Raise Dead and its Social Implications
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random user
First Post
Doesn't raise dead have a material component of diamonds worth at least 5000gp?
Using the basic conversion of $40-50 per gp mentioned in the building an inn thread, you're looking at $200-$250k per raise dead (and more for anything better). Even if you don't want to convert it to modern day prices (or feel the conversion rate is inaccurate) 5000gp gets you a "grand house" which is probably at least $200k (unless you live in Palo Alto in which case it's $1.4m).
Your average peasent isn't going to be able to afford that. Even the moderately well off aren't going to be raising dead often.
I think assassinations of people up to moderate stature would take place as normal. It's only once you get to Duke's, kings, etc that the thought of raising the dead is going to be an option.
Even then, I would create a history around it, or perhaps just a fable.
There was a kingdom where everyone loved the king. But a neighboring kingdom was jealous and sent assassins to kill the beloved king. They were able to succeed, but the kingdom loved him so they used the royal treasury to pay for a ressurection for the king. The 10,000gp was a small price to pay for having the king back.
Wroth with anger, the neighboring kingdom ordered assassinations of the kings friends, advisors, and family. The king, remembering the fealty of his folk in bringing him back to life, ordered that resurrections be made to those assassinated because they died as a direct result of the decision to bring him back.
Soon however, the royal treasury was mostly depleted, as while the kingdom had been a prosperous kingdom, the practice of paying for resurrections added up. People began to resent that they were being taxed to bring back priviledged people, while the poor people's friends were left without recourse.
The king had to come to the realization -- enough was enough. If they king continued to pay for ressurections it would bleed his kingdom dry. The dead would have to stay dead. But it was too late. With much of the treasury gone, the neighboring kingdom made war upon him and he did not have enough gold to defend his kingdom. The neighboring kingdom had been content with just killing a king, but ended up with both the kings life as well as his kingdom.
Hrm, ok, well, that fable could have been told better, but it's late at night and I'm too tired to polish it tonight.
But basically the cost of ressurecting people is this sort slippery slope in which assassinations can be used to bleed a kingdom or household. People have realized that it's better off for everyone if they agree that you aren't going to generally ressurect people because then you are just expensively staving off the inevitable.
And sure, one person who gets assassinated can take care not to be put into a situation where he can be assassinated again, but then the assassin can just turn to a family member etc and basically bleed him dry. It's very hard to prevent deaths for everyone you care for.
And in the eyes of most peasents, using their taxes to (in their mind) frivously raise a member of royalty is going to cause unrest. Of course, if it's not done too often, it will probably just be some grumbling. But do it often enough and there is a good chance you're going to have to opress them more or give them some circuses.
In any event, I think that even if the spell exists and isn't modified, I don't think it would have a huge impact on the game world.
Now, greater teleport, on the other hand... but perhaps that's best left for another thread.
Using the basic conversion of $40-50 per gp mentioned in the building an inn thread, you're looking at $200-$250k per raise dead (and more for anything better). Even if you don't want to convert it to modern day prices (or feel the conversion rate is inaccurate) 5000gp gets you a "grand house" which is probably at least $200k (unless you live in Palo Alto in which case it's $1.4m).
Your average peasent isn't going to be able to afford that. Even the moderately well off aren't going to be raising dead often.
I think assassinations of people up to moderate stature would take place as normal. It's only once you get to Duke's, kings, etc that the thought of raising the dead is going to be an option.
Even then, I would create a history around it, or perhaps just a fable.
There was a kingdom where everyone loved the king. But a neighboring kingdom was jealous and sent assassins to kill the beloved king. They were able to succeed, but the kingdom loved him so they used the royal treasury to pay for a ressurection for the king. The 10,000gp was a small price to pay for having the king back.
Wroth with anger, the neighboring kingdom ordered assassinations of the kings friends, advisors, and family. The king, remembering the fealty of his folk in bringing him back to life, ordered that resurrections be made to those assassinated because they died as a direct result of the decision to bring him back.
Soon however, the royal treasury was mostly depleted, as while the kingdom had been a prosperous kingdom, the practice of paying for resurrections added up. People began to resent that they were being taxed to bring back priviledged people, while the poor people's friends were left without recourse.
