D&D 5E D&D 5e death and consequences?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Btw, has anyone given the curious wording ("a flawless gem for at least xyz gp") some thought? If the usability of a diamond for this purpose is coupled to its price, then after a war of plague the demands of size and quality of diamonds would be reduced. Market forces drive the price up, so for the necessary amount of gold only lower quality stuff is now available. RAW transform these inferior gems now intofunctional ones.

Even weirder would be a situation where a party with a corpse comes into town only to find the jeweler with tiny shards. "Hey, please accept our 500 gp for your inferior merchandise! We need a 500 gp diamond."

Yep. To avoid that confusion, I convert the GP requirement into a carat weight requirement. So, "a flawless gem for at least xyz GP" becomes "a flawless gem for at least xyz carat weight".

The easiest way to do that is to divide GP value by 200-300, depending on your preferences. It isn't perfect- gemstone values are nonlinear; they jump at certain carat weights, and are also affected by cut, color, clarity and gemstone type- but it's good enough for a game.

 

[Paraxis]

There's a reason there's no monetary cost is given for spells above 2nd level cast by NPCs in the PHB.

The 'cost' discussed there is favours and good will - you don't earn that as easily.


I'm hoping the DMG suggests the divine spell limits from the 1st ed DMG.
Spells of 1-2nd level were given automatically.
3-5th by a divine agent, who may not always grant them. Not for raising people they had no reason to raise beyond being friends with the cleric in question.

Higher level spells were directly from the deity in question, and had always to be asked for and given a reason.

The exact details are not important - the point is that deities care about what their powerful clerics do with their mighty spells.

Gold might well not be enough. Dutiful worship or a quest for the god might be.

So how does that point of view handle bards?

They get most of the same bring people back to life spells as the cleric does, he they don't pray or worship, they don't get their power from an outside higher source that can cut it off or control it.

What you are doing is making bards the go to class for bringing people back to life. Without any ties to churches or views on the afterlife, it would just be a financial issue. Can you pay the bard enough for him to bring your loved one back from the dead? Since besides the material component there is no cost to the bard any amount is profit.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Oh, this would be a consequence when and if adventurers die ever so often. Other affluent people ("Mummy, mummy, I need a diamond! Daddy was stabbed in the pub!") could of course have an influence, maybe monopolizing the diamonds and driving prices through the roof.

In fact, one could base a whole campaign on the trade of blood diamonds, one in which adventurers have to buy (or steal) the precious resource from bloodthirsty warlords who control the local mines. Imagine what would happen if the church, in order to raise the King from the dead, had to buy a diamond from Hobgoblin guerrilleros.

 

[Thank Dog]

You know what's interesting about diamonds? They're not at all rare. The only reason they're so highly priced in modern markets is because of the control of said market.

So... in a game world, they could actually be quite plentiful. Or there could be a monopoly interest on them. Given the interest churches have in the diamond mining industry, I wouldn't put it past the temples of dwarven deities having that monopoly. Some cartel of the dwarves ensuring low supply and high prices. Probably have a massive stockpile of them somewhere. Plague breaks out and prices skyrocket, and the PC's are tasked with finding and liberating said stockpile

 

[Paraxis]

For what it is worth, the organized play adventure league has the following information on the subject.

Any settlement the size of a town or larger you can purchase spellcasting services.

Spellcasting Services
Spell
Cure wounds (1st level) -10 gp
Identify -20 gp
Lesser restoration -40 gp
Prayer of healing (2nd level) -40 gp
Remove curse -90 gp
Speak with dead -90 gp
Divination -210 gp
Greater restoration -450 gp
Raise dead -1,250 gp

Acolyte Background
A character possessing the acolyte background requesting spellcasting services at a temple of his or her faith may request one spell per day from the Spellcasting Services table for free. The only cost paid for the spell is the base price for the consumed material component, if any.

So it seems that any town, and town sounds like a pretty small place has someone who can cast raise dead. There are enough diamonds to cast it three times per day if they wanted to, and if you are an Acolyte it only costs you 500gp, you just need the coin don't have to hunt around for the perfect diamond.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I run my games as close to the book as possible, and build my world from that.

Seriously? You get some shockingly bizarre worlds that way. There have been enough threads here about what happens when you apply this or that rule to a society to turn me off that idea forever.

 

[ExploderWizard]

And this--with all respect to Lan-*-efan and those who agree with him --is the sort of "consequence" I want to see. I don't like seeing a PC permanently penalized. You wind up either with a penalty that doesn't matter, or with a player who feels punished for raising their old character rather than creating a new one.

Death is a form of failure. A permanent penalty is a reminder that this organization does not tolerate failure (evil laugh).

Any players with a dead character is welcome to reroll rather than play a character diminished by having died. All new characters enter the game at level one, so if that is preferable to a 6th level character that is down one point of CON then go right ahead.

A penalty for a dying character does ONE important thing. It teaches the important lesson that stupid decisions that lead to character death have consequences that impact the game as it continues. This is a MUST if you want the stupid decision quantity in your game to decrease.

 

[Astrosicebear]

A penalty for a dying character does ONE important thing. It teaches the important lesson that stupid decisions that lead to character death have consequences that impact the game as it continues. This is a MUST if you want the stupid decision quantity in your game to decrease.

Ive played in plenty of games where the character did the right thing and died to either a save or suck spell, bad rolling, or an untimely crit. Not everything is player choice.

 

[Savage Wombat]

In the real world at the time, most if not all diamonds came from India.

Imagine one country having a monopoly on the power to raise the dead.

Then the dwarves come along and discover kimberlite pipes, and that there's enough diamonds for everybody and then some.

Imagine then what the diamond cartels in India do to maintain their monopoly...

 

[Astrosicebear]

5E handles death and taxes pretty well.

I dont usually like to impose any penalties for dying. Paying for the costs, scrolls, casting etc, plus time away from the story is penalty enough. Characters that tend to die frequently get left behind.

If one was going to impose a death tax, I would suggest that on any Resurrection the character roll their HD(as in d6, d8 etc) and subtract their CON mod. This is the number of days they suffer Resurrection sickness, which equated to disadvantage on all d20 rolls.