Morality of Resurrection

[ZeroGear]

Just so that it has been stated:
We will NOT get into religious dogma of ANY major religions here. PERIOD!

Anyway, this is something that I've run across twice so far while playing Pathfinder. We all know that death plays a big part in that game, as does it's counterpart in the form of resurrection magic.
Now donating money to the church to bring back a fallen PC is all well and dandy, as is having the party cleric do it at a lower price, as long as it is done sparingly. But what happen when the Wizard (yes, the WIZARD!) decided that he can mix some spells and start resurrecting NPC's left and right on a massive scale?
The first time this happened, a fellow PC (yes, the wizard) figured he could bring some of the villagers of a city that had just been hit by a total wave back to life. This involved the use of the Blood Money, Shadow Conjuration, and Summon Monster spells. Blood Money would pay for the expensive components via ability drain, Shadow Conjuration was used to cast Raise Dead, and the Summon Monster spell brought in an archon to cast Restoration on the Wizard and heal the ability damage.

The second time was recently when I was running a test game using the Spheres of Power supplement. One of the characters had just gotten the Resurrection Advanced Talent of the Life Sphere, which lets him bring someone back to life for 2 spell points (provided he dies within 1 hour/level and his body is intact). Almost immediately he declared that he was going to go around offering free resurrections to the populace (As the DM, I, of course, told him no).

Now, putting the costly restrictions of raising the dead aside, what are the moral reasons why you should not go around raising everyone's dead mother on a whim? Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

[Fayd]

Well, according to my DM, you're pulling a damned soul out of Hell, bringing literal evil to the material plane, or you are pulling a sainted soul out of Heaven, ever so slightly decreasing it's glory and goodness, especially because they can now fall and Heaven can forever lose them.

Expanding on this last thought, by resurrecting someone, because they have free will and agency again, they may ultimately not go back, which brings a LOT of uncomfortable complications with it.

[Amaril]

So, he used shadow conjuration to mimic raise dead...yeah, no, that doesn't work.

You use material from the Plane of Shadow to shape quasi-real illusions of one or more creatures, objects, or forces. Shadow conjuration can mimic any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 3rd level or lower.

Raise dead is a 5th-level cleric spell of the conjuration (healing) school, so it's out in 3 ways.

However, if you allowed it anyway, there's a perfect way to give it dire consequences. Shadow conjuration's effects are only 20% real, and the target's returned soul would be no exception. You could rule that they're technically brought back, but trapped in a cursed state of partial life with any number of associated problems. Alternatively, you could say that the person's soul functions as normal until they disbelieve the illusion (as per the strict ruling of the spell), at which point any number of unpleasant things could result.

Anyway, to address your question, I think you've pretty much got exactly the right idea. Clerics and other divine casters are empowered by their gods--the rightful authorities over the souls of the dead, in many settings--to call back souls who are still needed in the world of the living. When they do it, it's all sanctioned and allowed to happen without issue. However, if some schmuck who has no ties to the gods starts breaking the rules and doing it without their approval, I could easily imagine that rustling their jimmies. And, of course, those souls might be needed in whatever place they're headed to, so that brings in a whole host of other issues that could arise.

[Red Fel]

Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

(Emphasis added.)

If I recall correctly, this is more or less the reason that Maruts exist. Technically speaking, Maruts exist to stop those who unnaturally prolong their own lives at the expense of others, but I imagine that the reverse is equally true - in the cases you illustrate, a PC is making death meaningless by bringing everyone back, willy-nilly. Death is Inevitable. Issues of morality aside, that disrupts the status quo of the multiverse, and as any Inevitable will tell you, this chaos will not stand.

Expect to hear knocking on your door late one night. Knocking by Fists of Thunder and Lightning.

[NichG]

You can make the universe itself dislike it for some reason of course, but that isn't intrinsic to resurrection, its just a particular setting choice (in the same way that casting a Fireball on Athas could be considered an atrocity because it renders a little bit more of that world incapable of ever growing anything again, but on Toril its not a big deal).

