Assassins and Resurrection

[SanusCompleo]

In what world... would this make sense to include both. Couldn't any noble with sufficient wealth (Or even those without liquid wealth that could be liquidated) simply put in his will an order of resurrection shipped to a local chapel and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, he's up to his old tricks again?

Resurrection isn't strict to D&D, it's in all sorts of RPG games. I've not had much experience as a GM having my characters get resurrections, but I do recall house-ruling it in my very first game to have exorbitant costs, (Slightly moreso than that of a very valuable gem, and permission of a deity that's always going to give permission anyway). What do you folks do about it? I'm world/setting building, and I was just working on new grappling/strangulation house rules when I realized this. For those people who enjoy the usefulness of having Resurrection of any sort handy, would you eradicate the usefulness of assassins? Perhaps have people who kill others (And want them to stay dead) have to perform a ritual in order to keep them that way? Or maybe simply burn the body? Are most people in your world too weak to have access to such abilities, save any Player Characters? Perhaps the world is friendlier, and assassins have little use being there? Maybe deities just wouldn't allow those who weren't worthy to be resurrected. In which case, those would those who committed the murder be punished for it, or would they allow the resurrected individual to it? What are the thoughts of the playground?

[Analytica]

In my opinion, this is an excellent justification for an Assassin PrC. Just make it so that their Death Attack makes non-epic ressurrection impossible. They are expensive, weird cultist things with strange magics, but unlike most others, they get the job done permanently.

[Drglenn]

Maybe they're just using death as a temporary punishment. Most systems have you come back weaker from a res and it usually costs a lot of money. You'll definitely remember your death so that may be a deterrent from continuing whatever you were doing beforehand.

[Marillion]

Another thing is that casual resurrection may be frowned upon by the churches. Just because the victim CAN pay to be resurrected does not mean the priest has to accept his money. It may be subject to approval, and even then, not every person that dies is meant to return. If he finds someone less savory to resurrect him, people are going to ask all sorts of questions, seeing as how he was, you know, dead and the church wouldn't raise him.

[Zetapup]

In addition to all the other points raised by others, why would someone resurrect the nobleman if they receive his fortune when he dies? (I'm assuming a relative is setting up the resurrection and generally ruthless noblemen are more likely to do well and/or be assassinated.) Also, the "assassination" would produce a fairly sizable dent in the nobleman's account.

[Xefas]

I can't recall any games off the top of my head other than D&D where resurrection is that easy, but-

Another thing is that casual resurrection may be frowned upon by the churches. Just because the victim CAN pay to be resurrected does not mean the priest has to accept his money. It may be subject to approval, and even then, not every person that dies is meant to return. If he finds someone less savory to resurrect him, people are going to ask all sorts of questions, seeing as how he was, you know, dead and the church wouldn't raise him.

This does raise a good point. Even if you're playing in a world where the folks with Raise Dead aren't the epic few heroes already busy saving the world from something or other, if Baron von Twirlin'Stache gets off'd, there's a good chance the Church of Goodfist isn't going to want him running around again, even if he were willing to pay above-and-beyond the money required for Raise Dead.

If he goes to less scrupulous sources, like the Church of Badfist, one, the Badfistites might want a little extra something for their troubles, like your eternal soul, or a Mark of Injustice, or a Geas or something. And, two, once the Goodfistites see you up and about without their aid, don't be surprised when they make a public declaration that you've sought un-Holy means to return to life, and as such, there's a good chance you're objectively Crotchety Mean, or whatever those alignments are.

Even if Baron von Twirlin'Stache is already Lord of Felldarkbloodville, it's at least a nice neon sign over his head saying "Hey, Paladins, you can totally just murder this guy and not get in trouble. He's working with dark gods and such." and there's always some god-fearing paladin out there just waiting to alleviate his manslaughter-blueballs.

