Is RAISE DEAD (etc.) too readily available in most D&D campaigns?

[DonTadow]

Hahahahahahaha!!!!

You're using the Forgotten Realms as your baseline?

No wonder your view is so skewed.

Is the realms not an official Wotc campaign world?

In your game world, it's extremely easy to get to a highly populated area. My world has borderlands, wilderness, dungeons, mountains and the players don't have perfect maps of everything. There are areas to explore, and places to adventure.

If you make it easy to get to heavily populated areas all the time, that's your choice as a DM. That's not something the game forces you to do.

So you are still arguing the "not enough time " point. Despite the fact that storyteller has already demonstrated that time is not really a factor. Not every dungeon is within 9 days of a city (though that's a heck of a journey). Even so, after 8th level pcs start gaining access to teleportation magic that can make travel much quicker. Talk about DM Fiat. You've fiatted your world so much, that you seem to want to be the one who dictates when and where resurrections will be used. Again, the reason i like action points. No DM fiat involved. Players use them whenever they wish without me having to design some far, far, far off dungeon just to make things more difficult on them because i've included two overpowered spells.

Show me where in the books where it says you are limited to traveling 2 - 3 days into dungeons on the outskirts of heavily populated areas.

There's no raw on where a dungeon is, but from my experience, players have rarely had to actually travel 10 days for a dungeon without passing civilzation. Sure, if they were walking they would have. But with boats, horses, airships, wagons, paid teleportation spells and what not, only low low levels walk. Again the only reason i can think of for setting a dungeon 10 days out is because you're manuvering the world to fit the mechanics instead of producing natural worlds.

In a complicated world of magic, wonderful beasts and low level technology, travel becomes a second thought. Unless there is a "reason" why i 'm creating such a sparsely populated world (after a great cataclysm, etc) then theres no reason for such other than i am not good at world creation.

They were removed because they were silly, and made an already arduous process a crapshoot besides. A lot of 1st Edition players didn't even use them. Imagine how delightful the scene would have been in the Conan movie if they'd fought off the spirits of the dead, and the wizard looked at Conan's body and said, "Oh well! System shock. Sucks to be you. Guess we'll try again tomorrow night." If you feel those mechanics add something to your game, use them. For a base, core rules game, they make no sense.

But unlike Conan, d and d is a cooporative game that doesnt depend on one PC. Imagine how interesting Conan would have been if all the other clerics resserected their friends the same way. Wow, that movie would have never ended.

Simply because you can make something silly and hard on an anal, nitpicking level doesn't mean that's the best way to go.

You overuse the world nitpicking. Again, a dictionary may be needed. The greatest stories are about heroes whom are ressurected. It doesnt happen a lot and when it happens it should be important. YOu're talking about reversing the course of life. Should this not be important. You seem happy with making resurrection the equivalent of Belvedere at Pigley's five and dime.

This is less about pcs coming back and figuring out a way to do luck, than it is about proper text book world design. When you do proper world design you got to look and think of how everything fits. For a lot of DMs whom put a lot into world design, resurrection is an unnecessary flaw.

A village will have scrolls of Gentle Repose? That exact scroll? Just sitting there waiting for players to use them on the way to the metropolis to get a McResurrection? Wow. That's convenient.

Or you can buy it before hand, have someone scribe it. Getting access to such a low level spell is not a problem. What, we're talking 3rd level clerics and 4th level magic users. I"m sure on their 9 day journey back they can memorize and cast it in enough time. How many straws did you grab thinking of that one?

The RAW nowhere dictates the pace of your story or whether PCs always have time to everything they want to do. That is absolute nonsense. If you write stories that can always be put on hold indefinitely, that is YOUR choice.

I don't write stories. I run adventures. IF the PCs want to slow down the pace its up to them. DMs are not gods, we only get to run them.


It is silly, and it's most certainly NOT the system in place. The rules give you guidelines. What you do with them is your choice.

From what you've described, you've made some very poor ones.[/QUOTE]

 

[Lanefan]

Unles you want your mid-level PC's to be the biggest fish in the pond, there has to be a built-in assumption that there's higher-level members of all classes (including Cleric) out there somewhere, and probably reasonably easy to find for any one of a host of reasons including but not limited to reputation and fame. If your game uses training rules you already know where to start looking....

Getting to them is easy if you have teleport available and have been there before.

