She doesn’t have any mechanical penalties vs Death, and as a multiclass Cleric, should actually have a better save than most other classes... I dunno. Anyways.
My vote for most annoying goes to... Hexxat now, probably? She more than anyone else I simply can’t stand.
A lot of these "jokes" are getting very close to outright Ableism...
I think you are on very dodgy ground equating Aerie's loss of her wings with real world disability and I think it is quite offensive to suggest that anyone who expresses a dislike of her character is "hating on a disabled teenager suffering from PTSD" as if we were talking about a real person dealing with real life challenges. Aerie is an artistic creation who was written with victimhood as her defining character trait. In fact, a lot of the time it feels like her only character trait. We are supposed to like her because we feel sorry for her. Everything about her, from her portrait to the voice acting is designed to reinforce this.
Personally, I find her character to be one-dimensional and on times I think the writing is cringeworthy. Clearly you do not agree. But that is a matter of taste not of virtue.
I'd like to send Aerie some love. She's a well-rounded character with a great backstory, who storywise did go through a very traumatizing life and in the end turns out to be someone who fights against injustice and slavery but the path to maturity is not an easy one.
I... wholeheartedly disagree with the 1-dimensional thing. Aerie is the most compassionate of all the Good characters: Mazzy is the next closest. From agreeing to being Minsc's witch off the bat to Keldorn recognizing that he can learn something of being Good from her, on top of her being captured in the first place for trying to save another boy from slavery...
I'd actually argue that she's one of the most fleshed out characters in terms of dimensionality. Her care for Minsc and Quayle, her dissents for any path that's more bloody than necessary, her lack of confidence (that changes) with Haer'Dalis, her friendship with Imoen, her desire for peace and an end to the incessant fighting by the end of the series, and then of course the whole self-identity crisis with her lack of wings... There's of course hits and misses: I didn't particularly like the whole pregnant arc, for example. But the only characters I can think of that have as many different facets in their characterization are Jaheira and Anomen, and possibly Keldorn at times.
@Permidion_Stark As someone who IS a caretaker for disabled and troubled family members, Aerie is a REMARKABLY accurate portrayal of a traumatised person for the time. Her initially needyness, the nightmares and flashbacks, its LEGIT. She may be a ficitonal character, but what exactly is the point of mocking even a ficitonal traumatised character? Why is that funny? Who's the butt of the joke? These jokes are all VERY uncomfortable.
@Permidion_Stark As someone who IS a caretaker for disabled and troubled family members, Aerie is a REMARKABLY accurate portrayal of a traumatised person for the time. Her initially needyness, the nightmares and flashbacks, its LEGIT. She may be a ficitonal character, but what exactly is the point of mocking even a ficitonal traumatised character? Why is that funny? Who's the butt of the joke? These jokes are all VERY uncomfortable.
I was not aware of your family situation and it was not my intention to cause you any distress.
You ask what the point is of mocking a fictional traumatised character? The point is I find her mawkish, contrived and saccharine. Like the other romanceable female characters in the original BG2 she is presented as a victim and that is what we are supposed to find attractive about her. I think it is bad writing and it makes for uncomfortable reading.
Clearly your opinion is totally different to mine. That's fine. Each to their own. However, I think you should be wary of accusing people who disagree with you of having prejudices against people living with disabilities in real life. As I said in my last post, I found your remark that people are "hating on a disabled teenager suffering from PTSD" to be quite offensive. To be honest I thought you were just virtue signalling. So I responded with a joke about Aerie because I thought it would annoy you. It was not, however, my intention to upset you. And for that I apologise.
Thank you for the apology, I appreciate it. You don't have to like her, my point is only that making fun of someone's difficulties is poor form.
"and it makes for uncomfortable reading."
Yes, it should. Dealing with trauma is extremely uncomfortable, even other people's.
Also, "Virtue Signaling" is such a disengenuous term. Its just the "politically correct" way of saying, "This person wants to do the right thing, how stupid is that?"
Wow, I never realized Aerie was quite this polarizing. I always liked her character, and she has been on most of my BG2 runs. Doesn't hurt that she turns into an absolute powerhouse as a C/M.
Anomen, on the other hand, did not rustle my female PC's jimmies. However, despite being annoyed by his overbearing arrogance and sexism, she did try taking him once. He did get better. Somewhat. (He passed his test in that run)
Keldorn, to me, is like a slightly older, wiser, but still obnoxious Anomen. He's not nearly as blatant, but his character rubbed my chaotic good PC the wrong way repeatedly. Maybe it's the lawful vs chaotic thing, I dunno, but the only time she wasn't annoyed with him was when he was turning undead. The rest of the time? Yeah, she felt judged.