If we're assuming the assassin'd person is Duke Hugglesworth, and he's the kind of person that the Church of Goodfist would happily rezz', one wonders why the hell he wants to leave his palatial ecstasy (which is to say that he has his own palace made of drugs) in the afterlife to begin with. If he's some kind of saint in that regard though, then, well, what the hell? Maybe good people should have the perk of being able to piss away small fortunes on a second chance to do good. It doesn't exactly make me weep in injustice.

[NichG]

There's a distinction between Assassin the PrC, and Assassin the job. I'd imagine that in a world with easy resurrection, assassins would be people who can:

- Kill in very specific and exotic ways, to send a message to the target.
- Kill in ways that are hard to come back from.

The first would be a 'death is just a threat' type thing. Even if a nobleman can bring his daughter back from the dead, they wouldn't want to see her suffer or die and bear the marks of that experience. Worse yet if its some kind of ritual killing that made her soul spend a night in Baator or something else particularly awful.

The second would involve knowing all the sorts of tricks that make resurrection difficult. Use Flesh to Stone instead of killing the target, and then do various things with the not-technically-dead statue. Destroy the body, making it harder to recover the person. Trap the soul in a repository so there's nothing to 'come back'. Trick them into drawing Void from a Deck of Many Things. Animate them as undead, so their physical form needs to be destroyed before they can be brought back. Convince them to take their own life through mind-altering substances and other torments so their soul chooses to refuse resurrection. Kill them with old age somehow (tricky, but how about polymorphing them into a mayfly?)

In principle, there'd also be a third type of job, which would be making sure people are dead during particular important moments. They might come back later, but if the captain of the guard is 'indisposed' while the city is under siege, the damage is done.

Of course, if resurrection isn't universally available, the traditional sort of assassin still makes sense in the majority of cases.

[Cespenar]

Not to mention price. I don't think no one's going to ask for the material components' worth only - that'd be silly. For a high level spell of such particular importance, I'm seeing at least %100 profits, if not more, making the price a rather hefty 10k+ gp for Raise Dead, 20k+ gp for Rez and 50k+ for True Rez.

[NecroRebel]

I like the Girl Genius method of handling resurrections: if you die, all of your titles, lands, etc. go to your next-of-kin, even if you are alive afterwards. So if Baron von Twirlinstache dies, well, he's not actually a Baron anymore, and is definitively a usurping tyrant if he becomes the ruler again, so paladins no longer need any excuse to kill him again (since he's not a legitimate ruler by any metric), the people won't respect him anymore, and the other nobles will feel justified in ganging up on and crushing the upstart.

[NichG]

One thing that should be considered though is, the people who are most likely the targets of assassination are also the people who most likely have written the laws on dead, resurrection, and inheritance. Why would you pass a law that makes your next of kin less likely to pay for your return from death, or a law that causes you to lose your belongings should something unfortunate but reversible happen.

I'd imagine the major power balance would be the churches themselves, but in a setting with multiple gods competition will put the churches at a disadvantage against the secular government. If one church refuses to resurrect nobles who die from various things, another church will offer in exchange for a favor, and will end up getting more support from the nobles. If there were just one church, or one particularly strong church, I could see the church itself trying to get said inheritance laws passed to discourage casual resurrections.

On the other hand, a church could gain a lot of power making resurrection law easy on the returned, but controlling who gets to come back and who doesn't. They essentially get to pick the rulers in charge by choosing not to return the ones they don't like. Plus, I could easily imagine a corrupt church (or a church of a deity that approves of this sort of thing) saying that someone who has gone against them after being resurrected is being 'called back to (deity)', in effect calling for their death in the guise of a positive thing.

[Conners]

I'd be more worried about the dozens of HP that characters have... I mean, you set up your assassination perfectly, and poison the noble's food: He makes his Fort save against the venom. You try it agian, he gets 4 Strength drained, and has to rest in bed for a while....