But if we're talking about only things that are intrinsic to resurrection, putting particular settings aside, it becomes trickier. I'd argue that there are reasons why its inherently immoral to resurrect people under most value systems (of course, it'd be immoral to cultists of death and so on). But whether its moral or not to resurrect a person, the availability of mass resurrection is going to pull societies through transitional periods and will have long-ranging consequences as well. So the morality ends up being more about whether or not the transitional period and long-ranging consequences are acceptable when balanced against the upside of 'no one need fear death ever again'.

The thing with resurrecting people all over the place is that it removes something which is taken for granted to be a hard reality of life. People live their lives with the understanding that death is an irreversible inevitability, and it becomes very deeply ingrained in culture, philosophy, etc. When you remove that on an individual level, its called a miracle - it hints at something greater, but it still keeps it outside of the realm of things that a person can rely on or expect. But when it becomes common then that particular tacit assumption becomes invalidated, and people just kind of don't know how to react. It creates widespread anxiety in people, because the entire framework of their existence has been built on the assumption of something being true, and now that assumption is being made false so everything has to be determined anew. The immediate impulse is to look for or even create reasons why the old assumptions must be true - e.g. creating fictions by which the universe enforces those assumptions in the long run, even if someone is violating them in the short run.

So if you're a person whose value system puts worth on certain regularities of life as creating the richness of human experience, it could be immoral to mass-resurrect people because the sorts of lives people live without the threat of death would arguably be poorer than the sorts of lives people live when they must fight for their lives and so on. But that's a very abstract morality - probably fairly rare outside of something like Planescape where everyone is looking in from the outside anyhow (a similar morality is what I generally use for playing gods - they aren't interested so much in the prosperity of people as they are in the stories that are still told about their world a billion years from now when all is dust) Similarly, if you value the stability of traditions then mass resurrections could be largely disruptive to that (both from having to change traditions to meet the new reality of the world, and from the issues caused by ancients coming back and telling people 'nah, it didn't happen like that, your clan leaders have been BSing you all this time').

The other consideration is that in the very long-term, there is an impact on the world population from the availability of mass resurrections. There is also the possibility for asymmetric provision of mass resurrections (e.g. only the rich get them, only people belonging to a certain kingdom get them, etc). These are all things that can ostensibly be worked out, so the morality here is more about having due dilligence in taking care of the details of bringing mass resurrection to the world rather than about resurrection itself. The same things could be true of any new boon - technology, new spells, etc.

And of course if old age is still a limiting factor then that changes some of the consequences here and there (though, with Reincarnate it doesn't have to be).

[Nagash]

So, he used shadow conjuration to mimic raise dead...yeah, no, that doesn't work.



Raise dead is a 5th-level cleric spell of the conjuration (healing) school, so it's out in 3 ways.

However, if you allowed it anyway, there's a perfect way to give it dire consequences. Shadow conjuration's effects are only 20% real, and the target's returned soul would be no exception. You could rule that they're technically brought back, but trapped in a cursed state of partial life with any number of associated problems. Alternatively, you could say that the person's soul functions as normal until they disbelieve the illusion (as per the strict ruling of the spell), at which point any number of unpleasant things could result.

oooohhh. Anyone else read "Pet cemetery" recently? If not, read it. It gives great consequences of this type. Essentially you brought the body back, not the soul. But it seems like something else likes to jump into those empty, walking vessels and take charge.

[TandemChelipeds]

oooohhh. Anyone else read "Pet cemetery" recently? If not, read it. It gives great consequences of this type. Essentially you brought the body back, not the soul. But it seems like something else likes to jump into those empty, walking vessels and take charge.

Isn't that also basically the premise of Monkey's Paw?

[Kitten Champion]

Now, putting the costly restrictions of raising the dead aside, what are the moral reasons why you should not go around raising everyone's dead mother on a whim? Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

Why do there have to be any moral implications? In a setting where resurrection is hitherto impossible and suddenly someone starts reviving the dead it would have massive earthshaking significance - but this is more like someone winning the lottery, a rare phenomenon that people know happens but are unlikely to experience personally. The people of the setting would have a frame of reference for it and their philosophy would have come to terms with it through any number of justifications and rationalizations.

Basically, why can't the resource cost be the expense for the PC? And the people resurrected are just beneficiaries to the capriciousness of good fortune.