Come to think of it, she didn't like Ajantis either, and for much the same reason...
Khalid, on the other hand, she actually liked. Yes, his speech impediment could get old, but he always seemed like a genuinely nice dude. Jaheira and Khalid were almost always in the party at the very end.
Oh, and Jan's turnip commentary got way, way too old. I need a solid thief, so he got the slot until the party left for Spellhold.
I like avariel: they taste like chicken. That's as close a compliment I am willing Aerie to give.
I am afraid all this soap opera talk simply doesn't hold water in high magic fantasy settings such as the Forgotten Realms. Like, at all. Missing a limb or four? Cast regenerate, wish or another healing spell of your choice on yourself and you're ready to take off! Far easier done than resurrecting the dead or reclaiming your lost soul for that matter. Come to think of it, Jaheira giving up on resurrecting Khalid for no reason at all is pretty much in the same line of TV drama seriousness.
Honestly D&D is quite terrible at staging believable traumatic situations. Given that everything can be mended, cured, restoered or healed by magic.
I picked up this thread some 14 days ago, and was quite shocked to see the Aerie bashing that took place - although only from a few.
This post probably was the worst
I don’t think a little Aerie teasing is out of order, but the excessive bashing is.
So I can fully agree with Thacobell that the Aerie bashing has stooped to low. All though I don’t think that Permidion crossed the line here with the teasing/joke.
Imho the Aerie bashing is real, and rather distasteful. It has some ugly misogynistic traits and downright ableism.
I hope we can all say that even though it’s only five years ago we started this discussion, that we have all come along way and are above such low comments as the one in the spoiler tags.
In Quayle's defense: he has one, smezy beard. And on top of that is also wearing a top hat!
Aerie lacks such high fashion sense and instead opted to draw a dartboard on her forehead.
In Quayle's defense: he has one, smezy beard. And on top of that is also wearing a top hat!
Aerie lacks such high fashion sense and instead opted to draw a dartboard on her forehead.
"Aim at me! I'm totally not protected by absolute immunity, physical mirror, or fire shield!"
I like avariel: they taste like chicken. That's as close a compliment I am willing Aerie to give.
I am afraid all this soap opera talk simply doesn't hold water in high magic fantasy settings such as the Forgotten Realms. Like, at all. Missing a limb or four? Cast regenerate, wish or another healing spell of your choice on yourself and you're ready to take off! Far easier done than resurrecting the dead or reclaiming your lost soul for that matter. Come to think of it, Jaheira giving up on resurrecting Khalid for no reason at all is pretty much in the same line of TV drama seriousness.
Honestly D&D is quite terrible at staging believable traumatic situations. Given that everything can be mended, cured, restoered or healed by magic.
Your body has to be in decent enough shape to be resurrected, which is why chunking is perma-death. Jaheira states that he was far too desecrated, which means that Khalid would have been closer to a zombie than a party member after Mr. I was done with him. I'll give them that one.
I thought in FR you could be resurrected with a hair or toe clipping. There is a drow wizard that gets virtually obliterated in that six book Lloth renewal saga where they go deep into the underdark, but he gets resurrected with a hair or similar in a future trilogy
I thought in FR you could be resurrected with a hair or toe clipping. There is a drow wizard that gets virtually obliterated in that six book Lloth renewal saga where they go deep into the underdark, but he gets resurrected with a hair or similar in a future trilogy
This. The raise dead spell requires the corpse to be intact in order to work as intended. Resurrection on the other hand can bring back any character that has at least one body part remaining. It only doesn't work on folks who died of old age or were pretty much obliterated by things like disintegrate.
Eh, Irenicus apparently is powerful to just decide he wants deity level power and the Seldarine take it seriously enough to actively intervene. He also cheats and has spells that don't exist. I totally buy that he could do something to a corpse to make it un resurrectable.
Plan B: Dump Khalid's body into one of Irenicus' cloning hourglasses. Use his cells to create a clone of him. Then proceed in dragging his soul into the new vessel. A few shoutings of a nagging wife should do the trick. Voila, you're done! Now you have a Khalid with 160% less stuttering up and running.
Eh, Irenicus apparently is powerful to just decide he wants deity level power and the Seldarine take it seriously enough to actively intervene. He also cheats and has spells that don't exist.
