Monte on Life and Death (And Resurrection)

[Gryph]

I like the idea that the state recognizes a resurrected individual as having died. So, in other words, you can probably resurrect the murdered king but it won't matter much because the line of succession will have taken over. A resurrected person is no longer married ("til death do us part"). A resurrected person's Will is carried out even after they have been brought back.

If the power exists to raise King Soandso's great grandfather, you want a legal code that can handle who gets to be king. Allowing rezzed ancestors to just take over would lead to chaos, so it makes sense to simply accept the status quo by legally recognizing that a resurrected person has died.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily work as well for uncivilized lands, nor for all campaigns...

I've used something very like this in a campaign. The empire considered anyone who has died and know walks the earth to be undead. They also had very strict title/property ownership laws barring the undead. Though certain enlightened reforms allowed the undead to retain certain personal property and abolished the automatic sentence of death by burning.

It was rumoured that Empire Vartag IV had a very beautiful undead mistress.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I read the first two pages of this thread and then this last page, so forgive me if I repeat anything here.

I think Raise Dead/Resurrection should be allowed, but it should be a rare occurrence. The problem with both now in 4E and 3.5E before it was that it's too easy to use, and it's also accessible by too low level a cleric.

To illustrate my point:
When WotC released 3E, they said that their surveys indicated that in 1e/2e, most campaigns ran from level 1 to somewhere around level 9 or 10 at the end. That means, that Raise Dead was something that a PC could cast only at the very end of a campaign when he or she was at level 9. Resurrection was something that was normally beyond the means of the PCs, since it was a level 7 spell, thus you'd need to be level 13 to cast it. So, you'd need to have access to a powerful NPC to get a Resurrection done. And, even Raise Dead was something that you'd only do at the very end of a long campaign.

However, when 3E came out, Raise Dead was still accessible to the PCs when they got to level 9. However, the campaigns were now designed to go from level 1 to level 20. So, you could now access Raise Dead less than halfway through a campaign. The spell lost its wonder because it was something a middle level cleric could now cast. (however, if you disallow Raise Dead & Resurrection, you're nerfing the cleric)

Then, with 4E, Raise Dead was cheapened even further. It was now a level 8 ritual, and campaigns were now designed to from level 1-30. So, you could now cast Raise Dead only 27% of the way through a campaign - heck, you're still in the bottom tier of adventurers and you're raising the dead.

During my 2 1/2 year long 3.5e campaign, my players used Revivify at least once a combat once they had access to it (Brings a player back from Death before the soul fully departs from the body if cast within 1 round of death... or more of augmented with the psionic version of it). However, the actual casting of Raise Dead or Resurrection was rare. In fact, I think I only recall one actual PC resurrection in the game - and that was in the last combat where the PC cleric cast a 5,000xp Miracle to bring the fallen dwarf fighter back from the dead after he got hit with Implosion, and shockingly, failed his FORT save.

The problem isn't Raise Dead & Resurrection in and of itself, the problem is accessibility. Raise Dead shouldn't be something a just out of the gate adventurer can cast. It should only be used by the most powerful practitioners of divine magic - thus, the PCs can use it only at the end of a campaign. Revivify is only mostly dead, so I think access to something similar is okay somewhat earlier - but, even that should be later on in a campaign as well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It strikes me that the tiers-as-treasure idea might work for this.

If classic D&D style resurrection is an Epic or Champion-tier thing, and such characters are recognized as gods or near-gods or somesuch, then no normal Common or Hero royalty is going to get access to these abilities, regardless of the wealth they command.

There are some things that cannot be bought or coerced. Resurrection is for those greater than normal people. If you're a king who wants to live forever, you need to find out how to become more than a mere mortal.

 

[variant]

I agree with Monte's idea of revivification or resuscitation, which is what it actually is. However, I think any healing spell should accomplish it which would mean that a character isn't really dead unless all the players are killed or they run out of healing. With modern technology we can bring people 'back to life' because they were never really dead, so why not magic that can instantly restitch wounds?

I also agree that resurrection should be something found in the Dungeon Master's Guide with various options.

 

[WheresMyD20]

Here is Monte Cook's latest Blog about Resurrection spells

Latest Bloggy Blog Blog


Have any of you actually used a resurrection/raise dead type spell as written?

Absolutely. In high-level 1e (level 15+) death is very common, so it's necessary for clerics to be able to raise their fallen comrades without too much difficulty. Of course, there is always the chance that a rez survival roll could fail and your character would be dead permanently. There are also fates worse than death... like spells that can trap or destroy souls.