Best Use of Souls?

[SorenKnight]

If you had, in a purely hypothetical and entirely non-evil manner, obtained one million forty-two thousand nine hundred gold pieces worth of human souls, what would you do with them?

Other than release them to their proper fate of course. Do gooders need not apply.

The party consist of one level 10 wizard with Craft Wondrous Item and Craft Magic Arms an Armor, his alchemist cohort with Fleshwarper and Forge Ring, a level 10 fighter and a level 10 cleric, neither with any crafting feats.

For those that haven't figured it out, we are all Evil as the devil himself, so morality is no object.

[ATHATH]

There are a few spells that require souls in order to be cast.

[PhantasyPen]

I'm actually a bit partial to fueling magical items with souls, be they mortal or belonging to some form of elemental creature. This gives a bit of flavor, and also might allow for some excuses to crank out a unique effect.

[Nifft]

If you had, in a purely hypothetical and entirely non-evil manner, obtained one million forty-two thousand nine hundred gold pieces worth of human souls, what would you do with them?

Other than release them to their proper fate of course. Do gooders need not apply. Use them in entirely evil ways for more power.

If good isn't allowed, that's what's left.


The party consist of one level 10 wizard with Craft Wondrous Item and Craft Magic Arms an Armor, his alchemist cohort with Fleshwarper and Forge Ring, a level 10 fighter and a level 10 cleric, neither with any crafting feats.

BoVD has some rules for souls-as-power, IIRC each one is worth 100 xp in terms of crafting expenses.

[afroakuma]

If you had, in a purely hypothetical and entirely non-evil manner, obtained one million forty-two thousand nine hundred gold pieces worth of human souls, what would you do with them?

Stew. Definitely make stew.

[Boggartbae]

sorry AFB, but I think one of the uses for souls is to increase the save DC of a spell when used as a component. Pump half your souls into a casting of necrotic cyst, and the other half into necrotic domination, and go and get the most powerful creature in the multiverse as your pet, permanently.

[Cruiser1]

If you had, in a purely hypothetical and entirely non-evil manner, obtained one million forty-two thousand nine hundred gold pieces worth of human souls, what would you do with them?
Sell them for 1,042,900 gp, of course (or at least 50% of that)! :smallbiggrin: If you can't optimize your party with a million gp of magic items, you're not trying! :smallwink:

[SorenKnight]

Sorry, I think I was a little too vague. We play Pathfinder, not D&D, and we use those rules for souls. I already know the rules for souls in PF, and am more looking for specific magic items and such. I apologize for not making that clear from the start.




Sell them for 1,042,900 gp, of course (or at least 50% of that)! :smallbiggrin: If you can't optimize your party with a million gp of magic items, you're not trying! :smallwink:

In PF souls can be used in crafting at their GP value. That's why I mentioned what crafting feats the party has. Unfortunately there aren't any crafters that we can access that are higher level then us in the area we control and those outside it are unlikely to trade with us, on account of how very, very evil we are.

The whole party is all equipped with various continuous spell effect items and similar op nonsense, and I was looking for more of the same.

If it helps we also have a small army of fanatic worshipers and have conquered a few decent sized city-states, so we have access to almost as much manual labor or raw materials as we want. There was one big city state that still stood against us, but well, where did you think the souls came from?:smallbiggrin:


Edit: To clarify a little more, none of the cities we've conquered had any significant magic items. The campaign world, or at least this part of it, has a culture and technological level similar to that of ancient Mesopotamia rather than the more standard medieval setting. I've been working under the impression that other regions of the world are more advanced in both technology and magic, and that's what will provide the challenge when we've finished consolidated out power here and work on further expansion.

Our current game plan as evil overlords is wipe out the last person capable of truly resisting us, a high level cleric, and then spend a couple decades consolidating power and creating all manner of abominations for our army. We're all longer lived races, so we can afford to wait a human generation so that all the humans we've conquered have lived their entire lives under our rule and have been properly indoctrinated so we don't have to worry about rebellion when we begin our expansion again.

