Removal of death's negative levels

[Hardestadt]

Hi everyone, :smallbiggrin: i have a question specifically concerning the negative levels gained by dying. How can these
be removed? I am looking for any viable way that follows the rules. Thanks in advance :smallsmile:.

PS: Greater restoration is not one such way since it specifically states that "Greater restoration does not restore levels or Constitution points lost due to death."

[Keral]

I don't think there's a way to do it without resorting to houserules.

Also, for what is worth, we did this with my group. Dying with no level penalties. It was "good" for the first few levels. We were all more or less new to the game but as we progressed it became a bit of a problem. Players would do stupid things without an ounce of tactics. So we decided to reinstate the level penalty. Although a bit softer than what it should be ( we made spells a bit cheaper)

[Necroticplague]

Thought Bottles can restore you to a previous experience level, thought this requires some foresight to store the experience in the bottle ahead of time (which I find isn't usually too hard to figure out who's gonna die next).

[Firest Kathon]

Are you playing D&D 3.0/3.5 or Pathfinder? In Pathfinder, the negative levels can be removed with Restoration (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/restoration/).

[Hardestadt]

We're playing 3.5e, in a somewhat high difficulty campaign. Thus there's a lot of dying -_-

[Gemini476]

I don't know how relevant this is to your campaign since it's something that's really commonly houseruled away, but the standard XP rules mean that you get a 13-43% XP bonus if you're one level behind the encounter level. 20-80% if you're two levels behind the encounter level.

Levels eventually even out, so even permanent level loss and multiplayer XP penalties and whatnot don't really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

"XP is a River" affects more than just crafting - it's a catchup mechanic.

[tiercel]

We're playing 3.5e, in a somewhat high difficulty campaign. Thus there's a lot of dying -_-

Well Gemini476 is correct that the direct RAW way of handling this that the XP system is supposed to give more to those who are behind (something not all DMs realize they should compute separately). Also, it is certainly more than allowable for the DM to at least partly offset death XP penalty with a story award for a character who took a major risk/sacrifice to "take one for the team." Also, some magic cheats death w/o XP loss (but with a catch, whether it's revivify's short window of opportunity, immediate-action spells that can prevent death but have to be right there ready to go, or true resurrection's low availability/high gp cost).

I would submit that the problem here seems less "how do we mitigate XP loss from death" and more "the campaign is high difficulty and involves a lot of PC death." Some of this might be addressable from the player end (optimization choices including better divination/defenses, or better offensive punch, or even PC paranoia) but some of it from the DM's end (encounter design/balance for your group, understanding the kind of game you want to play). .....talk to DM?

[Piranha424]

If you're playing in 3.5 there isn't really a way to restore lost levels from death except by preventing the death in some way. The reason for this is that unlike in Pathfinder death does not impoose a permanent negative level but instead actually removes experience points so as to put you in the middle of the previous level. The change in XP from encounters for lower levels does help but without a spell like Revivify or a DM that will go with a negative level house rule instead of actual concrete XP loss you can't get that level back except by regaining the XP.
As another option, i remember playing a pretty tough 3.5 campaign and at a couple points we were almost party wiped going to the "next area" we decided as players that what we really needed to do was grind some XP and as characters we decided that we would - since we weren't under any particular time crunch we could determine - head to a major city and see if we could find someone who needed a party of our level for some sort of small quest in order to hone our combat abilities before facing off against someone clearly more powerful than us.

[Dagroth]

We're playing 3.5e, in a somewhat high difficulty campaign. Thus there's a lot of dying -_-

Work towards gathering more resources before taking on the next serious challenge. It may be a high difficulty campaign because you're progressing the story a little too fast. This can happen when a well-designed group smashed through a set of encounters they're built to defeat, but don't get a lot of treasure from.

[Crake]

the answer is to be an outsider or elemental (without the native subtype, that ruins the effect) and be brought back to life with limited wish. Limited wish is explicitly capable of bringing back outsiders and elementals to life, with no mention of duplicating any specific spell, or of granting any level loss. 300xp for casting limited wish is a bargain compared to losing a level at higher levels.

[Malroth]

planar bind some nightmares and adventure via astral projection. that way when you die you just wake up with a headache.

[Gemini476]

Some more options:
Revivify from the Spell Compendium is a 5th-level Cleric spell that revives you with no level or CON loss but needs to be cast within one round of death.
Last Breath is a 4th-level Druid spell from the Spell Compendium that's a no-downsides Reincarnate that needs to be cast within one round of death.

If you need to, you can extend that death timer by one minute/caster level by casting Revenance (Blackguard, Cleric, Paladin 4; Bard 6) on them - it revives someone who's been dead for one round/CL without penalties, but they die at the end of the duration. At which point you can Revivify them.


The best option is probably to stop dying so much, though. Stop trying to punch above your weight-class, stop taking unnecessary risks, try to minimize death in general by working with the team, stuff like that. Raise Dead should be a safety net, not a fact of life.