Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[Celebrim]

In general, I share your grief, but I've found solutions for this one that personally make me pretty comfortable.

I have used several similar solutions, but I have pretty extensive mass combat experience with D&D worlds and I've always found that whatever magic is available is generally the decisive element. This isn't so bad when the PC's are the source of that magic, but when its NPCs it grates - and it further grates when it suggests that certain specific tactics (pike formations and massed heavy cavalry) are simply unfeasible and largely have to be written out of your world's history. I recognize that historically effective fighting forces were generally much more mixed arms than romantic conceptions of them tend to be, but even so it tends to make armies of my world much more uniform than I would like them to be. All of them have to have sizable effective massed missile and skirmisher screens simply to deal with the possibility of enemy spellcasters. The Welsh all longbow army survives as does the Mogul light cavalry, and Byzantine Cataphracts (in at least the mixed bow and lance form), but the classic Spartan heavy Infantry, Imperial Roman legion, and Polish Hussars are in trouble. I have sorta solved the problem by having a few legendary mercenary units who have cobbled together enough magical items to fight in close formation (the Black Swords being the most notable), but still - its a constraint I'm unhappy with.

 

[Delta]

d) while every cleric theoretically is able to access every possible spell he still needs to request it from his deity who can simply deny the spell

That's simply not in the rules as written.

 

[Just Another User]

I find that wizard-spell problems can generally be massaged by tweaking the frequency of wizards or the particular spell in the campaign. It's a much more cutting problem for cleric-spells where (a) every known church in the world is full of clerics, (b) every cleric has access to every possible spell, and (c) the spell is generally applied within a safe sanctuary, at no risk to the cleric in question.

As time goes on, clerics bug me more and more in comparison to any other class.

While b) and c) are usually true, a) don't need to be, see Eberron as a great example, where priests of a religion are actually experts focused in the diplomacy and knowledge (religion) skills, with some rare adept and some exceptionally rare Cleric.

 

[robertliguori]

Not really. The problem is that a source of water isn't enough. You also have to have a water distribution system. Cholera epidemics have broken out in the third world that had access to clean drinking water because the buckets being used to bring the water from the spigot to the homes were tainted with residue from cleaning up after other sufferers.

Besides which, disease is a literal malevolent spirit in my campaign world. It doesn't have to obey physical laws. A disease spirit could possess your magical fountain and then it would produce diseased water. In fact, it very likely would be possessed by a disease spirit because being artificial, it has no natural water spirit to defend it. So, you build a magical fountain, and the first thing you learn is that upkeep of that fountain involves reutinely hallowing it to keep evil spirits away.

Cholera is particularly bad, because Chorlera in its incarnation as 'the Red Death' is one of the seven greater disease spirits in the service of the Elder God Morgul, Lord of Rot. If Cholera really wanted to inhabit your magical fountain, driving it out would require heroes of the highest order (probably not less than 18th level).

Who cares about driving it out? People have wonderful personal-level cholera-demon-exorcism systems; they're called immune systems. The trick is to keep victims from dehydrating before death happens. In this case, assuming we don't have wondrous architecture of Cure Disease readily available, we can double our price and throw on a Purify Food and Drink effect. With a little jiggling of areas-of-effect, we now have guaranteed-potable water and retroactive refrigeration. That disease spirit can hang around all it wants; the water coming out of the fountain is guaranteed by the nature of magic itself to contain no vectors for disease.

The sanitation issue with improperly-cleaned buckets is a problem; this is why plumbing would be of vital importance, and also why wondrous architecture of prestidigitation and a designated cleaner would also be a worthwhile investment for a village. We're at 750 gp for the whole shebang, and as long as it's properly used, natural disease spread will be virtually eliminated. It won't stop powerful outsiders from going around casting Contagion, as you mention, but if disease is only something that happens when a specific outsider makes it happen, then it's not a major source of death, and you don't have to worry about trying to cure it.

