4e - What do you guys think of these Raise Dead rules?

[Saph]

As some of you know, I play at a gaming society that's actually a collection of gaming groups who all meet up together in London. It's fun, because you get to chat with other groups before and after your own game, and you get to see their games and campaigns unfold and progress (or fail).

One of the other DMs is running the 4e "Scales of War" campaign. They've played 4 sessions or so, and have just had their first couple of player fatalities. In the aftermath of the session, the DM posted the following on our website's message board. What do you think of them?

OK - onto the subject of Raising the Dead. ( i would have covered this earlier but didn't expect it to be 'on the table' so soon.)

My general feeling is that i don't like the Raise Dead option where it is freely available at all times and without consequences other than a bit of money laid out. It feels to me like a video game where you just put another 10p in and bingo! you get a new life. In playing terms i feel it devalues the experience because you can be quite blase about getting killed in the knowledge that your friends can just throw a few hundred gold pieces in someones direction and you'll be good as new...

So my table rule on Raise the Dead is a follows.

The ritual is available in this world as per the PHB tho likely to cost more. However such is the serious nature of this ritual that there are potential consequences, and they can be both for the caster and for the recipient. The consequences will usually be related to the manner of the recipients death, and/or the caster's current life situation. When the ritual is performed the following happens

the recipient rolls a d6

1 = no or possibly even good consequences
2,3 = moderate consequences
4,5 = serious consequences
6 = extreme consequences

As i said the exact nature of the consequences for the recipient will depend on a number of things but to give you a feel - Mork, Dork and Nork are all killed by a White Dragon after being caught in the dragons cold breath. Fortunately their bodies are rescued by their colleagues who then perform a raise dead ritual. Mork roles a 2, Dork a 4 and Nork a 6. on their recipients role.

Mork recovers but becomes vulnerable 10 to cold, has minus 2 on endurance checks that involve the cold, and has a permanent reduction of one point on his constitution stat, with all resultant reductions on skills, hit points, defences etc.

Dork recovers but a cold chill has been cast on his heart that can't be shaken off. A lawful good paladin, Dork now struggles to maintain his former view of the world and is beset by doubt, moodiness and sometimes bleak thoughts about his purpose in life. All Dorks encounter powers now only re-charge on 4,5,6 between encounters.

Nork recovers but during the process an evil minor dragon-God intervenes. He will only allow Nork to return to the world on the understanding that he replaces his own soul with that of two of his colleagues.

For the caster - roll a d20

1 to 10 - no consequences
11 to 14 - light consequences (usually v.minor)
15 to 17 - moderate consequences
18 or 19 - serious consequences
20 - extreme consequences.

What do you guys think? Good, or bad?

My reaction on reading them was "Damn, that's harsh. I'm not sure I'd want my character raised at all with that hanging over her head, and I definitely wouldn't be casting it either." Which might have been the intention. So far, the responses from those actually playing in his game have been mixed.

- Saph

(Note: I'm posting this in Gaming rather than Homebrew because these aren't my rules, I'm not going to be playing with them, and I'm mostly interested in people's general opinions on how easy/hard/dangerous Raise Dead should be.)

[fractic]

Being nerfed hard for dying just isn't very fun. I think 4e handles it good enough as it is. The penalty is significant but not huge. It also lasts for a reasonable duration at about half a level.

[RTGoodman]

I can understand that raising is too easy for some in 4E, but I think he's gone past easy, reasonable, and hard and all the way into TOO harsh. If you're going to do anything to limit raise dead, start by making it more expensive (which he's done) and maybe have the death penalty (-1 to basically everything for 3 milestone) either become a -2 or last until the player gains a level.

[Tengu_temp]

The point of ressurection changes was to make it less of a punishment for players - losing experience, constitution score, or other such consequences does not constitute for a fun game, especially if you die by bad luck with dice and especially with 4e which is a hard enough game already. And those houserules are even worse, because while you can regain experience, they can make your character so flawed it's practically unplayable.

Dying is enough of a frustrating experience that it needs no further punishment. And any half-decent roleplayer will not risk his life on a whim and needlessly anyway (unless he's playing such a character).

