RAISE DEAD: get rid of it and make D&D better

[Slife]

The only way the character can die is for the player to specifically risk it, to say that if his character dies in this combat he's dead forever, but if he prevails he achieves a specific goal.

Or, even better, if he dies he stays dead, but still manages to succeed at his goal. Which takes a bit of the sting out of it. Rather than a wounded Sir Galahad dying at the third orc coming after the rest of the party, he staggers back to his feet and holds them off long enough for everyone else to escape.

 

[Emirikol]

I've been thinking about this more since seeing some meaningful responses. WHy not just remove "DEATH" from D&D. You go to neg 10. So what? You're just going to get raised anyways. Why go through some artificial boring part of the game to find a cleric (or make your 9th level guy in your party cast it)? WHy not just pay the money and get it over with?

Raise dead is also boring THere's nothing dramatic about it. It's a part of the game that, among the other things I listed, annoying. Death is a mere inconvenience and the RICH can afford to get their resurrections on It's so "real world" in that respect

Try a new character..it might be refreshing

Of course the players in my one game where there is no Raise Dead may have another opinion. The other game..well it's typical D&D.

jh

 

[Remathilis]

I played Star Wars Revised d20 for over a year (got to tenth level, more on that). No res in THAT, and there is plenty of ways to die. (Vitalty/Wound vs. lightsaber, nuff said). So I'll use that as my baseline for "no-res" D&D...

No more calculating the amount of gold, spell components, or whatever.

Unless you are removing Expensive Spell Components (ESC), I fail to see how the raise spells will fix this. My group has began a cartel on the purchase of 100 gp pearls, for example...

No more whining about the loss of level.

Unless you are dumping energy drain, this one is hanging around too...

MORE players using their noggins knowing that they're not going to be able to run back to daddy to get resurrected.

Nope. You get two types of players usually in a "dungeon crawl" style game without res...
a.) Turtles who stock on every magical and mundane protection available, search every 5' square, spend 15 minutes discussing strategy at every door, and run as soon as things fall apart in any given encounter or such. The game begins to feel like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", but without the funny parts...
b.) Battering Rams who tweak their characters to strike first, strike hard, strike often. They squeeze every last bonus out of a build, favor power-combos, and whose sole goal in combat is to kill it with SWAT style precision and power before whatever monster can act (or act often).

Both of them do this for the same reason: there are no second chances. So they prep for the worst, either with a good defense or a good offense (or both!) because that's it. It can lead to a bigger powergaming problem then with Raises IN, since if Players know that they may have a second chance, they are more likely to take risks, and thus advance the game along.

MORE players having to come up with more than one character concept in their lifetime.

Um... Ever heard of Knuckles the Rogue? How bout Knuckles the 2nd, Knuckles the 3rd, Knuckles the 4th...

This goes doubly for "Bob, Knuckles just died. Roll up what you want, but we don't have a rogue right now..."

LESS worrying about death.

BUZZ! Flat wrong. By the time Raise comes around, PCs are fighting against no only magic missiles and spears, but disintegrates, finger of deaths, devourers, beholders, lethal poisons, and other extremely deadly nastiness. Survival often comes down to a roll or two, and those odds don't break for the PCs nearly as often as they should to survive that kind of onslaught. Action Points help, but they aren't nearly enough in a "one hit kills" world. This leads to the mentality of extreme protection (Turtle) or Kill it before it kills me (Battering Ram).

Unless the game has no internal continuity and really is a series of dungeons with PCs are pawns of the players. THEN I won't worry bout death, or a lot of other things (like names or histories) either.

MORE DM's having to come up with more diversity in plots than "dead-character..oh, whatever now shall I do that my entire campaign revolved around you?" I say this tongue in cheek because I do it

See above. There are plenty of other ways to break a DM of the Pet PC scenario, but really, isn't epic story telling about watching ONE person grow? Imagine of Frodo inherited the one ring, but Gromo (the 15th hobbit encountered by the fellowship after most of them dropped like flies in Moria) was the one to chuck it into Mt. Doom?

I think the loss of RAISE DEAD (and it's ill-begat ilk) would put a lot more power back into the game's themes..and fear back into players' eyes..and more memories.

If I want fear, I don't need to resort to killing PCs or threatening them with never playing their favorite PC again. In a world of interventionist deities, powerful wizards, ancient curses, and soul-imprisonment, Raise Dead is nothing more than a way to counteract a night of bad dice rolls.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

Remathilis,

You've hit the nail on the head. Most of the issues people attribute to Raise Dead would still exist if the spell were removed, and character continuity would be non-existent.

I've ran campaigns with high kill rates both with and without resurrection magic, and the ones with resurrection always seem to keep the players' interest longer.

On that note, have you noticed that it always seems to be DMs who complain about that spell? I don't think I've ever heard a player complain about the ability to raise the dead. Us DMs, we're used to all our NPCs getting massacred.