I suppose the gods can punish them for their hubris and all that, but that's sort of what wizards do with their lives - seek out arcane power beyond our comprehension and wield it to impress women at parties and whatnot. If the gods were so eager to maintain their precious cosmic order they shouldn't have made it so easy for the modding community to get involved.

[BWR]

Ignoring Blood Money problems and the fact the scheme doesn't work by RAW and the interesting idea of raising something other than you intended. For sake of argument, assume basically costless, widespread raising of dead.

Yes, the cosmic balance is an issue. Things die, and the multiverse seems to be designed around this happening. Upsetting this too much will get the attention of many powerful beings. As noted, inevitables, gods, etc.will all have a say. Some want the multiverse to function as it should, some gods want their power to stay constant or increase - the act of death may be empowering to death gods, souls coming to the realm of the god may grant power, fiends want souls for recruitment, etc. Anything large scale enough to be noticable will be unpopular.

Forcing souls out of the afterlife - not happening. Riase Dead does not compel people to come back. Those happily dead can just say no. No saints will be yanked out of heaven against their will. Bringing evil people back is more likely. Peoplel generally don't want to stay in whatever netheworld they were sent to longer than absolutely necessary and accept. Some might think of it as a stay of execution but go back to old ways, some might actually try to turn their new life around and hopefully end up somewhere better next time they die. This might be the most interesting application of mass resurrection. If done on a large enough scale it could start swining the balance towards Good ever so slightly. I can certainly see some good-aligned people thinking this is a viable strategy.

In societies with lots of death from sources other than old age, this could cause a lot of change. If your average couple has 6 or 7 kids and only 2 live long enough to procreate, this makes for a fairly stable population. If all these prematurely dead come back, population explosion. Possible consequences: society faces lack of resources. The need to feed and house everyone is burden. Aggressive expansion of the society is, barring magic, the only option. Increase agriculture area, start taking over neighboring settlements, raiding, etc. Rapid enroachment on nature will be unpopular with nature types, causing conflict with other sentients, even unintentionally, is not a good thing.

In times of war or plague the population won't drop nearly as badly. Big wars are not only expensive but cause lots of death. Too few people to till the soil and otherwise do useful stuff in society is bad. Diminishing number of troops is a problem for any war. Being able to quickly replenish the number of troops can change the face of war. Actual combat will be about the same but as long as you win the field you can get your troops back on their feet again. The morale boost of knowing you will likely be brought back is incredible, causing people to fight harder, be less likely to run and encourage more wholesale slaughter to ensure the enemy doesn't come back. Hardly a good thing. Corpses of the enemy will be destroyed if possible to prevent people from sneaking them out and bringing them back. Some cultures and gods may not like that.

Legal problems. Inheritance and ownership and whatnot. A dies, her estate is inherited by B. Then A comes back. Who owns it? B, because A died or A because A isn't dead? What if A was sentenced to death - has the punishment been properly executed (hah)? Is death meant to be permanent legal condition or can it be a temporary condition? What about marriage or other contracts with a 'til death do you part' clause (assuming this is taken literally)? Are they still binding if one party is dead then brought back to life?

A single wizard going around and at best raising one or two people per day isn't going to affect much of anything. I don't really see that it should be a big deal for any non-PC party unless the DM wants it to be.

[Ettina]

Why would there be a morality problem with using resurrection a bunch? Is there a morality problem with using medical techniques to save someone from a heart attack? We used to think heart stopped = dead, but now we can often restart a stopped heart. In a world where resurrection magic is available for 1 hour after death, it would become just like another medical procedure, and people wouldn't be thought of as really dead until they could no longer be resurrected.

If it goes wrong, that's a different matter, but it's just sour grapes thinking to make it that it has to go wrong.

I mean, think about it. It used to be a fact of life that 25-50% of babies wouldn't live to their first birthday, and many of those kids wouldn't make it to five. Now, infant death has become rare. Has this destroyed the fabric of life as we know it? No. It's just changed our lives. We had to learn to have only one or two kids, instead of having dozens just to hedge our bets and make sure at least one made it. There were some people, when infant mortality first went down, who thought the world was going to end because people would have 10-15 kids who'd all grow up to have 10-15 kids each and we'd end up overpopulated.

My point is, don't be afraid to let a fantasy world be different from our world. Just because they're putting a different meaning on death doesn't make it a bad thing.

