Do you allow resurrection-type magic in your campaign?

[Sejs]

I allow it, but it's hard to come by. You can't just bop over to the local temple and lay down coin for a resurrection. Chances are very good that all the clergymen at that temple arn't even Clerics (members of the cleric class) - they're most likely to be Experts. Divine spellcasters are the guys out performing miracles and acting as the hand of their god on earth. They're a seperate order from the rank and file that perform weddings, give sermons, offer advice, and grant succor to the needy. Even in the event that you get into contact with a divine spellcaster of sufficient level to raise the dead, you're going to have to then go about convincing them that the deceased is the kind of person that -should- be brought back, from their point of view. If you go to a priest of Heironeous, you're probably going to spend a good while convinving them that your dead friend really was a good man who fought for what was right. If you go to a druid, you're very likely to be told that, hey things die, that's how it's supposed to work.


Of course, PC spellcasters skew things, as they can do with their abilities as they see fit. But when it comes to everyone else in the world I run things as outlined above.

 

[Gothmog]

no strings drop another quarter in the slot and raise Merric's Mage. What Fred is dead and you're out raise spells, and too far to city. Merric roll up a new mage. poof . Game on.
My question for those who outlaw raises. How mean are you in combat? Do you take out the fighter with rot grubs because he dug through the garbage to get that last gp. If merric fumbles three times in a roll and the orc nat 20 him three tims does the orc do a jig as Merric's tank clanks to the ground at -11.

I didn't change combat around much, in fact I've lowered the MDT to 10 + Con bonus + 2 Base Fort save, with bonuses or penalties also assigned for size. You can go to a negative hp value equal to your Con, and I made stabilizing easier (Con check with DC 10 + the absolute vaule of the negative HP). That said, if a call could go either direction, I always give the players the benefit of the doubt. I also don't run combat/trap heavy campaigns, so the PCs are cautious and usually have some warning of imminent danger.

I also don't allow living beings to travel the planes (such as they exist in my homebrew). So no dimension doors, blinks, teleports, gates, etc. Only disembodied souls (ie, dead people), ghosts, incorporeal undead, outsiders, and elementals can travel the planes. The exception to this is the Spirit World (similar to most campaign's Ethereal), which some witches and mediums can traverse with the proper spells, and the Realm of Faerie, where the Fey dwell. So the only real chance a mortal will have to see other planes occurs after he is dead, and traveling to whatever afterlife he deserves.

Summoning spells are allowed, but they are long, tedious, costly and MUST involve conjuring extradimensional forces (ie, fiendish, celestial, elemental, or outsider entities). To make the summoning spells more useful, the durations are expanded for a certain number of tasks or specified contingent duration, but summoned creatures are notorious for trying to subvert their summoner's desires.

 

[Knight-of-Roses]

In my current game the gods are dead and no one is sure what is on the other side of the veil . . . there is almost no ability to bring people back from the dead.

I am willing to pull blows, but not in dramatic conflicts. When they go up against the big bad, there is a serious chance that people will die. So far they have been lucky.

 

[shilsen]

I allow it but require a level check with certain modifications (so higher level PCs and NPCs have more chances of returning from the dead than villager Bob). Also, no character can benefit from the same resurrection-type spell more than once. So once you've been raised by Raise Dead, no more Raise Deads for you.

 

[Destil]

I allow it as a counter to save or die spells. But the spell needs to be cast very soon:

5th level: Body must be able to support life, must have died within 1 round per caster level, casting time 1 full round.
XP cost: 50 XP per HD of the creature to be raised

7th level: Most of the body must be present, must have died within 1 hour per caster level, casting time 1 hour.
XP cost: 100 XP per HD of the creature to be raised

9th level: Creature must have died within 1 day per caster level, casting time 1 day.
XP cost: 200 XP per HD of the creature to be raised

I allow power components for the XP requirement sometimes. These are the clerical versions (all with no level loss), there's also clone (arcane, as per 3.0), Reincarnate (druid, must have died within 1 week, 100 XP / HD loss for the recipant) and the psionic power Astral Pathways (Psycoportation, allows the soul of the creature to return but somwhat more involved for the dead person).

 

[shadow]

I never liked ressurection spells. They are way too tied to metagame concepts. From my experience, campaigns with a good amount of ressurection magic tend to lead to extreme metagame thinking. The worst example was when I heard of players resorting to suicide tactics because they could be raised later with little penaly. (The level loss is a small price to pay for taking out a major villian with ease in a suicide attack.) Of course this style of play is okay for some groups who aren't concerned with story, but I prefer a slightly more "believable" campaign world.
In most stories and legends death is treated as a finality. Of course there are many examples of legends involving people trying to bring someone back to life (such as the legend of Orpheus) or trying to cheat death (such as Gilgamesh), but few legends portray such attempts as successful (Orpheus looks back on his wife, and she slips back into the underworld; in spite of his quest for eternal life, Gilgamesh eventually dies.) In most D&D campaigns death is treated as a minor inconvenience at best. When a character dies, he or she can always get ressurected at the local cleric. In such a world there would be no question what lies on the other side of the veil. Kings and rulers, with the wealth and access to ressurection magic, would never stay dead leading to godlike tyrants ruling the land. The very world would be different; death would no longer be the a subject of religion, philosophy, and stories. It would be treated by many people the same way we treat the flu. "Oh Bob's got killed again, we'll have to take him to the cleric again." I prefer to limit ressurection magic for sake of campaign verisimilitude.

 

[TwilightWhisper]

I find it hard to believe that any deity would let a soul (the material his plane is made from, petitioners and possible future proxies) elude him unless it was for some very special purpose. Favors do not come cheap.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I put "yes with strings" but it's more like "yes but I play Arcana Unearthed." The game has enough built in limitations on Res that I don't worry too much about it. The mechanics made it rare, and there's no reason to make it otherwise. Works for me

 

[Emperor Valerian]

In my world, it depends heavily on what area the players are in. In the section based on medieval Europe, magic is fairly common, but even then, ressurection, etc. is rare... ie. you have to have been 12th level or so to even be considered, and then usually you have to been considered a 'friend' of the church doing the ressurecting (ie. saving the church from demons, etc.).

On top of this, occassionally when someone dies (character or NPC) their deity refuses to let their soul return... at least in its regular, humanoid form. This prevents ressurection from being overly used... the more times you get ressurected, the higher chance you'll get, "denied re-entry." I do this by rolling a D20... the initial DC is 15 for the second ressurection, and goes up by one for each one thereafter.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The problem is:

D&D is lethal.

Death is common.

Danger is common.

Which means - if you're trying to build any sort of story, and keep these parts of D&D in the game, you're likely to lose PCs on a semi-regular basis.

And a game that loses PCs regularly has buckley's chances of retaining any sort of consistant adventuring group.

Other people have posted on this before, although usually in the case of a TPK. What do you do when the characters will all the relevant info die? Is that it? Is your long-running epic basically dead and wasted? Do you lose all that investment?

Only - if you remove the resurrection spells, it's a wider problem, because you don't just have to look out for TPKs - normally a single surviving party member has the potential to bring back the entire party. With no resurrection, he doesn't - it's that simple. So even if each member of the original party dies one by one, you lose an entire generation of knowledge, and your campaign suffers.

That's why I'd suggest leaving in resurrection spells. Either that, or overhaul the game so there are alternative penalties for losing to guys.

One suggestion : a critical hit table with long-lasting effects, and remove the regeneration spell. Now the PCs can lose a combat, suffer for and feel that loss, but yet stay in the story.

Alternately some sort of group history that is passed down with the surviving members would be a good one, and a prime reason to include a bard in every group.