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

[Helldritch]

I would not go this route at all. In previous edition, it was a limiting factor for the fact that elves had:
1) Long life spans. Ridiculously long. This enabled them to use some spells without restraint such as haste, limited and full wishes without fear of the consequences.
2) Could multiclass in the most powerful class (MU) without losing anything in the process. In fact, MU/Thief was one of the strongest multiclass. A grey elven MU/T could go as high as 18/infinite and keep being relevant through out his/her career.
3) Elves started up with a lot of bonuses compared to other races. Just the enhanced surprise possibility was crazy when in the hands of a thief. Secret door detection and quite a few others.

It was because of these that elves could not be raised. Reincarnated yes, but not raised. In 5ed, they no longer have this strong advance that they had in previous editions. Limiting them, although great lore wise, would no longer serve any game purpose and could refrain some players from making elves. Unless you give them something worthwhile in exchange, I would not go this way.

 

[jgsugden]

I would not add this rule to an ongoing campaign with elves in it, but I would see no problem adding it when there are no existing elven PCs.

 

[wingsandsword]

It was a rule that, like a lot of odd ones from AD&D, nobody seemed to miss when it was gone.

It was rooted in the idea that elves didn't have souls the same way humans (or most other demihumans) did. . .but that concept wasn't followed through in any other way elsewhere in D&D. If elves were so metaphysically different, you'd think it would come up in Planescape when dealing with Arvandor and the Elven Pantheon. You'd think that they'd be immune to Trap the Soul or other spells that explicitly affected souls. . .but they didn't. You'd think that maybe some other humanoid races might have the same situation, but they didn't.

If you're going to say that elves are so metaphysically different on that level, it would have ramifications other than a single spell not working on them, but a higher level version of the same thing working. It would mean changes to how they interact with gods and planes of existence, of how spells that affected souls affect them, generally it should be a lot broader than it was in AD&D.

That kind of inconsistency was a lot of why that rule wasn't mourned when it was eliminated in 3e.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It was a rule that, like a lot of odd ones from AD&D, nobody seemed to miss when it was gone.

You have an expansive definition of nobody!

I am sure that while there are many who did not mourn the passage of the rule (a number only exceeded by the number who were not aware of the rule), there are significant number of people who miss the rule.

The OP and myself being two of them, right?

 

[Perun]

Thanks, guys! You made me reconsider revivify, and if I choose to implement this house-rule in my next campaign, I'll make it so that it works on elves.

It was a rule that, like a lot of odd ones from AD&D, nobody seemed to miss when it was gone.

It was rooted in the idea that elves didn't have souls the same way humans (or most other demihumans) did. . .but that concept wasn't followed through in any other way elsewhere in D&D. If elves were so metaphysically different, you'd think it would come up in Planescape when dealing with Arvandor and the Elven Pantheon. You'd think that they'd be immune to Trap the Soul or other spells that explicitly affected souls. . .but they didn't. You'd think that maybe some other humanoid races might have the same situation, but they didn't.

If you're going to say that elves are so metaphysically different on that level, it would have ramifications other than a single spell not working on them, but a higher level version of the same thing working. It would mean changes to how they interact with gods and planes of existence, of how spells that affected souls affect them, generally it should be a lot broader than it was in AD&D.

That kind of inconsistency was a lot of why that rule wasn't mourned when it was eliminated in 3e.

Yeah, I'm aware of the inconsistencies. I remember The Complete Book of Elves muddying the waters even further (I should check the relevant sections in the CBoE, I'm operating on memory alone here).

I would not add this rule to an ongoing campaign with elves in it, but I would see no problem adding it when there are no existing elven PCs.

I'm planning the house-rule for a future campaign, so any potential players of elf character will be aware of it from the start. I'm not a fan of introducing changes to existing characters mid-game.

 

[Perun]

I would not go this route at all. In previous edition, it was a limiting factor for the fact that elves had:
1) Long life spans. Ridiculously long. This enabled them to use some spells without restraint such as haste, limited and full wishes without fear of the consequences.
2) Could multiclass in the most powerful class (MU) without losing anything in the process. In fact, MU/Thief was one of the strongest multiclass. A grey elven MU/T could go as high as 18/infinite and keep being relevant through out his/her career.
3) Elves started up with a lot of bonuses compared to other races. Just the enhanced surprise possibility was crazy when in the hands of a thief. Secret door detection and quite a few others.

It was because of these that elves could not be raised. Reincarnated yes, but not raised. In 5ed, they no longer have this strong advance that they had in previous editions. Limiting them, although great lore wise, would no longer serve any game purpose and could refrain some players from making elves. Unless you give them something worthwhile in exchange, I would not go this way.

I'm not sure I agree with you. I do agree that being unaffected by raise dead would be somewhat of a pain in the backside, but I'm also considering some of @Ruin Explorer's suggestions, particularly the elves-always-reincarnate-as-elves idea. In fact, I think reincarnate spell should not be limited to a single list of possible results, and already have some house-rules planned for it (putting it back to Wizard spell list and reducing the cost of material component to one-half being some of the changes I'm thinking of). Allowing elves to always reincarnate as some type of elf (probably excluding drow... but perhaps not) would nicely offset the ineffectiveness of raise dead, while still hopefully providing flavour.

 

[Helldritch]

I'm not sure I agree with you. I do agree that being unaffected by raise dead would be somewhat of a pain in the backside, but I'm also considering some of @Ruin Explorer's suggestions, particularly the elves-always-reincarnate-as-elves idea. In fact, I think reincarnate spell should not be limited to a single list of possible results, and already have some house-rules planned for it (putting it back to Wizard spell list and reducing the cost of material component to one-half being some of the changes I'm thinking of). Allowing elves to always reincarnate as some type of elf (probably excluding drow... but perhaps not) would nicely offset the ineffectiveness of raise dead, while still hopefully providing flavour.

The "reincarnating" into elves only would certainly alleviate the penalizing aspect. Also, the fact that the standard array exists makes creating a new body for the elf not so penalizing too. But, again, the fact that elves were not being "raisable" was because of the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post. You had the risk of having lower stats than what your original character had (higher stat would be a benefit but the chances were low as the new body might not have the bonuses your original self had).

So why would you want to penalize elves? Because they do not have souls but spirits? Ok. What benefit would they get from that house rule? If you penalize in some way, you should bonify in some other way. If you want to be fair that is.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Honestly, I wouldn't categorize revivify along with raise dead. It's supposed to be a "They're not really dead yet," spell.

Yeah, when my Gnome Artificer cast the spell, I basically described him as pulling out an auto defibrillator. Another player had a cleric shove a chocolate covered pill down the target's throat while saying, "Shows what you know. He's only mostly dead."

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

 

[Helldritch]

Yeah, when my Gnome Artificer cast the spell, I basically described him as pulling out an auto defibrillator. Another player had a cleric shove a chocolate covered pill down the target's throat while saying, "Shows what you know. He's only mostly dead."

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

That, Sir, is a great idea! I wonder why I didn't think of it myself...

On the other hand, the 300gold diamond is quite a limiting factor in my games... But exhaustion! What about: Cost: 300gp diamond or inflict a level of exhaustion to the character. I think, I have something brewing here.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

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".