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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1099600" data-attributes="member: 13654">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.</blockquote>

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