This is true. For example, the recipe and ritual for Create Sewage Golem are known only to Big Jon.
I totally buy that he could do something to a corpse to make it un resurrectable.
I buy that he could but there doesn't seem to be anything in the game to suggest that he has. Khalid's corpse appears to be essentially intact and is certainly recognisable. In a game where creatures regularly explode into chunks, Khalid is actually in pretty reasonable shape. And unless I am misremembering, doesn't Jaheira refuse to countenance raising Khalid not because it can't be done but because his corpse has been desecrated? She dedicates him to Silvanus in the expectation that he will find peace and seems to think it is better to do that than bring him back to life with all its torments.
I seem to remember from DnD lore that if deceased doesn't want to raised, then you can't do it regardless of the state of the body.
Maybe Khalid had enough adventures?
@Permidion_Stark Jaheira specifically states that Khalid's corpse has been desecrated in a way to prevent being brought back. There's a big misconception that this line doesn't exist because so many people use the BG2 Unfinished Business mod, which changes the line and replaces it with one where Jaheria just says its better not to try. For some unknown and probably really stupid reason.
As much as I love the lore, Forgotten Realms went way, way off the rails with the magic system. Death, and undeath, are practically meaningless concepts as a result. While I'm not above using Raise Dead on a party member, I do think that the relative ease with which you can do so cheapens the whole deal somehow. Further, while I will cop to having my parties carry a copy of a Raise Dead scroll, I still feel that this should be a more involved process necessarily involving a temple. Dying should present more than a speed bump to a campaign.
However, as it pertains to Khalid, I suspect that he fell victim to his own bad press. Nevermind that he turned out to be a competent NPC, that stuttering did him in. Of course, he wouldn't be the only BG NPC party member to get shafted in BG2. Monty and Montaron, Safana, etc., got screwed as well, and poor Branwen and Yeslick didn't even make the cut.
Of course we all know that the real reason that Jaheira doesn't want Khalid raised is that she wants him out of the way so she can romance the Charname.
I seem to remember from DnD lore that if deceased doesn't want to raised, then you can't do it regardless of the state of the body. Maybe Khalid had enough adventures?
My money is on him enjoying his single afterlife. Far, far away from his ex-wife.
Jaheira: "Khal, I looted a scroll of resurrection. So get your arse back here!" Khalid: "H-hell no! This marriage was s-supposed to end as death parts us. N-no one told me it could continue *after* that!" Jaheira: "Ah well, guess I better search for a new victim lover."
As much as I love the lore, Forgotten Realms went way, way off the rails with the magic system. Death, and undeath, are practically meaningless concepts as a result. While I'm not above using Raise Dead on a party member, I do think that the relative ease with which you can do so cheapens the whole deal somehow. Further, while I will cop to having my parties carry a copy of a Raise Dead scroll, I still feel that this should be a more involved process necessarily involving a temple. Dying should present more than a speed bump to a campaign.
However, as it pertains to Khalid, I suspect that he fell victim to his own bad press. Nevermind that he turned out to be a competent NPC, that stuttering did him in. Of course, he wouldn't be the only BG NPC party member to get shafted in BG2. Monty and Montaron, Safana, etc., got screwed as well, and poor Branwen and Yeslick didn't even make the cut.
I think that it really, really depends. When it comes to adventurers and people with lots of cash we can consider that raising the dead is quite possible, but I wouldn't extend it to "in the realms" because such divine services are tremendously expensive and costly, even if it were a favor youd need a 9th level cleric and these arent easy to find in every corner . As for Branwen , according to the tutorial she works at the duchal palace s2.
I suppose you have a point about the expense, though for most commoners I imagine the sum being closer to the 200 gold than the 750 for a scroll. If the amount you find in people's homes is any indication, however, I suspect most people are stuck with traditional burial.
That said, any reasonably sized temple should have a cleric capable of casting it.
Really, the money in commoner houses is way too much within the IE's: it should be copper coins, or at most silver coins carefully stashed away. Gold coins are something most folks haven't even seen, much less have in their possession. That's something merchants, officials and similar influential people have. Not bloody commoners.
Then again FR lore dedicates that the church of Ilmater provites their healing services free of charge for ordinary people. So a lack of money isn't really a problem in that case.
There's a lot of different variables at play, so buckle up for one of Zaxares' patented lore dump discussions!
