DM Help

[Neberu]

So here's the situation.

System: Pathfinder RPG
Party: Human warblade (lvl 6), Elven Black Flame Zealot (lvl 6), Elven Wizard (lvl 5)
Homebrew World

So the party is adventuring through a blasted wasteland and encounters a Necromancer and his platoon of undead digging for relics. They watch for a bit and the Zealot and Warblade want to just bypass him and move on with their adventure but the Wizard wants to talk to him. A short curt conversation later has the Necromancer being a general stand offish jerk and the Warblade and Zealot decide to just walk on (assuming that the wizard will follow). The wizard does indeed follow for a bit but once he's a distance away he fires off a Fireball spell at the necromancer. The inital blast obliterates most of the undead but the necromancer, 2 Large Skeletons, and a T-Rex Skeleton survive and give chase. The Wizard and the Zealot drop down to negative HPs in a few rounds but manage to take out the 2 large skeletons and mostly escape the necromancer who leaves it up to his T-rex to finish the job. The warblade holds his own most of the way but in the end he falls too.

A lot of crap followed that where I handled the situation poorly but its not important to the issue at hand, which is as follows. My party is dead, like dead dead and they all know it. But because we all feel it was really weak we've decided we want them to continue playing their characters. So now I need to come up with a believable situation that has them being resurrected and returned to a playable status and I'm coming up blank.

I'd really like the situation they find themselves in upon their return to the land of the living to be "complicated", such as them being indebted to a power they'd rather not be or have their resurrection be complicated in some way or something along those lines.

Anyone have any idea's for a fellow gamer?

[clockworkjoe]

A few options come to mind:

1. The necromancer brings them back to life - but captures their souls with a mind jar spell or something like that. If they do something for him (retrieve a relic guarded by a guardian the necromancer couldn't bypass) - he will return their souls.

2. A hermit holy man saw the battle and chased off the necromancer after the battle, raises the party back to life in exchange for a vow to live a more righteous life or to perform a quest (whatever you want)

3. The necromancer was digging up a relic right? The relic looses a powerful supernatural creature that teleports the PCs bodies away to a sanctuary where they are raised.

4. The PCs bodies remain undiscovered for years until someone finds them by chance and a cleric raises them out of curiosity

5. A peasant sees the battle and steals the bodies away from the necromancer and takes them to the village healer. The healer is barely able to raise the three characters. When they come back to life, the peasants of the village beg the PCs to stop the bandits that raid their village every year.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Well, the guy who killed them was a necromancer.

Problem solved.

4th Edition introduced this notion, that I intend to use in my game one day, that undead have three elements: body, mind, and animus (the shadow of a soul). An undead, in it's most basic form, is a reanimated body. No mind, no animus. Zombies, skeletons, basic unthinking no spectacular undead. Give an undead a mind and they think for themselves. Give an undead their animus and they have the same powers they had in life as well as undead specific powers. Vampire Lords, Liches, Larva Mages are examples.

I wanted to run a campaign where the heroes died and where returned to "life" as undead with their animus intact. They're still undead but they can use their powers and maintain their current level. Apply the general undead template (negative hurts, positive heals) and you have a group of adventures under the command of a nercomancer who have their wits about them.

Now you can continue the plot with the addition that the party has to find a way to get free of the nercomaner's control and return themselves to life... or not. Maybe they like what they've become. I like to offer players power with no cost in mechanical terms to see what they do. After all, what is a PC's "soul" to a player? This is the chance to find out.

[dragonshaos]

For fun after they come back, 'forget' to mention that at night they take on the forms of their dead rotting bodies and during the day they are their normal healthy selves.

Might make for a few good encounters with people and the like.

[Tissue]

Thats kind of a sucky situation.  There are a few different ways out of it.   Personally I would punish the wizard more then the others for his actions that lead to their deaths.

1>  The necromancer raises the wizard from the death before the others as some form of un-dead, then have the wizard find a way to resurect the company.    But for his foolish actions he has to play the rest of the campaign as whatever un-dead creature he is raised as.

2> A wandering cleric brings the warblade and the Zealot back to life when they awake they find that their wizard is no where to be found;  then perhaps link that to the necromancer in some way,  perhaps the necromancer stole the body, brought the body back as undead.... etc,   then either the party go and find him,  or the wizard needs to write a new character.  (I would go down this path as characters who start foolish fights without their party backing them up piss me off.)

3> One of the major gods bring the characters back.  What God you decide on would depends on the characters alignment, if they follow a God already at this stage and so on.  The God has brought them back because the Necromancer that has killed them was actually searching for a relic that is partof some ritual that raises an ancient evil that will enslave the planet... etc.  The Gods want to stop this, but can't find the necromancers that are searching for the relics etc etc etc.


Personally i would punish the wizard in whatever option you decide to use.