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Illusionist Update

I updated the illusionist class description. Reference Character Classes under resources.

Life Essence

“Being alive” in Midth is the binding of life essence to physical form. Life energy is the glue that binds. When the physical form is damaged (to zero hit points), the life energy is on the brink of breaking its bond between life essence and physical form. Below zero, the bond has broken and the life essence leaves the body, and with it, the life energy begins to collapse onto the life essence – no longer “attracted” to the physical form. Once in motion, the process can only be halted by the infusion of positive energy (temporary life essence) into the physical form to attract the life energy back to the body – which also pulls the life essence back to the physical form. Further infusions are needed to repair the broken bond. This translates into healing spells (or spell-like effects) cast upon the bond to stop further collapse away from the physical form and then repair. Once rebound, the healing can be applied to regaining positive hit points – thus repairing physical damage. If not halted, the separation process eventually completes and the life essence drifts off into the “afterlife”. The time it takes for this separation to complete is dependent on how badly the initial bond was damaged. So, typically, a person who suffers damage that drops them to negative one hit point is considered to have sustained the tightest breakage of the bond. This means the bond has broken but the majority of life energy still remains in close contact with the physical form. Without attention the life energy continues to collapse onto the life essence and the person has around ten minutes until full separation of their life energy and physical form occurs. Greater initial damage causes a larger rift between physical form and life essence at the instant that the bond is broken, which translates into a shorter duration for the life energy to detach from the physical body and bind fully with the life essence.

The breakage of the bond is an interaction between life energy and the physical form; but once triggered, the process towards separation is purely a reaction between life energy and life essence – the two are attracted and the life energy takes time to fully envelope the life essence. So, during this time, if any further physical damage occurs, it does not hasten the separation. A misunderstanding of this phenomenon has led many to wonder why fallen heroes don’t take further damage from area of effect spells (which really has them wondering why the person didn’t instantly die and was able to be revived with healing spells). Well, the physical form does take more damage in these cases, and it should be likened to stabbing the carcass of a pig over and over again with a knife and the pig not getting any more dead. The life essence has already left the body and the life energy is titrating away at a rate dependent on the distance from the body the life energy was initial knocked away. Therefore, the belief that “at negative ten hit points life essence separates” is not correct. This belief does have its basis, though. Without proper investigation, the tribal healers and village clerics assumed blood loss led to final death. And the time it took to die from this blood loss was usually about ten rounds after the victim fell unconscious – hence, at one hit point per round, you get negative ten. And of course, massive damage causing near instantaneous death also justified this belief, since the victim “must have been closer to negative ten when initially damaged” and therefore, fewer rounds were needed to get to negative ten. But this is really a case where an empirical model closely matches the real data – but only in some of the cases. The phenomenon already mentioned left heads scratching and guessing things like a fireball must have burst over the body that was so close to the ground (being unconscious and all) and therefore must not have really done any damage. And the justifications go on and on…

The explanation is in… that hit points have nothing to do with it… in fact, there’s no real good reason to account for them once dead (below zero). The magnitude at which someone drops below zero is useful in determining the rate of “decay” of life energy, but nothing else. Sure, if a body gets splattered across the ground after falling 1000 feet, the life essence was knocked so far away that there is no life energy in the body (there’s no body for that matter), and accounting for hit points helps determine the grandness of the death. But even in that case, just one little chunk could be used to perform a resurrection (or reincarnation)… ever wonder why? It all has to do with the life essence being held safe within its life energy shell and nothing to do with the physical form. But that’s another dissertation.

It should be noted that one point of life energy is lost when a person drops below zero hit points. If they are cared for and brought back to consciousness, that lost point does not return. If not cared for and separation occurs, the remaining life energy points fully form around the life essence and help pull it towards its destination in the afterlife. One misconception is that the life energy points are lost and that’s why the body is dead. The body is lifeless because of the separation of life essence from the physical form. The life essence is able to maintain its cohesion through its interaction with the life energy points.