Getting them to cast a Raise for you? Ah, that's where the bribery and role-playing come in.

But I fail to see what all the argument's about...

Lanefan

 

[Storyteller01]

The great metropolis which has been the core of your examples happens 1 time in a hundred if you use the basic suggestion for randomly rolling the size of your cities

Let me repeat that.

If you use the randomized city size table, you will get a great metropolis 1 time out of a hundred.

I haven't been using just metropoli in my examples, you have. Regardless, you will get a result that guarantees a Raise (either by caster or scroll from cities and metropoli) on a roll of 86 or better. 15 out of 100. Simplify that to 3 out of 20. Simplify it further for 1 out of 6.66.

Do you have to use that random city size determination chart? No. Do they say you should? No. Here is an example of how you can build a world, they say. Do it any way you want. This is just an example.

You claim is that Raise Dead isn't as prevalent as I say via the core rules, since you play by the book. I show you basic figures, and you tell me you don't use the system, prefering to judge the arrangement on your own. Are you playing via the published guides or not?

And the example isn't that bad.

No it isn't. It's just not for my game. It's a guaranteed Raise 1 out of every 7 attempts statistically. That's better odds than rolling a critical for most weapons. Again, not what I'm after.

You are wrong. I'm sorry it hurts, but live with it. The base game is not as bad as you described, nothing you've brought to the table substantiates that, you've made statements about WotC's published adventures that you cannot prove and other people have shown to be mistaken with hard examples.

I've type a brief summary of the item and NPC availability guides. I've copyied and posted a section of the SRD stating what can be found where unless your DM says otherwise. I've even described how both can be used on extended trip to areas with the Raise ability, and how likely they'll find it. I quit playing Dungeon mag adventures specifically because they tended to follow the above system. My apologies if I can't get specifics on them at the moment.

You haven't shown anything. If fact, you specifically stated that you didn't have to:

You are making the positive truth claim that these carictures ARE a natural extension of the rules. The burden of proof is on you. Proving a negative isn't my job. Proving your point is your job.

Moving on:

Play the game however you want. Enjoy it. But the base game isn't as bad as you describe. I know, because I run it.

I never claimed it was bad over all, just that Raises and return-from-death senarios were too prevalent for my tastes.

I have healing available in nearly every town.

I don't, at least not the magical variety. Just another preference.

Okay, Gentle Repose scrolls will be available in every town. I never said they weren't.

Yes, you did. You even went so far as to remark on how overly convenient the concept was:

A village will have scrolls of Gentle Repose? That exact scroll? Just sitting there waiting for players to use them on the way to the metropolis to get a McResurrection? Wow. That's convenient

Moving on, again:

Okay, the system demands they be there. I've been in games where it wasn't an option BECAUSE NOBODY COULD CAST IT.

Then this is the choice of the players and the DM, not that that's bad. The d20 D&D system was designed around having a member from each of the four base groups, including some healer. It effects creature CR, treasure available (the random roll charts are geared for this distribution), and how often goods and services are available in any settlement. You can do what you want, but don't claim that a system works one way if you don't actually use it.

And that was because of player choices, not DM fiat like you continually insinuate.

But your the DM who doesn't make Gentle Repose or other sources available per the DMG guide. You insist that they count the days enroute to some place capable of casting raise, when its been shown that they don't have to. Again, this isn't a bad play but it isn't strictly by the book.

And it's not because we don't have sufficient rules knowledge, either.

No, it's because you choose not to use them.

We're roleplaying.

Sweet! Congratulations!! I applaud your choice! Enjoy! (Not snarking here, I'm actaually happy we agree on something)

I'm fudging death when I use resurrection and raise dead, yes.

You've also admitted to fudging it's availability. If you don't use the community building guides in the DMG how do you establish what's available where? Seriously, do you have another published system or do you adjudicate specs via your own campaign needs? If it's the latter, you determine when they can raise themselves, not the rules.

But I'm not fudging the system, and simply refusing to see the clear light of day. You're simply saying that the game is worse than it is.

No, I'm saying that I don't like how available certain aspects of the game are. Then I'm showing you the statistics.

You have been shown to be mistaken.

NO, I HAVEN'T! All you've shown me that you don't use the rules as written either. I would love it if you showed me something beyond 'it says the DM doesn't have to do this'. The entire system says this. The game is completely 'what the DM allows' dependant.

