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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Byrons_Ghost" data-source="post: 457822" data-attributes="member: 7396">Generally, I try to permanently avoid killing off player characters because it messes with the ongoing plots that we have going. I can't have them slowly tracking down some criminal society that kidnapped their families if the PC roster is changing every other week. You see this sort of problem in Call of Cthulhu a lot:"hmm, lost another PC! Well, that mime across the street looks like he'd be interested in saving the world. Let's give him the journals kept by the last eight PCs and see if he can't make some sense of them without loosing his mind!"So my players pretty much know that I'm not going to kill them off. Anything else is fair game, however- dismemberment, disfigurement, loss of status/wealth/property/family/lovers, that sort of thing.I'm just finishing up a high magic, high level game where raise spells and the like were easily available. We had three different PCs die at one time or another, but since a raise was a little bit away it just wasn't much of a problem. Some people don't like this, I know, but I look at it more along the lines as being "only mostly dead." Anyhow, a high level game eventually gets to the point were you just have to assume that the players and the villains either won't be able to destroy each other permanently at all, or will be able to do it so well that neither they nor much of the kingdom they're in will be even experiencing an afterlife, let alone returning from one. Of course, in some ways that makes things more interesting, as now they really have to get into plotting, maneuvering, etc.Anyhow, I'm getting ready to switch to a low level game with severely less magic floating around. I expect it to be a little odd, at first, having characters that could die from two good sword hits (we're starting at third level. Last campaign with this same group ended with people between levels 18 and 20). I'll definately have to pull my punches some, but I'm still determined not to kill off PCs permanently.However, the constant cyle of death and ressurrection won't work as well in this setting as it would in, say, Mythic Egypt. I've been considering the following possible solutions to keep raise spells around, but limit their uses:1. Story option: the spells don't work on just anyone. Not only does the person have to want to come back, but the gods (or whomever is granting the spell) have to want it as well. This means that the person has to be important, have a destiny, be marked by fate, etc. So the PCs will of course count (PCs are always marked by fate <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=":)" /> ), but it will apply to very few NPCs. It makes the gods seem callous, sure, but then, why shouldn't they be? Why should they let every peasant who suffers a tragic cart accident come back to life? "Sorry, should've watched where you were going there, Bob. Better luck next time!"Part of this is having the person raised come under some sort of karmic debt/geasa/whatever to the god that "approves" their return. This, of course, allows for more adventures/rping in the future.2. Rule option: It's a lot harder to find clerics with raise and resurrection- they're actually special domain spells, and not on the standard clerical list. They'd either be part of an altered Heal domain (True Res is already in the Heal domain, the others are not, to my knowledge), or part of their own domain (along with other spells of course). Either way, it's hard to find someone with them, meaning that they just aren't going to be commonly available, even if it is a king or someone who died. In this scenario, the whim of the resurrectionist applies just as much as the god.  Considering how great this power would be, they would probably be some sort of underground cult or secret society, and therefore hard to find- and not likely to come forth and volunteer their services. Another option is that only the clerics of the God of Death (tm) have this power, and both He and his servants generally aren't inclined to release people from His realm without good reason.Anyone have any thoughts on these, or other ideas? I may use a mix of these things, myself. I'm also curious as to how some of the recent religious-type books deal with this subject, such as Book of the Righteous or the Nat 20 Death supplement. Anyone noticed anything?</blockquote>

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