Short version - these houserules are

[Starbuck_II]

As some of you know, I play at a gaming society that's actually a collection of gaming groups who all meet up together in London. It's fun, because you get to chat with other groups before and after your own game, and you get to see their games and campaigns unfold and progress (or fail).

One of the other DMs is running the 4e "Scales of War" campaign. They've played 4 sessions or so, and have just had their first couple of player fatalities. In the aftermath of the session, the DM posted the following on our website's message board. What do you think of them?



What do you guys think? Good, or bad?

My reaction on reading them was "Damn, that's harsh. I'm not sure I'd want my character raised at all with that hanging over her head, and I definitely wouldn't be casting it either." Which might have been the intention. So far, the responses from those actually playing in his game have been mixed.

- Saph

(Note: I'm posting this in Gaming rather than Homebrew because these aren't my rules, I'm not going to be playing with them, and I'm mostly interested in people's general opinions on how easy/hard/dangerous Raise Dead should be.)

Wait, so both the caster and the recipient of raised dead get punished in his version?
At least the recipient gets positive affects if he rolls a 1.

I like the idea behind the rules. The spirit of the rules is okay, but the actual text sucks.
Plus, how do you know if the DM is being fair when you roll slight. Since slight isn't defined anywhere.
Slight to the DM might mean Moderate to me.


Also, Moderate and Extreme are reversed inthe examples.
I'd rather 4, 5, 6 roll to recharge encounters after battle than Mark's penalties.

[Charity]

I think I'd prob remain dead and roll up a new character rather than face unforetold, randomly generated, permanant, unbalancing character nerfs for something happening to my character that I tried my best to avoid...

If his players were chucking themselves off cliffs rather than walk down then fair enough, just say the gods didn't smile on that ritual, but this system seems very arbitary and unduely harsh to me... especially as with point buy you could just make an identical character.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Sounds a bit like the ideas in Heroes of Horror, which were cool and thematically appropriate for a game of fantasy horror.

The DM has written himself a blank check to screw over any character that gets raised. I wouldn't put up with that sort of abuse of power.

"Bad stuff is going to happen to you, but you have no way of guessing what it might be, and I have a free hand to make it anything I want and mess up your character concept from the inside. Bwahaha!"

No, thanks.

[Ent]

I still love the last line of Raise Dead... death is less inclined to return them, so, cough*bribe*cough, pass death a few coins like a town guard.

[Inyssius Tor]

I think his consequences are quite a bit too harsh. I don't really want to be punished for dying--I already died over it, after all! I don't like the idea of nerfing a character because of death.

Now, other consequences are awesome. I doubt I'll be resurrecting anyone in my game without squeezing at least two plot-hooks out of the buildup and aftermath. (find the Crown of Lien the Undying to keep Roderick alive! Roderick, survive in the Shadowfell until they can find it! All of you, get out of the obligations you owe the entity you dealt with to raise him!) Ditto house-rules that give the character both an advantage and a disadvantage. For example:
Your ordeal in the lands of the dead has shaken loose your racial connection to the Feywild; instead, your untethered soul drifts toward the Shadowfell. When you use fey step, you are dealt 1d8 necrotic damage (increasing to 2d6 at 11th level and 3d6 at 21st level) and gain an aura 1 until the end of your next turn. Creatures within this aura take cold damage equal to your Charisma modifier.

[chiasaur11]

I still love the last line of Raise Dead... death is less inclined to return them, so, cough*bribe*cough, pass death a few coins like a town guard.

I bet the head Death'd be pretty teed off if he knew.

[Vortling]

I laugh at these house rules. I'm not sure what's the intended outcome, but if I was playing in a game with these rules I'd be less inclined to care about my character RP-wise. I'd simply have the DM keep them dead each time and make a new character. And bring portable entertainment if he insisted on excluding the new character for an inordinate amount of time.

In short, it's really too harsh. If you don't want players resurrected you should just say so. Otherwise they will prefer death to be a revolving door.

[Waspinator]

As has been said, the most likely outcome of these rules would be that people would stop raising characters and instead just make new ones.

[Yakk]

*nod* -- what are the new character rules, start at level 1 and get no extra XP from being out-classed by opponents? :-)

Resurrection shouldn't, gamist-wise, be uniformly worse than rolling a new character.

