D&D 5E New raise dead. thoughts?

Lord Tirian said:

The real problem with character death is: It sidelines the player until either a) the character is resurrected or b) has rolled up a replacement character.

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This argument seems just a little off. I get the impression that those who think this way have some deep rooted issues revolving around selfishness and other equally undesirable personality traits.

In my experience the dead guy usually has to wait until the fight is over and the group makes the trip to town, where in most cases the whole affair takes a few minutes of the time allotted for your gaming session. Sometimes this takes a little longer if there are things going on that can't wait.

If your DMing style is at odds with raise dead spells then that is something you need to deal with as the game has mechanics built in to keep characters from dying permanent deaths.



I understand that actually killing a character in the most recent version of the game would take a herculean effort on the part of the DM or a truly inept one.

Of course if the party had an NPC along for moral support, or the dead guy had a henchman or two, the player sitting idle wouldn't be an issue since he could still continue to play only he'd be using a different character. He could also start making a new character if that is how you deal with dead characters in your game. Character creation means he's not sitting idly by while everyone else plays, he's doing something.

As I see it, someone complaining about the natural outcome of a game where characters are put in life threatening situations and they fail is the last thing I want to deal with. Those people can go play a video game or something because I don't have much patience for that sort of thing at the table.

We will get to you as soon as possible, chill!

Lord Tirian said:

The real problem with character death is: It sidelines the player until either a) the character is resurrected or b) has rolled up a replacement character.

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Not a problem nearly as often if you play more than one character at a time...
[MENTION=6674889]Gorgoroth[/MENTION] - to nitpick: it's a resurrection survival roll, not system shock, required in order to return to life. (the res. roll is usually a few percent easier than the SS roll) But yes, it's an excellent mechanic that really should return; along with the Con loss.

Lanefan

Gorgoroth said:

Again, D&D characters should NOT have plot immunity.

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And if everybody dies and the quest fails...that's good! Why do I say that? Because if there is no real chance of actual failure to complete the campaign, what is the reward? An interactive story, where no matter what the good guys win.

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I think there is a serious misconception here.

You are assuming that if the PCs cannot die, they automatically win.

It's not true, unless the DM makes it so.

If I run an adventure or campaign where the purpose if e.g. "kill the BBEG" or "loot the dungeon", then allow the party to keep trying until they succeed, then yes the guys always win. But they actually always win in any case, whether (a) I disallow PC death completely, (b) I let them die and allow Raise Dead, or (c) I let them die and disallow Raise Dead so that death always means roll up a new PC. In all these cases, it can still be a "no matter what the good guys win" if I let them keep going to the dungeon or retry fighting the BBEG until successful.

OTOH, now imagine what happens if I instead define some FAILURE conditions for those adventures. E.g. if you don't loot the dungeon at first try, someone else will do it. Now you don't have a "no matter what the good guys win" scenario even if they cannot die! (Notice however that "cannot die" doesn't mean that they are invulnerable... it just means that if they are dropped to 0hp they have to stop fighting/adventuring).

Having permanent death or not in the game is a decision that the group needs to make for a different purpose: to choose if they want the game to focus on "character development" a lot (in which case you want each PC to last as long as possible) or not at all, and have more fun in trying playing different classes and races (in which case death is just an opportunity to try another PC).

I generally favor the latter, maybe because I've never been that good at character development, and I've always been interested in trying many different characters. But I really started to understand the opposite view thanks to a co-player, and then friend, who asked her character to be unkillable, and at that time I really thought it was lame to ask the DM such thing (especially because the others were still all killable)... but slowly I got her point. It really is a different playing style, and it's got nothing to do with wanting to "win".

Lanefan said:

Not a problem nearly as often if you play more than one character at a time...

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Of course, that's not how D&D is presented these days. 3E (which is now almost 12 years old!) and 4E have a strong emphasis of having one character at a time.

Of course, my problem is with the potential of side-lining players at plot-inconvenient points. Usually, there's trek back to town after the character gets killed to get the character revived, but it's harder to justify if you have a plot/adventure with a time-critical issue.

EDIT: And of course, Li Shenron is absolutely right, not dying is not equal to not failing. I'm starting to think there really ought to be two modules handling death and dying: One for narrative-minded groups (where death is hard, where plot failure is the bigger threat than death, where resurrection is rare and special) and a more dungeon-crawler-centric one (where replacement characters are assumed, dying is the usual mode of failure and raising the death is a touch easier).