Oh, and by the way, about people being resurrected who didn't want to be - that happens with modern medicine, too. A person who commits suicide, if found quickly enough, will often find themselves waking up in an emergency ward with a psychiatrist wanting to talk to them.

[ZeroGear]

Thank you all for your replies, but I think I need to clarify a few things first:
-Shadow Conjuration: I think that was the spell he used, but I'm not 100% sure on that. All I know is that he somehow managed to mimic the resurrection/raise dead spell on a decent (7-15 times) scale. Also, I wasn't the DM there.

-Spheres or Power: The way the Talent works is that the only cost is 2 Spell points, plus a mostly intact body. Casters have a daily allotment of Spell points equal to 1/2 their class level + casting stat. You need to be at least caster level 10 to get the Talent, giving you a minimum of 5 Spell points, but you can increase your pool though the use of the Extra Spell Points feat, which gives you 2 more points each time it is taken. The Character in question was 10th level, CL 10, with a +8 casting mod and 6 bonus points, giving him a total of 19 spell points. So that's almost 10 resurrections a day.

[Friv]

Thank you all for your replies, but I think I need to clarify a few things first:
-Shadow Conjuration: I think that was the spell he used, but I'm not 100% sure on that. All I know is that he somehow managed to mimic the resurrection/raise dead spell on a decent (7-15 times) scale. Also, I wasn't the DM there.

-Spheres or Power: The way the Talent works is that the only cost is 2 Spell points, plus a mostly intact body. Casters have a daily allotment of Spell points equal to 1/2 their class level + casting stat. You need to be at least caster level 10 to get the Talent, giving you a minimum of 5 Spell points, but you can increase your pool though the use of the Extra Spell Points feat, which gives you 2 more points each time it is taken. The Character in question was 10th level, CL 10, with a +8 casting mod and 6 bonus points, giving him a total of 19 spell points. So that's almost 10 resurrections a day.

Nine resurrections a day, from people who have to have died that day and didn't die of old age and want to come back, is going to have a pretty minimal impact on your world as a whole. I mean, it'll be impressive; you'll have a cool faith healer thing going. But in the grand scheme of things? It's not world-shaking.

It is fodder for a heck of a lot of cool stories, though! What happens when twelve people arrive that day looking for resurrections, and you have to send three away? What if some rich merchant tries to bribe his way to the front of the line - or hires his own wizards to hold the other members of the line hostage? What if the church of a God of Death decides that the character is a heretic, and demands he restrict himself to two resurrections a day, or else they'll start killing the extras? Perhaps someone really evil just died, and their second-in-command tries to force the healer to save them. Perhaps someone doesn't want to come back, but their relatives won't take no for an answer...

[Ettina]

Why would there be a morality problem with using resurrection a bunch? Is there a morality problem with using medical techniques to save someone from a heart attack?

Actually, I'm really curious about this. I've never heard an explanation against spamming resurrection (barring tacked-on side effects) that doesn't also imply modern medicine is evil.

[Saidoro]

The second time was recently when I was running a test game using the Spheres of Power supplement. One of the characters had just gotten the Resurrection Advanced Talent of the Life Sphere, which lets him bring someone back to life for 2 spell points (provided he dies within 1 hour/level and his body is intact). Almost immediately he declared that he was going to go around offering free resurrections to the populace (As the DM, I, of course, told him no).

You read the part where it said that all of the purely optional advanced magic options could majorly change the setting and advanced talents in particular allow people to do fantastic things as part of their day-to day shdule, right?

[Coidzor]

Now donating money to the church to bring back a fallen PC is all well and dandy, as is having the party cleric do it at a lower price, as long as it is done sparingly. But what happen when the Wizard (yes, the WIZARD!) decided that he can mix some spells and start resurrecting NPC's left and right on a massive scale?

There's no moral difference between either class using resurrection magic, so wizard or cleric s irrelevant save for mechanics.

The first time this happened, a fellow PC (yes, the wizard) figured he could bring some of the villagers of a city that had just been hit by a total wave back to life. This involved the use of the Blood Money, Shadow Conjuration, and Summon Monster spells. Blood Money would pay for the expensive components via ability drain, Shadow Conjuration was used to cast Raise Dead, and the Summon Monster spell brought in an archon to cast Restoration on the Wizard and heal the ability damage.

