[3.X] What Does the Playground Think of Resurrection?

[Keneth]

Ever since the beginning, I've always disliked resurrection spells. Obviously, they come in different shapes, and many have some sort of drawback, but in most cases, bringing a person back from the dead is fairly painless and trivial. I can understand the desire to keep playing a character you've become attached to, and these spells at least partially mitigate the "I reroll the same character" situation, but I feel that, even in a world of high magic, the ability to resurrect someone should not be something as simple as a spell.

What does the Playground think of this? Does it bother you? If so, how do you handle it? Do you use rituals? Ban all the methods? Never kill the PCs?

[Emperor Tippy]

The game is largely balanced around resurrection being relatively cheap and accessible.

An equal CR challenge stands a decent chance of killing at least one party member. That is supposed to be 50% of challenges.

15% are supposed to be very difficult, where death is pretty much a coin toss.

5% of challenges are supposed to be "flee or face a probable total party kill" level of difficulty.

That is 70% of all encounters that the PC's face having a decent or better chance of player death.

Every level should have 13 or so equal CR challenges or the equivalent.

Death for PC's isn't some rare or note worthy event, its the expected reality.

[ArcturusV]

Use the old 2nd edition Reincarnation table, that's what I do. Funny how people stop using it for Immortality loops and the like when they might come back as a badger or a frog.

But to be honest? It's just not really a concern that comes up all that often. The lowest level is 4th for the Druid's Reincarnation, 5th for the Cleric. I usually play in the territory of 1-9, maybe up to 12 at the high point. So the rezzing doesn't really happen until high level. And even then it's something where generally the price (Either in Materials or risking coming back as something worse than death) is something you do for an important character that needs to fulfill the plot and still kind of balk at the price (Yes, I've had PCs weigh the merits of selling a backup weapon versus resurrecting another character). So it's hardly something where my players pop it off regularly, and it tends to happen once, maybe twice in an entire campaign. Which I'm fine with.

[Krobar]

As a DM I have never had a problem with Resurrection spells. But I have no qualms about killing PCs either.

[ryu]

Death is cheap. The world is built that way, fluffed that way, and balanced around the fact that it is just an inconvenience. It's so cheap in fact that there's really no way to truly permanently kill someone past a certain level of power barring fiat.

[The Insanity]

I don't like the cheapness of resurrecting. I houseruled and refluffed such spells and abilities to essentially be equivalents of a defibrillator. They can bring someone back to life and even full health, but only for a very short time after his death.

[Keneth]

The game is largely balanced around resurrection being relatively cheap and accessible.

The game is also balanced around a party that's painfully average in every aspect, but I agree, death is inevitable. You didn't really answer my question though, unless the statistics are supposed to be your way of saying you're okay with it.


Death is cheap. The world is built that way, fluffed that way, and balanced around the fact that it is just an inconvenience.

That's arguable. How many stories have you read where the heroes get frequently resurrected? I can think of a few examples, but it's hardly a common thing. In a world where resurrection is freely accessible and death just an inconvenience, there sure are a lot of great heroes who stay dead.

And what of all the villains? If death is so cheap, why even bother fighting if there's little to no hope of ever being anything more than an inconvenience to the bad guys?

[Harrow]

I've never thought of them as a problem. However, my group tends to feel they make death 'cheap'. So instead, I just have multiple back up characters at all times.

I don't think it's possible to make an effective system where death is anything other than a mild inconvenience. If a player can just make more characters, he doesn't necessarily need to care about any individual. If there are penalties on new characters (such as starting under average party level) then either they don't stack and you live with it or they do stack, in which case they are going to be self-reinforcing and ultimately effectively eliminate the player.

I guess that's all you can do. "If you die, you don't get to play anymore". But then, I wouldn't call that an effective system. It just makes the most sense to me to not let death be a big deal.

[ryu]

The game is also balanced around a party that's painfully average in every aspect, but I agree, death is inevitable. You didn't really answer my question though, unless the statistics are supposed to be your way of saying you're okay with it.



That's arguable. How many stories have you read where the heroes get frequently resurrected? I can think of a few examples, but it's hardly a common thing. In a world where resurrection is freely accessible and death just an inconvenience, there sure are a lot of great heroes who stay dead.

And what of all the villains? If death is so cheap, why even bother fighting if there's little to no hope of ever being anything more than an inconvenience to the bad guys?

Honestly in a world that is ''high magic'' which can translate to high tech, high divine power, mythological forces, or other such nonsense? I can't even count the times people come back at the drop of a hat. Don't even get me started on comics, and anime. No really just don't. That, however, isn't the point here. As people still die all the time as the encounter system was built and assumed to be, and the resources to reverse said death become more and more easily accessible later, some form of resurrection or reincarnation is clearly assumed to be common.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Honestly in a world that is ''high magic'' which can translate to high tech, high divine power, mythological forces, or other such nonsense? I can't even count the times people come back at the drop of a hat. Don't even get me started on comics, and anime. No really just don't. That, however, isn't the point here. As people still die all the time as the encounter system was built and assumed to be, and the resources to reverse said death become more and more easily accessible later, some form of resurrection or reincarnation is clearly assumed to be common.

Don't know much about anime, but generally in comics characters being killed off and then immediately brought back (whether literally or within the context of an alternate universe/reboot) is considered bad writing.

[Tar Palantir]

Don't know much about anime, but generally in comics characters being killed off and then immediately brought back (whether literally or within the context of an alternate universe/reboot) is considered bad writing.

Part of the bad writing in that situation is the fact that the treatment of death is inconsistent. Treating death like it's a huge deal and having a revolving door afterlife is bad writing. Weaving the fact of resurrection in with the plot and forcing the players to find a way to thwart a villain when death isn't necessarily the end for them is quite the opposite.

[ryu]

Don't know much about anime, but generally in comics characters being killed off and then immediately brought back (whether literally or within the context of an alternate universe/reboot) is considered bad writing.

The question was how often such things happen in media. The answer is that it's fricken common. You can make statements about the quality of writing that entails, but quite frankly if you're going to have a world where the places people go when they die are things you can just go to with a bit of magic resurrection makes sense. I mean really think about it. What's so crazy about putting the dead guy back in his body and setting it to working order again? He's still a component to be used as is his body. What's so crazy about just making a new body if the old one is gone? It's just a glorified meat sack really.

[NichG]

Playing the resurrection game gets tiring. I know my PCs would hate if villains exploited it to the degree that it can be exploited in D&D.

My solution is basically to make it harder to accidentally kill someone in the game, and make a 'difficult' or 'short-term' form of resurrection possible. In the short term case, the winning side still has a chance to bring back the casualties from the fight, but if someone is killed and no one is there to do anything about it within a few minutes, they're just done. In the difficult case, whenever you resurrect someone/get resurrected, there's some story or quest or price involved - perhaps every time you die and come back you get a growing pool of irreducible taint that does something to you and your environment, or you have to agree to serve the god of death for a day, or you have to make a deal with someone, or whatever. It'd be annoying if that were an every-game thing, but with the reduction of 'accidental lethality' it tends to be more like 'a few people die over the course of the campaign'.

