Raise dead issue

[Fade]

My idea:

http://www.enworld.org/messageboards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11304

 

[Agamon]

My house rule:
http://www.angelfire.com/games3/elivone/house_rules2.htm. My campaign's monetary system is a bit different than the default. Roughly double the costs is what it would be in, say, Greyhawk.

 

[hong]

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.

Exactly. Raise dead spells fill an important role in the game, and are just another point where games need to be treated differently to books, movies or other forms of storytelling.

I do think that resurrection magic can have implications for the world that aren't entirely positive. The way to deal with this isn't to ban such magic, though. Just limit its applicability only to those characters who have a significant role in the story -- PCs, major NPCs and such. This lets death retain some significance in society, while also allowing PCs an escape hatch from insta-kill events.

Mind you, toning down some of those insta-kill events wouldn't be such a bad idea, either. There's nothing that says beholders (for example) must have disintegrate, dominate, flesh to stone, finger of death, and a bunch of other powers. Similarly, it should not be beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to remove spells like PWK, distintegrate, destruction, etc, while still allowing high-level characters to shine. And if you do this, there should be less need for inconvenient resurrections.

 

[noretoc]

Petrosian Wrote

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.

This is exactly what I don't want. If I had wanetd to just let it go by the rules, and have raise dead be common, then I would not have started this thread. Instead I want to change it, and was looking for ideas to help. I got some great ones, so it looks like the whole point of the thread worked fine. Maybe in you game, you like the way it works now, that is fine too, but in mine, I don't and telling me to accept it dosen't add much to the conversation.

 

[drothgery]

This is exactly what I don't want. If I had wanetd to just let it go by the rules, and have raise dead be common, then I would not have started this thread. Instead I want to change it, and was looking for ideas to help. I got some great ones, so it looks like the whole point of the thread worked fine. Maybe in you game, you like the way it works now, that is fine too, but in mine, I don't and telling me to accept it dosen't add much to the conversation.

Strictly by the rules, getting someone raised takes 500 gp worth of components, and only works if the person to be raised has been dead for less than 1 day/caster level. So no one less than 4th level is going to be raised unless they have powerful (or at least wealthy) friends. Also, if you're far from a large town (and don't have some means of moving much faster than you can on horseback) and don't have a sufficiently powerful cleric with the components in the party, then you probably won't be able to get someone raised, simply because the time limit will expire.

If a character has to hire someone else to cast raise dead, then the cost doubles, because at minimum you're hiring a 9th level cleric, which means 9th level * 5 th level spell * 10 gp/spell level = 450 gp. Even if you have the money, though, you'll have to convince the casting cleric that raising this guy is a good idea (more corrupt churches might raise most people for sufficient money, but they'll charge more than standard prices).

The other thing o remember, I think, is that 9th level characters are fairly powerful; what's easy for them is not easy for commoners, or even 5th-level characters, so just because the PCs (and similarly medium to high level characters) can be raised most of the time, it doesn't mean that just anyone can.

 

[Petrosian]

This is exactly what I don't want. If I had wanetd to just let it go by the rules, and have raise dead be common, then I would not have started this thread. Instead I want to change it, and was looking for ideas to help. I got some great ones, so it looks like the whole point of the thread worked fine. Maybe in you game, you like the way it works now, that is fine too, but in mine, I don't and telling me to accept it dosen't add much to the conversation.

Uh Ok, well lets begin with... you editted out the significance of the quoted text. i WAS NOT TELLING YOU TO ACCEPT IT.

I was pointing out how PC death discourages role-players, a similar point to the qualms you raised in your original post, and how unless "you want to discourage" ... etc.

My points were simple but lets repeat them typing slowly since you seen to have missed them. Maybe you can even bear with me long enough to read an entire sentence instead of just excepting one portion of it to brook offense at.

In DND 3e, death is not a dramatic event or a sign of player error or any of those things we DMS would like it to be to make role players able to see a decent reason behind why their focus is now gone. There are too many save or die events. More often than not, PC death results from a bad die roll. Sometimes the GM can tweak things by not having the enemies do the smart thing and CDG the HELD PC who will be out in a round or two, or have them ignore the obvious dispel magic possibilities becuase we don't want to just kill the PC even tho circumstances say "well they probably would"... but not always.

