Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[Will]

... You honestly think people never do things that will result in bad outcomes in the misguided sense that it won't happen to them, or it won't happen soon enough to matter?

I think RL has plenty of counter examples.

 

[robertliguori]

Doesn't have much to do with raise dead, but this really irks me.

I can only assume you've done nothing more than give the Saga Edition destiny rules a passing glance at best, or are relying on second-hand knowledge considering how ill-informed this view on SWSE's Destiny Mechanics are, especially the specific example.

It's quite possible for someone with a Destruction destiny to not be penalized for resolving a border skirmish peacefully, and might even be rewarded for moving one step closer to their destiny if by peacefully resolving that skirmish they gain the allies needed to help them destroy the Big Evil Cult that they are destined to destroy. Obi-Wan had a Destiny to get Luke started on the Jedi path (Education), but wasn't penalized because he withheld certain key truths from Luke (namely, his father's real fate), which by your rather literal reading of the Destiny mechanics he should have been.

I had taken it to be implied that the Destruction destiny was of the kingdom (with the theory that a lot of border skirmishes can add to a war quickly), not in general. If there was any confusion, then yes, destinies are specific, and a destiny of Destruction does not penalize you for random acts of non-destruction. (It does for specific acts that make your destined destruction less likely. Worship of or even getting the attention of Erynthul or Nerull is just a bad idea.)

But it's safe to say that nobody chooses to worship any evil god for a few dozen years if the end result is an eternity of hellfire.

Evil gods reward their faithful followers because they want to have faithful followers.

I think that it's more likely that characters act according to their alignments, and choose their patron gods the same way. If you are naturally chaotic neutral, you may find yourself worshipping Olidammara; if you aren't, then the odds of you doing so are less. I don't think that outside of specific, highly-controlled areas, you get too much voluntary adoption of a god in contravention of how people would choose to be in general; I think that you get a fair number of evil people worshiping evil gods not because they expect a grand reward, but because the alternative is the tender mercies of the fiends. (Not that most evil gods are any better, amusingly enough.)

 

[DM_Blake]

I think that it's more likely that characters act according to their alignments, and choose their patron gods the same way. If you are naturally chaotic neutral, you may find yourself worshipping Olidammara; if you aren't, then the odds of you doing so are less. I don't think that outside of specific, highly-controlled areas, you get too much voluntary adoption of a god in contravention of how people would choose to be in general; I think that you get a fair number of evil people worshiping evil gods not because they expect a grand reward, but because the alternative is the tender mercies of the fiends. (Not that most evil gods are any better, amusingly enough.)

Yes, I think that's pretty much the gist of it.

However, someone who is ruthless and evil in real earth (pick your favorite historical bad guy, e.g. Hitler if you'd like) can easily rationalize that hellfire is just a myth so lets go be ruthless, take over the world, slaughter lots of people, etc.

But, in D&D, those villains know, without a doubt, can even have it scried for a few gold at a local gypsy camp, what will happen to them at the end of their life. They cannot rationalize it as a myth.

That alone would be enough to scare most of them straight. Or at least straight enough to avoid the hellfire. If Hitler lived in Greyhawk, he might very well have toned it down a bit, or found a way to latch onto some evil entity who could guarantee him a position of leadership in the afterlife rather than eternal agony.

And given that, many evil deities, entities, and even fiends would gladly take on evil followers who show promise, then reward them rather than torment them in the afterlife. If the evil entity breaks his word, he won't get many new promising recruits.

Ergo, Mr. evil assassin, necromancer, demonologist, blackguard, etc., all have patrons who promise great rewards. Evil kinds of rewards. Not playing harps on puffy clouds - these guys don't want that. They want an army to lead, a harem to, uh, you know, and a pit full of victims to torment. And their patron will gladly bribe them with this stuff, and will fulfill his promise when these guys die the final death.

Even the ones who don't pick up a patron in life, will often be recruited in death by talent scouts for the big bad afterlife entities looking to recruit generals for their eternal interplanar wars. Their death becomes a sort of a free agency...

And any evil villains running around commiting mayhem in the D&D world who haven't chose a side yet, haven't secured their eternal bliss, are taking a huge risk. And all the evil entities have armies of messengers of all types, just itching to bop up to the material plane on a recruitment drive. They send these messengers up to find evil guys just like this and tempt them with all the promises.

