Til death do us part -raised again.

[Grim Reader]

So if a married character dies and gets raised...is he still married, or does the marriage terminate upon death? What about oaths that you swear for life? What about your inheritance and will? Are your heirs going to be making off with your stuff?

Obviously, when you go down in a fight, and you're back the next day, short some diamond dust, that shouldn't be a problem. Unless your wife/husband has a really good lawyer.

Bus some spells can bring you back years, or even centuries after your death. At some point, life must go on. And what if you get reincarnated?

Inheritance -lands, titles, wealth and armies- was trememdously important in medieval times. What happens when death can be temporary?

[Flickerdart]

That would depend on your campaign setting. Vows would probably be different, and people who have inheritance that matters would probably have some kind of laws that require them to be raised immediately.

Or you can have all these newly living people going off to become adventurers, what with their estates and wives now being used by someone else.

[BowStreetRunner]

That could be a very fun plot-device. But it really depends on the campaign setting and the DM. Since most pre-written materials I've seen don't take this sort of thing into account, there is no RAW answer.

Steven Brust wrote a series of books in a setting where raising someone from the dead was so common that it was generally accepted that anyone who could afford it had 'death insurance' in the form of a pre-purchased spell from the local clerics and if you went to hire an assassin to kill someone the first question they asked was whether you wanted the victim to be just dead, or if you were going to pay more to make them permanently dead. In a world like that, I would assume the laws would take raising into account.

On the other hand, in the high-fantasy settings of J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist and others I would be surprised if the laws were prepared to deal with such issues.

[Fouredged Sword]

In Girl Genius, raising someone from death with science is possible. They deal with it by saying that once you die, your titles pass on weather or not you are revived. This leads to wonderful blackmail plots where nobility are raised from the dead, only to be under the thumb of the mad scientist who raised them because if it ever became public they would loose everything.

[SethoMarkus]

Pretty much as everyone has stated, it would depend on the setting. Though, it also helps to take into consideration that even in real life there are differing views on marriage depending on religion/beliefs, region, and time period. For example, within Christianity there are some belief systems that marriage persists until death, while other beliefs specifically state that the married couple are joined for eternity. I'd also take a looking at how missing persons are treated in real life; after missing for so long a person is generally considered "legally dead", but sometimes they come back (after being shipwrecked or stranded in a foreign land, for example). Although not truly "resurrected" in the gaming sense, it is basically the same situation.

Though, I would imagine that if an individual were raised from the dead centuries after their death, it would be a moot point as surviving heirs and thieves would have cleared out anything of value long ago.

[Kudaku]

A setting where powerful divine magic is easily available would have taken possibilities like this into consideration by writing inheritance laws and marriage vows that cover the eventuality of the afterlife, reliable communication with the deceased, and resurrection spells.

A setting where such magic is rare or unheard of, on the other hand... Imagine resurrecting someone in our world a few weeks after he passed on. Good luck trying to get your social security number back!

[malmblad]

In a setting with enough laws to make this relevant I would assume they'd have their own versions of 'living' wills. If resurrections are relatively common I would assume that these wills would be also, and I wouldn't just surprise a character with all his stuff going to a next of kin because he/she didn't have one.

[The Viscount]

The laws may very well change. If they don't, and death strips you of your possessions, lichdom becomes a much more tempting possibility, as it never says that the process kills you like the Ritual of Crucimigration.

[Emperor Tippy]

Oaths and contracts last and are valid for whatever the terms of that specific oath or contract are. If someone is stupid enough to accept an oath or contract with "until I die" as one of the clauses then they deserve to get screwed over when the adventurer offs themselves and is resurrected one round later.

"Until the sun goes dark" or "Until the end of time" tend to be better conditions for oaths and contracts when resurrection is possible and readily available.

[Slipperychicken]

"Until the sun goes dark"

Until a disgruntled Warblade housewife decides that she would rather end the sun's illumination than stay with her husband.

[Jasdoif]

Oaths and contracts last and are valid for whatever the terms of that specific oath or contract are. If someone is stupid enough to accept an oath or contract with "until I die" as one of the clauses then they deserve to get screwed over when the adventurer offs themselves and is resurrected one round later.

