Opinions about Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnation...

[Lazlo]

I'm a player who finds the path of RP more rewarding and exciting than the final destination. I do think it cheapens the value to have people continuously popping back up again, but I kinda get attached to my chars. In campaigns with lots of deaths and no rezzes, it almost became tiresome to come up with new and interesting character concepts. If the battle was a draw, then we're bringing new people against a foe that got reinforcements while we were. The draws and deaths continued with no advancement. Why role play or even make a back story when he's only going to be around a couple sessions?

In our 3e campaign Raise Dead was moved up to take over the Resurrection spell slot, and Resurrection moved up further to take over the True Resurrection slot. That certainly reduced how often they were seen in play.

This doesn't seem like a terrible idea. I would say keep reincarnation where it is. There are vast ways to roleplay reincarnation, especially since you can't turn into a roach any more. I remember being a pixie well lol. The only people who would dislike this are those disincluded from certain PrC's with a new race (though that could probably be worked around), or people who need their char to be 'sexy'.

It all depends if you are playing a fighting heavy campaign where deaths are very inevitable, or a slower campaign where people role play enough to find the party's strengths and weaknesses and survive longer as a result.

 

[green slime]

All very nice for death to be meaningful for those occasions when the character dies a noble, heroic death.

Far less fun, and far more common, for the death to be caused by minor events snowballing into a catastrophic series of poor die rolling on the PC's part, leading to an ignomious end in a minor sidetrack, which was originally of no real consequence to the plot. Worse if it occurs in the first hour of the monthly game.

Leaves everyone round the table with a poor taste in their mouths. Oh, guess what John? You get to pick up the pizzas and play the Druid's wolf companion this time! Too bad you rolled a 3 "1"s in a row.

 

[Amazing Mumford]

All very nice for death to be meaningful for those occasions when the character dies a noble, heroic death.

Far less fun, and far more common, for the death to be caused by minor events snowballing into a catastrophic series of poor die rolling on the PC's part, leading to an ignomious end in a minor sidetrack, which was originally of no real consequence to the plot. Worse if it occurs in the first hour of the monthly game.

Leaves everyone round the table with a poor taste in their mouths. Oh, guess what John? You get to pick up the pizzas and play the Druid's wolf companion this time! Too bad you rolled a 3 "1"s in a row.

Totally agree with you there-- not too long ago we had a PC who died withing the first 15-20 minutes of the session! That bites for the player... Anyways, I've tried to prevent that situation in my campaign by having each player have a fully-prepared "back-up" PC that knows the party and is familiar with what the party is doing, so in the event of a very early death the "back-up" could be united with the rest of the party and the adventure can continue and the player can participate. Getting the "back-up" to the party though is kinda tough at low levels...

Well I think personally I am going to implement a few of your ideas... I will move raise dead up to the resurrection slot, and move resurrection up to the true resurrection slot. I will mandate that only deities with appropriate portfolios give access to these spells, and also have nature-oriented PC's (druids, rangers, wu jen) have reincarnation as their particular option for coming back from the dead. To offset these changes though I will not restrict access to revivify, and I think I will increase it's "time limit" to 2 rnds instead of 1... that makes it much more useful especially when being cast from a scroll, as it takes a move action just to get the scroll out!

 

[irdeggman]

How about some thoughts from players? As a player, what do you expect concerning these spells? As a cleric player, what do you think? Do you think your deity should give it to you because "it's in the Player's Handbook" or do you agree that only certain deities might allow it? As a player, would you think it's "unfair" that a DM might put a restriction on the power over life and death??

As a player I do not mind PC death as long as it is heoric and not just a simple dice roll (I personally hate auto death spells and don't really like massive damage rules either, although they make sense I just don't like having PCs die with a single blow).

In 2nd ed I played in a Dark Sun setting (death is very common and it helps a player get over the stigma that their PC should never die). In Dark Sun the only characters that had raise dead, etc. spells were druids. Now that makes things a massive quandry since they are also all about fighting the unnatural and such.

I played in one home brewed game where I had something like 5 PCs die - and no ready access to raise dead (or the like). Finally my PC gained an artifact that allowed him to cast the spell (didn't help if he died - which he didn't by the way).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

To offset these changes though I will not restrict access to revivify, and I think I will increase it's "time limit" to 2 rnds instead of 1... that makes it much more useful especially when being cast from a scroll, as it takes a move action just to get the scroll out!

