User:Luigifan18/Fade to Flame (3.5e Trait)
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Fade to Flame
Whenever you die, your body is instantly consumed by pale green flames which leave behind nothing, not even ash. You then rise from the dead in a burst of flame... in a completely different location, quite some time later. Needless to say, death is still rather inconvenient, even for you.
Benefit: Whenever you die, your body is instantly consumed by pale green flames which leave behind nothing, not even ash. The flames come and go in the span of less than 1 round, and do not burn their surroundings at all; if someone is touching you at the moment you die, they will not be harmed. Some time later (see the drawback), you return to life in a random location, with no lost levels or Constitution (though you must make a Fortitude save, DC equal to the save DC of the effect that killed you (or, if it doesn't allow a save, what its save DC would be if it did allow one) or your damage in excess of your death threshold (usually 0 or −10 hp), whichever is relevant and/or greater, or be exhausted for 1d4 of a measure of time determined by a separate d% roll (see the Respawn Time Unit D% Table) upon returning to life).
As a side effect, you stop physically aging when you've reached adulthood (the minimum adventuring age defined on your race's age chart); you do not accrue aging bonuses or penalties, nor do you die of old age. (You can still be killed by pretty much anything else that would be lethal, but hey, you'll just respawn and get on with your life like nothing happened, right? ...Right?)
Drawback: This is a trait where the benefit is also the drawback. You have absolutely no control over where you respawn; you could wind up several dozen miles away from where you died, or even on a completely different plane of existence. The location where you end up may or may not turn out to be terribly inconvenient for you. The DM may decide a location for you to respawn in or randomly determine it in any manner he deems appropriate, though it's recommended for the distance between your location of death and your respawn location to be roughly proportional to the magnitude of your death (so simply getting knocked down to −10 hit points or less would respawn you somewhere within 300 feet (the greater the damage in excess of what would be required to kill you, the greater the distance), getting disintegrated would respawn you in an adjacent country, and being hit with a 9th-level death effect that would also destroy your body would cause you to respawn across the multiverse (so, if you got killed in the Abyss, you're likely to respawn in Celestia)). However, you must respawn on a surface that is capable of supporting your weight (so no respawning several hundred feet above solid ground unless you can fly), and you cannot respawn in a location that would be sufficient to kill you again without allowing you to have a reasonable chance to escape or otherwise make it out intact (so no winding up at the epicenter of a cave-in, on the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of the sun, on top of a voidstone, strapped to a sacrificial altar, or completely surrounded by a horde of starving bebiliths or several dozen people who hate you… though any of those circumstances that are actually not dangerous to you at all, or that you could handle with complete ease (CR is at least 6 less than your own) would obviously be crossed off that list); if you end up being exhausted upon respawning, you absolutely cannot be respawned in a location that would pose any threat to your life within the next 4d20+12 hours.
Furthermore, the process of respawning takes a while. Roll a 1d20 and a d%. The d% roll determines what measure of time (rounds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades) you must wait in order to respawn; see the table below. (Depending on what killed you and how difficult it would make reviving a character under normal circumstances, the DM may modify the percentages on the table before making the d% roll.) The 1d20 roll determines how many of that unit of time you must wait to respawn. In addition, you can only be resurrected early by true resurrection or some other effect that doesn't require even a tiny fragment of a corpse, and even then, there is a 50% chance for it to fail; if the resurrection check fails, no form of mortal magic can resurrect you before you naturally respawn.
Special: To possess this trait, you must be the direct descendant of a deity. The number of generations removed is irrelevant; you could be a god's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchild and still possess this trait, but having a god as your aunt or uncle doesn't cut it.
If your soul is trapped, you cannot respawn until it is freed (though, since your corpse immediately burns away to nothing when you die, a creature that wants to trap your soul generally has to do so while you're still alive). If your soul is destroyed or damaged enough to prevent you from being revived (such as by being eaten by a devourer or succumbing to soul burn), you are killed permanently like anyone else would be. (Again, however, since your corpse self-destructs upon death, any effect that can only destroy or damage your soul post-mortem and requires the presence of your body to do so, such as barghest's feast[1], won't work on you; your enemies would have to destroy your soul before landing a lethal blow.)
Roleplaying Ideas: This trait isn't a physical or mental trait; it is a property of the soul. As such, it can't really be roleplayed per se. However, many characters who have this trait are completely unaware of it until they have died for the first time or lived long enough to notice that they're not aging like a member of their race ought to (though considering that only direct descendants of deities can have it, people who have it are quite rare in the first place). As a result, they will probably be very bewildered and befuddled when they respawn for the first time.
| D% Result | Measure of Respawn Time |
|---|---|
| 01-10 | Rounds |
| 11-30 | Minutes |
| 31-49 | Hours |
| 50-68 | Days |
| 69-80 | Weeks |
| 81-88 | Months |
| 89-96 | Years |
| 97-99 | Decades |
| 100 | Centuries |
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