Removing Resurrection?

[Palanan]

I've been playing 3.5 for over ten years, with a wide variety of gaming groups, and none of them have ever put much effort into raising or resurrecting their dead comrades. Lose a character, roll up a new one has always been the default assumption. It's never been an edict from any of the DMs I've played with--the various groups just haven't been interested.

Thus I've never really had much experience with how parties go about this, apart from a few secondhand stories about NPCs that did a thriving business in raising foolhardy adventurers. As I slowly work towards running another campaign, I'm wondering whether it wouldn't make more sense to simply remove Resurrection from the mix altogether, the way I'm planning for a number of other higher-level spells, and perhaps Raise Dead as well.

So I'm wondering just how attached most players are to being raised or resurrected, and what the effects on a low- to mid-level campaign might be. Do most 3.5 players consider raising and resurrecting to be an integral part of the game? Or is my experience more typical, where most players don't really care?

[Extra Anchovies]

The more hack-and-slash a game is, the less important resurrection is to its integrity. If you've got a heavily story-driven game where all of the players are heavily invested in their PCs and their PCs' goals, character death can be a huge event, but if the premise is "we're adventurers, we kill things and take their stuff", a dead character can easily be replaced by another.

Personally, I think it's good to keep death a significant event, but it could also be fun to have high-level adventurers running around dying and coming back frequently, with their primary concern not being "not dying" but instead "not dying at an inconvenient time" or "not having my soul trapped/destroyed".

[Sagetim]

In most games I play in, we don't have access to rez magic unless we can do it ourselves. And in a number of those games the GM hates all full casters so cleric and wizard, for example, are off the table. This makes those games much deadlier, and we take our character builds much more seriously for combat as a result. We're also prone to more combat shenanigans and the attempts thereof. For example, when given access to dynamite in one session my character ferreted his supply of it away into his bag of holding. 2 years later, when we were fighting a king that...well, just needed to die and was rather challenging with his levels of soulknife or psion or whatever it was...suffice to say, he had a low ref save and no evasion. So while my character was dangling for dear life or a chasm, he pulled his dynamite out and chucked it at the bastard. The resounding kaboom in the enclosed spaced deafened our characters for a while, but the king was blown to smithereens by the blast.

As I recall, we had a number of close calls in that game, but the only characters who actually died were for the players who left the group permanently. In fact, it became a running joke every time my soulknife was reduced below 0 and rose up once again because of his illumine blade class feature, and at one point it helped him survive the death throes of a balor. Which was a moment of pants ****ting terror for an npc demon watching (because none of us were killed by the balor, not even in it's death throes).

In a recent game the dm was much more loosey goosey with things and we could find high level priests that could cast true rez here and there, even in remote temples for unexplained reasons. So it really came down to 'did we have 25k to rez someone?'. Because raise dead sucks, you lose a level and come back at 1 hp. And rez also blows chunks because you still lose a damn level. True rez is the only viable option, because it's the only one that you don't lose a damn level with.

Generally it seems to come down to an out of character decision: does the player want to roll up a new character, or wait for their old one to be raised? In the game with plentiful resurrections (and other things) some players got really excited for playing a new character...so they got their old one killed on purpose.

Anyway, in a low to mid level game the players aren't going to be able to cast any rezzing magic (not until the end spectrum of 'mid level'). So the only source of it is going to be npcs or outside sources. Unless you have a heavy story game with a lot of roleplay and people getting attached to their characters and needing certain characters to complete the thing...then the players probably won't be too worried about a lack of rezzing. Not unless you institute a 'you can't play the same class until you've played each other class' rule or something. Which is a helluva rule to have in a 3.5 game with all of 3.5 available. So many base classes...so many.

[Crake]

Personally, I think it's good to keep death a significant event, but it could also be fun to have high-level adventurers running around dying and coming back frequently, with their primary concern not being "not dying" but instead "not dying at an inconvenient time" or "not having my soul trapped/destroyed".

I've actually had games where the players got so powerful that this is how it ended up. It doesn't cause any detriment to the game, because they're high level, they're supposed to be powerful. The way I solve the problem of spells like raise dead and resurrection is limiting them to the players only. There are no random 9th level clerics able to cast raise dead except maybe in the largest of cities, but if so, they would likely be famous, and booked for months, perhaps even years in advance, meaning that the party would need to have a gentle repose handy for a while, and then wait a long time (which may not be convenient for them). People able to cast resurrection would be nigh impossible to find short of a mage binding celestial beings with innate cleric casting. Mages can also use lesser planar binding to summon a movanic deva for a "free" raise dead (it would probably come with some requirements that the party do some kind of good act i'd imagine), but that's not available any earlier than it would be for a cleric.

But basically, in my games, before level 7 (druids with reincarnate, and good clerics using lesser planar ally as above), players simply have 0 access to raising the dead.

[Sagetim]

I've actually had games where the players got so powerful that this is how it ended up. It doesn't cause any detriment to the game, because they're high level, they're supposed to be powerful. The way I solve the problem of spells like raise dead and resurrection is limiting them to the players only. There are no random 9th level clerics able to cast raise dead except maybe in the largest of cities, but if so, they would likely be famous, and booked for months, perhaps even years in advance, meaning that the party would need to have a gentle repose handy for a while, and then wait a long time (which may not be convenient for them). People able to cast resurrection would be nigh impossible to find short of a mage binding celestial beings with innate cleric casting. Mages can also use lesser planar binding to summon a movanic deva for a "free" raise dead (it would probably come with some requirements that the party do some kind of good act i'd imagine), but that's not available any earlier than it would be for a cleric.

But basically, in my games, before level 7 (druids with reincarnate, and good clerics using lesser planar ally as above), players simply have 0 access to raising the dead.

The flip side of this is that if the players ever want to retire from active adventuring, they can probably make quite a living keeping the cleric safe as the cleric provides rez services. One of the things I dislike about 3.5's rezzing as opposed to 3.0's though, is the cost. In games where the DM is trying to hold some kind of strict wealth by level adherence, spending at least 5,000 gold on a raise dead is a deadly blow to a character's finances.

[Rubik]

As mentioned above, people who get attached to their characters will want to keep those characters going, so they're going to want Aeris rezzed with phoenix downs, and they'll be upset when that can't happen.

Beyond that, high level characters can be excessively complicated to build, especially for people like me who want them to be just so. I don't like just throwing a pile of stats out there; I like building to a theme and keeping the various bits and bobs in line for who that character is and what I want him to do. And that's not including the various pieces of personal history I attribute to parts of the character -- this is the adventure that he received his item familiar from, and that is the spell/power/item/feat he used to save the world last year. That's a lot of work, but it's something I do so I can get in the character's head and get to know him. Losing all that work can be heartbreaking, and doing it all over again (but even worse, because higher level characters have more stuff to do it for) can be a pain when mourning the loss of a friend.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Extra Anchovies
If you've got a heavily story-driven game where all of the players are heavily invested in their PCs and their PCs' goals, character death can be a huge event, but if the premise is "we're adventurers, we kill things and take their stuff", a dead character can easily be replaced by another.

In most of the groups I've played with, there's been a wide disparity between those players who are strongly attached to their characters and those who are just there for the hack. We've had the full spectrum in most of these groups, and yet raising and resurrecting is barely mentioned, much less pursued.

Even in my current Pathfinder group, which is plowing through Runelords right now, there's much more interest in replacement characters than working out contingencies for resurrection. Go figure.


Originally Posted by Extra Anchovies
Personally, I think it's good to keep death a significant event….

And with this I agree completely.


Originally Posted by Crake
The way I solve the problem of spells like raise dead and resurrection is limiting them to the players only. There are no random 9th level clerics able to cast raise dead except maybe in the largest of cities, but if so, they would likely be famous, and booked for months, perhaps even years in advance, meaning that the party would need to have a gentle repose handy for a while, and then wait a long time (which may not be convenient for them).

I really like this approach in terms of player options...although it still leaves me wondering how societies operate with practical resurrection for the elites and death as usual for the masses.

I could see wrenchingly high-magic wars fought over this issue--and in fact it's hard to see how they wouldn't be, which is one reason I'm thinking of simply removing the issue altogether.




Originally Posted by Sagetim
Not unless you institute a 'you can't play the same class until you've played each other class' rule or something.

… :smalleek: :smallfrown: :smallmad:

I have never heard of a rule like this. Wow.

.

[Keltest]

my thoughts are, if you want to restrict access to resurrection effects, restrict access to the diamonds you need. 5k gold can quickly become chump change, but looting a dungeon's worth of treasure wont get you any closer to resurrection unless that dungeon is a diamond mine.

And especially in an environment with a lot of adventurers, diamonds are quickly going to become a rare commodity. Temples would likely be pre-emptively buying them all up for their clerics and favored minions, and the ones the temples don't get would be going to other wealthy and powerful local individuals. 5k gold worth of diamonds quickly becomes a quest in itself to obtain.