The king had to come to the realization -- enough was enough. If they king continued to pay for ressurections it would bleed his kingdom dry. The dead would have to stay dead. But it was too late. With much of the treasury gone, the neighboring kingdom made war upon him and he did not have enough gold to defend his kingdom. The neighboring kingdom had been content with just killing a king, but ended up with both the kings life as well as his kingdom.
Hrm, ok, well, that fable could have been told better, but it's late at night and I'm too tired to polish it tonight.
But basically the cost of ressurecting people is this sort slippery slope in which assassinations can be used to bleed a kingdom or household. People have realized that it's better off for everyone if they agree that you aren't going to generally ressurect people because then you are just expensively staving off the inevitable.
And sure, one person who gets assassinated can take care not to be put into a situation where he can be assassinated again, but then the assassin can just turn to a family member etc and basically bleed him dry. It's very hard to prevent deaths for everyone you care for.
And in the eyes of most peasents, using their taxes to (in their mind) frivously raise a member of royalty is going to cause unrest. Of course, if it's not done too often, it will probably just be some grumbling. But do it often enough and there is a good chance you're going to have to opress them more or give them some circuses.
In any event, I think that even if the spell exists and isn't modified, I don't think it would have a huge impact on the game world.
Now, greater teleport, on the other hand... but perhaps that's best left for another thread.
random user said:
Yes, but a Stole of Raise Dead (12/day) "only" requires fifty such gems. If a GM were to want such items in his or her campaign, their recommended price would be 444,400 gp. At an interest rate of say 10% that's 44,440 gp per year to amortise it. Say 250 working days per year: 178 gps per day: 15 gp per Raise Dead (provided that you are serving a sufficiently large comunity as to require 72 funerals per week).
Similarly, a Cope of True Resurrection (12/day) has a recommended retail price of 910,960 gp, so under the same assumptions it could amortise its cost at 31 gp per True Resurrection. That's cheaper than a healer's kit. Cheaper than a saddle horse. Much cheaper than a king's suit of clothes.
Tharen the Damned
First Post
What about the Dead?
Do they want to be raised?
Some who die of natural causes may not want to come back.
Their time on the mortal plane is up and they let their spirit freely leave the body.
Take up the burden of life again?
Nope, thank you very much.
What about the Gods?
Do they give permission to raise someone of different alignment or different faith?
Son you want to raise the wizard Morgl, follower of the Goddess of Magic?
Well, don´t they have their own priests these days?
If Death is an antropomorphic entity, will he/she let her customers go?
IMC (I use the Pantheon of Book of the Righteous and a homebrew world) Raising the Dead is only possible if the person in case died of an unatural cuase and if the person is willing to come back. Sometimes the Gods themselves intervine and don´t let their beloved followers go back.
Furthermore, as the ability to raise the dead is scarce, it has mayor social implications for raiser and raised.
Churches may demand a steep price or the raised ind money or deeds.
This gives the churches a lot of power and even the Kings family will think twice if they want to raise the old king.
Do they want to be raised?
Some who die of natural causes may not want to come back.
Their time on the mortal plane is up and they let their spirit freely leave the body.
Take up the burden of life again?
Nope, thank you very much.
What about the Gods?
Do they give permission to raise someone of different alignment or different faith?
Son you want to raise the wizard Morgl, follower of the Goddess of Magic?
Well, don´t they have their own priests these days?
If Death is an antropomorphic entity, will he/she let her customers go?
IMC (I use the Pantheon of Book of the Righteous and a homebrew world) Raising the Dead is only possible if the person in case died of an unatural cuase and if the person is willing to come back. Sometimes the Gods themselves intervine and don´t let their beloved followers go back.
Furthermore, as the ability to raise the dead is scarce, it has mayor social implications for raiser and raised.
Churches may demand a steep price or the raised ind money or deeds.
This gives the churches a lot of power and even the Kings family will think twice if they want to raise the old king.
The social implication of revivification magic is one of the reasons the DM of our campaign has made it pretty rare. In-game it's handled thus:
There are very few true clerics in any given church. Most priests are simply very devout folks. In major temples (usually found only in large cities, but occasionally there are important religious sites elsewhere), there is usually one or two clerics. Other classes can also be priests without gaining clerical spells. Druids are equally rare.
