[2E] Beyond Wholeness-Restoring Meditation

Q

Quorlox

Junior Member
The Gem of Incomparable Wellness discussion makes me wonder if there could be a Medicine Charm that allows for complete regeneration from death.  Med 3-Essence 3 allows a character to regenerate lost limbs, so why not total regeneration?  It'd have to be balanced.  For example, maybe the Charm would need to be purchased once for each regeneration, with a character's Essence being the cap on the number of times it could be purchased.  It would automatically activate on death and the character would regenerate in a sanctum of sorts.  The character would pick the location, etc. and then be able to regenerate in secret.
 
But how would you counter it?  Letting characters purchase charms that will bring them back from the dead sounds fun, but after killing them half a dozen times after the pc does some outrageously stupid thing and watching them come back would lose its excitement.  Something to keep this power from working, otherwise its just like haveing a group of players with that level 5 Hearthstone.


Even charms in the Melee tree that have perfect defense, their downside is that they burn up Essence so you cant keep using it.
 
In Exalted healing isn't supposed to be easy.  I don't like the idea of a Charm that reforms a body elsewhere.


That is more the purview of Sorcery, and something that has to be prepared in advance, and prepared again to work again--and it should have a disgusting cost in Essence as well to have a Pheonix Down effect rolling...


As a Charm, even a Medicine Charm, it is just too dang powerful and out of theme.  Transporting to a prepared location is Medicine?  Nope.  That's Sorcery.  And it should cost a ton to use.
 
With LOTS of comitted Essence tied up in it.  Like, say, most of your pool.  Sort of like the cost of the Materialize charm for spirits.  It takes up about 2/3 to 3/4 of their Essence to do that.
 
Sherwood said:
But how would you counter it?  Letting characters purchase charms that will bring them back from the dead sounds fun, but after killing them half a dozen times after the pc does some outrageously stupid thing and watching them come back would lose its excitement.
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My initial thought is to have the Charm be one use only and allow that character to purchase up to his Essence in Charms.  If a character died half a dozen times doing stupid stuff, he'd have to have Essence 6+ and not be able to die doing anything epic.

As a Charm, even a Medicine Charm, it is just too dang powerful and out of theme.  Transporting to a prepared location is Medicine?  Nope.  That's Sorcery.  And it should cost a ton to use.
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I wouldn't mind if it were sorcery, although I don't think committed Essence should be required.  This is just emulating a natural ability of spirits with sanctums, correct?  So maybe a Sanctum spell would make more sense.
 
Not a Charm.  Sorcery. It's not a natural extension of normal healing.  


As a Solar Circle Spell, it could be thematic and appropriate.  Just not a Charm.
 
As a Solar Circle Spell, it could be thematic and appropriate.
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What if the spell created a sanctum of some form and required a creation of a duplicate body using Wyld Shaping and blood from the target.  The body would have to be identical, so no increasing Attributes, etc. via this magic, but this would allow opponents a way to threaten the use of the spell.  If you know somebody has cast the, you'd want to locate the sanctum and destroy the body before trying to kill the Solar.  If you limit it to one active sanctum per target, it would prevent having unlimited resurrections in a short time and IMO remove the need for committed Essence.
 
A darker,  creepier and, I feel, more appropriate option would be an artifact that "traps" the souls (and shard) upon death whole, allowing them to be transferred to a healthy artificial body... or hollowed body...


I believe that I also read a phoenix-themed fanmade Sidereal MA somewhere, the high-end Charm of which caused the user to burn up on the point of death and become perfectly healthy again. In other words: it's an appropriate effect for the culmination of a Sidereal Martial Art. That's how powerful and rule-breaking such a Charm would be.
 
Quorlox said:
What if the spell created a sanctum of some form and required a creation of a duplicate body using Wyld Shaping and blood from the target. <snip>
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The sanctum part feels thematically wrong. You're just trying to safe-guard the weakness of the spell with that. That should be an entirely separate spell (and I think I've actually seen spells that deal with sanctums. Or creations in Elsewhere at any rate. Might have been fanmade though. Might even have been available here in the Submissions section).
 
I thought of something like this once....  except the new body would grow slowly over days in a vat.... and then Say in 10 days emerge...


or posibly for a dragon blooded let them plant a seed in advance which will grow into a tree which, when they die will turn into their new human body.
 
I am with Jakk on this issue to a point. I can see a great plot twist when an enemy of your circle does this by chance. Or maybe right at the last moment when all hope is losed in the battle of their lives and one goes down...the last one sacrifices himself to let the others live.


I would want to see a huge cost, the life of a willing person, in order for this to work.


Something like what SPOILER Hound did for Ratcatcher only not necromancy.