1. The first issue is the type of spell used for resurrection. As mentioned above, Raise Dead requires the deceased's body to be present and mostly intact (if it's missing the head or any vital organs, the person would immediately die again upon being raised. You could feasibly raise someone who was missing limbs, although those limbs would still be missing when the dead person came back, and most D&D games don't get into such technicalities.) Raise Dead also doesn't work on elves, although it DOES work on half-elves (so Khalid is still a valid target for a Cleric at the appropriate starting level of SoA.) Finally, Raise Dead cannot bring someone back to life who has been dead for longer than a month.
Resurrection can bring back a dead victim with only the barest part of the dead person present. It could be half a torso, a severed hand, a single rib bone or even just a lock of hair. Unlike Raise Dead, it works even on elves, although as a level 7 Cleric spell it would be out of reach to all but the mightiest of priests in a typical D&D world. Note that even Resurrection cannot bring back somebody who was slain by means of a Death Spell or a Finger of Death spell (which is why these spells are regarded as Evil to use.) Resurrection can bring back victims who have been dead for up to a year and a day. (To account for leap years? Or just a charming folklore thing that made its way into D&D?)
3.X D&D and subsequent editions also introduced True Resurrection, Resurrection's roided-up 9th level cousin. True Resurrection doesn't even need a body part to be present; it will re-create the dead victim's body out of thin air. It has no limits on how long the victim has been dead for, and even spells like Finger of Death et. al. cannot stop a True Resurrection spell. If you cast True Resurrection on an undead, it will kill the undead AND resurrect the original person at the same time. The only time True Resurrection will fail to work is if the victim's soul is somehow kept imprisoned somewhere and cannot return to its body, or via the intervention of a deity or similarly powerful being.
2. The willingness of the deceased. As Artona mentions, a dead person can only be brought back from the dead if they WANT to come back. What's more, the soul in the afterlife instantly knows who is calling them back and what deity they serve, so if an evil Cyricist was trying to raise the dead paladin he just killed for further torture, the paladin's spirit would know who was calling him and just refuse to heed the call.
In addition, in the vast majority of cases, the dead person will not want to come back. It was "their time", and if they are Good/Neutral aligned, they now dwell in a plane that, to them, is absolute paradise. Why would you want to give that up to return to a life of hardship and tribulation? For Evil souls, usually they can't come back because they're too busy being tormented by demons/devils, and Evil doesn't really have a track record of raising their dead minions. :P
In Khalid's case, it's probably safe to say that he would have wanted to return, but perhaps the celestial servants who met him told him that he needn't worry anymore; his journey is over, and "all will be well in the end". (Which, in fairness, it will be!)
3. Steps to prevent resurrection. As mentioned above, for a Raise Dead spell, simple stuff like severing the dead person's head or digging out their heart would suffice for preventing them from being raised. A Resurrection spell would be harder to foil, and you would need to kill the victim with a Finger of Death spell or something similar, or trap their soul so it can't return to their body. All of these things Irenicus could easily do, of course, but we don't have a lot of supporting information for if he DID actually bother. Given Jaheira's dialogue though, my guess is, via her druidic talents, that she sensed some kind of powerful Necromantic spell was used on Khalid that would have interfered with attempts to raise or resurrect him.
Comments
My vote for most annoying goes to... Hexxat now, probably? She more than anyone else I simply can’t stand.
I think you are on very dodgy ground equating Aerie's loss of her wings with real world disability and I think it is quite offensive to suggest that anyone who expresses a dislike of her character is "hating on a disabled teenager suffering from PTSD" as if we were talking about a real person dealing with real life challenges. Aerie is an artistic creation who was written with victimhood as her defining character trait. In fact, a lot of the time it feels like her only character trait. We are supposed to like her because we feel sorry for her. Everything about her, from her portrait to the voice acting is designed to reinforce this.
Personally, I find her character to be one-dimensional and on times I think the writing is cringeworthy. Clearly you do not agree. But that is a matter of taste not of virtue.
And the jokes are a bit tasteless IMO
I'd actually argue that she's one of the most fleshed out characters in terms of dimensionality. Her care for Minsc and Quayle, her dissents for any path that's more bloody than necessary, her lack of confidence (that changes) with Haer'Dalis, her friendship with Imoen, her desire for peace and an end to the incessant fighting by the end of the series, and then of course the whole self-identity crisis with her lack of wings... There's of course hits and misses: I didn't particularly like the whole pregnant arc, for example. But the only characters I can think of that have as many different facets in their characterization are Jaheira and Anomen, and possibly Keldorn at times.