 

[Storyteller01]

Getting them to cast a Raise for you? Ah, that's where the bribery and role-playing come in.

Yes... bribery... yes...

But I fail to see what all the argument's about...

Lanefan

I get the feeling molonel and I are saying the same thing. 'Three blind men and an elephant' type of deal.

 

[ThirdWizard]

We've got the crowd who dislike Raise and the crowd who say Raise isn't that common in D&D, but where's my crowd who simply acknowledge that Raise Dead can occur quite commonly in D&D and just don't care? Unrecoverable bodies happen, and that is a case where in my game the PC or NPC isn't brought back to life, an analog to death in Storyteller's game I suppose, but I have never had a PC die above 7th level and not be raised if the party had the body. And, I just don't see it as a problem.

I guess my crowd just doesn't have much to argue about... It's just preference.

But, I also enjoy Iron Heroes where if you die, you're dead. Different game, different expectations, differently run. I don't use save or die in those games, being the big difference. In D&D, the phrase "Make a fortitude save" could mean your PC is going to be dead in 10 seconds. I could change that in my D&D games, and thus take away the need for Raise Dead so often in them as well, but it works, I don't really mind it, so there's no real need for me to change it. It also makes my IH games different than my D&D games, which I think of as a plus as well.

So in short, I agree with Storyteller about the prevalence of Raise Dead's availability in D&D, and I don't really see how anyone could seriously disagree with that given the guidelines in the books, but I don't think its a bad thing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So in short, I agree with Storyteller about the prevalence of Raise Dead's availability in D&D, and I don't really see how anyone could seriously disagree with that given the guidelines in the books, but I don't think its a bad thing.

I think this is where the disagreement comes in. Storyteller and DonTadow seem to be suggesting that it HAS to be a bad thing. Not just for them, but objectively. Obviously, this isn't true, so people just get into debating the finer points of what the rules actually suggest, both seeing the same thing and calling it something different.

Because its wide availability and it being "cheap and easy" are effectively two different conversations, I think.

 

[molonel]

Is the realms not an official Wotc campaign world?

It is an official WotC campaign world. So is Living Greyhawk, which is older:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome

So is Living Death:

http://www.livingdeath.org/

So is Eberron.

You are required to use none of these. None is the default.

So you are still arguing the "not enough time " point. Despite the fact that storyteller has already demonstrated that time is not really a factor. Not every dungeon is within 9 days of a city (though that's a heck of a journey). Even so, after 8th level pcs start gaining access to teleportation magic that can make travel much quicker. Talk about DM Fiat. You've fiatted your world so much, that you seem to want to be the one who dictates when and where resurrections will be used. Again, the reason i like action points. No DM fiat involved. Players use them whenever they wish without me having to design some far, far, far off dungeon just to make things more difficult on them because i've included two overpowered spells.

No. Storyteller is arguing "This is the baseline, this is the default, this is the way the game nearly always is."

I'm saying that there are a variety of means and factors that affect the game. Okay, you succeed in using magic to successfully preserve the body and travel overland days or weeks to find a city. That's not a McCleric. That's work.

Sooner or later, teleport can come into play. That makes it easier if you memorize the city on the same plane to which you will always travel for Raise Dead spells. This is not a trick. This is not a revelation. This is upper level play. This also happens about half of the way to 20th level, which is the the upper limit of non-epic play.

I'm not fiatting anything. I'm simply saying everything is not cheap and easy.

And I've done so very effectively.

You keep wanting to make your way sound superior, no matter how you argue. The difference between us is that I'm not trying to do that. I'm saying we use different means to achieve the same end.

So it's not that your way involves less DM fiat, because I'm not employing DM fiat to override the rules. I'm playing well within the rules. You're playing a wider variant, but you're within the rules, too. Hopefully, all of us are having fun.

There's no raw on where a dungeon is, but from my experience, players have rarely had to actually travel 10 days for a dungeon without passing civilzation. Sure, if they were walking they would have. But with boats, horses, airships, wagons, paid teleportation spells and what not, only low low levels walk. Again the only reason i can think of for setting a dungeon 10 days out is because you're manuvering the world to fit the mechanics instead of producing natural worlds. In a complicated world of magic, wonderful beasts and low level technology, travel becomes a second thought. Unless there is a "reason" why i 'm creating such a sparsely populated world (after a great cataclysm, etc) then theres no reason for such other than i am not good at world creation.

