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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2918276" data-attributes="member: 32740">The Man in the Funny Hat understands.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I came up with that perspective on resurrection/death by seeing and reading a CONSTANT succession of threads complaining about how broken things were if you followed the logic of having resurrection magic available.  Misguided DM that I was I had my own succession of house rules intended to threaten, annoy and cajole players who were so gauche as to think that they would just get their newly dead PC raised, eat the penalty and forget about it.  How DARE they?  Why it makes it all seem so cartoonish or videogameish and so clearly lacking in any roleplaying effort to treat such situations so cavalierly.  I'd show them...  I'll make it so difficult to deal with death, so tedious to get the spells, so expensive, so burdened with DM-inflicted roleplaying demands they may not love me for it, but they'll at least respect me.  They'll immerse themselves in the roleplaying possibilities, they'll cheer at my intriguing new takes on the afterlife, and at the same time it will solve those pesky problems like never being able to truly kill anyone; never being able to have those dramatic moments of some unfortunate NPC providing only half a clue with his dying breath [<raise> Okay, now Mr. NPC, what was it you were saying about the Lost Widget of Doom?].I had thought that was the sensible... logical approach.  But after thinking on it some more, and realizing I hated the very restrictions I was threatening to apply things finally began to dawn on me.  Things like resurrection magic weren't intended for use by NPC's on every farmer - they came to be in the rules because PLAYERS invented it/wanted it just to use on their PC's.  There was just this fog of literalness that was making everybody crazy.  The idea that if it's a spell in the PH then whether it was intended or not it has all these logical game implications.  A spell like Resurrection must have ALWAYS existed in all campaign histories, it MUST exist now, and its usage must be determined only by following all logical possibilities to their ultimate conclusion.  It was that kind of thinking that was the real problem.  The solution for me was to simply alter those assumptions.Thus I disagree with that position forwarded by the OP that "Death is not the End".  People only assume that it is then something that Joe Commoner can and should take for granted because it something they as players have always taken for granted.Oh my yes.  Sadly some of it has been my own doing.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  My approach at least places no restriction on PC attitudes and access, merely on NPC attitudes and access.  I don't deny any PC cleric from using Raise Dead, I don't even deny PC's from getting it from NPC's.  I simply have NPC's treat it as a religious... oddity of sorts that the VAST majority of people in the world will not return from the afterlife despite it being clearly, even easily possible.  Rich, poor, young, old, king, peasant, any race, any religion, 99% of them will not return from death.  But those adventurer types and the people they're always fighting are such fascinating exceptions.  They will die and return time and time again and never bat an eye.  Why is that?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It most certainly is.  In fact, it is something that so few people actually DO appreciate about D&D; something that so many people just fail to grasp.  Yes, you CAN insist on your own interpretation being better rather than accepting the conclusions that everyone else never questions.  You just can't insist that your interpretation MUST be followed by everyone else.  I've come to the point where I'd rather read a dozen long threads containing everyone listing their OWN insistence than a single post that is insistent about, oh, say, CORRECT interpretation of RAW?Seconded.True.  But all the more reason to provide disagreement and demonstrate alternatives since much that he lists when it comes up in play can be... problematic.</blockquote>

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