Reincarnate questions

[StreamOfTheSky]

Last session, a character was killed and the druid used Last Breath to bring her back, and the roll came up...gnome. The character was originally a human cleric/crusader w/ dex 8, melee-focused, and heavy armor reliant. So, not the best of results. I am wondering some things, though.

Does Reincarnate effectively change irrevocably what your "original" / "natural" form is? I don't mean polymorph shenanigans to get back to Human, but if she were to get killed and raised w/ a proper Revivify or the like. It looks like she's trapped as gnome barring another Reincarnate to roll the dice again...

I'm offering the chance to roll for sub-race since Whisper Gnome at least wouldn't gimp her to speed 15 in her armor. Should basic rock gnome have a greater chance of happening than the others or is the below fine?
Roll a d10:
1 Air
2 Arctic
3 Desert
4 Forest
5 Ice
6 Jungle
7 Rock (ie, standard gnome)
8 Stonehunter
9 Wavecrest
10 Whisper

What exactly *should* be gained from the new form? I know the spell says, "The reincarnated creature gains all abilities associated with its new form, including forms of movement and speeds, natural armor, natural attacks, extraordinary abilities, and the like, but it doesn’t automatically speak the language of the new form." But should it really gain cultural/training related benefits, like the gnome's AC bonus against giants or weapon familiarity? Doesn't seem right to me, and she gets to keep her human bonus feat and skill points, so it's not like she's getting cheated if she doesn't gain *everything* gnome grants. I want a RAI answer here, not RAW. I tried to break it down below (sub-race might raise new questions):
Definitely gained:
Physical stat mods, base speed, and Small size
Low light vision and Listen bonus
Spell-like abilities

Definitely NOT gained:
Gnome language
Weapon familiarity

I'm not sure:
Save bonus against illusions and save DC bonus on illusion spells (is this cultural or part of their nature?)
Dodge bonus vs. giants (I think they train for that, like dwarves)
Alchemy bonus (is this trained or part of their nature?)
Attack bonus on goblinoids and kobolds (pretty sure this is trained...)


It seems that magic armor and shields (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?340405-Armor-resize-question) don't resize. I knew weapons didn't, but that leaves her pretty screwed, and they are reaching a fairly remote area and won't be able to simply buy Small gear (or add Sizing to her weapons) for a while. What would be a fair cost to adjust medium armor or shields down to small size, if you were to houserule it in, as a mundane solution?

This is an NPC run as a 2nd character by one of the players and she *is* a spellcaster, so I'm not too concerned if she's negatively impacted for a while, but I still would like to know about the above.

[Curmudgeon]

It looks like Reincarnate associates your "natural" form with your new body, just as it associates your "natural" age with young adult. Your approach to selecting subraces seems fine. A Human who's seen/heard about Gnomes being particularly gifted with certain things, who finds themselves suddenly in a Gnome body, may well discover that the balance of a Gnome hooked hammer now just seems perfect.

In general, I wouldn't muck with the rules until I'd tried things as straight RAW first. As you noted, the character gets to keep their Human bonus feat and all the skill ranks they've acquired, while gaining racial traits. On the downside, their armor and gear won't be as useful. Things tend to balance out.

[Chronos]

There's at least some trace memory of the "original" form left, as a Wish or Miracle can restore it. But given that those are the only two ways given of restoring original form, I think it's safe to say that no lesser magic will do it.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, it seems the only way out of gnome...at their level...is taking the chance on reincarnate again.

As for mucking with the rules...it just doesn't make any sense. And I can understand gaining those cultural/trained qualities over time, just not immediately upon rebirth. I might just run it as written, though. Because the stuff in the "no" column is all things the character won't care about anyway, so the additional complexity won't really have an effect anyway.

