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Kevka Palazzo
2006-12-29, 05:05 PM
As a player, I actually kind of dislike how other players are so nonchalant about dying once they reach level 15 (and have all that money that they've built up after 15 levels). It takes part of why I like D&D out of D&D and makes the experience cheap.

As a DM, I've never had to run a campaign that went so high, but I'm about to send 4 lucky (or unlucky) players on a 1-20 run through the world of Eberron, and I don't want them, when they finally reach that awe-inspiring island continent of Argonessen, to ram the airship down a dragon's gullet just because "We can afford the rez."

So, I was wondering how I could make it so that, if a player really wanted to keep his character, he could get it back, but at a penalty.

My ideas so far are to remove true resurrection entirely and move resurrection up to a 8th level spell, to remove true ressurection and double the costs of resurrection as a 7th level spell or to make both ressurection and true ressurection ritual spells of sorts that require a doubled monetary cost and a triple XP cost that the party could split.

I know that dramatically changes high-level gaming, but that was the plan. Any ideas to help me out?

Thomas
2006-12-29, 05:09 PM
There's no rules changes necessary. Why would true resurrection be available for sale at all? (And who's resurrecting the characters anyway?)

pestilenceawaits
2006-12-29, 05:09 PM
It does seem to me that resurrection takes a lot of the tension out of the game. maybe if they get killed several times and are kept low on cash they will be more careful. or each resurrection could require a quest to obtain a special very rare component (not that 5 and 10 thousand gp diamonds are just lying around) :0)

Pegasos989
2006-12-29, 05:17 PM
Option 1: Up every resurrection spell (raise dead, etc.) by 2 levels and make true resurrection unavailable. Also double or triple costs.

Option 2: Change the diamonds to be one gem. So True Res would not be " A sprinkle of holy water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#holyWater) and diamonds worth a total of at least 25,000 gp." but rather " A sprinkle of holy water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#holyWater) and a diamond worth of at least 25,000 gp.". 5000gp diamond of raise dead might atleast require a big quest, 25k diamond would be very rare (as in, they might find one in the whole campaign by awesome luck, very big reward, spending a level or two looking for it...).

I prefer the latter. Things you should do is remove death effects completely. No more "save or die" spells. Also, remove death by massive damage if you use them because they really assume that the kind of resurrection magic is unavailable. You might also concider enlarging the death zone (death is at 0-Con score instead so that con 25 character dies at -25 instead of -10.) or something...

Roderick_BR
2006-12-29, 05:30 PM
I like the rising the spell level idea. It's still available, but harder to get, especialy if the group has a high level cleric. True Resurrection could be used only as divine intervention.
And don't forget, the characters may have a lot of money, but can they find that many diamonds for sale? They'll eventualy grow too poor to rise their deads all the time, and taking off true resurrection, they'll start to drop in level.

Seffbasilisk
2006-12-29, 05:34 PM
Well, remember, if there's a TPK, who's going to True Rez the party? If they're eaten, who'll know that they died? And even IF they get NPCs to Rez the cleric or even the entire group, they might not be able to FIND high enough level NPCs, or high enough level NPCs WILLING to do it. That's the material cost, you also have to factor in the by the raw cost of getting the spellcaster to cast it. THEN you have to include a 'generous' donation to the church to even get thier attention, etc etc...

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-29, 05:36 PM
I make my players go get the soul back from whichever plane it has departed to before they can cast Raise Anything. Yes, you can get raised from the dead, but your fellows had better really want you back.
I have a whole arc of scenarios set up ready, scalable to the PCs undertaking the quest, to deal with this.

Khantalas
2006-12-29, 05:38 PM
All raise dead spells cost over 5000 gp if someone else casts the spell for the party, and such spells are not available for sale save for extreme situations. If they cast it themselves, they would still need to carry diamonds with themselves - diamonds which are hard to find and easily stolen or lost.

Jack Mann
2006-12-29, 05:38 PM
If you have access to Heroes of Horror, it has several good suggestions for resurrection spells.

Kevka Palazzo
2006-12-29, 05:42 PM
Ah. After reading the entire spell entries I realize that my DM is simply lazy when it comes to spell requirements. Also, most of the other players are on their first characters, so I guess he's being easy on them for their sakes. I guess if resurrections are as hard to get as you all say (especially in Eberron, considering that the only NPCs I know of high-level enough to pull off rezes are dragons, and they don't normally do such generous things) I might consider just leaving them as-is.

