Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[DM_Blake]

You ever try running a high-level (14+) game without resurrection magic?

In 3E, raise dead was not optional unless you were prepared to either stick to low-level play, do some serious house-ruling, or tolerate one to two PC deaths per session. Resurrection magic was very much hardwired into the game, and the game broke down without it.

Nope.

Characters of level 14+ have always had plenty of access to "back to life" spells. Save or Die, Save or Petrified (Stone to Flesh requires a Save or Die roll), and other similar effects are very common at these levels, and once in a while saves are failed. Especially since beholders are smart enough to use eye rays that require fort saves on the guy in the pointy hat and robe, and eye rays that require will saves on the guy charging into battle wielding big scary weapons (beholders really hate paladins).

I have no problem with high level PCs needing an occasional back-to-life spell. And neither does 3e or 4e D&D, apparently.

The difference between D&D editions is that in 3e, anyone who could afford the spell and could find someone to cast it could be brought back. Apparently in 4e that is no longer the case.

None of which affects the PCs, since we're assuming they always have the destiny to come back when the spell is cast.

I just don't like the heavy handed ruling that "Well, Fred lived a good and righteous life, but he can't come back even if his wife brings the material component to the arch-bishop of the Heironeus church, just because he doesn't have an unfulfilled dstiny."

There is no need for this kind of rule in a CORE rulebook.

Where this belongs, maybe, is in the DMG, in a chapter on world-building, maybe in a sidebar about considering the effects of back-to-life spells on the campaign setting. DMs should be advised about some possible ramifications of allowing free public access to the spells, and the ramifications of not allowing it, and then it should be left up to a DM to decide how it works in his campaign.

It should be a suggestion, not a core rule.

And that's if it is even mentioned in the core books at all.

The truly best place for a rule like this is in a specific campaign setting. When WotC (or anyone else) releases a campaign setting, let them put in rules governing this sort of thing so that the rule is specific to just that campaign setting. Grayhawk - maybe requires destiny. FR maybe doesn't. Ravenloft certainly limits these spells. Planescape certainly does not limit them. Etc.

 

[hong]

The difference between D&D editions is that in 3e, anyone who could afford the spell and could find someone to cast it could be brought back. Apparently in 4e that is no longer the case.

None of which affects the PCs, since we're assuming they always have the destiny to come back when the spell is cast.

I just don't like the heavy handed ruling that "Well, Fred lived a good and righteous life, but he can't come back even if his wife brings the material component to the arch-bishop of the Heironeus church, just because he doesn't have an unfulfilled dstiny."

That's not heavy-handed at all. That's just, like, you know, real life. If you find yourself needing a rule to justify what happens in real life, that's a sign you're thinking too hard about fantasy.

Well, assuming that you would go to a real-life archbishop claiming to have the material component for resurrection, anyway.

 

[DM_Blake]

The hardwire is what I disliked about Raise Dead. You had to have it. For many of us, that broke genre. That turned death into a joke. You had to houserule Raise Dead out of the game, then you had to houserule new negative hitpoint rules.

I like the other way around better. You write good negative hitpoint rules to begin with. Downed characters should mean "now my own character does something heroic to save my friend." Death becomes rare because your characters act like heroes and have an in-genre means of explaining how a character got saved.

This is good, I agree with this - most of the time.

On the other hand, if PCs cannot die, they begin to act like the A-Team (remember that old show? I hear there's a movie coming out soon). Those guys could crash a helicopter at full speed into a cliff, fall hundreds of feet to the rocks below, and walk out of the wreckage).

I once had a DM that I knew never killed PCs. In fact, he saved them from death no matter what. In a new game he started, I had my little level 1 rogue sneak attack the heck out of a hill giant. He meant it to be a roleplaying encounter, but I turned it into a kill. Yes, I killed the giant. Solo. Because that giant miraculously missed me over and over, and I found ways to get away, then come back and sneak attack it, get away, repeat. I leveled up to level 4 off of that one kill.