A solar willing giving their life up so that the other could be restored....


Otherwise you have a group of extremely power solars with no fear whatsoever of dying... the game would get stupid...fast.
 
Solfi said:
(and I think I've actually seen spells that deal with sanctums. Or creations in Elsewhere at any rate. Might have been fanmade though. Might even have been available here in the Submissions section).
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You mean like this?
 
You could do something with a (Underworld?) manse that calls to your higher soul as it is leaving your body.  Then you need to tranfer your body to the manse were it can be regenerated and your soul placed back into it (for a lower power manse), or the herthstone could absorb the corpse and then shatter.  The stone and body grow back in the manse at the same time.  


Either way, a manse like this would probibly be permanatly attunued to a shard untill the manse was altered and all attunements broken.
 
I was thinking about Bleach ,and was considering a sort of conversion of ghosts into shinigami by hunting down their lower souls and consuming them to regain some of the power they had in life.


If that were accomplished, they'd basically be whole again, just immaterial.
 
I could see a "recover from death" type charm if it a) had to be used real soon (minutes) after death and b) cost a permanent point of Essence.


On the other hand, this charm would be almost as good in many cases.
 
Controlled reincarnation of the soul seems canonically possible (see the Outcastes book in 1E, the Forest Witches).  Prayers to encourage a Terrestrial Exaltation seem to work.  I don't THINK you can guarantee a Celestial Exaltation no matter what you do, but you could arrange for yourself to come back to life as a mortal.  And if your deeds and destiny were glorious enough after that, maybe there'd be a spark waiting for you.


But I would not allow death immunity to be a simple Charm, personally.
 
I would make it a Lore Charm and make it work as follows:


Instead of actually regenerate your body at a secure location this Charm instantly transports your body from point A to B (A being the area in which you are attacked and B being the secured location). The B-spot would have to be a place the Solar had been to before but can be chosen either when the Charm is activated or when it is learned. This would be a simple Charm and would thus need to be activated before death is a possibility. After it has been activated, the effect can take place reflexively at any time during the scene. When the character has suffered lethal damage beyond Incapacitated, this Charm instantly stops any further damage and teleports the character from the A-spot to the B-spot.


The cost for this Charm would be over the top. Permanent Essence, 40 motes and Willpower (maybe permanent also) is a possibillity.


I think I remember seeing somewhere in the Core that bringing someone back from the dead is impossible. However, ghost summoning is possible and permanently binding it to a body probably is as well. In theory, bringing one back from the dead is possible, but that person would not be Exalted or even have the same physical stats.
 
Again, I don't htink that this sort of thing should be a Charm.  


Sorcery, would be apropos, but not really a Charm.


Charms allow you to do things better.  Read faster.  Talk better.  Get through mountains of paperwork.  Jump higher.  Extend the reach of your weapon.  Heal faster.  Dodge better.  Shoot arrows faster.  


I don't recall a natural ability to teleport and regenerate.  Much like I don't recall a natural ability to call a mystical guillotine around peoples heads, but Sorcery handles that pretty well.


The only plan for a Charm was the tree idea, but that would work much better as a spell as well.  Plant the tree, with piece of flesh, water it with your blood, and it will grow a body within it that will "blossom" out upon your death to receive the souls and the Shard.  But it would require some time to grow the tree, and the "blossom".


An Artifact might also be a better idea.


I just dislike the idea of Charm, as it isn't really thematic with doing anything better or faster.  It is altering the normal scheme of things, and that is Sorcery.


It isn't like crafting Essence to create an object that fades into nothing later--like the Solar ship idea or a steed or weapon made out of Essence.


Charms are simpler.  Charms are like shortcuts in the Creation.  You could still dodge, but a Charm makes it better.  You can hack something to bits, but a Charm takes less time.


Sorcery is involved and rewrites the usual rules of Creation, sort of like "hacking" it.  Bringing back the dead is a pretty big hack.
 
wordman said:
By the way, with some tricks, resurrection is canonically possible.
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Interesting.  I actually pulled one of the examples out for a character.  While running the Locust War, the circle asked the Big Guy to bring back a fallen comrade.  If anyone can do that, the Primordial that made Creation in the first place should qualify.
 
Being able to make Creation doesn't necessarily mean one can bring back the dead. The primoridals aren't omnipotent- if they were, they wouldn't have lost. Their Creation powers only mean they can make a copy of someone, not bring them back.
 
Jukashi, you have given me some truly evil ideas to inflict upon my group.  Heh.
 
I would say it's within a primordial's power to take the original soul, the original shard and the person's mind (an imprint in the soul/shard or even the background radiation of creation) and make them whole again.


In otherwords, literally taking their component parts and putting them back together. What's wrong with that?
 
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