If running a game in an existing world eg. Faerun, how would you handle Last breath? Is it Kelemvor that comes for you, god/demon lord/whatever you worship, or angel/servant of a former one?
I’ve had thoughts of changing Last Breath, but I think there’s much fun to be missed by that. Perhaps an addition to it could work better; a dying character sincerely promising/swearing something could give +1 to +3 bonus to roll; GM decides the bonus depending on how big the wov is. Partial success means death/the deity gives it a twist or extra challenge, meaning GM already has an idea to build on. Even failure could give the character some extra time if he wovs to accomplish a specific goal, after which another Last Breath could be made, perhaps even with a bonus, depending how satisfied the reaper is. Thoughts?
Kelemvor judges the dead, but the Nine Hells have an agreement where they are allowed to bargain with petitioners waiting for judgement.
Hmm. Would that mean that anyone would be met by a fiendish representative offering a choise? That might be interesting >:) just a little innocent-seeming deed asked…
As far as I remember, every player has to choose a patron-deity when creating their char, or else the soul is lost in fugue after their death. So you could (if the player has chosen a patron) send a representive of said deity. After all it could be in the interest of the deity not to loose a faithful (or useful) worshipper and put in a good word for you with Kelemvor 😉
Mechanically, the Fugue Plane represented where the soul was when a character was still eligible for Raise Dead. Lore wise, this translated to souls waiting for their deity to pick them up from where they “landed.”
Having a God of the Dead in residence in the palace at the center of the Fugue Plane is like having a magnet for the souls of the deceased, so that they get drawn through various portals and out of the material plane.
Only the Faithless and the False get judged by Kelemvor (or Cyric, or Myrkul, depending on the time frame). But unless you deity is really interested in you, your soul transitions to the Fugue Plane first, and then a representative of your god shows up and picks up their followers and takes them away.
There is contract that allows devils to deal with souls that appear on the Fugue Plane, and from time to time demons will raid the line to pick off a few souls here or there, but the planar forces in the Fugue Plane are suppose to repel these raiders before they get their prizes.
While adventurers and many people have a patron deity, very few people in the Realms only worship a singular god. So even if you don’t have a single patron deity, if you worshiped multiple gods and weren’t actively saying that you worshiped one while subverting their ideals, eventually you will get picked up by someone. Having a patron deity is essentially a means of saying “between Chauntea, Lathander, and Ogmha, even though I worship all of these guys, Lathander’s afterlife seems to be the best option for me.”