[Xervous]

my thoughts are, if you want to restrict access to resurrection effects, restrict access to the diamonds you need. 5k gold can quickly become chump change, but looting a dungeon's worth of treasure wont get you any closer to resurrection unless that dungeon is a diamond mine.

And especially in an environment with a lot of adventurers, diamonds are quickly going to become a rare commodity. Temples would likely be pre-emptively buying them all up for their clerics and favored minions, and the ones the temples don't get would be going to other wealthy and powerful local individuals. 5k gold worth of diamonds quickly becomes a quest in itself to obtain.


On a side note... would the changing market price of diamonds affect the quantity required for a raise dead? Or... better not to think about DnD economics.

[Draconium]

Personally, something I really like to do is have resurrection possible, but extremely hard to attain unless you're high level. As in ,have there be about one person on the entire continent who can cast a resurrection spell, and they're holed up in some abandoned monastery, guarded by dangerous monsters and/or humanoids with high PC levels. Basically, raising someone from the dead becomes an adventure all on it's own. (Of course, you'll need to provide the player with a temporary PC while this happens.)

[ComaVision]

My solution was a combination of Crake's and Keltest's. I want death to be a big deal so NPCs above 6th level are quite uncommon and diamonds of that value are very rare. I wouldn't prohibit a group from it but it'd definitely become an entire side-quest.

In the game I DMed, it never came up. They were mostly new players and sometimes were just waiting to die to try out another character concept. I think there were two Reincarnations in another game that happened prior to mine.

[Ashtagon]

Make it a side quest.

Sure, your PC has the resurrection spell memorised. But it can only be cast in the presence of the petitioner. Good luck finding the spirit. And if you need the permission of the god of the dead, you will need to ask him in person.

[Sacrieur]

I effectively banned it by making it nigh impossible and reworking death entirely.

[Rubik]

Removing ways to renege on death and not making it harder to die is merely incentivizing optimization to ensure that one's PC can't die without some serious firepower (and often, not even then). It's even doable at low levels, such as with using the savage ghost progression and LA buyoff, or ghost/uncanny trickster or legacy champion later on. Immunity to death from hp damage, frequent rerolls for everything, and all the other tricks that make death extremely difficult to contract.

That just leads to either an optimization arms race or frustration when you start banning everything a player does to protect himself from your houserules.

I'd suggest that, for anyone who makes resurrection magic difficult or impossible to acquire, you make "death at -10 hp" a coma instead, that takes a long period of recovery to overcome. It makes "dying" a penalty without ruining the player's playing experience.

[ComaVision]

I'd suggest that, for anyone who makes resurrection magic difficult or impossible to acquire, you make "death at -10 hp" a coma instead, that takes a long period of recovery to overcome. It makes "dying" a penalty without ruining the player's playing experience.

What if we like death to be a serious and possible outcome?

[Ashtagon]

What if we like death to be a serious and possible outcome?

This.

If there is no sense of a risk of failure, then the joy at the victory won becomes hollow and poorly-fitting.

[Rubik]

What if we like death to be a serious and possible outcome?Then don't expect players to become attached to their characters or build as deep or complex characters as they might otherwise.

There are possible consequences for failure that have nothing to do with death and can be used to encourage players to work smarter and harder without ruining all of your players' hard work.

There's a reason I never use Aeris in FFVII, after all.

[Draconium]

Then don't expect players to become attached to their characters or build as deep or complex characters as they might otherwise.

Unless your player wants their character's journey to end with a Dying Moment of Awesome or something like that...

[Rubik]

Unless your player wants their character's journey to end with a Dying Moment of Awesome or something like that...Fair enough on that point, but that's something far more than "Oh crap, I failed a save," or "Damn those critical hits!"

Have you ever watched a TV show or read a book series where main characters die off all the time and don't come back? What incentive does the audience have to feel emotional attachment if it's clear the characters are going to die off anyway?

[torrasque666]

Have you ever watched a TV show or read a book series where main characters die off all the time and don't come back? What incentive does the audience have to feel emotional attachment if it's clear the characters are going to die off anyway?
I dunno. Ask George R.R. Martin.

[Rubik]

I dunno. Ask George R.R. Martin.That's pretty much what I had in mind, actually.

[ComaVision]

I dunno. Ask George R.R. Martin.

lol This.

Seriously, I can't get invested at all if I know all the conflict will work out because the hero never dies.

[Draconium]

The main problem is, while death should mean something from a literary standpoint, it makes gameplay a lot more difficult, as it's hard to really get invested in "heroes" that can die from even the most simple, mundane fight. Of course, making death easy to come back from makes it so it's hard to really ever feel like they're in danger in the first place.

One of the best ways I've seen it dealt with is actually in OotS. When Roy died, he technically could've been revived right away - but due to circumstances beyond the characters' control, it took an entire book to bring him back. That's how coming back from death should be handled - it's possible, but it should never be easy.

[ComaVision]

One of the best ways I've seen it dealt with is actually in OotS. When Roy died, he technically could've been revived right away - but due to circumstances beyond the characters' control, it took an entire book to bring him back. That's how coming back from death should be handled - it's possible, but it should never be easy.

But that's a story and there wasn't a guy waiting around for several weeks before he could play again.

[torrasque666]

But that's a story and there wasn't a guy waiting around for several weeks before he could play again.
Just watch as it turns out that OotS is actually an illustrated Campaign Journal...

[Draconium]

But that's a story and there wasn't a guy waiting around for several weeks before he could play again.

It was just an example. I didn't mean to imply that's exactly how it should be done - it should be different in each case. And temorary PCs are a thing that exists, aren't they?

[Rubik]

lol This.

Seriously, I can't get invested at all if I know all the conflict will work out because the hero never dies.There are measures of failure that don't include death.

And as mentioned, death of a main character should mean something, which is difficult to pull off in a game that largely comprises of chance. Sacrificing yourself for your friends means something. Dying because of a die roll doesn't. There's no literary drama there, just death because of dumb luck (or a lack thereof). And you can have a similar level of trauma-drama from a character's randomized death that you can have from a randomized coma, if you want to have survivor's guilt in your roleplaying, or whatever.

[Brova]

Seriously, I can't get invested at all if I know all the conflict will work out because the hero never dies.

But it's possible to fail without dying and to die without failing.

For example, think of a time you were personally in conflict with someone about something. Was it possible you would fail? Probably. Was it likely you would die if you did? No, not at all. Did you still care? Probably.

Conversely, fiction is rife with examples of people who's plans succeed even though they die (though it's often because they die). Obi Wan dies, but the Empire still falls and Luke still becomes a Jedi. Kelsier's plan involves him dying in order to inspire a rebellion.

And there are satisfying stories that involve characters dying and coming back. In Lord of Light Sam dies and comes back at least twice, and that is one of the best fantasy novels. Game of Thrones even has dead people coming back, at least to some degree.

[Milo v3]

I dislike removing resurrection in most campaigns (not all though), since it causes a new guy to appear without any ties to the previous events of the story and my players simply aren't good enough roleplayers yet to make it not seem out of place, which ends up just damaging their immersion.

[Mechalich]

Personally I consider this in the context of the campaign world. Either death is beatable at some level of difficulty/resources or it isn't.

If death is beatable then high-powered important people never, ever die. This is basically what happens in FR - and that's pretty much the minimal logical extension you hit when you start talking about high-level casters + death beating magic. Any such world has a PC agency problem, because it is forever dominated by a tier of extremely high-powered people who cannot die who have no incentive on letting you join their ranks. That generally isn't any fun.

You can avoid this by making beating death almost impossible to the point that it requires epic quests - but for the PCs that doesn't generally help. If it takes a whole campaign to bring someone back from the dead because you have to actually march into the underworld all Hercules-style to do it the player can't exactly wait around that whole time. As a result, for my money, it seems best to just make bringing back the dead impossible. You do have to shift around some other assumptions as a consequences though.

[Crake]

I really like this approach in terms of player options...although it still leaves me wondering how societies operate with practical resurrection for the elites and death as usual for the masses.

I could see wrenchingly high-magic wars fought over this issue--and in fact it's hard to see how they wouldn't be, which is one reason I'm thinking of simply removing the issue altogether.

In my games, 5000gp for a raise dead is a significant enough chunk of cash that it would practically cripple an entire noble family. Thus only the most absolutely richest would be able to afford such a thing.... IF there was a cleric in town who was capable of it, who's spells hadn't been booked ahead for other things, and the family had some method of preserving the body so the 1 day/level time doesn't expire. Also, a cleric capable of raising the dead is not going to necessarily advertise that fact, because, at least in my game world, magic is not a common occurance, and something like that would just freak the entire population out.

Basically, for practical purposes, unless the NPCs are themselves capable of raising the dead, they don't/can't pay for it either.

[ericgrau]

I've been playing 3.5 for over ten years, with a wide variety of gaming groups, and none of them have ever put much effort into raising or resurrecting their dead comrades. Lose a character, roll up a new one has always been the default assumption. It's never been an edict from any of the DMs I've played with--the various groups just haven't been interested.