Okay, you have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you cannot imagine why players shouldn't be around the corner from a major metropolis and a Starbucks - oops, I mean a high temple - at every step of the game.

Do you give them unlimited gold, too? Or can you simply not think of a reason not to?

But unlike Conan, d and d is a cooporative game that doesnt depend on one PC. Imagine how interesting Conan would have been if all the other clerics resserected their friends the same way. Wow, that movie would have never ended.

Or I can imagine a game where the DM has to invent tools like "heroic luck" to explain why people never die. Ever. Never ever.

Yeah, I can make fun of that, too.

You overuse the world nitpicking. Again, a dictionary may be needed. The greatest stories are about heroes whom are ressurected. It doesnt happen a lot and when it happens it should be important. YOu're talking about reversing the course of life. Should this not be important. You seem happy with making resurrection the equivalent of Belvedere at Pigley's five and dime.

And here again, we have the caricature.

Death and resurrection have never been treated that way in my games, and unless you were floating in the ethereal plane while we gamed, you are clearly stepping outside the boundaries of what it is possible for you to know.

So kindly step back into reality, and talk about your own experiences. Because I am the only acknowledged expert present in this discussion about my experiences. And when you talk about them, you will always be wrong unless you agree with me.

Caricatures notwithstanding.

You want resurrection to happen perhaps once or twice in a campaign. Rock on. Enjoy yourself. But if death is going to be a threat in any way, then you will compensate in other ways to prevent it.

Unless, of course, you're playing d20 My Little Pony, and combat is never lethal.

This is less about pcs coming back and figuring out a way to do luck, than it is about proper text book world design. When you do proper world design you got to look and think of how everything fits. For a lot of DMs whom put a lot into world design, resurrection is an unnecessary flaw.

And here is where we reach the point where we part ways. It is not a flaw. It works in my world, it is not a problem, and I put a lot of thought into my world design to figure out how everything fits.

If you see it as a flaw, that is certainly your right to view it in that way. But when you speak for everyone else, and we know that we've made it work, your argument has committed suicide because we know you are mistaken.

Or you can buy it before hand, have someone scribe it. Getting access to such a low level spell is not a problem. What, we're talking 3rd level clerics and 4th level magic users. I"m sure on their 9 day journey back they can memorize and cast it in enough time. How many straws did you grab thinking of that one?

I grabbed no straws. You just prefer to caricature this or that point instead of admitting that someone maturely, intelligently and imaginatively disagrees with you.

I freely confess that your way is a legitimate way of gaming.

Why can't you be mature enough to do the same thing with the way in which I choose to game?

Why is your position so vulnerable, and so weak, and so easily threatened that it must be the ONLY right way in order for you to play and enjoy it?

 

[Storyteller01]

I think this is where the disagreement comes in. Storyteller and DonTadow seem to be suggesting that it HAS to be a bad thing. Not just for them, but objectively. Obviously, this isn't true, so people just get into debating the finer points of what the rules actually suggest, both seeing the same thing and calling it something different.

Because its wide availability and it being "cheap and easy" are effectively two different conversations, I think.

I think I was clinched when I was called micro-managing, more than anything else...

 

[molonel]

It's still a guaranteed Raise 1 out of every 7 attempts statistically. That's better odds than rolling a critical for most weapons.

If you use the basic, randomized city size generation tables and take no account of culture, alignment, deity or geography, and give your characters unlimited wealth and time to travel anywhere they want, gosh, it becomes a lot easier, doesn't it?

You people keep talking about how insufficiently imaginative everyone else is. But when we raise actual in-game concerns, and don't confine our entire worldbuilding process to a single table on a single page in the DMG, we're just going WILD AND CRAZY! We're breaking the rules!

Rules? These aren't rules. Every world doesn't have to have 1 out of 100 cities be a major metropolis, and even if they were, that's not a bad thing.

But the point is:

It's not as cheap or easy as you portray.

You are trying to milk that random city generator for all that it is @#$@#ing worth.

And then I am the one grasping at straws?

Good lord.

But you haven't shown anything. If fact, you specifically stated that you didn't have to!

I specifically stated that it is not my point to show you that something is NOT in a book. Yours is the positive truth claim. The burden of proof is on you to make your own points. Not for you to assume them, and then me to disprove them.

Someone has already pointed out that WotC adventures don't fit your description. You conveniently ignored that point, however.