[ATHATH]

So you can't use Call Lemure Horde, Call Dretch Horde, Call Nightmare, etc. (spells with soul components from 3.5)?

[zlefin]

as an oddball plan you could use lesser planar binding/ally to get a nightmare which would let you planeshift to some place with better purchasing options (and with higher level crafters than you have locally)

[Potato_Priest]

I'm a native to the 5e forum, but I just popped in to tell you how very jealous I am. It's been a while since my last evil campaign.

[unseenmage]

You could make some Soulbound Shells, give them Cooperative Crafting, and have them start equipping your cities with magic item might.

Edit: That said, it might be helpful to know the demographics of your souls.

How many were spellcasters? How many are evil? How many innocent? Any of particularly high quality?
Do you have a soul sorting and grading machine?


Edit Again: And if I might ask, How in all the hells did you snag so many?!?

[Nifft]

Can you reincarnate them and use them as slaves?

[SorenKnight]

So you can't use Call Lemure Horde, Call Dretch Horde, Call Nightmare, etc. (spells with soul components from 3.5)?

I could ask the GM about allowing 3.5 content, but I'd rather not. That being said, the PF soul rules still allow use as spell components. (Go here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/daemons/)and scroll down to "The Soul Trade" and "Using Souls") Essentially I can substitute them for any expensive material components or use them in crafting.



as an oddball plan you could use lesser planar binding/ally to get a nightmare which would let you planeshift to some place with better purchasing options (and with higher level crafters than you have locally)

Not a bad idea. My only concern would be opening up what has been a relatively closed ecosystem up to this point to larger extraplanar threats.


You could make some Soulbound Shells, give them Cooperative Crafting, and have them start equipping your cities with magic item might.

Edit: That said, it might be helpful to know the demographics of your souls.

How many were spellcasters? How many are evil? How many innocent? Any of particularly high quality?
Do you have a soul sorting and grading machine?


Edit Again: And if I might ask, How in all the hells did you snag so many?!?

Magic item abuse. I made a custom item of use-activated Create Soul Gem (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/create-soul-gem/). Because its use-activated I don't have to spend an action to use it, so anyone who dies in range gets captured.

Aaand I just realized that spell has a duration, and a Will save. I can't believe I missed that, it really should have been obvious that such a low level spell had to have some kind of drawback compared to higher level equivalents. Well, I suppose the new question is what can I do with over a million gold in the next week or so? My best plan would be to go with zlefin's idea and find an extraplanar buyer willing to trade them for something more lasting, preferably an item of Soul Bind so I can continue with my Evil, but I'm open to ideas.

The vast majority of the souls I have come from an army we killed. We used previously acquired souls to call up a devil and trade for the Hellbound template, then overran them with a much smaller army of regenerating minions. We had a tribe of 20 goblin mounted archers and ~300 hobgoblins to the enemy's 6,000 phalanx soldiers and a handful of war elephants, but they didn't have the resources to counteract our regeneration, at least not that they could afford to equip the common soldier with. The enemy army was all 6th level and the GM ruled that their souls were worth 400 gp each.


Can you reincarnate them and use them as slaves?

Hypothetically, but we have other ways of getting minions. Our current plan is to slaughter the city and capture any children young enough to have no memory of it, then raise them as fanatic soldiers with no conception of a world without their almighty dark gods, i.e. us. Some casual googling has told me that a city of its size should have one to two thousand kids of three or under, and once we hellbind them that'll be a significant force.


Oh yeah, embarrassingly enough I forgot one member of the party, a bard. He came in later than the rest of us, so we made him the (un)holy voice of our religion rather than a god in his own right. He serves as our prophet and envoy, as well as utilizing some good old fashioned mind control on our enemies.

