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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Atticus_of_Amber" data-source="post: 85495" data-attributes="member: 2683">Someone brought this up in another thread about killing just killing an enemies hostages and raising them later. A similar issue came up with the infamous "baby shields" in Piratecat's Defenders of Daybreak story hour campaign.I've posted this before, but I thought I'd do so again in case anyone found it helpful.Here's my solution to resurrection problems in D&D. The first half is "by the book" and the second half is a house rule.Firstly, the PH clearly states that a person can only be resurrected if they want to be resurrected. In my campaign, there’s something of a catch-22 working against resurrection: good characters go to a paradise afterlife and thus do not want to be resurrected; evil characters, while they would very much like to leave their afterlives, tend not to have the sort of devoted friends who would go to the time and expense of raising them. Neutral characters tend to have either or both these troubles (either they like their afterlives, or they don’t have devoted friends, or both).(Of course to solution to the no friends problem is a kind of “resurrection insurance” taken out with a lawful church.)Second, and this is the house rule, being resurrected, in addition to reducing your level by one (or causing you to lose one point of CON if you are only first level), also causes you to age to the beginning of the next age category. Your appearance changes to correspond with your new age category during your resurrection. This “aging of the soul” effect can radically change your ability scores, as well as shorten your life.    I haven’t decided yet whether you can be resurrected once you are in the venerable age category or whether you just extrapolate the penalties (i.e. -4, -5, -6, etc to the physical ability scores (minimum of 1) and +1 to the mental scores with each further resurrection). The former option puts an absolute cap of four resurrections. The later would allow spell-casters with polymorph (or druids with the aging immunity ability, though I might rule this only applies to nature ageing) to avoid the physical penalties. (Another option might be to say resurrections after venerable cause an absolute decline of -2 to all ability scores.)</blockquote>

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