D&D (2024) Rules that annoy you

[James Gasik]

What killed you should have some bearing on how easy or not it is to revive you. Clearing poison is easy; if you can case Raise Dead you can cast Neutralize Poison. Not so easy is clearing other ailments that require a full Heal (6th-level spell) to fix.

Now this is your opinion, and I'm not going to argue with an opinion- you're allowed to have it and that's fine (especially since the creator of the spell apparently held the same opinion!). But the question I would have is "why?". If we can accept that magic can revive the dead, why does "how you died" matter, exactly? We're talking about a divine miracle here, if God says you can bring someone back from the dead, you can, regardless of how they died.

Otherwise, you'd have to have a variety of different spells- "revive from poison, revive from fire, revive from trap, revive from sword, revive from white dragon breath, revive from being stepped on by a giant" and so on.

And as it would happen, whoever created the 5e version of the spell seems to have a similar opinion to mine, since it states "This spell also neutralizes any poison and cures nonmagical diseases that affected the creature at the time it died."

Even if removing all conditions is normally something a higher level spell does, it's not like that's all that Heal does- further, let's say Raise Dead did remove conditions. It's not like you're really doing yourself any favors by killing yourself and being brought back from the dead to remove those conditions and do an end run around Heal, since you're also losing 1 Con whether the spell succeeds or not!

Again, if I really wanted to make resurrection rare, this isn't the way I'd go about it. Making mechanics annoying to use can be a really poor method of balancing them.

I should also point out that I can count the number of times I've seen a PC brought back from the dead on the fingers of one hand in over 35 years of playing D&D. Generally when characters die, one of the following is true:

*The party has no access to Raise Dead.

*The party has no money for Raise Dead.

*Raise Dead won't work (some examples I've seen in actual games: turned into an undead, body parts missing due to homebrew critical hit charts/swords of sharpness/etc., level drained, turned to stone, disintegrated, soul stolen by demilich, is an elf/outsider/construct, is against character's religious beliefs, character doesn't trust the source of the revival, character made a deal with a devil and their soul was forfeit).

*The player willingly stays dead rather than put the burden of bringing them back on the other players.

OR

The player would rather stay dead than having all their gear sold to bring them back.

OR

The player doesn't want to deal with "resurrection baggage", ie, Con loss, level loss, being reincarnated into something they aren't keen on playing, gaining some permanent "battle scar" or other penalty on top of being brought back- as an example, someone I used to play with is particularly harsh with his players when he DM's. A few years back, another friend's Cavalier died rescuing people from a burning building, and when they were brought back, the DM had them lose 8 points of Comeliness (no, really!) due to "horrible burn scars".

*The player had an idea for a new character anyways.

*The player quits the game. Not necessarily because their character died (though I've seen it happen!), but maybe they were unhappy about the circumstances, they were already contemplating leaving due to real life issues, issues with other players, or issues with the DM- either way, this proves to be a good spot to leave the game.

Granted, some of this willingness to ditch characters is due to most DM's being loath to force someone to start with a new 1st level character when everyone else is higher level, but not all of it- I've played in many AD&D games where all characters start at level 1, no matter what (and as a result, I've had a long string of low level PC's over the decades, lol)!

This has really informed my opinion about raise dead and similar magic, and why I don't really see the need in making it particularly harsh- if it's something the players aren't really keen on interacting with in the first place, then extra hoops aren't really necessary.

Anyways, that's my philosophy on it, and why I find the restrictions on AD&D Raise Dead to be kind of silly.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Now this is your opinion, and I'm not going to argue with an opinion- you're allowed to have it and that's fine (especially since the creator of the spell apparently held the same opinion!). But the question I would have is "why?". If we can accept that magic can revive the dead, why does "how you died" matter, exactly? We're talking about a divine miracle here, if God says you can bring someone back from the dead, you can, regardless of how they died.

Otherwise, you'd have to have a variety of different spells- "revive from poison, revive from fire, revive from trap, revive from sword, revive from white dragon breath, revive from being stepped on by a giant" and so on.