Sure, it doesn't always go this way. But it would surely go this way very often.

And once you get the inside track to an eternity of evil awfulness, you only end up in the hellfires if you screw it up and fail your evil patron - their punishment is truly scary.

 

[JohnSnow]

Summary:
In order to be resurrected, you need to be fairly wealthy and fairly well connected to know someone who can cast the spell and be able to pay for the component. Otherwise death is permanent.
And you need to die a clean death with an intact recoverable corpse, or you need even more wealth and connection to pay for the bigger spells' components. Otherwise death is permanent.

See, the problem (such as it is) with this approach is that it just doesn't work for the kind of stories some of us want to tell or the kind of worlds we want to game in.

The notion that the rich can avoid death if they can pay the tab might be philosophically inconsistent with the kind of world we want. By insisting on an actual monetary "cost," you invalidate a number of sayings so essential to our conception of the world that the whole thing becomes irrelevant.

Many people would do anything, literally anything to bring a loved one back to life. Peasants in the real world rioted over poor working conditions. You don't think it would be worse if people knew that with enough money, you could bring people back to life?!

Ask yourself: What would people do today if they found out that some company had the ability to reverse death? Anything that didn't have an expensive (read: rare) consumable would be MANDATED in order to prevent civil unrest.

Some people love to talk about "creative" solutions to the questions raised by 3e's rules, like Derren's absurd "diamond mine" scenario. And that's a creative solution to part A of the problem. But A leads to B leads to C, and so on.

The ultimate problem with the simulationist approach is that, if you think it through sufficiently, you realize that A doesn't actually solve the problem - it just raises more quesitons, which need more creative solutions, and so on. At some point, if you're honest with yourself, you are forced to admit that fully conceptualizing a world where death is as easily reversible as it is in 3e is actually impossible. It changes so much that there really is no way to have a "realistic" world based on the premise.

But if it's actually determined by factors beyond people's control, like whether it's someone's "destiny" to die now, people will gripe about it, but it's nothing they can change. And that's not so different from the real world.

But the reversal of death as a purchasable commodity that the wealthy can afford but the poor can't? That's a much thornier problem. Since it's under the control of mortals, some people would inevitably try to change it. And following the repercussions of whatever decisions you make through the whole of society...

It makes my brain hurt.

 

[Derren]

Some people love to talk about "creative" solutions to the questions raised by 3e's rules, like Derren's absurd "diamond mine" scenario.

Why is it absurd? When diamonds ensure that you can be ressurected (among other uses as spell components) then you can be sure that nobles would fight about diamond deposits a lot harder than normally and that the diamonds are a lot more valuable than when just being used as luxury item.

 

[Will]

DM Blake:
Yes, you can scry the Hells (with, mind you, GREAT difficulty). So?

What proof can anyone offer you that 'if I am evil, I will definitely go THERE and be tortured'?

What, your God told you so? Maybe he's lying. In fact, maybe your 'detect evil' only tells you what your chump God wants you to think.

 

[pukunui]

See, the problem (such as it is) with this approach is that it just doesn't work for the kind of stories some of us want to tell or the kind of worlds we want to game in.

The notion that the rich can avoid death if they can pay the tab might be philosophically inconsistent with the kind of world we want. By insisting on an actual monetary "cost," you invalidate a number of sayings so essential to our conception of the world that the whole thing becomes irrelevant.

Many people would do anything, literally anything to bring a loved one back to life. Peasants in the real world rioted over poor working conditions. You don't think it would be worse if people knew that with enough money, you could bring people back to life?!

Ask yourself: What would people do today if they found out that some company had the ability to reverse death? Anything that didn't have an expensive (read: rare) consumable would be MANDATED in order to prevent civil unrest.

Some people love to talk about "creative" solutions to the questions raised by 3e's rules, like Derren's absurd "diamond mine" scenario. And that's a creative solution to part A of the problem. But A leads to B leads to C, and so on.