Thus I've never really had much experience with how parties go about this, apart from a few secondhand stories about NPCs that did a thriving business in raising foolhardy adventurers. As I slowly work towards running another campaign, I'm wondering whether it wouldn't make more sense to simply remove Resurrection from the mix altogether, the way I'm planning for a number of other higher-level spells, and perhaps Raise Dead as well.

So I'm wondering just how attached most players are to being raised or resurrected, and what the effects on a low- to mid-level campaign might be. Do most 3.5 players consider raising and resurrecting to be an integral part of the game? Or is my experience more typical, where most players don't really care?

What it boils down to is that in 3.5 you should not expect to live. Period. You nearly need a full system rewrite or insane luck to avoid eventual death. You can improve your odds but you can't avoid it entirely. One to three lucky rolls and out you go from the land of the living. Even if you were to remove all death effects, even plain old damage might do it in a couple rounds. So as long as you don't mind rolling up new characters, sure, it's fine to get rid of resurrection.

There are ways to encourage people to stick with their character and raise him, but you don't seem to want that so no need to get into it.

[Pex]

I can appreciate a DM not wanting players to think character life is just a commodity, to have a cavalier attitude towards their characters. Banning Resurrection doesn't necessarily prevent that. It could enhance it because characters would become dime a dozen since players have to make new ones when their current one dies, if they already have such a cavalier attitude. When players are invested and care about their characters, banning Resurrection doesn't make them care more. These players want the Resurrection because they care so much and want to keep playing the character. They don't just casually kill off the character because they're so attached. They'd view character death as a sense of losing in D&D, not counting those who would be thrilled to go out in a blaze of glory to save the day such that coming back would ruin the moment. How rare or common Resurrection is in a game that allows it depends on the verisimilitude of the game world. A campaign in the Orient that's all about honorable death in battle makes perfect sense not to have Resurrection at all because it doesn't fit the setting.

A DM needs to take care when a campaign doesn't have it. It is the players' responsibility not to do anything stupid and get their characters killed, but it's also the DM's responsibility not to be so insensitive himself. Character death should not be common, even if a player makes a wrong choice. Not stupid, just incorrect.

In any event, any DM who bans Resurrection with a "so sorry so sad, deal with it" attitude and/or boasts he bans the spell (and Raise Dead) is not a DM I want to play with because that's a DM who hates his players.

[Sacrieur]

Then don't expect players to become attached to their characters or build as deep or complex characters as they might otherwise.

This hasn't been my experience as a DM in the least.



In any event, any DM who bans Resurrection with a "so sorry so sad, deal with it" attitude and/or boasts he bans the spell (and Raise Dead) is not a DM I want to play with because that's a DM who hates his players.

A game where death is permanent is a game where every battle and every decision carries that much more weight because of the real cost involved with the player. If you want to play a game with rezzing that's fine since it's in the original rules, but don't say I hate my players. I guess your mistake is assuming that all players are like you and want what you want.

[Remedy]

I fully admit that this is a matter of playstyle and preference, but with one blazing exception in memory, every game I've been in where none of the starting characters were part of the party by the end was very dissatisfying for that very reason. It just loses its sense of internal and personal progression. One time my DM actually lampshaded this fact by having an employer stumped about what to do when he sent the party on a particularly long, arduous quest and the group that came back had not a single person from the group he sent. I did not appreciate the reminder, myself, but... Yeah. If you can't tailor your D&D game to where deaths happen more rarely than they tend to in actual play, then removing Resurrection means removing the ability to grow a character and party dynamic internally throughout play. Many people have fun with that sort of game, which either forsakes roleplay almost entirely, or is instead very dark as characters develop deep and meaningful relationships only to be unceremoniously killed off. Neither of those would be fun for me, but that's not to say there's anything wrong with enjoying that.

[Crake]

A game where death is permanent is a game where every battle and every decision carries that much more weight because of the real cost involved with the player. If you want to play a game with rezzing that's fine since it's in the original rules, but don't say I hate my players. I guess your mistake is assuming that all players are like you and want what you want.

I think a game in which death is permanent is best handled by a different system is the idea. There are so many ways to just outright die in 3.5 just from a single bad roll on a d20 that character death almost becomes an inherent assumption in the game at some point or another. Banning raise dead in a system where "oops you rolled a 1, you die" is a thing is just uncool, because either you're actively staying away from a huge portion of the system by not using those kinds of spells/creatures (in which case a different system where you can utilise more of the mechanics would be better) or you're actively punishing your players for their eventual bad lucky that will inevitably occur.

Just because your niche group is a-ok with rpg-masochism, doesn't mean everyone else is. Your group would likely be an exception to the generalization that Pex mentioned, and I think many people would agree with him.
That is even assuming your group enjoys it as much as you say they do, and you aren't just making assumptions.

[VoxRationis]

Personally I consider this in the context of the campaign world. Either death is beatable at some level of difficulty/resources or it isn't.

If death isn't beatable they high-powered important people never, ever die. This is basically what happens in FR - and that's pretty much the minimal logical extension you hit when you start talking about high-level casters + death beating magic. Any such world has a PC agency problem, because it is forever dominated by a tier of extremely high-powered people who cannot die who have no incentive on letting you join their ranks. That generally isn't any fun.

You can avoid this by making beating death almost impossible to the point that it requires epic quests - but for the PCs that doesn't generally help. If it takes a whole campaign to bring someone back from the dead because you have to actually march into the underworld all Hercules-style to do it the player can't exactly wait around that whole time. As a result, for my money, it seems best to just make bringing back the dead impossible. You do have to shift around some other assumptions as a consequences though.

I am inclined to agree with this kind of reasoning. My group, whether I'm DMing or playing, rarely includes resurrection (though that might be because we tend to play at low levels), and this is to the point where when my DM suggested that a high-level NPC might be resurrected if we killed him, it kind of felt like cheating. But we like a fair amount of player agency in our group—the idea that you could kill the Emperor if you planned well, and that this would actually have a significant effect on anything other than the royal accountant's spreadsheets, appeals to us. Of course, this goes both ways, and we're pretty used to rolling replacement characters—but that's by no means because we're unattached to them. Death effects also tend to be a bit rare in our games, so death is usually something more avoidable if you're cautious.

[Sagetim]

In most of the groups I've played with, there's been a wide disparity between those players who are strongly attached to their characters and those who are just there for the hack. We've had the full spectrum in most of these groups, and yet raising and resurrecting is barely mentioned, much less pursued.

Even in my current Pathfinder group, which is plowing through Runelords right now, there's much more interest in replacement characters than working out contingencies for resurrection. Go figure.



And with this I agree completely.



I really like this approach in terms of player options...although it still leaves me wondering how societies operate with practical resurrection for the elites and death as usual for the masses.

I could see wrenchingly high-magic wars fought over this issue--and in fact it's hard to see how they wouldn't be, which is one reason I'm thinking of simply removing the issue altogether.





… :smalleek: :smallfrown: :smallmad:

I have never heard of a rule like this. Wow.

.

In a game where all of 3.5 made by wizards was available, including some stuff I had that isn't wizards but is 3.5, well, it's one way to keep the suicidal sanchez brothers from coming to avenge their fallen brother(s) every time one of them dies...with each of them being the exact same build...by the same player...>.>

No, seriously, if that rule hadn't been in place, one of the players probably would have kept remaking the same character each time his first one died rather than seeking any kind of rezzing, then probably would have tried to finagle getting his old gear onto his new character in addition to starting wealth. The rule was in place to encourage players to branch out and explore 3.5 with new characters. This was also a game where most of the party died at least once, and a number of true resurrections and greater reincarnations happened instead of rolling up new characters. One was even a freebie as a result of the bard lying that well to a high priest. I think he glibnessed his bluff check up to a total of 70 to lie that the party's spellscale half fey was totally an emissary of bahamut and thus deserved a free true rez in the interest of brotherhood of the good faiths. And that worked.


Also, on reading up on the rest of this thread, I now kind of want to play a psion or something in one of crake's games just to cheat the economy and maybe occasionally freak out locals for the hell of it. It wouldn't even have to be in person freaking out, just leaving certain things in place would be freaky enough. Like fabricating a face into a tree with a high craft (carpentry) check to make it look like the face grew in place naturally...and stealing an annoying pet that people let run amok for some dumb reason and dumping it in quintessence then glueing it to the top of a church or something. You know, stupid little pranks to screw with people. Okay, maybe not the animal abuse...

To be back on topic: I ran a sandbox FR game once, and the players decided they were going to roll an evil party. For most of the campaign, this was not a problem. Because they were low enough level that even when they were actively pursuing evil agendas...like killing drizzt in cold blood, they were still basically beneath the notice of the high powered characters in the setting. Elminster was busy doing epic wizard **** (mostly thwarting thayans), the simbul was busy being queen of aglarond and not caring because they didn't go near her country, and kheblen blackstaff was busy in waterdeep doing waterdeep stuff. Oh, and one of the players one on one'd drizzt pretty easily...his stats in 3.5 are just...bad for his level. It was at that time that the party's fighter earned the title of 'the masked bastard' by lopping drizzt's head off in cold blood (due to a scythe crit) in a surprise round in a public event. While everyone there was busy trying to catch him, the party beguiler stole the body while the party fighter ran off with the head. Eventually drizzt's stuff made it back to him, but the reputation stuck for the party's scythe focused fighter.

