Raise Dead now costs 5000 GP!

[HeavyG]

I don't see why it is so important that all deaths be final. I mean, sure, it is in real life, but why does that mean that it has to be in a fantasy campaign with teleportation, people flying around and so on ?

If raise dead really offends someone's narrative sensibilities, would it not be easier just to drop the spell ?

The way I see it, there are already magics able to heal your body and people obviously have no issue with those. And there are also magical spells of comparable power that manipulate souls from one body to the next, like magic jar. How is it difficult to accept that in these conditions, raising the dead would not be such a difficult feat ?

Of course, it would mean that people in a D&D world would not view death the same way 21st century terrans do, but how is that a bad thing ? They would probably have a word to define a state of "near-death", meaning the time the soul lingers around the body (1 day per level I think) and "far death" from which it is very tough to come back. The important thing about suspension of disbelief is that things be internally consistent, not that they ressemble your real life, right ? (Well, if you have some degree of imagination, I mean.)

Since adventuring is so deadly and this game is supposed to be in part about developping your character, raise dead has a very real role to play in dealing with bad luck of the dice, which happens pretty often. So, I don't like this price increase too much.


In the Vlad Taltos series of novels, raises are very easy to get. But it's also pretty easy to make someone impossible to raise. This is a better fantasy solution, IMO : Create some ways for intelligent opponents to kill you dead (i.e. unraisable), and make it harder (or impossible) to resurrect people. Narratively, this means that assassins and sentient opponents who want to kill you are to be feared, but that if your PC is unlucky and gets mauled by a beast after you played him for 8 months, then you won't suffer too much for it. Much more dramatic, IMO.

 

[DMauricio]

On being raised (kinda long-winded)

...

As I read this thread, it seems that everyone happy about the change is a DM. Do any players like the idea of 5000-gp raise dead? Or is this another change that lets "hardass" DMs screw their players, and annoys everyone else?

I dunno. As a DM, I'm pretty annoyed at the change in cost.

Why should *every* town have a cleric that can cast raise dead?
This certainly doesn't happen in my campaigns.

In my campaign, the players are the only people with that kind of power level (unless they go to a major city/major temple or somesuch) and even in the event that there is an NPC cleric who can raise party members, its doubtful that they'd simply capitulate to raising a dead party member for only monetary means.

In other games I'm involved in (counting some run as a meat grinder/powergaming campaigns) its rare that we can get raised. Generally due to issues on if there is:
a: a willing cleric able to cast said spells
b: enough of the characters that the spells work
c: enough money in the group to pay for the cost of spell casting. (not counting material components)
d: character incentive to be raised. We use a house rule that unless the player states his character wants to be raised (prior to said character's demise) they can't be raised. (of course this has meant that there are opportunities where the players WANT their characters raised, but this doesn't happen too often - due to the restraints placed by good role playing. An example of this is the devout fighter who died mid battle - after accomplishing some deeds. The player decided that the character would not want to be raised... simply due to the fact that he had died in an according manner)


As written, only PC clerics would be able to cast raise dead for 500gp (certainly in the campaigns I've played in)
And with the 3.5 change, I don't know if this will be happening now. Though until I get a copy of the 3.5 core rules, and run a few sessions using the revised spell, I won't really know.


my $0.02


Dom

 

[nimisgod]

I pretty much agree with the change even though I have only just started to allow Raises and Ressurections in my game.

I think its incredibly difficult to balance Leniency vs. Strictness. Especially since the RISK contributes to the FUN of the game.

If Raise Dead is too cheap then there is no real risk to dying. I would hate to play a game where the death of a character is just a drop in a bucket to fix.

I mean, where's the Risk of Life vs. Death in that? I might as well play Diablo or something.

On the other hand, when there is no death, there is the risk of people just twiddling their fingers at the 5th hour of a session and just being bored out of their asses.

I remember playing the Legend of the 5 Rings RPG with a killer GM. It was hard to get attached to a character when its so easy to die. I was lucky to die only once (or twice). Everyone else fared far worse.

I remember my brother making up a character (its a point buy game so takes more time than just rolling up stats) and dying one minute after he entered. Needless to say, that Lion Clan Archer did not accomplish much.

There's no raise dead or ressurrection in L5R so we just had to make up character after we died. On the plus side, we get to make characters whose insight equal our deceased characters but that's beside the point.

The Risk of Death (and losing a character we were attached to) kept us "deathly" careful of combat. And those who've played the d10 L5R know how deadly the system is. You're usually only 5 feet away from death via katana (or Oni Claw or Taint or Fire or... you get the idea)

But then, the risk of death made the game fun, just like being scared in a Horror RPG is fun. And Gawddamn... that game was fun...

I am in the camp that says Raising the Dead should be difficult.

If you like your character so much, then you and the party should be able to raise him back to life regardless of cost. 5000 GP is nothing if your fellow players help out. And you are friends, right?