Now, for gear... It seems by RAW there's no rules at all for inappropriately sized armor and shield, so she can't use those at all. For weapons, it'd be a -2 penalty and her 1H medium weapons would become 2H weapons, and so forth. Again, w/ a dex penalty and melee focus, losing your armor is quite the blow. What would be a fair mundane price to re-adjust a suit of armor from medium to small (magical armor if it matters, but I think it should just be a flat cost no matter what)? Something around the price to adjust full plate to your body shape within the same size (and wrong sized full plate costing both values)? That'd be 200-800 gp, which...is a pretty stupidly wide delta, actually.

[JDL]

Why not go the opposite route and have the character get an Enlarge Person with Permanency instead? Bingo, they drop the Strength penalty for being a Gnome, they can wear all their old gear again, and they're simply down 2 Dex and about 2,500 gp.

[Kantolin]

While not as directly helpful to the question, wouldn't the cleric/crusader be perfectly okay as a gnome from a mechanical standpoint?

+Con is useful to a melee unit, their AC actually goes /up/ rather than down, strikes and spells can help overcome the strength and size penalties easy. I mean, the -2 strength won't matter much when you're casting righteous might and/or divine power anyway. Or Slay Living, if he's going that route with his spells. If he's power attacking, he now has a valuable +1 to hit that can be safely power attacked away over a human counterpart, too.

So overall, they become a little less damaging and noticeably more tanky. And they get to keep their bonus feat, so they also get the best part of being human.

And he may or may not be able to get a pet Bulette.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Permanent Enlarge Person runs the risk of being lost every time a dispel is lobbed in her vicinity, doesn't seem like a good solution, plus it just makes the dex worse (the other good thing about whisper gnome besides base speed would be the +2 dex to offset enlarge person, though). Also, that's really not an option anytime soon.

As for higher AC for small....it's +1, loss of magical heavy armor is a much steeper hit (+1 fullplate, in her case).

I know long term it could be beneficial.... She tanks with Iron Guard's Glare and combos w/ another player's use of Defensive Rebuke to create a lose-lose for foes, and Titan Fighting would further that combo nicely, for example. I was just curious about solutions for the short term, which might last quite a few sessions. But she is a spellcaster, so I suppose she'll be fine.

[KillianHawkeye]

What would be a fair mundane price to re-adjust a suit of armor from medium to small (magical armor if it matters, but I think it should just be a flat cost no matter what)? Something around the price to adjust full plate to your body shape within the same size (and wrong sized full plate costing both values)? That'd be 200-800 gp, which...is a pretty stupidly wide delta, actually.

Honestly, I would say that you're at the point where you either need to go get a new set of armor or... MAYBE you can rip the old armor apart and use the pieces to make a new set of armor sized for a small creature. You'd lose the magical properties of the original armor, and it would require Craft checks and some sort of armor smithing equipment, but you really can't "adjust" a suit of full-plate armor for a creature less than half the size and keep any meaningful part of the original armor IMO.

[Crake]

if you're worried about enlarge person being stripped with a dispel, just allow a custom continuous item of enlarge person

[Curmudgeon]

if you're worried about enlarge person being stripped with a dispel, just allow a custom continuous item of enlarge person
So instead the magic item gets dispelled for 1d4 rounds, and the person finds themselves buried in their now greatly oversized armor. That's plenty long enough to get killed.

[nedz]

Does Reincarnate effectively change irrevocably what your "original" / "natural" form is? I don't mean polymorph shenanigans to get back to Human, but if she were to get killed and raised w/ a proper Revivify or the like. It looks like she's trapped as gnome barring another Reincarnate to roll the dice again...
The rules are silent on this - so it's up to the DM.



I'm offering the chance to roll for sub-race since Whisper Gnome at least wouldn't gimp her to speed 15 in her armor. Should basic rock gnome have a greater chance of happening than the others or is the below fine?
Roll a d10:
1 Air
2 Arctic
3 Desert
4 Forest
5 Ice
6 Jungle
7 Rock (ie, standard gnome)
8 Stonehunter
9 Wavecrest
10 Whisper

The table is somewhat generic and should probably be changed to match the setting. E.g. A result of Elf would be strange if they don't exist in the setting. The problem is that there are a lot of possible options and most of those were not in the core books, unlike the spell.