How does this relate to the thread? Well, in a high powered game there's nothing to say that the high level characters are going to be busy keeping track of anyone who is 'getting too strong' and waste their time 'keeping them down'. In the Forgotten Realms example, Elminster is too busy being a mary sue to go around wasting players who are getting too powerful, Tzass Tam (or whatever his name is) is too busy being a thayan lich-wizard guy to worry about some players unless the players are thayans and thus in his political spectrum. And he's probably busy counter scheming Elminster...and insulting the Simbul...and doing evil wizard stuff. The Simbul, as mentioned, is busy being a queen. Halaster doesn't really leave undermountain, and Kheblen Blackstaff (as I recall) doesn't make a habit of murdering people, or at least not without good reason (and 'he can cast level 7 or higher spells' is not good reason). The power players in FR are generally too busy with each other to notice up and coming players until after the players have already gotten to near epic or epic level.

Edit: So, you know, the characters who can cast high level rez magic are going to probably be busy in a setting like FR and require you to go on a quest/prove your faith in their god before they even consider taking your money to cover the diamonds cost of casting the spell. Meanwhile, there's an abundance of mid level characters in FR (at least compared to other settings) so finding someone to raise dead you isn't going to be terribly hard.

[Kol Korran]

This is quite an interesting discussion... I've been thinking about this at times, but I like seeing the views here. From what I gather, I think the main issues presented are:

1) Is death meaningful/ A major event?
Those who side with having resurrection methods removed, wish to do so for two main reasons- to keep it as a meaningful event, story wise. If Death and being raised happens regularity, then it's impact is far lessened. The second reason is to keep it as a meaningful "lose condition". A sort of a threat that hovers, and thus it grants more importance to decisions, to survival, and can actually instill fear in critical moments. Making death trivial sort of kills one of the most important dramatic, tragic, suspenseful and meaningful elements of the game.

Though it's a tad long, the video about The death and return of Superman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PlwDbSYicM) tries to deal with this quite nicely I think. (You can skip to 13:50 for the main message). In short "Resurrection kills death".

When I came back to roleplay, in 3.5, the second half of the campaign was far more lethal- 1-2 characters would die at each session. But we had loads of treasure (This was a modules campaign) and access to teleport to the main city. It became a joke when a character died, we teleported to the main city, got rezzed, and then teleported back... This cheapened death considerably, and the game suddenly felt a lot less... real. We just needed the money to be back on the horse, threats seemed... less important now... the game lost quite a bit of it's edge.

2) But multiple deaths reduce attachment and involvement:
If death is often, and characters die fairly randomly, without possibility of return, then many players will not get attached to their characters, since "they're gonna die anyway, right?"

I can understand this way of thinking, but I think this stems from the third point I'll make- "Game's lethality and game system". But I'd like to propose a different perspective- I think that though the attachment of the player does also revolves around the frequency of character death, it is mostly influenced by the player's own personal tendencies to attach and roleplay a character. Some players just love to do so, some really don't. I think it would take drastic levels of lethality to reduce an involved player level of attachment. But it might affect players who are more in the "middle ground".

I mentioned before that in the game I played before, once resurrections were common, the game felt "less real". For most of us players) (Who by that time were in our later twenties/ early thirties), playing an often resurrected character cheapened the experience, and if at all- made us LESS attached to the character. It felt to us as if "cheating", that the character has already lost, and is now "not rightfully there". We needed death to mean something. Perhaps it was because we were older and had people lost, and knew that it MEANT something, or perhaps that death is such an integral part of our existence, that we don't quite know how to cope with the experience of a resurrected character, but for most of us, coming back from the dead soon lent to detachment from the character.

That said, in two later campaigns that I ran, death came upon once in each, after a fairly long play, and the players looked horrified, and quite astonished. both were saved by a timely "Breath of life spell", and I could see the tension come off their features. True, in these cases it felt more "saved from the brink of death", and not "full death" (Sort of), so maybe that is different, but I do feel they would have been quite upset if the character died. Had that happened would they desire Resurrection or to remain dead? I do not know...

The make up of the group and players, and what strengthens and what decreases attachment varies greatly. Some feel Resurrection is crucial to have the character achieve it's goals and destiny, and not fear about the disappointment of death. Some players feel that the threat of death, and an the reality of a very final END is crucial to their feeling of mortality, vulnerability, and thus achievement and heroism. This differs from group to group, from player to player.

3) Game's lethality and game system:
I think this is a very crucial point to the discussion, as I feel that many of the posters come from different gaming experiences. Some people play long campaign where few of the characters die, while some have a far more lethal game, where death is right around the corner, and in the course of a campaign many deaths are assumed.

Though in part the lethality depends on the game system, I think it far more depends on the gaming style. True, D&D 3.5/ PF has built in rules for Resurrection, which implies the basic design assumed many deaths will be common, but From reading some campaign logs and stories (You can check my sig), you can see a lot of different styles, and the styles which have a decreased body count are not less challenging, tense or thrilling.

An interesting but extreme case is The All Guardsmen Party (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?386908-The-All-Guardsmen-Party), a story which begins with a hopeless fight, in which the players play multiple characters, as a battalion in a hopeless fight, where their character are killed by the dozens (No exaggeration) and they keep throwing in more and more, until just a select few survive for the actual campaign. They become more attached to them BECAUSE they survived where so many other have died. The death of so many other characters intensified the attachment to the survivors considerably. Intriguing... It's an interesting read (I haven't read it all, but the start is... a truly unique gaming experience)

You can just read the various RHoD journals to see how the same game, same system, same campaign can be played with a vastly different lethality range. Or the various PF adventure paths logs.

In our group, I know the game is tense and challenging, as the players told me a few times that they feared for their characters (Not just death, but including). Or at least I'd like to think so. Yet characters have rarely died. and we played 3.5 and PF.

It's worth to note 2 methods that I've seen in games, one in FATE core, the other in 3.5 6E (Though it's not limited to that). In Fate, if a character is about to die, the player can call for a sort of "saving grace" (Forgot the name of the actual mechanic)- basically, the player and DM discuss how the character significantly loses, but doesn't die- the character is captured, altered, something important to her is captured/ altered/ destroyed, and so on. A sort of a compromise. The DM can do so as well, for main NPCs! Thus you get more recurring villains. But... FATE is a more narrative gaming system, and may not fit gamist mindset.

But D&D 3.5 had a homebrew (I think) rules, that speak of something similar- Conviction points & the "Death flag". (http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/E6_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Variant_Rules) These rules were especially made for E6, where resurrection is impossible. An interesting approach...

4) Making Resurrection a special quest:
This has been brought up as a solution. Yet, it has it's problems... First, it can fit only a specific kind of game, where death is expected to be rare. Since if it's not, and the players would wish to make many resurrections, it will become pretty hard to make all that many "special quests"... So this approach assumes a low lethality game from the outset.

Another problem, is that you don't always have time for that "special quest"... In the first campaign I ran in 3.5 (Many Facets of Darkness " in my sig), near the end of the campaign the party rushed to a location to disable the main antagonist defenses, and then they were to attack their last location quickly, before it can regroup. IN the final battle of that preliminary incursion, one of the characters died. (And was brought with breath of life). We didn't have time for a long quest! Time pressure was on! Had the character died fully, and not resurrected, the party would have to contend with a replacement character for the final chapter, which might have felt quite... unfulfilling. Sometimes you need to have Resurrection be fast.

5) Resurrection at a "meaningful" price: D&D tries to show it by a lost level/ negative level whatever. This is an interesting mechanic, though I understand there are ways around it (PF resurrection and greater resurrection spells. Again, making it mostly about the money), yet some feel that this is too simplistic, and needs to come at a price that is dramatic, meaningful, and not trivial. A sort of a sacrifice the character (Or those who raise it) are attached to, which might make them feel twice, or most importantly- keep the feeling that something important/ precious was lost...

Flavor wise I think it could be made as a sort of a barter/ deal with the forces of death/ afterlife/ gods/ magic/ whatever...

This is entirely ad hoc for the party, and quite hard to adjudicate. It also heavily depends on the group and players again (What isn't?)- Some might love the story twist, some might resent giving up something precious. Some find the feeling of loss enhancing, some find it interfering with their fun. A matter of maturity, preference and style.

I have never tried it in my groups, and have heard of this only rarely, but I think it might be a nice balance- both keeping resurrection as an available and fast option (A fairly quick ritual away), but keep it meaningful end pricey enough, as not to become to common/ a revolving door. Thus the characters you really care about, you can continue.

