Cloning RP - How is this allowed?

[QueenOfCookies]

Right - so I'm aware of several times in plotlines that people refer to having "Clones". I was not aware that our science has advanced so much for this to actually occur to provide players the ability to just escape death in general.

Here's how I see it: Oh - we can have Clones in RP in which we can NEVER fully die and our memories immediately go into them when we die. Through crystals or some other nonsense. We can decide what we remember and of course - we have as many clones as we want and can say in RP that we have more hidden in other places.

But we cannot have progress in history that allows Gnolls to roam the surface? Drow to work towards reversing their curse? Or allow Orogs to once again be a surfacer race?

I ask - where is the accuracy of science with the time period? How is this "cloning" RP not godmodding?

[Eira]

Canonically, magical clones can exist in Forgotten Realms, but the memories do not go into them when the creator dies. The memories go into them when they are created, so if people have libraries of created clones, those clones would lose months or years of memories.

Please report people who are making light of death in this manner. No wizard worth anything would flaunt that they have clones anyway; that would be the number one way for someone to hunt them down and destroy them.

[The GrumpyCat]

The issue I'm seeing here isn't so much the fluff of cloning, it's more people treating it (or any other sort of rped 'fluff' of respawning) as a 100% proof 'you can't destroy me, I'll return over and over and over and over again!'
If that's happening, whether the fluff is cloning, returning from the gods, rebirth, or anything else - please report it.
If it's specficially how to rp cloning - I would suggest just recognising, In Character, that it is an imperfect art. Treat it as a method that has a chance of failure.

If you're looking for a Lore answer here I'm sure there are folks far better equipped to answer it but for my part...

Firstly In FR cloning is certainly not a scientific ability, but rather a magical ability. A quick type in of 'cloning and forgotten realms' shows this

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cloning

How accurate that is to 3rd ed I'm honestly not sure, but I am sure cloning as a magical ability did exist/was used in FR in 3rd ed because there was some mad thayan mage that made a tonne of copies of himself. So it is a lore accurate answer. Though don't consider it so much as folks in a white lab coats with tubes, but rather wierd magical rituals done by folk with far too much power and far too little sense - for the most part.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

cloning can still be a very cool explanation for coming back to life after death, if done well. it's almost always more imaginative than "tyr rescued me for the nth time"

[magistrasa]

I'm not sure if this is still the case after the area was updated, but there was even at one time a respawn point you could bind to in the module that was a cloning vat.

[Scurvy Cur]

Relevant 3rd ed spell:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/clone.htm

And as Magistrasa says, one of the respawn points in the game is a (very evil) set of cloning vats. Definitively lore-established magic.

However, if you see someone RPing that danger and even death can be laughed off because they "have a clone anyway, lol", this is worth reporting. As with other means of coming back from death, reviving into a clone is canonically very traumatic. Nor is it guaranteed to succeed. Any number of things could prevent the soul's transit to the new body. Further, one can readily imagine all sorts of horror scenarios in which the required clone preservation methods fail (or are sabotaged) unbeknownst to the clone's owner, and they find themselves reviving or attempting to revive in a badly decayed meat puppet instead of an intact body.

[triaddraykin]

Every method of returning to life has a chance of failure. This is 'common knowledge'. 'Everyone' has heard of some attempt at it failing, whether it was a king's court hanging a cleric for failing to bring the king back, to the local priest trying and failing to bring Ethel back when that cow kicked her heart. It's the kind of thing you hear about in temple service and taverns alike.

I know of a political assassination where the mechanic of removal through assassination was used, then they tried to wave it off because they were right there with a Raise scroll to revive them moments after the assassin got away. The person wasn't so much angry with the removal of office as they were with the method, because 'there was no guarantee they could have brought me back.' They might as well have put a blindfold on them and stood them next to a spike pit, and not told them where it was, as far as they were concerned. Decent chance they'd survive, but it was still the height of betrayal and irresponsibility to have done it how they did.