Thanks for the help.

Thomas
2006-12-29, 06:30 PM
Exactly so. There's nothing, anywhere, that says PCs should be able to buy them. (In fact, I'm pretty sure the rules for purchasing spells as services indicate that resurrection and true resurrection cost so much that they are explicitly NOT generally available.)

It's all a matter of the DM bothering to control the game. The rules support it already.

Jack Mann
2006-12-29, 06:49 PM
Indeed. If the cost is higher than 3,000 gold, after spell components and what have you, then it's not generally available, except at DM discretion.

Of course, if they have a cleric in the party, then it requires more direct intervention.

General_Ghoul
2006-12-29, 07:33 PM
You could have just reincarnation available.


BTW, what is the favored class of badgers?

fangthane
2006-12-29, 07:36 PM
Up until epic levels, limiting cashflow works quite effectively to limit the willingness of the party to bankroll a true res. I've found that quite often a chaotic party will sell off the deceased member's stuff to pay for it, which can be quite comical. A lawful party usually includes a Geas/Quest or similar and requires repayment or service, to include also the price of the Geas.

I haven't actually DM'ed at epic levels so I can't speak to that. I'd suspect that even at a rate of 10 True Resurrections per magic item an epic character would be leery of losing that much cash, but there's the potential for epic divine spellcasting, arranged with the DM, which uses (for example) 500k in diamonds but grants the party of 4 immunity to death effects for 24 hours. Work with your players, engage them - out of character - as your allies in the effort to keep things balanced and therefore challenging and fun.

Maybe I'm just lucky in that of the 7 or 8 other guys I play D&D with, all but two of them are capable of taking DM duty themselves. Either of that pair probably could anyway, but they'd need the books.

iceman
2006-12-29, 07:51 PM
resurrection spells are all divine spells given to clerics or other divine spell casters by their dieties. If their diety (YOU) doesn't want to allow them access to the ressurection spell then so be it. However, I would caution you about restricting or removing certain resurrection spells from the game or making them harder to come by. There is no bigger piss off than having a high level character bite the bullet because of one bad saving throw and then having roll up a whole new character. Remember, it can be really easy to kill off pc's at higher levels and at higher levels you shouldn't hold back.

Personally I wouldn't change anything. Make sure the monsters and villains they're facing are played appropriately, smart and merciless, don't be afraid to smoke them sometimes seeing as how they do have resurrection spells available. Not to mention that no matter how high of a level you are dropping 25K for a true ress really starts adding up.

Nerd-o-rama
2006-12-29, 09:21 PM
In Eberron, there are almost no NPCs capable of casting a True Resurrection (I suppose Jaela Darran, who can only do it in the Cathedral of Flamekeep, some Dragons, and the couple of Syberis-marked Jorasco heirs), none of whom would cast such a spell for mere money.

If your party can cast it...well, good for them. I hope they keep their cleric alive. I'd also support eliminating Raise/Ressurect/True Ressurect entirely, especially in Eberron.

Heh. I just noticed your screen name, OP. Nice.

NullAshton
2006-12-29, 09:34 PM
If you want dying to be a penalty, simply remove true resurrection from the game world. That level loss will discourage them from dying.

MrNexx
2006-12-29, 09:37 PM
There's always the option to go wildly counter... make ressurection so easy that it is socially unacceptable to kill someone permanently (e.g. the Vlad Taltos novels by Steven Brust).

Another fun option: Simply say that most good people, and those evil people powerful enough to win a worthwhile (i.e. non-food, non-wall-fodder) afterlife, do not want to be ressurected. Oops. Sorry. They're enjoying the afterlife immensly. No desire whatsoever to go back to that life of pain and utter craptitude. Since ressurection requires permission, ressurection becomes difficult.

Aximili
2006-12-29, 10:32 PM
(I haven't read everything up to here, but just to state my opinion)

If you're gonna remove true ressurrection, remove wail of the banshee too. If you don't want them to be so careles about dying, wail of the banshee will be sort of a game breaker.