Now that's a ridiculous example. No sane DM would allow that.

But PCs need to fear death. They need to know that if they make foolish plans, there will be consequences that cannot be hand-waived away by having their friend "heroically" save them.

Without fear of death, the PCs decision making goes from "OK, that looks like a tough fight. We need to carefully plan out a strategy to make sure we all live through it." to "OK, there's another walking pile of loot for us. Charge! The DM will make sure we don't die!"

OK, that's kind of drastic. It's not really quite that bad. But I hope it serves to illustrate the point of how players in many games really do view encounters as a source of XP and loot, rather than as a risky tactical or strategic challenge to be overcome.

Once you have that, then you can add in Raise Dead as you please, or not, depending on your final genre. That way, the DM can make the call about how he wants the game and you are not stuck with all societies having this weird get-out-of-death-free-card messing with the setting.

Now this I agree with. It should be up to the DM.

What I don't agree with is the Core rulebooks having a rule about this - it should be a footnote in the world-building section in the DMG to educate DMs about it and leave it up to them.

It should be a rule in a campaign setting, not a core rulebook.

 

[DandD]

Huh? Are you disagreeing with DM_Blake anywhere, hong? Seems that you two agree with each another...

 

[DM_Blake]

There's no need for a DM to ever directly make the decision about destiny outside the game.

Gods exist in D&D, and the 4E clerics' spells that bring people back to life are "prayers" to those gods.

The normal destiny for good people is to be rewarded by their good god with some sort of "heavenly" afterlife. This is reliable fact to people who live in D&D worlds--no less so than elves, magic or the existence of dragons.

Most good people would choose their god's heaven over going back to the material world. While I know I am stepping outside D&D for the following analogy I think it's apt: Even Buffy, a true hero, had trouble dealing with returning to life after visiting her heaven...

Once in such a heavenly afterlife, even those who formerly feared death will no longer do so for the most part. A good god would not see it as blessing to one of their followers to send them back out of their heavenly realm back out into the material world.

However, a good god will recognize that sometimes the necessity exists to grant such a prayer. The god will of course use his knowledge of the person and the world/planes--including possible knowledge about the future--to decide whether to grant the prayer. Some gods may even ask the dead person, "What have you got that's worth living for?"

In simulationst terms, it is up to the god being prayed to--acting according to their definition as an NPC--to decide whether any person's "destiny" is unfulfilled to such an extent that it is appropriate--again from the god's perspective, not the DM's meta-perspective--to answer the prayer to bring the person back to life. The simulationist DM will treat the god as having no meta-knowledge about PC status.

Even more evil gods will engage in a similar assessment of whether they see the dead person's "destiny" as justifying the expenditure of power to bring them back to life. Of course they will place weight on the factors that are most important to them--e.g. they probably won't care if the person is happy about being brought back to life but will care whether it furthers their godly interests. Evil tends to see destiny from a more self-serving perspective. (Evil gods also have other alternatives in the material world such as turning the dead into the undead to have them continue to serve their evilly divine purposes.)

Neutral gods might say "that's the way the cookie crumbles" or they may not even be bothered to take notice of prayers to revive the dead.

This approach allows for campaigns where death is permanent except for those rare cases where the gods themselves have identified someone as having an unfulfilled destiny that is so important--in the eyes of the god--that the god has decided they will use their divine power to restore them to life.

Excellent point, Marmot. You've echoed and beautifully expanded on one of my earlier points about why everyone in 3e D&D isn't always brought back.

It's up to the individual. Even after the spell is cast, the individual might just say "Nope, I like it here and I won't go back". Spell succeeds, but results fail - the corpse is not raised from the dead.

This is one of the reasons why it is not necessary to lay down the law and rule that bringing back the dead only work on people with specific destiny.

Such a rule is really not needed at all.

