Revenants

Last month's Dragon had a Features article on an Insider-only race, the Revenant. I've always liked the idea of a revenant, a figure brought back from the dead for a sole purpose, driven to accomplish it. The novels that introduce the well-known drow Drizzt Do'urden have him chased by a revenant (his father? It has been years since I've read them), and the MMO Ultima Online had the revenant as a summonable creature that doggedly followed its target, outsmarting invisibility and teleportation.

Allowing players to play this race is definitely an interesting idea, though not likely a choice that is going to work for a casual campaign. While I'm sure DMs would be accommodating to a player that wanted to try it out for a lark, I think the whole concept of the revenant -- the back-from-the-dead, single-minded driven creature -- requires a campaign that has this idea interwoven into the plot, instead of just something that might come up once in a while.

I think the revenant would work well for a single-player campaign, providing a great hook into why the character adventures alone, and also providing the motivation to advance through the adventure (if you have problem players that like to (jokingly?) NOT follow the hints that the module provides.) The revenant can provide a basis for a single-session game, being brought back to take down this cult stronghold or that evil warren, and upon success or failure, returning to the afterlife from whence he or she came.

Of course, it works well for a whole party, too: a whole campaign could be based around some of the ideas hinted at in the article, with the party being pawns in the games of gods, or representing a party that, in service of one deity or another, was wiped out, and brought back as a favour to the deity for another try. In fact, the idea of bringing a group's party back from the dead after a Total Party Kill works well if you really wanted to see a campaign to the end. In fact, the 3.5 Ghostwalk sourcebook was useful for this, and was a backup plan that I had had for a few adventures in the past.


One of the interesting ideas of the revenant is that you choose a race that you were before, and gain benefits based on that race, most importantly, satisfying prerequisites that require the race. This applies most directly to most of the revenant feats, which specify both "revenant" and an additional race as the prereqs, such as the "Soul" feats which let you dabble back into lost racial powers, such as the Human Soul to get a +1 bonus to your defenses, or the Halfling Soul, to use your second chance power in an encounter instead of the dark reaping one that you get as a revenant. This can be especially useful if you are playing a previous character, returning for a second time around, and got used to certain racial abilities.

The racial Paragon and Epic Destiny paths are interesting, though I'm not sure the latter compares in "strength" to other epic destinies. The Paragon path touches on your pseudo-undead nature, and the Epic Destiny sure plays on the idea of "destiny", and "fate" and how your life, such as it is, has been reclaimed for yourself, allowing some interesting bonuses to saving throws.


I'd be curious to try this race out. As it stands, I don't see race mattering too much in the grand scheme of things - the initial racial traits, the occasional use of a racial ability, and the role-playing aspect of NPCs dealing with your character's race don't amount to that much compared to class selection and power choices. This is too bad, because one of the ideas in 4e was that race was going to matter a little more. In fact, if our current party was to switch to all revenants instead of two humans, a halfling, an elf, an eladrin and a dragonborn, I wonder how much we'd notice. I think the storyline reason for playing a revenant would be the most noticeable change.