The other way to do it is to make some gimmicky reason that the PCs in particular cannot be permanently killed, and then make the story revolve around that. Perhaps a god is tormenting them by forcing them to die over and over, or perhaps every time they die the campaign goes to an alternate universe where they didn't, so they're leaving a string of desolate universes behind them, or whatever. I think when you do that, you have to go all out on it, make 'dying' a viable tactic as much as 'hitting things with a sword', and have lots of threats that are worse than death.

[Captnq]

Actually, I don't know what you are talking about.

Lets take the Eberron Setting

True resurrection requires a 17th level caster. You have a better chance of getting Merrix d'Canath to give you a hand job then find a 17th level ANYBODY, much less someone who can cast true resurrection.

So you are losing a level.

If you play with a DM like me, getting XPs is like pulling teeth. Players would rather lose an arm then lose a level.

Lets ignore the fact that Raise Death for cash isn't that common to begin with.

Of course if you are playing in MagicMart Land, okay, sure. But really, getting killed isn't "no big deal". I notice that arguments here tend to glaze over real game situations. How many have lost a PC in the dungeon and tried to get out to find someone to bring your fellow PC back from the dead? If you have a DM that lets you escape, sure, it's easy. If he does it by the rules, he keeps trying to kill you, and now you are down a man.

I had a party come back with everyone else in a portable hole and only the fighter alive to find someone to bring everyone back. Almost got him, too.

[AMFV]

I have no objections with players who are emotionally involved with their characters using resurrection to keep them alive, or making a quest of that sort of thing. Because it makes them happy.

For me when I'm playing I absolutely never use it, because I can't stand the level loss and I always have tons of characters I want to play but haven't gotten the chance to. So character is an opportunity for me, not that I try for it, but it gives me a chance to try on a new voice.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

At low levels, you usually can't afford a res, so it's not a problem there. A low level dead character is just dead unless the DM wants to step in with a friendly NPC.

Related to that, I find it's convenient to pretend that 9th level spells don't exist outside of specialized, fiat rituals, for more reasons than just True Resurrection. This way if you get rid of the remains, dude's gone. The PCs tend to have less access to 9ths than NPCs over the course of a campaign anyway (unless your campaign is magicitemtopia, land of every magic item ever for sale now).

Resurrection tends to be the lesser of evils. You can...
(1) Coddle the players and fudge everything so that they never die, meaning they're actually invincible instead of just functionally difficult to keep down.
(2) Restrict resurrection such that you basically just introduce a new character when an old one dies, destroying any ongoing plot threads and continuity with that character and potentially reducing buy-in for new characters (Mr. Martin I'm looking at you), or...
(3) Just let them pay the tactical/monetary/XP/RP costs of dying, have the character come back, and move on.

Yes, at high levels death is cheap. But at high levels you can get magically imprisoned, dominated, possessed, imploded, and all other fun things that screw over your character, if you're into that sort of thing.

[ryu]

Actually, I don't know what you are talking about.

Lets take the Eberron Setting

True resurrection requires a 17th level caster. You have a better chance of getting Merrix d'Canath to give you a hand job then find a 17th level ANYBODY, much less someone who can cast true resurrection.

So you are losing a level.

If you play with a DM like me, getting XPs is like pulling teeth. Players would rather lose an arm then lose a level.

Lets ignore the fact that Raise Death for cash isn't that common to begin with.

Of course if you are playing in MagicMart Land, okay, sure. But really, getting killed isn't "no big deal". I notice that arguments here tend to glaze over real game situations. How many have lost a PC in the dungeon and tried to get out to find someone to bring your fellow PC back from the dead? If you have a DM that lets you escape, sure, it's easy. If he does it by the rules, he keeps trying to kill you, and now you are down a man.

I had a party come back with everyone else in a portable hole and only the fighter alive to find someone to bring everyone back. Almost got him, too.

At levels high enough for Resing to be a thing? Start a deal with a high ranking church to have true resurrection cast on the entire party once per year which is only paid in full after resurrection occurs with the right to not have it be done in a given year up to a week in advance of the target date. Notification happens via sending. If the value of keeping tabs on this is argued as reason to not allow it? Agree to pay a small yearly fee for this privilege to reserve castings.

[Story]

Lets ignore the fact that Raise Death for cash isn't that common to begin with.

Of course if you are playing in MagicMart Land, okay, sure. But really, getting killed isn't "no big deal". I notice that arguments here tend to glaze over real game situations. How many have lost a PC in the dungeon and tried to get out to find someone to bring your fellow PC back from the dead? If you have a DM that lets you escape, sure, it's easy. If he does it by the rules, he keeps trying to kill you, and now you are down a man.

I had a party come back with everyone else in a portable hole and only the fighter alive to find someone to bring everyone back. Almost got him, too.

Your mileage may vary. In both the tables I've played at, a character death results in a NPC offering to raise them at cost before the next session. We recently pitched in for a scroll of Revivfy so we won't have to pay the full 5k if it happens again. It all depends on your style of play.

[Naomi Li]

I rather like resurrection magic being available... but I tend to look at it from a civilian outlook and not a murderhobo. Even if you pay only the material component cost, reincarnate costs about 100 weeks of work. Resurrection is 1,000 weeks of work. So, even if you get your other expenses down to 0 (lots of divine magic and a bit of arcane?) you're not going to be able to bring people back from the dead very frequently.

And if an adventurer is throwing around that kind of money so frequently, it does make one wonder where all of those resources are actually coming from. Someone, or something, has to have made all that is being used, after all, and it seems probable that they weren't given fair value for their resources.

Anyway, reincarnate and resurrection are exceptionally important tools in my Shellynic goal of saving everyone possible, and it making death less permanent is entirely to the benefit of this goal.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Your mileage may vary. In both the tables I've played at, a character death results in a NPC offering to raise them at cost before the next session. We recently pitched in for a scroll of Revivfy so we won't have to pay the full 5k if it happens again. It all depends on your style of play.Revivify definitely feels different, though. At the very least it's easy to imagine it as a last-second healing magic before the body "gives up the ghost" in a literal sense. Putting the ghost back in is the problem.

[lsfreak]

Of all the things that screw up tension or storytelling in 3.X, resurrection is among the smallest of them. The PC's have access to unlimited energy, effective zero-cost transport to the entirely of the physical universe, the ability to directly question deities about the physics of the universe (how fast do you thing they develop modern technology with that?). There's other oddities in the system that people also only selectively apply; a wightocalypse or the entire world turning into nothing but shadows hasn't happened despite every indication that it should have; armies are still generally assumed to be a thing when casters that can decimate them in a single round or simply ignore them entirely; economics basically doesn't exist and prices are as engrained into the laws of the universe as gravity and E=mc^2 (except when it's plot-relevant). If you can contend with ignoring the strange repercussions of those, resurrection shouldn't be an issue.

