limiting ressurections reassessing clerics

[calighis]

I really hate the rules regarding raise dead and true resurrection. Put simply, there is no fear in risking your character's life knowing full well that it can be restored to you with little difficulty.
Also the very act of raising the dead is cheapened by the fact that it has a GP price attached to it and can be performed multiple times.
By the time your cleric can raise dead it might very well become once a day phenomena.
No magic, no angelic chorus or demonic presence as the case may be... just poof your alive.

I think there ought to be a balance for the rule. That resurrections of all kinds ought have some serious strictures on them.

1) The same character ought not be able to res more than three times through any agent be it wish, miracle, or true res...

2) Part of the spell requirement for all res spells ought to be that the divine agent granting the resurrection be granted a boon by the characters. Paladins of sufficient level would be exempt from that one. If not a boon then perhaps the character have to retrieve an extremely intractable scroll or ointment in order to perform the deed. No GP cost unless it is a god of wealth or greed and even then it ought to be some outrageous sum.

3) A cleric can only cast a res spell with the direct approval of his god and further more, he can prepare no other spells that day as all of his prayer and preparation is absorbed into being a direct conduit for the most powerful expression of his divine agents might. If the God's approval is not obtained the cleric cannot res.

4) A cleric can only cast resurrection three times a year. If there is anything a divine agent hates its recidivism.
This prevents the characters from going back to the same damn cleric to get res'd like its a walk in clinic every other adventure.
That way they would have to go and find another scource after the first however many times and that can be exciting. Imagine having to go to the lizard folk to ask their most powerful shamans a favor?
What kind of crazy stuff would they ask you to do?

Now these are what I am trying to stipulate for the group but I have a veteran player who tells me that I should not be messing around with the balance of the game. I can see his point. Why should certain characters have to struggle just as hard and not get all of the rewards he is entitled to while others etc...
So my question is.. how can i make a balancing equation here?
What can I give the cleric if I take this away from him?

One of the biggest reasons to play a cleric is that you can resurrect your fallen comrades while fighting in the abyss. Totally essential.. True res is the difference between victory and TPK a great deal of the time.

I would provide a cleric that was better at keeping his comrades alive. perhaps allowing him to cast instantaneous heal spells over the course of combat at a distance providing he take some damage doing it...
or even that one spell... don't have spell compendium.. that allows you to res if its during the same round. I might extend that by a round.
I might provide a ray to him that if he could hit a comrade with it in the same round that he went down he would roll a 1d4 and that character could be healed back above -10 hp before that many rounds expired. maybe call the spell homeostasis.
The fact that you cannot be res'd willy nilly would make these abilities essential and make the role of the cleric even more essential cause staying alive is suddennly much more important.

Tell me what you think please.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Mortality is a good thing, for most campaigns. So, I agree, more or less.

Of course, Raise Dead isn't quite the one-a-day feat you classify it as. Not unless players don't mind lagging behind in levels, something fierce. And kids players these days? Probably no likey.

However, I got rid of it, in my house rules. Plus, Resurrection and True Resurrection became prolonged, difficult and expensive (in one way or another) rituals. But I'm sure there are a number of players out there who would scream blue murder at the very thought. Shucks.

Making adjustments to the rules doesn't in and of itself unbalance the remaining RAW. In some cases, it's been known to help *balance* the darn things.

It's your campaign world to adjudicate, so you call the shots with that. House rules have been around since almost the beginning of the RPG era. Hell, [x] million DMs can't be wrong, right?

And as to what to add to the Cleric if you 'take away' some resurrection (i.e., make it work in ways you prefer it to). . . er, nothing? It's a powerful class anyway. Suck it up and deal.

 

[Kerrick]

I agree with Aus. You're taking away/tweaking 3 spells which, while powerful, aren't the center of his effectiveness - they're only useful if someone dies. Raise dead is all right as is, I think, though it and its relatives could use an increased casting time.

If you want, you can incur further minor penalties, like requiring a day of rest. Pathfinder does it where you gain a permanent negative level (I think; I'm a little fuzzy on the details). Or you could do what I did - institute ability burn (from the XPH) instead of XP. For raise dead et al, the ability burn applies to the target, not the caster - you suffer, say, 2 points of Con burn for raise dead, 1 for res, and 0 for true res. Ability burn can't be restored except by rest - 1 day per point.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Raise Dead exists because this is a game. Played by people. People who, if they can't get their character raised at some point, will just make a new character anyway. And if they can't make a new character, I imagine they'd eventually get bored being a spectator and leave the game. If you don't like people coming backfrom the dead, just ban it. Some DMs actually prefer keeping the same characters around, instead of a rotating cast of new faces, to have a long-running plot be viable.