"Until the sun goes dark" or "Until the end of time" tend to be better conditions for oaths and contracts when resurrection is possible and readily available.Or if a practical endpoint is desired (or necessary, as with matters of inheritance), "until X amount of time passes contiguously without return to life". Preferably a duration that only accounts for days, as allowing for the "ten years per caster level" types of resurrection isn't going to be at all practical for those still living.

[Gildedragon]

Ha! Villain motivation for my next campaign: skew king annulment of marriage vows by ending the sun!

[Lord Vukodlak]

Good luck trying to get your social security number back!
They actually don't recycle social security numbers. If your social security number ends up on the "Your Dead Jim (http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=1242722&nav=4QcSFMat)" list you have a lot of work a head of you but getting back your social security number is relatively simple.

[Kudaku]

They actually don't recycle social security numbers. If your social security number ends up on the "Your Dead Jim (http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=1242722&nav=4QcSFMat)" list you have a lot of work a head of you but getting back your social security number is relatively simple.

Ah, I phrased that badly. I didn't mean that they'd reassign his personal number, just that showing up at your typical run-of-the-mill government office and going "Yes, I was dead, here is my death certificate, but the thing is... I'm back now" might be tricky.

[Gensh]

Ah, I phrased that badly. I didn't mean that they'd reassign his personal number, just that showing up at your typical run-of-the-mill government office and going "Yes, I was dead, here is my death certificate, but the thing is... I'm back now" might be tricky.

Captain Bailey has you covered. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFvw7WRnrVU) :smallwink:

[koboldish]

Hmm.... That's a very interesting question. This hasn't come up in my game yet, but I would have contracts be valid for a week after death, unless the dead person is resurrected. If they are, the contract is renewed. Otherwise.... Have fun getting your stuff back.

[Bonzai]

Always, always, get a pre-nuptial agreement.

[kreenlover]

Always, always, get a pre-nuptial agreement.

speaking from personal experience here? :smalltongue:

sorry if I brought up something painful to you.

But, I would rule that it can go both ways depending on how people think. If you have greedy family members, having them steal your stuff can be a great minor side quest, while having your loving spouse jump back into your arms when you return from the dead would be very rewarding to many characters

[Fouredged Sword]

The spouse isn't the problem. They assumably WANT to spend time with you. The local tax man is the problem.

[Emperor Tippy]

The spouse isn't the problem. They assumably WANT to spend time with you. The local tax man is the problem.

This is why having all of your assets in various trusts and corporations with ownership obscured until it reaches a Luxemburg shell company owned with Bearer shares is such a smart idea.

*talk to your lawyer and accountant to make sure that you do it legally, the tax man dislikes people keeping him away from their money and will screw you unless he legally can't.

[Gildedragon]

Hard to do if the govt is the Fraternity of Grand Wizards. They have divined all possible tax evasion routes and sealed them

[Slipperychicken]

The spouse isn't the problem. They presumably WANT to spend time with you. The local tax man is the problem.

Fixed.

You never know. Considering that half the tavern wenches in D&D are Succubi, the spouse of a wealthy adventurer-hero might well be a gold-digger looking for a share of the riches.


Not so hard to imagine, when you consider the party burglar's been picking your pocket for months, hundreds of bandits and sellswords die trying to get to your cash, every trader in the land is looking to rip you off, and half the street urchins you see are trying to walk off with your purse.

[Thorvaldr]

I think one thing to remember is that death has the permanent connotation for us, since in our world it's pretty permanent. If you're from Europe, saying that you were "Going to America" meant something a lot different in the 1500's than it does today. And going to Oregon from the East Coast means something very different today than it did in the 1800's. But for most people in a D&D setting anyways, being raised from the dead is only something for the uber-rich.

According to the DMG, about 95% of the population is 1st level (plus or minus). The 5,000 gp diamonds are so astronomically above the high majority of the population that it's probably usually a moot point, and coming back from the dead is something that only nobles/the extremely wealthy/adventures even need to consider.

And then as has been said many times before me, it's probably based on a kingdom by kingdom, or individual by individual basis. Since Raise Dead can only raise people who have been dead for no longer than 1 day per caster level, I would say that once someone has been dead past a fortnight, then they count as pretty much dead. Anything beyond that is getting into pretty amazing circumstances!




Steven Brust wrote a series of books in a setting where raising someone from the dead was so common that it was generally accepted that anyone who could afford it had 'death insurance' in the form of a pre-purchased spell from the local clerics and if you went to hire an assassin to kill someone the first question they asked was whether you wanted the victim to be just dead, or if you were going to pay more to make them permanently dead. In a world like that, I would assume the laws would take raising into account.