That said, I prefer to deal with those oddities by houseruling them out of existence entirely, and do the same with resurrection. If resurrection exists in such a setting, it's rare and part of a quest in itself, though it kind of depends on the players and their attachments to their characters. But when I play the "standard" D&D setting, strange side effects of resurrection are primarily handwaved like all the other silliness that comes with a game that runs on Rule of Cool and not simulationism.

[Czin]

Resurrection is honestly whatever you make of it. In my setting (well actually our old Ace of Spades DM's, we just took over after his untimely death) which is very high magic and high powered (and very high tech but shhh), resurrection is extremely common, especially because once modern economics got going, gold got devalued heavily to the point where it was equivalent to a car purchase, then once things got to Culture level post-scarcityism, gold was actually worthless since you could transmute it from rocks or even just energy so anyone can get one.

Death was not only cheap, it's free.

This had lead to the side effect of the player characters being rather reckless and weapons, spells, and abilities meant to make it harder or impossible to resurrect being substantially more common.

[Firechanter]

Most of this has been said before, but you asked for opinions:

In D&D, Death is a Condition. Sort of like Paralyzation, Petrification, and the like. Would you also ban restorative spells that cure these conditions?
Played straight, the party will encounter many advanced monsters that throw around 50% Save-or-Dies like candy, so characters _will_ die, and their deaths will be entirely arbitrary and not in the slightest climatic or heroic. That's not a lot of fun to play if death is final.
Besides, ime players still try their damnedest to avoid death, both for in-character reasons (nobody wants to die in the same way that nobody wants to break a leg, even if it can be healed) and because the mechanical loss of XP and gold still hurts enough.

If you don't like Rez, you should rework the whole death mechanics, for instance in the direction that the more modern RPGs go. This might include:
- failing a SoD doesn't mean "Dead", it means "knocked out and Dying" (which means your buddies have time to help you);
- characters are knocked out at 0HP, but have a much bigger poof of Negative HP before actually dying;
- characters have a kind of "Fate Points" that can be used to avert death and be "Left for Dead" instead (this is what Conan D20 uses).

[OttoVonBigby]

One thing nobody has yet brought up is the fact (enshrined somewhere in the rules IIRC) that a dead character may not WANT to come back. And if they don't want to, at lower levels (and maybe at any level AFAIK) there's no way short of divine intervention to force them to. Maybe the afterlife's pretty awesome for them; to hell with the quest. Therefore, expending the resources to resurrect them can risk not only Coming Back Wrong but also wasting the resources (a darker fate from the players' perspective! :smallwink:).

This is a convenient mechanic in that a DM can work with a player in deciding whether or not that player would prefer a new character, and then justifying their decision within the story. (And it's even more convenient if the dead character is an NPC ally that the DM wants to dispose of for story/drama purposes.) I suppose, though, it depends in many ways on the cosmology in effect.

So, I see what you mean, Keneth--in fact I was considering this very point recently while watching an episode of a TV series that killed off a recurring character. "Why can't I do that as a D&D DM," I thought--but I can, sometimes and sort of.

[LordBlades]

On the one hand, I enjoy games where coming back from the dead doesn't really exist more, because it creates more dramatic tension both in and out of character.

On the other hand, I don't thing something like that can be implemented into D&D without substantial changes or a rather large list of banned stuff.

D&D has many one-hit-kills. Between random crits from x3 and x4 weapons at level 1 to save-or-die and no-save-just-die, there's plenty of ways to lose your character from full HP in a single die roll without being able to do anything about it. This IMO would lead to unfun games, and people not investing too much effort into their own characters.

[Twilightwyrm]

I tend to feel this way as well, which is why I tend to curtail the use of resurrection magic. I do, however, recognize that if I do indeed feel this way, it is then my job to properly balance challenging my parties to their breaking point, with making sure not to set up circumstances that will push them past this point and get one of them killed. So far I'm happy to report, I have yet to get a player killed (though they have come painfully close, mostly because of lots of bad die rolls, but also sometimes due to poor tactics).

As for good in universe ways to curtail this, restrictions on spell knowledge, and the fact that at levels 1-8 said spells aren't typically available, have pushed these spells outside the realm of possibility thus far. I've also been toying with the idea of requiring a single diamond worth the price of the spell component as the spell component. Obviously, such diamonds would be extremely rare, making just acquiring on problematic in and of itself.

[Firechanter]

Therefore, expending the resources to resurrect them can risk not only Coming Back Wrong but also wasting the resources

While I couldn't find any definitive ruling, I regard the material component as the price for the effect. If the soul does not want to return, the spell fails. --> No Sale. So the diamonds remain untouched.

--

All of the above said, let's keep in mind there are different Rez spells with different ramifications.

- Revivify: Insta-Res with no no XP penalty, but must be cast within one round. I like this one. It's kinda like "You were never really dead". I'd even give a little more leeway with the time limit, like 1 minute or so.

- Raise Dead: the standard. If you don't want someone to be raised, just chop off their head and take it with you / destroy it (dissolve it in acid or whatever).

- Resurrection: can be countered by Disintegrate, as repeatedly demonstrated in OotS. No remains -> no resurrection.

- True Res: this is the truly problematic one, and entirely justified to ban. With this spell in game, the only way to ultimately and permanently keep someone from coming back is to destroy the soul. And that sucks.

--> I play without True Res, but everything else is fair game.

[Keneth]

I can't even count the times people come back at the drop of a hat. Don't even get me started on comics, and anime.

The question was how often such things happen in media.

I was actually referring specifically to D&D stories (whether in novels or rulebook fluff). But even if we take into account comics and anime, death is most often pretty permanent. Let's discount characters whose whole shtick is resurrection, and Dragon Ball universe where wishes are passed around like candy, any character that isn't absolutely necessary to continue the story will generally stay dead. Obviously, the main character can never stay dead unless you plan on retiring the series, and let's face it, in comic books that almost never happens, and in anime they'd rather leave the ending open for any potential new seasons.


You have a better chance of getting Merrix d'Canath to give you a hand job then find a 17th level ANYBODY, much less someone who can cast true resurrection.

I don't know about Eberron, but 17th level characters aren't that rare in most D&D universes. And true resurrection hardly accounts for all methods of bringing people back.


Of all the things that screw up tension or storytelling in 3.X, resurrection is among the smallest of them. The PC's have access to unlimited energy, effective zero-cost transport to the entirely of the physical universe, the ability to directly question deities about the physics of the universe (how fast do you thing they develop modern technology with that?). There's other oddities in the system that people also only selectively apply; a wightocalypse or the entire world turning into nothing but shadows hasn't happened despite every indication that it should have; armies are still generally assumed to be a thing when casters that can decimate them in a single round or simply ignore them entirely; economics basically doesn't exist and prices are as engrained into the laws of the universe as gravity and E=mc^2 (except when it's plot-relevant). If you can contend with ignoring the strange repercussions of those, resurrection shouldn't be an issue.

