Resurrection changes a man...

[Jack Simth]

Try long-term negative levels. They're like regular negative levels, except they're not curable by means of magic. They reduce your XP total as per losing a level, and cause you to be treated as a level lower while they remain; they go away when your XP total reaches a point where you'd gain another level had you properly lost one. -1 on all skill and ability checks, -1 on attack rolls and saving throws, -5 hit points, -1 effective level, and lose one of your highest level spell slots. Less bookkeeping than actually losing a level; you're just weakened, shaken, and uncertain from "your ordeal". You still know everything you knew (you're just a bit shaken up, and can't do it as well). Nothing disappears from your spellbook (you just can't concentrate as well as you used to to prepare as many spells as you otherwise could) and so on.

 

[Planeswalker Maloran]

I like that. It's probably what I'll go with.

 

[Quartz]

Another suggestion for you: give the character a virtual LA of +1. So your 5th level character would be treated as 6th level vis-a-vs the other PCs when it comes to calculating XP awards. THis would only go away when he actually became 6th level (or 7th or...).

I also suggest that you differentiate betwen long-term death and immediate resurrection. In the latter case, look at resurrection as a super-heal. The spirit hasn't left the body yet. Or, for the Pythonistas, "He's not dead, he's only resting."

 

[Phlebas]

Something I'm considering now is experience loss; meaning loss of experience equal to a level, without losing the level itself. That way the character doesn't lose any abilities, but still takes longer to gain new abilities. Your experience goes below the minimum for your level, but you don't 'level down' from it, you just need to gain that much more experience before you level up again. That seems kinda awkward, though... Any other suggestions that might work instead?

I work on just XP loss and no level loss, it avoids the "hey where did that spell go" element but remains a deterrent. I can't see how that would be awkward for either player or DM, (unless your using electronic character sheets) certainly compared with level loss.

I suppose you could end up with a situation where someone develops a deathwish after losing too much xp that they feel they'll never catch up (although if you play the xp/cr rules properly characters should catch up in levels even if not in xp), but sooner or later the rest of the party will stop paying for the raise dead so i don't think its changes game balance at all....

 

[Phlebas]

I also suggest that you differentiate betwen long-term death and immediate resurrection. In the latter case, look at resurrection as a super-heal. The spirit hasn't left the body yet. Or, for the Pythonistas, "He's not dead, he's only resting."

"Ah, your freind here is only mostly dead. Theirs a big difference between mostly dead and actually dead"

 

[Planeswalker Maloran]

"Ah, your freind here is only mostly dead. Theirs a big difference between mostly dead and actually dead"

Yeah, mostly dead means he's still partly alive. If he's all dead, there's only one thing you can do: go through his pockets and look for spare change. *grin*

 

[Meeki]

What's your logic/idea behind abberation?

 

[Planeswalker Maloran]

What's your logic/idea behind abberation?

Glad you asked. By my understanding, abberations are creatures whose presence defies the natural order. They only exist because of magical meddling (or in a few cases, they are native to a completely alien world, and are only here because of magical meddling). In the natural order, those who die stay dead. They can be returned to life only by magical meddling. It isn't natural, thus Nature brands them as freaks; in other words, abberations. This is also why the druid spell reincarnate would not have that side-effect; it works with the natural process rather than against it.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

1) If bringing back the dead is difficult to do in-game, it interrupts the quest. You're in the middle of a huge dungeon, off to destroy the lich that's been raising an undead army and raiding the countryside for "materials" to do so. And now you have to go to the mountain of Pain, past the Sea of Blood, and through the Forest of Ghosts to retrieve your buddy's soul to reunite it with the body.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It imposes a heavy "cost" on bringing back the dead, but without making the resurrected character less enjoyable to play. The side-quest to retrive their fallen ally doesn't have to be unrelated to the main quest, either-- it's a perfect opportunity to learn something about the villain, or acquire an artifact to use against the villain, or something similar.

You can also use it as an excuse to give the dead character information about the plot-- which he can reveal after he's been retrieved. Goes well with death having changed him, and with having been harrowed.

In my games, I've been strongly considered requiring a limited character rebuild upon resurrection. Nothing that imposes a real bonus or penalty, but the players has to reshuffle a few of the items on his character sheet to reflect being a slightly different person afterwards.

 

[Jack Simth]

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It imposes a heavy "cost" on bringing back the dead, but without making the resurrected character less enjoyable to play.

If it only takes a short time, it's not really an increased cost in this manner, and will not impose any particular "bite" to make character death more repulsive.

If it takes a long time, the player of the deceased is either playing a different character (which defeats the purpose of the resurrection in the first place) or is sitting it out (which also defeats the purpose).

The side-quest to retrive their fallen ally doesn't have to be unrelated to the main quest, either-- it's a perfect opportunity to learn something about the villain, or acquire an artifact to use against the villain, or something similar.

You can also use it as an excuse to give the dead character information about the plot-- which he can reveal after he's been retrieved. Goes well with death having changed him, and with having been harrowed.

Yes, but this depends fairly heavily on the DM's ability to improvise. The guy who needs to sit there and plan out a dozen contingencies is going to have problems if he wasn't expecting it.

The guy who never writes anything down anyway is going to be fine.

Then there's the issue of what you do with a previously-set time limit; a lot of class balance comes with the four encounters-per-"day" paradigm. You don't expect to make it with three... but the time-off means that Lich is going to raid even more villages, slaughter even more innocents, and have a much larger army to go in and grab the Solar's Gem from the Fortress of Goodness to power the Ritual of Returning for the ancient Demon-prince, banished six millenia ago. If such a thing has already been established... well.... there's a problem in un-establishing it to make time.

In my games, I've been strongly considered requiring a limited character rebuild upon resurrection. Nothing that imposes a real bonus or penalty, but the players has to reshuffle a few of the items on his character sheet to reflect being a slightly different person afterwards.

Reasonable enough, especially if you permit the PHB II retraining rules that let you reshuffle the character anyway.

Really though, in order to prevent players from becoming insensitive to character death, while still having it available, you need to have the players in on the plan, and fundamentally playing along with it.