How could reincarnation magic be limited to prevent overuse? ow 2n M:UpLtNna Mh
Maleficient is an evil witch on a quest for true immortality. Until she accomplishes her goal, she uses a midpoint form of magic called reincarnation in order to buy her more time and keep her alive. Reincarnation magic allows an individual to reincarnate themselves after death in the body of another human. Maleficient has a number of host bodies scattered throughout the world and trapped in a deep sleep to take control of in case she is killed by her enemies or dies of old age. Her most recent claim, a young girl named Snow White, is the next host that she will possess.
This spell takes a number of steps. After a person dies, their soul jumps into a magical item called a soul stone, which keeps the soul in storage and prevents it from crossing over to the next world. The soul is then transported and absorbed into the host body, giving the person possession over it. Reincarnation requires the victim to be living, so these hosts are placed in a coma-like sleep and kept in magical stasis to prevent them from aging. They are stored in this way until needed for further use.
The result is that the body now contains two souls within it that continue to remain separate, with the original soul remaining trapped and the dominant soul of the witch retaining control. The witch now has access to the person's memories, knowledge and spells to use. They can also access the person's mana for an extra boost in spellcasting if needed.
Powerful witches are likely to use this method to cheat death whenever possible, and limits need to be places on this form of magic to prevent constant overuse. In essence, individuals both weak and strong should only reincarnate themselves into others of their caliber. A witch might be powerful, but would have a hard time with this spell because there are few people walking around with that kind of power level. Alternatively, an average person would have an easier time because of a larger pool of individuals. However, this isn't a power grab. Even if they managed to take down a powerful opponent, transporting their own soul into them wouldn't be an option.
How can I accomplish this goal with these rules?
8 Answers
Remember analogue audio tapes? Copying them was a lossy process: If copied too often, you'd accumulate noise until the content is no longer enjoyable.
Make soul transfer a lossy process, too. Applied once, there's almost no change in the soul, but with each transfer, damage to the soul accumulates, until at some point it is too weak to take over the new body. It is still there, but the actual owner of the body is now in control, and can in turn make use of the witch's memories and powers.
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3$\\begingroup$ Memory loss will do just fine. If you have 1% chance of not knowing your ---laptop password--- demon servant's true name or ---username--- the location of your lair each time you jump to a different body, you will think twice before doing that too often. $\\endgroup$ – John Dvorak 7 hours ago
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2$\\begingroup$ JPEG artifacts are not something you want on your soul. $\\endgroup$ – IndigoFenix 4 hours ago
Don't make the base witch inherently dominant. It should be a tough struggle of wills to take control of the new host. Of course, a skilled witch will be very skilled at soul combat, and have spells to pacify the other soul, but make it a struggle. The base soul is more suited for their body, so if they are trained in soul defense they may be the one who controls the body.
Make the souls an attractive target for any witch who wants power. The soul of a powerful witch, free of her body, could be a powerful ingredient in many spells, warding schemes, and potions that other witches could want. If you do die and anyone finds out, many witches will attempt to ambush and steal your soul. There's a strong incentive for whoever is managing the soul to sell it to any of many willing buyers.
Make soul transportation difficult. Losing your body and mastering the soul of another should be exhausting. During this time the witch is vulnerable to others stealing her secrets with mind magic, or being attacked.
Loss of spell
What powers the spell is the spell itself: It unravels all memory of itself and how to get that knowledge, and uses that energy as a kickstarter. A clever witch will have given herself clues, left parts of it scattered around where only she can find or understand it, but finding the spell again will take time. Writing it down where everyone can find it, will be too dangerous, since she is not able to defend herself once in the stone, so it must be hidden cleverly. Most people only manage it once. They die, having spent their priceless, second life frantically searching without success.
Biological compatibility
As with organ transplants, the soul must be transplanted to a compatible body, in sufficiently good health that the shock won't kill them; else the transplantation process will fail. I would suspect that there wouldn't be too many people meeting the criteria, which is generally the case when looking for donors.
Secondly, the soulstone is a physical item, which needs time to be formed within the original body of the witch or within the host's body, so the witch can't just body hop whenever. Add on that the soulstone is a one shot: once the witch dies, the soulstone has to be physically transferred to the new host, where it will break down and transfer the soul into the host's body. Afterwards, the witch will have to generate a new soulstone for the next transfer, which would take a couple of years to do.
I can think of a few ways. First, soul stones could be hard to make and degrade with each transfer to a new host body. The chances of it failing to retain the soul during the transfer go up each time it’s done. Thus, the witch risks crossing over to the afterlife more. And making a new soul stone can’t be done without potentially breaking the artificial attachment to the new host body.
Second, with each transfer, the pool of compatible hosts decreases. You absorb traits from each host body, which means the list of traits you have to match gets longer. That increases the difficulty finding potential hosts.
Third, potential insanity. Your soul might have an allergic reaction to the host body, causing you to gradually lose your mind.
You can introduce witch hunters to hunt witches as they have methods to detect witches in her dormant state or you could also make soul becomes weaker every time reincarnation magic used till it threatened to disappear. You can also introduce supernatural forces like Grim reapers to kill witches if they cheat death too much.
Why invent anything different that plain old high mana/ingridients cost? The spell is so complex, that it requires a lot of magical energy stored up. Collecting it in such amount is difficult and takes years by performing (insert a list of non-trivial time and effort consuming tasks). Unless witch fails to complete this preparation in time for next cast it is game over for her. And if there are people working on killing her, "in time" might come quite quick and unexpected.
I doubt that anything that is not "Worse than death" would make such a character think twice before doing it. In fact such a character would probably have a combination of ego and determination that would over-ride any potential side effects. I think you would have to make it circumstantial. In such a sway, that an ingredient to perform the spell is so rare and difficult to attain that only one is ever in existence at any time, and your villain has access to the thing that makes it. That creates a very finite cap to who and how many.
Resurrection and Reincarnation magic is a big, probably the most powerful, type of magic. It allows for the worst consequence normally associated with life... Death... to be diminished as a result. I'm, kind of, of the opinion that when a bad guy who uses such magic finally is "hoisted by their own petard" their ultimate death should be as awful as dying as many times as they effectively lived. The circumstances of which should make for a fun brainstorming session for any writer/DM.
If, however, you want the spell to be accessible to everyone, but on a limited basis, it's not a problem to just apply an arbitrary number.
Example in modern fiction: Doctor Who is one of the most popular sci fi shows ever made. When the Doctor "dies" he regenerates into a new form. (Or in certain situations uses the regeneration power to heal himself in the same form)
Time Lords are limited to 13 incarnations (12 regenerations) under normal circumstances, and within the bounds of the show only two of the most powerful; The Master (Three times) and The Doctor, ever overcame this issue.
The Master stole the power of The Keeper of Traken and used it to steal the body of a man called Tremas, (note the anagram...) to beat the limit, then survived a Dalek execution before possessing Eric Roberts and was subsequently "resurrected" by The Timelords after he died facing off against the 8th Doctor. He was willing to go to any length to continue his existence. While the Doctor was granted a new set of regenerations despite being ready to accept his fate, essentially so that he could keep up his good work...
Yet no one has ever asked the question, "So... why do they only get 12 regenerations and not 120???" and they don't need to. That part of the story is unimportant next to what that limit means to the various characters.
