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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agemegos" data-source="post: 1539698" data-attributes="member: 18377">Good point. In my campaign the Dead waited in a vast queue, which was advancing slowly enough that one might plausibly maintain that only world-wide use of reincarnation and revivification magic caused anyone to leave it at all. Some people maintained that the Dead were advancing to judgement, and that only the wickedness of the world since the collapse of the Empire had caused the huge backlog to form (these people argued that the 200-year practical limit on True Resurrection was the result of the fact that people who had been dead for about 200 years reached the head of the queue and got judged). Other people maintained that God was not going to start judgement until the end of the world, and that the Dead were simply waiting in line for Judgement Day (except those who came back, of course). And the druidic people believed that there was no Judgement Day coming, and that those who ended up in the queue were stuck there until someone cast Reincarnation for them. So there was a fair incentive for anyone to come back who could.But under other arrangements for the afterlife things might be different. If the Dead are waiting in limbo for Judgement Day most will cheerfully come back. But if the Good have gone to their reward they will be most unwilling to come back (especially if their reward involves responsible duties, as I would argue it must to reward the truly Good). And if the wicked are being punished justly for their sins they will be  very anxious to return if given the possibilities.Which could mean that revivification magic would only work on (a) evil people, and (b) those who nobly agree to postpone their enjoyment of Paradise for a specific and sufficiently important reason. The former are likely to be much more common. In general revivification might therefore be rather dangerous, and the religious authorities would never engage in it without clear signs from God. Or perhaps a brief taste of the realities of Hell, together with the certain knowledge that death is inescapable at the expiration of natural lifespan, might mean that most evil people who are re-vivified face the strongest possible incentive to mend their ways, so that everyone who is raised is (or at least starts out) determined to be better than they were. Underr those circumstances certain Good people might feel it to be their duty to raise and resurrect all the Evil people they can, so that those Evil people have a chance at being redeemed.Easy revivification of the dead is full of good stuff, consequence-wise.</blockquote>

Verification