Not sure that works, mechanically.. I don't see why there would be a moral problem with restoring life to victims of violence or natural disasters. Indeed, it would just be callousness to do nothing if one truly could help at such trivial cost.

I can see why a GM may feel threatened, but on the whole, learning to work with magical options is better.

The second time was recently when I was running a test game using the Spheres of Power supplement. One of the characters had just gotten the Resurrection Advanced Talent of the Life Sphere, which lets him bring someone back to life for 2 spell points (provided he dies within 1 hour/level and his body is intact). Almost immediately he declared that he was going to go around offering free resurrections to the populace (As the DM, I, of course, told him no).

No need, you control who has been dead of causes he can resurrect for less than a day that he can reach or can reach him. All you did here was deny yourselves obvious quest hooks & establishing the party's rep as do-gooders.

Now, putting the costly restrictions of raising the dead aside, what are the moral reasons why you should not go around raising everyone's dead mother on a whim? Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

Natural causes and practical concerns are the main limit. There *is* no good reason to rez the party fighter who got ganked by a goblin & then refuse to bring a child murdered by the same goblin on moral grounds.

[ZeroGear]

Alright, some more clarifications here:

-I just remembered how the wizard did it. It was't Shadow Conjuration, it was Limited Wish. That should work mechanically, but should not be abused.

-Yes, I read the warnings about advanced talents. Mainly I included them because a) they need to be field tested, b) I did not expect him to announce this, and c) resurrection is an expected part of the gaming world and I needed some way to include it. I have learned my lesson and will be more restrictive in future endeavors.

-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?
The other thing I worry about is the Kenny effect, as I call it. Death is part of the gaming session, and while I understand that resurrections do occur, they should not be a every-day occurrence. From a character's perspective, if they guy keeps dying, it's humiliating; form the players perspective, it turns his character into a running joke; and form a DM's perspective, it voids the threat of death that hard bosses should inspire. I want to know what would(morally) prevent this form happening all the time.
More than that though, I want to know why this hasn't happened before in any given game world. The players are most likely not the only high-level characters out there, why are they the first to do this and what moral quandaries does this actually entail when it happens?

[NichG]

-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?

The other thing I worry about is the Kenny effect, as I call it. Death is part of the gaming session, and while I understand that resurrections do occur, they should not be a every-day occurrence. From a character's perspective, if they guy keeps dying, it's humiliating; form the players perspective, it turns his character into a running joke; and form a DM's perspective, it voids the threat of death that hard bosses should inspire. I want to know what would(morally) prevent this form happening all the time.
More than that though, I want to know why this hasn't happened before in any given game world. The players are most likely not the only high-level characters out there, why are they the first to do this and what moral quandaries does this actually entail when it happens?

The problem is the word 'moral' here. There isn't anything 'morally' keeping them from doing all this, and there's no reason why there necessarily should be! From the point of view of humanitarian concerns, eliminating violent and accidental death from the world is a boon to everyone. The problem you're having is that there's a conflict between the needs of the drama, story, and game and the what individuals within the world of the game would logically desire or do. That's not a moral conflict, its a metagame conflict (which is no less real, but its a very important distinction).

The answer is basically that this should have happened in many game worlds, but it doesn't because of genre conventions and metagame considerations. There isn't a good reason in-world why goodly people should desire the threat of death to exist. So the answer to your conundrum isn't moral in nature. It is either that the setting itself contrives to restrict this or add consequences that are not obvious (e.g. 'inevitables show up and kill everyone who was brought back, because cosmic law doesn't care about humanitarian concerns'), or that you talk with your players OOC about genre conventions and to what degree you as a group want to hold to them or subvert them.

Its like the Wall of Salt thing. By RAW, economics should not be a thing that exists anymore in any sufficiently high level D&D world because of the paradoxes caused by fixed prices combined with the ability to have a significantly cheaper means of production than was assumed. You could ban Wall of Salt and Wall of Iron to prevent this. You could adapt the rules so that resource values do in fact decline when the market is glutted by them. But you could also tell your players 'hey, I know this can be done within the rules, but its pretty silly and breaks the game; can we just agree to pretend that it doesn't exist and in general not use tricks that would generate infinite wealth?'. That's generally the best approach because then, if your players also want the game to be stable and fun, they can understand why you're objecting and they can take action on their part to make it so it doesn't become a problem.

