limiting raise dead

[Sylrae]

As mentioned by one of the other posters, If you limit resurrection, you need to remove save or die effects (I don't think they should be in the game anyways, they are a much too anticlimactic way to lose a character.

That said, Resurrection doesn't benefit the cleric. It doesn't make the cleric any better really, it makes EVERYONE ELSE better. Nobody wants to just follow the party around doing nothing but resurrections and cure spells all day.

I've played in games with limited raise dead, and it CAN be a good thing. it shouldn't have that much of an effect unless you have stupid players though, cause if your PCs are dying more than 1 PC per like 12-18 sessions, you're probably making things a bit too hard on them. Maybe you should consider occasionally fudging the dice so they can get out by the skin of their teeth, or make the monsters make bad judgement calls, occasionally have the monster forget to take his attack of opportunity, or whatever, so that you dont have such a high death count.

I've always been more concerned with remakes. I've played in alot of groups where the players cant decide on a character and stick with it, so every 3 sessions they want to make a new character. THAT, I put a number limit to. the first one I let them get away with and they come in at the beginning of whatever level they are. Afterwards, they come in 1 level lower than the lowest player if they decide to scrap their characters and reroll. If they die not from some stupid action they took then its different, but for suicides and erase/rerolls thats what I had to do.

Anyways. you could limit raise dead like you suggested but thats a complicated way to do it. I'd suggest limiting it in other wyas maybe?

- The dead character, to be revived, has to go through a quest alone in the afterlife to get the chance to live again (+ a res spell must be cast)
- To revive an intelligent creature, another intelligent creature's life must take its place
- whatever, just don't make it too complicated, and if you dont make raise dead easy then save or die needs to go.

 

[Elephant]

I'll never understand this impulse to take something that REALLY sucks in the game -- dying is equivalent to LOSING the game -- and trying to come up with ways to make it suck even more. Is your goal to have players always start new characters after they roll a natural 1 on their save vs. Disintegrate? (or Phantasmal Killer, or Blasphemy, etc) That strikes me as unnecessarily mean.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Some people believe that the possibility of character death can enhance the experience of roleplaying, intensify it, or the like. Some people do not.

Pick a side!

 

[calighis]

I happen to agree with Aus snow. The reason I'm bringing this up is that a character willingly sacrificed himself to help defeat a bad guy in such a way as that it was made obvious that this was a player motivated suicide and not a character motivated one. We all knew that he wanted to play another character and so none of us were shocked at his sudden altruism.
Having said that, I feel like an earnest desire to stay alive adds a level of realism to the game that otherwise lacks with infinite rez. Real consequences are ultimately where real value is derived from.
That said, I can see the other side of the argument. Nothing is worse than coming home a loser in D&D. After all there are many other areas in life where it sucks to be a loser, but D&D just shouldn't have to be one of them. In and of itself, I think the risk of failure provides plenty of incentive to stay alive.

 

[Sylrae]

Elephant. rolling a one on those things wouldnt kill you, because well, as I said, like three times for emphasis, any save or die is out the window if you make it harder to resurrect.

Having said that, if its player motivated suicide then im less forgiving than if its not. a dead character may have a harder time coming back from the dead via a cleric. well it would be harder on the whole. but not impossible.

I dunno. im thinking at the very least, death should maybe have less permanent penalties. and I don't personally think -1 con is the way to go. unless of course you add a way to regain it.

now everyones said what they had to say, and the OP can make his decision with those things in mind.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Some people believe that the possibility of character death can enhance the experience of roleplaying, intensify it, or the like. Some people do not.

Pick a side!

I agree with Aus_Snow, but perhaps in a slightly different fashion...

Some people like the idea of character death in D&D and others don't. Pick a side.

But actually _pick_ one. Don't waffle back and forth. Either eliminate Raise Dead mechanics entirely or embrace them.

I've been playing rpgs for 20 years, and the _first time_ I ever had a GM that allowed _any_ kind of coming back from the dead was a short-lived game group I found when I moved here to New Jersey 2 years back.

Yeah, that's right... 20 years of perma-death, except for one recent and brief game.

Personally? I think death sucks. When I _run_ games though, it's an option the whole group decides on. If everyone wants death to be on the table (i.e. an option), then they get the option for it to be permadeath or not.