The ultimate problem with the simulationist approach is that, if you think it through sufficiently, you realize that A doesn't actually solve the problem - it just raises more quesitons, which need more creative solutions, and so on. At some point, if you're honest with yourself, you are forced to admit that fully conceptualizing a world where death is as easily reversible as it is in 3e is actually impossible. It changes so much that there really is no way to have a "realistic" world based on the premise.

But if it's actually determined by factors beyond people's control, like whether it's someone's "destiny" to die now, people will gripe about it, but it's nothing they can change. And that's not so different from the real world.

But the reversal of death as a purchasable commodity that the wealthy can afford but the poor can't? That's a much thornier problem. Since it's under the control of mortals, some people would inevitably try to change it. And following the repercussions of whatever decisions you make through the whole of society...

It makes my brain hurt.

This!

I really dislike the 3e assumption that all you need to access raise dead et al are the right connections and the right amount of money.

Sure, I can houserule it otherwise, but the more important question is: why should I have to?
What Keith Baker has said about the 4e interpretation is much more to my liking. It makes raising people from the dead less of a service/luxury/commodity/whatever that's taken for granted by people living in the fantasy world and makes it more mysterious/magical/fantastical/whatever.

 

[DM_Blake]

See, the problem (such as it is) with this approach is that it just doesn't work for the kind of stories some of us want to tell or the kind of worlds we want to game in.

The notion that the rich can avoid death if they can pay the tab might be philosophically inconsistent with the kind of world we want. By insisting on an actual monetary "cost," you invalidate a number of sayings so essential to our conception of the world that the whole thing becomes irrelevant.

Many people would do anything, literally anything to bring a loved one back to life. Peasants in the real world rioted over poor working conditions. You don't think it would be worse if people knew that with enough money, you could bring people back to life?!

Ask yourself: What would people do today if they found out that some company had the ability to reverse death? Anything that didn't have an expensive (read: rare) consumable would be MANDATED in order to prevent civil unrest.

Some people love to talk about "creative" solutions to the questions raised by 3e's rules, like Derren's absurd "diamond mine" scenario. And that's a creative solution to part A of the problem. But A leads to B leads to C, and so on.

The ultimate problem with the simulationist approach is that, if you think it through sufficiently, you realize that A doesn't actually solve the problem - it just raises more quesitons, which need more creative solutions, and so on. At some point, if you're honest with yourself, you are forced to admit that fully conceptualizing a world where death is as easily reversible as it is in 3e is actually impossible. It changes so much that there really is no way to have a "realistic" world based on the premise.

But if it's actually determined by factors beyond people's control, like whether it's someone's "destiny" to die now, people will gripe about it, but it's nothing they can change. And that's not so different from the real world.

But the reversal of death as a purchasable commodity that the wealthy can afford but the poor can't? That's a much thornier problem. Since it's under the control of mortals, some people would inevitably try to change it. And following the repercussions of whatever decisions you make through the whole of society...

It makes my brain hurt.

Yes, but now you get to the fun part. The farmer holding the archbishop at scythe-point to force him to raise his beloved wife. Nice story hook.

The overzealous church ruling the land with an iron hand, even kings bowing to their whim because they don't want that precious resurrection withheld because they crossed the church. Nice campaign hook, or at least backstory.

Or the barmaid who begs the party's cleric for a raise dead, and offers them a magical sword worth more than the cost of a diamond. Now they need to get the diamond - none available in this little town. Or do they use the one the cleric was saving for an emergency? I hope they won't need a raise dead in the dungeon now... And what if that sword was stolen, something they find out, the hard way, a week later?

Do you need these hooks? No, there's a million more hooks out there that don't involve raising the dead.

Ultimately, precious precious diamonds are too far out of the reach of 95% of the masses that they just accept death because they can't change it, except for the rare few who try to take the law into their own hands and steal diamonds or the coin to buy them, or coerce priests to cast the spell. Maybe some of them make dark pacts, or even light pacts, for a resurrection.

4% of the population doesn't have the means to get a raise dead, but at least they might have a shot. They are merchants, business owners, poor noblemen with little viable land or income. They don't have enough, but they know people who do, and maybe can barter for allegiance or services or ownership of their business, etc. Buying a raise dead could seriously ruin these people, but they might be desperate enough to do what it takes, even if that means breaking the law to make up their shortage.