I have actually accounted for or fixed all of those things. Resurrection is the next in line, but thanks for your input. :smalltongue:


If you don't like Rez, you should rework the whole death mechanics, for instance in the direction that the more modern RPGs go. This might include:
- failing a SoD doesn't mean "Dead", it means "knocked out and Dying" (which means your buddies have time to help you);
- characters are knocked out at 0HP, but have a much bigger poof of Negative HP before actually dying;
- characters have a kind of "Fate Points" that can be used to avert death and be "Left for Dead" instead (this is what Conan D20 uses).

These are all kinda-sorta already implemented in Pathfinder. The majority of SoD effects are turned to straight damage, characters get more negative hp, and the system has hero points which can be used to avoid instant death scenarios.

[Kudaku]

I'm fine with resurrection as a resource available to PCs, however I think it should come with a financial cost that is high enough to make it unavailable to the average commoner, or else you need to take this into consideration when designing your campaign world.

I ran into a problem with this when I had a paladin player (in Golarion) pick up Ultimate Mercy at level 7 and used it (entirely in character) whenever he could. He'd raise people who died in accidents, from diseases, bar brawls, whatever you can imagine. I did some number crunching and discovered that he could pretty much reverse all deaths in a small city by himself (excepting people dying from old age). Furthermore, using the retraining rules a human paladin can qualify for the feat by level 3, and other races can qualify by level 5.

Ultimate Mercy specifies that a paladin can use 10 charges of Lay on Hands to raise someone free of charge if he is also willing to take a temporary negative level for 24 hours - it goes away automatically at the end of that time.

Which poses a problem to me... Why wouldn't every deity with a paladin order be training paladins to provide low-cost resurrection services? Or better yet, what do I do when a paladin of Abadar sets up a resurrection booth, charges 1k gold instead of the 5k and change the temples asks for, and tithes 10% of his income to the church of Abadar?

Presumably there is reason since the Golarion campaign book doesn't ever mention Ultimate Mercy...

In my case I discussed the problem with the player OOC and IC used visions and dreams of a Marut - a single cast of Raise Dead would barely be a blip on their radar but when you cast it reliably day after day it becomes a disturbance large enough to attract the attention of the inevitables. That way I was able to let the player keep the ability and use it when he felt the need to, but also maintain the consistency of the game world and fill in an otherwise annoying logic hole.

In my games excessive use of resurrection magic draws the attention of a marut, and is also why resurrection spells have costly material components in the first place - they're not meant to be used willy-nilly.

[Raven777]

Well, from a design perspective, does permanent character loss - because this is what meaningful death essentially translates to - benefit the core gameplay goals of D&D? I do not thing it does. Losing my character is not conductive to my enjoyment of the game. It crosses the thin line that separates challenge from frustration, and does so with no benefit to gameplay. Therefore, excising it from the system was the right decision.

[Firechanter]

Interesting, I didn't even know that PF Palas get free Raise Dead at the cost of two feats. But I'm not that deep into PF anyway.

In my 3.5 setting, I have a Death Goddess similar to Wee Jas; she is LN and has the ultimate control over resurrection magic. When you die, you pass through her Gates of Death and are then forwarded to your alignment-appropriate afterlive. Even if you're a follower of a NG Greater Power who would happily let you return from paradise to life so you can fulfill your task, you still have to get past the Death Goddess, who demands a tithe to let you go -- that's the material component of Raise/Resurrection.

[Keneth]

you still have to get past the Death Goddess, who demands a tithe to let you go -- that's the material component of Raise/Resurrection.

What would a deity do with gold or diamonds? Seems a bit petty.

[Firechanter]

Gee I don't know, the gods move in mysterious ways. =D

edit: if you start with logic, why do deities refuse to grant the Raise Dead spell to any cleric below 9th level? Why are there spell levels at all?

edit 2:
Actually you just reminded me of an idea I had before. The Death Goddess doesn't actually want diamonds. She demands a specific blood sacrifice. Like the heart of a certain creature to be burned. This creature is rather rare, so the market price of a fresh heart is, guess what? Or the players can hunt the creature themselves, in which case the carcass itself is the treasure earned for defeating it. So it would have to be a CR9-10 creature.

[Keneth]

Now you're thinking more in my realm. Blood sacrifices are cool, except I would generally require a sacrifice of comparable power, with an exponential price for lesser sacrifices. So if you want to resurrect your 10th level character, you might have to sacrifice a CR 10 creature, or a whole city of low-level NPCs. And that would only be one part of the ritual. :smallbiggrin:

[Doc_Maynot]

Interesting, I didn't even know that PF Palas get free Raise Dead at the cost of two feats. But I'm not that deep into PF anyway.

In my 3.5 setting, I have a Death Goddess similar to Wee Jas; she is LN and has the ultimate control over resurrection magic. When you die, you pass through her Gates of Death and are then forwarded to your alignment-appropriate afterlive. Even if you're a follower of a NG Greater Power who would happily let you return from paradise to life so you can fulfill your task, you still have to get past the Death Goddess, who demands a tithe to let you go -- that's the material component of Raise/Resurrection.

The healer class from Miniatures Handbook gets free true ressurection 1/day as a SLA as part of it's capstone.

[Story]

I rather like resurrection magic being available... but I tend to look at it from a civilian outlook and not a murderhobo. Even if you pay only the material component cost, reincarnate costs about 100 weeks of work. Resurrection is 1,000 weeks of work. So, even if you get your other expenses down to 0 (lots of divine magic and a bit of arcane?) you're not going to be able to bring people back from the dead very frequently.

And if an adventurer is throwing around that kind of money so frequently, it does make one wonder where all of those resources are actually coming from. Someone, or something, has to have made all that is being used, after all, and it seems probable that they weren't given fair value for their resources.


The poverty and misery of the common person in default D&D settings is difficult to reconcile with the existence of magic and high level NPCs. Unless you want to say that the gods are actively trying to maintain the veneer of a pseudomedival setting Cabin In The Woods style.

Or you could just play Tippyverse.

[ericgrau]

In a game system with 2-3 rounds to death even with direct damage resurrection is a necessity. Without it you need a slew of unconsciousness rules not only for damage but also save-or-die spells to basically accomplish the same thing as resurrection.

The "painless and trivial" part is why I'm in favor of level loss upon death, unlike some. Due to accelerated xp gain when behind on levels the loss is only temporary, and it keeps players from getting excessively careless.

If you use a simplified form of leveling rather than xp, you can allow 2 levels to catch up. If the player is 2 levels behind, the first lost level is regained in 1 level rather than 2. I'd suggest capping it at -2 levels so players never feel useless. This goes hand in hand with trying to get similar optimization among players too. Technically it should take 4 levels to fully catch up, but those using xp are the same level as their allies half the time before being fully caught up so it averages out to the same effect.

[PinkysBrain]

I can understand the desire to keep playing a character you've become attached to, and these spells at least partially mitigate the "I reroll the same character" situation, but I feel that, even in a world of high magic, the ability to resurrect someone should not be something as simple as a spell.
It's as hard or easy as the DM wants to make it, making the default resurrection just cost money and level is the right thing to do ... the default way should be simple.