Plan B: Shoot him with a crossbow from a window, when he is at the markets without his armour. BAM!! Right in the chest!! You quickly make your escape from the building, proud to have accomplished your mission.
Hour later, you check up on the noble... he's still shoppin, and didn't even notice that 10 points of damage your bolt inflicted. The bodyguards assume it was a childish prank.

And THAT is why ressurection isn't a problem in DnD and similar systems... most assassins can't get far enough to worry about that problem.

One thing that should be considered though is, the people who are most likely the targets of assassination are also the people who most likely have written the laws on dead, resurrection, and inheritance. Why would you pass a law that makes your next of kin less likely to pay for your return from death, or a law that causes you to lose your belongings should something unfortunate but reversible happen.

I'd imagine the major power balance would be the churches themselves, but in a setting with multiple gods competition will put the churches at a disadvantage against the secular government. If one church refuses to resurrect nobles who die from various things, another church will offer in exchange for a favor, and will end up getting more support from the nobles. If there were just one church, or one particularly strong church, I could see the church itself trying to get said inheritance laws passed to discourage casual resurrections.

On the other hand, a church could gain a lot of power making resurrection law easy on the returned, but controlling who gets to come back and who doesn't. They essentially get to pick the rulers in charge by choosing not to return the ones they don't like. Plus, I could easily imagine a corrupt church (or a church of a deity that approves of this sort of thing) saying that someone who has gone against them after being resurrected is being 'called back to (deity)', in effect calling for their death in the guise of a positive thing.

...Good grief, laws already need to take so many crazy things into account. With magic and ressurection added in, legal stuff would become an even larger nightmare...

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If you have Greek-style pantheons, I can't imagine secular governments. While some DnD gods might let mortals believe whatever self-imaged-reality they want to--most would probably be insulted that people would refuse to accept deities' existence. Combine that fact, with the ability to make your priests control the weather, send curses, and appearances of godly avatars--I doubt there'd be much safety for a secular institution (unless it was so small, it was below the gods' concern).

Also, why would churches not like people being resurrected from the dead? Now, religious organizations in a leftist nation tend to want to get away from anything, "miraculous" because it isn't the "popular orientation" (secularism is the "politically correct" orientation). Note that most rightist nations today, are actually leftist by the past standard, so this'd work to an extent on America and so-forth as well.

Now, if they weren't showing off to the athiests about how "scientific" they were: Religious leaders would probably like resurrection. Quite a good slogan to say, "Get good with our god, and you will live to a ripe old age, garunteed!". The cue would be long to pay homage to such deities, in a modern era where most white-collar workers could afford a resurection--ESPECIALLY since we can make diamonds nowadays ("millions of years" my @$$...).

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Yes, the religious leaders - if they did it right - would be the main rulers of the world. I mean, heck, if your priests can send down lightning bolts, as a common thing (as opposed to the RL religious doctrines, where such divine power is considered rare, or made-up), you have a pretty good military to boot. The slogan, "Want epic, cosmic power? Join our cult, and obtain it!" would become much more effective...

So yeah, they ought to be some of the main figures of the world... assuming, that is, that there isn't a lot of in-fighting among the various gods... If there is, political struggles on the mortal and divine plains might take up too much of the religions' time, for them to properly rule the world.

[Quellian-dyrae]

One way it could work is if there's a much smaller window of opportunity to bring someone back. If most resurrection-capable casters can only bring someone back within, say, a day or so of death, and need the body, the assassin's job becomes harder (they have to either hide the body, conceal the murder, maybe even impersonate the victim for a time), but if they can delay a resurrection long enough, they can prevent it.

Another possibility might be to play up the "coming back to life is a traumatic experience" angle. High-level heroes and adventurers, people who routinely throw themselves into battle against howling hordes of warriors and giant monsters that defy description, can throw it off with little to no lasting impact. But your average person or noble might suffer severe mental trauma that could even be entirely personality-altering or incapacitating.

[Tengu_temp]

Resurrection isn't strict to D&D, it's in all sorts of RPG games.

