D&D 5E How do you handle the "economy killing spells" in your game?

Krachek said:

I think it’s more interesting to dream about how « raise dead » can influence a society.
How much power can such a spell give to caster? How much a church leader will ask to raise a dead king or heir?
Our historical Pope were having a strong power just by allowing divorce. Imagine now raise dead!

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An interesting take would be requiring a soul for a soul to raise dead. That would cast raise dead into the morally questionable realm. Anyone raised would want to keep it a secret, which would give the caster powerful leverage.

I tried something previously where I had only one priesthood able to bring back the dead. Each time someone died I required a miniquest from the "friends" of the dead to retrieve the soul. I was working OK, but I had to add an intermediate step to keep from derailing the adventure too much. So raise could be cast by other priests but only within an hour of the time of passing since the soul was still hanging around the body. I was leaning on making it 1d10 minutes per level of the character to add some randomness to it.

WaterRabbit said:

An interesting take would be requiring a soul for a soul to raise dead. That would cast raise dead into the morally questionable realm. Anyone raised would want to keep it a secret, which would give the caster powerful leverage.

I tried something previously where I had only one priesthood able to bring back the dead. Each time someone died I required a miniquest from the "friends" of the dead to retrieve the soul. I was working OK, but I had to add an intermediate step to keep from derailing the adventure too much. So raise could be cast by other priests but only within an hour of the time of passing since the soul was still hanging around the body. I was leaning on making it 1d10 minutes per level of the character to add some randomness to it.

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What I've been mulling over for my next campaign is making lifespan a fixed quantity, and requiring that the caster give at least half their remaining lifespan to the one being raised. For example, if the cleric would have 50 years left to live normally, he could raise someone by giving that person 25 of those years. The priest and the target would then have 25 years of natural lifespan remaining to them. If the priest raised a second target before a significant amount of time had passed, the priest would lose 12.5 years of lifespan and the target would gain 12.5 years.

As such, raising the dead would be a non-trivial sacrifice, which likely results in a significantly reduced lifespan for both the caster and the target (discounting the fact that the target was dead).

I'm considering making it so that willing participants can split the sacrifice between themselves. So if 4 participants and a cleric raise someone, each would lose one tenth of their remaining lifespan, which would be added to the no-longer-dead target's lifespan. (1/5 because there are four participants plus the cleric dividing the loss, times 1/2 since a single participant would normally only lose half their lifespan).

Well, one inherent limit on raising the dead, in the given rules, is that the people have to want to return, which can be quite limiting; most good people are probably happy in their afterlife (and evil people are less likely to have others try to raise them). I imagine strongly LN and CN people enjoy Mechanus and Limbo, too.

As for nobles, kings, etc. -- that's really destabilizing (IE, a duke dies, and their heir gets the title; a year later someone with a resurrection spell comes along and raises the old duke. What if the new duke doesn't want to give up the title?) I figure that most NPC spellcasters would be unlikely to set up situations like that unless it's really worth it.

In my own world, there are other limits. One is that divine spellcasters are much rarer than arcane spellcasters, and high-level spellcasters of any type are rare. (The most common spellcasters are wizards, by a major margin.) Most towns and all but the largest cities, and many of the smaller kingdoms and nations, simply don't have anyone who can cast raise dead, much less resurrection.

I think it would be fair to say that in a feudal society where resurrection is a thing, there would be specific rules to address succession of deseased nobles. Some societies might downright outlaw its use for the nobility, or grant a “mourning period” before the crowning of the heir whereas the decreed is allowed to claim its throne back.

But I’d imagine it would still be a source of conflict. “The king is back after 10 years of exile!”. “He is the direct descendant of the king’s son born after his first death. His lineage is purer than the bastards sons of his successors!”

I imaging in a society with Raise Dead, people would wait for at least 10 days before choosing a successor. Also, if someone were going to kill a king, etc. they would make sure the corpse is in no condition for a Raise Dead spell to work on it. The same applies to Resurrection as to making sure the body cannot be exhumed all it. Since Resurrection can bring someone back from up 100 years in the past, that could be destabilizing but precautions would be taken I am sure.