[Crake]

Ask your GM if there's any occult rituals (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/occult-adventures/occult-rules/occult-rituals/) you can perform with that value of souls? They are entirely GM dependant, but he might come up with something nice for you. Perhaps you might even be able to summon something REALLY powerful and get some neato goodies out of it? Might even be able to trade with some efreeti and get a buttload of wishes in exchange for some souls?

[SorenKnight]

Ask your GM if there's any occult rituals (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/occult-adventures/occult-rules/occult-rituals/) you can perform with that value of souls? They are entirely GM dependant, but he might come up with something nice for you. Perhaps you might even be able to summon something REALLY powerful and get some neato goodies out of it? Might even be able to trade with some efreeti and get a buttload of wishes in exchange for some souls?


That's a really cool idea! I could use rituals to do all those evil magic things that there aren't necessarily specific rules for, and at the very least I can use the souls to lower the DC. I'm thinking immortality, or maybe granting templates that you can't normally get, at least as easily. Maybe transforming all our mounts into their dire equivalents? So many possibilities...

[FocusWolf413]

Really? Nobody?

Red Fel,
Someone needs advice from Hell,
Red Fel,
This is your dinner bell,
Red Fel,
I've had far too much to drink to write well.


Wow. That was bad.

[Red Fel]

Really? Nobody?

Red Fel,
Someone needs advice from Hell,
Red Fel,
This is your dinner bell,
Red Fel,
I've had far too much to drink to write well.


https://i1.wp.com/www.sopitas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/rita-repulsa-power-rangers-3.gif?resize=270%2C225

At last, after ten thousand years, I'm free! It's time to-


Wow. That was bad.

... Yeah, yeah it was.

Okay. So other people have covered the RAW of souls, now here's the RAI.

Souls, like favors, are currency for a barter economy.

It's a fact that really shouldn't surprise you. Souls are to Outsiders and collectors what marbles are to kids. And collectors.

And by "Outsiders" I mean all Outsiders. Fact is, there are Good-aligned ones who would gladly buy from you, if it meant freeing the doomed from a fate worse than death. Although you tend to make a lot of hit lists that way.

Know what the nice thing is about being a merchant, though? Neutrality. As a buyer and seller of commodities, you don't need to be bogged down by the politics of the planes. You just happened to come into some perfectly legitimate goods, and are willing to part with them for a reasonable rate. You know. Legitimate business.

Keep your nose clean. Don't get personal, don't get involved. Make some discrete inquiries. There will be buyers. Buyers who will pay you way more than the gp crafting equivalent.

Think about it this way. If you suddenly find a stash of diamonds, are you going to make your own jewelry? Heck no, you're no jeweler. You'd ruin the goods and the profits. No, you'd sell them to people who can use them. They can go to the trouble of making and marketing jewelry. You don't care what they do with the diamonds, and you don't care where the diamonds came from - you just want to liquidate the asset. And they will pay you far more than you could make trying to craft your own crappy diamond rings.

Find a buyer. Don't settle for cash, cash is cheap. You can go out and commit a half a genocide and have more cash than you'll need in three lifetimes before lunch. No, you want things you can't get. You're selling Outsider goods, you want to deal in Outsider currency, and Outsider currency is favors. What you want is the sort of stuff money can't buy.

Lucky you, you're Evil to a fault. So you won't mind if the stuff you pay for carries some heavy moral penalties. And the people selling it to you won't mind either, because it puts a bit more Evil into the world. They'll avoid tricking you too much, because, if you should happen to come into some perfectly legitimate goods in the future, you will offer your best customers first crack at the merchandise.

Don't use the souls yourself, is my point. Sell them to someone who will. Ideally, Lawful Evil.

[FocusWolf413]

... Yeah, yeah it was.


You know what they say. F for Effort, and also F for Execution, you're a failure and a disappointment to the family.



Goods can be exchanged for services


Many outsiders won't just trade a generic favor. Favors, unbounded by terms, have unknown value and unknown risk. They'll demand terms to said favors. Make sure you delineate said terms. They won't necessarily try to screw you, but they'll certainly try to get it for the lowest price possible.

