Spirits and souls

[GRWelsh]

In AD&D elves have spirits and other demi-humans and humans have souls. How does this affect your campaign? Is this distinction important to the background and detail of your world setting? In my campaign it will become relevant when my players get to around 9th level and a cleric can attempt to raise dead since that won't work for the elf characters. But beyond just being a game mechanic and a race limitation, I am interested in other ways this distinction might have relevance or add flavor to a campaign.

It didn't occur to me at the time when I first read DEITIES & DEMIGODS but this is another Tolkienesque parallel since Elves can die but their spirits cannot leave Arda but end up back at the Halls of Mandos to be judged and reincarnated. By contrast, Men, and presumably Dwarves and Hobbits as well, depart from the world entirely when they die. In AD&D terms, does this mean that when elves die their spirits do not go to the Outer Plane matching their alignment?

[Erik Larson]

Oct 21, 2023 10:59:40 GMT -5 GRWelsh said:

In AD&D elves have spirits and other demi-humans and humans have souls. How does this affect your campaign? Is this distinction important to the background and detail of your world setting? In my campaign it will become relevant when my players get to around 9th level and a cleric can attempt to raise dead since that won't work for the elf characters. But beyond just being a game mechanic and a race limitation, I am interested in other ways this distinction might have relevance or add flavor to a campaign.

It didn't occur to me at the time when I first read DEITIES & DEMIGODS but this is another Tolkienesque parallel since Elves can die but their spirits cannot leave Arda but end up back at the Halls of Mandos to be judged and reincarnated. By contrast, Men, and presumably Dwarves and Hobbits as well, depart from the world entirely when they die. In AD&D terms, does this mean that when elves die their spirits do not go to the Outer Plane matching their alignment?

If the Ethereal plane is somewhat of a plane one might call "the spirit world", they could be encounters there.

Whereas those with souls head for some place in the Outer Planes after death.

[geneweigel]

In the DEITIES AND DEMIGODS bit on Mortality and Immortality it goes into what happens to spirits on page 10:

Another difference between souls and spirits lies in what happens to them when they arrive at their destination. For souls, it is the beginning of eternity; it is on this plane that the soul will remain forever, enjoying the benefits or suffering the torments thereof. Spirits, on the other hand, may be but temporary residents of the plane. Their rewards and punishments are less than that received by souls. At some time in the future, at the will of the deity, the spirit can be returned to the Prime Material Plane - reincarnated. The new creature will not have any sort of overt memories of its former life, nor will its new form necessarily be the some as its old. If on elf becomes evil during his or her life, his or her spirit would go to one of the evil planes at death. The ruler of that plane might, a century later, decide to send the being bock as a Draw, for example; this Draw would have the some sort of good-evil choices during life as the elf hod (albeit from a different viewpoint), and conceivably could go to yet another plane upon death if he or she did not remain evil and loyal to the master of that place. The amount of time that a spirit must spend in a plane before returning to the Prime Material Plane is extremely variable. It could range from as little as ten years to a millenium or more - time is not important to a deity. (Note: The above is only a suggested method for dealing with character life-after-death. The DM may, of course, use whatever system is most appropriate to his or her campaign.)

In regards to bringing back elves. It was answered in DRAGON MAGAZINE #33 (JAN 1980) Sage Advice:

QUESTION: Although the Players Handbook does not include them in the description of the Raise Dead spell, may elves and half-orcs be raised from the dead?
ANSWER No, they cannot. They do not have souls, and therefore a wish must be used to bring them back.

Which was followed up in #52 (AUG 1981) Sage Advice:

In previous clarifications in this column and from the DEITIES & DEMIGODS™ cyclopedia, we know that elves and half-orcs have no souls and therefore cannot be raised from the dead or resurrected. Since Raise Dead and Resurrection return the soul to the body, it must reasonably follow that the reverses of these spells (Slay Living and DestructIon) release the soul from the body. Does this mean that elves and half-orcs are not affected by the reverse spells, since they have no souls to release?
Good question, but your reasoning isn’t quite sound. The unreversed forms of those spells do indeed “return the soul to the body” — but they also do a lot more. They reintroduce biological, physical life into a body; otherwise, a lifeless body with a soul inside it would be just that — a lifeless body. The
physical trauma that the recipient of a Raise Dead spell goes through is considerable, so much so that the revived person is “weak and helpless” and must rest to regain his former vigor. So, it is reasonable to assume that an elf or half-orc struck by a Slay Living spell would undergo physical trauma to the same degree, and in this case, the trauma is great enough to kill even a soulless being. Likewise, the trauma caused by a Destruction spell, which turns the victim to dust, is something which no creature could endure and remain alive. The reasoning which suggests that a creature can’t be affected by the reverse of a spell if that creature is immune to the unreversed form breaks down under a bit of examination. Many reversible spells are defined in such a way that a figure cannot possibly be immune to both forms of the spell at once. For example, should a blind character, obviously immune (at least for the moment) to Cause Blindness, also be unaffected by Cure Blindness? Of course not. There is no general rule which indicates that someone who is unaffected by one form of a spell is automatically unaffected by the reverse as well.

[Scott]

I don't use any of the rules from Dieties and Demigods. It's an enjoyable read. The info on some of the planes at the end is useful, but that's it.

Souls I think is pretty standard. The physical body is like a vessel for the body.
Spirits and body are one. When the body is killed, the spirit does not die. I handle it like what happened to Sauron when his physical form was destroyed. It was never really defined in the books, that I know of, and I have never quantified it, but there is some process that happens that prevents the spirit from assuming a physical form for a very long time, effectively removing that spirir from play unless a wish or something similar is used.

[GRWelsh]

My mind keeps going back to the medieval belief that elves and fairies were neither of Heaven nor Hell -- they were somewhere in between. That must have come about since fairies were a pre-Christian belief and so never fitted neatly into the Christian worldview. At times, fairies could be wicked or cruel but mostly they were simply enigmatic and 'other'... Belief in them was ubiquitous so wouldn't easily go away even as people in Europe converted to Christendom. Fairies never could be simply and easily equated with God and the angels or Satan and the demons, and so they didn't really have a place in the Christian cosmology, and yet many people continued to have beliefs about them. Some tried to interpret elves and fairies as angelic, demonic, spirits of the dead, etc. but none of those categories are a neat fit.

[geneweigel]

Using Occam's razor the differences of soul/spirit are just technicalities for tying it up for fantasy's sake of flavor. They are all going to be become undead despite the protests of players looking for an angle. E.g. "My elf can't become a ghoul!" etc

[Scott]

Part of the Tolkien elf body/spirit arrangement meant their body was much more hardy than man's. It's kind of the worst of both worlds in D&D. Elves can't be raised and they're inherently weaker.
You could expand on the groaning spirit concept with this, where elf spirits that refuse to go to their appropriate destination become evil spirits that can be encountered, a banshee being just one possibility.

[geneweigel]

You know something that is weird? I had expanded banshees back in the 1990's for my interconnected Earth campaign.

The "lesser banshee" was one that I included in the BROKEN CASTLE Add-on "AGAINST THE ELVES" called the "banfibber" and I only hinted at the other male versions yet to come.