Loss of a character only hurts the roleplayers who care about their characters. The power gamers with a backpack full of them have no fear of PC death. It just mneans bringing a nre playing piece on board.

The current DND 3e rules handle this quandry by making death, like many other obstacles, one the PCs will relatively soon be able to counter on their on.

NOTE that the above three elements combine to make a world which is conducive and attractive to roleplayers.

This is a consistent gaming approach.

What you went on about was that you do not like the lack of significance of death due to raising being just another obstacle BUT at the same time you recognize the significant role it plays in allowing roleplayers to not los characters all the time and thus be discouraged. You recognize the situation. However, two things stand out.

First, you are focused on FIXING RAISE DEAD, and not on the overall issue. if you make raised dead tougher then you also need to make the save or die spells/events less frequent so that PC death becomes dramatic and significant and FOR A REASON other than "darned dice" or else you will drive off the people you want to attract. No amount of 'i want to nail raise dead but...." wh... err... complaining will change that fact.

Second, you do not seem to realize this needs to be an up front beginning of campaign issue. if your players have invested their time and emotion into building their characters based on the rules as you presented them, thus feeling relatively sdafe in that they know if they die a raising is certainly possible, then it is cheating them for you to now yank it out from under them. if you change the rules in mid-stream then you have effectively tricked them into giving you time and emotion and then are trying to weasel out of your end, in which you told them "we use the rules on raising PCs."

i once saw a player excited about getting to play a shadowrun game give the prospective Gm a six page background and fully detailed character etc with a broad grin on her face. The Dm too one look at the amount of work and told her 'Don't get too attached to your character. it will die. you will probably need three or four before the game finishes."

With a deflated look she smiled, took her sheets back, said "thanks" and left.

For all his faults, at least that GM was bright enough to tell her up front and ahead of time so she didn't get into the game, invest her emotions, just to then get a "well gege you are dead. do you have your next character."

OK to sum up simply, no matter how impassioned a plea it is, you cannot at the same time kill PCs irrevocably with any frequency and based on random elements and expect to attract or keep good roleplayers who invest themselves in their characters.

So, no matter how much you may want to make "death taxes" higher and higher until they just see it as not worth it, that wont address BOTH the issues you raise. To focus on just upping death taxes and then just worry about the implications is not enough.

So if you really want to keep roleplayers AND you feel a holy mission to make death taxes so severe that the players wont want to endure them at any cost, then you need to remove the senseless deaths too. You need to be ablke to say truthfully that your PCs wont die just out of luck.

That means "fixing" all the disintigrates, the polymorphs, the finger of deathm the death touches, the failed reflex saves, the critical hits, etc etc etc etc etc.

or you can just give lip service to the care and feeding of your roleplayers, raise death taxes and just "feel real bad" when good roleplayer's PCs die from "just bad luck."

The latter seems to be what you are angling for. Particularly given the one thing you have vboiced agreement with is a change to making whether you come back or not "another die roll" and even express fondness for you making that a subjective die roll at that, with no mention of at the same time fixing the "one failed die roll" that put them there.

If you do not want to kill PCs for bad luck, or at least don't want to make it worse than it is...

if you were serious about the whi... complaining about the death effects, wouldn't you also be thinking about adding a similar "second chance" die roll to the save or die spells itself?

Something like "when a character "dies" by reaching -10 or more Hp or by failing a save vs a disintigrate or death or similar spell effect, she is mortally wounded and collapses in a coma like state between life and death. in 1 minute the character will make another save based on a Dc set by GM whim and significantly determined by whether the player has pissed him off recently and only if the second roll is also failed do they die."

This way, while they have to make a "please the GM check" to be brought back, they also have to pass a "please the Gm check" to die in the first place.

 

[Numion]

I don't see this quite as a big problem. My players are SOOO pissed off every time their character dies, and it seems to be a small consolence if they get raised. Almost more often than not they make a new character after death.

The groups cleric is 16th level though, and I wonder if True Resurrection will change their thinking. I'm not going to limit it's use though.

I also think that limiting raises is unfair to the melee types that happen to die most often. So I haven't limited raise deads or resurrections. It's worth considering whether dead characters staying dead truly adds anything to the game. If the player likes the character, why not let him keep it?