 

[hong]

This is one of the reasons why it is not necessary to lay down the law and rule that bringing back the dead only work on people with specific destiny.

Nobody said anything about "specific destinies".

 

[DM_Blake]

Well, all I have to go on is this quote from Worlds and Monsters. Take it how you will...

Death Matters Differently: It's generally harder to die than in previous editions, particularly at low level. When a heroic-tier player character dies, the player creates a new character. A paragon PC can come back from the dead at a significant cost. For epic-tier characters, death is a speed bump. Being raised from the dead is available only to heroes, and it's more than just a spell and a financial transaction. NPCs, both good and evil, don't normally come back to life unless the DM has a good reason.

For the record, I would like to point out that up until that last sentence, it's specifically talking about player characters, not NPCs.

Quite frankly, I prefer this. I'd rather it was harder for a PC to die than have him popping back from the dead all the time. By epic-tier, I can swallow that, but at the heroic-tier level? Sometimes even heroes die.

Now here, You, I, and Worlds & Monsters are all in agreement, mostly.

I'm willing to let heroic PCs find a way, a quest, a bargain, whatever, to raise someone. Could be a good adventure. Usually I let the raise happen first, so that PC doesn't have to sit out on several gaming sessions while this adventure is resolved.

And I surely don't mind expecting the DM to have a good reason for a NPC to come back to life. For me, a good reason is "he's the king - of course we'll try to raise him". For some people, that's not a good enough reason.

I am not even arguing to convince anyone that my reasons are better than theirs.

All I am saying is that it should be up to the DM to define what constitutes "a good reason" for NPC resurrection. It should not be a core rule. It should be a campaign setting rule.

That's all I am saying here.

 

[DM_Blake]

Of course, we'll need campaign sourcebook writers to stop making every last one of their kings and such 17th-level fighters and paladins...

-Will!

Well said!

I hate that too...

 

[Will]

In my games, I was considering a Fate mechanic that meant if it wasn't the right circumstances, you couldn't die!

Mind you, that mechanic doesn't save you from being horribly maimed...

I never implemented it, but if I did, I'd probably have permanent stat damage and injuries as a result of narrow escapes.

"You are destined not to die until the conjunction of Arithakin and Delb."
'What?'
"Astrological conjunction. Not due to happen for 60 years."
'Awesome!'
...
~Kinda sucks that Doug got sick from that mummy and has been in a coma these past 60 years.~
#Yeah. But he finally died in his sleep.#

 

[DM_Blake]

Well, in Forgotten Realms where there are lvl 10+ priests on every street corner in major cities, it means that every merchant can't just go get a rez if he falls off a cart and breaks his neck.

Under the old system, in a wealthy city like Waterdeep where clerics were overflowing, there was actually very little reason for ANYONE with a reasonable amount of wealth to ever die.

In fact... It would have been so easy for rich folk to get a rez, I could almost see family members being accused of murder if they didn't get the person rezed. Coming back from the dead should never be "simple" and should never be a "given".

Why not?

We accept fireballs as a "given". We accept flame strike spells as a "given" - and that requires the same kind of caster using the same level spell lost as Raise Dead.

In a world where all kinds of wonderful magic exists, unicorns, flaming swords, leprechauns, drgons, djinni, wish spells, teleporting, flying carpets, heck, there's millions of magical mystical things in D&D, why is raise dead so special that we need ruling to limit its use?

Again, I say this is a campaign setting decision.

The campaign writers of Forgotten Realms made Waterdeep, populated it with "lvl 10+ priests on every street corner", knowing full well that Raise Dead is on their spell lists. They could have added rules to the Forgotten Realms limiting raising the dead, but they didn't. Therefore, their decision was to allow "ANYONE with a reasonable amount of wealth to ever die". Apparently that's how it works in Forgotten Realms.

Other campaigns vary. And they should vary.

But this variance should be up to the DM without having it explicitly ruled in the core rulebooks.