No small part of the game at the time was about* the minutiae. Dotting the i's and crossing the t's was part of the variety/goals/decision points of gameplay. Sure, if you have a cleric and downtime, having them prepare a 4th level spell as well as the 5th level one is trivial and seems like pointless niggling. But what if you are using scrolls you had to pre-emptively seek out? Or are in a dungeon environment and selecting precious Vancian spells to have at the ready? Suddenly these become important considerations, and figuring out what level of preparedness you needed to have was a tension point around which player decision mattered.
*or I should say 'included design elements which supported.' How much each group actually glommed onto each of these facets is as usual highly table-dependent.

Beyond that, it seems clear to me that being able to be brought back from the dead seems to be something Gary et. al. had some ambivalent feelings regarding. It was apparently deemed necessary enough to have shown up pretty early in the games tenure*, but it sure seemed like something they feared might end up being 'too easy.' oD&D's week of downtime turned into loss of Con, resurrection survival chances, the raising spell aging the caster (risking system shock and death on their part), and a maximum lifetime limit. Not to mention all monsters and cursed items which precluded it. Having coming back be as easy as a 5th level spell... but be sure to do this, and not that (and don't even think about the other thing), and plenty of water beforehand (but not for 12 hours beforehand), and no heavy lifting afterwards, and if poison is involved you also need this other thing (and maybe a note from your doctor)... seems completely on brand for someone hedging their bets on if this thing is a good idea in the first place.
*I'm guessing even then there was notions of characters people were too attached to to let go too easily; or maybe of cheap/unfair deaths one might want to get take-backs on.

There is a bit of silliness in the poison one needing a secondary spell on top of raise dead while the (for example) white dragon breath not needing a 'remove freezer burn' spell to work, but that is the D&D way where the mortal peril is abstract except for when it isn't (in which case it is highly specific).

 

[cbwjm]

There's been many a party with access to 5th-level spells in the field but nowhere near as many with access to 7ths (in 1e you had to be 16th level to cast 7th-level spells and 16th-level characters don't exactly grow on trees)

Not too mention the other restrictions, needing to worship a good powerful enough to grant the spell (might not have actually been a restriction in the phb, but eventually was), and the cleric needed an 18 wisdom which would have shrunk the pool of 16th level clerics that could actually use 7th level spells.

Also, didn't resurrection age the caster? Might be something that the elderly patriarch wants to avoid just to raise some no name adventurer.

 

[Lanefan]

Now this is your opinion, and I'm not going to argue with an opinion- you're allowed to have it and that's fine (especially since the creator of the spell apparently held the same opinion!). But the question I would have is "why?". If we can accept that magic can revive the dead, why does "how you died" matter, exactly? We're talking about a divine miracle here, if God says you can bring someone back from the dead, you can, regardless of how they died.

Otherwise, you'd have to have a variety of different spells- "revive from poison, revive from fire, revive from trap, revive from sword, revive from white dragon breath, revive from being stepped on by a giant" and so on.

Most of those can be covered as "revive from physical trauma", which Raise Dead already covers provided the corpse is still mostly whole and Resurrection covers no matter what. Disease, poison, and a couple of other specific conditions* aren't covered by Raise; for Resurrection I ruled (and it seems consistent with the original intent) that it builds in a Heal effect as well.

* - including pregnancy, which isn't covered by either spell; I once had to go in and make a bunch of rulings around that.

And as it would happen, whoever created the 5e version of the spell seems to have a similar opinion to mine, since it states "This spell also neutralizes any poison and cures nonmagical diseases that affected the creature at the time it died."

Which fits in with 5e's easy-and-simple philosophy.

Even if removing all conditions is normally something a higher level spell does, it's not like that's all that Heal does- further, let's say Raise Dead did remove conditions. It's not like you're really doing yourself any favors by killing yourself and being brought back from the dead to remove those conditions and do an end run around Heal, since you're also losing 1 Con whether the spell succeeds or not!

Unless you use a well-worded Wish, but that's another can o' worms entirely.

Again, if I really wanted to make resurrection rare, this isn't the way I'd go about it. Making mechanics annoying to use can be a really poor method of balancing them.

I should also point out that I can count the number of times I've seen a PC brought back from the dead on the fingers of one hand in over 35 years of playing D&D.

