D&D 5E Looking for unique suggestions on making player resurrections punishing.

[iserith]

You're correct, its not very often that I come across this. And I guess in a sense the extreme cost is a serious hurdle early on to low level parties/characters. I misspoke and placed too much emphasis on difficulty. I should have mentioned that I was looking for more thematic suggestions to change/modify it from "bring this large bag of money (diamonds) to this dude and your friend will be alive again) to a more difficult series of hurdles for flavor sake. So I guess my request is more of flavor suggestions that are tougher than what's currently listed.

As far as new characters goes, they start 2 or 3 levels behind and lose the equipment of their original tool. We homebrewed in that death doesn't remove attunement, but I've also loosened up a tad on the magic items being rare, at least later on in the game when the party moves from fighting kobolds and goblins to giants and dragons. So in a sense if a character dies all those really cool items are locked to them and can't just be passed around - unless you bring them back via a resurrection.

Okay, so it looks like the incentive to resurrect the character - aside from personal attachment - is you get to keep your items and you don't lose 2-3 levels. That's a decent enough encouragement to make use of raise dead in my view.

I would suggest that in addition to the cost and penalty incurred for use of such spells that Death itself demands the resurrected character perform a particular quest of its choosing in a certain amount of time. If the character reneges on the deal or fails to complete the quest in time, permanent death and eternal damnation follows. To complicate matters, make sure the quests the characters are going on are already time sensitive so that they have to start prioritizing and getting creative to get everything on their plate done before it's too late.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I probably misspoke, not necessarily the coming back more punishing, but the act of resurrection itself a more difficult process. Something more than just diamonds and spells. Maybe I can ground this idea more by pointing to various movies/anime where to bring someone back from the dead didn't just require you to bring some money to a guy and boom its done.

So I guess in a sense its more punishing because it would be harder to set up the process and possibly even complete it, but perhaps I should have also thrown in also a focus on thematic/dramatic elements to make it less cut and dry.

Then here is my advice: Talk with your players to find out what kind of difficulties they would find interesting, and which kind or amount of difficulty would result in their almost always choosing not to engage in the resurrection process.

For example, my own group will not bother with resurrection if any of the following are true: permanent penalty to anything but in-game currency; chance of the attempt failing; mandatory involvement of NPCs, especially if said NPC is going to use the act as leverage to get the party to do something they might not otherwise choose to do; time required to restore dead character to functional status exceeding 24 hours.

So we go with the 5th edition default for the mechanics of the issue - but there is the open area of narrative difficulty by way of some force/being opposing the act of "cheating death" and hunting down those that have been resurrected to try and kill them (while such force/being spends most of its time/effort hunting down and destroying undead creatures for the same reasons), or other complications manifesting outside the character being brought back or the character doing the bringing.

Because, as I've repeatedly seen folks figure out the hard way, what works for a movie, anime, or other form of story-telling does not necessarily work for a table-top game, and in fact usually doesn't by simple fact that reading/seeing a character struggling with something and playing the character struggling with something are two fundamentally different experiences.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Okay, so it looks like the incentive to resurrect the character - aside from personal attachment - is you get to keep your items and you don't lose 2-3 levels. That's a decent enough encouragement to make use of raise dead in my view.

I would suggest that in addition to the cost and penalty incurred for use of such spells that Death itself demands the resurrected character perform a particular quest of its choosing in a certain amount of time. If the character reneges on the deal or fails to complete the quest in time, permanent death and eternal damnation follows. To complicate matters, make sure the quests the characters are going on are already time sensitive so that they have to start prioritizing and getting creative to get everything on their plate done before it's too late.

To riff off of this awesome idea a bit, and since it seems to me the OP is looking for things the living friend(s) need to do to pull it off...

What if the spell requires a living person to step forward and formally petition Death as part of the ceremony. So the service being asked of Death must be accepted by both the living petitioner and recently dead individual. This act binds them and so both must accept the eternal punishment for failure. This way Death has no downside on his end. If the service is performed, he gets what he wants at the cost of one soul. If the contract is breached, he gets two souls. Win-win in his book.

 

[RevelationMD]

In the olden days, I believe that you lost 1 point of CON -- permanently -- when you were resurrected.

Yep... and that meant that your chance of being successfully resurrected declined with each resurrection and a failed resurrection meant you could never be resurrected again. I liked that system - you really feared dying. Even when your chance of failing a resurrection was in the low single digit percentile there was still a chance of kissing your character goodbye permanently.

 

[baradtgnome]

I do not like the word punishing. The game is supposed to be fun. I am all for consequences for a character's actions, and have no trouble setting the bar high for somethings to be accomplished.

This is always an intriguing topic. I wrote a blog post about it years ago. Of course that was pre 5E.

Basically as follows,

1. The dead creature must be willing to come back
2. A god must be willing to potentially piss off the god of death and part the barrier
3. That god will ALWAYS want something substantial in return

This gives me all the control I need, without building in a bunch of rules, or character 'punishing' mechanics. I will say, characters in my game rarely die, but somehow I manage to keep them certain I will kill them if they make poor choices or take big risks and luck turns on them. I will let characters die.