And your basic premises are wrong. The gp cost of raise dead and the others is NOT chump change. Parties that keep wasting money on these spells will have very poor gear for their level, not to mention they won't really get to know the satisfaction of advancing in level if they keep eating that lost one from the spell.

Finally, it's only IME, but still. The people who die in a fight are often the ones doing the most heroic things and trying to keep the other characters safe. Almost every single death I've seen has been in that kind of framework. I would never want to discourage people from playing like that.

If you don't like putting a gold value on human life, then follow the cue of the DMG variant and instead of costing gold, raise requires special "power components" that are rare and must be adventured for. Let the dead PC(s) make other characters to help in the expedition, maybe family of the deceased, and turn the tragedy into a chance for a fun sidequest.

 

[Phlebas]

..............
Finally, it's only IME, but still. The people who die in a fight are often the ones doing the most heroic things and trying to keep the other characters safe. Almost every single death I've seen has been in that kind of framework. I would never want to discourage people from playing like that.

If you don't like putting a gold value on human life, then follow the cue of the DMG variant and instead of costing gold, raise requires special "power components" that are rare and must be adventured for. Let the dead PC(s) make other characters to help in the expedition, maybe family of the deceased, and turn the tragedy into a chance for a fun sidequest.

I've always turned raised dead into a mini-quest where it links into PC development
IMC The last PC who bit the dust was aiming for Shadowdancer so after she died her own shadow went on the run from the shadow plane and the party had to track it back down before casting raise dead. Managed to have a suitably creepy ritual where the party was defending the body / shadow against creatures from the plane of shadow while the cleric was hurriedly reading the raise dead scroll.
If you don't want to derail the main plot then simply using a Geas/Quest spell as part of the raise dead would add a sufficient penalty to discourage over use of the spell. IMHO the simpler the tweak to RAW, the easier

 

[Phlebas]

.................
I would provide a cleric that was better at keeping his comrades alive. perhaps allowing him to cast instantaneous heal spells over the course of combat at a distance providing he take some damage doing it...
or even that one spell... don't have spell compendium.. that allows you to res if its during the same round. I might extend that by a round.
............

Tell me what you think please.

I think you might want to have a look at the pathfinder rules on channeling positive / negative energy instead of turning. basically it heals living / harms undead in a 30' radius. playtested it a few weeks ago and it seemed to add to the game

.................
I might provide a ray to him that if he could hit a comrade with it in the same round that he went down he would roll a 1d4 and that character could be healed back above -10 hp before that many rounds expired. maybe call the spell homeostasis.
............

Why not use some of the optional rules such as -con hp before death ........

 

[Jack Simth]

Calighis,

Yes, the cheapening of death is annoying. But at the same time, it is the way it is for reasonably good reasons.

1) Players have a tendency to get emotionally attached to their characters, and get upset if they can't play them anymore. From that perspective, getting them back is more fun than not - and when it boils down to it, the point of the game is to have fun.
2) It strains verisimilitude that a group that's dealt with shape-shifting monsters will simply accept a new member. Putting the previous member back together is, in that regard, more "realistic" than is simply suddenly taking in a new random person.
3) Permanent negative changes to a character (Stat loss, primarily, but also several other possible methods) slowly make the character unplayable, mechanically - which isn't fun if you've gotten emotionally attached to the character (see 1, above) - so the 3.X D&D approach doesn't do that (except for 1st level characters); just a GP and XP hit (which isn't permanent, and doesn't generally make a character unplayable, mechanically).
4) Long and/or difficult side-quests tend to interrupt the main plot. This has a particular tendency to break verisimilitude when there's a timer of some kind or other to keep the players from simply taking a 24 hour nap after each battle.
5) Long and/or difficult side-quests either leave the player of the dead character sidelined, doing little, or playing a character they're less inclined to play. This is generally less "fun" for the player.
6) Short and/or easy side-quests simply don't do what you want.

That's a long way of saying that resurrection more or less needs to be part of the game, and that it can't be too difficult. Hence the current incarnation of resurrection - 1,000 to 25,000 gp (depending on spell), one spell slot, a ten minute casting time, and one lost level later you're good to go. There's some penalty of significance (lost level, lost gold), but it's not crippling (you can regain xp and gold without too much hassle) and it doesn't generally interfere with the plot. The only issue is the old "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" bit - but then, that's been around for about 2000 years.