Like Xefas said already, I don't recall any non-DND RPGs where resurrection is so easily available. Most of them either don't have it at all or have it as a very powerful, extraordinarily rare ability. Needless to say, I prefer it that way - nothing kills the dramatism of a death scene more than the knowledge the dead character will be back soon anyway.

[Arbane]

Check out Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos stories - the main character is an assassin in a world with (relatively) free access to resurrection magic. There's three ways to assassinate someone: The first way is just to 'send them a message' by killing them, knowing perfectly well they'll be back. The second way makes them REALLY dead, since resurrection in that world won't work if the brain is destroyed. The third way uses massively illegal magic weapons that eat the victim's soul, and kills them Deader Than Dead.

[beyond reality]

All it means is that you need a bit of strategy. Sure, just stabbing some guy and running isn't likely to work, so instead kidnap them. Take away the body after they die (which is easy, all it takes is a dimension door spell and you and the corpse are gone) or kidnap them before they die. Hide the body, feed it to pigs, whatever.

Now, you still have to deal with True Resurrection. But that's a level 9 spell so that's really rare. But if you think there's a risk that a wandering level 17+ cleric might come by and happen to resurrect the dead guy then just animate them as a minor undead like a skeleton and bury them in the ground or drop them in a lake. viola!

[Madeiner]

Nice topic.

Sometime ago, i made a topic about laws, resurrections and death penalty on enworld.
Here's the discussion: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...urrection.html

That's mostly about the laws, though, but still interesting.

About the resurrection itself, remember that the spells say the SOUL must be willing to return. That is, not YOU as the person who died, but your soul.
In my games, this means that you are either a PC (because of gameplay reasons), or a NPC whose SOUL wants to return because it has something unfinished to do, like a very important quest.
If you are an adventurer about to save the world, you get rezzed. If you are a magician about to uncover the secret of the spell that's gonna make life easier for everybody, you get rezzed. If you truly want to save, or even avenge, someone you love(d), you get rezzed.
In most other cases, the spell simply fails.

Other than that, in my games, returning from the dead is an ordeal. You will probably suffer some long lasting consequences.
I had a PC suiciding himself because he didn't like the result of his Reincarnate (he reincarnated as human and he was an halfling). He was brought back from the dead, but he suffered a mental illness and he tried to suicide every time things weren't going as he wanted. It took a while to cure him.

In another occasion, the government wanted to resurrect soldiers lost in an war. The government invaded a country with an excuse that their enemies were controlled by demons and had powerful weapons hidden in their city. There were no weapons of course, but they found a lot of resources to fuel their engines of war (sounds familiar? :P).
They wanted to resurrect the soldiers to gain more approval from the common people.
However, having tried to resurrect a few dozen, they noticed that more than half of the souls didn't want to return, and those who were resurrected suffered serious mental diseases (paranoia, fear of everything, etc). So they decided against resurrecting any more soldiers.

[Arbane]

About the resurrection itself, remember that the spells say the SOUL must be willing to return. That is, not YOU as the person who died, but your soul.
In my games, this means that you are either a PC (because of gameplay reasons), or a NPC whose SOUL wants to return because it has something unfinished to do, like a very important quest.
(SNIP)
In most other cases, the spell simply fails.

Makes sense, at least for people who ended up in one of the pleasant afterlives.

Which leads to the worrisome conclusion that Resurrection will work more often on evil people than good ones...

And yes, PTSD sounds like a perfectly rational reaction to _getting killed_.

[WalkingTarget]

Check out Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos stories - the main character is an assassin in a world with (relatively) free access to resurrection magic. There's three ways to assassinate someone: The first way is just to 'send them a message' by killing them, knowing perfectly well they'll be back. The second way makes them REALLY dead, since resurrection in that world won't work if the brain is destroyed. The third way uses massively illegal magic weapons that eat the victim's soul, and kills them Deader Than Dead.

