Monte on Life and Death (And Resurrection)

[pemerton]

YThe biggest problem with the Raise Dead spell that Mr. Cook doesn't even consider changing is the simple fact that it completely undoes death.

<snip>

People like raising the dead because it lets them to continue playing with a character who died. People dislike raise dead spells because they undo the story aspects of death. The simple solution is to both let the character come back but not undo the story aspects of death. In other words, a character who was raised from the dead is still, in some sense, dead.

Raise Dead spells should grant a temporary reprieve from death and are ultimately more akin to necromancy, rather than "curing" death and being equivalent to healing magic. A character who died once is doomed to return to death. They become detached from the reality of the living. After the campaign is done, they will simply return to the land of the dead

I like this, but couldn't XP it.

I think dark, dangerous side effects would be a good method for keeping the normal men from tampering with mortality.

The more rose-coloured version of this, and of TwinBahamu'ts suggestion, is the 4e version - that only certain souls are fated for heroism, and those are the ones that the Raven Queen will permit to return from the dead.

So tampering with mortality is a sign of some special doom or fate, but it's grimly heroic rather than darkly necromantic.

A modular D&D might even put forward both options, reflecting different underlying campaign tones.

 

[Auraword]

One area that seems to be overlooked in the discussions about resurrection and raise dead is the effect of character death and these spells on actual table play.

Although there may be a plethora of campaign, lore, and style based reasons for these spells to be restricted or to not exist there is also one very big reason to include them.

Character death, especially of the unexpected and random variety remains quite punitive to the actual player of the character and can lead to problems at the table in play. The reason for the quick return of player characters to life and activity is largely game related: the player needs something to do at the table and a way to continue playing the game during the session - without bogging the flow of the action and story.

The ability to return a beloved character to life also can benefit the campaign's realism: players are going to be inclined to invest in a character and in that character's relationships and the consequences of his or her choices, creating a richer experience than if every character ends up feeling temporary or disposable.

Compromises between investment and realism can include ideas like character trees, where a player has a small set of interrelated characters that can benefit from each other's development and step into each others shoes in adventures and stories. Or placing resurrection completely in the domain of player / dungeon master discussion - an example of which could be seen in Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker novel: certain heroic souls who die before their time are allowed to (conditionally) return to life.

I understand the position of those who think that there should be some sort of penalty for failure or foolishness in the world. Perhaps it would be best in considering the role of resurrection to define death in not one but three ways.
A death brought on by stupid decisions and foolish behavior might be one that cannot easily be undone, since fate and the Gods rarely favor idiots. A death that is simply an accident of combat or the dice might be seen as a slip in the grand plans of destiny and be undone at only a moderate cost, so the player can keep on playing. And a death at the dramatically appropriate moment might be seen as the completion of a given soul's lessons and the time for that soul to move on to the hands of the Gods, perhaps allowing the player to make a character to inherit the lost character's wealth and legacy. It could thus be said that for the sake of realism that most souls are content to join the Gods at the end of their natural span, and that even Kings and the greatest men might still have completed their destiny in the world at the time of death and thus not qualify for a resurrection.

Thanks for reading. /love

 

[CM]

The resurrection survival percentage roll from 1e is brilliant - there's always a small chance you ain't coming back (or, it's gonna take something big usually involving a bunch of adventuring in planes you really shouldn't go to).

I could never let a single die roll tell somebody when they should stop playing a particular character, or what direction the campaign should head in for the next several levels.

I'm more of a fan of the 4e version of resurrection--only souls with unfinished destinies (IE whoever the DM decides) can return from death.

 

[hafrogman]

I do know that the Steven Brust option in the Vlad Taltos novels should be there. (No accident that those novels are loosely based on a D&D campaign.) Raise dead is cheap and easy, if you know any mover or shaker. Kill someone with a "Morganti" weapon, and it doesn't matter, because such a weapon kills the soul. Thus you bring up all kinds of interesting issues about receiving or inflicting a permanent death that gives pause, even in a game.

My mind went to these books too, but not for the Morganti weapons, but for all the other ways a body can become unable to be raised. Decapitation, burning, destroying the brain, etc.