DeathQuaker
2006-12-29, 11:58 PM
Aximili has a point: one of the reasons why high level characters can easily ressurrect is because by that point they also potentially face a number of "save or die" scenarios. Although good players are fine with their characters going out in a blaze of glory, no one likes to die due to simple unlucky die rolling (I remember playing 2nd ed and rolling double-zeros trying to teleport away from the Tarrasque... the monster didn't kill me. The dice did. It was humiliating and pointless.)

Here's an idea: rather than houserule ressurrection, find other ways to bring tension into the game. Lives aren't the only things that have to be at stake. Artifacts, political events, alliances, ideas. If they can't retrieve the MacGuffin of Awesome from the Big Bad, will their entire home continent sink into the ocean? Will the city go into revolt if the Thingy of Whatsification is destroyed, losing their chance to prove the Prince's Innocence? Will they be mocked by the Evil Overlord and lose their chance at Supreme World Domination? They might shrug off dying, but they won't shrug off failure. Make it clear that even if they "true rez" there may be consequences. If you do it well, they'll like it--they'll feel more heroic for accomplishing what they do.

You can also put other lives at stake--maybe they have enough gold to ressurrect a couple party members, but can they rez the entire village they're trying to rescue?

Or simply, perhaps the Big Bad is capable of Imprisonment or similar spells (or worse) where a victim may not be easily recovered, res spell or no.

Other ideas... you could temporarily "take away" resurrection through plot... don't change the rules for it, but, say--maybe the Big Bad is a horrible lich whose mastery of Negative Energy has weakened all positive energy spells in the area. The party might hope that AFTER the lich is killed, they get the ability to res themselves back, but until that point, their survival is uncertain. Then when they do kill the big bad and things return to normal, if anyone has died, they really have earned their res spell.

Some other folks I know leave the rules as is, but the party has to go on a quest into the Planes to find the dead PC's soul and convince it to return rather than become a petitioner. That assumes, however, that the player of said PC isn't going to get some play time for awhile. But it's another way to avoid having to change the rules while still bringing a challenge into a game where death isn't always permanent.

the_tick_rules
2006-12-30, 12:17 AM
well it's from an outside perspective. I'm sure if players could actually feel the pain of the arrows, swords, dragon fire, etc. they'd be less willing to die so many times.

Kevka Palazzo
2006-12-30, 01:54 AM
I really like what you said in that 2nd paragraph, DQ.

Thanks.

Shazzbaa
2006-12-30, 02:25 AM
DQ's second paragraph was, in fact, godly. :smallbiggrin:

My problem with Res. is more the plot issue. It's... just too easy. "My parents/mentor/important person died. Ordinarily this would be turning point in my life, but as it is, they're easily resurrected and I can go on my merry way."
Swearing revenge on your dying friend's grave is a lot less dramatic when you later have to say "You killed my dearest friend -- but he got better." It's hard to avenge your mother's death when she's peacefully at home knitting you a new scarf.

It's kind of like when someone posted earlier wanting to play a blind character, and a response came reminding them "be sure to put something in your backstory about being cursed irrevocably with blindness by a deity or something, because otherwise the first good cleric you find could just heal it." Things are just fixed too easily in D&D.

But then I suppose that's a gripe with the system, isn't it?

JaronK
2006-12-30, 02:38 AM
Heroes of Horror has a variant where one of the material costs is the life of someone of the same alignment as the target to be resurrected. It's kind of hard to kill off a Lawful Good character to rez that paladin... especially since the paladin has to be willing. You pretty much need a willful sacrifice of such a character to rez your pally, and that's going to be problematic.

JaronK

The_Werebear
2006-12-30, 02:40 AM
I always remove Resurection and True Resurection from the game, make Raise Dead a 9th level spell, and remove all instant kills from the game, save Phantasmal Killer at level 7 and Finger of Death and Cloudkill at 9

You aren't going to bring many back, but it is a lot harder to make someone just drop dead.

Ennan
2006-12-30, 04:44 AM
my dm: resurection? go find yourself a town first boy. then find yourself someone who can. then find yourself someone who will. then beg....

in the meanwhile, make yourself a new character will you?


:D


and yes, i also like the "i can die" effect. whenever an enemy is encountered there is always the possibility that we are way underpowered and should've run/talked/just not opened that door etc.. love it

Jack_of_Spades
2006-12-30, 06:56 AM
It's up to their deity if they can live again, and if the diety isn't happy with them, they're screwed. An ex-paladin who is consider becoming a blackguard may not come back, but the playful rogue who worships Tymora might.