The brain thing isn't the only method to do that second case. Revivification also won't work after approx. 3 days no matter what and it's also possible to ward a body so as to prevent it from happening (although, a skilled enough sorcerer can probably get around that eventually - although it might be easier to just track down whoever made the ward and... persuade them to remove it). It's also possible to just plain fail at the attempt - spells generally aren't fire-and-forget in the setting. There are relative levels of skill involved in just about any magic use.

It's also worth noting that revivification is a relatively recent development in the setting, along with teleportation - one of a very small number of settings that I'm familiar with that has shown more than the standard fantasy setting medieval stasis.

[Berenger]

Another possibility might be to play up the "coming back to life is a traumatic experience" angle. High-level heroes and adventurers, people who routinely throw themselves into battle against howling hordes of warriors and giant monsters that defy description, can throw it off with little to no lasting impact. But your average person or noble might suffer severe mental trauma that could even be entirely personality-altering or incapacitating.

George R. R. Martin does this in A Song of Ice and Fire. Ser Beric Dondarrion ist slain no less than six times, but each resurrection seems to hollow out his body and soul alike (to the point of Beric forgetting childhood memories or the face of his wife, losing the ability to savour the taste of a cup of wine, not really feeling emotions anymore, bearing the gruesome death-wounds all over his pale, emaciated body etc.). After the sixth resurrection he is only a shadow of his former personality and begs his priest to "not bring him back again". I haven't read the book for some time, though, perhaps someone else can elaborate.

[Mastikator]

In a world where money can buy you magic, and magic can make you immortal, the rich are immortal.

Assassins who kill off these rich immortal jerks would probably use some kind of soul binding/destroying necromancy to keep said victim from coming back.

[Madeiner]

Makes sense, at least for people who ended up in one of the pleasant afterlives.

Which leads to the worrisome conclusion that Resurrection will work more often on evil people than good ones...

Well, if we want to take planes into consideration, then around a third of evil people souls will end up in carceri, and there's no escape from there. Some will end up in the grey wastes, and no escape from there either.

Also, good people i think are more likely to have the driving force to return to the living. Loss of loved ones, wanting to rid the world of evil, etc. I see these drives as "stronger" than "conquer the world because i want to", and thus more likely to return.

Other than that, a part of the souls will return as a ghost, especially when the thing that one MUST COMPLETE is especially evil or twisted.

However, i'd be partial to changing evil people as they return to the living a lot more than good people.
It is true that once you return, you retain no memory of where you have been. But if your soul ended up in hell, then it has probably been tortured by devils and suffered all kind of bad things.
In my games, if an evil one returns, then it will probably become a mad psychopath with extreme mental diseases. That doesnt make him "less" or "more" evil... just different. Like, the only emotions left will be rage, hate, the desire to make suffer anything that is living.

[horngeek]

In the Pathfinder standard setting, Golarion, there's a group of assassins called the Red Mantis, who treat the act of assassination almost AS a religious calling. They literally worship the God's personal assassin. Which means they don't accept 'secondary objectives: find out what the guy's doing' type stuff, but I digress.

They handle resurrection of their marks this way: the Red Mantis PrC specifically allows them to tell when someone they've killed is rezzed.

They kill that person again, as many times as it takes for them to get the damm message and stay dead.

[stack]

I believe there are also quieting needles (in PF, not sure about 3.5).
Text:

Spoiler

Show

Quieting Needles

Source Pathfinder #29

A set of quieting needles costs 25 gp. Inserted into a corpse’s heart, lungs, and other organs, the needles can be well hidden inside a slain body with a minute of work and a Sleight of Hand check — the result of this Sleight of Hand check determines the Heal check DC to notice the use of quieting needles on a corpse. This Heal check gains a cumulative +1 bonus for each day the body has been allowed to decay, as the presence of the needles grows increasingly obvious as the flesh rots away. A body pierced with quieting needles can be brought back to life as normal via raise dead, but upon being restored to life, the victim immediately begins suffering from the fact that his major organs are perforated by hidden needles. This grisly fate can even strike someone brought back to life via resurrection or true resurrection if the body itself was intact and the needles were thus hidden. (Casting resurrection or true resurrection with only a fragment of the body or no body, forcing the spell to rebuild the body as appropriate, is a surefire way to avoid having the victim come back to life with the needles still inside him.)