[Edea]

Sign me up for 'total and complete character detachment,' 'have PSP, will disrupt session until new character is allowed in at the same level as the previous one,' and 'DM is going to quickly lose players/player interest.' These are idiotic houserules in the context of 4e (assuming the DM who wrote them is being serious).

[Collin152]

Reduce the harshness of the penalties, provide a way to eliminate them over time, and I'm sold.
I like the idea of consequences for death, just not such extreme ones.

[Randel]

One thought I had rolling in my head for the past few days was the idea that spells like raise dead don't work reliably unless preparations have been made. Mostly, hiding a portion of the persons soul in a jar which is later activated on their deceased body to revive them.


The ritual to create a soul jar is similar to casting a raise dead spell normally, but it targets a living person and harmlessly extracts a portion of their soul and hides it in a small object. Often in a ceramic egg which is then kept in a box. The receipiant of the spell must spend a healing surge (which is recovered with an extended rest) but suffers no other mechanical disadvantages (though some may find some portion of their essence missing, like the memory of their happiest day or their fondness for some person).

If that person dies, then their soul jar will attract the rest of their soul to it and hide them from Death. The soul jar may glow when the person dies thus alerting a companion entrusted with the jar of their friends demise. If the soul jar is brought within 5 feet of the dead persons body (or a portion of it) and broken then the soul returns to the body and repairs it as if the Raise Dead ritual had revived them normally. Complete with the penalties associated with it.

However, when the jar is broken then it only takes 5 minutes for them to be brought back instead of one hour. A person may have at maximum one jar in heroic tier, two in paragon tier, and three in epic tier. Each one costs the full price of casting the raise dead ritual.

If a soul jar is broken more than 5 feet from the dead body then the soul portion is lost to the great beyond (unless multiple soul jars exist in which case it is rescued by the remaining jars). If broken when the person still lives then they recover that stored bit of soul (no mechanical advantage but would recover whatever memory or 'bit of their being' they lost when storing it away). Soul jars have a limited tracking ability to seek out the dead body of the person to raise with them, this primarily help to make sure the person activating the jar knows that this is definatly the place to use the precious item.

A person who's soul is hidden in a soul jar but not restored to life is generally unable to interact with the world and exists in a sleeplike state with bits of dream to keep them company. Though some may be able to communicate to people who are either sleeping or within a short distance of their soul jar.

As the soul is a quantum thing unlimited by conventional physics, in a given group then no one soul jar contains 'more' soul than the others since they seem to all contain all of it at once. Though as is the case, sometimes things work differently for different people.

Eating another persons soul jar is not recommended, nor is force feeding your own soul jar to someone else. The results are not pretty to either party.

[Mewtarthio]

Only a fifty percent chance of recovering encounter powers for the rest of eternity? That's ridiculously harsh. Seriously, that's very, very nasty. I'm not opposed to you upping the consequences of resurrection, but at least let them go away after a while.

Eating another persons soul jar is not recommended, nor is force feeding your own soul jar to someone else. The results are not pretty to either party.

[Shades of Gray]

You can make it so that the negative effects can be lost after a character reaches a milestone.

Or you could make it so they permanently lose healing surges. Until a milestone or a level.

[nightwyrm]

All these harsh rules for raising dead, when will DMs understand that players can make a profit by leaving their characters dead and making new characters.

New character comes into the play in pristine condition and with new gear, while the party can loot the dead character and not have to pay for raise dead fee.

[erikun]

My reaction:

If you want Raise Dead to be a non-laissez faire situation, then make casting the ritual a hassle. Require the person be taking to a church for the cleric preforming the ritual. Run the caster and dead character (perhaps the whole party) through a skill challange or fight, where they need to get the dead character's souls from Death itself. Require a sacrifice from the deceased personal effects, such as important or meaningful equipment.

Basically, make Raise Dead painful but capable of bouncing back from. Saddling the PCs with permanent penalities isn't going to make the game more fun, or more exciting. It will make the game more boring, much like if they fought a BBEG and the BBEG wandered around and took extra actions that the PCs couldn't affect.

Make the game fun and challanging. Don't make it annoying or stressful.

[Jayabalard]

Personally, I don't have a problem with any of the penalties... none of them are "too harsh" for me to enjoy the game. But I think it's silly for to use a die roll, especially 1d anything, to determine it.

