Kill raise dead... dead!

[Felon]

The trouble is, fiction is not a game - whether a character lives or dies is not decided by a roll of a die, but by the author.

While there are many examples of a main character dying at the end of a novel (or at a relevant plot point), very rarely does it happen 15 pages into the book.

Indeed, in long running series of novels, the main character's ability to escape death is generally taken to ludicrous levels. Being raised from the death actually is more believable...

This is mirrored to a large degree by the pace at which an adventure (and the DM) dole out challenges. Just as the toughest battle doesn't occur 15 pages into the book, the first fight of an adventure should tend to be light work, not an epic nail-biter.

If you can have a sufficient buffer between dying and dead, then the DM is in the driver's seat in determining how lethal an encounter is going to be, and not so much the randomness of dice rolls. Having DM fiat exercised before a character dies seems to make much more sense to me than having to find a way to reverse an untimely death.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think that this is an issue that should be addressed with a plethora of options.

At the very least:

1. Easy access to Raise Dead even at low levels.
2. Access to Raise Dead, but not so easy and delayed until higher levels.
3. Raise Dead is unavailable, except perhaps via an arduous quest.

This way, every group should be able to find an option than suits them reasonably well.

Admittedly, this does interact with the deadliness of the game, but I think that that also ought to be something that allows for multiple choices. Video games vary difficulty levels all the time, usually with a simplistic mechanic such as just changing hp and damage. It should be relatively easy to establish various difficulties in D&D with some rigorous playtesting.

 

[NewJeffCT]

The problem with Raise Dead is that it comes too soon in the game now.

In 1E and 2E, most campaigns went from level 1 to somewhere around level 10. Raise Dead was a level 5 spell, so the players would not have access to it until they were at least 90% of the way through the campaign at level 9. By the time you've invested 90% of a year's time in a campaign, using a Raise Dead spell was certainly a reasonable way to keep a key PC in the campaign. After all, the PCs were great heroes by that time.

In 3E, the game was designed to go from level 1 to level 20. However, Raise Dead was still a level 5 spell, meaning you had access at level 9. So, instead of being 90% of the way through the campaign, you're now only 45% of the way through a campaign when you can get access to Raise Dead. The spell is cheapened because you're not yet great heroes at the cusp of the campaign climax - you're only halfway there.

In 4E, you have access to the Raise Dead ritual at level 8 when the campaign is designed to go from level 1 to level 30. So, you now have access to the spell 26 2/3% of the way through the campaign - you're barely out of the gate when you can start raising the dead. It gives the game a completely different feel if the spell is that easy to access. It's the equivalent of Raise Dead as a 3rd level spell in 1E/2E.

So, you go from a spell that is only available after the average campaign is 90% in 1E/2E, to a spell that is available after 45% of the average 3E/3.5E campaign is over, to a spell/ritual that is available after only 26 2/3% of the way through the average 4E campaign. Big change to the entire feel of the game.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

In 1E and 2E, most campaigns went from level 1 to somewhere around level 10.

?? I would really assert that to be inaccurate at best. "Most" people would agree that by 10th you've moved out of the sweet spot of not just AD&D but most other versions of D&D, yet MY experience is that most campaigns end with PC's at levels well into the teens. Spell charts go to 29. Certainly I never knew anyone who expected their game to conclude around 10th. They either wanted to start over well before that point or had every intention to run the game indefinitely beyond that point.

Raise Dead was a level 5 spell, so the players would not have access to it until they were at least 90% of the way through the campaign at level 9.

No, players have access to it when the DM ALLOWS them to have access to it - often through obtaining it from NPC's but sometimes by items as well. My own experience is that by the time PC's are able to cast raise dead on their own they still rely overwhelmingly on NPCs and items to provide it.

Raising dead PC's is a capability included in the game for ENTIRELY meta-game reasons. It has nothing to do with setting design or PC power levels or the like. It has EVERYTHING to do with simply allowing players who have characters which they enjoy to resume playing those characters despite other circumstances in the game having resulted in their deaths. Maybe it was a fluke missed save. Maybe it was the players own carelessness or stupidity that led to it. Raise dead exists in the game ONLY to allow that player to resume playing his PC instead of being forced to create a new one.

