Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[Nahat Anoj]

Hmm, does this mean that only 21st+ level characters (characters with an Epic Destiny) can be raised? I wouldn't think so.

I remember reading somewhere that coming back from the dead depended on Tier. At the Heroic Tier, death is incredibly costly, if not impossible, to come back from. At the Paragon Tier, coming back from the dead is easier but it will still require a good amount of resources. At the Epic Tier, death is easy to come back from.

 

[DSRilk]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraydak
/agree. As a simulationist I hate this change, and utterly fail to see how anyone could think it is, in any way, shape or form, pro-simulationism. It is pure, rules-enshrined, DM fiat.

How would a simulationist approach Raise Dead then? I am anxious to see how Raise Dead works in the real world.

I wouldn't approach raise dead, and haven't for over a decade. I thoroughly dislike the idea. Basically, the problem is the game system is designed like a board game where pieces can be eliminated while at the same time assigning each player the job of only one piece on the board. Thus either the game ends for that player when his piece is eliminated or you have to find some way to bring him back. The game system uses raise dead and its ilk for this purpose. Dead? No problem, find a priest, bring some coin, and you're back up and running. This new fluff doesn't make any difference at all, imo. Only the VERY rich could afford it before, and even in previous rules it stated that some people didn't wish to come back, so it was commonly always PCs alone that usually got rez'd. The problem for me has always been that ANYONE died and came back. To me, the resurrection of ANYONE is a world altering event.

To address the issue of piece elimination in my game, you simply can't die unless you tell me your character wants to risk his life for the task. Instead, there are far more insidious and interesting things that happen when you hit -10 hp (or whatever marker we happened to be using that campaign). This method eliminates the problem without the weirdness of any kind of resurrection. There are many good threads on this type of approach, so I'll speak on it no further here.

Given all this, I suspect that I'll handle raise dead the exact same way this version. That said, the idea of rituals appeals to me. Rituals, as I understand them, might be a place where resurrection makes sense in my concept of the world. Bad guy conjuring some horrible ritual in order to bring back a dead god, ancient evil, or his long dead master. In short, it's a plot device, not a way to fix a game issue.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I really don't think this changes anything. Players will still be able to treat death as a mere inconvenience, and the DM's favorite bad guys will always come back, to the players' immense frustration. The only thing this does is prevent you from wasting money raising some commoner back to life, as if anyone actually did that before.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Hmm... That could actually mean, that the Destiny to befowl you is loose and only when you begin to step into that Destiny that Destiny begins to become a presence in your life.

Sorta the idea, that one has the opportunity to step into one's Destiny either knowingly or unknowingly or mis-step and become simply a normal adventurer.

 

[pukunui]

Here's the link to the SRD: LINK Apparently you need to go read it again. Either that or read my example #1 again. Assuming that Bob's sister wants to come back (and why wouldn't she?), example #1 is impossible under 3.5.

Admittedly, example #2 may or may not be possible under 4E. We don't know yet what restrictions Raise Dead works under (does disintegrating his head still work?). But it is impossible under 3.5 if you "kill him right." However, I could have made a better example than #2 if I'd spent more than a minute on it. Whatever. See below.

I'm not really seeing how #1 is impossible under the 3.5 rules ... but I'll admit that I haven't really been arguing with you properly. I've been thinking in terms of "raising people from the dead" in general terms, not in the specific terms of the 3.5 raise dead spell (that is to say, I've been thinking in terms that encompass resurrection and true resurrection as well as raise dead). So in general terms, your examples are not impossible with the 3.5 mechanics. In specific terms, they might be impossible with the specific 3.5 raise dead mechanics (although I'm still not seeing it) but since we don't know the specific terms for the 4e mechanics, everything is mere conjecture. Again, as I said before, this entire thread is based off what is essentially a playtester's opinion of how bringing people back from the dead works in 4e. We don't even really know if Keith was referring specifically to a 4e ritual called raise dead or whether he was just referring to the overall method of bringing people back from the dead, whether or not there are multiple ways of doing it.

This is the part that really bothers me. This rule gives the DM the power to "tell the PCs story for him." It takes away control from the PCs in a ham-fisted manner that is blatantly "because the DM feels like it." It reinforces that the campaign is the DM's opportunity to tell storied to me, rather than for me to be a meaningful participant in an emergent story.

