Raise dead issue

[Errant]

IMC...

Raise Dead doesn't work at all unless the deceased's body is whole. Characters killed & (partially) eaten by monsters don't leave whole bodies. Characters must succeed at a Fortitude save equal to the 10 plus the damage inflicted by the death blow past the point of death. (eg if death is at -10 Hps, & a fireball drops a PC to -18 Hps, the DC is 18). [Edit: rationale being some attacks damage the body so badly it can no long be considered whole]

Plus, the player must be able to state what unfulfilled mission/need is strong enough to make their character return from 'heaven'.

 

[Archer]

I think losing a level is enough of a penalty to stop players from doing things that result in their death on a regular basis.

If you let them bring in a new character of the same level as everyone else there is no penalty for dying and that new character comes in with perfect classes and nice equipment while the party usually keeps the dead character's equipment.

If you want to remove the powerful life magic you should balance that by taking out the powerful death magic.

The DM can always fudge the die roll or rules so that characters never die if you don't like the idea of bringing people back to life.

Whatever you do to modify the standard way the game is played, you need to change other things as well. There are many things you can do to counterbalance. Reduce the average EL of every encounter by one. Let the PCs rest more often. Give out more treasure that raises Hp and saves.

If someone doesn't want to be raised I plan to let them make a character 2 levels lower with half the normal amount of equipment.

 

[Cergorach]

You can counter the problem by implementing all kinds of additional penalties, or you could embrace it and let your players/characters handle the consequences. Life becomes cheap for them (especially when they gain access to spells such as true resurrection), loss of their or comaredase life is remedied by a simple spell. They start to become 'godlike', defying death, etc.

Just imagine the situation when someone gets taken hostage and the characters just say: "Yeah sure, kill the hostage, we'll bring her back from the death without much trouble...". The 'heroes' will start to become as much 'monsters' as the monsters they are fighting...

As you say that yours is a roleplaying campaign, i'm sure that you can come up with something ;-)

 

[Matafuego]

Re: Re: Raise dead issue

Players thinking through OOC actions like you mention above are (to me at least) not good roleplaying. Knowing that your character can be raised and being fairly certain of it to the point that you put your character into a situation he/she wouldn't normally go into is bad roleplaying.

Well.. Why?
I mean, supose you were some kind of fighter and you had to kill a powerfull fiend. I aproach you and tell you: "It doesn't matter if you die, I can make the church raise you" (I am a high level cleric, you know I can do it, I know I can do it)
Wouldn't you give everything to succeed?
Would it be "Bad behaviour" (I suppose that when a player "badly roleplays" is because he's not acting as he "should" considering the situation). It's no OOC Knowledge, the cleric knows he can cast the spell, the fighter knows it will work.
That's why on my campaign ressurrection always carries the risk of failure (and thus angering some demon or god) and the risk of losing your soul forever. Besides it's impossible unless the head of a church agrees to it and even if he agrees you have to get some elements to perform some kind of ritual and your god's approval (of course). For diseases it's the same thing (they are very deadly IMC). Reincarnation is another matter since it's only performed by the druids and only to people helpful to nature (some, not all, druids belong to a secret organization that is the one that controls this things since it could alter the balance of nature)

 

[jasamcarl]

No

There is no reason either the fighter or cleric have to know it will work. The PLAYERS might know and act accordingly, but their characters, much as when they ecounter powerful monsters, should cover the their mechanical actions with 'fluff' actions consistent with the narrative assumptions laid down by the dm. The mechanics are but an abstraction on which to determine RESULTS. The method used to get their was left intentionally vague (Hitpoints, BAB) in order for each group to tailer 'flavor' text to their particular campaign...

 

[Matafuego]

So what you are telling me is when a wizard casts a "mage hand" he doesn't know if it's going to work at all?

It's the exact same thing, they have the knowledge to cast the spell, they know what it does, unless your house rules change this it's the way magic works.

 

[jasamcarl]

No...

What i am saying is how each individual spell WORKS is a matter of ingame narrative. Take for instance the difference between Divine and arcane magic. There is nothing in the rules that states the SOURCE of either type, but the flavor text gives some clue so as to allow clerics to rp specific types of prayer, rituals, or whatever. You are assuming the mechanics, as oppossed to the resolution of the mechanics, has any neccessary ingame implications..as if BAB represents some 'essense'. Or perhaps this line of thought is too subtle...

