Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[Hairfoot]

"Unfulfilled destiny" simply means that the player isn't ready for a PC to die. Who's to say that a dead character's destiny wasn't to become lunch for a troll?

 

[BASHMAN]

Ooh! Let me get in before the haters.

I like it. Simple, but straight-forward and nothing bars the DM from applying to "special" NPCs.

As a branded "Hater" I would just like to point out that I too LOVE this approach to raise dead. Baker's point about why kings can't just have their wills stipulate that they be raised has always bugged me. I have had to bend over backward in campaigns to deal with this before, claiming that the assassin used a special poison that prevented the body from being raised, etc. All nobles had clauses in their will that said they had to be raised if they died unnaturally or the beneficiary would be disinherited, etc. This is much better-- the King died because that WAS his destiny. Brilliant.

However, DMs should then reserve the right to say that when a PC dies, that was THEIR destiny (i.e. in the triumphant battle vs. the Ultimate Evil, your hero dies just after striking a telling blow. That should be your destiny that you fulfilled. If a level 20 fighter gets cut down by orcs in this sleep... yeah, he may get a rez...)

 

[Mirtek]

And for that, I am overflowing with gratitude.

How is this any different from 3.x's DM fiat "he does not want to come back"?

 

[Nightchilde-2]

To me, the heart of simulation is that nothing happens to PCs that can't happen (at least in theory) to NPCs. They may use different "game rule models" to model the results/course of action for practical reasons, but the hypothetical "game physics" are universal.

I don't know for sure that this is what's being said. I don't see it as inconceivable that various NPCs wouldn't have destinies that allow them to be raised. After all, the recurring villain is an old (and effective) trope...

 

[pukunui]

Really there's no wrong way to do Raise Dead then.

Doesn't this statement contradict everything else you've said?

You just accept that works "thusly", and apply that rule to the game.

So if I accept that only people with "unfinished destinies", something that I, as DM, am free to interpret as I see fit, can be raised from the dead and then apply that rule to my game, where's the problem?

That's the simulationists' problem with this new Raise Dead rule. It basically says that "Raise Dead works for world-people relevant to the current story arc, but not for anyone else."

Where do you get the "relevant to the current story arc" bit? The way I read it, Raise Dead would work for anyone for whom the DM (aka "world-builder") thinks it should work, whether or not they are relevant to the current story arc. Sure, a DM could choose to have Raise Dead only work for people relevant to the current story arc, but if he's got something going on in the background and it's feasible/believable/consistent with his game world to have some NPCs be brought back to life, there's nothing stopping him from doing it. I really don't see where it has to be relevant to what the PCs are doing. I just see that it's essentially up to the DM to decide who gets raised and who doesn't and it provides him with a convenient in-game explanation as to why there aren't people being raised from the dead willy-nilly. It's also a convenient tool to explain why a particular PC does or does not come back from the dead (if the player wants to make a new character, then the DM can just say that the dead PC had clearly fulfilled his destiny or whatever).

That "doesn't work" because to a simulationist everyone has their own story arc.

Perhaps, but I would argue that 99% of those story arcs are not interesting enough to be worth actually simulating. Most of them would too closely resemble real life, and no one I know would be interested in having anything to do with them. They don't want to simulate their mostly boring real life experiences. They want to escape them by playing heroes - extraordinary people who can do extraordinary things.

From within the game there shouldn't be any way to tell the difference between an NPC and a PC.

I disagree. There should be a way to distinguish PCs from NPCs. PCs are the heroes. They're the protagonists (or, in some cases, the antagonists). This is not something that's new to 4e. 3e had it too, in so far as there were NPC classes which were less mechanically powerful than PC classes and so on.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

"Unfulfilled destiny" simply means that the player isn't ready for a PC to die. Who's to say that a dead character's destiny wasn't to become lunch for a troll?

Yeah, as other people have said, it codifies the problems that you normally face as a DM into rules.

As a DM, my problem with raise dead has always been "Why do the PCs get it every time they die but I have to come up with (lame) excuses if I don't want all of their enemies coming back to life every time they defeat them or the King to stay dead after an assassination?"

This basically gives you a rule that answers that question. It's fairly cheap to bring people back to life with this ritual. Anyone with a bit of money and access to someone who can cast it can get someone back to life. It just only works on people who NEED to come back to life because they weren't SUPPOSED to die. You know, like PCs who died in a random encounter and want to continue playing their characters.

 

[robertliguori]

I'm a sim DM and I like it. It's perfect.

I also think that only souls that were powerful in life could ever be ressurected, so I hope the rules also support that.


It depends on each one's personal philosophy, so I think the relevant question here is: Who decides each person's destiny?
In game it's the Master of Fate AKA DM.

But the DM isn't master of fate. The proper term for the master of fate is "Author". DM implies dice and player free will. As long as you use either, there is no such thing as preordained fate.

This brings you to the uncomfortable situation of either ignoring the dice and the players or having the players be the only characters in the universe that override destiny.

Destiny, as an uncaring force in the universe moving characters towards a certain outcome, can work. The trick is to make destiny like gravity; it exerts a force, but with power or cleverness, you can laugh as it utterly fails to influence you.

That being said, this rule does make me want to play 4E, as a character that combines Deadpool with Belkar Bitterleaf.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Every decision doesn't have to be a G vs. S vs. N one...

 

[Imban]

See, there's somewhat of a tension between two of the ways that D&D can really play out. One is like Eberron, the other is like the Forgotten Realms played as epic-level fantasy rather than LotR Ripoff fantasy. In the former, resurrections going on all the time throws things for a loop, and assuming we want them for gameplay reasons, a handwave that basically says "only the PCs and rare people on the plot railroad can be resurrected" is fine. If it's not, you basically just have to throw resurrections out entirely.

In the latter, kings of countries worth mentioning don't just get normally assassinated by normal things like a knife to the face. They get immolated by black flames that turn them into bodaks, then spirited away, so they can't be resurrected as they "live" on as undead, but no one knows where. Otherwise, the level-22 high priest of their country just resurrects them, and this is still a fine course of events, because we're playing in wacky super powered fantasy land. Under this system, you can put heavier restrictions on resurrection - perhaps raising the level at which it's available and its requirements - so that only exceedingly important and powerful people will be returning from corpseville, not every minor noble who gets gored by a boar, but "You hear some jerk stabbed the king to death last week? No? Oh, no, no, he's fine, the High Priest of Pelor raised him the next day." is a 100% fine tavern discussion in this style of play.

 

[HeinorNY]

Destiny, as an uncaring force in the universe moving characters towards a certain outcome, can work.

The DM controls that force in my games.