It gives a bad DM the power to do this (but then, as I've tried to point out already, bad DMs could already do these sorts of things with the 3.5 rules). It gives a good DM the power to say that powerful NPCs in his campaign world die and stay dead because coming back from the dead isn't just about knowing the right people and having enough money. It also gives a good DM the power to say that a PC has returned from the dead for "story" reasons (no doubt worked out in conjunction with the player concerned) so that the player can keep playing that PC -- whereas, if the player didn't want to keep playing that PC but the other players felt it was in keeping with their characters to try to raise that PC anyway, the DM could then say that the spell doesn't work because clearly that PC's time has finished rather than having to say "He doesn't want to come back", which, if you ask me, would be a totally BS answer in 99% of the cases where this situation might arise ... because what hero, given the opportunity to come back to life and continue the fight, would say, "No thanks. I like it here. I'll let you guys sort it out." To have him say that simply because the PC's player isn't interested in playing that character anymore is purely metagaming (and I've actually had this happen in a 3.5 campaign). The new fluff at least gives the DM a plausible in-game reason for why the character isn't coming back -- that is to say, he can't come back as opposed to he simply doesn't want to ...

 

[small pumpkin man]

Interesting.

But how does this change the use of raise dead in a practical sense?

It doesn't. All it does is change he base assumption from "anybody can get raised unless there's a good reason not to" to "no-one can get raised unless there's a good reason they can".

Depending on your definition of "good reason", this could make no difference at all.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

While PCs are often to have unfulfilled destines, most people simply cannot come back. It allows player to have raise dead, without making it a prominent influence on the world. A nice simple and elegant solution.

I've often been annoyed with raising people from the dead and I, too, am pleased by this change. It's not such a big deal, as I've simply banned resurrection magic from my games (oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that causes). If only people with destinies to fulfill can be raised, that's good enough for me and I will probably allow resurrection magic finally.

It also makes the Raven Queen (the goddess in charge of destiny and death) truly the epitome of Lawful Neutrality - as long as they have destinies to fulfill she allows *anyone* to come back, goodhearted saint or blackhearted murderer.

 

[Valdrax]

Actually, as a pro-simulationist, I consider this yet another outrage. What does "destiny" mean? Why should the gods allow Harry the adventurer to be raised, only to see him fall into the next pit trap and die and be be left to rot, while the favored high priest has no 'destiny' and cannot be raised?

1) Maybe that was Harry's destiny. Fate works in mysterious ways.
2) Maybe that was the high priest's destiny. Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.
3) Maybe the gods aren't in control of fate. Maybe it's the furies. Maybe even the gods have destinies to fulfill in time.

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

Because good guys should rarely want to come back, and evil/neutral guys probably always should. Why do heroes come back and villains stay dead, given the rewards awaiting them in 3e's after life? Instead, this rule ensures that our heroes and our villains stay on the stage until their story is done without contravening the logic of the setting.

So, since you run destiny as a blind force, if a character chooses to take an action that voids destiny, what happens?

Your mistake is assuming that destiny is preordained by the DM in such a manner that the players can void it. Destiny exists entirely as a force *within the campaign world,* and not *in the real world.* Destiny is what your group says it is by their actions. It is largely revealed after the fact.

You don't have to issue ironclad prophecies in the game for a character to have a destiny. Destiny is largely just protagonist aura anyway, even in stories written and told entirely by a single person.

 

[robertliguori]

Gods work in mysterious ways.

Gods are NPCs. You can hunt them down, beat them up, and intimidate them into telling you the truth. Good luck that whole enshrining the mechanics of the universe on the man behind the curtain.

Then DM un-fiat it. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to grasp? Naysayers are always acting like everybody must obey the rules as if they're some divine commandment.

*sigh* Because we, as you might notice, are discussing D&D. We are not discussing Robert's Homebrew of D&D. The RAW is the common ground we share and generally take for granted when discussing a system. Moreover, the mere fact that there is such discussion on the topic shows that unlike Death Doesn't Inhibit Actions or Cleave + Bag of Rats, there is no clear consensus on particular applications of this rule being bad and wrong.

Ooh, well said!