Fanaelialae said:

What I've been mulling over for my next campaign is making lifespan a fixed quantity, and requiring that the caster give at least half their remaining lifespan to the one being raised. For example, if the cleric would have 50 years left to live normally, he could raise someone by giving that person 25 of those years. The priest and the target would then have 25 years of natural lifespan remaining to them. If the priest raised a second target before a significant amount of time had passed, the priest would lose 12.5 years of lifespan and the target would gain 12.5 years.

As such, raising the dead would be a non-trivial sacrifice, which likely results in a significantly reduced lifespan for both the caster and the target (discounting the fact that the target was dead).

I'm considering making it so that willing participants can split the sacrifice between themselves. So if 4 participants and a cleric raise someone, each would lose one tenth of their remaining lifespan, which would be added to the no-longer-dead target's lifespan. (1/5 because there are four participants plus the cleric dividing the loss, times 1/2 since a single participant would normally only lose half their lifespan).

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I like this idea. It makes it a real sacrifice. However, instead of a fixed quantity you could just bring the person back but cost the caster 10 years or something. You could also roll for the lifespan of the person who died and then the cost becomes variable.

WaterRabbit said:

I like this idea. It makes it a real sacrifice. However, instead of a fixed quantity you could just bring the person back but cost the caster 10 years or something. You could also roll for the lifespan of the person who died and then the cost becomes variable.

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Those are certainly viable options.

I didn't go with the flat amount, because that makes it fairly negligible for longer lived races, like elves.

I didn't base it on the target's lifespan because then you end up in situations where it becomes nigh impossible for a human priest to raise an elf, but relatively negligible for an elf to raise a human.

As for how it would work, I would roll the characters' lifespans in advance, and track them in secret. Certain powerful divinations might reveal someone's lifespan, but otherwise they don't know with certainty.

It also means that a human who is raised by an elf would have an abnormally long lifespan, since he received half the elf's remaining years (which will typically more than a single human lifespan). On the other hand, an elf brought back by a human would have (in elven terms) very little time. That elf might very well start behaving more human, rushing to check things off their bucket list as it were. This would likely result in a belief that the soul is shared in when one is brought back, which could lead to all sorts of interesting repercussions, such as elitist elves shunning the raised elf because he's be "tainted by humanity".

But yeah, you can totally mess with it. The 50% from the caster(s) was just something from my gut. I wanted to make it costly but not crippling. The average PC would need to cast raise dead an improbable number of times in order to have it impact them within the scope of a campaign (mine tend to run a few years of in-game time at most).

Stalker0 said:

So you would allow fabricate to turn a lump of coal into diamond?

Forget the armor, this is the new fortune making scheme.

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If Superman can do it....

Fanaelialae said:

I'm considering making it so that willing participants can split the sacrifice between themselves. So if 4 participants and a cleric raise someone, each would lose one tenth of their remaining lifespan, which would be added to the no-longer-dead target's lifespan. (1/5 because there are four participants plus the cleric dividing the loss, times 1/2 since a single participant would normally only lose half their lifespan).

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So, what if we got a big ritual used hundred or thousands of participants to resurrect the assassinated and beloved king? We're sending what, half of a thousandth of total life per participant? In most cases a few hours? That's a neat idea.

Beleriphon said:

So, what if we got a big ritual used hundred or thousands of participants to resurrect the assassinated and beloved king? We're sending what, half of a thousandth of total life per participant? In most cases a few hours? That's a neat idea.

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Thanks. Yeah, that could totally work. However, at least for my version, the key is that the participants must be willing. That implies a certain level of trust which might discourage larger rites. After all, if someone says they are willing but isn't, or changes their mind during the last moments of the spell, the rest of the willing participants end up holding the bag. So it becomes a question of whether you can trust the other participants, or you end up sacrificing a larger amount of your lifespan than anticipated because the others weren't being genuine.

I could imagine a situation where the king's best friend (genuine), his priest (genuine), and 98 "loyal" courtiers (wish the king would remain dead so they can make a bid for the throne) participate in a raise dead spell. The best friend and the priest each sacrifice 25% of their lifespan because the other participants weren't actually willing. Presumably, there a three people who are going to be rather miffed and 98 others who suddenly have a vested interest in making three problems go away...