Only certain gods grant revivification spells. They are generally limited to the goddess of death (who is a neutral sort of judge of the dead type in our game), the goddess of life, and possibly the god of healing, maybe the god of forests. I'm not entirely sure because it's only come up once, in one game set in the world.
In any case, most good people, including adventurers (who are also quite rare), wouldn't want to come back from their eternal reward. There are few whose unfinished business is important enough to them and to the gods in question that they would want to and be able to come back.
Neutral people are reincarnated (not as the spell, more like actual reincarnation). Because the whole purpose of the cosmology revolves around sorting and refining souls into pure good and pure evil to see which is stronger. Even many of the gods will eventually be sorted, and the ones on the winning side will get to make remake the universe in their image. Not that it's going to happen any time while people are still playing the campaign.
I'm not sure how it works for evil people. They're consigned to torment in the afterlife to scourge the last bits of good from their souls, so they would certainly have an incentive to return to life, but I don't know if any evil gods provide revivification spells (although the goddess of cold and undeath might allow you a different path back to the world).
Anyway, the major plot of one of the campaigns that's currently running (albeit slowly as the players and DM live a 5-hour drive apart) is a group of villains trying to create and arcane means of resurrection in order to bring back a majorly powerful evil tyrant from history, which would be too easy, and nearly impossible to prevent if all gods handed out resurrection spells to their high level priests and there were a lot of high-level priests in the setting.
Besides providing cool plot points, this system also keeps a healthy fear of death in the players in a game that doesn't have a high mortality rate.
There are very few true clerics in any given church. Most priests are simply very devout folks. In major temples (usually found only in large cities, but occasionally there are important religious sites elsewhere), there is usually one or two clerics. Other classes can also be priests without gaining clerical spells. Druids are equally rare.
Only certain gods grant revivification spells. They are generally limited to the goddess of death (who is a neutral sort of judge of the dead type in our game), the goddess of life, and possibly the god of healing, maybe the god of forests. I'm not entirely sure because it's only come up once, in one game set in the world.
In any case, most good people, including adventurers (who are also quite rare), wouldn't want to come back from their eternal reward. There are few whose unfinished business is important enough to them and to the gods in question that they would want to and be able to come back.
Neutral people are reincarnated (not as the spell, more like actual reincarnation). Because the whole purpose of the cosmology revolves around sorting and refining souls into pure good and pure evil to see which is stronger. Even many of the gods will eventually be sorted, and the ones on the winning side will get to make remake the universe in their image. Not that it's going to happen any time while people are still playing the campaign.
I'm not sure how it works for evil people. They're consigned to torment in the afterlife to scourge the last bits of good from their souls, so they would certainly have an incentive to return to life, but I don't know if any evil gods provide revivification spells (although the goddess of cold and undeath might allow you a different path back to the world).
Anyway, the major plot of one of the campaigns that's currently running (albeit slowly as the players and DM live a 5-hour drive apart) is a group of villains trying to create and arcane means of resurrection in order to bring back a majorly powerful evil tyrant from history, which would be too easy, and nearly impossible to prevent if all gods handed out resurrection spells to their high level priests and there were a lot of high-level priests in the setting.
Besides providing cool plot points, this system also keeps a healthy fear of death in the players in a game that doesn't have a high mortality rate.
Presto2112
Explorer
What my DM does is this:
Raise Dead is in fact permitted in his game setting (found here), but at an extremely heavy price. The way he works it is that when a mortal casts Raise Dead or another for of resurrection, the gods become quite upset with the request, and demand a soul in exchange for the one raised - usually the soul of the caster, but not always.
Oh, and resurrection is an immensely expensive prospect as well.
Raise Dead is in fact permitted in his game setting (found here), but at an extremely heavy price. The way he works it is that when a mortal casts Raise Dead or another for of resurrection, the gods become quite upset with the request, and demand a soul in exchange for the one raised - usually the soul of the caster, but not always.
Oh, and resurrection is an immensely expensive prospect as well.