Full disclosure: the way I deal with death in 4E is that characters who fail all 3 death throws are "merely" crippled and will die after a couple of hours if they don't get medical attention (which a heal roll can provide). A couple of days bed rest or magical healing (via ritual) gets them back on their feet again. Full death only happens if a) a crippled character is killed with a coup-de-grace or b) actually gets reduced to -1/2 maximum hp (which is ridiculously hard, but covers things like being crushed to death etc., things that are just supposed to be lethal). Similar rules in 3E. That allows me to keep death a scary thing (and often permanent), not something you bounce back from easily.

tlantl said:

This argument seems just a little off. I get the impression that those who think this way have some deep rooted issues revolving around selfishness and other equally undesirable personality traits.

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Here's a hint: Do not make it personal. Do not attribute a position to a character flaw, while there's still the possibility they simply have a different perspective and reasoned opinion. And, on the internet, there's pretty much always that chance.

This needs to be a knob you can dial up or down. Some DM's don't like resurrection at all, much less resurrection without permanent consequences. Myself, I hate losing a level or losing CON. But, I do care a bit more about death that way. Let's not bother setting a balance; make a gradient of options and let DM's choose the one they want.

Interesting POV's here. For myself I wouldnt play in or run a game where death wasnt a real option. Even now I'm a stickler for those material components.

A 10k diamond? Thats really rare, thats on huge diamond. I know the default seems to be "if you have 10k you can buy a 10k diamond" But I've never done it that way.

Realistically we're talking about something very rare, not hope diamond rare but definitely rare... so I always make it a bit of a quest to even find something like that.

I was thinking I would do the same thing for this current 500 gp requirement. Maybe not diamond but something like obsidian (connection to the dead) or a rare scarab beetle or something thats more then a matter of just jaunting down to the town market and picking it up.

In my perfect world, there'd be a breath of life type effect in the cleric spells. Give them a minute (give or take) to revive the dead before their soul leaves their body.

Then, after that, everything is partitioned into the ritual magic system with the explicit understanding that it's up to the DM which (if any) rituals are available in their game. Give a few example rituals based on contradictory assumptions to drive the point home.

But I have a feeling we'll just get a scattering of mid- and high-level spells that return the dead.

timASW said:

A 10k diamond? Thats really rare, thats on huge diamond. I know the default seems to be "if you have 10k you can buy a 10k diamond" But I've never done it that way.

Realistically we're talking about something very rare, not hope diamond rare but definitely rare... so I always make it a bit of a quest to even find something like that.

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That's an interesting thought. If you use the magic item buying limits, you wouldn't be able to walk into a store and buy one without visiting a metropolis or very rich city.

Like magical items, there'd still be an off chance one's available (GM fiat or roll on a table). But even in the biggest cities, it'd only be a 75% chance as written (for 3.x/Pathfinder).

timASW said:

I was thinking I would do the same thing for this current 500 gp requirement. Maybe not diamond but something like obsidian (connection to the dead) or a rare scarab beetle or something thats more then a matter of just jaunting down to the town market and picking it up.

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I'd be really tempted to have it require a minor holy relic of whatever god the dead person ended up with. Get the relic, convince the god's clergy it's worth it, have them convince the god's direct servants it's worth it, get your friend back.

Cheers!
Kinak

Falling Icicle said:

I think one good compromise is to have a Breath of Life type spell that can only raise someone who died very recently (say in the last 10 minutes, for example). The spell can only work in the short window before the soul has departed to the afterlife. This allows people to have the option to revive dead characters without the immortal kings and villains problem I mentioned before.

Of course, it's still up to individual preference whether or not this spell should incur some kind of cost or penalty for the character, but I think it's far less setting-breaking and immersion destroying than raise dead and resurrection, which can bring back people who have been dead for weeks or even centuries. Of course, not everyone has a problem with those spells, and the existence of this spell doesn't preclude those.

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Like the Revivify I had mentioned above (A 3.5E spell)

timASW said:

Interesting POV's here. For myself I wouldnt play in or run a game where death wasnt a real option. Even now I'm a stickler for those material components.

A 10k diamond? Thats really rare, thats on huge diamond. I know the default seems to be "if you have 10k you can buy a 10k diamond" But I've never done it that way.

Realistically we're talking about something very rare, not hope diamond rare but definitely rare... so I always make it a bit of a quest to even find something like that.

I was thinking I would do the same thing for this current 500 gp requirement. Maybe not diamond but something like obsidian (connection to the dead) or a rare scarab beetle or something thats more then a matter of just jaunting down to the town market and picking it up.

Click to expand...

I've always connected the 10k Diamond to a special pseudo-magic type of gem. These are then usually connected to a deity by story and become a setting element. For instance: Wee-jas's heart, a very rare type of red diamond, that is said to have the power to bring back the dead.

It helps make sense of why resurrections aren't always available and provides a good deal of verisimilitude when knowledge of it is dropped into a campaign early on. It then becomes an obvious goal if someone dies later on, and a resurrection is needed.