(If it were a major source of death, you can set up a more-expensive rig; wondrous architecture that Planar-Binds plague demons and then never interacts with them, thus denying them the possibility of escape. There are many places to set something like this up; at an undersea observation post in Lunia would give quite effective results.)

That's what you get for hiring an engineer to do a wizard's work.

I always warn my players, before you do anything that sounds new or cool, do some research to figure out why your obvious idea hasn't been tried before. Sartha has a 30,000 year written history. It's highly unlikely you are the first to try anything. History is littered with the corpses of young wizards that thought they had a great idea. And that's if they were lucky.

Yes, it's possible that I might discover a wholly-undiscovered effect or synchronicity that leads to my plan breaking down...but I might also accidentally summon Great Ctuthlu tomorrow during tea when I ask my adventuring buddy to pass the sugar. Either there are basic principles of the universe that can be understood (and therefore exploited), or everything could explode tomorrow anyway, and there's no reason not to try your revolutionary new Undead Postal System.

That's the thing about side effects; rare is the flaw in a process that cannot be turned into an effective, desired output under certain circumstances. Your unnatural and unholy experiments haven't failed at discovering a way to save peasants; you've just discovered a new and interesting way to massacre that incoming orc horde.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Even being a king could not be enough, kings have heirs, one die, another one is made, but unless the king is needed alive right here, right now or something Really Bad(TM) happen the church would refuse to raise him.

Heh, forget Raise Dead, what about Cure Disease and Cure X Wounds spells?

Take a look at modern-day monarchy... Charles, Prince of Wales will be 60 years old next November*... Does he seem to fit the image of the "young, dashing Heir-Apparent"?
Now that we have modern medicine, a healthy, lucid 82 year old lady (Queen Elizabeth) is not such a rare occurrence, at least on developed countries.

The point is that, if you think about it hard enough, almost any kind of magic will have social and political consequences... So almost all mid&high-fantasy settings need some serious hand-waving in order to function according to trope.



* According to Wikipedia

 

[Just Another User]

Heh, forget Raise Dead, what about Cure Disease and Cure X Wounds spells?

Take a look at modern-day monarchy... Charles, Prince of Wales will be 60 years old next November*... Does he seem to fit the image of the "young, dashing Heir-Apparent"?
Now that we have modern medicine, a healthy, lucid 82 year old lady (Queen Elizabeth) is not such a rare occurrence, at least on developed countries.

The point is that, if you think about it hard enough, almost any kind of magic will have social and political consequences... So almost all mid&high-fantasy settings need some serious hand-waving in order to function according to trope.



* According to Wikipedia

No, I think raise dead is a can of worms on his own, after all wounds heal naturally and people can heal from diesase without magic, magic only make it faster and more certain, but there are no mundane ways to come back from death, you can insert cure disease and CW spells in a setting without changing it too much, sure you must still do a little handwaving, but not on the same intesnity of the handwaving you need for raise dead.

And what I said for raise dead count for the other spells, even if not at the same level, spells are (literally) gifts from the gods, you should not abuse them*, someone is wounded? unless it is a life threatening wounds he can just wait for it to heal naturally, unless there are more pressing reasons there is no need to use magic for it. The same for cure disease, with the aggravation that priests able to cast it are quite uncommon. And for all the spells there is the point that a cleric will not use them on anybody, are you a follower of his religion? or at the very least are your goals common to his religion? A cleric will use his spells first for the members of his comunity,then for member of his religion from outside his comunity, then on everyone else, if at all and more probably not, if you go to him searching for healing he would gladly use a Heal check on you, even free of charge, but unless you give him a "damn, good reason"(tm)** he would not use his god's gifts on you.

* in 2nd edition this was explicitely put in the rules, if you used your spells in a way that your god would have disapproved he could cut you from his maigc for a while. Pity they forgot to even put it as an option in 3.x

**what is a good reason is open to interpretation, of course, being a member of his religion is a good one, "We have saved/are going to save the village from the goblin raiders" or something like that, usually works, too. Money could either works or make the priest very angry.