My final thought on the matter: To me, character attachment, development and "feel", are crucial to the games I like to play. Death and resurrections can both add or decrease it. I think that this kind of a discussion, about death, coming back, and it's meanings are crucial to the preliminary set up of every group, and every campaign, to set expectations, and adjust accordingly.

Thank you all for making me think of this a bit more!

[Pex]

A game where death is permanent is a game where every battle and every decision carries that much more weight because of the real cost involved with the player. If you want to play a game with rezzing that's fine since it's in the original rules, but don't say I hate my players. I guess your mistake is assuming that all players are like you and want what you want.

Pay attention. I did not say DMs who ban Resurrection hate their players. I said DMs who do so with an attitude of "so sorry so sad, deal with it" and/or boast about it are ones who hate their players. They are being insensitive to the players and their characters.

[AzraelX]

There are so many ways to just outright die in 3.5 just from a single bad roll on a d20

in a system where "oops you rolled a 1, you die" is a thing

you're actively staying away from a huge portion of the system by not using those kinds of spells/creatures
You're definitely overstating the amount of content that is save-or-die. It is not a "huge portion of the system" by any stretch of the imagination. It sounds like you should work on setting correct challenge ratings.


your niche group is a-ok with rpg-masochism

That is even assuming your group enjoys it as much as you say they do, and you aren't just making assumptions.
Were you really so offended by the fact that a lot of people don't enjoy a game in which their character's life is the central point of the universe, making the narrative less believable, less immersive, and causing even death to hold little consequence for them? Because your comments here are unnecessarily rude, leading me to conclude you must have been pretty upset by what you were replying to.

Although your latter comment regarding "assumptions" is unintentionally humorous, since it's only a baseless assumption itself.

In my experience, having played in all positions along the resurrection spectrum: I've found that the more available resurrection is to the party, the less depth the campaign tends to have. There certainly appears to be a relation between them.

Basically all games with shallow poorly-conceived campaigns (and lazy DMs who can't be bothered to create quality content) have resurrection freely available. Meanwhile, the most immersive and well-developed worlds also tend to heavily restrict or remove the ability to resurrect.

That being said, valuing "caution/tactics/strategy" over "half-assed recklessness that relies on magical deus ex machina to fix it" is not "rpg-masochism". It may be hard to imagine that there are players who don't find it painful to simply prepare for the risks an encounter may offer, and that there are DMs who don't find it painful to create encounters with an appropriate-enough CR so survival isn't 100% dependent on RNG. These people do exist, and in great number.

I could then follow up with something about how your niche group is a-ok with masturbatory rpg-coddling, but that line of conversation is starting to get unnecessarily personal, so I'd ask that you reconsider the next time you're thinking of showing how clever you are via witty personal attacks.


Your group would likely be an exception to the generalization that Pex mentioned, and I think many people would agree with him.
I'm not sure if "many" is supposed to represent an impressive quantity or not. Either way, your group would likely be an exception to the generalization that I've mentioned above, and I think many people would agree with me. If you're still not convinced of my opinion, I can come up with more rhetoric like the pseudo-statistics and anecdotal evidence that we both seem to be so good at. Just let me know and I'll get right on it for you :smallsmile:

[Crake]

You're definitely overstating the amount of content that is save-or-die. It is not a "huge portion of the system" by any stretch of the imagination. It sounds like you should work on setting correct challenge ratings.

I think you should take a casual glance at the monster manual and note the amount of creatures with generally save or suck, if not save or die effects at a whole range of challenge ratings. Nymphs, medusas, basilisks, umberhulks, bodaks, vampires, chaos beasts, cockatrice, ghouls, carrion crawlers, just to name a few.

[Pex]

In my experience, having played in all positions along the resurrection spectrum: I've found that the more available resurrection is to the party, the less depth the campaign tends to have. There certainly appears to be a relation between them.

Basically all games with shallow poorly-conceived campaigns (and lazy DMs who can't be bothered to create quality content) have resurrection freely available. Meanwhile, the most immersive and well-developed worlds also tend to heavily restrict or remove the ability to resurrect.

That being said, valuing "caution/tactics/strategy" over "half-assed recklessness that relies on magical deus ex machina to fix it" is not "rpg-masochism". It may be hard to imagine that there are players who don't find it painful to simply prepare for the risks an encounter may offer, and that there are DMs who don't find it painful to create encounters with an appropriate-enough CR so survival isn't 100% dependent on RNG. These people do exist, and in great number.

I could then follow up with something about how your niche group is a-ok with masturbatory rpg-coddling, but that line of conversation is starting to get unnecessarily personal, so I'd ask that you reconsider the next time you're thinking of showing how clever you are via witty personal attacks.


I'm not sure if "many" is supposed to represent an impressive quantity or not. Either way, your group would likely be an exception to the generalization that I've mentioned above, and I think many people would agree with me. If you're still not convinced of my opinion, I can come up with more rhetoric like the pseudo-statistics and anecdotal evidence that we both seem to be so good at. Just let me know and I'll get right on it for you :smallsmile:

Your experience, accepted, but correlation is not causation. The availability of Resurrection and the excellence of a DM and his campaign world have no relation to each other. I can speak of my own experience of playing with excellent DMs and exciting, involved, immersed game worlds yet Raise Dead/Resurrection were available and used, even by PCs on NPCs.

[Vogie]

My experience may be somewhat jaded, as our pathfinder games never had a cleric, or a wizard high enough to cast ressurrection indirectly. We did, however, have druids, and thus the only ability available to us was Reincarnations.

Our DM used that as a character reframing device. Even if you died and were reincarnated as the "same" character, he forced whoever was reincarnated to rethink their character based on the new race/gender that was rolled. This sometimes changed alignments, always changed motivations, and since our homebrew included a Vice vs Virtue mechanic, those would change as well - maybe not into another vice/virtue, but sometimes to a much more exaggerated form.

I do see the possible problem on both fronts - a very deadly campaign could have either a giant flow of money, which could be offset by allowing resurrections, or characters being rerolled regularly.

I could definitely see a DM allowing one-offs baked into character design for sheer recordkeeping purposes. Successive rerolls may feel a bit more like the Borg or Resurrection Man... My character has died due something specific? Better reroll something that beat that thing specifically!

A character may have a (single) twin, or younger sibling that has similar stats/feats to fill in. Older characters may have adult children of the same class ready for vengence. Good Characters who are currently or were recently part of a tribe/guild/battalion/etc may have a similarly statted comrade to jump in, while evil characters may similarly have a coven/krewe/band of outlaws. Wizards could have a single preserved clone on standby, druids could self-reincarnate once, Fighters get one limited instance of the DieHard feat for free, et cetera et cetera.

The other option is to have it baked into the story (but the PCs don't know this ahead of time) - when one character dies, all the characters die either immediately or in short order, and then the quest changes for them all to fight through death and back into life. You could also take a page from OotS and have the "dead" character(s) still around as spirits for a specific purpose, or to accomplish an goal within the campaign.

[jiriku]

So I'm wondering just how attached most players are to being raised or resurrected, and what the effects on a low- to mid-level campaign might be. Do most 3.5 players consider raising and resurrecting to be an integral part of the game? Or is my experience more typical, where most players don't really care?

It varies from player to player and from circumstance to circumstance. I have players who have literal stacks of backup characters prepared in advance, just in case. For them, character death is simply an opportunity to try one of their other ideas. I have players who invest very deeply in a single character, and would absolutely want that character raised from the dead if death should occur. I also know players who are only casually interested in D&D at all -- they play for the social aspect of the game and they often have VERY busy lives outside the game. These casual players often prefer raise dead when their characters die because one character is as good as another to them and raising the old character is less trouble and less time investment than creating a new character.

In most the games, I'm very willing to accept a character death and just roll something new. But I also play in a group that meets just once a month, and we have a campaign that has been running for over three years now. My character is very aggressively involved in worldbuilding -- his schemes and plans pretty much drive the action for the whole party and I'm far more engaged in my own character's plans than I am in whatever flavor-of-the month plot the DM gives us. If that character died and I couldn't have him raised... I'm not sure where I'd be in that game. Trying to start over with a walk-on character who had no involvement in the existing plot and none of the previous character's goals would feel so shallow and contrived. I don't think I would enjoy that game any more under those circumstances.

[Sacrieur]

I think you should take a casual glance at the monster manual and note the amount of creatures with generally save or suck, if not save or die effects at a whole range of challenge ratings. Nymphs, medusas, basilisks, umberhulks, bodaks, vampires, chaos beasts, cockatrice, ghouls, carrion crawlers, just to name a few.

All of which can be undone in the game and have don't really mean much in a discussion about resurrection being banned. There are also defenses. For instance if you're fighting a basilisk fight with a blindfold or avert your eyes. Both of which are recommended in the rulebook.

---

While I am by no means a nice DM that doles out freebies to players, I also don't put them in situations where they die without any choice and give ample and realistic signs that they should be there. Further, I may also give a character or two a "bad feeling". Point in case the party entered a wizard's own demiplane and everyone simply ignored the wizard's advice and kept on trucking head. The party's choices ended up in a member of the party dying without a save.

