Quests for Ressurection

[Fualkner Asiniti]

Okay, lotsa big, powerful people are gonna be dying in my campaign. The PC's will want to ress them. Really, killing a powerful NPC and just True Ress-ing him seems just too dumb, even for fantasy. But, on the other hand, elimiting Raise Dead entirely is also dumb. PC's die, it happens. So I thought a "swinging door" mechanic would be neat. You kill something powerful enough, destroy a city, ect., the soul can come back to the body. The balence of the universe is changed enough to let the soul back. More powerful souls require harder quests. You still need to cast the spell. There are a few rules for this:

1. You must witness the death.
1a. You must have the body if the spell requires.
2. You hold a contacting session with the deity (or Cause) to ask what quest must be done to raise the soul. This session costs 50 gp in incense, ect.
3. Complete the quest.
4. Bring dead creature, item, ect. to temple, and the spell is cast.

So, good idea, anything wrong, Comments?

[Fixer]

If you are going to do a quest, it should be related to retrieving the actual spirit of the dead. Make the players go find the spirit of their companion, collect it, and return with it.

[Kurald Galain]

The temple may have additional demands of you, including but not limited to quests, geasa and collecting tax money.

[Breaon]

The first question you have to answer, as a DM, is would those NPCS want to come back, after experiencing their afterlife?

In the world I play in, death is pretty absolute. There are not a lot of pure-level clerics; most are multi-classed (aside from PCs/cohorts.) As a culture, death is seen as final, unless mandated by the divine powers (ie. plot devices.)

It really depends on how death is viewed in the world, by the culture/society. Does one specific god/dess hold "Death" in its portfolio? What do they think of the "casual" use of Raise Dead/Res/TrueRes?

[Elana]

One of the easies way would be to make diamonds a bit rarer.
(They were all used up with those thousands of ressurections in the past)

And since raise dead, resurection and true ressurection needs lots of diamonds, they have the trouble finding enough of those.
(probably there is enough in the lair of ancient dragons, or a lot of smaller ones, depending on what makes sense at the current point in the campaign)


(For reincarnate you can say the same, that they have to questto find those rare oils and unguents)

[Ramza00]

One of the easies way would be to make diamonds a bit rarer.
(They were all used up with those thousands of ressurections in the past)

And since raise dead, resurection and true ressurection needs lots of diamonds, they have the trouble finding enough of those.
(probably there is enough in the lair of ancient dragons, or a lot of smaller ones, depending on what makes sense at the current point in the campaign)


(For reincarnate you can say the same, that they have to questto find those rare oils and unguents)

As a player this would irk me like no other, I rather live in a DM world similar to Breaon. Don't try to yank the player chain's by making them jump through silly hoops.

Furthermore "diamonds" is more or less a place holder. Balance wise you just need to spend about 5000 gp. In your campaign world you can easily say the material component is water worth 5,000 gp if in a desert campaign, gold, 5,000 gp of slaves, etc. In your world you may not spend the material component when you cast the spell, perhaps you summon certain outsiders and the cost for the life is the 5,000 gp.

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Another option you can do is have a quest similar go to the land of the dead, the well of eternity, the endless waste, heaven whatever. These quests can be short or long. After retrieving an item, a truename, the actual spirit you can now resurrect them. Depends on how you do it you can have the players only make the quest once, if a player dies again since they now done the quest they can use the relevant spells.

For example clerics have raise dead and true resurrection, they must though call the true name of the lord of the dead before they can summon him and then bargain with him to allow the dead to return to life, the initial quest is to learn the true name of the dead once learn you won't forget it unless the memory is erased. Perhaps since it is a truename you can't tell other people it, for you can only learn it from the lord of the dead himself or some other powerful outsider, when you try to say or write his name to people who haven't heard the name it is just gibberish, you need to hear the name from the original source and then it is no longer gibberish to you.

[Prometheus]

There are a lot of ways around it, here are some examples from mine:

In one of my campaigns, a king was in a coma, where his soul couldn't get back to his body. Chopping up the body and casting resurrection wouldn't have helped a bit. Instead they had to find the Red Minotaur (which in this case was a Minotaur of Legend), and take his horn (somewhat stolen from a DMG plot), grind it up, and convince a desert mystic to perform the ceremony to bring him back. When he came to, it revealed that assassins were coming for him, using Locate Person, and he drew a card from the Deck of Many Things (an artifact that was previously introdcued under his possession) and got Void. Unlucky card, but lucky for him, he dropped off the radar and the assassins withdrew.

In another case, the death sentence of an extraplanar court is not in fact death, but eternity in Temporal Stasis, to prevent resurrection and to be "humane".

One character had made a Clone of himself, and had died and come back several times using this method. As a variant to the spell, however it aged him about seven years. Already an elderly human, it became clear by the end of the game that his last death would also be a death by old age, therefore unable to be brought back. It worked very well with his character, because he spent his life trying to buy himself time, time to spend with his elven love who will most obviously outlive him.

Finally, the brother of the above character was murdered by the same person who kept killing the clones. Instead of being resurrected, he came back as a ghost, and required that he be avenged before either he be brought back or find his final rest. When he was, he opted for the latter.

[Jimbob]

One thing in my eyes, if this NPC or PC depending on what happens, they will lose a level and when the rest of the party are on this quest, thus gaining even more EXP and maybe leveling up they will be even further behind. But apart from that its a good idea. I have done a few quests before to retreave the players soul, mostly in hell or the centre of the earth, always fun in my eyes

[Hranat]

Something else I don't hear a lot of people about...

The Good afterlife, and in fact all afterlifes except Hell and the likes, should be nice. The Ultimate Beings should have created a paradise for the mortals sharing their view on life, so they would actually have a reason to be Good (or anything.)
So, you die, and your soul goes to paradise where you feel fantastic all the time, and you're doing everything you like, no one tells you what to do (unless you like that) and all of a sudden you get a wake-up call from the idiots you left back on earth, that you should come back. There's no way I'd come back down in that world of misery if I'm in Paradise, I'm sure of that.
Possible motives to return: Responsibility? Appearently you played your part in being the good guy, after all you're in Paradise. Which would mean I had done enough and I'd give the suckers on the mortal plane the finger.
Ah well... this is a bit over-roleplayed. Other motives are: Your fellow players get really pissed at you for making them lose 5.000 gp in diamonds, your DM gets really pissed at you for holding up the game, and you simply decree that your character wants to be resurrected so you can play on...

I simply want to say that only badguys want to leave the afterlife... and that's unlogical too by the way, because the devils would rather reward the mortal badasses than punish them...

[Elana]

Problem is, a good guy would come back, because the people need him.

A evil guy would come back, because life is better.

Now those damn neutrals...you just don't know with them :)

[Hranat]

Sure they'd come back, but what if you get an Elysium-effect?

You know, that they lose themselves in paradise? And get all hippy and stuff?

[Fixer]

Neutrals would be, "Meh, whatever. What do I get out of it?"

[sikyon]

Or you could be like "What? Raise Dead and loose a level?!?!?! No sir, it's true res or nothing at all!"

[Matthew]

Yeah, I think I would go with interplanar travel and soul fetching as the best method for this sort of thing.