D&D 5E Old School: No Revivify or Raise Dead for elves

[Benjamin Olson]

I do rather wish the spell had some debilitating effects like a level of exhaustion, though.

I think I'd give 1d6 levels of exhaustion for revivify. In other words, they are still probably out of the adventure for the immediate future, and there is a 1 in 6 chance of not surviving the trauma. Raise dead gets 1d8-2 exhausion, so better odds (and there even if they avoid the exhaustion the spell already gives them a penalty on rolls for a few days). And so it goes in a similar pattern for higher level spells with only reincarnation and true resurrection as guarantees of survival (by virtue of the prior having a pretty good built in penalty and the latter being 9th level god-damned epic magic).

 

[Perun]

I'd file this idea under "probably cool if the players are into it and it fits your gameworld." Baseline 5e lore has the Elves as much more mundane humanoids with some "Fey Ancestry". From a lore-based mechanics perspective, I think if one were going to change them to being some sort of soulless spirit creatures it would be fair to make them outright Fey and thus affect what spells and abilities can target them (which is slightly less overpowered than it might be considering that a lot of the humanoid specific spells are charm effects they already have advantage resisting).

Fundamentally my feelings on deadlier D&D are that I like it for very short or low RP campaigns (honestly if you die a stupid death at the end of a oneshot that just gives you a better story), but when people are really invested in their character and have played them for months or years I wouldn't be comfortable as a DM saying "you die and stay dead because of my house rule".

I'm all for changing elves to Fey, but it might have further-reaching consequences that simply barring them from raise dead. Various spells and effects that affect Humanoids only (e.g. charm person, dominate person, etc.) wouldn't affect them any more, for one. I'd have to go through the rules with a relatively fine comb to see the full effect of changing the type.

 

[cbwjm]

I remember running into this rule in the icewind dale crpg. It was really annoying. You think you've finally reached the point where you can get your party members back alive because your cleric has raise dead and then your elf fighter/mage goes ahead and dies and you debate reloading or picking up the elf's gear and heading back to town to get a resurrection spell cast on them.