Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[hong]

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.

I'm kinda baffled why you're even arguing then. Nobody has ever said that the rulebooks will contain specific reasons why some people are resurrectable and some aren't. Keith Baker said himself up above, that the "destiny" thing was just informal language on his part, not something in the rules themselves.

 

[Clawhound]

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.

(IMHO, I WANT my players acting like the A-Team. They're frikin heroes already. Don't be weanies!!!)

Where I see including/not including some clause is that either the presence or absence of such a clause says something. If the clause is not in a spell or ritual, then the physics of the world does not include such a thing. The default view of the game is that such a thing is possible. Now every game has it, and removing it feels restricting to the players who expect it.

If it is included in a base rule, then others will feel restricted by this rule.

So either way, it has an impact.

 

[Dausuul]

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?

Because raise dead has tremendous impact on the fundamentals of society. Fireball doesn't imply a change in the very nature of the world; it's just another way to blow stuff up. We can do that in reality, we just need a bit more gadgetry. Dragons are more of a stretch, but still, a dragon is not so different from a fighter jet in terms of its capability to affect the world around it.

Offhand, the only spell I can think of that compares to raise dead in its implications for the game world is teleport. And that, too, looks like it's getting some hefty restrictions in 4E.

Now, can you construct an imaginary society that incorporates both of these things and is still internally consistent? Sure. But you have to build that society from the ground up. The permanence of death is the foundation for all kinds of traditions, legends, laws, behavior patterns, social structures, and on and on and on. (The necessity of passing through points in between when going from A to B has fewer social but almost as many geopolitical implications, and more strategic/military ones.) You can't just slap 3E raise dead onto a boilerplate medieval-fantasy world and have it make sense.

As Stogoe said, in previous editions the Immortal-Oligarchy rule was the default. Apparently the 4E designers concluded that most people don't have much interest in building their game worlds around the ability to raise the dead.

Again, I say this is a campaign setting decision. ... But this variance should be up to the DM without having it explicitly ruled in the core rulebooks.

There will be a default behavior for raise dead, no matter what, and that default is determined by whatever is or is not in the core books. Leaving the restriction out carries just as much weight as putting it in. The 4E designers have decided that the default should be "resurrection is flat-out impossible for 99% of people in 99% of circumstances," and I have to say I agree with them.

If you don't like the limitation, you will have to house-rule it out of your campaigns, true. But that requires no more effort than for me to house-rule it into mine. In fact it requires less effort, because you only have to strike out an existing rule whereas I would have to make up a new one. And since I very much doubt this particular rule has any game-balance implications (since it applies to NPCs only), striking it out should be as simple as saying "It doesn't work this way in my world."

One of us is going to have to house-rule. There's no way around that. 4E's requirement that you house-rule is no more onerous than 3E's requirement that I do so.

 

[wgreen]

(IMHO, I WANT my players acting like the A-Team. They're frikin heroes already. Don't be weanies!!!)

SUBSCIRBE!!!!!!!1

-Will!

 

[Immolate]

This rule change won't impact my game since we haven't allowed resurrection since first edition because (we believe) that it is the ultimate form of cheese. Of course there are ramifications to such a decision, such as having to deal with character replacement rules. Our concept has evolved to: either restart at first level or create a character with half the xp of the party average. Another issue was making characters more durable so that they didn't die quite so easily. We extended the unconscious range from -10 to -10+(constitution bonus). Add some Arms Law critical hits to that and you have characters dying several times in a year-long campaign, on average. Only once have we had a TPK, and that in the climactic battle.

I like the changes in 4E, and I'm glad that they're moving to make death more meaningful within the rules, and I also appreciate the front-loading of hit points and big changes in death rules to make it less capricious, but we'll probably still houserule it away and houserule in the crits. The good news is that we shouldn't have to houserule out the 487 other instances of cheesey goodness that didn't make the trip from 3.5 to 4E.

 

[KingCrab]

I can see destiny in two ways.

1. Everyone has a destiny ahead because whatever they end up choosing to do becomes their destiny (people shape their own destiny.) Here everyone can be raised.

2. No one has a specific destiny as nothing is predetermined. (Similar but a different way of looking at it.) Here no one can be raised.

I'm a firm believer in choice, and people controlling their path. Never is there something that someone absolutely has to do in the future because it is destined. I think it makes the game exciting to know your path is not destined.

 

[Dausuul]

I can see destiny in two ways.

1. Everyone has a destiny ahead because whatever they end up choosing to do becomes their destiny (people shape their own destiny.) Here everyone can be raised.

2. No one has a specific destiny as nothing is predetermined. (Similar but a different way of looking at it.) Here no one can be raised.

I'm a firm believer in choice, and people controlling their path. Never is there something that someone absolutely has to do in the future because it is destined. I think it makes the game exciting to know your path is not destined.

Third possibility: Some people have a destiny, but if you have one, it's what you were meant to do. You have the choice whether to actually do it or not--and you can be prevented from doing it. (After all, if you die and nobody rezzes you, you can't very well fulfill your destiny even if you've got one.)

The powers of Fate push you toward your destiny, and will help guide you back to the path, even to the extent of letting you return from death; but the choice is always yours.

 

[Just Another User]

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.

FWIW, my simulationistic approach is this:

Cleric can raise people from dead, but most of the times they choose not too. Clericis have high wisdom after all, they can see all the problem you mentioned, and others more. so Raise Dead is not a "purchasable commodity" except in the sense that you must pay for the material components. if you want for a cleric to raise your friend you must give him a exceptionally good reason. Something like "it is the only one that have a hope to stop the demoinc invasion" could be a good one, for example.
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.
PCs would have a little more leeway (call it my concession to gamism ) but not even too much, a cleric that would go around casting Raise dead too openly could put himself in some bad situations with his or someone else church. "abusing" god-given powers is a thing that religious people rarely see under a postivie light.

And the best part is, this is not even a house rule, it is just fluff, but it is good fluff, if I can say so myself.

 

[Celebrim]

Because raise dead has tremendous impact on the fundamentals of society. Fireball doesn't imply a change in the very nature of the world; it's just another way to blow stuff up.

Well, sure, if you have alot of other ways to blow stuff up, fireball doesn't make a big impact. But if you don't have alot of ways to blow stuff up, fireball has a huge impact on society.

The existence of fireball makes tradional ancient warfare very difficult, because its based on undergoing alot of training in order to be able to perform efficiently in a very small dense formation so as to achieve a local concentration of force. But fireball has the same sort of impact on tactics as rifled muskets and grapeshot. Formation tactics are close to obselete, only commanders might not realize it yet. If fireball is reasonably prevalent, then armies have to adopt skirmishers as the main line of battle rather than solid formations.

I'm a historical military buff, so fireball's presense causes me more psychological grief than 'raise dead'.

 

[DandD]

Magic in general would cause serious changes on society, be it civilian or militarian.