Even if the default is simple you can still make it hard, but if the default is hard it's hard to justify making it simple. When half the party is dead and there is no plausible way to introduce temporary PCs for the players with dead characters to play you don't want the default method to be a quest which takes an entire session.

Want to make it harder for lower level characters? Take the body. Want to make it harder for higher level characters? Take the soul. Want to introduce pathos? Put in time limits for standard resurrection (Eberron) so leaving someone behind can mean certain death (until true resurrection becomes available, although at that point there are more grandiose ways to create certain death).

[ericgrau]

A side quest can also be a cool way to handle it if the normal way is too boring for you. Plane shift to the planes of the afterlife and retrieve the soul in person. Either by overcoming a test or by using stealth and violence.

The dead player will still need a backup character in the mean time, but at least his original isn't gone for good.

Another way I saw it done was for each resurrection to cost a "soul piece" which drifted off to Mechanus to get used in part of the ongoing construction of the multiverse. When someone lost too many he was gone for good. And then the party went to Mechanus to retrieve his soul pieces. The residents who strive for endless multiverse reconstruction and recycling of life force were not pleased. This was very much the "stealth and violence" option. But with this particular approach the group wasn't spending the entire campaign on ressurection side quests.

[Keneth]

The "painless and trivial" part is why I'm in favor of level loss upon death, unlike some.

I think level loss is an unnecessary complication. I'm more in favor of negative levels, but since those can be fairly easily removed, I don't find them to be an appropriate drawback.

I do want there to be consequences though (beyond monetary loss). It's the other half of the answer which I don't have.

[ryu]

You want to know how often death is cheap in D&D stories? Counting actual play I've been in results in no less than two hundred resurrections. Ten of those were true resurrections because a body was destroyed completely. One was being brought back by the direct intervention of a deity I'd earned favor with through a series of incredibly high power quests, because my character had their soul destroyed. Most of the other 190 or so were reviving individuals from my army of pet dragons because it was faster and cheaper than making new ones.

Now not taking into account my playing? Every other table that runs the spells as written, that also kills characters.

Not counting those and just going with Medieval lore? Not as common, but then again most of the things in D&D that are also assumed parts of the system weren't part of any medieval story either.

[JusticeZero]

I [made them] be equivalents of a defibrillator. They can bring someone back to life and even full health, but only for a very short time after his death.
So, you like the psionics version then?
My main issue is when it can be used to break storylines. Assassins just aren't as scary when you can say "Restoring King Sarah to life here - don't even need the body.."
I always look oddly at the webcomics based on D&D when moderately high level characters end up in the deaths' door range. By the time spells to cure death are available, I rarely see people dropped into that range; it's usually things like -41.

[Keneth]

You want to know how often death is cheap in D&D stories? Counting actual play I've been in results in no less than two hundred resurrections.

Your personal experiences don't really mean anything. I'm not trying to diminish their value or quality, they simply don't matter with regard to first party fluff. In contrast, none of my characters (in a tabletop game) have ever been raised from the dead, and I've been roleplaying for decades. But that doesn't really say anything about the rules or the setting.

I can think of several examples of people being raised from the dead (and not as undead) in first party material. But I can count them on one hand, so...

[ryu]

Your personal experiences don't really mean anything. I'm not trying to diminish their value or quality, they simply don't matter with regard to first party fluff. In contrast, none of my characters (in a tabletop game) have ever been raised from the dead, and I've been roleplaying for decades. But that doesn't really say anything about the rules or the setting.

I can think of several examples of people being raised from the dead (and not as undead) in first party material. But I can count them on one hand, so...

This is why I also brought up the general play experience of any table that runs those spells as written while also killing characters, and pointed out that D&D lore is significantly different from medieval lore.

[Maginomicon]

I have all out-of-combat resurrection spells/powers (like any game-breaking effect) require a ritual component (charged incantation). For most kinds of resurrection, the details of the ritual component are kept secret, and thus only a few know the ritual. Those that do guard its procedure carefully and sequester away those who gain the power to charge the ritual.

Thus, the only form of resurrection available to the masses is one that was made profitable: Stasis Clone.

Stasis Clone is like the SRD's Clone spell, except upon the body's maturation it immediately enters metabolic stasis and will not rot like a normal Clone

The general populace can purchase and upkeep "life insurance" on "scaling payment plans". :smallamused:

[Keneth]

This is why I also brought up the general play experience of any table that runs those spells as written while also killing characters, and pointed out that D&D lore is significantly different from medieval lore.

Yes, but gameplay experiences and medieval lore are both just as irrelevant to any part of this discussion, so I don't see what you're trying to say. I know death is cheap in D&D, that's not the problem. I'm asking how people justify or correct that fact, especially since first party D&D lore itself doesn't see it as such.

[ryu]

Yes, but gameplay experiences and medieval lore are both just as irrelevant to any part of this discussion, so I don't see what you're trying to say. I know death is cheap in D&D, that's not the problem. I'm asking how people justify or correct that fact, especially since first party D&D lore itself doesn't see it as such.

The first party lore tends to be the kind of silly that thinks Drizzt is a competently built, dangerous character prepared to do battle with demons, and even be a vital component in taking on an entire society of magic using drow. I think you can imagine exactly how seriously I take things like that.

[Coidzor]

They played around with making death harder to alleviate in dragon magazine and, IIRC, Ghostwalk. I can't recall which dragon magazine issue they appeared in though, I believe it was either the one with the deity based on the Wild Hunt(Dragon 342), the demon of hunger with its own spin on the Hunger Domain(Dragon 312), or Dragon 306 with its various LA+0 templates, as those were the ones I recall viewing recently and I stumbled upon it while I was looking through them.


That's arguable. How many stories have you read where the heroes get frequently resurrected? I can think of a few examples, but it's hardly a common thing. In a world where resurrection is freely accessible and death just an inconvenience, there sure are a lot of great heroes who stay dead.

And what of all the villains? If death is so cheap, why even bother fighting if there's little to no hope of ever being anything more than an inconvenience to the bad guys?

Who cares about stories? D&D departed the realm of being based on extant stories ages ago and has its own metanarratives, metaplots, etc. :smallconfused: If you want to make death permanent, you either have to accept that you're monkeying around with the assumptions of the system and that you're just going to have your players endlessly rolling up characters who are functionally identical to the deceased or make it commensurately harder to die by nerfing save or die effects, energy drain, etc.

Team Evil isn't a unified front, for starters. Neither is Team Hero. That's painfully obvious, so, yeah, the general premise is that villains are loners or subordinates of a bigger villain, not part of some kind of villainous network, of if they are, it's a singular villainous network, not some kind of ubiquitous thing. :smallconfused:


So, you like the psionics version then?
My main issue is when it can be used to break storylines. Assassins just aren't as scary when you can say "Restoring King Sarah to life here - don't even need the body.."
I always look oddly at the webcomics based on D&D when moderately high level characters end up in the deaths' door range. By the time spells to cure death are available, I rarely see people dropped into that range; it's usually things like -41.