For the players, it represented a grim reminder that this world can be cold and unforgiving and that their party's momentum can turn on a dime at the smallest mistake. And that they should be ever vigilant because they're really battling for their lives. I've invested incredible amounts of time into my world and the character's place in it. The characters have friends, family, and all sorts of very real influence that can't be replaced by a bunch of gold thrown in by a few players. Killing off one of them represents not just a destruction of their own work, but also all the effort I spent into them as well.

And in the end each victory is that much sweeter knowing you bested the odds and came out on top. I've had characters who don't just pretend they're fearless knowing they can be rezzed anytime, but take huge risks which could very well end in their permanent death, to the awe of the players and characters. It doesn't just let you play in a world; it lets you be in a world.

[BWR]

In most games I play death is pretty permanent until the party can reliably cast Raise Dead on their own. Even after that in many games a dead character is a dead character. Once PC's are rich enough to reliably pay for raising it's still a bit of a toss-up whether we bother to do so. The Mystara game I'm running is a bit of an exception in that not only are the PCs high level (17th and working their way towards 20th and Immortality) but I explicitly said I would approve of the Revolving Door policy of resurrections. This means that I'm free to be extra cut-throat and we'll usually have at least one death per adventure and sometimes more. An individual death is little more than an expensive speed-bump but when you start getting a death (or three) per combat the players and PCs feel appropriately challenged. Easy resurrection doesn't mean a challenge is easy.

One thing I haven't seen too much of either in games I've been in or read about on fora is how gods (or philosophies) may not be willing to just cast any spell for whoever has enough money. In the case of the classic cleric with a god, the god has the final word in what spells the cleric gets and if S/He will allow it to be cast on just anyone. An easy way of restricting resurrection magic is simply saying that the gods don't feel the dead character in question is worth the gift of a renewed life. Or just bring in proper religion and philosophy to issue, not just treat clerics as spell dispensers.

In my aforementioned game a PC died and I randomly determined the Immortal of the church at which the others tried to raise their friend. Turns out it belonged to a rival Immortal of the patron of one PC. The Immortals in question aren't enemies or even particularly interested in working against eachother (she just thinks he is a stodgy, boring old fart, and he thinks she's a flighty air-headed bimbo). So as an additional cost the more powerful caster decided to make a wager with the PC cleric to prove the superiority of his patron's philosophy. The dead PC would be raised in any case but the losing cleric would have to extol the virtues of the winner's Immortal in a very public place. A year or more of game time (several years IG) and some interesting twists and turns later and the two clerics were married with a kid (and you thought this guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Q6U0MYNS0) had it hard) and both Immortals are simultaneously annoyed and smug about the whole situation arguing about who won who over.

[Crake]

All of which can be undone in the game and have don't really mean much in a discussion about resurrection being banned. There are also defenses. For instance if you're fighting a basilisk fight with a blindfold or avert your eyes. Both of which are recommended in the rulebook.

Let's break it down then perhaps. Firstly, they are all undoable, assuming the party either wins, or is able to escape the encounter with the afflicted PC. If you end up having to run away from practically any of them, your friend is as good as dead.

Nymphs - Removable via a spell, but your friend is practically out of the fight. Will slow you down if you need to run away, making escape either impossible, or impractical
Medusas/Basilisks/Cockatrice - Removable by a high level spell, with the chance of death directly tied to it. Impossible to run away with, so requires the party overcome the encounter right away, or leave their friends to likely be broken into tiny pieces.
Umberhulks - Can result in people attacking eachother and resulting in unexpected deaths. Once you are confused, the likelihood that you're going to be able to act normally to avert gaze again will drop dramatically, so a person who gets confused will likely stay that way. If two people get confused and attack eachother, they will stay there attacking eachother until one of them is dead. Impossible to run away from without leaving your friends behind.
Bodaks - Save or die. Plain and simple. Cant avert gaze if you get ambushed by it.
Vampires - Save vs dominate. Has a simple, but short term counter with protection from evil, but you're still generally screwed.
Chaos beasts - Yeah, this one is just nasty. Unless you have the cures prepared that day, or at least readily available in some way, the PC is practically done for.
Ghouls/Ghasts/Carrion Crawlers - Paralysis is as good as dead, one coup de grace and it's over, impossible to escape with party members.

As you can see, many of these effects, while not necessarily causing death in and of themselves, can easily result in death, so they are very relevant to a discussion about banning resurrection.

[Anlashok]

Were you really so offended by the fact that a lot of people don't enjoy a game in which their character's life is the central point of the universe, making the narrative less believable, less immersive, and causing even death to hold little consequence for them?

I never really understood the whole "I think you're being rude, so let me be as snide as possible in saying as much and defeat the whole point of calling you rude in the first place" approach to things.

[Crake]

I never really understood the whole "I think you're being rude, so let me be as snide as possible in saying as much and defeat the whole point of calling you rude in the first place" approach to things.

It's called an ad hominem, and I generally just ignore the rest of people's posts when they include such things, though his argument was also a bit of a strawman, implying I was offended in some way, and that I enjoy games of a particular nature, none of which were asserted by myself in any way. I don't care what people do in their free time with one another, so nothing they do could possibly offend me.

To reply to his statement though, I strongly agree with Pex, in that I don't believe the availability of resurrection really plays a big part in whether or not a game is well run or enjoyable at all. As I said, if you avoid a large portion of the system to avoid the issue of "oops, I rolled a 5% chance of failure on my dice, guess I need to re-roll now", then sure, it can be for the most part avoided, but if you want to utilise the system in it's entirety, then removing spells to bring people back from the dead will just make those encounters horrible for players.

I personally have a player who will refuse to re-roll. If his character is ever irrevocably killed or lost in some way, they don't roll up some carbon copy, or something else, they simply bow out of the game. I'm actually a huge advocate for this kind of mentality too, because I've always hated the idea that characters are just so readily and conveniently replaced upon death. That to me is way more unrealistic than high level players being able to come back from the dead, and as such, in the games I've run, I've never had a player re-roll a character. That is, of course, my own personal opinion, and I don't expect others to follow that at all.

[Sacrieur]

Let's break it down then perhaps. Firstly, they are all undoable, assuming the party either wins, or is able to escape the encounter with the afflicted PC. If you end up having to run away from practically any of them, your friend is as good as dead.

Nymphs - Removable via a spell, but your friend is practically out of the fight. Will slow you down if you need to run away, making escape either impossible, or impractical
Medusas/Basilisks/Cockatrice - Removable by a high level spell, with the chance of death directly tied to it. Impossible to run away with, so requires the party overcome the encounter right away, or leave their friends to likely be broken into tiny pieces.
Umberhulks - Can result in people attacking eachother and resulting in unexpected deaths. Once you are confused, the likelihood that you're going to be able to act normally to avert gaze again will drop dramatically, so a person who gets confused will likely stay that way. If two people get confused and attack eachother, they will stay there attacking eachother until one of them is dead. Impossible to run away from without leaving your friends behind.
Bodaks - Save or die. Plain and simple. Cant avert gaze if you get ambushed by it.
Vampires - Save vs dominate. Has a simple, but short term counter with protection from evil, but you're still generally screwed.
Chaos beasts - Yeah, this one is just nasty. Unless you have the cures prepared that day, or at least readily available in some way, the PC is practically done for.
Ghouls/Ghasts/Carrion Crawlers - Paralysis is as good as dead, one coup de grace and it's over, impossible to escape with party members.

As you can see, many of these effects, while not necessarily causing death in and of themselves, can easily result in death, so they are very relevant to a discussion about banning resurrection.

Most of these are based on "escape is impossible".

That's what bags of holding are for. Just shove your companion in one. Escape is suddenly possible!

[ericgrau]

Easily replacing your character cheapens death as much as resurrection does. Even more so because you lose all attachment to your character's individual quirks. If you're cool with this, then great, if not then a simple solution is to make the new character a level or two behind the old character. He should never be more than 2 levels behind the party because that will make it much harder to contribute and be involved in the game. And as usual he should get extra xp for being behind so that he catches up to the party. So this should only be a temporary condition.

Even damage can quickly and easily kill nearly anyone with enough bad luck, so there is no practical way to remove unlucky death from D&D without rewriting every monster. Furthermore while you can sometimes spend a round saving a disabled ally, you yourself might become dead or disabled within that time. Whether from damage or a special effect. Even if it's damage and you have enough max hp to survive a round of crit(s), you might have already taken a hit by the time your ally is down. D&D is just that fast.

[lord_khaine]

That's pretty much what I had in mind, actually.

Oh yeah i completely agree, its the main reason i stopped reading those books myself.
More or less all the characters i had grown attached to were dead, and it killed my interest because i were disinclined to care about the others, dead became far to cheap there.

[Crake]

Most of these are based on "escape is impossible".

That's what bags of holding are for. Just shove your companion in one. Escape is suddenly possible!