If they go for the option of being able to come back from the dead, then that's it. I don't make a big production out of it, although I do make sure that there's an option for permadeath to NPCs.

Every time I see someone go on about wanting to "limit" the options for Raise Dead/Ressurection, it always makes me shake my head. As I see it, all they're really trying to do is have the appearance of allowing characters to be able to come back from the dead, but really wishing they didn't have to and hoping that none of their players will be willing to jump through all the hoops to get their character back.

It's not hard to "balance" people coming back from the dead, at least in terms of what happens in the world. People can only be dead for X amount of time, damage to [x], [y], and [z] parts of the body means it can't be brought back (brain/head, heart, and spine are good ones), it costs money, you've got to have an actual body to bring back to life (not just pieces of it), casters are able to place a spell on a body to block it from being brought back to life before the time limit is up, there's weapons out there that destroy/trap the soul.

They're you've limited coming back from the dead.

Not everyone can afford it, it's possible to inflict damage that gets around it, and people can still be assassinated.

If you want some sort of mechanical slap in the face, simply assign a cumulative -1 to all actions for every [hour] /[day] / [whatever] that someone is dead. The penalty goes away at the rate of 1 per every day of rest. Can't be changed or sped up. There, now you've got a mechanical penalty.

If the people kicking around forums are to be believed, the cleric doesn't _need_ any kind of anything to make up for taking away their ability to bring people back from the dead. They're already over-powered as it is.

Personally, I just toss the standard D&D cleric out the window. It's a god-powered Fighter/Mage that's got healing, utility and combat spells, stuff for dealing with the undead, and bringing people back from the dead. If you're interested in "balancing" things, make people multiclass to get all that power.

 

[Sylrae]

I agree with Aus_Snow, but perhaps in a slightly different fashion...

Some people like the idea of character death in D&D and others don't. Pick a side.

But actually _pick_ one. Don't waffle back and forth. Either eliminate Raise Dead mechanics entirely or embrace them.

I've been playing rpgs for 20 years, and the _first time_ I ever had a GM that allowed _any_ kind of coming back from the dead was a short-lived game group I found when I moved here to New Jersey 2 years back.

Yeah, that's right... 20 years of perma-death, except for one recent and brief game.

Personally? I think death sucks. When I _run_ games though, it's an option the whole group decides on. If everyone wants death to be on the table (i.e. an option), then they get the option for it to be permadeath or not.

If they go for the option of being able to come back from the dead, then that's it. I don't make a big production out of it, although I do make sure that there's an option for permadeath to NPCs.

Every time I see someone go on about wanting to "limit" the options for Raise Dead/Ressurection, it always makes me shake my head. As I see it, all they're really trying to do is have the appearance of allowing characters to be able to come back from the dead, but really wishing they didn't have to and hoping that none of their players will be willing to jump through all the hoops to get their character back.

It's not hard to "balance" people coming back from the dead, at least in terms of what happens in the world. People can only be dead for X amount of time, damage to [x], [y], and [z] parts of the body means it can't be brought back (brain/head, heart, and spine are good ones), it costs money, you've got to have an actual body to bring back to life (not just pieces of it), casters are able to place a spell on a body to block it from being brought back to life before the time limit is up, there's weapons out there that destroy/trap the soul.

They're you've limited coming back from the dead.

Not everyone can afford it, it's possible to inflict damage that gets around it, and people can still be assassinated.

If you want some sort of mechanical slap in the face, simply assign a cumulative -1 to all actions for every [hour] /[day] / [whatever] that someone is dead. The penalty goes away at the rate of 1 per every day of rest. Can't be changed or sped up. There, now you've got a mechanical penalty.

If the people kicking around forums are to be believed, the cleric doesn't _need_ any kind of anything to make up for taking away their ability to bring people back from the dead. They're already over-powered as it is.

Personally, I just toss the standard D&D cleric out the window. It's a god-powered Fighter/Mage that's got healing, utility and combat spells, stuff for dealing with the undead, and bringing people back from the dead. If you're interested in "balancing" things, make people multiclass to get all that power.

I like your way of thinking. I don't think I personally want ot completely scrap raise dead, but I may limit it as you mentioned above.