Least, that's how I do it. It also explains how BBEGs keep coming back, their god is happy with them!

dead_but_dreaming
2006-12-30, 07:25 AM
I agree with Shazzbaa. The biggest problem with ressurection is that it removes all the drama from dying at high levels. IMC, I'll do it like The_Werebear or according to HoH.

Saph
2006-12-30, 07:55 AM
My problem with Res. is more the plot issue. It's... just too easy. "My parents/mentor/important person died. Ordinarily this would be turning point in my life, but as it is, they're easily resurrected and I can go on my merry way."
Swearing revenge on your dying friend's grave is a lot less dramatic when you later have to say "You killed my dearest friend -- but he got better." It's hard to avenge your mother's death when she's peacefully at home knitting you a new scarf.

Not to mention inheritance issues. What happens when someone wealthy dies, and their goods and magic items get distributed to their grieving friends and family, and the owner shows up again a week later?

I like MrNexx's idea. If a good character's passed on, and are now hanging out in the heaven of Selune or Pelor or whatever god they worshipped, they should be happy there. How much are they really going to want to go back to their old life of sleeping in ditches and fighting horrible monsters?

Another DM I had ruled that any character could only be affected by resurrection spells once. So, the first time you die, you're fine, but the second . . .

- Saph

Beleriphon
2006-12-30, 08:41 AM
As a DM, I've never had to run a campaign that went so high, but I'm about to send 4 lucky (or unlucky) players on a 1-20 run through the world of Eberron, and I don't want them, when they finally reach that awe-inspiring island continent of Argonessen, to ram the airship down a dragon's gullet just because "We can afford the rez."


Nerd-o-Rama is correct. With Eberron you're fortunate in that there are all of three characters as published that can actually perform a resurrection of any type. One is a 12 year old girl and leader of a major religion, one is so evil you'll never get her to agree, and the last is requires payment up front and will only help those who help her first.

Functionally, in Eberron if there are resurrections being performed, its the players themselves. At that level I say let them do it, but there is the problem of having a high enough level cleric hanging around to cast said spells. So my advice is to take out the cleric first.

Thomas
2006-12-30, 08:45 AM
I like MrNexx's idea. If a good character's passed on, and are now hanging out in the heaven of Selune or Pelor or whatever god they worshipped, they should be happy there. How much are they really going to want to go back to their old life of sleeping in ditches and fighting horrible monsters?

This is already covered by the rules, too.

From the spell description for raise dead:
"In addition, the subject’s soul must be free and willing to return. If the subject’s soul is not willing to return, the spell does not work; therefore, a subject that wants to return receives no saving throw."

Like I said, it's all about the DM bothering to control the game. All the necessary provisions are already in the rules.

Shazzbaa
2006-12-30, 09:14 AM
Another DM I had ruled that any character could only be affected by resurrection spells once. So, the first time you die, you're fine, but the second . . .

The GM of my college game has a kind of similar deal. First of all, the only characters capable of bringing us back to life are a particular type of shapechanging monster -- we have to have one of them around or find one fast. Secondly, the only way to come back is to have our body partially combined with this monster, so the first time we're brought back, we have a few stat changes and are considered 1/4 monster... the second time we come back, major stat changes and considered 1/2 monster. Only one of us has died twice, and the DM has warned that if the shapechangers have to bring her back again, she'll have so much monster in her that she won't even be recognisable as the same PC, and that player will have to make a new character while the rest of us fight off the monster that's been created with her old one.

Kind of a "three strikes you're out" approach. Also covers NPC death since, realistically, the shapechangers wouldn't waste time resurrecting anyone who wasn't out saving the world.

Telok
2006-12-30, 10:04 AM
I've always been a little odd about returning from the dead. I freely admit to swiping from the Vlad Taltos novels, in detail.

1. Raise Dead becomes an arcane and divine spell with about 1000 gp of components.

2. Three day time limit before the soul is absorbed/relocated to an outer plane.

3. There must be enough left of the body, and in good enough condition, for the raised person to survive. No missing heads.

4. The person is brought back in the same condition that they died in except for 0 hp and all stats are damaged down to 1.

5. If the poison was not neutralized, you'll have to make the save again.

6. No True Rez, use Wish/Miracle and go on a planar quest. Reincarnation uses an old 2nd edition table I still have ("A rat? I came back as a a rat!?!?")

