Results 31 to 54 of 54
Thread: About selling your soul
-
2024-03-19, 12:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2019
- Location
- Israel
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
Whatever mortal can possibly invent, Baatezu are already familiar with. They exist for much longer time and are way smarter and more vile. I am sure that they do expect literally anything.
And they will do their best to not be tricked by mortal, because if they do, they will face punishment so horrid that we can't even imagine it. Its their safety and not just losing mortal's soul to another devil.Last edited by Edreyn; 2024-03-19 at 12:28 PM.
-
2024-03-19, 04:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2024
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
I think devils are overestimated. Not all devils are millennia old, and even those, are limited by their Intelligence scores and skill ranks. They can be superated, they don't gain a +1 to their checks every 100 years or anything similar.
-
2024-03-19, 07:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2011
Re: About selling your soul
Not all devils are out there making deals either.
Ice devils for example, are seen explicitly as a dead end promotion, because they kinda suck at making deals due to bad mental ability scores. This is stated directly in fc2
Also, considering that every devil (aside from erinyes) started off as a lowly lemure for centuries before they got promoted to a higher form, even the lowliest of intelligent devils are AT LEAST centuries, and anything above an imp is probably AT LEAST a millennia oldWorld of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
The new Quick Vestige List
-
2024-03-20, 01:17 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2024
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
And how many books of infernal jurisprudence does a lemure reads through those centuries?
-
2024-03-20, 03:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2014
- Location
- Sovereign State of Denial
Re: About selling your soul
-
2024-03-20, 08:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2021
-
2024-03-27, 08:22 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2024
Re: About selling your soul
Well,
As a GM I have a simple solution to all this.....once the deal is signed, I lean over my GM Screen. Pick up the character sheet and say "My, this makes a great NPC now doesn't it."
When I GM I have a rule that the characters should be striving to be hero's, not villains or Soul-Lawyers.
I have two players that like to be on the edge of that and I periodically reign them in their behavior with "Are you sure this is in your long term interest to alienate the god of the priest that heals you?"
Amazing what behavior changes can occur when "Bless", "Cure" and other buffs stop working on a character.
-
2024-03-27, 08:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
-
2024-03-27, 09:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2014
- Location
- Sovereign State of Denial
Re: About selling your soul
-
2024-05-06, 09:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2024
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
I've another few questions about the pratice of selling the soul as described in Fiendish Codex 2: Tyrant of the Nine Hells.
Since I've been repeatedly requested to not open different topics for similar question, I'll write it there.
1. What happens if a soul seller becomes undead or immortal (Cloud Anchorite, Starmetal Adept, repeated use of Steal Life), therefore not dying, not becoming damned? Personally I guess the harvester devil would become increasingly frantic about murdering the contractor.
2. In this situation, would regular sentient sacrifices / offerings of wealth appease temporarily the harvester devil?
3. Could a harvester devil be persuaded to pass a percentage of the XP reward usually offered for a Pact Certain to a cult master for each cultist he manages to successfully convert?
- example: the cult master contacts an harvester devil (a Falxugon) working under Mephistophele. Why specifically the Lord of the Eight?
Until recently, the subtle, fi ery
Mephistopheles operated cults for Asmodeus as part of his
vassalage to the greatest of the archdukes. Now Mephistopheles is slowly relinquishing these subcontracted duties to
build a peculiar cult of his own that promises its members
control of hellfi re—a relatively new magical substance of his
design. This sect, which does not restrict its membership to
lawful evil adherents, has hidden cult aspects because it’s as
much a soul-harvesting operation as a means of entrenching
diabolical power in the Material Plane.
According to the Fiendish Codex, harvester devils are autorized to offer a certain amount of experience for the soul of a mortal (600 xp for a Pact Certain with a level 1 character).
The cult master makes this proposal: I convert cultists to Mephistophele, once they die - either in battle, on the sacrificial altar or in any other way - you get the merit for the soul and I get a share of that spiritual energy you would have otherwise offered for them (in game terms, 60 xp or something similar).
4. Excerpt from the Fiendish Codex 2:
Meanwhile, devilish intermediaries might seek out the captured foe’s allies or relatives and offer to return the prisoner
in exchange for their souls. Cash-poor or greedy diabolical
organizations sometimes grudgingly accept large sums of
money in lieu of souls. Where possible, a devil always double
deals, gaining both the prisoner’s soul and at least one other
soul as ransom
For example, could a contractor buy spiritual energy (devilish XP) as that offered in a Faustian Pact, paying in cold cash rather than with his soul?Last edited by Samael Morgenst; 2024-05-06 at 09:48 AM.
-
2024-05-08, 10:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2014
- Location
- Sovereign State of Denial
Re: About selling your soul
These questions are better asked to your DM - or if you are the DM, pick whatever moves the story forward. If the relatively in-depth rules given don't satisfy your questions, the answers are determined by authority.
-
2024-05-09, 12:04 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2014
Re: About selling your soul
I really feel as though this is more the realm of the DM of the game that yo, specifically, are playing. Unless you happen to be said DM and are looking for thoughts on the matter, I don't know what we can really answer except what we would say as the DM.
That said, if you have some creative mage and a way to fake a soul in an illusion or some such, I can see such a ruse working in some circumstances.the first half of the meaning of life is that there isn't one.