Allow me to educate you.
Realism is a measure of how something measures up to reality.
Verisimilitude is a measure of how something measures up to expectations of a given reality, not necessarily the actual one. A generally-shared expectation is that abilities based on skill and talent don't run out the way abilities based on resources that need to be renewed do. If the idea of learning how to trip someone in combat, doing so, then being unable to do so later on until a specific period of time has passed, then being able to do so again until you actually do with no confounding factors like fatigue or relative capacity of your opponent does not strike you as a poor simulation of skill-based abilities, that is fine. But if it does, then rules that make skill-based tripping work a set number of times in a given time period are not verisimilistic. Add a general expectation that skill is actually chi manipulation and not really a measure of knowing how to do something, and it's verisimilistic again.

Likewise, make the rules the universe is trying to simulate "Whatever the DM wants to happen happens, regardless of past experience.", and you have achieved perfect verisimilitude; it's just that playing in such a universe is of little interest for many of us. For me, the funnest part of D&D is adding individual bits of awesome to the world and watching them interact and fight it out. I think that the ability of a ruleset to lead to interesting places not anticipated by the original designer to be a feature, not a bug, and I think that if you're going to permit resurrection but disallow it under certain circumstances for plot reasons, you should time out, explain you are altering the rules of the universe to allow / disallow resurrection in this instance, and run with it.

Two options:
-He can't meet his destiny anymore
-It wasn't really part of his destiny

In the first option, it seems that if the old age restriction got removed (which I imagine it would, since it was a simulationist-emergent rule* and 4E doesn't like those), then it seems that snagging and subverting a destiny should be the first thing you do upon hitting paragon level.

The second case obviously doesn't apply, since the destinies were all specifically stated. I was also working from the SWSE destinies, which can be clearly identified in-universe from the way the world bends around specific, enumerated goals.

*I used to be severely annoyed about the die-of-old-age-inherently rules. Why was it necessary to enforce such lifespans?
Then I read the old write-ups of the FR NPCs and realized that the old age rules were a way of permanently separating Elminister and his ilk of been-everywhere, done-everything, you'll-never-be-as-good-as-I-am-ever NPCs from the continuity of RAW.

Plus, it's another reason to shoot for lichdom, and any rule that adds more liches to a campaign setting is a good one.

Meh, Raise Dead and other Ressurection spells have always been something dumb in D&D. No matter what explanation they give and whatever rules specification they write, it will be dumb, no matter what.
Voyaging to the Realms of Dead People and bringing back the souls in Orpheus-style should be the only viable way for heroes and other good people. Everything else should just be Blackest Magic born from the hearts of evil people who read the Necronomicon and other vile books of Darkness and Dread. Raise Dead and Ressurection should be Necromantic Spells that make the Ressurected become evil and spiteful at best, and Zombies who crave brains otherwise.

I disagree. I actually agree with the 4E tiers.
At Heroic tier, you follow the rules of the world. Ressurection is serious, scary stuffs, beyond your ken.

At Paragon tier, you can bend around the rules slightly. You can journey to the underworld, and make a bargain with Hades, and hey, that's a 43 on your Perform check, so you have his approval...under these conditions.

At Epic tier?
"...he punched out Charon, seduced the shades of thirty different women, swam the Styx while carrying three amphora of wine, drank the wine, sought out Eurystheus's father and murdered him again, shattered Sisyphus's boulder with the explanation 'Yeah, Dad can be a real dick sometimes.', and then stole my dog? On a dare?"

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've never considered that a problem. Only the highest-level priests can cast it, so very few NPCs will even have access to it.

But if you look at the DMG demographics....

Any large town (2001+ people) has a chance of a 9th level cleric who can raise dead (4th-9th)

Each small city (5001+ people) is pretty likely to have a 9th level cleric (7th-12th)

Each large city (12,001+ people) is guaranteed to have three clerics of 10-15th level

Each metropolis (25,001+ people) is guaranteed to have four clerics of 13-18th level

so if playing straight by the book, wealthy PCs would be unlikely to fail to find a cleric capable of casting the spell unless there were some campaign-specific restriction or deviation from the baseline (e.g. Eberron where most of the high level people died in the war).

Personally I prefer campaigns were there isn't such a high assumed baseline of high level characters; I'm more Eberron than Forgotten Realms in terms of my preferences

Cheers