The sheer annoyance factor of getting people back tends to be enough to keep the suicidal idiocy in check, plus it's actually easy enough to prevent people from returning that they actually won't risk leaving bodies around.

I've found in D&D that if you're actually successful enough to annoy an evil religon your enemies start coming back with alarming regularity (it started happening to us at about the sixth temple, which occurred at about level 12, so we faced people again at least twice in the last two levels). With just one high priest who can cast Raise Dead you could end up facing a group of 4 to 10 arcane and divine casters all 1-4 levels below the group average and all working togather. Between the scrying, teleporting, and flat out blast damage... At higher levels it's just easier to make sure you don't annoy any clerics of any religon than to prevent one person from coming back from the dead.

Remember, anything legit for the players is also legit for the DM. And it's twice as legit if it fits the NPC's goals, abilities, and personality.

DeathQuaker
2006-12-30, 01:13 PM
DQ's second paragraph was, in fact, godly. :smallbiggrin:

Wow. I've never done anything godly before. :smallcool:



Swearing revenge on your dying friend's grave is a lot less dramatic when you later have to say "You killed my dearest friend -- but he got better." It's hard to avenge your mother's death when she's peacefully at home knitting you a new scarf.

Actually, you've given me a neat idea for a character story... young hero's Noble Peasant Village is attacked, Important Family Member dies. Young hero seeks to restore family member, but Noble Peasant Village has no one alive who is able to cast Raise Dead and no one has the monetary resources either. Hero becomes 1st level adventurer to raise the funds to buy Raise Dead... but of course by the time he gets the funds, the Important Family Member is too far gone to Raise, and now he has to go for a Ressurrect/True Ressurrect instead. He becomes more and more a powerful adventurer, getting the money and/or the allies to res Important Family Member, and meanwhile, Important Family Member has been a Petitioner on Mount Celestia for years now and has no desire to return to earthly existence, making Adventurer's Hero entire life's purpose all for naught.

You then have a high-level hero, capable of anything, but has lost all sense of meaning in his life. Will he recover and become a valiant hero who now respects the preciousness of life, even in a world where magic makes life easier? Or will he lose all perspective and become the destructive force such as the one that took his family from him to begin with?

Hm. Neat.

tarbrush
2006-12-30, 07:26 PM
And the even funnier point about Eberron is what happens when your cleric gets to high enough level to cast res.

Cos every damned house elder, king, commoner etc is going to be beating a path to your door demanding that you res them for free because they're whatever.

Diggorian
2006-12-30, 07:45 PM
On top of the logistics of getting a "1-Up" spell cast, I house ruled the caster had to convince the soul to leave heaven (if good) or cut a deal with a demon/devil for the soul (if evil). Never figured how to do true neutrals.

The_Werebear
2006-12-30, 08:37 PM
On top of the logistics of getting a "1-Up" spell cast, I house ruled the caster had to convince the soul to leave heaven (if good) or cut a deal with a demon/devil for the soul (if evil). Never figured how to do true neutrals.

Lawful: Work out a contract with the Soul and its superiors in a lawful plane

Chaotic: Find and sieze the soul, then convince it in a chaotic plane

True Neutral: Work out a deal with a diety of balance on why this soul is needed.

Diggorian
2006-12-30, 08:54 PM
Yeah that's actually what I did with the Lawful/chaotic neutrals.

I was thinking Neutrality would be a purgatory court room where you wait your turn for judgement.

Godhand
2006-12-31, 12:39 AM
Another viable option is using 1st edition revival rules. Every time you die you lose 1 con permenatly. Of course, 3rd edition stats can reach much higher than 1st so in 3rd it might be better to have a _2_ con loss and the level. Not only does it sting with the level loss, that's x*2 hp gone forever. Keep the revival cost and spells where they are, but that rights off needless dying.

Jack Mann
2006-12-31, 02:01 AM
If you make resurrection harder, take out the massive damage rules. Remember, at high levels, the frontliners are going to take 50+ hit pretty often. Having to make up a new character every four or five sessions is going to make your fighter player unhappy.

Unless they decide to play a knight, of course, and never have to worry about it.

Cybren
2006-12-31, 02:12 AM
I always thought bringing things back from the dead was perfect territory for fighting inevitables, clerics of the local death god, grim-reaper ripoffs, and other "you've done the unnatural!" goodies.