I also like your idea of killing the cleric. I'm thinking maybe tack the cleric spells onto the wizard, and make the wizard choose the spells if he wants them or not.

the Turn Undead could be a feat, or series of feats available to anyone who is a member of a church. perhaps a lesser version could be available to anyone with a holy symbol?

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I also like your idea of killing the cleric. I'm thinking maybe tack the cleric spells onto the wizard, and make the wizard choose the spells if he wants them or not.

If you want I guess you could do that. It sounds like you're talking about basically having the Mystic Theurge as a base class at that point.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/mysticTheurge.htm

Here's the WotC view of the MT:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rs/20030402a
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060616a
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20060908a
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20060926a

Honestly? I usually just dump the whole class. Depending on the particular game, I might have some of the spells floating around, but generally I have a class that's an actual _healer_ class, which takes care of that aspect.

The holy warriors (paladin-types) wind up getting some of the martial spells, so that covers the martial side of things.

Undead stuff goes to other classes that are specifically focused on Undead in the first place.

the Turn Undead could be a feat, or series of feats available to anyone who is a member of a church. perhaps a lesser version could be available to anyone with a holy symbol?

Usually I don't bother with the whole feat thing. Classes that are focused on undead hunting get it as part of their schtick.

Personally, I gotta say I think the way the whole Undead turning thing works sucks.

I'm a fan of people having Holy Symbols that have been blessed by some diety. When used by a person with little/no faith, a holy symbol can keep the undead back, much like a Protection from Evil sort of thing. When used by someone with the appropriate faith (either a person of the same faith that blessed the Holy Symbol, or an undead hunter), it will do an Eldritch Blast that only affects undead. The blast comes from the holy symbol itself.

Of course, I feely admit that if I don't like something in the book, I'll hack it apart until it suits my sensibilities. So my solutions may not work for everyone.

 

[Brasswatchman]

I'll never understand this impulse to take something that REALLY sucks in the game -- dying is equivalent to LOSING the game -- and trying to come up with ways to make it suck even more. Is your goal to have players always start new characters after they roll a natural 1 on their save vs. Disintegrate? (or Phantasmal Killer, or Blasphemy, etc) That strikes me as unnecessarily mean.

I don't know. Is it really possible to 'lose' a roleplaying game?

 

[Sylrae]

If you want I guess you could do that. It sounds like you're talking about basically having the Mystic Theurge as a base class at that point.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/mysticTheurge.htm

Here's the WotC view of the MT:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rs/20030402a
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060616a
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20060908a
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20060926a

Honestly? I usually just dump the whole class. Depending on the particular game, I might have some of the spells floating around, but generally I have a class that's an actual _healer_ class, which takes care of that aspect.

The holy warriors (paladin-types) wind up getting some of the martial spells, so that covers the martial side of things.

Undead stuff goes to other classes that are specifically focused on Undead in the first place.



Usually I don't bother with the whole feat thing. Classes that are focused on undead hunting get it as part of their schtick.

Personally, I gotta say I think the way the whole Undead turning thing works sucks.

I'm a fan of people having Holy Symbols that have been blessed by some diety. When used by a person with little/no faith, a holy symbol can keep the undead back, much like a Protection from Evil sort of thing. When used by someone with the appropriate faith (either a person of the same faith that blessed the Holy Symbol, or an undead hunter), it will do an Eldritch Blast that only affects undead. The blast comes from the holy symbol itself.

Of course, I feely admit that if I don't like something in the book, I'll hack it apart until it suits my sensibilities. So my solutions may not work for everyone.

Yeah, the Mystic theurge as a base class is the basic idea. it would cast as a wizard, and use wizard class features though. I plan on cutting down the number of arcane classes. I don't think it'll overpower the wizard though, cause you still have to pick your spells. You'll just have a few more options, and may have to fill the role of party healer. (or have the party rely on items).

and the Holy symbol idea is basically what I was going for, but "appropriate faith" would be done via feats. so that's how youd get a lesser turn undead as a paladin, turn undead as a cleric, and like a greater turn undead. The turn feats would also double as rebukes. maybe add feats like the domain abilities so you can learn to turn outsiders too. what do you think?

it's gonna be a kindof weird setting. with different and sortof drastic houserules, as well as custom player options.

it'll likely catch my players off guard because they won't be options they expect for the most part. I'm going for a different game this time then standard D&D.