O' Death Where is Thy Sting....

[Silver Moon]

Our Play-by-post group recently got into a discussion about death. Most of my 23 years of player has been with older edition rules, where a character who died had to make a Resurrectiion Survival roll based upon Constitution and if the character was brought back their constitution was permanently reduced by one, thus lessening the chance that it might happen next time.

Third Edition removes that restriction. In doing so the possibility of a permanent character death seems to have also been removed. How does this not cheapen the concept of death? Where is the risk?

 

[Thanee]

Well, you can re-introduce something like that, if you like, but I'm sure they did it, because it's no fun to lose a character. They are heroes after all, and heroes do not die usually.

Still the cost of death (gold and experience) is not one to shrug off lightly. Sure it's not as bad as a permanent death, but is that really necessary?

Even with the relatively light death penalty in 3rd edition, I have yet to see someone to not act cautiously, because of a possible death.

Bye
Thanee

 

[JoeGKushner]

We house ruled that the Con loss was just a 'marker' for how many times you died and didn't effect actual hit points or other rolls save for being rasied. Worked well for us.

In the new edition, you still have the same factors you've had in every edition. The level of the spell, the rarity of the spell casters, the cost of the casting, the willingness of the character to be raised, the time frame of the spell itself, etc.. .etc... etc...

 

[Felix]

Getting brought back from the dead is bloody expensive! 5 grand for a lousy Raise Dead? That seems to be the biggest balancing factor to me... and the prices scale up as you gain levels. 25,000 is going to put a dent in anyone's funds, especially if you're decked out in ridiculously powerful equipment that nobody is going to have the means to buy full price without bankrupting the government.

Besides, who says tere are 25,000 gp gems lying around anywhere? It might be a nice little quest to find the thing.

Or, for Raise Dead, you might say that the gemstone is what prevents you from losing Con, and that if the party were so strapped for funds, the cleric could Raise the poor PC without the material component, and the PC would be -1 Con for the trip.

 

[Bad Paper]

death effect

Let's not forget that for a "simple" reincarnate or raise dead you cannot have died from a death effect, e.g. slay living or finger of death. For those, you have to get a resurrection. It's quite difficult to come back from the dead, really, and there are the diminishing returns from continually ponying up the cash to raise someone (whose level keeps dropping) from the dead.

In my campaign, I have found that it is difficult to motivate people to take reincarnation. They just want to roll up a new character one level lower. My response to this is: yes, you can roll up a new character, but only one that's two or three levels lower (depending on the available pool of adventurers in the area). You will find that a gnome can grow to like being a half-orc that way.

 

[Aaron2]

How does this not cheapen the concept of death?

In your campaign, what happens to the player's "soul" between death and being raised? Answering this question will go a long way to solving the problem.


Aaron

 

[Bobitron]

I've been loving the Privateer Press setting, Iron Kingdoms. It is a more dangerous world, where magical healing is limited, and Resurrection is practically non-existant.

The religions of the setting believe that those who pass are in effect "needed" by the gods to fight in a great war, and that once dead, someone should stay that way.

The main preisthood automatically delines any applicants for reanimation to anyone under 10th level, and those above 10th level have a 1% chance per character level of being chosen. Being a important follower of the god helps, but does not mean the raising is promised.

Most healing spells can bring negative effects to the caster in the Iron Kingdoms setting. I like the way that works out, people tend to protect their skin a little more.

 

[Marimmar@Home]

25,000 gp is a whole lot of money, even in our FRC it's bound to be problematic when multiple deaths occur at the same time. Don't forget that for 25,000 gp you only cover the material component, the priest will be another 2,000 gp or so so it gets even worse. I am even tempted to allow buying magic items back into the game, it will drain the coffers of my players even more. *muahahahaha*

~Marimmar

 

[dcollins]

Third Edition removes that restriction. In doing so the possibility of a permanent character death seems to have also been removed. How does this not cheapen the concept of death? Where is the risk?

As others have noted, 3.5's answer to this was to increase the resurrection material component cost by x10 or some ridiculous figure. That's pretty clunky, and winds up creating high-level parties with a big gap in magic equipment because they hawked to raise one or more people.

My players and I are very happy with a House Rule that resurrection requires a Fort save DC 10 to come back, along with flesh-to-stone and polymorph, etc. (My higher-level game uses DC 15).

 

[Berandor]

I like AU's resurrection, but I'd even more like it if there was only a ninth-level spell to bring someone back.

Then, combine it with AU's idea of having said spell cast seven times on seven consecutive days... et voilá