The Gryphon
First Post
I wouldn't allow it to be that cheap myself. I'd either limit the amount of uses to 5/day [that seems to be an assumed limit for uses per day] or charge the material cost for an unlimited use item [components x 100] as an absolute minimum.Agemegos said:
So Raise Dead would cost 694,400gp and the True Resurrection would cost 3,160,960gp (it would cost 1,910,960gp anyway as the component cost for True Resurrection is 25,000gp x 50 = 1,250,000gp) or limit the items to 5/day at your cost and the corrected True Resurrection cost.
Either way they will take a long time to make, and technically they're both epic items which also adds to the construction problems.
Firstly IMC magic users capable of rasing the dead are EXTREMLY rare. Firstly most priests are just Expert/Aristocrats (depending on their socal position, a country priest would be all expert while those living in cities are mostly Aristocrats). Even the most powerful kings in the land dont have access to that kind of power (at least not on any sort of regular basis).
Secondly I've gotten rid of the Resurection spells, replacing them with the spell Dark Resurection (from CoC). This represents the sundering of the barrier between the worlds needed to bring someone from the dead (and the terrible results of such interference). Rase Dead works beacuse it can reach characters still "in transit" to their final resting place, once a character has passed beyond the Veil then only the darkest arts can reach them, tearing them from their final resting place. Both of these spells are seen as Necromancy; and as such if knowledge of the spell got out both the caster and the subject would be subject to severe persecution.
Secondly I've gotten rid of the Resurection spells, replacing them with the spell Dark Resurection (from CoC). This represents the sundering of the barrier between the worlds needed to bring someone from the dead (and the terrible results of such interference). Rase Dead works beacuse it can reach characters still "in transit" to their final resting place, once a character has passed beyond the Veil then only the darkest arts can reach them, tearing them from their final resting place. Both of these spells are seen as Necromancy; and as such if knowledge of the spell got out both the caster and the subject would be subject to severe persecution.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
The god of course always has final say in whether or not a cleric's spell (any spell) even works or not. Or if he's allowed to get it that day. Once in a while, a PC will say 'OK, I get up that morning, do my prayers and whatever ritual is appropriate for the day. I'll just take what spells I normally take', and I'll say 'The spell for creating water doesn't come to you' (or whatever spell). That usually gets their attention quickly, because it's a quasi-subtle hint that for whatever reason, it doesn't fit your god's idea of what you should be doing to carry that spell that day. Pennances are usually done the same way; a priest who did not heal someone he should have might find that when he heals himself that it leaves scars (that may or may not later fade) or that he can only heal, say, women and children.
Once in a great while a cleric may get a spell he didn't specifically request. That's usually a Sign of the slap-in-the-face variety.
Ressurection of, say, a King is an important matter. In most campaigns I've run, rulers have some part in the divine plan for the world. They're important in the eyes of the gods, and though it's possible for a ruler to come to power in all the normal ways (including murder, deception, etc) they still have some degree of 'importance'. Succession is a very important thing, not to be interfered with lightly. Thus, a King usually may not be ressurected if the spell is thrown unless the death was untimely, the work of oppossing evil forces, or was in some way unnatural.
Lesser folk may or may not be granted such dispensation. Usually if they are, it's taken as a sign by the gods that that person is somehow needed in the various invisible struggles that go on. Most campaigns also have a general tenet that the work of the gods is somewhat mysterious, so they're also used to the idea that they may never know why a person is allowed to be brought back.
Once in a great while a cleric may get a spell he didn't specifically request. That's usually a Sign of the slap-in-the-face variety.
Ressurection of, say, a King is an important matter. In most campaigns I've run, rulers have some part in the divine plan for the world. They're important in the eyes of the gods, and though it's possible for a ruler to come to power in all the normal ways (including murder, deception, etc) they still have some degree of 'importance'. Succession is a very important thing, not to be interfered with lightly. Thus, a King usually may not be ressurected if the spell is thrown unless the death was untimely, the work of oppossing evil forces, or was in some way unnatural.
Lesser folk may or may not be granted such dispensation. Usually if they are, it's taken as a sign by the gods that that person is somehow needed in the various invisible struggles that go on. Most campaigns also have a general tenet that the work of the gods is somewhat mysterious, so they're also used to the idea that they may never know why a person is allowed to be brought back.
