Raise Dead: A nice big bone to the simulationists

[Majoru Oakheart]

In the light of the 4e resurrection rule I see the typical reaction being more like a third world peasant whose wife is sick and needs an organ transplant. Maybe expensive high-tech western medicine could save her but he doesn't know anyone who has been similarly saved personally, and neither does anyone in his village. Nor could his entire village afford the cost of either the transport or the treatment itself, and there is no guarantee that it would work.

The above analogy is of limited use, as for the fantasy peasant there is no tv, internet or phones, he's almost certainly illiterate and dependent on word of mouth and stories to learn anything.

The idea is that in the default D&D world that only "recently" a human nation that spanned almost the whole world (or continent) has fallen. Before that, they lasted a long time. Long enough to create roads all over the land, promote trade for hundreds or thousands of years, spread knowledge and magic all over the place, and so on.

When this kingdom fell, it left cities or states to fend for themselves without an overreaching government in place to support them anymore. Some fell themselves, leaving large areas of land without a government at all, but with the people still living there.

These people remember when there were people around who could bring back the dead. There might even be a couple of people left in their towns/villages who have the knowledge to do so. Either that or they know of a nearby city where it can be done.

The world may not have the internet, cell phones, and the like. It does have sending stones capable of instantly transmitting messages from one side of the planet to the other. Even assuming you don't want such a thing to be common, most D&D worlds do have one major factor over the real world: Thousands and thousands of years of history at about the same "technology" level.

In the default world, the tieflings had an empire spanning half the world for thousands of years where they were capable of bringing back the dead all the time. So did the dragonborn. So did the humans. Plus, there were older empires that were even more grand.

Unlike the modern day world where the ability to actually save someone from most diseases has been around only for the last 100 years, the ability to magically cure disease, wounds, even death has been around 10,000 to 20,000 years. And it has touched nearly every place on the planet at least 4 or 5 times.

I certainly see it as something almost everyone in the world has at least heard of being a possibility. The knowledge to do so may even be passed down from generation to generation. It is likely filled with rumors and half forgotten truths. People might(wrongly) believe that only royalty can come back to life or that only those in the prime of their life can return.

 

[Aenghus]

re resurrection magic

...
I certainly see it as something almost everyone in the world has at least heard of being a possibility. The knowledge to do so may even be passed down from generation to generation. It is likely filled with rumors and half forgotten truths. People might(wrongly) believe that only royalty can come back to life or that only those in the prime of their life can return.

My comments were in the light of the new 4e rules on resurrection magic, where it no longer works on everyone automatically. From what has been announced so far, resurrection won't work on people in the heroic tier (1st-10th level) and is difficult to access for those in the paragon tier (11-20th). This puts it forever past the reach of peasants and low level NPCs, regardles of how rich or influential. Direct divine intervention could do it, but this seems to be less common in the 4e take on things as well.


Change the rules, and you change the world.


(Well, I'm not as literal about ruiles as I used to be, but still think this way).

Change is much easier when starting a campaign from scratch in a new world. Changing an existing world can be more difficult, especially if major events depend on the the exact functioning of the old rules.

 

[Clawhound]

That's where your conception of modeling is important. If your physics is based on the rules, then you have an issue. If your physics is based on some setting ideal, then a change in the rules only changes how any particular event is modeled.

Thus, why settings are drifting into fluff territory, as settings have an internal integrity different from the rules base.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

"You can only be raised if you have an unfulfilled destiny."

Just wanted to note that I've been suggesting this for... well, a couple years now. Specifically that all ability to resurrect the dead has never been intended as anything but an in-game means of achieving the meta-game goal of not letting a PC death destroy the fun or dynamics of a campaign. By simply letting the DM assert that any NPC is resurrected only if he wants to let him be resurrected to MAINTAIN a plot line or campaign structure, thus preventing resurrection from being UNIVERSALLY applied to every Tom, Dick, and Harry and collapsing a game world under the broken logic of it.

DM fiat? Of COURSE it is. As long as players continue to decide for themselves whether their PC "has a destiny to fulfull", the DM gets to limit it's logical use beyond the PC's only insofar as he sees fit. I don't see how ANYONE could have cause to complain about this. ASSUMING that the DM does not get to decide this success or failure for PC's (beyond mere availability of such magic) it simply puts into written form what a lot of myopic DM's should have recognized long ago. Most problems with resurrection magic were really with its application BEYOND the PC's, not WITH the PC's.

 

[Dausuul]

My comments were in the light of the new 4e rules on resurrection magic, where it no longer works on everyone automatically. From what has been announced so far, resurrection won't work on people in the heroic tier (1st-10th level) and is difficult to access for those in the paragon tier (11-20th). This puts it forever past the reach of peasants and low level NPCs, regardles of how rich or influential. Direct divine intervention could do it, but this seems to be less common in the 4e take on things as well.

Can you link to anything indicating there is an actual rule that resurrection magic doesn't work on Heroic-tier characters? I know we've been told that if your character dies in Heroic tier, you roll up a new one--but that doesn't mean resurrection is impossible for such characters, just that it's not something you expect to have available at that level.

If your 1st-level character dies in 3.5E, there's no rule saying raise dead won't work on him, but between the hefty material component and the need to find a 9th-level cleric, it's still pretty unrealistic to expect to get him rezzed.

 

[hong]

Moving back to the idea of the bereaved NPC peasant whose wife has died, I would generally prefer a world where the possibility of actual resurrection never even occurs to him. He may implore the gods to bring her back, but doesn't expect that to happen.

In the light of the 4e resurrection rule I see the typical reaction being more like a third world peasant whose wife is sick and needs an organ transplant. Maybe expensive high-tech western medicine could save her but he doesn't know anyone who has been similarly saved personally, and neither does anyone in his village. Nor could his entire village afford the cost of either the transport or the treatment itself, and there is no guarantee that it would work.

If you could handle it in 3E, you can handle it in 4E. If anything, 4E is closer to what you're after than 3E.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

My comments were in the light of the new 4e rules on resurrection magic, where it no longer works on everyone automatically. From what has been announced so far, resurrection won't work on people in the heroic tier (1st-10th level) and is difficult to access for those in the paragon tier (11-20th). This puts it forever past the reach of peasants and low level NPCs, regardles of how rich or influential. Direct divine intervention could do it, but this seems to be less common in the 4e take on things as well.

You assume too much about what you don't know yet.

Change is much easier when starting a campaign from scratch in a new world. Changing an existing world can be more difficult, especially if major events depend on the the exact functioning of the old rules.

True. And I think this is one of the (many) good reasons to start a new campaign with 4e rather than try to convert an old one. The paradigm is different and it creates a slightly different functioning world.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

I am still having a problem seeing the difference between "NPCs are raised if the DM says so" and "NPCs can't be raised unless the DM says so".

Was there a problem with NPCs running around behind your back getting raised from the dead when you weren't looking?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

And I think you underestimate the importance of the germ theory of disease.

The importance of clean water is not incompatible with the germ theory of disease. Indeed, if one believes in the germ theory of disease, one has every reason to support access to clean water.

There is little doubt that cholera is caused by a germ. There is also little doubt that the cause of developing cholera for most people, historically, was their social status when this status was instrumental to their access to clean water.

 

[Lackhand]

I am still having a problem seeing the difference between "NPCs are raised if the DM says so" and "NPCs can't be raised unless the DM says so".

Was there a problem with NPCs running around behind your back getting raised from the dead when you weren't looking?

I would rather have to work to explain precisely why person A was able to be raised from the dead...
... than have to work to explain why person B resolutely refuses to be raised from the dead.