A creature brought back to life with quieting needles inside him is immediately struck with pain and must make a DC 25 Fortitude save each round to avoid being nauseated from the pain and suffering 1d6 points of Constitution damage. A successful Fortitude save negates the nauseated condition and reduces the Constitution damage to 1. Removing quieting needles from a dead body takes 1d6+6 rounds (and a DC 20 Heal check if the process is to leave the body in a condition where raise dead is still viable). Removing quieting needles from a freshly restored living body causes 2d6 points of damage per round the procedure continues, with a successful DC 25 Heal check reducing damage caused that round to 2.

The use of quieting needles is relatively uncommon, meant as much to punish enemies for attempting to raise dead allies and force them to waste the resources on such expensive magic as well as to cause the restored creature agonizing pain—using quieting needles is an evil act that is as illegal as murder in most civilized regions.

TL,DR: stick needles in the body, take CON damage when res'd.

[Sith_Happens]

I think casual resurrections and assassins go perfectly well together. After all, it vastly increases your chances for repeat customers.

[Infernalbargain]

I think casual resurrections and assassins go perfectly well together. After all, it vastly increases your chances for repeat customers.

Wow. Just wow.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

It may have been mentioned already, but in Pathfinder they actually address this issue. The greatest assassins in the world of Golarion are the Red Mantis, a cult that worships the Mantis God, Achaekek. They are wholly dedicated to the sacred art of killing, and they have a special policy on resurrected people. If they learn someone they killed has returned to life, they hunt them down and kill them again. And again. And again if need be, to ensure the target remains dead and their professional integrity intact.

However, they also have a policy against killing royalty. If a person is the legitimate ruler of a nation by the divine right of kings, the Red Mantis will refuse to accept hits on them, as Achaekek was created to protect the gods from mortals who would harm them to usurp their power, so to do the Red Mantis defend kings and queens, the mortal equivalent of deities, from harm.

Non-royal heads of state, such as usurpers or democratically-elected leaders, however, are fair game.

[HandofCrom]

Greyhawk also had the legal system similar to Girl Genius. Nobles lost all titles irrevocably at death so the undead and resurrected could not wield legitimate power as a feudal lord.

[Provengreil]

It may have been mentioned already, but in Pathfinder they actually address this issue. The greatest assassins in the world of Golarion are the Red Mantis, a cult that worships the Mantis God, Achaekek. They are wholly dedicated to the sacred art of killing, and they have a special policy on resurrected people. If they learn someone they killed has returned to life, they hunt them down and kill them again. And again. And again if need be, to ensure the target remains dead and their professional integrity intact.

However, they also have a policy against killing royalty. If a person is the legitimate ruler of a nation by the divine right of kings, the Red Mantis will refuse to accept hits on them, as Achaekek was created to protect the gods from mortals who would harm them to usurp their power, so to do the Red Mantis defend kings and queens, the mortal equivalent of deities, from harm.

Non-royal heads of state, such as usurpers or democratically-elected leaders, however, are fair game.

the Assassin PrC capstone ability also makes a true resurrection spell necessary to get a resurrection, so they got that, too.

[Fouredged Sword]

Stab with soul stealing dagger (there is a metal for that) and then planeshift the dagger into the far relms. Even if the dagger gets destroyed, the soul has likely been eaten already by an elder evil.

[Douglas]

At least in the context of D&D, assuming the assassin and the victim have approximately equal resources, once resources reach the point where resurrection is normally easy they are also at the point where means of making it difficult are available. Bringing a dead king back gets a lot harder when said dead king's soul is held in the murder weapon which is inside a secret vault heavily guarded by the assassins who killed him, for example.