D&D 5E New raise dead. thoughts?

Lanefan said:

Valid point; we're still not sure what the 5e economy is going to look like.

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I think it would be best if 5e didn't have any economy set in stone except at the 1st level, when the characters still haven't been adventuring. After that, it would be nice if a DM didn't have to strictly measure how much treasure to shell out if she didn't want to.

Anyway I think that setting prices for "services" (i.e. spells) in D&D is always a bit dangerous, because what looks expensive at a certain level will normally become cheap or outright irrelevant at higher levels. It's the same problems with Rituals, and could be one reason why Mearls has said they might just remove their costs.

Falling Icicle said:

Some people would prefer that there be little or no penalty for dying.

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On the other hand, some people think the dead shouldn't be able to be raised at all.

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And then there's many different preferences inbetween those two extremes.

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Definitely.

A spell like Raise Dead actually serves mostly the in-between.

Those who want "no or little penalties" (this really means that they don't want their characters to die BTW), can just agree with the DM that in their campaign dead doesn't mean dead for a PC. It may mean knocked out for the rest of the combat or the day; it may mean to have a temporary penalty as if "dead" is replaced with "seriously injured"; it may even mean to have a permanent penalty. Either way, they don't really need Raise Dead in the game to represent these cases.

Those who want "death is permanent" obviously don't need Raise Dead. The DM can still have a rare and specific exception for a PC or NPC and base it entirely on narrative (it could also be a spell, but something so unique and complicated that will work only for such exception).

This leaves us with the in-between groups... I think it'd be nice to have an "optional" spell called Raised Dead to provide a reference standard, but as you say, the best solution is always going to be the group's own solution, depending on (1) if they want this only in high-level campaigns or also immediately, (2) if they want it to take time so that the penalty is being out of the game, (3) if they want short-term, long-term, or permanent penalties, (4) if they want it to cost money, (5) if they want it to work 100% of the times or less... really, the combinations are so many, that the best way not to make anyone unhappy is to make Raise Dead be a DIY spell!

I'm still bummed they didn't keep the "Unfinished Destiny" idea tossed around during the formation of 4e.

The idea was simple, raise dead only worked on someone with an "unfinished destiny."

It was the perfect plot device to tweak raise dead for your table.


Want your players to have unlimited resurrection? - There destinies aren't finished till the campaign is done.

Want raise dead to be nearly impossible? - No unfinished destines for anyone.

How come my fighter can get raised by the rich king cannot? - Unfinished destiny.


It was so completely perfect, and to me would fit well with 5e's style.

Stalker0 said:

I'm still bummed they didn't keep the "Unfinished Destiny" idea tossed around during the formation of 4e.

The idea was simple, raise dead only worked on someone with an "unfinished destiny."

It was the perfect plot device to tweak raise dead for your table.


Want your players to have unlimited resurrection? - There destinies aren't finished till the campaign is done.

Want raise dead to be nearly impossible? - No unfinished destines for anyone.

How come my fighter can get raised by the rich king cannot? - Unfinished destiny.


It was so completely perfect, and to me would fit well with 5e's style.

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There was a hint of this in the flavor text for 3E as well. They had a rule that a person who had died of old age could not be raised. It also prevented the anti-aging abilities of the Druid from making her immortal.

I agree that it would have been a nice angle.

I think an interesting set of (optional) rules for Raise Dead would be thus:

• Alter the material component to a sacrifice of great personal value from both the target and the cleric casting the spell. The components should always be symbolic and of great personal importance, such as a treasured magic item, a limb, or a loved one.
• Success is not guaranteed. Roll against a chart, which can even include backlash against the caster or (rarely) even the caster's death.
• If the roll fails, it means that the target can never be resurrected.
• A given character may only be resurrected once.

Jeff Carlsen said:

I think an interesting set of (optional) rules for Raise Dead would be thus:

• Alter the material component to a sacrifice of great personal value from both the target and the cleric casting the spell. The components should always be symbolic and of great personal importance, such as a treasured magic item, a limb, or a loved one.
• Success is not guaranteed. Roll against a chart, which can even include backlash against the caster or (rarely) even the caster's death.
• If the roll fails, it means that the target can never be resurrected.
• A given character may only be resurrected once.

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That was one thing I didn't like about 4E - there wasn't much penalty for failure. Ritual failed - oh well, we're delayed 10 minutes until we can cast it again. I do like the idea of some penalty for failure, so there is a risk.

NewJeffCT said:

The problem with Raise Dead isn't the spell itself. It's when it's available. In the days of 1E and 2E, D&D campaigns typically went from level 1 to somewhere around level 9 or 10 at the end.

