How is death (and raising the dead) handled in D&D novels?

[jonesy]

And actually, I'd say that experiencing death and a raise dead spell would be fairly dramatic and would contain at least medium amounts of torment. I'd imagine death is hardly pleasant and level loss isn't fun, either. Chapters could be written about a character coping with it.

And in the case of Riverwind, have already been written.

 

[Hypersmurf]

iirc, Gygax's Gord the Rogue books have some death/raising...

Well, Gord has a Ring of Nine Lives. He dies a few times.

That's about all I can think of off-hand, though. There are a few major personages who die in the last couple of books (the silly ones), and they aren't brought back... which rather startled me, since I was expecting them to make a reappearance.

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

And in the case of Riverwind, have already been written.

Hell, Wulfgar gets a whole book on the topic, doesn't he?

-Hyp.

 

[John Morrow]

Here's the situation: one medium-level, not-too-hard-to-come-by spell can bring the guy back in one minute. It won't be dramatic, it won't be imaginative, it won't be full of torment. The spell can be repeated under the same circumstances and produce the same outcome any given number of times. That's a basic law of the world you're writing about.

If the bodies are missing some critical or desirable parts, that "medium-level, not-too-hard-to-come-by spell" just isn't going to do the trick and you'll need a "higher level, harder-to-come-by spell", instead. Sure, another "medium-level, not-too-hard-to-come-by spell" can still bring the person back to life but they'll have to play race roulette to use it. Also note that neither of those "medium level, not-too-hard-to-come-by spells" don't work on death effects, nor do they work on creatures how have been turned into an undead creature. Both also require a part of the body and without any part of the body, you are beyond the reach of even the "higher level, harder-to-come-by spell" and into the realm of the highest level spells.

Is it really that difficult for an author to figure out how to mutilate a character's body, destroy a characters body, have the character transformed into an undead creature, die from a death effect, or even die from an artifact with an effect like the Skull in the Deck of Many Things in order to have a character die? Wouldn't bad guys go out of their way to destroy bodies (e.g., lava pits, vats of acid, etc.) knowing that it will make it that much harder to bring the character back to life?

All this hollow elitist posturing about "good" writing and "bad" writing does not address that simple conundrum. How do you, as an author, keep that basic law from draining the tension from a battle to the death when "to the death" doesnt' mean much? "Good writing" certainly isn't about making up the rules as you go along and turning a blind eye to established premises whenever they're inconvenient. That's not creative writing, that's just sloppy.

Well, the obvious answer is not to rely on the tension of a battle to the death to drive your story. Battle is a cheap way to create tension and in all to many books, movies, and especially television series, the outcome won't be death for the hero, anyway. Treat the characters more like superheroes and make the stakes more than simply the life or death of that particular character so that if they die, they will fail at something important and even if they are raised, the cost will be paid and will be steep.

Another option is to introduce a philosophical element to being raised such that not all characters will choose to accept it. All of these options can work within the rules rather than ignoring them.

 

[Pants]

iirc, Gygax's Gord the Rogue books have some death/raising...

But I could be misremembering. :\

'Come Endless Darkness' spoilers below....


Gellor, Curly Greenleaf, and Chert are all killed by an evil necromancer/demonbinder fellow and his demonic allies. Gord calls up a Solar (using a magic item of some sort...) who then agrees to Ressurect ONE of Gord's allies only (cause they're all a bunch of dirty neutrals! Damn Solars ). Gord picks Gellor the Bard.

I never read the last book, but that's all the ressurecting that I know of in that series, aside from Gord's two or three deaths...

He gets killed by a Rakshasa and he gets killed one more time... can't remember how...

Hell, Wulfgar gets a whole book on the topic, doesn't he?

-Hyp.

*cough*

[sblock]Technically, he didn't die... [/sblock]

 

[Hypersmurf]

I never read the last book, but that's all the ressurecting that I know of in that series aside from Gord's two or three deaths...

You didn't miss much.