Your lot have a different style than ours, then. Out of every 10 character deaths here I'd guess on average at least 4 come back (or try to); at very low level it's close to 0 in 10 but at high level it's closer to 9 in 10.

Generally when characters die, one of the following is true:

*The party has no access to Raise Dead.

*The party has no money for Raise Dead.

*Raise Dead won't work (some examples I've seen in actual games: turned into an undead, body parts missing due to homebrew critical hit charts/swords of sharpness/etc., level drained, turned to stone, disintegrated, soul stolen by demilich, is an elf/outsider/construct, is against character's religious beliefs, character doesn't trust the source of the revival, character made a deal with a devil and their soul was forfeit).

We put together a chart once of possible reasons why a revival spell didn't work (i.e. a resurrection survival roll was failed) and some of those options are on that chart.

Raise Dead won't work against turned-to-stone in any event; you need Stone to Flesh to fix that.

*The player willingly stays dead rather than put the burden of bringing them back on the other players.

OR

The player would rather stay dead than having all their gear sold to bring them back.

I've seen both of these at mid-level; the latter being more common than the former.

OR

The player doesn't want to deal with "resurrection baggage", ie, Con loss, level loss, being reincarnated into something they aren't keen on playing, gaining some permanent "battle scar" or other penalty on top of being brought back- as an example, someone I used to play with is particularly harsh with his players when he DM's. A few years back, another friend's Cavalier died rescuing people from a burning building, and when they were brought back, the DM had them lose 8 points of Comeliness (no, really!) due to "horrible burn scars".

This seems over the top, but the idea of revival from death carrying some permanent consequences (e.g. the loss of a Con point) is, to me, sound.

*The player had an idea for a new character anyways.

That can happen whether the dead character is revived or not. As a player I've more than once had a dead character revived and then sent it down the road anyway because I had an idea for something new.

*The player quits the game. Not necessarily because their character died (though I've seen it happen!), but maybe they were unhappy about the circumstances, they were already contemplating leaving due to real life issues, issues with other players, or issues with the DM- either way, this proves to be a good spot to leave the game.

Odds are good that player was going to quit soon anyway, so no net difference there.

The one thing I've never seen is a character go through enough death-revival cycles to bump into the hard-line rule that a character cannot do that cycle more times than its original Constitution score. There's one in a game I play in who is getting close - he's died and come back 11 (!) times and had a starting Con of 14 - but that's by far the closest Ive seen. And no, he's not mine!

Granted, some of this willingness to ditch characters is due to most DM's being loath to force someone to start with a new 1st level character when everyone else is higher level, but not all of it- I've played in many AD&D games where all characters start at level 1, no matter what (and as a result, I've had a long string of low level PC's over the decades, lol)!

This has really informed my opinion about raise dead and similar magic, and why I don't really see the need in making it particularly harsh- if it's something the players aren't really keen on interacting with in the first place, then extra hoops aren't really necessary.

I've yet to meet a player who, on losing a character at mid-level or higher, doesn't at least try to interact with those mechanics to the fullest extent possible.

 

[James Gasik]

Not too mention the other restrictions, needing to worship a good powerful enough to grant the spell (might not have actually been a restriction in the phb, but eventually was), and the cleric needed an 18 wisdom which would have shrunk the pool of 16th level clerics that could actually use 7th level spells.

These are better limiting factors IMO, if you want revival to be difficult in the campaign than loading the spells themselves with unnecessary minutia. Just don't let the spell be readily available!

As to the argument of "well, what if you're using magic items to cast raise dead?"- sure. In this case, the need for neutralizing poison would come up. I still don't think this is a good limiting factor- basically it comes down to "well, yeah, my players have the ability to revive the dead, but I want ways to make that harder"...when you could have just denied them the ability in the first place.

It basically creates another tier of revival spell. But instead of actually making a 6th level spell of "raise dead from poison/disease" you have "raise dead plus random other spell".

I am reminded of a story I heard online once. Players had a dead party member and needed them raised, but the DM was like "well, he's poisoned, you need to take care of that first".

Player was like "oh, ok, no problem. I cast purify food and drink".