The only case that a bag of holding would help in those circumstances is petrification. The rest are all impractical, if not impossible to get into the bag of holding, and a petrified person would be so heavy that just 1 body would likely break a type 1 or 2 bag of holding.

Blindness is a maybe, if you can get your friend into the bag mid combat, but the rest, not a chance. Good luck getting a confused person into a bag of holding, a person afflicted with corporeal instability is screwed either way, as is a dominated character. A paralyzed character is also a maybe, assuming he hasn't been coup de graced yet, and well, that's not to mention the people who arr just straight up dead already from the pure and simple save or dies.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Because there is an afterlife and because people end up in a domain matching their alignment or deity its is infact logical to assume most people would refuse to return to life. The Complete Divine has a passage talking about for most people when they die they accept that they're dead and move on, even evil people.


In my E6 campaign which lacks raise dead, I gave the players three strikes and your out.. These save them from death, they might lose a limb. (for which there are clockwork replacements). But they'll survive. On the third strike you're dead. An example being the rogue was "killed" but instead just lost the use of an arm. For the remainder of the fight he was unconscious and considered dead by the enemies. He later had to get the arm amputated and replaced with a clockwork arm.

[Sacrieur]

The only case that a bag of holding would help in those circumstances is petrification. The rest are all impractical, if not impossible to get into the bag of holding, and a petrified person would be so heavy that just 1 body would likely break a type 1 or 2 bag of holding.

Blindness is a maybe, if you can get your friend into the bag mid combat, but the rest, not a chance. Good luck getting a confused person into a bag of holding, a person afflicted with corporeal instability is screwed either way, as is a dominated character. A paralyzed character is also a maybe, assuming he hasn't been coup de graced yet, and well, that's not to mention the people who arr just straight up dead already from the pure and simple save or dies.

All I'm hearing are excuses. I gave you one idea of dozens that could fight negative conditions. Honestly if no one in the party prepares themselves adequately for the encounters that's on them and they can just save or suck. The DM or game system shouldn't be held accountable because you didn't think to get some form of fire resistance to journey into a volcano.

[Pex]

Easily replacing your character cheapens death as much as resurrection does. Even more so because you lose all attachment to your character's individual quirks. If you're cool with this, then great, if not then a simple solution is to make the new character a level or two behind the old character. He should never be more than 2 levels behind the party because that will make it much harder to contribute and be involved in the game. And as usual he should get extra xp for being behind so that he catches up to the party. So this should only be a temporary condition.

Even damage can quickly and easily kill nearly anyone with enough bad luck, so there is no practical way to remove unlucky death from D&D without rewriting every monster. Furthermore while you can sometimes spend a round saving a disabled ally, you yourself might become dead or disabled within that time. Whether from damage or a special effect. Even if it's damage and you have enough max hp to survive a round of crit(s), you might have already taken a hit by the time your ally is down. D&D is just that fast.

I'm of the opinion that if your character dies and you bring in a new one it should be the same level as the character who died. It's really the player, not the character, who earned the XP and level that character achieved. It's the player who spent the real world time and effort to achieve his character's accomplishments. It's sad enough to have lost your character. To lose a level or two as well is adding insult to injury.

[Crake]

All I'm hearing are excuses. I gave you one idea of dozens that could fight negative conditions. Honestly if no one in the party prepares themselves adequately for the encounters that's on them and they can just save or suck. The DM or game system shouldn't be held accountable because you didn't think to get some form of fire resistance to journey into a volcano.

That's a very disingenuous stance to take, as you know you can't possibly be prepared for every situation and scenario, and that is also not taking into account times when the players have actively been decieved. Unless you as a DM make sure every encounter is perfectly tailored to their abilities, then there will eventually be that one time when they don't have the answer to whatever the scenario happens to be, that's my point. But then we get into the whole "tailored encounters" debate.

[Selion]

There is an interesting slight difference between d&d 3.5 and pathfinder, i think you may have a better time following the pathfinder rules.
In d&d 3.5 the material component is "diamondS worth 5k gp"
In pathfinder the material component is "diamond worth 5k gp"

Ok, it's just an "s", but a single diamond worth 5k gp is not the easiest thing to find in the world.
I found resurrection spells fairly balanced even in a plot driven campaign:
To prevent the raise dead spell the whole corpse is needed, so you just have to burn the body to ashes.
To prevent a resurrection spell you must destroy the corpse.
You cannot truly prevent a true resurrection (though some charachters may have their name hidden since their birth), but i think there are a few men in an entire nation able to cast a 9th level spell.
In either case you can seal the soul or raise the corpse as an undead, and if you are fighting people that may have access to a resurrection true spell you should have plenty of ways to do so.
These limitations may be the starting points of nice adventures, here there are some ideas:
Low levels: you can have the body of the men the pcs want to resurrect treated with acid and raisen as a zombie, hidden inside a zombie horde.
Middle levels: a noble has been killed, the body has been destroyed, but his lover could chop a lock of hair from the body, and disappeared after that, the pcs must find her to resurrect the noble.
High levels adventures: the king has been murdered and the corpse has been destroyed, the high priest tried to resurrect him but the spell doesn't work, he think the soul has been sealed, but a divination spell reveal that the soul is free, but the name of the king is false. The pcs must investigate to find the true name of the king.

[Crake]

High levels adventures: the king has been murdered and the corpse has been destroyed, the high priest tried to resurrect him but the spell doesn't work, he think the soul has been sealed, but a divination spell reveal that the soul is free, but the name of the king is false. The pcs must investigate to find the true name of the king.

It's worth noting that you don't actually need the name of the deceased, just some unambiguous means of identification, as described in the spell, such as time and place of death. So yeah, name is irrelevant.

[NichG]

Personally I consider this in the context of the campaign world. Either death is beatable at some level of difficulty/resources or it isn't.

If death is beatable then high-powered important people never, ever die. This is basically what happens in FR - and that's pretty much the minimal logical extension you hit when you start talking about high-level casters + death beating magic. Any such world has a PC agency problem, because it is forever dominated by a tier of extremely high-powered people who cannot die who have no incentive on letting you join their ranks. That generally isn't any fun.

You can avoid this by making beating death almost impossible to the point that it requires epic quests - but for the PCs that doesn't generally help. If it takes a whole campaign to bring someone back from the dead because you have to actually march into the underworld all Hercules-style to do it the player can't exactly wait around that whole time. As a result, for my money, it seems best to just make bringing back the dead impossible. You do have to shift around some other assumptions as a consequences though.

I think this is an important point, but it in turn indicates the direction towards a large number of potential resolutions.

For example, if the issue is that the tier of high-powered people act as a top-down control on those wanting to join them (e.g. shutting off PC agency), then its not necessarily the case that you need to make death un-beatable or hard to beat, you just need to make it so that it's impossible to ever become powerful enough to really maintain exclusive control over who else becomes powerful. That could be done in a lot of ways. For example:

- Power has unstable basis. It may be that due to divine favor/astrological alignment/etc, someone has a brief window of time in which they come across power that exceeds anything they will ever have direct access to for the rest of their life. For some people, they use that time to create a more permanent long-term power base that lets them remain in some control, but that power base is always going to be a little weaker than people who are at their peak.

- The potential for power has a very large random 'innate talent' factor and is hard to detect or divine upon. So while the current tyrant may be able to sustain their power forever, maybe it's hard-capped at Lv12, and they can't easily find the guy whose cap is Lv20 to kill him before he gets powerful enough to be a threat. Of course, this just extends things a little, because the Lv20 cap guy will then be able to hold his power until the Lv25 cap guy comes along, and so on, so you basically have setting-level power creep. But that would be fine for a single campaign taking place at some specific part of that power creep progression; it would just start to break if you wanted to do a series of campaigns in the same setting.

- Death is beatable, but comes with a permanent cost in someone's peak potential. For example, something like 'every time you come back, your level cap irreversibly drops by 1'. Someone who manages to never die will always be able to be more powerful than someone who has had to claw their way back. In addition, if ways of avoiding old age also suffer from this, then while death may be ultimately beatable, weakness is always eventually inevitable.

- Another variation of this is that death is beatable, but killing someone enables the killer to steal some of their power. So its more 'can you hold on to something?' than 'can you avoid losing everything?'

- Related: Death is beatable, but doing takes a very long time. This is the 'slain demons are banished for 100 years' model. Even if there are powerful beings who can keep coming back, whenever they're killed they basically have to climb their way back up the heap and rebuild everything they had put in place to ensure their continued power. This kind of resurrection is mostly useless for adventurers of course. You could do an interesting campaign with this where the PCs are souls that get constantly reincarnated every century (keeping their levels/etc, so gradually becoming more powerful), where a given century would take place over a fixed, small number of sessions. So if someone's character dies, they play a backup NPC until the next mini-arc. Might be a bit rough if its more than 2 or 3 sessions per era.

Probably we can come up with several other variations...