Also, yeah, A+ on the handle.
Now we need a Sigfreid and Zigrfeid

Matthew
2006-12-31, 07:23 AM
If you make resurrection harder, take out the massive damage rules. Remember, at high levels, the frontliners are going to take 50+ hit pretty often. Having to make up a new character every four or five sessions is going to make your fighter player unhappy.

Unless they decide to play a knight, of course, and never have to worry about it.

Yup, that's the problem. If you remove Resurrection, you have to consider all the ramifications at high level play, where Save or Die becomes more common.

I pretty much ditched Resurrection and Reincarnation for my Homebrewed and Houseruled (A)D&D Game, but it was just one change amongst many others for a 'Low Level and Magic' Campaign Setting.

Lilivati
2006-12-31, 11:19 AM
I played in a game where the DM made the cleric roll a "deity check", for lack of a better word, to see if his god would support raising this person from the dead. DC depended on the target and the circumstances. Without guaranteed rezzing, the party was a lot more cautious.

Dark
2007-01-01, 03:30 PM
I once played with a house rule that a raised character would permanently lose one point from a random ability. (This was the most dreaded 1d6 roll in the game).

This was in the boxed set D&D, which doesn't normally have a penalty for resurrection at all. The random stat loss was a compromise between that and the much harsher AD&D rules, which always reduced Constitution and had a system shock roll on top of that.

However, after a while I started to introduce "stat potions" (drink to permanently raise an ability score) to compensate for these losses, because death was pretty frequent at high levels even with careful players.

If I had to design a new system, I'd probably just make it so that a raised character needs a full week to recover from being dead, no matter what kind of healing is applied. This way, death takes the character out of action for the current mission, so it needs to be avoided, but it doesn't permanently weaken the character.

stainboy
2007-01-02, 10:49 AM
I hate resurrection too, for all the same reasons. The way I handle it is:

Yes, resurrection spells exist in the campaign world.

Well, except for Reincarnate, because that spell is just too stupid.

Resurrection is a miracle granted directly by a higher power, and works only on a soul with very pressing unfinished business in the world of the living.

All a cleric casting a resurrection spell is doing is *asking* a higher power to resurrect the target.

Higher powers generally believe that mortals are mortal for a reason. If a higher power didn't want someone to die, he would have already made damn sure it didn't happen. This applies even to higher powers that aren't sentient personages, such as the Silver Flame. Thus, higher powers do not generally allow resurrection spells to work.

Petitioners (souls that have gone onto the afterlife) usually lose the desire to return to the living. This is stated explicitly in the standard D&D cosmology - petitioners want to merge with the plane, not return to life. In Eberron it's not as explicit, but the similarities between Dolurrh and Hades imply to me that the dead there wouldn't have the will to leave on their own. Thus, only very strong-willed souls with pressing business in the material world would accept a resurrection, even if it worked. Whether your character meets these criteria is the DM's call.

The one exception in Eberron is the Undying Court. The Aerenal elves believe that all Aerenal elves should be allowed to live out their full lifespans, by resurrection if necessary. Aereni priests resurrect fallen elves on the battlefield according to the books. Thus, a resurrection spell cast by a cleric of the Undying Court will typically work on an Aerenal elf. However, your character is either not an Aerenal elf, or if he is he can't count on an Aereni priest being around to resurrect him if he dies.

The Blood of Vol will not resurrect you. Well, they will, but not the way you want them to.

In conclusion, if you die in one of my games, Eberron or otherwhise, it's probably permanent. If I think it would make for a better story if you were resurrected, and the party's willing to jump through the hoops necessary to get you resurrected, it might happen. Most likely though, if you're dead, you're dead.

Ambrogino
2007-01-02, 11:03 AM
The one exception in Eberron is the Undying Court. The Aerenal elves believe that all Aerenal elves should be allowed to live out their full lifespans, by resurrection if necessary. Aereni priests resurrect fallen elves on the battlefield according to the books. Thus, a resurrection spell cast by a cleric of the Undying Court will typically work on an Aerenal elf. However, your character is either not an Aerenal elf, or if he is he can't count on an Aereni priest being around to resurrect him if he dies.