How, when, and at what cost the raise is provided is really a matter for the individual DM to justify (and is NOT limited in the slightest to when a PC can cast it for another PC and never has been) based on what he thinks is necessary to maintain an appropriate "respect" for avoiding death, rather than abusing its mere existence to circumvent it entirely on a repeated and casual basis. It's supposed to be an "out" that the DM allows and not a right that the player abuses.

 

[Gort]

No, players have access to it when the DM ALLOWS them to have access to it - often through obtaining it from NPC's but sometimes by items as well. My own experience is that by the time PC's are able to cast raise dead on their own they still rely overwhelmingly on NPCs and items to provide it.

Not truly, no. In 3e a cleric is assumed to have access to all of his spells. The DM would actually have to go out of his way to deny access to this spell. And since the game actually assumes that death happens all the time to PCs and can be easily "cured" (see: Save or Die spells, dying when you hit -10 HP even if you have 300 base HP) you have to modify quite a bit more of the game if you deny access to raise dead spells.

I want to see deaths being rare, but irrevocable. Make it difficult for a character to die by accident - an enemy would have to actually make the choice to kill the character, not just get a lucky crit. However, once that choice is made, the character is GONE.

This way, if there is someone who is 100% in love with their character and will never play another et cetera et cetera, the DM can have him be horribly wounded and left for dead, stripped of all his gear, arrested, chained up in a dungeon and so forth.

 

[NewJeffCT]

?? I would really assert that to be inaccurate at best. "Most" people would agree that by 10th you've moved out of the sweet spot of not just AD&D but most other versions of D&D, yet MY experience is that most campaigns end with PC's at levels well into the teens. Spell charts go to 29. Certainly I never knew anyone who expected their game to conclude around 10th. They either wanted to start over well before that point or had every intention to run the game indefinitely beyond that point.

There was an extensive survey done by WotC before 3E came out. While there were certainly many outliers, the survey found that most campaigns in 2E/1E days went from level 1 to somewhere around level 10. I'm sure somebody out there besides me remembers that from the early days of enworld.

As somebody who has been playing D&D since the late 70s, most of the long-term campaigns I was involved with usually ended with the PCs hitting "name" level, which is often level 9.

Following the survey, though, the reason that 3E was designed for level 1 to 20 was so those high level spells that so often took up space in older edition books (Meteor Swarm, Maze, Otto's Irresistible Dance, Wish, etc) could actually be used by players in game, instead of some mysterious NPC who grants the players a boon, or some BBEG who does it to harm/stop/kill the PCs.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Not truly, no. In 3e a cleric is assumed to have access to all of his spells. The DM would actually have to go out of his way to deny access to this spell. And since the game actually assumes that death happens all the time to PCs and can be easily "cured" (see: Save or Die spells, dying when you hit -10 HP even if you have 300 base HP) you have to modify quite a bit more of the game if you deny access to raise dead spells.

That's certainly true - if I didn't kill at least one PC or more per combat in my 3.5e game, I figured I wasn't doing my job.

But, with access to things like Revivify and Psionic Revivify, death was only another obstacle for the players to overcome.

 

[ferratus]

If you have save or die spells, you have to have raise dead.

Now I think this will be the unfathomable chasm that can't be reconciled by modular rules. Should 5e have save or die spells and poisons?

 

[Fanaelialae]

If you have save or die spells, you have to have raise dead.

Now I think this will be the unfathomable chasm that can't be reconciled by modular rules. Should 5e have save or die spells and poisons?

Modular can handle that. Just have an optional D&D's Deadliest book that includes rules for save and die spells, traps, monsters, etc. (You can even include a selection of them in the core 3, or however they publish it.)

 

[A'koss]

We used to play a couple of variations on Raise Dead to make it more meaningful. I think the best was a variation whereby life required a life. Someone could only be raised if another was *freely willing* (no charm, threatening, etc) to give up their life in exchange. The cleric then drew the life out of one to raise the other.

And if the one sacrificing their life was lower level, the one revived would be hit by a number of negative levels equal to the difference, recovering 1/day.

So Raise Dead was there but the price was never an easy one to pay.