He should just simplify it to "bad things are going to happen to you if you are raised from the dead" and leave it at that.

New character comes into the play in pristine condition and with new gear, while the party can loot the dead character and not have to pay for raise dead fee.

For any GM worth his salt, that's a short term boost if any.

Saddling the PCs with permanent penalities isn't going to make the game more fun, or more exciting.

That's simply a matter of personal preference. Some people like that sort of thing; you run risks this bad just for casting spells in general in some systems (the old TSR Conan for example)

[Tsotha-lanti]

In short, it's really too harsh. If you don't want players resurrected you should just say so. Otherwise they will prefer death to be a revolving door.

I don't think this is necessarily true. There are great ways to handle resurrection magic out there.

In Glorantha (explicitly laid out in HeroQuest, but not in RuneQuest), resurrecting someone is huge magic. Traditionally, you need very specialized magic, or a heroquest (a journey into the Otherworld) - and a lot of that specialized magic is heroquests. The White Woman will have to gather a party to represent the gods who journeyed into the Underworld to bring back the Sun and all the others who had died, and this party will have to face demons and dangers in the Darkness beneath the Earth. The greatest hunter-followers of the Bear God can "sleep to life" after dying, like the bear slept through the Great Darkness of Death.

And if you do come back, you may be changed (this being a roleplay aspect that the player can choose). Some heroes can survive multiple resurrections without being affected, and that becomes their big claim to fame. But most others will find their connection to Life weaker, and their connection to Death stronger; they may be bleak or unable to enjoy the tastes and smells and sounds of life, and may elect to henceforth follow the God of Death.

The journey, too, can be perilous. Maybe you are unable to trick the Guardian at the Gate, and must bargain with it instead; you might have to give it your hand, which can never be grown back (or which might only not exist in the Otherworld). You might lose your eye to the carrion birds in the hellish halls. You might earn the enmity of the Keeper of the Dead.

And so on.

But a blank slate just saying "you roll on this table for totally indeterminate and vague consequences that I decide on the spot and that are obviously intended to screw with you" is the worst imaginable way to handle it.

I think I, as a player, would prefer death to be another grand and epic adventure, rather than a revolving door. I can deal with death being final just great - but that works for specific kinds of games that expect less epic heroics of PCs than D&D. I would absolutely detest death being a way for the GM to arbitrarily and randomly screw my character.

You can make it so that the negative effects can be lost after a character reaches a milestone.

Or you could make it so they permanently lose healing surges. Until a milestone or a level.

Much better and balanced mechanical ideas. Intesify the penalties already associated with raise dead (PHB page 311, "a death penalty; -1 to all attack rolls, skill checks, saving throws, and ability checks [...] fades after the subject reaches three milestones").

Using that same mechanic with bigger penalties would be way fairer and more balanced. Maybe you don't have access to your dailies until 3 milestones. Maybe the penalty is -2 or -4.

[Yakk]

Catch the Soul
Level: 1 Component Cost: 10 gp
Category: Restoration Market Price: 50 gp
Time: 1 minute Key Skill: Heal
Duration: 1 month

To perform the Catch Soul ritual, you must have the body of the target who has died less than 10 minutes ago. Make a DC (10+Target's Level/2) Heal check to catch the soul -- failures may be repeated, but do not extend the 10 minute window, and consume components. Finally, the ritual caster must consume 1 healing surge from themselves or a willing donor. This healing surge is returned 30 days later, or when the donor gives up the gain of an action point at a milestone.

The ritual catches a piece of the departing target's soul in a component used in the ritual, which allows a later Resurrect ritual to be cast on the target. Without this ritual taking place, the target cannot be brought back from the dead short of quest to the lands of the dead. If the object that the soul was caught to is lost or stolen, the target cannot be resurrected without it.

This ritual has other, less pleasant, uses as well.

Resurrect
Level: 8 Component Cost: 500 gp + special
Category: Restoration Market Price: 680 gp
Time: 8 hours Key Skill: Heal
Duration: Instant

This ritual may only be performed on dead targets on whom a successful Catch the Soul ritual was performed.
The caster of the ritual makes a Heal check against a DC of 10 plus the target's level. Increasing the components spent to 5,000 gp gives a +5 modifier on this roll, and increasing it to 50,000 gp gives a +10 modifier on this roll.