[Ettina]

-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?

Escalating to what? What is so bad about bringing people back to life? I really don't get how you could have a moral issue with this.

[Segev]

Morally-speaking, resurrection's no problem whatsoever. As written, it requires a willing soul to choose to come back.

Obviously, if you're bringing back an evil person, you're aiding them in spreading evil, but that's not a moral problem with resurrection so much as a moral problem with how you use it. Giving money to somebody poverty-stricken is generally considered a good deed; giving it to a poverty-stricken terrorist who will turn around and use it to kill people would, however, not be. (We're assuming you act with full knowledge, here, and are not mistaken nor deceived.)

If you want to keep resurrection from becoming industrial, recall the costs associated (and don't allow shenanigans that don't work by the RAW; you can be a stickler, here, if needs be), and remember that only willing souls actually return. If the afterlife is pretty awesome by the definition of the souls who go to it, they may be less willing than one might expect. Peasants whose entire families were wiped out along with them in a disaster (or a slaughter) might not want to come back; their families are (presumably) with them in the afterlife of their alignment, and their lives were hard and unpleasant. What's to come back for?

Even evil types may not wish to return; sure, evil planes have lousy afterlives for the weak, but these are ambitious people. On the other hand, there are a lot of weak evil people who find themselves on the bottom of the heap. Maybe part of the moral implication of over-using resurrection is that you have a higher statistical likelihood of evil people willingly returning than good, so spamming Resurrections can yield an overall shift of a region's alignment towards Evil, just by virtue of who chooses to come back and who doesn't. Notably, it should be the weak-willed, sniveling variety of evil soul who returns most often; the ambitious, BBEG-material (or even lieutenant-material) villains would be having too much fun climbing the ranks of fiend-kind.

So spamming Resurrection would lead to the region becoming overrun with petty crooks, cruel and weak-minded thugs, and selfish pricks.

[Frozen_Feet]

Escalating to what? What is so bad about bringing people back to life? I really don't get how you could have a moral issue with this.

If people don't die for a long-enough period but continue to breed, you will start having severe population problems in time. This is not a huge problem for D&D/PF resurrection specifically, because people still die of old age, but the birthrate would need to get lower.

There are other answers to the question, but those would be setting-specific. In default D&D cosmos, though, death is its own important step in spiritual advancement and facilitating cosmic justice. Souls are *not* supposed to stay on Prime Material forever and ever, they are supposed to join their gods at one point. That's why, as mentioned, there are Maruts, a class of Inevitable Constructs who will come and kill you if you cheat death too many times.

[Rater202]

There is no legitimate biological reason for anything to die-Animals die because a genetic flaw means our cells don't divide perfectly.

Giant Tortoises lack this flaw-kept free of predators, diseases, and supplied with an appropriate diet, certain species of giant tortoise are theoretically immortal.

As there is no biological reason to die, and lots of people die of unnatural causes anyway-restoring them to life is morally justifiable, because as said, there honestly, from a scientific perspective, is no reason why people have to die in the first place.

As for population issues-historically, as length and quality of life increase, population growth decreases, and farming practices improve all the time(current conspiracy theories not withstanding) so we'd continue to be able to feed people for a long time. As for space-you could fit the entire population of the planet earth into the state of Texas, and spread out evenly it would be less crowded than new York city-the rest of the US could be used for agriculture(And farmers there means less crowding in Texas) and the rest of the world would be one giant nature preserve

Of course, that's all irrelevant, because Resurrection spells don't' bring you back if you die of old age

And note, that while high ranking Clerics probably know for sure there's a after life-the average commoner doesn't-for all he knows, Cleric MAgic is just wizard magic and there are no Gods.

so, no reason to die, large number of deaths unnatural, population growth being a non issue, even if it was it's still not an issue, and uncertainty about what comes after?

Yeah, no reason why, if cheep resurrections are a thing, to not give them out like candy-besides, the biggest gift you can give someone is a future, so giving futures to people who had theirs stolen from them is the biggest charity you can do, and charity is a good act by definition, yes?