I was not aware of your family situation and it was not my intention to cause you any distress.
You ask what the point is of mocking a fictional traumatised character? The point is I find her mawkish, contrived and saccharine. Like the other romanceable female characters in the original BG2 she is presented as a victim and that is what we are supposed to find attractive about her. I think it is bad writing and it makes for uncomfortable reading.
Clearly your opinion is totally different to mine. That's fine. Each to their own. However, I think you should be wary of accusing people who disagree with you of having prejudices against people living with disabilities in real life. As I said in my last post, I found your remark that people are "hating on a disabled teenager suffering from PTSD" to be quite offensive. To be honest I thought you were just virtue signalling. So I responded with a joke about Aerie because I thought it would annoy you. It was not, however, my intention to upset you. And for that I apologise.
"and it makes for uncomfortable reading."
Yes, it should. Dealing with trauma is extremely uncomfortable, even other people's.
Also, "Virtue Signaling" is such a disengenuous term. Its just the "politically correct" way of saying, "This person wants to do the right thing, how stupid is that?"
Anomen, on the other hand, did not rustle my female PC's jimmies. However, despite being annoyed by his overbearing arrogance and sexism, she did try taking him once. He did get better. Somewhat. (He passed his test in that run)
Keldorn, to me, is like a slightly older, wiser, but still obnoxious Anomen. He's not nearly as blatant, but his character rubbed my chaotic good PC the wrong way repeatedly. Maybe it's the lawful vs chaotic thing, I dunno, but the only time she wasn't annoyed with him was when he was turning undead. The rest of the time? Yeah, she felt judged.
Come to think of it, she didn't like Ajantis either, and for much the same reason...
Khalid, on the other hand, she actually liked. Yes, his speech impediment could get old, but he always seemed like a genuinely nice dude. Jaheira and Khalid were almost always in the party at the very end.
Oh, and Jan's turnip commentary got way, way too old. I need a solid thief, so he got the slot until the party left for Spellhold.
I am afraid all this soap opera talk simply doesn't hold water in high magic fantasy settings such as the Forgotten Realms. Like, at all. Missing a limb or four? Cast regenerate, wish or another healing spell of your choice on yourself and you're ready to take off! Far easier done than resurrecting the dead or reclaiming your lost soul for that matter. Come to think of it, Jaheira giving up on resurrecting Khalid for no reason at all is pretty much in the same line of TV drama seriousness.
Honestly D&D is quite terrible at staging believable traumatic situations. Given that everything can be mended, cured, restoered or healed by magic.
This post probably was the worst
I don’t think a little Aerie teasing is out of order, but the excessive bashing is.
So I can fully agree with Thacobell that the Aerie bashing has stooped to low. All though I don’t think that Permidion crossed the line here with the teasing/joke.
Imho the Aerie bashing is real, and rather distasteful. It has some ugly misogynistic traits and downright ableism.
I hope we can all say that even though it’s only five years ago we started this discussion, that we have all come along way and are above such low comments as the one in the spoiler tags.
So cut Aerie some slack, and send your grievances the right way... To BG1 Quayle. He is annoying to the point of trolling..
Aerie lacks such high fashion sense and instead opted to draw a dartboard on her forehead.
"Aim at me! I'm totally not protected by absolute immunity, physical mirror, or fire shield!"
Your body has to be in decent enough shape to be resurrected, which is why chunking is perma-death. Jaheira states that he was far too desecrated, which means that Khalid would have been closer to a zombie than a party member after Mr. I was done with him. I'll give them that one.
This. The raise dead spell requires the corpse to be intact in order to work as intended. Resurrection on the other hand can bring back any character that has at least one body part remaining. It only doesn't work on folks who died of old age or were pretty much obliterated by things like disintegrate.
This is true. For example, the recipe and ritual for Create Sewage Golem are known only to Big Jon.
I buy that he could but there doesn't seem to be anything in the game to suggest that he has. Khalid's corpse appears to be essentially intact and is certainly recognisable. In a game where creatures regularly explode into chunks, Khalid is actually in pretty reasonable shape. And unless I am misremembering, doesn't Jaheira refuse to countenance raising Khalid not because it can't be done but because his corpse has been desecrated? She dedicates him to Silvanus in the expectation that he will find peace and seems to think it is better to do that than bring him back to life with all its torments.
Maybe Khalid had enough adventures?