I think this provides a balance that the game is striving to reach. If you trivialize death, that has serious and far reaching consequences on the world, setting and society. But if you totally remove the ability to raise the dead, then you face players who invest a lot of time and effort into a character's story only to lose it all to an unlucky roll or bad decision.

So your average death to spell, sword or monster can be undone with a cleric, materials of sufficient cost and 'Raise Dead'. But there is no 'True Resurrection', and it's only the work of a moment to make a death permanent. It won't happen in the heat of the battle, but if you walk in to find the king with a dagger in his eye, there's no coming back from that.

As always, it wouldn't work for every campaign and every group, but I think it would be a good default assumption for the system.

 

[Kaodi]

Oddly enough I think class balance has a role to play in whether common resurrection magic should be available or not. If every party has to have a wizard, and the wizard dies, then is that player really going to appreciate having to create and entirely new wizard character rather than just raising the old one from the dead? If there is practically never a requirement of any particular class in the party, then if someone dies they can at least make a completely different character.

 

[Kaodi]

*Also, as long as there it is possible to bring characters back from the dead, and as long as that power is restricted to, or at least most easily used by, clerics, then I think it might be worthwhile to have some sort of special ritual that can be performed or condition that can be met that would allow a dead cleric who had unused death-reversing magic available when they bought the monastery to, in effect, self-resurrect.

 

[Elf Witch]

I think there should be fairly easy ways to bring a PC back to life. And I think that it should be up to the DM to decide how common this is in their campaigns.

I understand that a lot of people like a lot of realism and want death to mean something so they should have a way to implement that in their game.

On the other hand there are players and DMs who want a more story based game with characters playing a very important part of the story. And find that permanent death has a negative impact on the game so these gamers should also have a way to implement that style in their games.

There is a lot of creative ways to handle NPC death in the campaign. One way is the your times is up another is the NPC does not want to come back. Another way is that the gods require a service and maybe the NPC does not want to do that. Or maybe they do and that can lead to some interesting world consequences.

I have seen that death of characters can impact the game in some very negative ways. I have seen some players get to the point that they just stop investing any kind of background or interest in their characters if they lose to many characters. They might as well as be playing the shoe from Monopoly.

I have seen campaigns come to a screeching halt because of a TPK.

As for consequences I also think this should be up to the DM and his players. Some players would think that it is great opportunity to role play out a person ripped from heaven others may hate it.

 

[Elf Witch]

Oddly enough I think class balance has a role to play in whether common resurrection magic should be available or not. If every party has to have a wizard, and the wizard dies, then is that player really going to appreciate having to create and entirely new wizard character rather than just raising the old one from the dead? If there is practically never a requirement of any particular class in the party, then if someone dies they can at least make a completely different character.

This is a really good point. In my experience most players who lose a character to death don't want a clone of the lost character and generally choose to play a different class.

Those that just make another wizard often just remake the old character with a different name. For all intense and purposes it is the same character.

 

[Quickleaf]

It would be nice for some book space to be devoted to the *narrative* of resurrection and not just the mechanics.

For example, several folks have asked the question: "If adventurers have access to raise dead, what about the rich nobility?" I've always thought that raise dead was a sticky wicket when it came to succession and inheritance...maybe the state has instituted a tax on excessive resurrection? Maybe the church which can perform these rituals has nobles in it's pocket?

 

[pemerton]

One area that seems to be overlooked in the discussions about resurrection and raise dead is the effect of character death and these spells on actual table play.

Although there may be a plethora of campaign, lore, and style based reasons for these spells to be restricted or to not exist there is also one very big reason to include them.

Character death, especially of the unexpected and random variety remains quite punitive to the actual player of the character and can lead to problems at the table in play. The reason for the quick return of player characters to life and activity is largely game related: the player needs something to do at the table and a way to continue playing the game during the session - without bogging the flow of the action and story.

I think there should be fairly easy ways to bring a PC back to life.

<snip>

there are players and DMs who want a more story based game with characters playing a very important part of the story. And find that permanent death has a negative impact on the game so these gamers should also have a way to implement that style in their games.

If this is the motivation for Raise Dead, then some sort of Hero Point mechanic (that will prevent the unwanted deaths), or even free roleplaying between player and GM of the PC's spirit being returned to the world by the gods to complete its unresolved destiny, both seem to me to be better options than the ubiquitous returning to life of the dead.