I love this idea, and will probably steal this for my campaign. I haven't heard of Steven Brust, but I love his take on it. Makes all the sense in the world.

[CaladanMoonblad]

I think one thing to remember is that death has the permanent connotation for us, since in our world it's pretty permanent. If you're from Europe, saying that you were "Going to America" meant something a lot different in the 1500's than it does today. And going to Oregon from the East Coast means something very different today than it did in the 1800's. But for most people in a D&D setting anyways, being raised from the dead is only something for the uber-rich.

According to the DMG, about 95% of the population is 1st level (plus or minus). The 5,000 gp diamonds are so astronomically above the high majority of the population that it's probably usually a moot point, and coming back from the dead is something that only nobles/the extremely wealthy/adventures even need to consider.

And then as has been said many times before me, it's probably based on a kingdom by kingdom, or individual by individual basis. Since Raise Dead can only raise people who have been dead for no longer than 1 day per caster level, I would say that once someone has been dead past a fortnight, then they count as pretty much dead. Anything beyond that is getting into pretty amazing circumstances!


For the most part, I agree with your assessment; however, many groups use Stronghold Builders Guide, and one of the Wondrous Architecture items is a Bier of Resurrection that requires only 500 gp in diamond dust. For a D&D world with an HMO (healing magic organization) system in place, the biers would be located in major metropolises since rezzing the dead would be a great way for the church to get some income. It is still only for the rich, because 3-6 gold per month is the normal wage for unskilled labor...

In Gary Gygax's "Torn World" campaign setting, the Relics and Rituals sourcebook has marriage as a ritual with in game mechanic bonuses for both spouses, which ends upon one of the participant's deaths. So if that name means anything to people in this forum, that may be of some value to the discussion.

[Thorvaldr]

For a D&D world with an HMO (healing magic organization) system in place, the biers would be located in major metropolises since rezzing the dead would be a great way for the church to get some income. It is still only for the rich, because 3-6 gold per month is the normal wage for unskilled labor...

HA! Brilliant. Next time my players start getting uppity, I'll give them their hardest challenge yet: getting healing through an HMO!

"We're sorry, but we can't regenerate your arms, as you lost them outside of your coverage area. If you'd like to fill out these forms and wait here, I'm sure we can work out a payment plan for you..."

[Frosty]

HA! Brilliant. Next time my players start getting uppity, I'll give them their hardest challenge yet: getting healing through an HMO!

"We're sorry, but we can't regenerate your arms, as you lost them outside of your coverage area. If you'd like to fill out these forms and wait here, I'm sure we can work out a payment plan for you..."
The issue is further murkied by the recent Affordable Care Proclamation, issued by Emperor Lorek, also known as Loreklamation.

[CaladanMoonblad]

HA! Brilliant. Next time my players start getting uppity, I'll give them their hardest challenge yet: getting healing through an HMO!

"We're sorry, but we can't regenerate your arms, as you lost them outside of your coverage area. If you'd like to fill out these forms and wait here, I'm sure we can work out a payment plan for you..."

:P

I actually use a plot device called "The Adventurer's Guild" which includes a contract similar to Thorin and Company, except oriented to D&D. Guild member dues actually go into a Raise Dead Insurance fund, provided your team mates can get you to an HMO participant temple (generally temples of Heironeous, St Cuthbert, Ehlonna, etc., and not the temples of evil deities). My players get 2 "free rezzes" over the course of their adventuring career, and sometimes they have to "recover corpses" from dungeons that felled other AG groups.


The issue is further murkied by the recent Affordable Care Proclamation, issued by Emperor Lorek, also known as Loreklamation.

The difference of course, is that healthcare is rationed differently based on cultural values. For a D&D world, it never made sense to me that a Benevolent (NG) oriented temple (Ehlonna for instance) would hold out healing until they count your silver. : / For many craftsmen, temples would easily barter time and work for saving a child's life from pneumonia or the like, or setting a broken bone; these are all great chances for a Benevolent religion to proselytize and increase the church membership.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Barring some oddity like the bier of resurrection (cost and CL to install, please?) A combination of the factors of the cost, the number of casters actually capable of casting the spell (less than 1% of the overall population), and the fact that most lawful and good characters would choose to remain in the afterlife either because the good afterlife is pretty sweet or because coming back is completely against the natural order of things. People coming back is too rare an occurence for law makers to really give it much consideration.