However, as it pertains to Khalid, I suspect that he fell victim to his own bad press. Nevermind that he turned out to be a competent NPC, that stuttering did him in. Of course, he wouldn't be the only BG NPC party member to get shafted in BG2. Monty and Montaron, Safana, etc., got screwed as well, and poor Branwen and Yeslick didn't even make the cut.
Jaheira: "Khal, I looted a scroll of resurrection. So get your arse back here!"
Khalid: "H-hell no! This marriage was s-supposed to end as death parts us. N-no one told me it could continue *after* that!"
Jaheira: "Ah well, guess I better search for a new victim lover."
I think that it really, really depends. When it comes to adventurers and people with lots of cash we can consider that raising the dead is quite possible, but I wouldn't extend it to "in the realms" because such divine services are tremendously expensive and costly, even if it were a favor youd need a 9th level cleric and these arent easy to find in every corner . As for Branwen , according to the tutorial she works at the duchal palace s2.
I suppose you have a point about the expense, though for most commoners I imagine the sum being closer to the 200 gold than the 750 for a scroll. If the amount you find in people's homes is any indication, however, I suspect most people are stuck with traditional burial.
That said, any reasonably sized temple should have a cleric capable of casting it.
Then again FR lore dedicates that the church of Ilmater provites their healing services free of charge for ordinary people. So a lack of money isn't really a problem in that case.
1. The first issue is the type of spell used for resurrection. As mentioned above, Raise Dead requires the deceased's body to be present and mostly intact (if it's missing the head or any vital organs, the person would immediately die again upon being raised. You could feasibly raise someone who was missing limbs, although those limbs would still be missing when the dead person came back, and most D&D games don't get into such technicalities.) Raise Dead also doesn't work on elves, although it DOES work on half-elves (so Khalid is still a valid target for a Cleric at the appropriate starting level of SoA.) Finally, Raise Dead cannot bring someone back to life who has been dead for longer than a month.
Resurrection can bring back a dead victim with only the barest part of the dead person present. It could be half a torso, a severed hand, a single rib bone or even just a lock of hair. Unlike Raise Dead, it works even on elves, although as a level 7 Cleric spell it would be out of reach to all but the mightiest of priests in a typical D&D world. Note that even Resurrection cannot bring back somebody who was slain by means of a Death Spell or a Finger of Death spell (which is why these spells are regarded as Evil to use.) Resurrection can bring back victims who have been dead for up to a year and a day. (To account for leap years? Or just a charming folklore thing that made its way into D&D?)
3.X D&D and subsequent editions also introduced True Resurrection, Resurrection's roided-up 9th level cousin. True Resurrection doesn't even need a body part to be present; it will re-create the dead victim's body out of thin air. It has no limits on how long the victim has been dead for, and even spells like Finger of Death et. al. cannot stop a True Resurrection spell. If you cast True Resurrection on an undead, it will kill the undead AND resurrect the original person at the same time. The only time True Resurrection will fail to work is if the victim's soul is somehow kept imprisoned somewhere and cannot return to its body, or via the intervention of a deity or similarly powerful being.
2. The willingness of the deceased. As Artona mentions, a dead person can only be brought back from the dead if they WANT to come back. What's more, the soul in the afterlife instantly knows who is calling them back and what deity they serve, so if an evil Cyricist was trying to raise the dead paladin he just killed for further torture, the paladin's spirit would know who was calling him and just refuse to heed the call.
In addition, in the vast majority of cases, the dead person will not want to come back. It was "their time", and if they are Good/Neutral aligned, they now dwell in a plane that, to them, is absolute paradise. Why would you want to give that up to return to a life of hardship and tribulation? For Evil souls, usually they can't come back because they're too busy being tormented by demons/devils, and Evil doesn't really have a track record of raising their dead minions. :P
In Khalid's case, it's probably safe to say that he would have wanted to return, but perhaps the celestial servants who met him told him that he needn't worry anymore; his journey is over, and "all will be well in the end". (Which, in fairness, it will be!)
3. Steps to prevent resurrection. As mentioned above, for a Raise Dead spell, simple stuff like severing the dead person's head or digging out their heart would suffice for preventing them from being raised. A Resurrection spell would be harder to foil, and you would need to kill the victim with a Finger of Death spell or something similar, or trap their soul so it can't return to their body. All of these things Irenicus could easily do, of course, but we don't have a lot of supporting information for if he DID actually bother. Given Jaheira's dialogue though, my guess is, via her druidic talents, that she sensed some kind of powerful Necromantic spell was used on Khalid that would have interfered with attempts to raise or resurrect him.