Have you a page reference for that? The Aerenal Elves are more focused on undeath than Resurrection, and they weren't really involved in the Last War enough to have battlefield Clerics. If you died in battle you're more likely to be brought back as a Deathless Soldier than ressed.

ShneekeyTheLost
2007-01-02, 11:13 AM
Simple fix:

Even with True Rez, you loose a character level when you get brought back. True Rez just lets you do it without a body present. Rez requires at least some part of the body being present (parts are reassembeled and recreated so long as you have at least 1/20th of the character's body mass present). Raise Dead requires the whole body intact (requiring some inventive methods of reattaching limbs requred before using in some cases).

Narmoth
2007-01-02, 04:27 PM
This is how I did it in my 2nd ed. campaign sentered around a town attacked by drow (there's a big hole in the center of the city, and the game is a high-roleplaying variant of Diablo 1, with drow in stead of devils):
1. The high priest of the town will ressurect anyone brougth to him
2. It's free for the citizens (that's why they aren't overrun by drow jet) and reguires a tithe from players that are brought back from death.
3. Only thos who die from blodloss can be ressurected. Those dead because of nerve-damage, like the brain being crushed, can not be ressurcted. This more or less incudes those who are beheaded (the angle of the executioners cut is altered to affect the brainstem, for those into morbid details)
4. To be resurected, one obviouly have to be taken back to town. On low levels they can be found by the churchs scounting parties that try to hold back the invation before it reaches the surface, but on higher levels, the dead characters are much more likely to be found by unintelegent monsters that devour them than anyone finding them and bringing them to the highpriest.

This lets me allow a resurection when it's better for the game, and at the same time ceep the fear of dying in the players. After all, they wouldn't risc a character they have played with for more than 4 years.

stainboy
2007-01-03, 09:49 AM
Have you a page reference for that? The Aerenal Elves are more focused on undeath than Resurrection, and they weren't really involved in the Last War enough to have battlefield Clerics. If you died in battle you're more likely to be brought back as a Deathless Soldier than ressed.

I'd have to hunt through the book. I remember reading it but I don't remember where. I suppose I could be remembering wrong, but I'll look for it.

Shazzbaa
2007-01-03, 12:12 PM
All I want is to see more of a time limit to resurrection. True Res. can raise someone who's been dead, what, 10 years per caster level or something obscene like that? Honestly, to me, raising someone who's been dead for a year is pushing it.

I just feel like, even for the most powerful of Resurrection spells, it should be too late after a week has passed. That gives players enough time to get fallen comrades back to a temple, but it's short enough that someone in the story could feasibly not be raised in time, and be permanently dead.

Peregrin_Tooc
2007-01-03, 01:00 PM
Why not install a system like:
Whenever the cleric uses a spell in a way the god does not like, he loses the spellslot and/or the spell for a certain time, depending on the abuse and the spell-level?

Thexare Blademoon
2007-01-03, 06:29 PM
True Neutral: Work out a deal with a diety of balance on why this soul is needed.
Eh, that'd make sense for a philosophical TN (preserving the balance and all that crap), but what about one who is TN by being too Chaotic to be Lawful, too Lawful to be Chaotic, etc?

Narmoth
2007-01-04, 02:47 PM
One other way to limit how easy it is to be ressurected, is to ruel that the person should have a very strong reason to return. So strong in fact that he would return as a ghost if he isn't raised.

F.H. Zebedee
2007-01-04, 10:43 PM
I personally like inflicting a penatly of -d6 (rolled individually for each one) to Con, Str, and Dex. Each penalty decreases by one for every week that the resurrectee has been back. I guess that making their Con hit zero would mean that they die upon resurrection, too far gone to survive the process. So it allows people to die multiple times, and doesn't murder anybody with a Con better than minimal, but threatens people who drop dead multiple times in under a month.

And yes, avoid save or dies. Those are generally just pains in the posterior for players.

Machete
2007-01-05, 02:04 AM
Rob them blind. Preferrably by someone wearing a ring of invisibility. As in, "We were robbed blind and now have just enough resources left to scrape together 2nd level equipment!"

Let them earn it all back, it will be rewarding in building character.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-01-05, 07:31 AM
Resurrection is basically a respawn mechanic. If you're going to get rid of it, you need some other way to cut down the fatalities. I'd suggest some kind of Fate Point system (which would also have the advantage of keeping the characters alive *before* they get to Raise Dead levels of power).