I really enjoyed Saga of Old City and Artifact of Evil. I liked Sea of Death, and Night Arrant was a lot of fun.

City of Hawks was awful, Come Endless Darkness was dire, and Dance of Demons was even worse.

-Hyp.

 

[Pants]

You didn't miss much.

I really enjoyed Saga of Old City and Artifact of Evil. I liked Sea of Death, and Night Arrant was a lot of fun.

City of Hawks was awful, Come Endless Darkness was dire, and Dance of Demons was even worse.

-Hyp.

I don't really wanna hijack this thread anymore, but what the hell.

Totally agree on City of Hawks.
Artifact of Evil was pretty entertaining. Really felt like Gary was having a lot of fun writing the book.
Come Endless Darkness had some bright spots, but overall, it was a mess.
Sea of Death and Saga were fun though.

Back to our regularly scheduled thread...

 

[Sarellion]

The gods are still the final judge if youget the spells you want. Seems that in the novels they are more stingy with it than the DM.

Cadderly had the ability to raise the dead and done it a few times I think. I can remember that he did it one time for a lad killed by one of his enemies. Then one time as he tried to raise his mentor his mentor refused, he wanted to stay with Deneir.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, the obvious answer is not to rely on the tension of a battle to the death to drive your story. Battle is a cheap way to create tension and in all to many books, movies, and especially television series, the outcome won't be death for the hero, anyway. Treat the characters more like superheroes and make the stakes more than simply the life or death of that particular character so that if they die, they will fail at something important and even if they are raised, the cost will be paid and will be steep.

Worth repeating. This is what I meant by the bombast above.

How do you, as an author, keep that basic law from draining the tension from a battle to the death when "to the death" doesnt' mean much? "Good writing" certainly isn't about making up the rules as you go along and turning a blind eye to established premises whenever they're inconvenient. That's not creative writing, that's just sloppy.

Writing in a specific world, you should keep the laws of that world intact. Writing a D&D novel and handwaving away resurrection is like writing a Star Wars novel and handwaving away the Dark Side. It's an essential component of how the world works, and you're just kind of dancing around it. Or like building a dungeon that forbids teleportation FOR SOME REASON. The rules are already there, and writing around the rules so that you can drip tension from yet another fight to the death is more than sloppy -- it's false to how the world works. Now, in your game, you can create your own rules, but in something that's supposed to be set in the world, you should probably adhere to that world's rules.

Instead, you build tension from other sources. From mutilation of the body, from failure of a mission, from the "commoner tragedy," etc. You use resurrection to build tension. You have villains and heroes who are unaffraid of death, who know they'll just be back to fight again. You don't write around resurrection just because it forces certain hands. You embrace it. Confront it. Use it. To do otherwise destroys that illusion of reality that is so important in fantasy...

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Well, Gord has a Ring of Nine Lives. He dies a few times.

That's about all I can think of off-hand, though. There are a few major personages who die in the last couple of books (the silly ones), and they aren't brought back... which rather startled me, since I was expecting them to make a reappearance.

Some very cool deaths, too. A wizard takes out a demon (and himself) with a retributive strike from his Staff of Power. A cleric takes out another demon with a holy word, sending them both back to the Abyss. Both are cool deaths which are not easily countered with simple resurrection spells.

Pants pointed out the difficulties Gord has with a Solar in resurrecting his friends- and the ones who he couldn't resurrect had their bodies lost.

Gygax dealt with death/resurrection issues very well in his Gord books. He was also very adept at descriptively depicting the mechanical aspects of the game in his novels, which a lot of writers seem to have difficulty with. Either the mechanics are blatantly obvious (I recall a recent poster in one of the Eberron novel threads mentioning he could almost hear the dice rolling during action sequences), or else they "break" the rules of the game world in favor of descriptive text, neither of which, IMO, is a very good solution. If you are going to be writing in a world based on a game, you should follow the "rules" of that game, while not giving the reader a peek behind the curtain. Not necessarily an easy task, but a good writer should be able to pull it off.