Nine Lives

[Kadzar]

For a homebrew setting I'm working on, I'm considering, for a lark, to give Cat People nine lives. Problem is, just on a setting level, this sounds rather broken going by the most literal interpretation of nine free resurrections or whatever for the entire species. So what other interpretations can you think of for the phrase "nine lives", or maybe reasons why having nine lives isn't actually awesome?

[Saph]

You can do it the way Diane Duane does in her cat-books: when a cat-person dies, they're reincarnated in a new body. However, this is traditional reincarnation rather than D&D reincarnation: they go back to age 0 and grow into an adult all over again. Effectively they get a new life.

Memories remain but are fuzzy, growing stronger as you age past childhood to adolescence, so you'd lose your levels, but might remember the basics of what you did in past lives. Some people choose to seek out old friends and unfinished business with their new lives, while others make a clean break.

It'd be a fun roleplaying thing, but wouldn't directly boost the character's power (apart from giving them a certain amount of extra knowledge).

[Mono Vertigo]

Several ideas. Most are probably silly, though.

- They live 9 lives simultaneously. There are groups composed of 9 cat people (at most) who all share the same soul, but exhibit different aspects of it. They can share memories with a touch. Once one body is killed, though, they can't be brought back to life (and it's your call whether their soul-shard is also lost forever, or goes back to the "pool" to be shared with the survivors).
- They can die up to 9 different ways, but can only undergo one death at a time. There's physical death, of course; but they can also experience the death of their dreamself (in which case they completely stop dreaming) death of their immaterial soul, death of their innocence, etc. On the one hand, that means an individual keeps going longer than the average adventurer. On the other hand, it means that cat-people, at the end of their life, are often pitifully hollow bodies on auto-pilot, having died in every non-physical way.
- Cat People can give away their lives. When they breed, each parents has to give away at least one of their lives to each of their child; they can therefore have up to 8 children without dying, and a 9th one of they sacrifice themselves. They are also encouraged to give one of their lives to a dying family members who hasn't any left. You could have a society of Cat People who routinely trade away their lives for social or economic reasons.
- In order to get 9 lives, Cat People need to steal them from other sentient living beings. Good Cat People may prefer to execute criminals and sentient monsters instead of innocents to gather the lives necessary for them to be allowed out of their home town. Once they durably leave their home town, though, they cannot gain more extra lives from their killing (because of magical or metaphysical reasons, you know your setting better than I do).

[DigoDragon]

My thought is that "9 Lives" can work like the rogue ability Defensive Roll. It's not a very powerful ability, but works with idea that cats cheat death many times.

[Slipperychicken]

Once per month, when a catperson would be reduced to zero or fewer hit points, he may use his feline luck to remain at 1hp and conscious. He may also choose to expend his use of this power to automatically stabilize or reroll a failed saving throw.

[Joe the Rat]

They get 8 cheats from certain death - you skip the whole "they die" part, and they continue on as if the last one didn't happen.

Or you let them spend the rest of the (whatever everyone was doing that caused him/her to die) dead, then revive after the dust clears.

The flip side of this is that the means of survival can be downright embarassing, and they cannot be Raised or Resurrected. Ever.

(Or if you want to allow be nicer about it, being raised/ressurected counts as one of their "lives", letting them come back at full levels.)

The important thing to remember here is to emphasize the Nine Lives, but never directly point out that it means only Eight returns.

[endoperez]

My thought is that "9 Lives" can work like the rogue ability Defensive Roll. It's not a very powerful ability, but works with idea that cats cheat death many times.

Seconded.

Something very similar to that one happens n Terry Pratchett's Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. Maurice, the cat, argues with Death about the number of lives he has left, and it turns out one of the times he dodged certain death "just in time" did, in fact, cut it too close.

[Slipperychicken]

The important thing to remember here is to emphasize the Nine Lives, but never directly point out that it means only Eight returns.

Catfolk aren't some secret club, they're a race. It's got to be extremely well-documented that they cheat death 8 times.

[Joe the Rat]

Documented by whom? It would rather depend on how common they are.

But you are right that catfolk themselves should be quite aware of what nine lives means.

But do they necessarily know which life they are on? (again, borrowing from Pratchett)

[Fable Wright]

You could use the Death Delver ability of the same name...

[kardar233]

Documented by whom? It would rather depend on how common they are.

But you are right that catfolk themselves should be quite aware of what nine lives means.

But do they necessarily know which life they are on? (again, borrowing from Pratchett)

Oooh... I like this. So that the player doesn't necessarily know which life they're on, the first eight times they would die the DM fudges something behind the screen. With a good poker face you could have the player wondering which life they're on, which could make for good suspense.

[Slipperychicken]

Documented by whom? It would rather depend on how common they are.

By the Catfolk themselves, and anyone who lives with or regularly observes them. The phenomenon would have profound implications (if reproducible, it could extend lifespans potentially by 8x), and research into it would surely get funding. Even if it didn't result in any practical innovations, the data and information would still be there.

Even if there aren't hard numbers at first, researchers, scientists, crazy Wizards, immortality-obsessed alchemists, and other scholars would dig it up at least trying to verify claims that Catfolk live longer or are more likely to survive life-threatening events.

[Kadzar]

Well, I'd prefer that the nine lives thing be either not very obvious from observation or something that's actually not so great, since my idea for the Cat People is that they tend to be braggarts and arrogant for little actual reason. So when a Cat Person brags about their nine lives, other species would either be able to say "there's no proof that that's actually a thing" or "so what?"

Additionally, I'd like the number nine to have some meaning; maybe it's not a literal thing for all Cat People, but the number is derived from a certain story or something.

[Slipperychicken]

Well, I'd prefer that the nine lives thing be either not very obvious from observation or something that's actually not so great, since my idea for the Cat People is that they tend to be braggarts and arrogant for little actual reason. So when a Cat Person brags about their nine lives, other species would either be able to say "there's no proof that that's actually a thing" or "so what?"

Additionally, I'd like the number nine to have some meaning; maybe it's not a literal thing for all Cat People, but the number is derived from a certain story or something.

You could give them a 1/day reroll on saving throws.