8.5 Common Magical Effects
8.5.1 Resurrection
Some abilities can return dead creatures to life. This is called resurrection.
When a living creature dies, its soul departs its body, travels through the Astral Plane, and goes to abide on the appropriate plane or Divine Realm. This process is enforced by the Nature, who guides souls to ensure they reach their intended destinations. Bringing a creature back from the dead means retrieving their soul and returning it to their body.
A creature has no hit points or damage resistance when it returns to life. It is cured of all vital wounds, conditions, and other negative effects, but the body’s shape is unchanged. Any missing or irreparably damaged limbs or organs remain missing or damaged. The creature may therefore die shortly after being resurrected if its body is excessively damaged. Some resurrection abilities can restore more damaged corpses to life, as indicated in their descriptions.
Coming back from the dead is an ordeal. The creature’s maximum fatigue tolerance is reduced by 1. This penalty lasts for thirty days, or until the creature gains a level. If this would reduce a creature’s maximum fatigue tolerance below 0, the creature cannot be resurrected.
Resurrection is always voluntary. A soul infallibly knows the name, alignment, and patron deity (if any) of the character attempting to revive it and may refuse to return on that basis. If a dead creature’s soul refuses to return to life, no effect can compel it to be resurrected. Similarly, if a dead creature’s soul has been subsumed into the planar essence of its afterlife plane, it has already been resurrected, or the soul is otherwise inaccessible, resurrection is impossible.
Although you can resurrect creatures who have died of old age, it is usually pointless. They will die again before long from some malady resulting from their advanced age.
Limits of Resurrection
While dead, souls gradually lose their cohesion and independent sense of self. A typical creature can maintain its existence in the afterlife for a number of years equal to 5 times the sum of its level and Willpower. This can vary significantly for individual creatures, and being tormented in the afterlife can significantly reduce this time.
Enemies can take steps to make it more difficult for a character to be returned from the dead. Except for true resurrection, every ritual to raise the dead requires some part of the creature’s body, so keeping or destroying the body is an effective deterrent. The soul bind ritual prevents any sort of revivification unless the soul is first released.
8.5.2 Shapeshifting
When a creature shapeshifts, its physical body completely transforms into a different shape. It generally retains all of its original statistics and abilities, with the following exceptions. Some specific abilities that cause a creature to shapeshift have additional effects.
- The creature’s size changes to match the new form. This can change the creature’s base speed, Reflex defense, and other statistics as normal (see Size Categories).
- The creature’s mundane movement modes and natural weapons are replaced with the movement modes and natural weapons of its new shape.
- If the new shape is not normally capable of speech, the creature cannot speak. This may prevent it from casting spells with verbal components and using similar abilities.
- The creature is limited by the number of free hands present in the new form. In addition, it cannot gain more free hands by shapeshifting than it originally had in its base form. Even if you shapeshift to a form with many hands, you do not have the mental coordination necessary to use them all effectively.
- Any special properties that a creature had that were originally a result of its pure physical composition change to match its new form. For example, a ghost would stop being incorporeal if it shapeshifted.
All of a shapeshifted creature’s equipment that is physically incompatible with the creature’s new shape meld into its body. This does not break attunement, and the creature still gains the benefit of any magical properties of melded items. However, it does not gain the benefit of nonmagical properties from melded items. For example, a creature that shapeshifts into an amorphous gas would still benefit from all attuned effects from its equipped items, such as boots of speed. However, it would gain no benefit to its Armor defense or damage resistance from any melded body armor, and it would not be able to attack with any of its melded weapons. Items exceeding a creature’s carrying capacity are not melded, and simply fall to the ground in place.
When a shapeshifted creature dies, it returns to its original form.
8.5.3 Teleportation
Some abilities can teleport creatures or objects. When you are teleported, you move through the Astral Plane and arrive at a new location. You can be teleported between two different locations on the same plane, or between two different locations on different planes. If for some reason you cannot access the Astral Plane, you cannot be teleported.
Anything being teleported must have both line of sight and line of effect to its destination. In addition, the destination of the teleportation must be an unoccupied location on a stable surface. That surface must be able to support the weight of the teleporting creature or object. If any of these conditions is not met, the teleportation fails without effect. Some teleportation abilities are less restricted, as indicated in their description.
In general, you can teleport up slopes that are no more than 45 degrees. Steeper slopes prevent you from seeing stable ground to teleport to it. The GM can provide guidance for individual slopes, which may be easier or harder to navigate with teleportation.
Teleportation Noise
Creatures and objects that are teleported make a sound when they depart and arrive. This noise is caused by the displacement of air (or other substances) created by the teleportation. The base difficulty value of an Awareness check to hear this sound for a Medium creature or object is 10. This difficulty value changes based on the size of the teleported creature or object:
- Fine: 30
- Diminutive: 25
- Tiny: 20
- Small: 15
- Medium: 10
- Large: 5
- Huge: 0
- Gargantuan: -5
- Colossal: -10
Carrying Objects
When a creature is teleported, it can bring along equipment and held objects as long as two conditions are met. First, the combined weight of the objects cannot exceed the creature’s maximum carrying capacity (see Weight Limits). If a creature is teleported while carrying more than its maximum carrying capacity, all excess objects are left behind, starting with the heaviest object and proceeding in order of weight.
Second, no object can extend more than two feet away from the creature’s body. Any objects that extend beyond that distance are left behind. For example, a creature wearing handcuffs will arrive at its teleportation destination still wearing the handcuffs. However, a creature that is tied to a post by a long rope will arrive at its teleportation destination without the rope.
Astral Beacon
Some abilities allow long-distance teleportation, such as the overland teleportation ritual. This sort of teleportation is much easier if you are travelling to an astral beacon. The specific effects of an astral beacon are defined in the teleportation ability being used. An astral beacon covers an area, rather than a single point in space.
Each astral beacon has a unique name. The name represents the beacon’s precise location in the Astral Plane, so no two beacons can have identical names. For example, astral beacons created by rituals have their name defined by the precise color of ritual inks, details of drawn patterns, timing and inflection of ritual incantations, and similar subtleties.
It is possible, though unlikely, to find astral beacons simply by wandering in the Astral Plane. They are similar in size and shape to scrying sensors, but their appearance is visually distinct (for creatures who can see invisible objects). Inspecting a beacon can reveal the location it points to, and destroying the beacon in the Astral Plane removes its effects.
Horizontal Teleportation
Some planes have a curved primary surface. On those planes, “horizontal” teleportation isn’t objectively horizontal. Instead, it is horizontal relative to the surface of the plane.