So the title is really the general question for this and it got me thinking. I thought about things like say harry potter, where Voldemort split his souls into multiple containers and remembered good ol Neverwinter Nights 2 MotB. There was a section in Thay where you went to an academy that was focused on the mechanics of the soul, doing things like splitting, fusing, etc. So I got thinking for what happens if say, a lich split their soul before making themselves a lich for example. Assuming that you can split your soul into two separate entities, what would happen if one died or became a lich? Or what about making warlocky deals with say... a devil? The classic contract of giving the Devil your soul, but maybe not the whole or original one. Could you have one shard of your soul horribly corrupted by evil while the other remained good? If you made a golem to insert your soul into it, could it cast spells? I'd think a campaign involving some mad wizard who experimented with the mechanics of a soul with all forms of experiments both moral and amoral. What if you had someone dying, and the wizard offered a deal of putting the soul in the golem if they could shave off a bit of it. Or soul fusing, could you fuse a phylactery's soul with another 'Living' soul? What if you fused a soul promised to an otherworldly creature? would it void the contract since it requires additional payment? Its possible I'm being silly and that WotC have retconnned/changed all that but the question remains, what could happen when you start to do shenanigans with the mechanics of a soul?
P.S. Did you know Voldemort has a dictionary spelling to correct it?
That's going to be entirely GM purview. That said, here's my opinion, based on what I know of planar lore; I'm a bit of a Baator fangirl, so I'm going to use that as I reference.
Generally speaking, when you die, your soul takes the form of, well, your body. You go visit the Nine Hells, you'll see souls being tortured and that torture turning into energy that devils run on; those souls take the form the person had when they were alive. This torture generates divine energy by stripping a person's identity from them over a period of time, until they're an empty husk, and then transformed into a larvae, and thrown into a giant batch to possibly maybe eat enough other larvae and be upgraded into an imp.
So... splitting a soul? Fusing? Very good chance that involves the equivalent of Mad Science!!! bodily operations - basically, making a Frankenstein monster out of a soul. If you cut off non-essential parts, that's no different than someone losing an arm or a leg - painful and crippling, but you are still, well, you. At least the part of you with the head and heart. The arms and legs are part of you, but, well, just parts. Its not like snapping a cookie in half, or twisting an Oreo apart, where you basically have two smaller cookies now. Trying to split a soul as a lich is going to end up possibly destroying your soul, or mutilating it to no real end. Fusing more things to it could have an effect, but that's going to be GM call on what.
So, that's my take. Other GMs will have different ideas.
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So the title is really the general question for this and it got me thinking. I thought about things like say harry potter, where Voldemort split his souls into multiple containers and remembered good ol Neverwinter Nights 2 MotB. There was a section in Thay where you went to an academy that was focused on the mechanics of the soul, doing things like splitting, fusing, etc. So I got thinking for what happens if say, a lich split their soul before making themselves a lich for example. Assuming that you can split your soul into two separate entities, what would happen if one died or became a lich? Or what about making warlocky deals with say... a devil? The classic contract of giving the Devil your soul, but maybe not the whole or original one. Could you have one shard of your soul horribly corrupted by evil while the other remained good? If you made a golem to insert your soul into it, could it cast spells? I'd think a campaign involving some mad wizard who experimented with the mechanics of a soul with all forms of experiments both moral and amoral. What if you had someone dying, and the wizard offered a deal of putting the soul in the golem if they could shave off a bit of it. Or soul fusing, could you fuse a phylactery's soul with another 'Living' soul? What if you fused a soul promised to an otherworldly creature? would it void the contract since it requires additional payment? Its possible I'm being silly and that WotC have retconnned/changed all that but the question remains, what could happen when you start to do shenanigans with the mechanics of a soul?
P.S. Did you know Voldemort has a dictionary spelling to correct it?
That's going to be entirely GM purview. That said, here's my opinion, based on what I know of planar lore; I'm a bit of a Baator fangirl, so I'm going to use that as I reference.
Generally speaking, when you die, your soul takes the form of, well, your body. You go visit the Nine Hells, you'll see souls being tortured and that torture turning into energy that devils run on; those souls take the form the person had when they were alive. This torture generates divine energy by stripping a person's identity from them over a period of time, until they're an empty husk, and then transformed into a larvae, and thrown into a giant batch to possibly maybe eat enough other larvae and be upgraded into an imp.
So... splitting a soul? Fusing? Very good chance that involves the equivalent of Mad Science!!! bodily operations - basically, making a Frankenstein monster out of a soul. If you cut off non-essential parts, that's no different than someone losing an arm or a leg - painful and crippling, but you are still, well, you. At least the part of you with the head and heart. The arms and legs are part of you, but, well, just parts. Its not like snapping a cookie in half, or twisting an Oreo apart, where you basically have two smaller cookies now. Trying to split a soul as a lich is going to end up possibly destroying your soul, or mutilating it to no real end. Fusing more things to it could have an effect, but that's going to be GM call on what.
So, that's my take. Other GMs will have different ideas.