Laws about death penalty and resurrection

[MadLordOfMilk]

Whenever I run games, I tend to make raising dead more difficult.

One way is making the knowledge of how to raise the dead something incredibly taboo. Even if many are capable of casting the spell, few would know how to.

Another is changing what's required to raise the dead. Perhaps, in this world, bringing back one life requires the sacrifice of another? That makes things more complicated

 

[roguerouge]

I'd say that rez magic is a legitimate reason for the state to use gruesome execution methods like drawing and quartering. Basically, a horrible, painful, lingering death becomes a deterrent when death might only be the beginning. Loss of property, loss of magic items, loss of title... those things hit PCs and NPCs where they live. Being legally classified as undead also is a nice twist.

Of course, I can see Temporal stasis and extra-dimensional storage magic items as being a great way for the state to get around rez magic in high-powered cases.

 

[Mark]

What would you think government laws would say in such a case? Would it be logically illegal to raise someone after he was put to death, or would good governmens for example allow this as a second chance?
What if this transform death penalty into a 5000gp fine to pay the costs of resurrection?

I think any government that knew about the possibility, and considered that end result acceptable, would want at least a portion of that 5,000 gp as revenue. I generally play up the mental effects of NPCs being killed and raised from the dead to avoid PCs ignoring that NPCs can die. I once had some evil NPCs holding a farmer's wife as hostage and the PCs allowed her to die, so that they could get to the evil NPCs, knowing that they, the PCs, could raise the farmer's wife from the dead later. When she was raised, I had the experience result in her descending into a profound psychosis that caused her to repeatedly relive her death and thus repeatedly scream at the top of her lungs. Needless to say, the local NPCs were not pleased with the tactics and results of the PC rescue. They had to jump through a lot of hoops just to make the situation tolerable and the farmer's wife was still never right in the head. I don't believe that death and raising should be a trivial or strictly monetary matter. While I tend not to force extremely adverse effects on PCs and players in such situations, I am sure to mention occasionally that the experience haunts them, and I especially play it up big for NPCs in an effort to avoid RPing such things offhandedly.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

In a world where death is easily countered magically, I see the death penalty is not really such a penalty. In such societies, perhaps having all assets seized and the criminal shunned and permanently exiled would be equivalent to death. Alternatively, maybe longterm torture or "reprogramming" are valid punishments for heinous crimes. Ring of Regeneration + acid drip/rat swarm/etc?

If death is the way to go (since, practically speaking, the living criminal may yet seek revenge-- possibly with an army), then it likely becomes be illegal to raise the convict (just as it's illegal to harbor a criminal), at least for particularly bad crimes. Keeping the body for a long time; or reincarnating, animating or destroying it, all complicate the raising process. Maybe punishment of the soul is outsourced to Hell for a specified duration to ensure quality suffering.

Or maybe it's possible to "mark" the body somehow, so even if the criminal is raised, the convict bears, for example, a scarlet "M" for "murderer" upon his forehead until his (next) death. In this case he'd be due all the natural shunning and demerits that come with the crime, possibly things that would be codified into law (eg "No raised murderer shall be provided room and board by any licensed business, under pain of revocation of license for a duration not less than 1 year, and a fine of not less than 500gp.")


A powerful government could commission magics to counter even things like True Resurrection. Why not just introduce an expensive and jealously guarded spell called "Utter Death" that the government would use to eliminate the worst offenders, a spell that foils True Rez X% of the time? (Of course you have to keep that last little % uncertainty for dramatic effect ;-)

 

[BrokeAndDrive]

Found something that made me think of this thread:

"What do you mean you sold my house?

You had no righ...

Dead. Dead?

Well yes, technically. Well yes the dragon did fry me.

What do you mean the will was clear? Leave all my worldly possessions to the poor; look I was drunk ok, and there's always the raise dead ritual.

What do you mean the law doesn't recognise resurrection?"

 

[Aus_Snow]

I haven't played in (or GMed) a campaign wherein resurrection is such a trivial, easy, guaranteed thing. That includes very high level D&D. I guess it could make things confusing in some ways, yes.

I do remember one similar occasion though. A powerful NPC who had repented and reformed was resurrected after the execution that went ahead regardless, due to the law being as it was. He had to be moved to a neighbouring country (with different laws) to ensure his safety, in the end. All hell broke loose, basically.

Presumably, legal systems would need to take such things into account in the first place, in a world where it's commonplace or casual.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Great question.

For my own campaign, now that I think about it, resurrecting an executed felon would most certainly be illegal. However, plots involving body theft, necromancy, and either burial in lime pits or cremation seem like worthwhile avenues to explore.

Reducing the corpse, by either lime or cremation, seems like a near certainty for some governments - putting a time limit on retrieving a friend's or party member's corpse, at least for lowish level resurrection. Some definite plot possibilities there.

More stringent areas might even have a spell that prevents resurrection, possibly cast either before the execution or immediately after.

Thanks for the brain fodder!

The Auld Grump

 

[On Puget Sound]

In a campaign I ran long ago, I used the DMG guidelines to populate a large city (Byzantium) with adventureres, and came up with the number 8. 8 Raise Dead spells could be memorized and cast per day in that city, assuming every cleric used every available spell slot on raise dead. Then I had to figure how many people died in a day. Taking the worst mortality rate in today's world (Swaziland's) of 30 per thousand per year, that is one person out of 12,000 dying every day. I figured the death rate in my fantasy medieval world would not be that different from the death rate in Swaziland today. So the clerics in Byzantium could raise everyone who died (other than from old age) in a city of 96,000 people if they chose to.

This meant I had to figure out a reason why they didn't (or how it changed the world if they did).

 

[Doug McCrae]

His family stole the body and had him raised anyways, and now he's wanted for the crime of not being dead.

The crime is life. The sentence is death!

Where's Judge Death when you need him.

 

[pawsplay]

I imagine oubliette would be more often used. The sentence of being held until you die of old age would take on new meaning in such a scenario.

But otherwise, I can maintly just echo what was said above, gruesome executations and destrction of the body being the norm in cases of high crime. Resurrection is expensive, and would no more make execution obsolete than Blackhawk helicopters make an Uzi obsolete.