King Sarah, eh? That one's easily enough dealt with though, by making it so that the dead guy doesn't want to come back. Or remembering what spells are around and not making plots that don't take them into account.

They obviously have unwritten and unacknowleged houserules about how death's door expands as they level up.

[Emperor Tippy]

My main issue is when it can be used to break storylines. Assassins just aren't as scary when you can say "Restoring King Sarah to life here - don't even need the body.."

Don't hire the cheap assassins. Any professional is going to ensure that resurrection is (at best) difficult. The standard that I use is payment upon delivery of the Thinaun object that holds the targets soul.

[Douglas]

Lets take the Eberron Setting

True resurrection requires a 17th level caster. You have a better chance of getting Merrix d'Canath to give you a hand job then find a 17th level ANYBODY, much less someone who can cast true resurrection.
Doesn't the head of the Church of the Silver Flame get free 20th level cleric casting as long as she's inside their headquarters? You still have to somehow get a personal favor from the leader of a dominant world-spanning religious organization, but the question of "who is even able to cast it" is easily answered.

[lsfreak]

I know death is cheap in D&D, that's not the problem. I'm asking how people justify or correct that fact, especially since first party D&D lore itself doesn't see it as such.

Well then you have to ignore one or the other, and the one that has a lesser impact on screwing up the mechanics of the game is to ignore the lore, which is what the majority of people here are proposing.

And I agree with whoever said it up the thread a bit, it's not completely revolving-door. Cutting off someone's head and hiding/destroying it effectively puts them out of reach of everything but true resurrection, so anyone of lowish to mid levels is likely to behead the really dangerous foes. Burning or hiding the body a few weeks serves the same effect. As a screw you at these levels you could also mutilate the body instead, for example cutting off feet, hands, tongue, and eyes, so if the person is resurrected they have a horrible time, but that assumes that casters with access to restoration and incredibly rare even compared to those with raise dead.

I could see this as having a rather strange effect on culture - common criminals would never be beheaded, because to be beheaded would be acknowledging the person as a threat worth resurrection. On the other hand, refusing to behead someone of import would be a purposeful snub to their memory; maybe they cut out heart or lungs instead to keep resurrection from succeeding (or the reverse, cutting out the heart but leaving the head attached being a sign of respect by leaving the person's appearance generally intact.)

By the time you get to levels where true resurrection comes into play the game's really broken down, so you're kind of on your own to figure out what that means based on how you view all the other problematic stuff.

For the record, I've never played a game where resurrection magic wasn't available as-listed, though the side effects on culture and setting were always just handwaved.

[The Insanity]

That's a good justification for prisons. Instead of killing criminals or villains, they are imprisoned.

[ArcturusV]

Well, from a design perspective, does permanent character loss - because this is what meaningful death essentially translates to - benefit the core gameplay goals of D&D? I do not thing it does. Losing my character is not conductive to my enjoyment of the game. It crosses the thin line that separates challenge from frustration, and does so with no benefit to gameplay. Therefore, excising it from the system was the right decision.

Interestingly when you put it that way, I have the opposite conclusion. DnD is mostly an adventure story game. And part of that, and what makes it interesting in my mind, comes down to Drama. And Drama requires Risk. Which requires long term consequences. Death is a classic consequence.

It's why I rag on adventure modules, etc, that play with kid gloves. That actually tell you things like "If your party isn't doing so well in this fight, do this so they all live and win", and similar methods of DMing. Because... when players can't Lose, much less can't lose hard... they realize they can't win. Victory means nothing if loss was never really a factor. I've seen players have that realization on some level, and lose interest for that reason.

And I suppose part of this is why I play low level, slumming in the ghetto type DnD a lot. Because it has those elements a lot more than when you start hitting high levels and have the options (If you choose to use them) to just negate things you don't like. Including death of course. Removing consequences with relatively cheap, easy methods just diminishes the storytelling elements that is a good chunk of what DnD is.

[ryu]

Interestingly when you put it that way, I have the opposite conclusion. DnD is mostly an adventure story game. And part of that, and what makes it interesting in my mind, comes down to Drama. And Drama requires Risk. Which requires long term consequences. Death is a classic consequence.

It's why I rag on adventure modules, etc, that play with kid gloves. That actually tell you things like "If your party isn't doing so well in this fight, do this so they all live and win", and similar methods of DMing. Because... when players can't Lose, much less can't lose hard... they realize they can't win. Victory means nothing if loss was never really a factor. I've seen players have that realization on some level, and lose interest for that reason.

And I suppose part of this is why I play low level, slumming in the ghetto type DnD a lot. Because it has those elements a lot more than when you start hitting high levels and have the options (If you choose to use them) to just negate things you don't like. Including death of course. Removing consequences with relatively cheap, easy methods just diminishes the storytelling elements that is a good chunk of what DnD is.

Permanent death has less consequences than dying and being resurrected. Level loss takes a while to get back to the power you had before. Now if it's permanent death and thus people can just make new characters of equal level? That's not even a punishment unless the person actually cared about the original character deeply. Even if the new guy comes in one level lower you've afforded the player the right to change their build up as they wish so the guy who didn't care about his character just makes something more powerful to meet new threats. The guy who actually did care about his character? That guy didn't want his character to die. If that guy was me, he was even willing to put piles of gold and in-game time into ensuring that his character simply couldn't stay dead. Try asking that entire group how they feel when you start popping off the people they spent weeks if not months planning.

[NichG]

It shouldn't really be about punishing the player. Making them play a weaker character is sort of like saying 'you died, so suffer this out of game penalty'. I don't think thats really good design, nor really the point being made by people arguing against revolving-door death.

I think it is important for death to be significant in-character. Not even necessarily PC death, but just death in general. When everything that can be done to someone can be undone, then the villain stops being a real evil and becomes more like a mean kid on the beach, kicking over sandcastles that are annoying but not impossible to rebuild.

In the last game I ran, there was magic that would bring back the dead, but it was for the most part outlawed because 1/1000 times, something massively powerful and destructive would come back in their place (e.g. 1/1000 times, the soul of an epic-level wizard bumps the to-be-raised soul from the queue and jumps into his body instead). This had happened something like 4 times in the setting, and each time had required an army of high level characters to put down the thing that had come through. One time, the person had returned completely normal until it was revealed years later that he was one of these creatures and had been slowly building up his plans, so anyone confirmed to have been raised would be treated with suspicion at best.

Despite its illegality, the PCs still used it, as did some of the villains, but you couldn't solve a plague by saying 'lets just resurrect everyone that died' or even necessarily solve a murder that way (though you could raise 'em, ask who did it, and then kill them again, if you were willing to take the chance and were that sort of person).

