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

[Greg K]

Raise Deads are okay with me.

As to the OPs specific grievances with RS, I can tell you for one thing that removing it doesn't at least make players consider new concepts automatically. In our RoleMaster campaign one player made a fighter names Berg. Then came his brother Barg. Then Burg. Then Borg (sadly, without mechanical enhancements).

Never had that happen with any group I have played with. However, my GMs and other players would put up with that.

The lethality of the system combined with no resurrections just made us play real .. um, I don't want to say carefully (because we still died a lot), but cowardly, rather. I don't like that.

more strategically? Less recklessness?

BTW, DMs usually fail to fully grasp the non-mechanical 'penalty' of dying. For a competitive player, a character death means failure. They've made something they enjoy for a while, put effort into it, and it's a failure. Like if you made a drawing and it turned all crappy, that would really suck. That's why my players sometimes don't even want to a raise if the character dies; just like you'd throw a crappy drawing away without trying to fix it with an eraser.

That's your experience. Mine differs. Its a playstyle thing. In the groups I game with, the players like their characters, enjoy playing them, but if they die, its "just that sucks,. oh well. They don't view it as failure, just stuff happens. Then, we later recall the exploits and how cool the character was. If a character dies a spectacular death with we'll talk about that to.
I take that back we did have one player who was competitive. He was told chill as its just a game. He couldn't and was eventually removed after another player, who stood up for keeping him in the group (we were short on players), decided to take a crack at running. The guy running decided that the competitive player was taking it too serious and it was annoying to the the GM and rest of the group. After several conversations, the guy was not invited back (we were already back up to six pcs without him) and told that for gamng he would be better finding a group with his approach. However, we still invited him to hang out when we did other stuff like go to movies.

Not a knock against the competive player. His style just didnt' mesh with everyone else's

 

[Thurbane]

Good for you, but that doesn't mean that getting rid of Raise Dead makes D&D better. People always have the option to alter their individual games to their own tastes, and that does make D&D pretty awesome.

It doesn't mean that getting rid of Raise Dead makes D&D better for everyone, but it does that getting rid of Raise Dead makes D&D better for some groups. Mine, for example.

Point taken.

 

[Lanefan]

So, instead of losing a character to a bad Search check, you lose the character to a bad Resurrection Survival roll. How is that an improvement?

It takes 2 bad rolls to permanently lose the character instead of just one, for one thing. And, it makes death potentially more significant, as I noted upthread, than a system where revival is automatic provided the spell is cast.

That said, we have had some instances where characters who failed their RSR rolls ended up coming back anyway; some via well-worded wish, one or two by other characters physically going to the land of the dead said character's soul wound up in and buying or stealing them out...can make for some good adventuring, that....and so on.

Lanefan

 

[Yair]

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

Players like their toys. Is calculating the costs of magic item once every level or so REALLY that much of a problem?

No more whining about the loss of level.

If they whine, it means they care. It means they don't want to die. At any rate, there are variants on raise dead that take care of this issue (e.g. the "negative level for X days" solution).

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

LESS players enjoying playing their favorite character, as now he's dead.

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

LESS players enjoying playing the characters they like, instead of the characters their DM is forcing them to play.

LESS worrying about death.

Why? Only more worrying.
Worrying about the really important part, though, in a world where the afterlife is as advertised - worrying about the eternal fate of the soul, not the temporary recepticle.

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

As a DM, I'm stringently opposed to any ploy to increase my workload

The drawback that I can see, that would probably bug me though, is that player demands of magical item escalation and overpower would be on the rise. Can magical item dependence in D&D get any higher than it already is?

I... don't see it. Characters would still want the magic items "due" them, at least mine do. They always whine when their magic items aren't up to par with the guidelines, but know enough not to expect much beyond the guidelines.

What are your pro's and con's of the elimination of "bring back your dead" entirely?

Raise dead means that, from a certain level, character death isn't accidental. The players have invested a lot in their characters by now, and you don't want that investment to go to waste due to one failed save or a few lucky critical hits. Raise dead assures you that if the player wants to keep playing that character he'd be able to do so despite this bad luck. There are still plenty of ways to scare off the PCs, fates worse than dying - from being eaten by a barghest to being trapped in eternal torture in some hell dimension.

Raise dead is also more in line with the mythic feel of fantasy. In D&D, this world really is only a "lower" plane, this body merely a vessel for the soul. You can travel to the domains of the gods, and your soul can be called back to the world if its role in this world is not yet complete. In other words, the typical religious trope is true: your life on this earth isn't what's important, it's your eternal afterlife that matters. Raise dead helps make religion real.