 

[noretoc]

Having the chance of failure for comming back to life is a good idea. It will add some more risk, making the characters less willing to die, but won't make things come down to a die roll. Now it will be two die rolls, hehe. Plus I can modify the chance based on what they did. I like that. Thank you.

 

[Horacio]

The Twin Crowns setting has a nice rule about raise/ress. : each hero has a fixed number of destiny points, and each raise/ress. spends one of them. Once all destiny points are spent, no raise/ress. will work in the character. It works well, it helps giving a sense of heroism (character are heroes, and fate smiles at heroes) but also a sense of mortality (even heroes die, and when they die truely, nobody can bring them back).

 

[Petrosian]

"With the raise dead spell and the resurrection spell, it seems that dying isn't quite the penalty. There are times my players get into a situation, and they think, "is it worth dying and losing a level" for. I really don't like them having this choice. (The party had a cleric who can now cast raise dead, so as long as there is a body, they will get raised). "

here we go.

By the exact same token, when they get to a river and the bridge has been destroyed by those they are pursuing, the wizards says "hmm.. is it worth burning all those 3rd level spells to get us across?"

this reminds me of the "wow i remember the days when +1 swords were a wonderous thing and now they ain't that great a deal. Why aren't magic items mysterious?"

Answer is, this ain't that world. in this world by 6th level your typical wiz can give you a +2 weapons for hours. A 7th level cleric can too.

a 9th level cleric can raise you too, if you die the right way.

Is that inherently bad? No. it just changes the significance of PC death.

Now, IF you were in a world where PC death always came from dramatic events or PC error, then auto raise dead wouold be a potential problem.

But, barring house rules, you are in a world where the difference between PC live and PC dead is a bad die roll the PC could not control.

Two of the characters fighting a beholder each rolls a 20 followed by a 1 on two successive rounds of saves. one is turned to stone, the other is disintigrated. As the rules stand it will take a higher level spell and a level loss to raise the latter than the former. WHY even should that much difference exist?

Now you want to talk about extensive quests or chances of not coming back at all or a PC time clock on how many times.

Here is the rub.

its not OUT OF CHARACTER for a character who knows the spell raise dead or how it works to think of the consequences. its very specifically in character. (Sure the character doesn't think level but thats just PC shorthand for "lose these things......")

if you want to treat death as some big no-no then you need to from the outset rewrite the death rules BUT you darned well better also address the casual death by failed saves and lucky crits and the like. otherwise your wonderful roleplayers are being taught BY YOU to not get too interested in their PCs cause they might just die for no good reason.

I took the reverse approach.

In 9 levels of play, with six PCs, the sorcerer died once (failed save at wrong time), the ranger-druid once (went down and party stupdiity didn't get him out of harm's way), and the barbarian died twice (not stopping for healing while she was raging, go figure.) In each case i ran a post-mortem scene of the afterlife with interesting character development and stuff going on in addition to the scenes leading up to the 'big decision" of whether to come back or not. in three cases, the characters underwent some changes, some more significant than others. i have also introduced the notion of cults or sects of death gods who view those who have come back from beyond the "veil" as either abominations deserving to be hunted down or as special people who brought back insights that need to be cultivated and nurtured and plumbed for wisdom.

In other words, without saying "burn your character sheets your work is all for naught" and doing snoopy dances over the ashes, i still manage to make death more than just an interlude between raises where the player can go make a beverage run.

NO RAISE rules, whether they be roll-a-die, countdown, or even quest based no-raise rules, only hurt the people you ought to be wanting to keep, those who get into and care about their character's and the stories. You do not need to hurt them, you need to cultivate them.

The guys who don't care, who see the character as "just the playing piece of the moment" probably have a "backpack full of characters' and won't be discouraged at all by the "no-raise" rules.

So unless the latter are what you dream of having in your group and the former something you want to discourage, start making you world recognize that raise deads exist and like fly spells and sending spells, they make the world a whole different place but not necessarily a bad place.