[ryu]

Negative consequence leveraged upon someone is synonymous with punishment. If you legitimately can't feel you've won without risking a loss with negative consequences you're advocating punishment for failure. This isn't a hard to agree with position mind you. I don't feel satisfied in D&D unless I'm facing a legitimately dangerous opponent with access to equivalent if not the same tools I have. In that situation it all boils down to who made a better plan of action, and any penalties resulting from death or capture are losses taken for insufficient planning. These penalties usually result in loss of money, XP, or a favor given directly from a god. All of those things have value.

[Firechanter]

That's a good justification for prisons. Instead of killing criminals or villains, they are imprisoned.

Accepting D&D Cosmology at face value, you also get the question whether "capital punishment" is any punishment at all, even excluding Resurrection from the equation, since every soul gets into its own ideal afterlife by alignment. There's no uncertainty about whether your soul lives on at all (it does), and there is no eternal punishment or anything to fear. On the contrary, if you're evil, your evil actions will reflect on your standing in the afterlife, so you have every reason to be as evil as possible during your lifetime.

So in short, killing anyone as punishment is an iffy proposition, unless you go all the way and trap or even destroy the soul. Which is not easy in itself, and crosses a moral line some authorities may shy away from.

[NichG]

Negative consequence leveraged upon someone is synonymous with punishment. If you legitimately can't feel you've won without risking a loss with negative consequences you're advocating punishment for failure. This isn't a hard to agree with position mind you. I don't feel satisfied in D&D unless I'm facing a legitimately dangerous opponent with access to equivalent if not the same tools I have. In that situation it all boils down to who made a better plan of action, and any penalties resulting from death or capture are losses taken for insufficient planning. These penalties usually result in loss of money, XP, or a favor given directly from a god. All of those things have value.

There is a difference between the nature of the negative consequences that is very important though.

For example, I could institute a rule that when your character dies, you have to buy everyone at the table dinner. That's a negative financial consequence to the player, but its pretty dumb because it has nothing to do with the game at all.

I could have a rule where when your character dies, you must sit there and watch other people play for 3 hours before you can play again. That punishes the player, but it punishes them by making the game less fun for them. Since we're all here to have fun, thats a bad idea.

The idea is for death to have a 'consequence' without making the game less fun when it happens. The consequence may mean that your plans do not succeed or something, but it should enrich play, make the game more involving, rather than separate the player from the game. So, your kingdom falls and now instead of playing the king in his seat of power you're playing the ghost of the old king, trying to get his power back. You still get to engage in the game, but the 'punishment' is that you lost a little narrative control and the game goes a different direction than you were trying to make it go. Ideally this is done in a way that means the game is no less fun.

[Story]

Presumably capital punishment in D&D land is intended to stop people from committing crimes again. Most people aren't going to get raised.

[Coidzor]

It shouldn't really be about punishing the player. Making them play a weaker character is sort of like saying 'you died, so suffer this out of game penalty'. I don't think thats really good design, nor really the point being made by people arguing against revolving-door death.

I think it is important for death to be significant in-character. Not even necessarily PC death, but just death in general. When everything that can be done to someone can be undone, then the villain stops being a real evil and becomes more like a mean kid on the beach, kicking over sandcastles that are annoying but not impossible to rebuild.

So... Don't punish the player, but the only thing you can think of involves punishing the player? :/


Despite its illegality, the PCs still used it, as did some of the villains, but you couldn't solve a plague by saying 'lets just resurrect everyone that died' or even necessarily solve a murder that way (though you could raise 'em, ask who did it, and then kill them again, if you were willing to take the chance and were that sort of person).

If that's all you want, that's what speak with dead is for.


The idea is for death to have a 'consequence' without making the game less fun when it happens. The consequence may mean that your plans do not succeed or something, but it should enrich play, make the game more involving, rather than separate the player from the game. So, your kingdom falls and now instead of playing the king in his seat of power you're playing the ghost of the old king, trying to get his power back. You still get to engage in the game, but the 'punishment' is that you lost a little narrative control and the game goes a different direction than you were trying to make it go. Ideally this is done in a way that means the game is no less fun.

That makes more sense, I suppose.

[Story]

For what it's worth, even True Resurrection can be blocked by a 3rd level spell (Infallible Servant, Exemplars of Evil).

Edit: Oops, I didn't notice the line about Miracle. Apparently Infallible Servant blocks True Resurrection, but not Miracle. Man, how useless is that?

[NichG]

So... Don't punish the player, but the only thing you can think of involves punishing the player? :/


Not sure what you mean here. 'There are in-character consequences' is different than 'there is out-of-character punishment'.

[IronFist]

I don't know about Eberron, but 17th level characters aren't that rare in most D&D universes.
Oh, they are very very very (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20040712a) rare in Eberron.

[mindwarper10]

Don't know much about anime, but generally in comics characters being killed off and then immediately brought back (whether literally or within the context of an alternate universe/reboot) is considered bad writing.

this would mean nearly every comic book ever was bad writing... and I disagree...
Stan Lee Is the best, 'nuff said.

edit:

Oh, they are very very very (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20040712a) rare in Eberron.

Let me whip out my Eberron book that I just happen to have open to a page related to this!
So according to pgs 92 and 93 the planes move....yup
and Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead when it becomes remote (hard to establish a connection with) it says this exactly word for word: When Dolurrh is remote, spells that bring back the dead do not function, and it is impossible to reach Dolurrh by means of planar shift. Only by journeying to Dolurrh ( using astral projection, gate or a permanent portal to the plane), finding the soul of the deceased, and bringing back to the Material Plae can a deceased character be returned to life during this period. Once the soul is back on the Material Plane, no further magic is required to restore the dead to life.
(skipping a sentence here) Dolurhh is remote for a period of one year every century, precisely fifty years after each coterminous phase.


Alternatively during the Coterminous phase spirits have a good chance of entering the world, and worse yet raising the dead has a chance of calling forth more spirits than you intend.


I really don't remember how Faerun works, but aren't its planes static and immobile?
I think there is more to coming back to life in Eberron than most games.


alternatively there are plenty of spells that pretty much disable returning from the dead anyways. It also takes some time before you can actually raise the dead, something most npcs are assumed to not have achieved the ability to do. So it's not constantly happening, even if it is possible.

[AntiTrust]

In addition to what you said Mindwarper. In eberron they have a few resurrection tables made to bring people back ( I believe House Jorasco built them). In one instance however when they attempted to bring someone back a host of inevitables came and slew nearly everyone in the room citing breaking the rules of life and death.

For my groups resurrection is usually difficult. Churches can do it, assuming they have the priest on hand, but they only do it for the faithful and even then only after they complete some quest for the church. Druids are even tougher to convince since life to death is the natural order of things and you need a damned good reason for why they should reincarnate someone.

On the flip-side while the living players try to accomplish a means of resurrection for a fellow player. I talk to the dead player separately and offer him a deal to come back. There are plenty of powerful beings who would be more than willing to bring back a fallen adventurer...for a price.

Overall death shouldn't be the end to a character unless the player wants it, but rather an opportunity for another story to be told.