Raise dead does relieve the tension in common fights slightly. But in an action-packed game, this ain't too bad. A dead character is still a major disappointment and set-back, and players will still regret death and do what they can to avoid it.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

It seems to me that explosives and incineration are not covered by this spell. If there is no body left, the idea of a simple raise dead spell will not nix assassination.

Correct you are. I'm considering True Resurrection as well, although I didn't state as much. That allows a resurrection on anyone who isn't currently undead, soul trapped, or something similar.

In my campaign, the founder of a major empire intended to dismantle the empire once he had dealt with the major trouble spots of the region. His archmage didn't like that, so he cast Imprisonment on the ruler. He then hired an elderly doppelganger to impersonate the emperor until he died of old age, and cast mind blank on the fake daily so that no one knew. Once the "emperor" died, no one was gonna be scrying for him anymore, so the imprisoned emperor was secured. This occurred about 120 years before the current game time. It had the same essential effect as an assassination, but with the added bonus that someone might release the ancient emperor one day...

 

[phindar]

Raise dead means that, from a certain level, character death isn't accidental.

I would agree with this, although I think the problem is that the system makes accidental character death much easier than it should be, and that makes the R&R's necessary. If it wasn't so easy to lose a character you've put a lot of time into, you wouldn't need as many spells to bring them back.

I see it as a question of where you want to put the fix in, after they've died or before. If having death be (much more) final is important to the verisimilitude of the particular setting, its not that hard to remove the need for Raise and Res. Though ironically, this means that the gritty, low fantasy S&S style game will actually be less lethal than the high fantasy, vanilla D&D-- unless a high mortality, unrelentingly grim atmosphere is one of the selling points of the game. (And who am I to judge?)

 

[Aus_Snow]

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

Oh, that. Yep, already did that a while back. And yes, it has [made D&D better].

But not in any kind of absolute way - it just suits me, my players, and most other gamers I've met and talked with about it (IRL), better. I also made Resurrection and co. more difficult and involved, a la Arcana Evolved, only more so.

 

[ruemere]

Instead of removing Raise Dead, do consider nerfing it (and all other perma-effect removal spells, like Neutralize Poison, Restoration, Resurrection, True Resurrection).

The nerfing should not increase the cost of the spell, rather should make it harder and longer to cast. Also, side effects of Raise Dead (loss of a level), make it really painful to high level parties, especially, if it is a part of a difficult campaign (characters weakened once become much more likely to die again - and thus the potential hero becomes a paranoically careful adventurer).

So, my humble suggestion would be like this:
- limit the need to cast raise dead by extending "hovering at death's door" to 4 minutes.
- replace level loss penalty with a week long -2 penalty to all rolls (cumulative in case of another Raise Dead cast within the week of previous casting).
- make all bring'em back spells work only recently dead (so assassinating a king becomes a real ossibility - all you have to do is simply to hide a corpse), within hours or days.

(personal gripe)
Also, introduce (finally) countermeasures for common folk to foil spells that really break the game (teleports, divinations) - why do you need castles if any dimension travel spell easily allows to pass them? And the super expensive protection available right now, are not a solution for a king who needs to build castles and keep his people happy.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, I think that the current edition is designed to work with the level of magic it currently has, and that includes Raise Dead. In fact, many of my dungeons contain special areas where, if you activate their magic, you are automatically Teleported to that area and Raised if you are killed within a particular time span. They are called "Save Points". Wizards are working on a version where there is also a temporal shift, so that every action since your last "Save" is also undone (although you retain knowledge of your actions).



(Sorry, I keep rolling 1s on my Will saves....)

Seriously, though, I have no problem with Raise Dead as part of the D&D canon, but I don't like the idea of it being easy to raise the dead. When I created the Priest class for my home game, I gave Priests the ability to Raise Dead via channeling divine power (among other things). Of course, I didn't make it an absolutely sure thing, and I didn't give Priests spells. I don't mind characters coming back from the dead (you would lose a lot of potential in mythological terms if such a thing were impossible), but I don't like the idea of characters coming back from the dead as a "non-event" equivilent to ordering ale at the pub.

(shrug)

I don't know that there's anything really worth reading in my answer, but if you made it this far, then you probably keep rolling 1s on your Will saves as well.


RC

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I agree that the whole raise dead system needs an overhaul. But the problem is that the game is tailored to having it available.

All those save or die spells need to go to make an alternate system work.