1% of the population might have the cash on hand, or the means enough to get it, or eventually get it if they can arrange a little loan for the time being. These people are the upper crust of society. Instead of driving around in Rolls Royces and shopping at Tiffany's, they flaunt their near immortality as one of the privileges of the elite.

I'm not saying a game world has to work this way. But I am saying that an arbitrary, heavy-handed rule that says "nope, you cant be raised because you have no destiny" is not necessary either. Why not just leave it up to the individual campaign world or the individual DM to decide this stuff?

Where does it make more sense that "Well, we've resurrected Fred 47 times because he's a reckless adventurer with spare coin and an unfulfilled destiny, but we can't resurrect the high priest of Ziggy or the king of Muckamuck because, well, they never had a destiny to fulfill."

So, I respect that some of us want to tell a story where resurrection is a precious, destiny-driven privilege, and others want to tell a story where resurrection is nothing more than a luxurious commodity.

What I don't understand is why we must have a rule to tell us which one to use.

 

[JohnSnow]

Why is it absurd? When diamonds ensure that you can be ressurected (among other uses as spell components) then you can be sure that nobles would fight about diamond deposits a lot harder than normally and that the diamonds are a lot more valuable than when just being used as luxury item.

Sure. Your assumption is fine as far as it goes.

As a matter of fact, it's not only fine but an inherent truth derived from combining human nature with the ruleset. But that's not really that creative, since it not only MIGHT happen, it WOULD happen. So every world with ready resurrection spells that require diamonds has nobles feuding over diamond mines.

Moreover, it raises many, many questions that you don't answer. And those are questions that, pursued logically, will fundamentally alter the world to the point where it's unrecognizable.

Why wouldn't the peasants rise up en masse to take over those diamond deposits?

Who mines the diamonds?

In the real world, diamonds are most common in tropical locales, like africa and south america (it has to do with dead dinosaurs). How does this relate to the assumed pseudo-medieval setting?

Why would the poor labor?

How do you feel about a world where the gap between rich and poor is so vast?

In the real world, a poor man can be smarter or luckier than his social superiors. Likewise, a king can die of the plague. And no matter how rich you are, "you can't take it with you."

Do you want to game in a world where the saying is "Nothing in life is certain except taxes?"

 

[Derren]

Moreover, it raises many, many questions that you don't answer. And those are questions that, pursued logically, will fundamentally alter the world to the point where it's unrecognizable.

It wasn't my intention to explain such adapted worlds fully, but if you insist...

Why wouldn't the peasants rise up en masse to take over those diamond deposits?

Why would they? Sure if the pesants rebel then those mines are a nice target but in the end it wouldn't do the pesants much good. Their rebellion will likely be squashed and the only thing they can do is collapsing the mine, but they can't really destroy the diamonds or use them unless a church supports them.

Who mines the diamonds?

Pesants. Why shouldn't they?

In the real world, diamonds are most common in tropical locales, like africa and south america (it has to do with dead dinosaurs). How does this relate to the assumed pseudo-medieval setting?

Where diamonds can be found depends on the setting.

Why would the poor labor?

Why did the poor labor in any feudal system? Its their job and if they don't do it they will be killed or loose everything and are left to starve.

How do you feel about a world where the gap between rich and poor is so vast?

I think such a world is interesting as it doesn't look like mediveal europe with magic tacked on. Thats a general problem with D&D settings, magic is a addition but doesn't really affect the society. Of course my proposed solution is not for people who want a traditional mediveal world, no matter how unlogical that is.
Also, the gap isn't that much wider than in real life. Most nobles and rich persons already lived longer because they could afford to pay doctors except when things like the plague happened.

In the real world, a poor man can be smarter or luckier than his social superiors. Likewise, a king can die of the plague. And no matter how rich you are, "you can't take it with you."

Do you want to game in a world where the saying is "Nothing in life is certain except taxes?"

Why not? And old age still kills nobles (unless drastic measures are taken). I am rather surprised why you only pick those pesant <-> noble examples as imo the whole ressurection issue as pesants wouldn't be really affected by ressurection at all. They might be a bit more disgruntled because than in reality because nobles can't die early but thats all. The real differences would be in politics and warefare.