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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6228031" data-attributes="member: 32740">Mechanical penalties after resurrection are perfectly sensible but are NOT at all of practical use in trying to alter future gameplay.  Dice don't care about whether a character lives or dies, how careful or reckless he's been, etc.  IME, the more penalties and lingering baggage (no matter how benign) attached to death the more that players will simply RESENT it, not avoid it.  So for my games:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">PC's can certainly be brought back to life but don't expect to be fighting the next round.  Heck, you likely will not be fighting for several weeks.  Still, it will be an inconvenience to ongoing events but one that will then sensibly FIT into the ongoing game and usually not make the experience any worse than it already has.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">NPC's almost never are raised/resurrected because THEY sensibly choose to remain in a "blissful" afterlife.  Player characters can do what they want.  Resurrection magic is in the game for an EXTREMELY meta-game purpose - to let the good times continue to roll for the people at the table with a minimum of bother.  It is not now and never was a game world design motif to kick the players or the game world with.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">NPC's who witness or know of PC's accepting resurrection will treat them VERY differently.  Not necessarily badly treated, more likely warily or perhaps a bit fearfully.  After all, to an NPC, "everybody knows" that resurrection is possible, it's that nobody ever IS resurrected.  1 in 100 NPC's... less than that, 1 in thousands or tens of thousands will ever be resurrected and they will almost certainly have VERY purposeful lives. They only come back FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY REASON.  Even so they have to have had access to the magic to enable it and even having extraordinary motivation to return to life and swearing up and down that they'll come back from the grave they still so very rarely do.  Most such people come back as revenants or the like anyway.  PC's don't need any reason at all and often don't have even a vague one.  NPC's react accordingly.  PC's have strong roleplaying motivations to take NPC reactions into account for how they handle both their own death and the deaths of others, especially those close to them - the other PC's.  Cavalier attitudes towards death and resurrection will draw disrespect and ostracism.  That works much better to change gameplay.  It isn't the dying itself that's the issue so much as the bizzare and unwanted effects upon a game world that resurrection magic otherwise has.</li> </ol>If a player character dies, as the DM _I_ don't necessarily care whether the player continues with a new PC or one that's been resurrected.  Unless I'm quite foolishly hanging my game upon that characters fate my game won't suffer either way - unless the player and/or his PC perpetuates the unwanted feel of, "Drop another quarter in and pick up right where you left off."  If you're enjoying playing that PC then the game I run as DM is almost certainly better for it and it would be preferrable to let you resume playing that character rather than have to start a new one (unless that's what you want).  For the sake of "appearances" there has to be some consequence for the character dying but my goal should never be to punish you for it.  Well, maybe if you had it coming for being a prat...  But then the issue isn't that you were so gauche as to have died - the issue is you're being a prat.</blockquote>

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