-
2024-05-09, 09:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
Re: About selling your soul
I would argue that the soul-selling process is a magical ritual more than a mundane legal agreement. The magic actually changes the properties of your soul so it goes to a new destination. Otherwise, a CG character could simply sell his soul and dare his devilish creditors to file a lawsuit against Kord after death. If you attempt to sell a soul that isn't yours or is already sold, the ritual fails and the devil knows you tried to cheat him.
When in doubt, light something on fire.
-
2024-05-09, 11:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2008
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
1. Eh, they probably account for that. If 0.01% of people you make a soul contract with end up living extremely long lives (even an "immortal" doesn't live forever, you'll die of something eventually), that's a blip on the balance sheet. A smart devil probably takes a hit out on the contracted person if it's practical to do so, and if it's not, write it off as a loss and get to making more contracts. But a devil who's in the red or particularly desperate might do something more risky.
2. Sure, probably. Devils are nasty and spiteful, but they're not generally going to intentionally self-sabotage out of spite. If you're worth more alive than dead, you can probably stay on a devil's good side. But that's not going to win you much wiggle room the second you stop being profitable, and I expect they'd progressively try to squeeze more and more out of you.
3. I'm sure you could get something for it, converting a bunch of people to a fiendish cult in exchange for rewards is one of the more obvious deals that a devil would be happy to make. Whether you could specifically get experience points for it, well, see next question.
4. Experience points/levels are a fuzzy area in most settings. The process of how a devil transfers experience to you in exchange for your soul is unclear, so it's hard to say if it "should" work. But any kind of mechanical "EXP farm" has pretty serious setting implications if you decide to allow it to work consistently, so I probably wouldn't. On the other hand... that does sound like a lot of work, so maybe it's worth roleplay XP?Last edited by Eurus; 2024-05-09 at 11:13 PM.
Avatar by araveugnitsuga.
-
2024-05-17, 02:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
- Location
- Maine
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
Honestly not relevant really. Every discussion that's ever been made can be 'ended' with well the GM/DM just says no. Which is frankly quite boring. Thought experiments presume the GM/DM is permissive or non existent. It's kind of the basis of every thought experiment ever had. So you need to come up with something other than GM/DM fiat to really add to a discussion.
On thread topic though, interesting debate. I do agree w/ OP on one thing that people are over selling the powers of beings. They are in fact quite limited to their stat lines otherwise they wouldn't be available as options for the players to fight. If you want 'powers that be' like above deity or evils so strong their stats are blank to come into effect by all means. But in discussion of lesser evils that do in fact have stat lines and limitations to their power/knowledge/abilities... those lesser evils are in fact trickable. Many a story has come about from tricking weaker evil beings. Whether this specific idea would work I'm still on the fence on.. I do like someone's earlier suggestion of being torn into 8 pieces though.
-
2024-05-17, 10:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
You and I, with computers and digital watches, cannot arrange to end a signature at an exact time, to a billionth of a second. People in a medievaloid world without watches can't even do it to the exact second. One of those contacts is finished first. That is the only benefit the character will get.
Besides, exactly midnight at one spot is not the same time as exactly midnight twenty feet further west. On Earth, at the equator, it's about 13.6 microseconds different.
-
2024-05-18, 06:43 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2009
- Location
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
I like the idea of this supernatural race to the courthouse. I now want a boardgame in which players play a gang of devils all trying to navigate their way through some immense hellish court building relying on speed, wits, and (especially) their overwhelming love of bureaucracy to get to the filing room first.
-
2024-05-18, 04:22 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2014
- Location
- Sovereign State of Denial
Re: About selling your soul
-
2024-05-18, 09:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
I have no idea how most D&D settings work. They certainly don't all work the same. My players certainly live on a Ptolemaic world that the planets (including the sun and the moon) all revolve around. But they've also visited a flat world and two finite dimensions, and may soon be on a world that orbits its sun. That's why the DM has the final say on whether this can be made to work. In any case, neither you nor I nor the simulacra can finish a signature to an exact billionth of a second.
-
2024-05-19, 08:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
- Location
- Maine
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
Would it be possible to basically make the copies puppets of sorts so that the actions are all chained to the 1 controlling individual magically? I would think if all the actions are simultaneously magically controlled (magic therefore no delay in response like things we do in reality) that they'd all act simultaneously? Odd thought I'm not even sure if it's possible tbh just popped into my head.
-
2024-05-19, 09:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2011
Re: About selling your soul
World of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
The new Quick Vestige List
-
2024-05-20, 11:51 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2024
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
Nah.
Contract devil working for different archdukes has nowhere near this level of cooperation.
The Fiendish Codex mentions devils being punished for offering too much for a soul, and repeatedly suggest that a significant minority of contracts are actually fraudolent (obtained through cohercion and successfully challengeable , if one knows about Baator's laws).
The burocracy of Hell is nowhere as efficient and cooperative as you appear to think, and it should not surprise, given that each archduke is constantly sabotaging half of the others, and every one of them hates their boss Asmodeus.Last edited by Samael Morgenst; 2024-05-20 at 11:55 AM.
-
2024-05-20, 08:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2014
Re: About selling your soul
I figure if a devil gets fooled by this, they might be impressed as well as angry. But assuming that you had a permissive DM, and the character could somehow have replicas faking having a soul, or the devil does not have enough magic to sense a soul (as it is not one of the abilities they have listed normally), then it might just work.
the first half of the meaning of life is that there isn't one.
-
2024-05-27, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Gender
Re: About selling your soul
You are trying to out-clever and out-lie and out-cheat the devils.
That never turns out as well as one hopes.