 

[Lanefan]

Not too mention the other restrictions, needing to worship a good powerful enough to grant the spell (might not have actually been a restriction in the phb, but eventually was), and the cleric needed an 18 wisdom which would have shrunk the pool of 16th level clerics that could actually use 7th level spells.

Deities and Demigods split out the deities into different power levels, and some couldn't grant top-level spells. That said, deities etc. are fully in the DM's realm when it comes to setting design, and my guess is that most games didn't use Deities and Demigods as written except maybe as a high-level monster manual.

Also, didn't resurrection age the caster? Might be something that the elderly patriarch wants to avoid just to raise some no name adventurer.

Resurrection did, as written; Raise Dead did not. Never been a fan of the aging piece, did away with it in my games decades ago.

 

[Lanefan]

I am reminded of a story I heard online once. Players had a dead party member and needed them raised, but the DM was like "well, he's poisoned, you need to take care of that first".

Player was like "oh, ok, no problem. I cast purify food and drink".

You know, that's clever enough I'd probably let it work.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These are better limiting factors IMO, if you want revival to be difficult in the campaign than loading the spells themselves with unnecessary minutia. Just don't let the spell be readily available!

As to the argument of "well, what if you're using magic items to cast raise dead?"- sure. In this case, the need for neutralizing poison would come up. I still don't think this is a good limiting factor- basically it comes down to "well, yeah, my players have the ability to revive the dead, but I want ways to make that harder"...when you could have just denied them the ability in the first place.

It basically creates another tier of revival spell. But instead of actually making a 6th level spell of "raise dead from poison/disease" you have "raise dead plus random other spell".

I am reminded of a story I heard online once. Players had a dead party member and needed them raised, but the DM was like "well, he's poisoned, you need to take care of that first".

Player was like "oh, ok, no problem. I cast purify food and drink".

That last thing is a very clever way to get around a reasonable restriction IMO. Make people think of these things!

 

[James Gasik]

The one thing I've never seen is a character go through enough death-revival cycles to bump into the hard-line rule that a character cannot do that cycle more times than its original Constitution score. There's one in a game I play in who is getting close - he's died and come back 11 (!) times and had a starting Con of 14 - but that's by far the closest Ive seen. And no, he's not mine!

One thing about this limitation that never sat well for me was the resurrection survival chance. Since your odds of actually being brought back are reduced every time the spell is cast (successful or not!), saying "I have 14 Con, I can be brought back from the dead 14 times!" is far from true.

It's more like "I have 14 chances to come back, but in reality, it's going to be far less than that."

Not that, again, I've ever seen that in action. I do have a friend who had a character who was reincarnated twice, but I can't think of any other character who died more than once in any D&D game I've been involved in (outside of computer games, that is).

This may have more to do with the fact that I have few experiences with high level play. In most games, by the time you get around "name level", the DM burns out and "wants to take a break" and you never get back to that game, lol.

Even with the two AD&D characters I had that hit the big time, one became a god (and I retired them quickly because I found the idea of a god adventuring kind of ludicrous- and yes, I know BECMI has adventures for that sort of thing, but still, lol) and the other's level basically no longer matters because they also no longer "adventure" because the game has shifted into a political arena where roleplaying and cool ideas are vastly more important than having a Thac0 of -7.

Well, I did have a level 22 4e character, but that's like level 11 in AD&D (not in power, but in time invested).

 

[Lanefan]

One thing about this limitation that never sat well for me was the resurrection survival chance. Since your odds of actually being brought back are reduced every time the spell is cast (successful or not!), saying "I have 14 Con, I can be brought back from the dead 14 times!" is far from true.

Indeed, but it can still happen.

Not that, again, I've ever seen that in action. I do have a friend who had a character who was reincarnated twice, but I can't think of any other character who died more than once in any D&D game I've been involved in (outside of computer games, that is).

My namesake character is on 7 deaths - his Con started at 18 and is down to 11.

This may have more to do with the fact that I have few experiences with high level play. In most games, by the time you get around "name level", the DM burns out and "wants to take a break" and you never get back to that game, lol.

IME it's usually around 3rd-4th level where they shift from just rolling up a new one to trying to revive the dead.