Slightly related: my group generally allows anything weapon-like, such as wands, to be drawn like a weapon. Of course, this would not apply to 50 different wands, but a few important ones kept on your belt or what-not, just like you generally have a sanity limit on how many weapons are within immediate reach and how many are in the pack or bag of holding. So you could move and draw a wand in the same move action with BAB +1 or higher. I personally made Quickdraw make drawing anything one action lower than it would normally be (move--> free; standard --> move, full round --> standard) for any game I run. My group also generally allows a few key scrolls to be easily accesible on hte belt or similar, so assuming one of these is Revivify, a PC could also pull it out of the scroll case on the move.

Not that I'm opposed to increasing the time limit, though. A little before my group became aware of Revivify, we were playing in a Final Fantasy 1 game. In it, there were Fenix Downs, which functioned very similarly but were use-activated items (anyone can use) and had a longer time limit. We weren't sure how long, it was kind of lost knowledge, and the only time we used one the entire campaign was 2 rounds after my PC died. That might be another way to go. Remove the spells entirely and have items such as that to take the place. Mind you, the Fenix downs were extremely rare, and an almost forgotten form of magic. We had an 8 month weekly game, from levels 1-15. We found...two. The entire campaign. And it's quite possible the DM just slipped the second one in out of sympathy after we used up the first. I know I'm not an unbiased source, but my character totally deserved that revive.

 

[irdeggman]

Slightly related: my group generally allows anything weapon-like, such as wands, to be drawn like a weapon. Of course, this would not apply to 50 different wands, but a few important ones kept on your belt or what-not, just like you generally have a sanity limit on how many weapons are within immediate reach and how many are in the pack or bag of holding. So you could move and draw a wand in the same move action with BAB +1 or higher.

Actually this is the RAW.

Rules Compendium pg 8/9

Drawing Weapon (move action) - note references "If you have a BAB of +1 or higher, you can combine this action with moving your speed. Drawing a weapon applies to any weaponlike item, such as a wand, rod or staff, within easy reach. An item that is stored or out of easy reach must be retrieved as a stored item. . ."

 

[DarkelvenSFi]

And Mumford, yes sometimes rolling "1" is enough to die. I have seen it happening, it was not nice and we (DM and party) decided to pretend it never happened.

We have a rule in our game that suggests that a natural 20 (as usual) is a critical threat, another 20 is a serious critical threat (loss of limbs / wounding), another 20 means a Fort save or die, another 20 means they implode on impact. It's all a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it gives the players something to cheer about.

The flip side of this (to make the system fair) is with critical fumbles.. our barbarian once rolled a one, four times in a row, and failed the last roll to save. Normally on a critical fumble, the character ends up slapping themselves with the weapon (even if it's a ray; almost happened with our wizard and a disintegration ray); dealing damage. If it's a serious critical fumble, it's also a wound (bleeds), and if it's the fourth time; the player so thoroughly tangles themselves up that they cut off a limb; 1d6, one for each limb (no, 6 is a re-roll..).

The barbarian, cuts of his leg. While bleeding, he has the wizard cast fly so he can get around and finish the battle. Later he begs the cleric to cast regeneration so he can have his leg back.

Things like this make the campaign fun.


But back to the idea of resurrection. I don't see a problem with it.. it becomes a challenge for the characters to reach a high enough level to have the use of it, and then it becomes a chance of whether there's enough of the character left to make use of whatever spell the party has. Eventually, the party might no longer fear death so much as fear not being able to be revived. And then it's up to the DM to put some form of catch on dying so many times; such as having some powerful underworld being tire of having the character leave its grasp, so it sends minions up to collect him personally. Or to incorporate some mental anguish over dying so many times; having a chance of waves of vertigo or sickness whenever they enter battle (remembering what has happened before). The sickness gets worse the more often they die, and better the more time has passed between deaths.

There are a multitude of ways a DM can work around a player being frivolous with death.

 

[Mon]

For years, we've had a house rule that works well for us. Well, a few house rules that work in conjunction actually.

1. Casting any spell that revives the dead must begin within one round per spell level of the death occurring, or else the soul has moved beyond the spell's reach on the journey to the afterlife.

2. Gentle repose counts for the above purpose, but it only keeps the soul around for its duration so that more powerful spells can be used later to actually do the raising.