Seriously, in anything smaller than a large town there simply is no caster of high enough level while even in a large town it's only even odds that there's such a caster. Even in a metropolis there's only about 12 such casters out of the 25000 people in the city and no guarantee that any of those casters, from the large town up, would be of an inclination to ress' just anybody that could pony-up the cash. (all subject to DM whim of course, but these are the default figures).

[CaladanMoonblad]

Barring some oddity like the bier of resurrection (cost and CL to install, please?) A combination of the factors of the cost, the number of casters actually capable of casting the spell (less than 1% of the overall population), and the fact that most lawful and good characters would choose to remain in the afterlife either because the good afterlife is pretty sweet or because coming back is completely against the natural order of things. People coming back is too rare an occurence for law makers to really give it much consideration.

Seriously, in anything smaller than a large town there simply is no caster of high enough level while even in a large town it's only even odds that there's such a caster. Even in a metropolis there's only about 12 such casters out of the 25000 people in the city and no guarantee that any of those casters, from the large town up, would be of an inclination to ress' just anybody that could pony-up the cash. (all subject to DM whim of course, but these are the default figures).

Page 71 of Stronghold Builder's Guide stats two Biers- Life and Resurrection. The Life does Raise dead for 500 gp of diamond dust, and the Resurrection one does Resurrection for 500 gp. Caster level to create either is 9th for Life and 13th for Resurrection. Cost is 22,500 gp for Life, and 44,500 gp for Resurrection.

These are not astronomical costs for an organization that charges rich people for healing magic and otherwise is the recipient of heirless estates (if a GM is following the example of western europe). There won't be one in every single village, but I'd expect a Bier of Life in every major metropolis. I'm not certain, but it seems like this wondrous architecture was in the previous AD&D version of Stronghold Builder since most accounts are the 3.0 version is a copy/paste for the most part : /

One of the benefits of the biers, is that just about any monkey with diamond dust can operate it. So the church's high level wondrous item crafter could simply travel around constructing these things providing the overall organization can pony up the 50% cost, so the local community doesn't even have need to have a 9th or 13th level caster. So a bier might be 1 year old or 100 years old.

[Fouredged Sword]

Also while 99% of the population cannot afford resurrection magic, the 1% who can holds the vast majority of the wealth to be inherited and are the most likely to want to come back in the first place.

[Gildedragon]

Iirc there's an item that does resurrections too in secrets of Sarlona at no gp cost

[Grim Reader]

Also while 99% of the population cannot afford resurrection magic, the 1% who can holds the vast majority of the wealth to be inherited and are the most likely to want to come back in the first place.

Their heirs, however, may not be equally motivated for their return.

Also, good people tend to get a pleasant afterlife that they may simply refuse to leave. Horrible old people probably can't get out of the fire fast enough.

There is also the issue of Reincarantion. It would be significantly harder to claim your estate as a member of a different race. And even a formerly affectionate spouse may be less atteacted to your new Troglodyte body.

[Flickerdart]

There is also the issue of Reincarantion. It would be significantly harder to claim your estate as a member of a different race. And even a formerly affectionate spouse may be less atteacted to your new Troglodyte body.
If you set it up ahead of time, you could get your Reincarnated body notarized, so that everything is nice and legal. As for spouses, that's what shape changing magic is for.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Iirc there's an item that does resurrections too in secrets of Sarlona at no gp cost

Yeah, but if you overuse it it turns you into a megalomaniacal jerkwad, or at least makes your viewers complain about the constant copout deaths (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5foL_vM4FE).

[Coidzor]

Fixed.

You never know. Considering that half the tavern wenches in D&D are Succubi, the spouse of a wealthy adventurer-hero might well be a gold-digger looking for a share of the riches.

Not so hard to imagine, when you consider the party burglar's been picking your pocket for months, hundreds of bandits and sellswords die trying to get to your cash, every trader in the land is looking to rip you off, and half the street urchins you see are trying to walk off with your purse.

Well, you know... Murder Hobos have a tendency to sort that sort of thing out.

[JusticeZero]

Easy. Figure out what the first powerful person to be raised would have found most advantageous and keep that. If things change to make raising inconvenient for the rich, the law will change to benefit them again.