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
In my own game, which is nearing it's end after 3+ years, we've had many deaths, and many revivifications.
Early on in the campaign, I was dropping in little imperfections in the raised character -- the beheaded dwarf's beard never grew back (which was a great embarrassment to him, until he finally had it restored long after the event), the Elf who had been killed by trogs and stuck under a log to rot (I stole the idea from the way Alligators do the same thing, because they like the taste of rotted meat) was recovered and raised, but whenever he got nervous, the smell of his nervous sweat was the reek of rotting flesh. That sort of thing.
But after a while, as the PCs got into the teens, it became impossible to keep up the same routine, and it was quietly dropped.
The thing is that at the higher levels there are a lot of spells that will kill a character outright -- Power Word Kill, all the death magic stuff, etc. Death happens a lot more, and is not just about getting beat down to below zero. One bad saving throw, and the game is over for your 15th level character. It seems to me that if you're going to consider yanking raise dead/resurrection/true resurrection spells from your game, you're going to need to also remove the death magic that balances it.
My solution for my new campaign is to pay a lot more attention to the material components. In the past they just had to pay the money for the item, but in the new campaign they're going to have to actually try to find the very expensive rubies that they want -- and very often those that have them won't want to sell them, because they own them as a hedge against death themselves . . .
Raise dead is just diamond dust, I believe, so that one isn't so hard, but it also requires a whole, fresh body. But once you get into the resurrection spells, you need a ruby worth something like 5k or 25k, IIRC. Those rubies will be very hard to come by in my game, and not just something that you can find in the market.
Oh, and one other thing I've done in my current campaign -- one of my PCs, a kinda fragile Elf Archer, has been killed and come back far more times than anyone else in the party -- we make jokes about having punch cards for him, the 13th one is free, blah blah blah. But what I REALLY did was have him come back as the deathless PrC from the Book of Exalted Deeds -- I forget the name of it all of a sudden, but it comes with a 0 level, which just adds the deathless template to the character -- and now he's a dead guy, walking around trying to complete his last quest, his body so used to beign revived that it has forgotten to wait for the resurrection before getting back up on it's feet.
-j
Early on in the campaign, I was dropping in little imperfections in the raised character -- the beheaded dwarf's beard never grew back (which was a great embarrassment to him, until he finally had it restored long after the event), the Elf who had been killed by trogs and stuck under a log to rot (I stole the idea from the way Alligators do the same thing, because they like the taste of rotted meat) was recovered and raised, but whenever he got nervous, the smell of his nervous sweat was the reek of rotting flesh. That sort of thing.
But after a while, as the PCs got into the teens, it became impossible to keep up the same routine, and it was quietly dropped.
The thing is that at the higher levels there are a lot of spells that will kill a character outright -- Power Word Kill, all the death magic stuff, etc. Death happens a lot more, and is not just about getting beat down to below zero. One bad saving throw, and the game is over for your 15th level character. It seems to me that if you're going to consider yanking raise dead/resurrection/true resurrection spells from your game, you're going to need to also remove the death magic that balances it.
My solution for my new campaign is to pay a lot more attention to the material components. In the past they just had to pay the money for the item, but in the new campaign they're going to have to actually try to find the very expensive rubies that they want -- and very often those that have them won't want to sell them, because they own them as a hedge against death themselves . . .
Raise dead is just diamond dust, I believe, so that one isn't so hard, but it also requires a whole, fresh body. But once you get into the resurrection spells, you need a ruby worth something like 5k or 25k, IIRC. Those rubies will be very hard to come by in my game, and not just something that you can find in the market.
Oh, and one other thing I've done in my current campaign -- one of my PCs, a kinda fragile Elf Archer, has been killed and come back far more times than anyone else in the party -- we make jokes about having punch cards for him, the 13th one is free, blah blah blah. But what I REALLY did was have him come back as the deathless PrC from the Book of Exalted Deeds -- I forget the name of it all of a sudden, but it comes with a 0 level, which just adds the deathless template to the character -- and now he's a dead guy, walking around trying to complete his last quest, his body so used to beign revived that it has forgotten to wait for the resurrection before getting back up on it's feet.
-j