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I still run my games this way. I never really understood why until the E6 post spelled it out for me.

Anyway, my gripe with D&D and Raise Dead has little to do with mechanics, it has more to do with the fluff.

I always felt that raising the dead is something that should be a lot more than "pay some money, mumble a little while, ta-da." When you are raising the dead, you are:

A) Finding a specific spirit amount truly countless others, in a whole other plane of reality.
B) Pulling that spirit back across the boundry from its current location to yours.
C) Shoving it into a dead body.
D) Fixing decay, a stab to the heart, blood loss, and giving the whole mess a jump start.

That's pretty awesome magic as-is. There should be something more to it than money and mumbling, and the spell description should hint at having to perform a special quest for a deity, or (my favorite) having to enter the world of the dead to retrieve the soul personally, or sacrifice a number of sentient beings with equal life force, etc. Something, anything.

This makes it available, but do you really want to risk slogging through the underworld? Hard choices make games interesting. El Cheapo No Consequence raise dead isn't a hard choice by default - it is a given. It is boring.

Stalker0 said:

I'm still bummed they didn't keep the "Unfinished Destiny" idea tossed around during the formation of 4e.

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I like this too, sans the part where a lot of people will just say that until the game ends everyone still has a destiny.

NewJeffCT said:

That was one thing I didn't like about 4E - there wasn't much penalty for failure. Ritual failed - oh well, we're delayed 10 minutes until we can cast it again. I do like the idea of some penalty for failure, so there is a risk.

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I think modern D&D assumes, or strongly favors, PC victory in all circumstances and that if a player dies then it is definitely the DM's "fault", so the player shouldn't be penalized. So sad.

As far as 5e mechanics and the cost of 500gp, every game's economy is going to be different. That may be a lot, that may be pocket change, just adjust the cost up and down (or remove it) as necessary.

GhostBear said:

I still run my games this way. I never really understood why until the E6 post spelled it out for me.

Anyway, my gripe with D&D and Raise Dead has little to do with mechanics, it has more to do with the fluff.

I always felt that raising the dead is something that should be a lot more than "pay some money, mumble a little while, ta-da." When you are raising the dead, you are:

<snip>

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I agree.

Bringing a PC back from the dead was way cooler 1e-2e: You went on a quest typically.

Think of it this way: If you had to go find the soul, convince the power of the realm where the soul resided to release the soul (or 'steal' it), prepare the body and perform powerful magics with all the trimmings (light of the full moon on top of the tallest mountain, eg) that would take a character of paragon (or equivalent) tier at least...so a spell, which is EASIER, should be end of paragon if not epic!

I know part of the reason from going away from questing was the idea that the dead character didn't level, but if DMs limited it to a simple 1-3 session adventure, the xp loss would be minimal.

jrowland said:

Bringing a PC back from the dead was way cooler 1e-2e: You went on a quest typically.

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I think almost everyone likes this, but it works only if you make sure that the players has something else to do e.g. play a replacement character or help the DM running NPC and monsters.

Also, it works only if used sparingly. If the campaign is lethal on average, then questing each time a PC dies could become tedious.

To reiterate my opinion, as a DM I really want to hear from the players what they want. I have no problems letting a PC be killable only when its player accepts that, and otherwise substitute death with something else. If the group of players hasn't decided beforehand how to cope with a PC's death, I am willing to make a decision all of us together on the spot: do you want this PC dead now, do you want it to survive, or do you want a quest?

Let's keep in mind that allowing a PC to survive when by the rules it's been killed by a monster or trap, doesn't make the character immortal from the story point of view (he can still die next time, and he will definitely die at some point in time inside or outside the campaign time window) and doesn't mean the party "wins" all the encounters or the quests, because dropping to 0 HP (or whatever) still means you are out of the encounter, thus TPK still means encounter lost and possibly quest botched.

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the simplest way to balance death, as mentioned before, is the correct way.

You die, you lose 1 point of Con. Bam, done. Also, system shock rolls. Scariest rolls ever!!!


Let's put the fear of death back into PCs, and make the game seem magical again. Videogame resurrect at-will = do not want. I can play actual videogames if I want a truly immortal character.

The availability of raise dead is tied not only to preference for how dying is handled, but also by default assumptions about appropriate amounts of fudging allowed in the game. It's pretty easy to be hard-core about no raise dead, death is permanent, if the DM is going to fudge the group out of most of the possible deaths by not allowing them to happen in the first place.

The raise dead/fudge axis is not so much about dying, per se, as it is about, "what happens when you lose, badly, in combat or other life-threatening situations." There's no meaningful discussion of raise dead without also including that part.