Opinions about Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnation...

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Sorry for bumping such an old thread, but I would like to add a perspective about aquiring the materials none of you guys seem to have mentioned.

My point is: Diamonds. 5000 gp for a raise dead, 25000 gp for a true ressurection. If I want to limit the availability of ressurection in my campaign I limit the access to these components.

IME all that does is distort the purpose of the spell being in the game in the first place. Either you wish to allow players to resurrect their characters or you don't. If it's the former there's no reason to put excessive costs and restrictions upon obtaining the spell. If it's the latter you should be removing the spell entirely. The problem doesn't lie with the spells or their accessibility - it lies with the too-casual attitudes of players towards their characters deaths.

Players will ALWAYS pay the extra costs right up to the point that you make it a practical impossibility to afford it - at which point you are merely using the most annoying way of banning it's use/availability. The purpose of the spell is COMPLETELY meta-game related and attempts to regulate its use should not be handled in-game by pricing it out of players reach. All it will do is alienate and frustrate players without otherwise changing their attitudes and approaches to the subject.

 

[aboyd]

Either you wish to allow players to resurrect their characters or you don't. If it's the former there's no reason to put excessive costs and restrictions upon obtaining the spell. If it's the latter you should be removing the spell entirely.

I do not believe that such a "zero sum" attitude accurately reflects reality. Oh, and this:

Fallacy: False Dilemma

 

[Shin Okada]

My playgroup is taking an approach similar to Mon's.

Our house rule for those spells are,

Raise Dead ... 10 min./level
Resurrection ... 1 hour/level
True Resurrection ... 1 hour/level
Reincarnate ... 1 day
Revive Outsider ... 10 min./level

Virtually, those spells are as easily available as games played as written. Still, this removes "no one ever dies" problem. Even if a king dies, if no friendly spell caster can use such spells within few hours, he dies forever.

Originally, we made similar house rule set when we played our first 3.0e campaign. PCs were fighting against a powerful empire ruled by a lawful evil church. Which has of course a lot of higher level clerics. They were efficient militant organization, too.

Our consensus was that as it is much cheaper, faster & easier to resurrect a well-trained Blackguard or Cleric than to train another one, it seems odd that they don't raise slain villains. Without this kind of house rules, all the "BBEG of the adventure" will return in the sequels and that was .... annoying and non-dramatic.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I also heavily endorse spells like Revivify [...] To me, using spells like that makes it seem like the person never died. You're not undoing the most powerful force of nature with a cheap magic trick. You're rescuing him/her from the brink of it.

This is what I do, and exactly why, but I took it further.

I upped revivify to a potential casting of (Caster Level) rounds (but it takes a minute to cast, so if you're 12th level you can start casting in the 12th round, and you'll finish in the 22nd). I also created a spell called soul net that can increase that time further.

I created resuscitate at 7th level, which is revivify but with a potential casting time in minutes.

In the case of both revivify and resuscitate, I make it explicit that the soul has not left the body. There is no actual "death," though there is D&D death (so things triggered on death still happen).

I removed raise dead and resurrection. I left true resurrection alone.

Unfortunately, I also left reincarnation alone, thinking that the risk of ending up a different race would deter its use somewhat, and wanting to encourage the playing of a druid in my heavily city-centric campaign. Unfortunately, the spell largely became the cheap way back from death, and it didn't even encourage playing a druid, since the warforged artificer can make scrolls of it.

Nobody seems to care much about what race they return as, so mostly all it's done is disrupt my fairly dark campaign by introducing elements of ridiculousness. (One PC started as a human, became a goblin, became a half-elf, and is currently a gnome.)

If I were doing things over again, I'd make reincarnation at least 6th level, possibly 7th, and I'd have it create a duplicate body. It would essentially be raise dead. I might eliminate it completely.

 

[Elethiomel]

I treat these spells the same way I do fireball or magic-missile. They exist in the world and are available for PCs and NPCs to have on their spell lists. As such the world has adapted to the possibility of resurrections.

Barghests are widely sought after for their ability to destroy souls.

The Thieves' Guild have the Mortuarium, a secret dungeon where they put the bodies of their slain foes, animated as mindless zombies and shielded against scrying. (You can't resurrect the undead).

Trap the Soul, Mirror of Life Trapping and Imprisonment are good ways of dealing with someone permanently without killing them.

But ultimately these are the sort of thing out of the reach of the common man. You have to be a high level character before resurrection and the ability to oppose it become available to you.

This.

DnD rules are inconsistent with many of its published settings. You either adapt the setting to the system, or adapt the system to the setting.

I think a world in which resurrection is as readily available as the spells in the PHB indicate is a much more interesting place than Ye Olde Fantasy Settinge iteration 2143.

 

[Garthanos]

The spell was a patch for highly fragile characters and swingy mechanics ... they arent necessary in the game I play, however I always thought they needed an other world quest so they felt legendary instead of cheap.