You should hire a negotiator from a Lawful Neutral plane to make the deal. He'll put your terms into legal writing, and he'll also know the standard contract laws. I'd steer clear of chaotic buyers, as they aren't bound by the same rules as everyone else. Your mileage may vary with neutral buyers, because they'll gladly take the penalty for breaking a contract if someone offers the right price. Red Fel is right. Sell to lawful beings.

[Erit]

You should hire a negotiator from a Lawful Neutral plane to make the deal. He'll put your terms into legal writing, and he'll also know the standard contract laws.

Mechanus must surely have a surplus of litigants needing a bit more work to slot into their schedules.

[SorenKnight]

We had the game on Sunday and, for those curious, we ended up trading them for a few magic weapons, an item of 5/day Soul Bind, and 500,000 gold worth of black sapphires.

[Red Fel]

We had the game on Sunday and, for those curious, we ended up trading them for a few magic weapons, an item of 5/day Soul Bind, and 500,000 gold worth of black sapphires.

Probably the smartest thing you could do. Trading them for goods means that the deal is done, complete, finito - and that means that you're limiting your interactions with your client-base to an absolute minimum. Don't get me wrong, repeat business is generally a good thing, but you don't want any contract to extend beyond goods trading hands, if possible. Extended dealings over a long period of time with anyone interested in souls will rarely inure to your benefit - better to keep them short and to the point.

Bonus, you got the perfect means to turn this into a renewable industry. Great thinking! You can really corner the market on this "soul" stuff now, and turn a solid profit in the process.

[SorenKnight]

Probably the smartest thing you could do. Trading them for goods means that the deal is done, complete, finito - and that means that you're limiting your interactions with your client-base to an absolute minimum. Don't get me wrong, repeat business is generally a good thing, but you don't want any contract to extend beyond goods trading hands, if possible. Extended dealings over a long period of time with anyone interested in souls will rarely inure to your benefit - better to keep them short and to the point.

Bonus, you got the perfect means to turn this into a renewable industry. Great thinking! You can really corner the market on this "soul" stuff now, and turn a solid profit in the process.

My thinking exactly. 5/day Soul Bind adds up over time and can and fuel my magic item crafting essentially indefinitely.

[gkathellar]

Feed them into a sphere of annihilation for the lulz/on principle.

[Dragolord]

Feed them into a sphere of annihilation for the lulz/on principle.

That's the sort of thing which really riles up both fiends and celestials. Nobody likes a wastrel.

[Nifft]

Feed them into a sphere of annihilation for the lulz/on principle.

Tharizdun finds this hilarious! --more--

[unseenmage]

For me personally, in 3.x, I prefer trapping each soul in a chunk of thinaun steel then weaving that metal along with an equal volume of Shapesand, Livewood, Living Metal, Aurorum, Quintessence, and Oerthblood Alloy into a Dwarvencraft humanoid form reminiscent of a Warforged.

Then hit the resultant body with the Hardening spell, the psionics equivalent, Augment Object, etc before finally casting Minor Servitor on it.

The final Construct has living parts while not being alive, has a soul while remaining soulless, is affected by time though part of it is timeless, has shapable parts while its whole is solid, and has any one of the special materials qualities due to their being incorporated in equal measure.

Though the free willed conciousness within remains vulnerable to Dispel the body itself is sturdy and reclaimable.
Other than that this trick is a pointless waste of resources and magic. So basically they're expensive sculptures. An art, if you will.

[gkathellar]

That's the sort of thing which really riles up both fiends and celestials. Nobody likes a wastrel.

Well that's practically the point, isn't it? If you're not making everyone irritated, you're not really evil. :D

[Red Fel]

Well that's practically the point, isn't it? If you're not making everyone irritated, you're not really evil. :D

Agree to disagree.

You all love me. I keep it real, and I'm hilarious.