[Selion]

It's worth noting that you don't actually need the name of the deceased, just some unambiguous means of identification, as described in the spell, such as time and place of death. So yeah, name is irrelevant.

Yep i re-read the spell description, true resurrection is basically unstoppable...
Anyway a single diamond worth 25000 gp is quite unique. 25000 gp are 250 kg of gold. Currently gold is exchanged at 30 euros/g (currency for gold may change in base of the campaign setting used :P ), so you must find a diamond worth 7,5 millions of euros. The record for the most valuable diamond ever sold is 30 millions of dollars.
(Here goes the question: do deyties look at exchange rates before conferring divine powers? :D )

[Rubik]

I'm of the opinion that if your character dies and you bring in a new one it should be the same level as the character who died. It's really the player, not the character, who earned the XP and level that character achieved. It's the player who spent the real world time and effort to achieve his character's accomplishments. It's sad enough to have lost your character. To lose a level or two as well is adding insult to injury.Plus, being two levels behind merely compounds the problem of losing characters.

I played in a game with a rule like that, only when you died, your new character was a couple of levels behind the one you were playing when you died, which meant we often had one or two characters at level 15, while everyone else was level 7 or 8 (or even lower) because they kept dying from being increasingly far behind the RNG.

[ericgrau]

I'm of the opinion that if your character dies and you bring in a new one it should be the same level as the character who died. It's really the player, not the character, who earned the XP and level that character achieved. It's the player who spent the real world time and effort to achieve his character's accomplishments. It's sad enough to have lost your character. To lose a level or two as well is adding insult to injury.
To lose nothing makes players careless though, and it should be emphasized that the loss is temporary. The rules give bonus xp for being behind.


Plus, being two levels behind merely compounds the problem of losing characters.

I played in a game with a rule like that, only when you died, your new character was a couple of levels behind the one you were playing when you died, which meant we often had one or two characters at level 15, while everyone else was level 7 or 8 (or even lower) because they kept dying from being increasingly far behind the RNG.
That's why the loss should be capped at 2 levels behind. Plus if your group was playing with the standard xp rules every low level should have been power leveled simply for tagging along and keeping themselves alive in combat. At 4 levels behind they should be leveling up practically every fight unless it was a trivial encounter. So I don't see how it got to 8 unless they kept charging in and dying every single fight.

[Milo v3]

To lose nothing makes players careless though, and it should be emphasized that the loss is temporary. The rules give bonus xp for being behind.
It's not losing nothing though. They lost wealth, spell slots, either lost constitution or gained a negative level. But most importantly, they lost play time.


Plus if your group was playing with the standard xp rules every low level should have been power leveled simply for tagging along and keeping themselves alive in combat. At 4 levels behind they should be leveling up practically every fight unless it was a trivial encounter. So I don't see how it got to 8 unless they kept charging in and dying every single fight.
I think I've heard that this isn't true anymore in pathfinder unfortunately. Still works in 3.5e, but thought I should say.

[Pex]

To lose nothing makes players careless though, and it should be emphasized that the loss is temporary. The rules give bonus xp for being behind.


If one player keeps losing his character repeatedly the problem is the player not resurrection or playing a new character. If multiple players keep losing characters the problem is the DM not resurrection or playing a new character. If character death is rare with players being involved in the world and caring about their characters, then character death has a meaningful input with the sense of loss being great. The new character at the same level honors the player for all that he did with his previous character.

[Hal0Badger]

I always thought resurrection spell tree balanced by its availability and "price", though I prevent players accessing high level divine magic via temple services and I play below WBL in general, so that price is a real chunk of money. Eventhough I would agree True resurrection is kind of overpowered, by the time players have access to that kind of magic I have larger issues as DM :).

First of all, raise dead requires 5.000 gp worth of diamond, not gold but a specific 5k worth diamond, drops a level, and must be cast in a certain time. I have never seen a player writes in his inventory 5000 gp worh diamond, in case someone dies.

Resurrection is kind of more powerful I would agree, but it requires at least 13th level cleric. In my games, best case scenario, you would have access to 5th level spells as temple services, and spells like raise requires favor, alongside with the money (small quests). The reason behind this, I don't think temples should give away their powerful services just for donations. Resurrecting a powerful general when you are on the Crusade of St Cuthbert is acceptable, resurrecting a mercenary who pays some sort of money (and of course provides the diamond) is not acceptable.

Even if your party cleric can cast this, and justify the meaning, it is still 10.000 gold worth of diamond, possibly a detour from the adventure (with consequences), and a "level loss" which cannot be replaced. I would allow this, this is punishment enough.

Another thing is revivify spell, if your party cleric can reach you in 1 round, you have not actually died, party cleric just prevented your soul leaving the body, with a spell and cured that fatal blow.

Also, I think I should mentioned that I do not allow Revenance+Revivify combo, simply the time spent in the Revenance is towards to your "death-time-limit" for the purpose of resurrection spells.

I think the trick for me is, not disabling resurrection but making it a bit harder.


P.S: I do not think there is a correlation between how good a DM you are and allowing-banning Resurrection. Every game I played so far felt different, depending on the DM. If you balance your encounters in a manner that keeping in mind that they cannot resurrect, those games could be a lot fun as well.

[Sagetim]

It's not losing nothing though. They lost wealth, spell slots, either lost constitution or gained a negative level. But most importantly, they lost play time.


I think I've heard that this isn't true anymore in pathfinder unfortunately. Still works in 3.5e, but thought I should say.

I'm pretty sure Pathfinder replaced 'lose a level or 2 con if you were level 1' with some form of rez sickness. And I think it tossed out the cr chart for xp based on party level and just has flat xp rewards based on the CR. So the xp gap in a pathfinder game is going to stick around, but it's only going to be based on how long it took to get you raised instead of how long it took to get you raised and also an entire level's worth of xp.

[Milo v3]

I'm pretty sure Pathfinder replaced 'lose a level or 2 con if you were level 1' with some form of rez sickness. And I think it tossed out the cr chart for xp based on party level and just has flat xp rewards based on the CR. So the xp gap in a pathfinder game is going to stick around, but it's only going to be based on how long it took to get you raised instead of how long it took to get you raised and also an entire level's worth of xp.

*Looks it up*
Seems they changed it to permanent negative levels rather than lose a level. I'd say that's worse than "rez sickness".

[Crake]

*Looks it up*
Seems they changed it to permanent negative levels rather than lose a level. I'd say that's worse than "rez sickness".

"Permanent" negative levels are permanent in the same sense that "permanent" ability drain is permanent. They last until you get rid of them, all you need is a restoration spell and you're good.

[ericgrau]

If one player keeps losing his character repeatedly the problem is the player not resurrection or playing a new character. If multiple players keep losing characters the problem is the DM not resurrection or playing a new character. If character death is rare with players being involved in the world and caring about their characters, then character death has a meaningful input with the sense of loss being great. The new character at the same level honors the player for all that he did with his previous character.

So then something is lost, but it is role-play history/attachment instead. Then this approach only works if the difficulty is low enough and/or the players are good enough. That's an interesting take. I suppose it's fine if you don't want to run a super harsh campaign.

The only thing is death can happen in D&D purely from bad luck, quite frequently, so you have to be ready to accept that player history will usually be limited, it's only a matter of luck, skill and difficulty as to how limited it will be.

[Sagetim]

Yep i re-read the spell description, true resurrection is basically unstoppable...
Anyway a single diamond worth 25000 gp is quite unique. 25000 gp are 250 kg of gold. Currently gold is exchanged at 30 euros/g (currency for gold may change in base of the campaign setting used :P ), so you must find a diamond worth 7,5 millions of euros. The record for the most valuable diamond ever sold is 30 millions of dollars.
(Here goes the question: do deyties look at exchange rates before conferring divine powers? :D )

Well, don't forget that the real world has a cartel that acts to keep the prices of diamonds high. Another problem with this calculation is that coins made of a valuable metal aren't always pure that metal. Hell, Dragonlance uses Steelpieces instead of Gold Pieces, doesn't it?

My point being that it's hard to put a real world value on these things, because I don't think the player's handbook or what have you specifies anything other than the weight and general dimensions of the coins (something like 50 to a pound, which would equate the currency to a trade bar of gold, but generally you want to keep people from melting your coins down into trade bars, so one means of disincentivising that kind of behavior would be to make the coins an alloy of gold and something worth not nearly as much).

That said if the players handbook does specify that the coins are actually pure gold then there's an untapped scam there for players to make ridiculous sums of money. Probably through counterfeiting. Which just reminds me of the average amount of gold in the standard piece of ankh morpork currency: Just a little bit less than the average amount of gold in sea water.

[Rubik]

Well, don't forget that the real world has a cartel that acts to keep the prices of diamonds high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giu23Ii3PAA

[Sagetim]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giu23Ii3PAA

We may have stumbled on the great secret as to why they hoard gems the way they do: By keeping the price of diamonds high, you can use fewer of them for resurrections. Other gems just fit the theme while serving as a cover, and you have to keep something in circulation or...well, you don't have control over it's value then.