I never claimed it was bad over all, just that Raises and return-from-death senarios were too prevalent for my tastes.

Okay. They are too prevalent for your tastes.

Guess what?

When you make them harder to obtain, you are following the rules. You are doing exactly what the game tells you to do. Yes, it makes suggestions about city size and availability. But those are basic suggestions for people who've never built a world, before. If you follow them, great. If you don't follow them? They warn you to be consistent, and understand the consequences of your decisions. If you look further at those tables, it says that most cities are full of humans.

Does that mean you're breaking the game if your adventure goes into dwarven lands? Or that an elven kindgom is simply too wacky and too crazy to imagine?

I don't, at least not the magical variety. just another difference.

Cool.

Moving on: Then this is the choice of the players and the DM, not that it's bad. The d20 D&D system was designed around having a member from each of the four base groups, including some healer. It effects creature CR, treasure available (the random roll charts are geared for this distribution), and how often goods and services are available in any settlement.

That is their suggestion. You are not ripping up a Bible when you do otherwise.

But your the DM who doesn't make Gentle Repose immediately available, and force them to count the days enroute to some place capable of casting raise. Not that it's bad, but per the DMG their odds are 1 in 7 they'll find one. getting transportation is so cheap that it's available everywhere. A thorpe can supply 40 gp of mundane and magical goods and services. Transportation runs into the silvers.

I've never made Gentle Repose less available. Did I remember that there were exactly 2 scrolls of it in every city of a certain size? No.

I don't force them to count the days. That's from the description of the Raise Dead spell.

The DMG does not say that they will always find a city 1 out of 7 times. That's just ridiculous.

No, it because you choose not to use them.

Or maybe - just MAYBE - we're too busy roleplaying, and nobody wanted to play a specific type of character so that we'd always have Gentle Repose available so that we could travel to that 1 out of 7 cities, and raise someone from the dead at the local McTemple. (Who's buying lattes afterward?)

Just a thought.

I know it sounds crazy.

You've also admitted to fudging it's availability. If you don't use the community building rules in the DMG how do you establish what's available where? Seriously, do you have a system or do you adjudicate via specs from your own campaign needs? If it's the latter, you determine when they can raise themselves, not the rules.

I've never fudged its availability. The game does not REQUIRE me to always have my adventures within a days journey of a major metropolitan area.

Those "rules" aren't absolutes. They are basic suggestions for people who've never built a world before.

No, I'm saying that I don't like how available certain aspects of the game are. Since you don't use the above rules, we can assume you don't either.

Again, those aren't rules. Those are basic tools which you can use or disregard at your own leisure.

NO, I HAVEN'T! All you've shown me that you don't use the rules as written either. I would love it if you showed me something beyond 'it says the DM doesn't have to do this'. The entire system says this. The game is completely 'what the DM allows' dependant.

Yes, you have.

The rules do not say you must always paddle around in the kiddie pool of your world, and always allow your players the options you say are mandatory.

Nowhere in the rules. Absolutely nowhere.

I haven't been using just metropolis type communities, you have. The point still stands that per the generator made for the system, which you admit you don't use, you have a better than 1 in 7 chance in finding a Raise Dead.

Rock on. Now answer my question.

Where does it say you MUST use that table to generate your world?

Page number and paragraph, please.

(Keep in mind that I've already given the page number and paragraph that says it is a basic starting place, and not mandatory. Have fun with that.)

But you will get a result that guarantees a Raise (either by caster or scroll from cities and metropoli) on a roll of 86 or better. 15 out of 100. Simplify that to 3 out of 20. Simplify it further for 1 out of 6.66.

If you use the randomized city size generator, 3 times out of 20. Yes.

But your claim is that Raise Dead isn't as prevalent as I say via the core rules, since you play by the book. Then you tell me you don't use the system, prefering to judge the arrangement on your own. Which is it?

I play by the core rules. Nowhere in the core rules does it say you must create a world that way.

I imagine I'm going to have to repeat that a thousand more times until you get it.

 

[molonel]

I think this is where the disagreement comes in. Storyteller and DonTadow seem to be suggesting that it HAS to be a bad thing. Not just for them, but objectively. Obviously, this isn't true, so people just get into debating the finer points of what the rules actually suggest, both seeing the same thing and calling it something different.

Because its wide availability and it being "cheap and easy" are effectively two different conversations, I think.

Correct on all points.