[Segev]

There is no legitimate biological reason for anything to die-Animals die because a genetic flaw means our cells don't divide perfectly.

Giant Tortoises lack this flaw-kept free of predators, diseases, and supplied with an appropriate diet, certain species of giant tortoise are theoretically immortal.

Not...quite. It's not a flaw, so much as a different function. Giant tortoises are born "mature," more or less. They may be too small for some adult activities, but everything is there and in place and functional as it will be their whole lives. Provided sustenance, they continue to grow their whole lives (albeit at a logarithmic pace, as it takes more and more energy to keep growing). They have no puberty, no growth spurts, no timed events in their life cycle that are measured as part of a maturation process.

Most animals with which we are familiar - humans amongst them - have timed maturation processes. Using humans as an example, we grow rapidly from infancy to about 4-5 years of age, and then grow steadily (but more slowly) through about 10-12. Then we hit puberty, and all sorts of changes occur. Puberty lasts for 12-17 years or so (tapering off significantly towards the end), and then we stabilize at a mature size and with mature physical biology.

All of this is timed, and over a scale that cannot be controlled with simple hormonal cycles. Hormones themselves have to be triggered in huge concoctions all at once and at more or less the right time.

This timing is controlled by that "genetic flaw." It's not a flaw: it's a fuse. When it hits certain points, our cells flip into new modes to perform maturation processes.

(The name of the tail of "junk" DNA that is this fuse; the way it works, for those who don't know, is that the telomere is shorter each time a cell replicates/splits. Unfortunately, this leads eventually to the non-junk DNA being cut off as the telomere vanishes.)

There are human cells which do not replicate with shrinking telomeres. Cancer. We don't know why, but most anagathic research centers on figuring that out. The problem is that we don't know if it's related: does a lack of this timing fuse result inevitably in cancerous behavior in our cells?

Obviously it doesn't in giant tortoises.

[Callos_DeTerran]

...The people being brought back to life, which they can't with the method you've described, have a choice if they come back or not. Most people won't choose to come back unless they have some unfinished business that needs doing that is actually important.

Even then, in Pathfinder/Golarion, there's a time limit on raise dead which is, at most, twenty days barring shenanigans. So for one, most people won't come back. Second, most people have been dead too long for Raise Dead. And third, why the hell would he put himself through this as a character? Ability damage (even if hurt!) is horribly painful! Why the heck is he going around the world and randomly bringing people back to life and putting himself through such terrible pain?

[Sartharina]

I can't think of any moral reasons to object to it at all. If someone can raise the dead and does so, let them.

[Galen]

If I recall correctly, this is more or less the reason that Maruts exist. Technically speaking, Maruts exist to stop those who unnaturally prolong their own lives at the expense of others, but I imagine that the reverse is equally true - in the cases you illustrate, a PC is making death meaningless by bringing everyone back, willy-nilly. Death is Inevitable. Issues of morality aside, that disrupts the status quo of the multiverse, and as any Inevitable will tell you, this chaos will not stand.

Expect to hear knocking on your door late one night. Knocking by Fists of Thunder and Lightning.

Except the people he resurrects still inevitably die of old age when their time is up. Therefore, they die naturally. In fact, the wizard who goes resurrecting villagers who died of an unnatural tidal wave so that they can live their natural life span and eventually die of natural causes is doing the natural order a favor.

Maruts are made for Liches and Vampires who cheat the natural order and don't die when their time is up.

[Coidzor]

Ability damage (even if hurt!) is horribly painful!

Why the heck is he going around the world and randomly bringing people back to life and putting himself through such terrible pain?

Is that actually confirmed anywhere?

I suppose you could term it "Martyrdom," if you felt like it.

-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?

...D-Do you not like plot hooks? Or players getting invested in the game by actually doing something that has an impact(Which I seem to have to remind you that you, as GM, entirely control in actuality)? Like.... These are generally considered to be good things, getting people to invest in the game and want to follow it to its conclusion. And y'know, if it's distracting from some save the world plot that they want to instead go off and play good samaritan to the world... That mostly means you need to either A. talk to your players or B. step up your game about getting them involved in the main plot you're run.

You're entirely barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for a moral justification for not bringing the dead back to life when one can. You're also entirely barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for a moral reason to use as a club against your players in lieu of having a Gentleman's Agreement about what kind of game you all want to play and are playing together.

