Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vraille Darkfang" data-source="post: 2328643" data-attributes="member: 16989">I've read a lot of 'official' TSR & Wizards novels over the years.  Most campaign settings didn't have alot of high level characters (cleric or otherwise).  Thus Raise Dead/Ressurrection wasn't much of an issue.Then there is the Forgotten Realms.  Archwizards under ever stone, Epic Characters in every hamlet.While I won't discuss the 'munchkin' label so often attached to the realms, I will say this.I can remember less than 3 Raise Dead in the 120+ FR Novels I've read.  Maybe 10 if you count off hand references to 'the high priest was unable to raise her'.  But, the Realms is crawling with Clerics capable of casting Raise Dead.  Why isn't Raise Dead often mentioned in the novels?Because it would 'ruin the mood'.  Essentially, the creative people in charge of making the Realms fiction line has always maintained that any obvious show of Resurrection Magics as prevalent would ruin the 'Dramatic Effect'.  Basically, why care if Bob heroically sacrifices himself, if they'll just raise him later in the week (like often happens in the RPG).Thus, the dead stay dead because that makes a better story.  Much the same thought as went into "Well, let's just CALL it Catwoman, we don't need any of the back story or plot that made the character into what it is."As long as the book head takes a pretty conservative view of 'how fanatsy should be written' Don't expect a lot of Raise Dead (or healing spells in general).One of the biggest things I hated in The Rite (Rogue Dragons II).  A charcter survives the battle, horibbly injured but survives.  Next scene "Hi old friend, the clerics say I'm too injured to survive the night, but I just wanted to say...." Bascially the author wanted a 'touching moment' between the 2 characters, so the injured guy had to live for a bit.  One of the few times I've thrown down a book in disgust & didn't pick it up for a month. (If it was just a novel, or set in a world like Warhammer, fine, I wouldn't have minded, but having some NPC slowly bleed to death because the 100's of levels worth of clerics nearby all spontaneously ran out of EVERY SPELL THEY HAD, is just stupid)  Maybe a supernatural poison that prevents healing?  Would have worked & wouldn't have had to use the clerics' spell list like so much used toilet tissue.If you don't like how the game rules work, fine.  Just don't IGNORE THEM.  Shared World Fiction means VOLUNTARILY restricting your work to fit within certain defined rules & guidelines.  Don't like it?  Don't write it.So your answer is Raise Dead doesn't exist in the Novel World.  Unless the writer really, really needs it to & gets permission. (Or has enough Clout to say Up Thine, like Greenwood, Salvatore, Wies, Hickman.</blockquote>

Verification