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

[Sunseeker]

Sounds like you want a "darker" resurrection, not necessarily a harder one.

So, simple solution: humanoid sacrifice as an additional material component. Must be sentient, comprehend what it's doing and willing. Throw in a twist if you sacrifice an unwilling or non-comprehending creature. EX: Perhaps your Buddy just died to some orcs, well, you vanquished the Orcs, but one still lives. Obviously he would be unwilling, so maybe if you use him as a component, the Orc and your friend's souls switch. Now Buddy is in the Orc body (complete with Orc stats, but not levels), or perhaps Buddy's body is raised, with the Orc's soul. Maybe the spirit of Buddy and Orc have to duke it out one-on-one in the middle ground between life and death to determine who gets to live. Maybe they get physically merged into a half-orc, maybe mentally too.

From a mechanical standpoint this would also eliminate "on demand" resurrection, since a sacrifice will not always be readily available, like a diamond would.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Oofta]

Other people have great suggestions but I'll add my 2 coppers.

My campaign is based on norse mythology, with Nifleheim roughly the equivalent of the Shadowfell. All souls go through Nifleheim on their way to their final resting place (Valhalla, Hel's realm, etc).

So revivify works pretty much like normal. The soul of the dead has not traveled very far and it's easy to reconnect to the body.

The longer someone is dead the more difficult it is to bring them back, particularly if they end up in Hel. In any case the raise dead spell does not automatically bring someone back, it merely opens a temporary portal into Nifleheim so that people can go through the portal to retrieve the soul.

So it's basically a mini-quest to raise dead. In addition, once the person comes back from the dead there may be other repercussions as other souls lost in Nifleheim follow them back. The spirits may harass the person that has been raised, giving them disadvantage at various points, etc.

I do all of this so that death and coming back from the dead is an event that can be used for other plot hooks and in-game fun while also enforcing the feel that it's not just "poof he's back".

 

[Krachek]

Charge 20$ for raise dead or pay next pizza or beer run.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

First, my philosophy. I like meaningful consequences that make resurrection rare in the world, and not a routine thing even for PCs. But as a player I have a visceral hatred for anything that permanently takes things away from my character's stats. So I always hated losing a permanent point of Con, or a level, etc. It's just a psychological issue for me, so I accept it and go from there.

Here's how I impose serious consequences without permanently taking anything (except money) away from characters.

1) Multiply the cost of most resurrection style spells by 10. Raise dead cost 5,000, resurrection costs 10,000, etc.
2) Increase the amount of time needed to recover from the death penalty in the book. With raise dead, that -4 penalty drops by 1 every month rather than every long rest. With resurrection it only takes a week to drop 1 point. This means you will feel the effects for quite some time, but will eventually get back to normal.
3) Have possible non-statistical in-world consequences. People in my worlds have heard myths than in those rare cases when someone is brought back from the dead...
a) It might not be them. Maybe their body is possessed by a demon instead.
b) They might be followed. Maybe they pick up some sort of hitchhiker, or maybe they are missed by their afterlife and someone is sent to drag their AWOL butt back.
c) They might not be the same. Maybe them gain some sort of indefinite madness, weird luck, or some supernatural quirk.

While I would only cause c) to happen when it would be interesting for the game, not as a matter of course, the very fact that people are afraid of this sort of thing happening means that characters who are known to have returned from the dead are often not trusted.

 

[Taneras]

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.

Oh wow, very interesting. You know I like the fluidity of it all, I understand Matt Mercer was probably making some of the rules up on the fly but I really enjoyed seeing how personal it seemed. As if it'd be different for every PC if they were resurrected.

Thanks for that!

Sounds like you want a "darker" resurrection, not necessarily a harder one.


So, simple solution: humanoid sacrifice as an additional material component. Must be sentient, comprehend what it's doing and willing. Throw in a twist if you sacrifice an unwilling or non-comprehending creature. EX: Perhaps your Buddy just died to some orcs, well, you vanquished the Orcs, but one still lives. Obviously he would be unwilling, so maybe if you use him as a component, the Orc and your friend's souls switch. Now Buddy is in the Orc body (complete with Orc stats, but not levels), or perhaps Buddy's body is raised, with the Orc's soul. Maybe the spirit of Buddy and Orc have to duke it out one-on-one in the middle ground between life and death to determine who gets to live. Maybe they get physically merged into a half-orc, maybe mentally too.


From a mechanical standpoint this would also eliminate "on demand" resurrection, since a sacrifice will not always be readily available, like a diamond would.

There are certainly a lot of dark themes attached to bringing someone back to life. I'll certainly run this by my party and see what they think. Some are neutral/lawful good and it could create some interesting dialogue between them as whether or not to do it.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Still reading through them all!

 

[iserith]

I think another key consideration to have in mind when brainstorming ideas for this is how to get the player back to playing as quickly as he or she wants. In my view, there is little worse than having to sit and watch other people play while you're writing up a new character or waiting for your character to be resurrected. In my game, this is solved with trapdoor characters, that is, backups that are ready to go and already written into the narrative so that if a PC drops, we can bring the replacement in right away and continue on. A player shouldn't have to sit out of the primary mode of participation with the game if he or she doesn't want to.

 

[Shiroiken]

If you want to make the fear of death more meaningful, you can reinstate the Resurrection Check. The easiest way to incorporate this into 5E would be to require a Con check DC: 10 (DC: 5 +1/previous death if you want to increase future chances). Failure means that the soul is gone beyond mortal magic, but you could allow for extreme measures (i.e. epic quest) to circumvent it. Beloved characters may be lost forever under this rule, giving fear of death back into the game. Since this doesn't punish the character (other than the chance of permanent death), it doesn't create a cascade effect or feel unduly harsh.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Go old school.

No, REALLY old school.

The spell to bring back the dead is a ritual that opens the gates to the pathway of their particular afterlife. You want them back, you have to go get them.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Putting in a permanent mechanical cost or the possibility of resurrection failure is just going to increase the chance that the party won't bother to resurrect a character (or that the character will retire after being resurrected), throwing away all their investment in the story. And the next time? even more so: the new character has even less story encouraging the resurrection.

So, I would much rather implement a role playing cost. Make the spell component:
Memories: suddenly someone the dead character knew has no recollection of them. Or alternately the dead character forgets someone or something. Or everyone (the character included) forgets the character's name.
The dead character's legend: so everyone thinks the resurrected character is not the dead character, except the dead character of course. He may be the same in every way, but clearly he's a different person.
Restore the balance: one creature the dead character killed is restored to life OR one creature they saved dies.
Something is wrong: the character comes back with a flaw, or one of the resurrectors gains a flaw.