Presumably people have better things to do with their time when they're that powerful than to go around to wherever people have recently died and bringing 'em back.

Or you're already on your way to the Tippyverse and should learn to stop worrying and love the Teleportation Circle.

The other thing I worry about is the Kenny effect, as I call it. Death is part of the gaming session, and while I understand that resurrections do occur, they should not be a every-day occurrence. From a character's perspective, if they guy keeps dying, it's humiliating; form the players perspective, it turns his character into a running joke; and form a DM's perspective, it voids the threat of death that hard bosses should inspire. I want to know what would(morally) prevent this form happening all the time.

More than that though, I want to know why this hasn't happened before in any given game world. The players are most likely not the only high-level characters out there, why are they the first to do this and what moral quandaries does this actually entail when it happens?

That has nothing to do with rezzing NPCs and doesn't need any moral axis. No player *wants* to have the gimp character who keeps dying. Indeed, most of them will want to rebuild or get a new character that isn't gimped if they find themselves in a rut rather than be constantly rez'd by the party, regardless of whether the others begrudge them their loadstone status or not.

Most game worlds aren't designed with the rules in mind. Eberron is the closest of largish, published settings. The Tippyverse is infamous around these parts for having been built with the rules in mind with the particular premise of most being defined by the mass use of Teleportation Circles and the reaction to them. Most of these sorts of things aren't moral quandraries, they're purely practical concerns. Problems for the Engineer.

[Beleriphon]

Obviously it doesn't in giant tortoises.

Or lobsters, lobsters free of predators can grow to absolutely enormormous sizes, the largest that I'm aware of is well over 100 pounds. Somewhere, on the bottom of the ocean right now there could be a 1000 year old lobster, just doing lobster stuff getting ever larger.

[Rater202]

Not...quite. It's not a flaw, so much as a different function. Giant tortoises are born "mature," more or less. They may be too small for some adult activities, but everything is there and in place and functional as it will be their whole lives. Provided sustenance, they continue to grow their whole lives (albeit at a logarithmic pace, as it takes more and more energy to keep growing). They have no puberty, no growth spurts, no timed events in their life cycle that are measured as part of a maturation process.

Most animals with which we are familiar - humans amongst them - have timed maturation processes. Using humans as an example, we grow rapidly from infancy to about 4-5 years of age, and then grow steadily (but more slowly) through about 10-12. Then we hit puberty, and all sorts of changes occur. Puberty lasts for 12-17 years or so (tapering off significantly towards the end), and then we stabilize at a mature size and with mature physical biology.

All of this is timed, and over a scale that cannot be controlled with simple hormonal cycles. Hormones themselves have to be triggered in huge concoctions all at once and at more or less the right time.

This timing is controlled by that "genetic flaw." It's not a flaw: it's a fuse. When it hits certain points, our cells flip into new modes to perform maturation processes.

(The name of the tail of "junk" DNA that is this fuse; the way it works, for those who don't know, is that the telomere is shorter each time a cell replicates/splits. Unfortunately, this leads eventually to the non-junk DNA being cut off as the telomere vanishes.)

There are human cells which do not replicate with shrinking telomeres. Cancer. We don't know why, but most anagathic research centers on figuring that out. The problem is that we don't know if it's related: does a lack of this timing fuse result inevitably in cancerous behavior in our cells?

Obviously it doesn't in giant tortoises.

You are somewhat mistaken-Telemere's have nothing to do with the ageing process or Junk DNA-it's not DNA at all, it's made of an enzyme called telemerase, making it a protein.

The flaw of which I speak is that we have no gene for producing telemarase at rates comparable at which its used up, baring a mutation in cancer cells.

The fact that tortoises can generate telemerase at about the rate they use it without developing cancers is the evidence that that this whole "dieing of old age" thing is both unnatural(If death were the natural end of all things, then it wouldn't be imposible for tortoises to die of old age) and a complete load of arbitrary bulls*** becuase terrapins drew the long stra in the game of genetic super powers.

[Manly Man]

...the biggest gift you can give someone is a future...

You jerk, now I'm crying.

[Rater202]

You jerk, now I'm crying.

Exactly the point.