[Keneth]

Who cares about stories? D&D departed the realm of being based on extant stories ages ago and has its own metanarratives, metaplots, etc. :smallconfused:

I care about stories. And no, D&D most certainly hasn't departed from that realm. First party lore, including endorsed novels, is still very much a part of D&D and its development process.


That's painfully obvious, so, yeah, the general premise is that villains are loners or subordinates of a bigger villain, not part of some kind of villainous network, of if they are, it's a singular villainous network, not some kind of ubiquitous thing. :smallconfused:

I wasn't implying Villains was some sort of gentlemen's club that every bad guy hangs in after a hard day's work killing puppies. But it stands to reason that any good villain has allies in their cause, or even a large network of followers who would be willing to bring them back to life.


The first party lore tends to be the kind of silly that thinks Drizzt is a competently built, dangerous character prepared to do battle with demons, and even be a vital component in taking on an entire society of magic using drow. I think you can imagine exactly how seriously I take things like that.

There are viable ways of making Drizzt's shtick a decent concept. There is nothing wrong with the lore and everything wrong with the designer's ability to create good character builds.

[ryu]

I care about stories. And no, D&D most certainly hasn't departed from that realm. First party lore, including endorsed novels, is still very much a part of D&D and its development process.



I wasn't implying Villains was some sort of gentlemen's club that every bad guy hangs in after a hard day's work killing puppies. But it stands to reason that any good villain has allies in their cause, or even a large network of followers who would be willing to bring them back to life.



There are viable ways of making Drizzt's shtick a decent concept. There is nothing wrong with the lore and everything wrong with the designer's ability to create good character builds.

Oh really? He's a two weapon fighting ranger, with no ranger spells, fairly high LA, deliberately limited use of racial features which account for the LA, a host of relatively low level magic items with his badly built swords being the only exceptions. For pity's sake the swords are pure + enchantments with some glowing and a situational anti fire enemy mechanic. Keep in mind literally all of those things mentioned are explicitly his status in the books. It's not that he was built badly, although he totally was, it was that his entire concept was weak on a raw effectiveness level to begin with. Notice how pretty much all of his victories against even moderately competent magic users were based on antimagic shenanigans at the best times for him from third parties, or otherwise competent enemies throwing on the idiot ball.

[Quellian-dyrae]

I like the concept of resurrection as a powerful tool of high-level play. That said, I do think D&D makes it too easy. Being able to resurrect multiple people per day, within days, years, or even decades of death, is rather much. On the flip side, permanent penalties for it, while helping somewhat, are annoying from a game perspective.

For me, the ideal system for resurrection would basically be:

Revivification (the ability to resurrect someone seconds, maybe minutes, after death) could be reasonably common as a basic "you are now a high-level healer" ability.

Actual resurrection is much more rare; not just an expected capability of any high-level healer. It requires a more significant investment (D&D wise, this might be something like being a domain spell, or requiring a certain feat or PrC).

Generally speaking, resurrection requires an extensive (and possibly expensive) ritual. Resurrections would probably have a limit of 1-3 days of death in most cases, maybe extending up to a week or so for particularly powerful resurrectors.

Resurrection draws upon particularly deep reserves of power, leaving the caster noticeably but not too severely weakened for a not-insignificant period of time (maybe a week). Multiple resurrections in succession exacerbate both the scale and duration of the drain.

Being resurrected, while not inherently permanently debilitating, isn't exactly for the weak of will or spirit. More powerful individuals can usually shrug it off in short time, but others could suffer physical or mental ailments of a wide range of severities and durations.

[nedz]

As a DM I quite like cheap raises etc. because it means I can run harder encounters.

On the other hand I did play in one very gritty game without any such thing. My character died doing something relatively epic right at the end of the last session. I was cool with this since it was heroic.


Use the old 2nd edition Reincarnation table, that's what I do. Funny how people stop using it for Immortality loops and the like when they might come back as a badger or a frog.

I once ran a long running 2E game where most people preferred to be reincarnated on the Druid table — good times.


Now you're thinking more in my realm. Blood sacrifices are cool, except I would generally require a sacrifice of comparable power, with an exponential price for lesser sacrifices. So if you want to resurrect your 10th level character, you might have to sacrifice a CR 10 creature, or a whole city of low-level NPCs. And that would only be one part of the ritual. :smallbiggrin:

I played in one game where because we were tricked into killing the wrong NPC we had to go on a long quest and haggle for his soul. This was cool, but it would get old fast.


Don't know much about anime, but generally in comics characters being killed off and then immediately brought back (whether literally or within the context of an alternate universe/reboot) is considered bad writing.

Southpark: Kenny ?

Tl;DR:
I think it all depends upon the game really.

[Squirrel_Dude]

I think that resurrection is necessary when players are investing time and energy into playing their characters. I do think that cheap resurrection can be a bit of a problem, though. I think that it's more interesting when it's turned into a plot point and made interesting.

[molten_dragon]

Ever since the beginning, I've always disliked resurrection spells. Obviously, they come in different shapes, and many have some sort of drawback, but in most cases, bringing a person back from the dead is fairly painless and trivial. I can understand the desire to keep playing a character you've become attached to, and these spells at least partially mitigate the "I reroll the same character" situation, but I feel that, even in a world of high magic, the ability to resurrect someone should not be something as simple as a spell.

What does the Playground think of this? Does it bother you? If so, how do you handle it? Do you use rituals? Ban all the methods? Never kill the PCs?

I have no problem with it at all. Cheap and easy resurrection means I don't have to pull punches.

[ArcturusV]

That's an odd sentiment. I mean the theory behind it sounds like "I have to let my players win". Which is never how I really approached it. I mean I don't go out making impossible challenges and meat grinders looking to kill off party members just for jollies. But I hardly think I have to let them "win" either. I don't softball them just because they might die and not be able to come back (Low level, no one has the spell, no NPCs handy to cast it, etc). Or because they picked a fight they shouldn't, or did something stupid and I should be similarly stupid so they can stand a chance.

I dunno. Might just be me. Goes back to the idea that... If I can't LOSE... then I can't WIN. There's no drama if there's no risk. There's no triumph if you never really doubted your ability to survive/win.

Then again I've never had the problem where someone just rerolls with Bob the Second, an exact clone of Bob, who has all the same backstory, motivations, skill sets, items, etc. Never really happened at my tables. Most players seemed to be like me, interested in a lot of concepts so they were always eager to try something new if given the chance. And generally by the time they finished a character (An hour or so later, because, hell, it's never that fast), I already had a hook planned to get them into the game soon, etc.

[Big Fau]

I think there is more to coming back to life in Eberron than most games.

It is. House Jorasco makes it ridiculously easy, albeit only with Revivify (you can get it multiple times/day with a Greater mark and one feat).

[ericgrau]

I think level loss is an unnecessary complication. I'm more in favor of negative levels, but since those can be fairly easily removed, I don't find them to be an appropriate drawback.

I do want there to be consequences though (beyond monetary loss). It's the other half of the answer which I don't have.

So make the negative levels unremovable for 2 levels and bypass immunities. Less complicated than level loss and no way around it because the DM says so.