The first one is obvious. The player has to want to bring the character back. Perhaps it was a cinematic and thematic death that would be ruined by a return.
The second, the individual casting the spell has to get a god to agree to support it. Here is where I get controll. Interesting, I don't require the caster's god just a god - which creates some interesting role play and conflict potential
Lastly, if they are smart, they'll negotiate before hand or otherwise some pretty heavy quest/geas stuff comes there way. Yay - more campaign hooks! Depending on how penitent they are with the god, they might even have some disability applied. The options are endless.

If your players are uncomfortable with that kind of potential railroading, and insist on hard mechanics then my example won't work.

Oh - and 5E Revivify is exempted from this: the spirit has not traveled to the other side of the barrier of death yet.

 

[MechaPilot]

I probably misspoke, not necessarily the coming back more punishing, but the act of resurrection itself a more difficult process. Something more than just diamonds and spells. Maybe I can ground this idea more by pointing to various movies/anime where to bring someone back from the dead didn't just require you to bring some money to a guy and boom its done.

So I guess in a sense its more punishing because it would be harder to set up the process and possibly even complete it, but perhaps I should have also thrown in also a focus on thematic/dramatic elements to make it less cut and dry.

I recall one game I DM'd where I changed the required material component for resurrection to this: tears of a virgin widow.

That one didn't end up sticking though. My homebrew setting requires humanoid sacrifice to bring someone back from the dead: the gods are greedy about the souls they collect, and you have to trade one to them to get one back from them. I also impose some kind of story-based resurrection trauma, often using nightmares/dreams/flashbacks of the afterlife, or of how the PC died.

Say, for example, a PC was slain by a sea monster. If she were resurrected, she may very well have recurring nightmares about being eaten by that sea monster.

 

[happyhermit]

I think 5e makes it pretty easy to make resurrection extremely difficult or simple even playing strictly BTB.

By adding in diamonds as a requirement (not generic material components) and not saying anything about the availability of them, it is up to the GM to decide how it works in that particular world and game. I can easily imagine many parts of worlds where there are simply no diamonds to be had, I can imagine many situations where (diamonds being intrinsically linked to resurrection) they might be hoarded, controlled by "cartels", tightly regulated by government or other systems, etc, etc.

On the other hand, if the GM wants to make resurrection relatively trivial, they can allow the players to find diamonds for sale in even the most remote locations, or even just swap the gold out.

There are a lot of other things, like mentioned, but I have been largely enjoying how the 5e option of "Ok, so where the heck are we going to get diamonds now, this is going to be interesting (in the Chinese curse sense)."

 

[feartheminotaur]

I assume you mean raise dead or something similar since revivify seems to be treated differently (no ongoing penalty).

To me an effective barrier to resurrection should be one that the players want to overcome and one that isn't mere book keeping (more money, items, etc.). The two most effective barriers I've seen over the last few years:

1. Characters must perform a service for which ever god is called upon to bring them back. The god of death and this god may negotiate what that is. The party may be involved. This was the one our 4e DM used.

2. Characters can keep their souls from being collected by death - no spell required - but only if they defeat an avatar of death (as per the Deck of Many Things). The party may join in at their own peril. This was the one used in the OotA game I played. It was pretty fun.

I've also see others I've liked less: Losing a HD for healing purposes only - so a 3rd level PC only has 2 HD to heal with; forcing the PC to only take levels in cleric or paladin or favored soul of the deity that brought them back (hated that one); and the usual -1 CON or -1 level after rez.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Check out Critical Role (episode in the 40s, Raven Queen in the title, maybe? ) for a cool way Matt Mercer did a character death. Tje Revivify spell didn't simply work, the other characters had to RP a ritual and do 3 skill checks. DC started at 10 and went -2 for a successful save and +5 for a failure. Last check determined if the spell worked and the character came back. This included spending the diamond cost.

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[dmnqwk]

One way to consider making resurrection a more harrowing process is to create a quest to bring them back to life, taken by their allies.

For example:
Zanco the Gnome Wizard was ripped to shreds by a nasty encounter with a very ferocious pack of Owlbears. His lifeless corpse was dragged off into the bushes and the party had to hunt them down to get it back. Their party Cleric can cast the spell, but to do so requires her local church and a long, harrowing ritual.

The ritual requires the following components:
1. A Family Member or loved one to offer up a reason for the party member to return to life.
2. The completion of a Spirit Quest, dependant on how the character died as much as who they are (for example, the Gnome Wizard might be a brash, snobbish fellow who values intellect above all else so to bring him back to life, the quest could take place in a Labyrinth full of tricks and illusions, culminating in a showdown with a Spirit Guardian in the shape of an Owlbear, but maybe using the stats of a Dragon (complete with Legendary resistance).

To make it more harrowing, on return from the afterlife, the character suffers a neuroses, such as the ones listed in the DMG for Madness, for a period of 1 month (I recommend creating your own RP opportunity, such as in the above example Zanco now has an irrational fear of animals, requiring a Charisma saving throw just to be able to ride on a cart pulled by horses).
Also if anyone "dies" on the spirit quest trying to help their friend, they vanish from the encounter, and are in shock for a period of 24 hours, after which they wake up with short-term madness (again, feel free to create your own).