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View Full Version : Segev's idea: a new spell to use on monsters



Donnadogsoth
2015-02-04, 08:59 PM
In our discussion of the orc situation, Segev appealed in this post:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18754335&postcount=273

that the common denominator for sapient, sentient, or manlike creatures should be the concept of soul, that we call such creatures "ensouled" as a way of distinguishing them practically and morally from the dumb animals. It occurs to me a cool new spell, for any given setting, would be "Ensoul" which would give a monster, animal, plant or other non-ensouled creature a soul, making it morally a man and not a brute. I'm not playing or running any game right now that would allow for such a spell, but offer the idea here as something that could prove very interesting, if its implications were taken seriously by the party. What would a monster like an umber hulk or a giant snake do if it were suddenly given a soul? How would it understand and communicate its new condition to the PC party? What would their reaction be? Etc.

goto124
2015-02-04, 09:13 PM
Where did the soul come from? Did you just magic one out of nowhere? Is it mentally a baby? Or did it come from someone who'd died? Like a form of Ressurection, but in a different body?

Donnadogsoth
2015-02-04, 10:11 PM
Where did the soul come from? Did you just magic one out of nowhere? Is it mentally a baby? Or did it come from someone who'd died? Like a form of Ressurection, but in a different body?

One could list them and then roll a die, to make it interesting.

Alent
2015-02-04, 10:13 PM
Isn't this what the Awaken spell does in 3.x?

I'm not understanding the purpose unless "Always lawful evil" races definitively lack a soul, or something.

Mr.Moron
2015-02-04, 10:28 PM
I guess I can see the appeal but it probably wouldn't come up in one of my games. There's a lot of rules around souls in many settings (including both I run in), they tend not be the kind of thing easily generated by mortal magic.

Still assuming it did happen I imagine the new being would feel something like waking up from a long dream. It would retain experiences from the life it had up until they point, but the memories be flat, distant like a vaguely remembered story or movie. It would impart no particular new knowledge so if it couldn't speak before, it can't now.

It's default state towards the part or anything would probably be something between confusion and fear. This could be colored by previous experiences and assuming the players were particularly kind to it fear might be replaced with cautious reliance. Assuming the soul was put into something like an "Always Evil" variety of Orc, which would mostly have memories of violence I imagine it would begin to lash out wildly.

It's newly heightened sense of self-preservation and ability to make rational decisions would be overwhelmed with feelings of violence. Like soldier suddenly thrust back into the memories of battle. It may no longer be an inherently violent killing machine, but it has still only ever known violence. Shocking visceral violence, with no context and no reason. A lifetime of pain and killing thrust on to a new mind in mere moments.

Sith_Happens
2015-02-04, 10:34 PM
...I'm assuming you didn't actually read the part of the post you're linking which clarifies that the "soul" in "ensouled" doesn't literally mean such?

goto124
2015-02-04, 10:37 PM
It probably doesn't really matter whether or not it has a literal soul, for the purposes of discussion. (Argument about what is sentience). In actual gameplay, it doesn't matter much. The animal gained the ability to really analyze its thoughts and memories the way a human does, and 2 posts above is what happens.

Vitruviansquid
2015-02-04, 11:14 PM
How about if enchanted items were items with souls? The reason an enchanted sword is more effective than a mundane sword is because that enchanted sword has a sadistic personality, a will to smite evil, or so on. Likewise, an enchanted sword might be weaker than a mundane one if its personality is not conducive to violence, and a magician of some kind might "ensoul" an enemy's sword to make it more complacent, or slow, or rebellious.

Segev
2015-02-05, 12:34 PM
The post originally referenced that I made was actualy proposing nomenclature to try to get around a (rather boring, to me) debate people had been having over whether the words commonly used to define "people" versus "animals" and "things" were in fact accurate. I proposed "ensouled" because it encompassed the idea that a given entity is a person, and thus something one should treat as one would, in the real world, a fellow human being. While allowing for the possiblity that, even in the real world, other "ensouled" beings might exist which are not human. (Eventual A.I.s, alien species, genetically-advanced cockroaches...and I don't mean politicians...)


As for the idea proposed here, I am a little hard-pressed to think what it would do that Awaken does not. Perhaps if the concept of the psychological zombie was active in the setting (and you could tell the difference by some test).

The question becomes, what does a formerly-not-ensouled being look like before and after the spell is used? What has changed? And is it functionally different than casting the Awaken spell?

Donnadogsoth
2015-02-05, 10:30 PM
The post originally referenced that I made was actualy proposing nomenclature to try to get around a (rather boring, to me) debate people had been having over whether the words commonly used to define "people" versus "animals" and "things" were in fact accurate. I proposed "ensouled" because it encompassed the idea that a given entity is a person, and thus something one should treat as one would, in the real world, a fellow human being. While allowing for the possiblity that, even in the real world, other "ensouled" beings might exist which are not human. (Eventual A.I.s, alien species, genetically-advanced cockroaches...and I don't mean politicians...)


As for the idea proposed here, I am a little hard-pressed to think what it would do that Awaken does not. Perhaps if the concept of the psychological zombie was active in the setting (and you could tell the difference by some test).

The question becomes, what does a formerly-not-ensouled being look like before and after the spell is used? What has changed? And is it functionally different than casting the Awaken spell?

I'm not familiar with the Awaken spell so I can't comment on it.

The Ensoul spell could not only bring a creature to self-awareness, the magic could also make it self-aware of being self-aware. Think of an epiphany like a golden Faberge egg rising to the surface of awareness. The creature would be stunned at this new vista before its psyche. It would cease attacking or even moving, and would shake itself as if out of a dream, look about itself, and reassess its tactical situation as a mature, reasoning being. Its Alignment would be nullified: it would freely choose its Alignment within a period of grace, mayhap a vulnerable time for it as it could be swayed by acts of gentleness or of malice. Ensouled monsters would be limited by their communications ability, but all of them have their INT magically raised to 18 as pristine souls without cognitive blemish. Thus, even an ensouled black pudding might find a way to communicate with its fellow sentients.

jedipotter
2015-02-06, 12:16 AM
a cool new spell, for any given setting, would be "Ensoul" which would give a monster, animal, plant or other non-ensouled creature a soul, making it morally a man and not a brute. .

Maybe like the spell Moral Anthropomorphism? It could be zero level and on all class spell lists. It allows the caster to touch anything, and make anything exactly like the caster in every possible moral, emotional and philosophical way. The spell would have no save and no SR, as of course, the caster of this spell is always right.

Alent
2015-02-06, 12:35 AM
Maybe like the spell Moral Anthropomorphism? It could be zero level and on all class spell lists. It allows the caster to touch anything, and make anything exactly like the caster in every possible moral, emotional and philosophical way. The spell would have no save and no SR, as of course, the caster of this spell is always right.

I thought that spell was called "Mindrape".

Segev
2015-02-06, 09:35 AM
At the risk of explaining the joke, I think jedipotter means that anybody can cast this spell, because it's all in the mind of the caster. Having cast it, the caster now "knows" that the target is morally and philosophically the same order of being, with the same moral weight and importance and ethical rights, as the caster.

Donnadogsoth
2015-02-06, 11:10 AM
At the risk of explaining the joke, I think jedipotter means that anybody can cast this spell, because it's all in the mind of the caster. Having cast it, the caster now "knows" that the target is morally and philosophically the same order of being, with the same moral weight and importance and ethical rights, as the caster.

[snort] That's an intriguing idea. I would have called the spell Moral Doppelganger, but the idea of that type of spell interests me. What else can a "spellcaster" do that is Quixotically efficacious?