 

[BryonD]

The point is that, if you think about it hard enough, almost any kind of magic will have social and political consequences... So almost all mid&high-fantasy settings need some serious hand-waving in order to function according to trope.

I agree. And that includes the 4e version of raise dead. I don't buy that telling a peasant his wife can't be raised be she was of no consequence, and had no "destiny" would stop a riot any more than saying she can't be raised because there are no diamonds available. So you are exactly right, some hand waving is pretty much always going to be mandated.

But it is not a black and white issue. You can take simulation to far and get to the point that nothing flows and you can take gamism to far and get to the point that nothing makes sense. But there is a very wide middle ground. As several WotC people have stated, 4e moves along that middle ground toward the gamism side. And it is ok that a lot of people like that. It is also ok that a lot of people don't.

There is a vast difference between wanting the on screen elements of the game to make sense and letting off screen stuff simply be understood boundary conditions that are hand waved. And that doesn't remotely undermine simulation. Anyone who thinks it does doesn't understand simulation.

It is amazing to me the people in this thread who for some internal reason can't simply state that they prefer gamism. Instead they seem somehow oddly compelled to repeatedly attempt to force an absurd polarized mischaracterization of what simulation means onto the topic. It really makes one wonder why they need to make a bunch of badwrongfun assaults on the idea. If they were comfortable with their desire for simplicity, it seems they would just go along and play it their way.

Quite simply, 3e was a more simulationist game. If you are a pro-4e fan and you want to dispute that, then you are disputing WotC. And another fact, 3e was a very popular system that did really well with a lot of people. An honest open-minded view of simulation shows that it can and has worked and been highly popular and successful. But anyone trapped forcing all-or-nothing on it will never be able to grasp that.

 

[Lackhand]

I agree. And that includes the 4e version of raise dead. I don't buy that telling a peasant his wife can't be raised be she was of no consequence, and had no "destiny" would stop a riot any more than saying she can't be raised because there are no diamonds available. So you are exactly right, some hand waving is pretty much always going to be mandated.
<snip a bunch of stuff I agree with>

Wait, what?
You don't believe that saying to the (grieving) relatives of the dead woman that she can't be raised via this ritual, the only way to reunite the husband with his wife would be by a) storming the gates of the land of the dead and searching there for her shade, or b) the easy road?

I mean, "the laws of nature prohibit it" is usually a pretty good show stopper. Nobody (in game)'s going to be happy about the fact that the wife remains inert, but there are different ways of spinning this, out of game.
Imagine that there is a ritual that is performed at funerals that keeps the corpse fresh -- it keep rot from the coffin for a year, and ensures that the spirit of the slain travels swiftly to its just reward.
In one out of a gajillion instances, however, the ritual causes the corpse to stand up and return to life, healed of all injury and in the bloom of life. This isn't by chance; it happens only in times of great events and mortal struggle, and anyone who returns to life via this method will return over and over and over again until their role in the great struggle is complete.

What is there there to riot over? The priest did the ritual. Nothing more to say. You might riot anyway -- people sometimes riot over things which in retrospect seem like terrible catalysts -- but then we're talking high melodrama, and this is hardly campaign warping.

 

[bramadan]

Trying to wrap even remotely believable medievalesque world around DnD3 rules was what killed my desire to play that edition ever again.

Between immortal merchants/kings, invisible flying wizards, instant communications, travel that is either instant or incredibly safe (rope trick), scrying magic, streets better lit then in 19th century London, cheap permanent running water, endless source of iron and other base metals, ever plentiful crops and no epidemic disease the feel for the world got lost somewhere.

I am overjoyed that DnD4 is taking steps to make it easier for DMs to make worlds that conform to some accepted fantasy tropes and not late 20th century wonderland with swords.

 

[Celebrim]

I am overjoyed that DnD4 is taking steps to make it easier for DMs to make worlds that conform to some accepted fantasy tropes and not late 20th century wonderland with swords.

I can't say that I've seen a single thing about 4e that makes me think that. I simply see no sign that making the game have greater realism or even high fantasy versimlitude was even a consideration in the design.