D&D 5E How do royalty die in D&D?

Celebrim

Legend
Well, first, for the simple reason that it tends to provoke succession crisis if you put a sovereign on a throne and then resurrect an heir with a better claim, it's generally the case under the law (at least in my campaign world) that:

a) It's almost always illegal to resurrect a person in the line of succession to a noble title.
b) It's almost always the case that such a person loses all title to the throne.

Societies tend to do that out of self-defense. Consider the case of the younger brother who never expected to inherit who suddenly finds himself the lawful heir, and is sworn to the throne. Two days later the older brother shows back up and says, "Heh, that throne is mine." Even if the younger brother said, "Ok, sure. Glad to have you back.", what tends to happen is that later on the younger brother is like, "OMG I can't believe how stupid my older brother is. I would have totally ruled differently." and some people are like, "OMG, I'd so much rather have the younger brother as King." It just creates a lot of messes. The only exceptions tend to be related to cases where a person in the line of success has been found guilty of manipulating the line of succession through murder, or if the death of the person in question has left no clear heir and so does provoke a succession crisis.

Secondly, you cover the cases pretty well, but its worth pointing out that assassination techniques if they are to be effective generally have to do away with the body. If you've got a body, then you can bring the person back. No body, and things get dicey. Seriously powerful people generally have to be assassinated by NOT killing them. That is to say, it's often easier to do away with someone for a long time by trapping their soul in something or polymorphing them into something or turn them to stone then put various anti-divination defenses on the new form that it's not easily found. One popular defense among those powerful enough to manage it is a curse triggered by anyone that attempts to divine the location of the thing you want to find, but simple 'you can't find this' magic will work on its own. Stuffing the object or creature into another plane of existence works pretty well if you can manage it. That way, resurrection magic just doesn't work.

Generally speaking, if assassins can't manage that then they...

a) Use poisons that are resistant to magic and/or destroy the body.
b) Inflict diseases that are resistant to magic and/or destroy the body.
c) Ensure the body is consumed utterly by feeding it to something. A simple green slime works wonders here. Pour a bit on a dead body and in a few minutes there isn't enough left to resurrect.
d) Employ magic which ages the corpse unnaturally, making it harder to raise.
e) Turn the person into undead, and take the body with them.

At best, that forces the person rely on things like True Resurrection which - outside of silliness like the Forgotten Realms where every small town has a 20th level cleric - are likely to be pretty darn rare.

Anything that approximates a skilled assassination amounts to the same thing. Many monsters don't leave a corpse to work with - see 'swallow whole'. Ships going down in the ocean tend to leave no bodies to recover.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

jimmifett

Banned
Banned
I'm thinking of starting a campaign around a succession crisis. Basically, the king and queen die and the young heir is challenged by an uncle for the throne. I'm having trouble coming up with ways to kill off the king and queen who have access to mid-level clerics. I was hoping some of you would have good ideas :).

Here are possibilities I've come up with so far:
  • old age (doesn't really work since I want the heir to be young)
  • battle
  • sacrifices in a magic ritual to save the kingdom
  • assassination
  • accident while traveling
  • disease resistant to magical treatment

  • small asteroid strikes the kingdom (rocks fall, everyone dies)
  • had dreams messed with by the Quori, went insane, murder suicide by queen
  • overtaken by mimics (and tower replaced by mimic tower) over a decade ago, slain by heroes
  • ascended
  • contract came due after selling souls to have a prosperous kingdom
  • erased from time, BTTF style, prince McFly doesn't have long left... and Uncle Biffington is a jerk
  • not dead, but secretly trapped in a snowglobe owned by the uncle
  • fed to the Golthaius tree to cure prince with an apple
  • Slain at court by a slighted noble of the summer/winter court of fae
  • Violent uprising by an evil collective known as the Cult of Soul Schism. The month is referred to as Red October. Uncle leads the cult.
  • Have been dead for decades, but were actually living constructs made to watch over prince.
  • A wizard did it.
 

jrowland

First Post
Why have the succession crises be with the uncle? Why not the resurrected king? The people who worship other gods may rise up in protest to this "puppet of the gods" imposter king. The uncle might fan those flames and be pushing the rightful heir to assert his throne. Perhaps the queen is rezzed as a Deva (aasimar) and agitates for democracy as an obvious puppet to the gods, lending credence to the uncles claims and further dividing the land.
 

Mirtek

Hero
Also, keep basic politics in mind
Indeed. The last FR novel laid down the rules for ressurecting royalty in the kingdom of Cormyr:

If someone in line for the throne is resurrected, they immediately move to the bottom of the line of inheritance
Resurrecting a reigning monarch is punishable by death for the party responsible for the resurrection, the resurrected monarch is (magically) castrated and banished from the kingdom
 


transtemporal

Explorer
Sharks with frikkin lasers!

Seriously, have them eaten by a beastie. No coming back from that!

Either that or make resurrection spells uncertain for npcs. Like, they don't always work because the gods work in mysterious ways. But nevertheless, the people take it as a sign the gods didnt favor the current royals giving the uncle a chance to legitimately denounce the little tyke!
 


Remathilis

Legend
Mid-level isn't the worry.

Raise dead (in 5e) has a 10 day time window and doesn't restore lost body parts. Anyone attempting to kill a king would simply need to behead (and hide) the body, or keep it 11 days.

Resurrection (7th level, or 13th level cleric) is where the spell overcomes time (100 years) and missing body parts. Of course, the question becomes how common are 13th level priests?
 

steeldragons

Steeliest of the dragons
Epic
Mid-level isn't the worry.

Raise dead (in 5e) has a 10 day time window and doesn't restore lost body parts. Anyone attempting to kill a king would simply need to behead (and hide) the body, or keep it 11 days.

Resurrection (7th level, or 13th level cleric) is where the spell overcomes time (100 years) and missing body parts. Of course, the question becomes how common are 13th level priests?

Doesn't Resurrection require a body part/piece to be able to cast in the first place? It used to.

<rummages through 5e PHB> No! I'm shocked. So disintegrating a body or using green slime still is resurrect...-able? That's...seems wrong to me. But that's what the book say.

The spell does specify that the soul must be free and willing. So a soul trapped somewhere in the afterlife, subject who's under a Magic Jar, Trap the Soul and such like, I guess...couldn't come back and an unwilling soul wouldn't come back.
 

GMMichael

Guide of Modos
The spell does specify that the soul must be free and willing.
This. Why would anyone besides an adventurer want to come back from his god's happy hunting ground?

I didn't see the best meta-answer: you kill a king off the same way you kill PCs off. TPK! So a troll with fire-immunity got loose in the castle, and took out the king, queen, jester, and the only cleric around who knows raise dead spells. Done and done. Draw up a new king, queen, jester, and cleric while the players look at you weird.
 

Remove ads

AD6_gamerati_skyscraper

Remove ads

Recent & Upcoming Releases

Top