Quirks when you die and get raised

[Magic Slim]

I've read on these boards that some people don't like when characters are too easily raised. Of course, one way of dealing with it is to make Resurrection less available / more expensive.

One way I was thinking about would be to expose the raised character to the possibility of suffering from some minor ailment / quirk after the resurrection. Has anyone devised such a system? Did it work?

Thanks in advance.

Slim

 

[Cheiromancer]

Have you seen the Vampire Template Class that Sean K Reynolds developed? It is on the Wizards D&D site, or you can find a link to it from www.seankreynolds.com.

Consider the following house rule: When a character dies and is raised, they lose a level as usual. But they also gain a level of the Vampire Template. The idea is that contact with death has tainted them.

The problem with the "resurrections are rare" kind of rule common in grim-n-gritty campaigns is that players lose characters and have to make up new ones. That can be a downer. This rule allows them to continue to play, and at approximately the same level of power. But death still remains something with very serious consequences.

Just something to consider.

 

[D+1]

Okay, when you say "make RD less readily available/more expensive" what is your goal? To STOP the players from getting characters resurrected? If they want their characters raised they WILL get them raised and the only thing that is going to stop them is if you make is SO rare, SO difficult, SO expensive that it becomes UTTERLY impractical - at which point why don't you just ban it altogether because NOBODY is going to go through the hassle?
In my experience there is no middle ground. Once players have played a character for a few levels they WILL pay the raised prices and make the additional efforts needed to get the RD - which makes the raised prices and additional rarity utterly ineffective in adjusting the frequency of RD being actually obtained or used.
So you tack on things like inflicting ailments or quirks on the raised. Yet the question still remains - what's your goal? If you don't want the players to be able to raise their characters why do you allow the possibility AT ALL? If you want to allow the possibility you have to expect that they are going to almost universally take advantage of it. However, they will do so for entirely meta-game reasons. They do it because they like their character, enjoy playing them and want to continue to do so. But to PUNISH the character for being raised with additional ailments or quirks is an action which suggests that the player is doing something WRONG by wanting to have his character back.
The issue of too-frequent use or abuse of RD and Res. is one that is almost entirely meta-game. As a matter of course the DM is not all in a twist because he has an NPC fighter he wants to keep as a nemesis against the party raised - why should he be in a twist about a PC fighter? It's not the "ease" or "frequency" of RD and Res. that bothers DM's - it is the cavalier attitude that players have toward it. One of the reasons they treat it so superficially is because the DM does too. Yes, I think it's the DM's own damn fault if his players play his campaign as if it were a video game: drop in another quarter to get an additional life and resume the game where you left off.
The DM doesn't need to make RD/Res. expensive and impossible to get. He just needs to have NPC's treat it with great solemnity and respect. He needs to have the ceremony of it roleplayed out. He needs to have NPC's treat raised characters differently than those who have never returned from the dead - even if there's no game-rule effects beyond simply losing a level (as if that alone isn't supposed to be enough of a deterrent).
PC's fight big nasty monsters in great hordes. It's dangerous to do that. It's also more fun if PC's are out on the edge of their survivability. PC's that never fear getting below 25% of their HTK are going to have bored players. PC's that routinely flirt with unconciousness and death will have players who experience much more exciting and dangerous battles - and they will also have characters who quite probably, through no particular fault of their own, will die. The DM has hot dice and the players dice are cold. How badly do you want to punish the player and his PC for wanting to bring the character back from the dead and continue his adventures because of a few random dice rolls? If the idea of frequently raised characters bothers you that much then the first place to look is NOT in the RD/Res. rules because the cause of frequent deaths is not the RD/Res. rules. The causes of too-frequent deaths is reckless players/characters and DM's who don't recognize their OWN over-agressiveness or recklessness in challenging the PC's.
Players aren't going to complain all that much about frequent deaths if there IS relatively easy access to resurrection magic. But if the DM is saying to himself "there's too much easy resurrection going on in my campaign" then the most likely problem is the DM! Not the players, not their characters, and not the rules for RD/Res.