I think that houseruling this should be fine, but I can't comment on your setting - the RAW even hints at doing this sort of thing.

For a humanoid creature, the new incarnation is determined using the following table. For nonhumanoid creatures, a similar table of creatures of the same type should be created.




What exactly *should* be gained from the new form? I know the spell says, "The reincarnated creature gains all abilities associated with its new form, including forms of movement and speeds, natural armor, natural attacks, extraordinary abilities, and the like, but it doesn’t automatically speak the language of the new form." But should it really gain cultural/training related benefits, like the gnome's AC bonus against giants or weapon familiarity? Doesn't seem right to me, and she gets to keep her human bonus feat and skill points, so it's not like she's getting cheated if she doesn't gain *everything* gnome grants. I want a RAI answer here, not RAW. I tried to break it down below (sub-race might raise new questions):
Definitely gained:
Physical stat mods, base speed, and Small size
Low light vision and Listen bonus
Spell-like abilities

Definitely NOT gained:
Gnome language
Weapon familiarity

I'm not sure:
Save bonus against illusions and save DC bonus on illusion spells (is this cultural or part of their nature?)
Dodge bonus vs. giants (I think they train for that, like dwarves)
Alchemy bonus (is this trained or part of their nature?)
Attack bonus on goblinoids and kobolds (pretty sure this is trained...)


RAW is ambiguous here. Personally I'd give them all of the last five including Weapon familiarity, but it's your call.



This is an NPC run as a 2nd character by one of the players and she *is* a spellcaster, so I'm not too concerned if she's negatively impacted for a while, but I still would like to know about the above.
But bear in mind that if you have a Druid in the party who is prone to using Last Breath / Reincarnate then any precedent you set will likely apply to a PC eventually.

[sleepyphoenixx]

if you're worried about enlarge person being stripped with a dispel, just allow a custom continuous item of enlarge person

Or you could just get some dispel protection, which is something a primary caster should do anyway.

[atemu1234]

Or you could just get some dispel protection, which is something a primary caster should do anyway.

Ring of Counterspells.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Honestly, I would say that you're at the point where you either need to go get a new set of armor or... MAYBE you can rip the old armor apart and use the pieces to make a new set of armor sized for a small creature. You'd lose the magical properties of the original armor, and it would require Craft checks and some sort of armor smithing equipment, but you really can't "adjust" a suit of full-plate armor for a creature less than half the size and keep any meaningful part of the original armor IMO.
I wouldn't do anything like that, since it's basically piling penalties on penalties because of a roll of the dice. They already lost a level-- that's punishment enough.

I'd allow the player to pay a small price-- a few hundred gold, say-- for a blacksmith to scale down the armor, without losing the enhancement bonus. (Fluff explanation: the metal is already enchanted to be extra-strong; since you're using the same metal for the new armor, the bonus remains). Alternate solutions include conveniently dropping a small-sized equivalent, a magic item that can change the size of other items (could be useful for future loot), or coming across another adventurer-type who has a suit of small +1 plate, but needs a medium. (Perhaps a halfling who just got reincarnated as a human?). Long term... perhaps a quest to restore his original race?

Also, when throwing around solutions, remember that this is only a 2600 gp item. "Permanent enlarge person and a ring of counterspells" costs, what, twice that?

[StreamOfTheSky]

Numerous posters have suggested permanency, ring of counterspells, etc... now. Those are simply not an option right now. The party is in an extremely remote region at the moment and will be there for a while. The main civilized area they'll have access to......has a purchase limit of 800 gp and almost no magic items.
They had access to tons of magic shops prior to this trip and got thoroughly decked out for the journey, so this was just a rather unfortunate time to kick the bucket. They do not have the means to teleport back somewhere larger, and going back overland would take several days. And taking several days each way to buy some new gear may just have some very negative consequences on accomplishing the mission they're on. Adding some "traveling merchant" that just happens to be wandering through with expensive wares feels cheap and silly.