In the event of failure, the ritual may be tried again, but the component cost doubles for the same modifier, as does the casting time.

In the event of success, the subject returns to life with a -1 penalty on all attack, saving throw, skill checks, and ability check rolls. This penalty fades after the subject reaches 3 milestones. You cannot return to life a subject that has been petrified, died of old age, is currently an animated undead, or similar problems.

---

In essence, you prevent the target from ever going 'fully dead', and then reanimate the body. However, someone who is dead stays dead, short of an epic quest.

[THAC0]

Not a big fan of changing the raise dead rules. Here's why:

In 4e, party composition and balance is KEY. If you have one character die and raising them isn't worthwhile, you can often find yourself with an unbalanced party (unless the player makes a double or near double of the character!), which can easily ruin the game.

That's the huge reason that I like having raise dead readily available.

However, I also play in a group that doesn't always take advantage of that. Actually, come to think of it, we've never actually raised a character, but used the character's death as an opportunity to better balance our party. Once we reach a good balance, though, that might change.

[THAC0]

All these harsh rules for raising dead, when will DMs understand that players can make a profit by leaving their characters dead and making new characters.

New character comes into the play in pristine condition and with new gear, while the party can loot the dead character and not have to pay for raise dead fee.

Which is why the DM simply accounts for that. ICly, in our game, the dead are laid to rest with their items, removing items from a corpse is just Not Done. Unless you're naughty, I suppose.

OOCly we have an agreement regarding loots, and know very well that if we do loot our friend's corpse, that will be taken out of the treasure we typically would have obtained on our next few adventures.

[BobVosh]

I always liked 1st/2nd eds "save vs ressurrection" Basically rez is a hideous exparience and you die of shock XD

Anyway, the way we handle rez at our table is new characters come in half a level behind, and rez is -500xLevel in exp. Comes out to about the same, slightly in favor of rez.

[Hal]

If nothing else, this seems like the kind of thing that a DM should be clear about before the start of the game, or at least before players start biting it. There is nothing more frustrating to think that the game world operates in some way, only to be told by the DM that he's personally writing errata for the rules book you spent so long learning. Maybe if the characters knew about such things before hand, they might not have walked into danger so easily.

If you don't like certain rules, that's fine. But give players a chance to react to your special rules before you ambush them.

[MartinHarper]

I think it's a mistake to have permanent drops in power for characters that aren't "you lose a level" or "you lose experience", because it breaks the fundamental concept that characters of the same level should be at the same power level. Temporary power drops, personality changes, and mechanical changes are all fine, though the player should have more say in them than the DM.

All these harsh rules for raising dead, when will DMs understand that players can make a profit by leaving their characters dead and making new characters?

DMs who understand that make sure that new characters start with less power than existing party members, in an amount that corresponds roughly with the reduction in power associated with being raised from the dead.

[Tokiko Mima]

What's to stop a 4e player who didn't like the penalties from saying "Hmm... ya know what, I'd rather reroll," then erasing the name at the top of the character sheet, and writing a new one? I mean I always wondered this for 3.5e players who die a few times but once you hit the lowest balanced experience level you can be in your party, couldn't you die as many times as you like and just change the name of your character instead of using an expensive rezz?

Keep in mind when you're coming up with a new death penalty that if you make death too awful, the players just going to either reroll or quit. The point of D&D isn't to imitate realistic death, it's to make sure all the players have fun immersing themselves into the DM's world, and players with dead or useless characters aren't usually having much fun.

[potatocubed]

Much as I like the idea of epic quests to raise the dead a la Glorantha, they have one key problem: what does the player of the dead guy do while the rest of the party is questing to bring them back? 'Play hirelings' is an option, and a good reason for every party to have at least a few lackeys on call.

A speedy revolving door kind of death has the key advantage that it keeps the game moving and keeps the dead character's player involved. It's also a bit... unsatisfying.

I believe the intent of the house rules in the original post was to inspire characters to quest to overcome their drawbacks - a very old school kind of situation, and one I could get behind in a more moderate form. But if they're playing a scripted adventure path (Scales of War? I don't know it...) then doing that sort of thing is going to detract from the main thrust of the campaign, which has its own array of problems.

I don't know what the best answer is. =/