Soul Trap?

[Graysire]

So, in a campaign I'm DMing soon-ish, I have an Artificer 3//Dread Necromancer 3
He has asked me if he could have a Soul Trap-esque spell

His Quote:
"its based on the soul trap spell from elder scrolls.
Basically you cast this spell on a target and if they die within X(ex. 1/2 level) rounds they lose exp and
said exp is trapped in a gem to be used later as substitute for spell components or exp for magically item creation"

Any thoughts from the playground on what level such a spell should be? Or how else is should function to be reasonable?

[AtlasSniperman]

It depends how much XP it takes. the more XP the higher level. Another thing to watch out for is how the players would react if it was cast on them.

Imagine if all your XP got stripped when you died, would you want to res or bring in a new character? Or would you just walk away? too little XP and its not really worth any spell level anyway.

[Graysire]

So, perhaps a 2nd level spell version of it might take say....100? xp, but only if they have that much xp past their level(can't be used to drain a level)?

[AtlasSniperman]

I wouldn't be able to tell you how to work the numbers specifically. but preventing level drain seems like the best addendum to include to start.

[InvisibleBison]

A character who is raised from the dead usually loses some experience. You could say that this spell lets you capture some or all of that experience as the creature dies. It would probably be reasonable to say that you have to have a gem of a certain value in order to capture a given quantity of XP (the usual 1 XP = 5 GP rule might serve), and to also limit the amount based on the caster's level.

[Graysire]

.....I really like that idea InvisibleBison, thanks, that makes it follow the general trend of it being hard to get XP for crafting(3 per dose of liquid pain etc.) , while still making it worthwhile and have a reasonable resource requirement. Thanks a ton!

[Beheld]

As a general rule, anything which causes a specific way of defeating enemies to make you more powerful in the long run is a bad thing. It's fine for a single player game, but it's not fine in a cooperative story game where maybe not every other player wants to be part of making you more powerful by not killing people until you soul trap them. That's just the same as when you have a diplomacy army or whatever, it's just not a good incentive for the game.

[Graysire]

Ah, right....."diplomacy army"......yeah this player would do that, we're playing in a dark fantasy half-apocalypse setting, so hopefully I can limit him by his spell slots and the availability of gems, but I'll definitely keep that in mind, luckily he'll be using such XP for crafting items for the party(perhaps note in the spell it's for crafting only?), I like the idea of him not having to deal with getting behind in XP, but as you've rightfully pointed out Beheld, problems. Any suggestions?

[Beheld]

Ah, right....."diplomacy army"......yeah this player would do that, we're playing in a dark fantasy half-apocalypse setting, so hopefully I can limit him by his spell slots and the availability of gems, but I'll definitely keep that in mind, luckily he'll be using such XP for crafting items for the party(perhaps note in the spell it's for crafting only?), I like the idea of him not having to deal with getting behind in XP, but as you've rightfully pointed out Beheld, problems. Any suggestions?

Do away with crafting XP costs or create a crafting pool, and don't give him a spell that forces the rest of the party to fight a certain way to get half price loot.

[Graysire]

Ok, He'll just have to deal with his Artificer Craft Pool then, I didn't think of it that way before Beheld, thanks, and thanks to everyone else for their help as well.

[OldTrees1]

Ok, He'll just have to deal with his Artificer Craft Pool then, I didn't think of it that way before Beheld, thanks, and thanks to everyone else for their help as well.

Talk to the player. Perhaps they will still want to cast the "Soul Trap" spell occasionally as a flavor explanation for the crafting reserve mechanics.

[Beheld]

Talk to the player. Perhaps they will still want to cast the "Soul Trap" spell occasionally as a flavor explanation for the crafting reserve mechanics.

This is actually a good point. You could have it grant huge amounts of XP (500 from a CR 1 enemy, 1k from a CR 2, 2k from CR 3, 4k from CR 4 or whatever) but have an absolute cap of [whatever an artificer's crafting reserve is] per level. So that way he gets to soul trap, but it only happens to 2-3 out of every 10-20 enemies and there's no reason for the others to distort their experience, and he can still feel like he's "earning" that crafting reserve by casting soul trap.

[Telok]

You could replace the Retain Essence class feature with something similar to the Soul Trap.