You get the idea. That any method of resurrection is flawed, regardless of Actual Mechanics, is the lore of the server. There is ALWAYS a chance of failure, even if they've died and come back a thousand times. That chance should be taken seriously, and by extension, death should be taken seriously.

[Kuma]

Canonically, magical clones can exist in Forgotten Realms, but the memories do not go into them when the creator dies. The memories go into them when they are created, so if people have libraries of created clones, those clones would lose months or years of memories.

Not quite. The soul is where the memories are stored, and that's what enters the body when a clone is activated. It's written as treating it as if that creature was raised.

Cloning is a fine excuse for respawning, when done within the existing rules.

But we cannot have progress in history that allows Gnolls to roam the surface? Drow to work towards reversing their curse? Or allow Orogs to once again be a surfacer race?

I ask - where is the accuracy of science with the time period? How is this "cloning" RP not godmodding?

"if this canon spell in the d20srd is allowed then clearly we should be able to make drow be surfacers"

1: Gnolls can roam the surface just fine. They are not an Underdark race. Wiki says so. Good luck!
2: Drow can work towards whatever they like, ICly. OOCly, they will not succeed.
3: Orogs have never been a surface race.

[DM Monkey]

This is one of those things where nuance is really important. It's also a matter of who is being cloned, how they're achieving this, whether they have the ability to achieve it, and so on. There's been some fantastic roleplay on the server around cloning in the past. There has also been some horrible roleplay around cloning in the past.

The link to the spell Clone is posted above by Scurvy. That's probably the best setting-appropriate explanation of how it works. There's still room for crazy inventors to experiment with other methods to achieve the same results, but use the spell as a general reference. Also, no one else has to go along with it. It's really up to them/their character whether they believe you're a clone or not, whether they believe the magic has worked or not, and so on.

It's a great way for a high level Wizard/Sorcerer to explain coming back from death. Keep in mind our rules around memory of death, so maybe the cloning process has left that last few hours leading up to their untimely death fuzzy or blank.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

The link to the spell Clone is posted above by Scurvy. That's probably the best setting-appropriate explanation of how it works. There's still room for crazy inventors to experiment with other methods to achieve the same results, but use the spell as a general reference.

It's a great way for a high level Wizard/Sorcerer to explain coming back from death. Keep in mind our rules around memory of death, so maybe the cloning process has left that last few hours leading up to their untimely death fuzzy or blank.

I like this idea a lot, sometime I want to play a wizard who does this. Have a memory crystal they plug into their clone vat at the end of every day to transfer the collective knowledge to the master memory gem of the system. If the character ever dies, they lose that entire day's worth of memories. They wake up from the vat, know something must have happened, and try to piece together what happened in the missing time. The investigative aspect sounds fun, reaching out to friends and trying to figure out what happened that day. Trying to figure out what killed their last body so they can avoid it and protect themself from it in the future. And until they know there's lingering paranoia that whatever killed them is still at large, and possibly still hunting them.

[perseid]

I don't really see the issue as long as characters are still rping out a fear of death. "I have a contingency but only idiots use that as an excuse to roll dice" is a very logical take. As far as the 'technology' itself, there are cloning instruments ig as part of the server and within the setting itself there's multiple spells that have to do with the creation of clones. Really though the plot explanation for how a clone comes about seems relatively unimportant as long as people aren't treating it as a "Let's go ahead and do stupid shit because we have insurance" card. I'd also add that on top of the spell linked earlier there's also the spell Stasis Clone from Lord of Darkness.

[DM Monkey]

If people don’t take death seriously, they usually end up with an MoD. Nothing is guaranteed, any contingency can be foiled by your enemies, you’re never truly safe! The Forgotten Realms is a very dangerous setting and on Arelith you have some of the most incredibly powerful representatives of all alignments around you. Anything could happen.

[Rei_Jin]

The Shadowclaw Kobold Kloning Konservatory will soon be in operation.

Mwauahaha