3. Instead of losing a level, raised characters gain a negative level which cannot be removed until the character gains his next level (we NEVER have actual level loss in our games... but negative levels are permanent until removed).

4. If it is too late to raise someone, and you have the wherewithal, you can take a trip to the outer planes and try to get the soul back from the guardian of the dead on whichever plane it ended up on. This works up to the spells RAW time limit.

We find this situation works pretty well. We can have major NPC deaths as plot devices (nobody could reach the king in time...), AND have a get-out-of-jail-(almost)-free card for those accidental PC deaths.

Rules 1 and 4 we've used for a looong time. Since 2e days. Rules 2 and 3 were added later.

Just my $0.02

 

[TessarrianDM]

Combination of 1 and 3 for me.

I do the same thing, but do not worry about material components (for any spells, not just these). There are three clerics in the party, each following a different deity (and no two characters follow the same deity). The cleric of Kelemvor will not resurrect anyone; it is against his beliefs. The other two, who follow Mystra and Solonor Thelandira, have no problem with it.

However, these spells are almost never needed for two reasons: the cleric of Mystra relies on Revivify delivered with a Spectral Hand followed by Benign Transposition to prevent the death in the first place, and many times the players prefer to create a new character anyway. There has been only one PC resurrection since we started this campaign in 1998, but over a dozen deaths (not a single character is active now that was at the beginning, although several retired from play).

I also encourage the players to have a back-up character ready of one level lower than their current PC. They advance at the same time the main PC does, keeping them one level behind at all times. That way their net effect when they join the party is the same as if the main PC had been resurrected.

As far as the "world" implications of unfettered access, as another poster said, a soul must be willing to return. I have decided that few, if any, do.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

1. Raise Dead, et. al. are in the PH for the sole intent of their use by the PLAYERS, and IMO have always been so in every edition. The stupidity of DM's to use it on every NPC they run or allow it to be used on NPC's by PC's has never been the concern of the authors. Clearly if they ever have thought about it they've never DONE anything to change it. Q.E.D.
2. The DM can use any excuse he likes for why Raising doesn't work on NPC's (or why it works selectively) but why make excuses. You're the DM and you have the position in the game that you do to declare and enforce resolutions to just this sort of issue. The fact that you DON'T exercise your rights/responsibilities is again, not the concern of the authors.
3. If you don't want PLAYERS to be able to resurrect their characters then remove the spells entirely. If you DO want players to be able to resurrect their characters then your concern is ONLY with how YOU apply the spell to YOUR NPC'S.
4. Players/PC's with cavalier attitudes about death and resurrection is the only remaining concern, but that's a ROLEPLAYING issue and not a rules-enforcement issue and should be dealt with on that basis.

What all that means is that I'm the DM. When I don't want the spell to work on an NPC it doesn't. No special tricks, restrictions, or penalties that apply equally to PC's are needed or wanted. They are MY NPC's. I assign them their level, advance their level whenever I want them advanced, give them whatever gold, magic, and influence over the plot/story and other NPC's as I see fit. They live and die at MY convenience except as regards direct combat with the PC's.

If a player feels they need an excuse for why Raise Dead, etc. only rarely works on NPC's but works every time on a PC my first response is that the player is free to draw his own conclusions and requires no justification on my part regarding the NPC's. Regarding the PC's reasons for why it always works you have to ask the player concerned.

If I want players to have a roleplaying peg to hang their understanding on then I tell them that for the vast majority of NPC's when they die they proceed to whatever form of afterlife their religion dictates. In most cases this is some variety of paradise which they will NOT willingly give up. This is MY roleplaying justification to apply to MY NPC's as desired. They simply refuse to return - even if while alive they thought they'd never do so.

The spell is cast routinely for those who can afford it, but it rarely works. NPC's WILL treat death as a solemn event no matter how PLAYERS treat it. When PC's treat death and resurrection as "an inconvenience" they WILL be looked upon by NPC's as bizzare, if not nearly insane. When the spell works it will be treated as the freak occurrence it is if not an outright MIRACLE and people who WILLINGLY return from the dead this way WILL ALWAYS be treated differently by NPC's who know about it as a result.

These spells are otherwise present in the game to enable PLAYERS to revive their characters and return them to play with minimal inconvenience. The spells exist to preserve verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief for players who want to keep playing their characters. They do not exist to be an unnecessary pain in the ass for a DM who [stupidly] feels they have to raise every NPC in their game world.