 

[Wye]

I predict that by getting rid of raise dead and other effects, character death would actually be less common, as players hoard Action Points/Fate Points/whatever and/or act in a cowardly and truly unherioc manner.

Also, in such a situation I see Action Points becoming the new Raise Dead, and the "problem" surfacing all over again.

You are mostly right except in regards to unheroic behavior, as in that case I'll have a talk with the player, and if the behavior continues I'll just uninvite him to play.

But talking about the raise death function being replaced by action points, yeah, that's exactly what I'd aim for. The threat of death is still there, it still allows for heroics, and it removes that artificial bump of going to town to raise a comrade.

IF avoiding death is going to happen anyway (and SOMETIMES it is desirable), I prefer to smooth it out a bit instead of diminishing the gravity of actual death.

 

[phindar]

Very interesting suggestion - instead of spending Fate Points to avoid death, the prospect of death itself becomes a metagame currency that a player can spend to unlock certain story possibilities. Have you tried this in a game, and if so did it work?

I haven't tried it in D&D, but there are a lot of indie-games that use a similar mechanic or share that mindset.

I predict that by getting rid of raise dead and other effects, character death would actually be less common, as players hoard Action Points/Fate Points/whatever and/or act in a cowardly and truly unherioc manner.

It doesn't seem like there's much difference between a character who sacrifices his life knowing he can be Raised tomorrow, and a character who knows he can't be Raised deciding not to die. But I don't think Death being less common is a bad thing, if it makes it more dramatic. I think that if every combat wasn't potentially fatal, it'd make the ones that were deadly much more suspenseful.

On that note, have you noticed that it always seems to be DMs who complain about that spell? I don't think I've ever heard a player complain about the ability to raise the dead. Us DMs, we're used to all our NPCs getting massacred.

My principle objection to Raise Dead and the like is as a player. As a GM, it really doesn't bother me if the players have access to it, and I can't remember ever house-ruling it out of play (although I'm sure I did in 2e, when I house-ruled every line in the book at one time or another).

I've also extensively played other systems where Raise and Res aren't options and death is final, and I gotta say that's what I prefer. (I'm thinking here primarily of Shadowrun1-3, which was fairly Gamist and which had a pretty brutal combat system, where any character or creature could potentially be killed outright in a single attack.) I think there should be some consequences that are irreversible.

 

[Hussar]

Part of the problem, I think is that people tend to think that Raise dead and the like is easy. It's not. Raise dead requires you to have a fairly whole body. There's just all sorts of death out there that negates Raise Dead.

The higher level spells require access to high level clerics who may or may not grant the spell to the party. It's a built in role playing opportunity that's being swept away.

As far as the whole plotsy end of things, again there's a million and one ways to make sure something stays dead. Flesh to Stone is a much better assassins weapon than a dagger against the rich and powerful. As is feeding the victim to various demon or devil lords.

When you're rich and powerful, you get to afford a whole new league of enemies who are also rich and powerful and have access to the same things you have. I see it as a lack of imagination when people complain that Raise Dead means you can't run assassination scenarios. Hrm, Stone to Flesh and a Bag of Holding. You can never find the body and you cannot True Res it. End of story.

 

[Li Shenron]

In our last five years of gaming, Raise Dead was used only once. And we even got it cast for free by an NPC Cleric, mostly because the DM had setup the final encounter of an adventure too difficult for the current party and wanted to make up for his own mistakes (the character was even killed by a special death attack that the DM incorrectly adjudicated in the mid of the battle).

Every other time a PC had died, the players always replaced it with a new one.

So I can tell that for our group removing Raise Dead would have only a minor effect. Hence I keep it in the game, exactly because it doesn't change much. I keep it so that if I have a player that is sensitive about her PC's death (I had at least one, that was very sensitive about it), the option is always there.

As long as it happens occasionally it's not bad. But I agree that if each character gets resurrected more than once in their lifetime, it certainly sucks.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I haven't tried it in D&D, but there are a lot of indie-games that use a similar mechanic or share that mindset.

Also, find a post by rycanada and check his sig. He's got a system for this too.

 

[Emirikol]

. Raise Dead is nothing more than a way to counteract a night of bad dice rolls.

If you take the chance on fighting monsters, you take the chance with the dice. That's what they are there for. If you don't want to take chances, don't put yourself in danger. Are you saying that once a player has made "enough" bad dice rolls that he is excused from making further bad dice rolls even though he continues to put himself in needless danger and taking more chances? Perhaps if the dice aren't being kind to him, maybe he would want to rethink his strategy and WISEN UP A LITTLE - hence my other argument.
Dice are dice. Don't blame them. Raise dead is not there to counteract nights of bad dice rolls. When you go to Las Vegas and lose your pants, nobody says, oh, well let's just give you some more money then even though you can't read the signs on the walls: if you play games of chance, you may lose everything. Don't come cryin' to us

jh