Increased cost for Raise Dead at higher levels

[Ed_Laprade]

In medieval times doctors charged by how wealthy the client was. (That was taught at the university they got their doctorate from!) However, the 500 - 5,000 - 50,000 cost increase is a bit much to accept under those circumstances.

 

[Mark]

Still, no soul can be truly held from returning, if it so desires. The cost of the components represents the increased amount of energy that must be expended to prise the soul from the grasp of the being that controls it.

I go the other way. Whether a person knows it or not, most of what one does in life goes to benefit one or a group of higher beings. It is their counterparts who must be appeased with increasingly higher offerings to overcome their resistance to the ritual. IMO, of course.


For 3.xe, I like to use a scale of 500 gp per level with it doubled for a second time and tripled for a third. No more than three raises per soul.

 

[hafrogman]

I go the other way. Whether a person knows it or not, most of what one does in life goes to benefit one or a group of higher beings. It is their counterparts who must be appeased with increasingly higher offerings to overcome their resistance to the ritual. IMO, of course.

That's a workable idea, too. Or for real fun, make it one and have the gods say the other.

What? Why can't you have your friend's soul back? Erm. . . well normally I'd love to let go of his luscious, tasty, tasty . . . soul. *ahem* But, uh, sadly the Demons of Hell demand a balance of energy before I release him to do more good in the world.

Or it doesn't even have to be a concious thing. It could be more like gravity, similar to the soul weight idea. Two bodies in the aether are drawn to each other with a force proportional to the product of their respective power levels, divided by the square of the distance between them.

I think it has to be a power required kind of explanation rather than an economic one, otherwise players performing their own raising rituals wouldn't be paying the increased costs. Still, explaining the energy requirements isn't difficult, and could give rise to some interesting afterlife type power struggles.

 

[phloog]

and now I bring this thread back from the dead, as I just remembered a campaign I've run where there was a valid explanation as well:

Consider death as a force, or deity unto itself...or perhaps create a deity whose dominion is death. Death is natural, and comes to all creatures, perhaps even the gods. Returning from death to life is an inherently unbalancing event...in fact, I would put forward that in some campaigns you could interpret it as intensely chaotic.

The gods - not just the god of death, have plans and schemes, and generally speaking having death be a minor setback tends to disrupt those schemes (JUST when you thought Mort Spackle was no longer an enemy/asset...).

If you imagine that the main reason the gods have for resisting the return from death is that it injects chaos and messes up their divine plans, then you could see how they would be far more worried about the return of the Great Shempf than they are about the return of Pharmer Phred ("An extra seventeen bushels of lima beans are at that market!!! My plans are ruined!!!").

But of course I still lean toward the economy thing. It just makes sense to me...the only issue with using that rationale that I can see at the moment is if the PC's group is somehow able to bluff the priest into believing that they are all destitute...but maybe inherent in the casting is an understanding of the truth of things.

Maybe it's just all about elk.