From the Ashes looks at making reincarnation special and strange in your 5E D&D game.

Want to develop a backstory that goes all the way back? Tome of Heroes has hundreds of options to make characters of every sort. Even past lives!

In this final entry in the series, we present a toolkit to tweak, empower, and complicate rituals (reincarnatino or otherwise) at your table for roleplaying purposes.

Setting the Stage

Choosing a particular place of power for a ritual can contribute to a scene’s mood, provide backdrop for narration, and inform what the terrain might look like in the event of a combat encounter. Some suggested places of power:

Place of Power	Mood	Terrain
Within a henge of stone or a garden of magical plants (see Hedge Magic in the pocket edition of Tome of Heroes)	Ancient, heavy with spiritual energy	Upright stone slabs, low planters, symmetrical design
Beneath the open sky during a full moon, eclipse, meteor shower, or other cosmic event.	Cosmic, open, full of possibility	Alternating rounds of bright light and complete darkness
Inside a tomb or graveyard. Especially near a fresh grave, monument, or reflecting pool.	Cursed, dreary, ominous	Tombstones, open graves, shallow pool of liquid
A grove, copse, or mushroom ring that exists on a ley line, shadow road, or another source of primal magic.	Feral, lively, primal	Difficult fungal terrain, fungal hazards, glowing line of magic through the area
In the sepulcher, sanctum, or around the altar of a chapel, cathedral, church, or temple.	Historic, holy, risk of discovery	Altar, holy water dispenser, pews
At the site of a previously cast ritual, spell, or divine occurrence.	Porous reality, weighty	Motes of energy in the air, sparks of spell energy, discarded ritual implements
Around a built ritual circle. Use the table from Curiosities Inside The Ritual Circle for inspiration on what your ritual circle might look like.	Ceremonial, formal	Stone implements, glowing runes, magic circles scattered around the area
At the center of a crater caused by a great impact or detonation.	Exposed, unearthly	Difficult rubbled terrain, boulders, high crater edges
At a crossroads, intersection, or place where a high-stakes deal was struck.	Sketchy, momentous, unpredictable	Hard-packed roadways, direction signs, abandoned wagon
Near where a dragon recently hatched or took its first breath.	Dangerous, elemental	Environment appropriate to the dragon type, heaps of coins, wingbeats above

Including the Entire Party

When expanding a ritual to have more narrative weight, include other players than just the one performing the ritual. First, decide whether you want other characters’ contributions to have a mechanical (gameplay) or narrative (story-only) effect on the ritual and its outcome. Both styles have their merits, but for preserving gameplay balance and the level of difficulty in your game, narrative-only is a safer option.

Mechanical Participation

Offering advantage on dice rolled for the effect of the ritual is the most lightweight method to add mechanical participation. Here are a few ways to try that:

• Actions. Ability checks and the Help actions can apply. Set the DC or AC to the primary spellcaster of the ritual’s spell save DC. If an assisting character succeeds, the primary caster gains advantage.
• Material Sacrifice. Each character could offer up a meaningful item or trinket. A bonus to achieve success could be based on rarity: +1 for common, +2 for uncommon, +3 for rare, +4 for very rare, and +5 for legendary. Using reincarnation as an example, each character could offer an item meaningful to both them and the deceased such as a gift or shared weapon. This might allow a reroll on the reincarnation table or the deceased character’s player could apply the total sacrifice bonus as a positive or negative modifier to roll.
• Self-Sacrifice. Characters can offer some personal resource: hit points, Hit Dice, or spell slots to power the spell. Hit Dice can be rolled and their results added to achieve the desired result. Sacrificing hit points or spell slots could offer additional time for the ritual’s effect or modify its power.

Narrative Participation

Having each player add to the ritual in this manner can add emotional punch to the scene. Some options to encourage narrative participation:

• Feelings. While the primary spellcaster is performing the ritual, players share their characters’ feelings and sensory experiences in the moment. Let everyone contribute to the atmosphere and emotional weight of the scene.
• Memories. Have characters share or reveal memories relevant to the moment. If the spell is reincarnation or true resurrection for example, perhaps the primary spellcaster needs each character to share a strong memory of the deceased to successfully cast the spell.
• Prayers. Calling on even the fighter to say a few words in benefit of the spell can set the mood and encourage character growth at the same time.

Consequences

Unforeseen consequences can occur from rituals. Typically, a ritual incurs a 10% chance of a consequence after completion. Alternatively, consequences of a ritual could become an encounter or entire game session.

Perhaps the afterlife will not let a deceased character reincarnate without a fight. You can roll 1d8 or choose from the table below.

Ritual Consequences Table

d8	Consequence
1	Everyone participating in the ritual must make a Constitution saving throw against the primary caster’s spell save DC or suffer one level of exhaustion.
2	The performance of the ritual attracts a powerful creature’s curiosity or ire. An emissary confronts you within a week’s time.
3	Your ritual offends a powerful celestial, fey, fiend, or god.
4	The ritual’s powerful magics stir up the spirits of the afterlife, forcing an encounter with incorporeal undead such as ghosts, specters, or wraiths.
5	At the ritual’s conclusion, everyone present is permanently marked with the same esoteric symbol or rune.
6	The ritual’s component requirements prove greater than expected. Everyone participating suffers the effects of a bestow curse spell in order to complete the ritual.
7	The ritual’s casting shakes the ground beneath your feet and darkens the skies, fomenting a natural disaster such as an earthquake, thunderstorm, or wildfire.
8	Through misunderstanding or clumsy gestures, you have cast a different ritual or spell at the same time as the one you intended, mixing the results of both. (See Three Little Pigs: Part 1 for an example of how this could play out.)

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