But bear in mind that if you have a Druid in the party who is prone to using Last Breath / Reincarnate then any precedent you set will likely apply to a PC eventually.

I told the player I was allowing her access to Revivify at the same level as a Cleric because I really want the PC's to use such spells to stave off death and let me avoid for a bit longer tackling my issues w/ raise spells in D&D (which would be going off-topic here, but my problems are different from what I see most people gripe about them). She just happened to have already bought the components for Last Breath and said she may as well stick with it for now (even though I said they'd count as art/raw materials and re-sell for full value). Maybe after this debacle, she'll switch to Revivify. :smallsmile:
Cause I really hope she never uses Last Breath / Reincarnate on the centaur.... I don't even know where to start on making *that* table...


I wouldn't do anything like that, since it's basically piling penalties on penalties because of a roll of the dice. They already lost a level-- that's punishment enough.

To be fair, Last Breath specifically does not cost the target a level. Just like Revivify. So she lost nothing other than her racial identity and size.


I'd allow the player to pay a small price-- a few hundred gold, say-- for a blacksmith to scale down the armor, without losing the enhancement bonus. (Fluff explanation: the metal is already enchanted to be extra-strong; since you're using the same metal for the new armor, the bonus remains). Alternate solutions include conveniently dropping a small-sized equivalent, a magic item that can change the size of other items (could be useful for future loot), or coming across another adventurer-type who has a suit of small +1 plate, but needs a medium. (Perhaps a halfling who just got reincarnated as a human?). Long term... perhaps a quest to restore his original race?

Also, when throwing around solutions, remember that this is only a 2600 gp item. "Permanent enlarge person and a ring of counterspells" costs, what, twice that?

Agreed. It wasn't even that expensive, and she'll be fine long term. It's just that losing that huge chunk of AC really hurts in the short term. I'll either allow the lost cost re-size, or play it strictly. She can just buy some mundane armor and cast Magic Vestment, after all. She is still a tier 1...

[Zordran]

Due to us always being short on cash, we have a weirdly large amount of experience with Reincarnate, but we never came up with a solution to this problem, and it's worse because it only penalizes melee. My friend's human fighter suddenly found herself a halfling fighter, and her solution was...commit suicide and request another reincarnate. And that was when the NPC druid finally gave up on us. And then he was slain and inhabited by an intellect devourer, but that wasn't on us.


I really hope she never uses Last Breath / Reincarnate on the centaur.... I don't even know where to start on making *that* table...
DM's solution for a roll of 100 (DM's choice): roll d3 for Bestiary, and then d400 for page, reroll only if the page doesn't have a monster on it (or isn't a page).


Alternate solutions include...a magic item that can change the size of other items.

Make it look like a fridge magnet.

[Chronos]

If I were DMing, and a Reincarnate roll came up 00, I'd choose a form in such a way as to balance the party. If the character in question were overpowered, I'd try to pick something that nerfed it somewhat (without disabling it totally). But if it's the poor BSF? Yeah, he gets to turn into a firbolg or something.

[atemu1234]

If I were DMing, and a Reincarnate roll came up 00, I'd choose a form in such a way as to balance the party. If the character in question were overpowered, I'd try to pick something that nerfed it somewhat (without disabling it totally). But if it's the poor BSF? Yeah, he gets to turn into a firbolg or something.

I outright told my party I would do this, when the Druid cast the spell.

Elf Rogue -> Lesser Fey'ri Rogue was well received.

[Sith_Happens]

loss of magical heavy armor is a much steeper hit (+1 fullplate, in her case).

Since you're the DM and full-plate needs to be fitted to its wearer anyways, just say that for the maximum 800 gp the fitting can include a one-category size change.

[Deox]

Cause I really hope she never uses Last Breath / Reincarnate on the centaur.... I don't even know where to start on making *that* table...


I took the excellent work done here, Lists of Every Playable Monster by ECL (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?401132-Lists-of-Every-Playable-Monster-by-ECL), and customized the randomization to better suit my needs.