D&D 5E Resurrection and Revivify

[Yaarel]

It seems like if the body is mangled, then we're looking for a 17th level or higher caster. That makes certain kinds of death a lot closer to permadeath.

The Revivify spell says, ‘heals mortal wounds’. So, as long as the pieces of the puzzle are present, Revivify seems able to restore a mangled body.

On the other hand, it might be, burning a corpse to ashes by fire would destroy the body. Thus fire might make Revivify fail. It depends on how reconstructable ashes are. Probably not. At that point, the Resurrection spell would be the only option.

Even if coming back via Revivify, dying in a Fireball with ‘vital organs’ still intact might come back with burn scarring?

In a campaign I had that went to high level, they were still using Revivify as the primary resurrection method.

Once they had to use a Wish spell, because the PC fell into the Abyssal Storm of the Demonweb Pits, but that's it. It's just TOO good compared to Raise Dead and even Resurrection, as the 1minute limitation is seldom a problem (only once did the party cast it during combat before the 1minute was up).

It is true that the Revivify is almost always useful, even at the highest levels. I am ok with this, and feel it is working as intended. Characters normally die in combat. Reviving them in the same round or immediately after combat at the latest, is normally how a resurrection happens.

The possibility of fire damage might make Revivify more difficult however if the fire destroys vital organs. The Disintegration spell explicitly destroys the body. So Resurrection would be the only option.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Revivify can probably absorb Raise Dead. In other words, at level 3, if the body is only dead within minutes, then the ally comes back to life with 1 hit point, and without penalties. But if the body has began decomposing, then it should return with levels of Exhaustion, that take upto several days to recover from. If the body would have been destroyed, such as missing a head, then Revivify automatically fails.

Or, the whole series of spells could just be Revivify up-cast?

 

[Blue]

Or, the whole series of spells could just be Revivify up-cast?

I would personally love less spells known and more spells you can upcast just across the board.

To contracdict myself though, I wonder if that's adding an extra layer of complexity at the table for of having to evaluate each spell in each slot. I am good with complexity off the table, but I don't want to slow down play. Warlock gets away with it because you only need to know if for one level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To contracdict myself though, I wonder if that's adding an extra layer of complexity at the table for of having to evaluate each spell in each slot.

Every same-or-lower-level spell known/prepared, even if it can't be up-cast, is a candidate to consider when using a slot, it's usually all pretty intuitive, you jump right to the best spell for the situation - but I could see the theoretical decision-tree modeling it getting quite complex.

 

[Yaarel]

Or, the whole series of spells could just be Revivify up-cast?

My main problem with the four resurrection spells (Revivify, Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection), is they feel too much like redundant spells. They remind me of 3e (Cure Light Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Critical Wounds). I breathe a sigh of relief when I see 5e consolidate them as ‘Cure Wounds’ − augmentable by using higher slots.

By consolidating the resurrection spells, there are two salient separate concepts.
• Revivify = revive the old body
• Resurrection = create a new body

 

[Yaarel]

With regard to Revivify. Perhaps the longer the body is dead, the higher the slot spell level required, and the more Exhaustion levels result? All the way upto slot 7. (If requiring slot 8, the sixth level Exhaustion would kill the character making the spell fail.)

At slot 9, Resurrection is better by creating a fresh new body.

So.

Revivify can revive a vitally-intact body that has been dead for less than 1 minute. For each higher level spell slot, the Revivify spell can revive a body that has been dead for upto one additional week. The revived character incurs a level of Exhaustion for each new week of death. For example, a body that is dead for 10 days requires a slot of spell level 5 to revive, and the revived character incurs two levels of Exhaustion.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd rather get rid of Revivify (or jump it to 5th and combine it with Raise Dead). Having Revivify at 3rd, with no real drawbacks, makes death no more than a speed bump provided the corpse is in halfway-reasonable shape.

Resurrection (at 7th) requiring at least a bit of the previous body is fine. It's True Resurrection at 9th that needs to go; by that point your party is casting Wish, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to the 5e Wish rules to allow it to revive someone without any body parts present.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Personally, I don’t like the idea of rolling Raise Dead into Revivify. I like that at early levels, your only option is yo drag your fallen ally’s body to the nearest temple and pay the local priest to bring them back. In a major city there might be a priest powerful enough to Raise Dead, but if you’re out on the borderlands the best you can hope for is Revivify, and that’s where Gentle Repose comes in handy. I think that creates a really nice dynamic.

The trouble with this is that an awful lot of parties don't have access to Gentle Repose, and without that spell, which technically you have to not cast as a ritual (though I can't see any non-black-hearted DM really enforcing that), because a ritual takes +10 minutes, so must have prepared, the PC is just dead.

It's a lovely dynamic in a party with a Cleric, I agree. But it essentially makes it a game of "Force a player to be a Cleric and have a non-Evil DM or you diiiiiieeeee!", which is like, not great. I think it's worth losing that in order to improve the game generally, which combining the two would do. An alternate approach would be to put Gentle Repose back to what it should be, a 0th-level ritual accessible by more than just Clerics.

 

[Charlaquin]

The trouble with this is that an awful lot of parties don't have access to Gentle Repose, and without that spell, which technically you have to not cast as a ritual (though I can't see any non-black-hearted DM really enforcing that), because a ritual takes +10 minutes, so must have prepared, the PC is just dead.

It's a lovely dynamic in a party with a Cleric, I agree. But it essentially makes it a game of "Force a player to be a Cleric and have a non-Evil DM or you diiiiiieeeee!", which is like, not great. I think it's worth losing that in order to improve the game generally, which combining the two would do. An alternate approach would be to put Gentle Repose back to what it should be, a 0th-level ritual accessible by more than just Clerics.

Yeah, I’d say putting it on the Druid, Paladin, and Ranger (and maybe Bard?) spell lists would be a good move. I’m not 100% sold on making it a cantrip though. I actually like that the healer has to weigh the risk of using their last spell slot to help out in a fight, or saving it for Gentle Repose in case someone dies. Once you’ve cast it once with a slot, you can keep the dead party member reposed with ritual castings.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The trouble with putting it on the list is that it means it sits on one of the very small number of spells those classes have prepared or known, which isn't great.

Maybe it should be a class feature which requires you to expend a 1st-level spell slot, that is present on the "healing" classes.