 

[Darklone]

I do understand that problem...

D+1: If some DM does not want his typical D&D campaign to become some sort of Diablo2 hack&slash party with respawning in the village... or a FR campaign with more traffic at the deathsgate than on the market in Waterdeep...

... then he wants to add some flair to death.

Magic Slim: Have you read the Song of Ice&Fire by G.R.R. Martin?
The dead who are brought back suffer from the injuries that killed them. E.g. they are alive, but someone with a cut throat is not able to speak anymore... another guy has a huge hole in his left shoulder. Stuff like that. Additionally, each time they die they lose some humanity. Just read the part about the lightning Lord Beric Dondarrion... he can't remember how often he died anymore and why he's fighting at all. He's losing memories of his former lives.
If you include penalties like that to play... and the Raise is very important for the campaign... it will add style. If not, the players simply don't get raised at all.

 

[Thresher]

You could bring in the old 2E rule of only being able to die as many times as you have unmodified Con?

 

[Piratecat]

You could bring in the old 2E rule of only being able to die as many times as you have unmodified Con?

That's a non-rule, because it's never relevant. Have you ever seen anyone die that many times?

 

[clark411]

That's a non-rule, because it's never relevant. Have you ever seen anyone die that many times?

Almost.. heck my cleric is on death #5- the price of being effective and being a healer in combat With 11 con, I'm about half way there, and I'm level 9.

as for the original question, quirks are fun until they are not fun.

Options
1. Mutations due to imperfections in the mortal ability to grasp the divine will of resurrection. This means growing things you didn't have or being warped bodily. Raise Dead doesn't deal with this as it isn't so much the reforming of the body. True Resurrection doesn't have this, as this is done by those who truly do grasp the divine will.

2. Marking. When you are Raised, Ressed, True Ressed, you are marked by the god whose clerics did it. This can be a permanent Mark of Justice, or dependant on your level / your proximity to the faith's alignment. Works like a Mark of Justice in the form of the deity's symbol... can demand behavior or even be a Geas/Quest. This presents interesting plothooks as the PCs are fighting people they see marked by the God Hextor, who probably don't actually want to be fighting them but have no choice.

3. Piggybacked Souls. Sometimes when you come back, you don't come back alone. If you have some a spiritual aspect to your world, have the souls of the slain haunt the PC that slew them in death before ascending to whatever heaven (or hell) in store for them. Having Bill Fighter come back with the spirit of KGra'glahnvin the Goblin attached will make them think twice of making so many enemies die upon their blades.

4. Harbinger of the Faith. Instead of the rather oppressive manner of the Marking, raised/ressed creatures can see the truth of the deity that aids them... a life altering change, or perhaps just a temporary one. Returned creatures speak only the faith of their god, or almost have a connection to the god in their purpose etc. They may speak the echo of the will of the god as they resound through the multiverse, or they may be the only way a god can communicate with the faithful beyond the cleric's choice to Commune.

could go on and on but will pause here for coffee

 

[Thresher]

Yeah we had a paladin down to about his last 3-4 'strikes' over a few years of play, he started getting a bit more careful in his later years.
A current character still played over the last 10 years was down to his last 2 strikes, he was real glad we switched over to 3E, was a wiz-evoker, mostly specialised in lightning who's now an Elemental savant sorcerer. (considerably damn tougher!)

Same guy played them come to think about it...
But he always did tend to have a habit of biting off more than he could chew

 

[ichabod]

I have found what I think is a middle ground. When a player is brought back from death in my campaign, they have to make a fortitude save of DC 30 minus the level of the spell used. If they fail, they age an ammount equal to the adulthood age of their race. If they succeed, they age half that ammount, minus the ammount they succeeded by (minimum 0). This makes age, which was previously meaningless, a factor in the campaign. It also allows you to rez a once or twice, maybe more depending on when you do it, but eventually it just wears out your character. I also like the in game feel of it. As a consequence of this rule, we now have two middle aged characters in the campaign.

 

[clark411]

Nice.. I hope you get a very very big birthday cake when you're raised. =) Included in the temple fee of course.