And if you don't care enough for the character, then make a new one. If you know the GM is damned lethal, make a back-up character before the game.

In-game Logic means a lot of nothing in an FRPG like D&D. Maybe souls have a special value compared to normal monsters. Who the cares about the explanation involved when any storyteller/GM can make one up easily.

After why are clerics good at healing? a cleric of a god of destruction should be good at destroying right? Why is a wizard better at that than a priest of the apocalypse? Is the power accumulated by a mortal better than the divine power placed into a mortal? After all, Gods are better at destroying things than tiny little magi right?

Given the diversity of games and the fact that many gamers use homebrews (or adjust a published world to their liking) the use of in-game logic, IMX, is futile in debate unless you are talking about a untouched published setting.

"Necromancy is evil because its like slavery!"

"Not in my setting! The people there believe that wasting the labor potential of the dead is the real evil!"

"What- ing -ever"

If in-game logic is useless, then there is mechanics. Mechanics only count if they add to the Fun.

Raising the Dead should cost an arm and a leg at low levels for everyone involved and not just the PC that died. But as the party goes higher in level, these costs are more easily surmounted.

IMO, a GM giving the PCs a tiny bit of aid (and also adding to the story) for a difficult price can still maintain the fear of death better than a GM fudging rolls (SOFTIE OR FAVORITISM!) or one that makes death goddamn cheap.

Even if you don't have money, there are always allies to beg or use favors from.

The Death of a PC should be a big event, at least IMC.

Some GMs are neurotic enough that they usually won't make a Core Rule hard on the players (Guilty!). They'd rather nerf a rule that is hard on the players. FE, in my 3.0 campaign I wouldn't nerf 3.0 Harm or Haste, even though I think they are overpowered. The alternative could be even more unbalancing and unfun.

But if I thought that 5K GP was too much, it would be easy for me to reduce.

 

[hong]

Gee, IMC Raise Dead costs the equivalent of about 20 years of income for Joe Commoner, so it's highly unlikely that his family will be able to, or interested in, coming up with the money.

Solves that problem without special rules.

Substitute "Joe Rich Merchant", then. Same thing.

Furthermore, your insight is lacking. "Joe Commoner being raised" covers a bunch of problems, foremost among them being "the guy we were supposed to capture/guard/keep alive got killed? No problem, we raise him."

 

[Agback]

You're making an error in thinking that "new items" can be designed at will by characters using the pricing guidelines in the DMG.

Actually, I am thinking that these things can be made by the gods. They are consistent with the way magic magic works, and the gods and their cults would surely want them. If the gods are under some sort of special constraint, or if magic works differently in this case, there ought to be some sort of indication in the rules.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Otterscrubber]

I don't see why it is so important that all deaths be final. I mean, sure, it is in real life, but why does that mean that it has to be in a fantasy campaign with teleportation, people flying around and so on ?

The way I see it, there are already magics able to heal your body and people obviously have no issue with those. And there are also magical spells of comparable power that manipulate souls from one body to the next, like magic jar. How is it difficult to accept that in these conditions, raising the dead would not be such a difficult feat ?

Of course, it would mean that people in a D&D world would not view death the same way 21st century terrans do, but how is that a bad thing ? They would probably have a word to define a state of "near-death", meaning the time the soul lingers around the body (1 day per level I think) and "far death" from which it is very tough to come back. The important thing about suspension of disbelief is that things be internally consistent, not that they ressemble your real life, right ? (Well, if you have some degree of imagination, I mean.)

Since adventuring is so deadly and this game is supposed to be in part about developping your character, raise dead has a very real role to play in dealing with bad luck of the dice, which happens pretty often.

I agree. Dont fear raise dead, work it into your campaign ahead of time so that it will happen. Most people make characters and develop them so it is natural they want to play them for as long as possible. Especially if there is an ongoing storyline that has everyone involved. I dont know why everyone wants to make it so complicated.

 

[hong]

Of course, it would mean that people in a D&D world would not view death the same way 21st century terrans do, but how is that a bad thing ? They would probably have a word to define a state of "near-death", meaning the time the soul lingers around the body

"Mostly dead"

(1 day per level I think) and "far death" from which it is very tough to come back.

"All dead"


Hong "because when they're mostly dead, there's only one thing to do!" Ooi

 

[mmu1]

I don't like the change to raise dead's material component cost.

Raise dead is "too cheap"? You lose a _level_. That's a month of play-time.

Exactly - which is something all the people saying "you should be grateful you can come back to life at all" seem to be missing.

I don't care whether my character ought to be grateful for being raised, and how much being alive ought to be worth to him - I'm sure I'd be grateful too if I got hit by a bus and got to come back to life, once more a college student. (Hell, if that was the deal, I'd seriously consider going out to play chicken with a truck... Ah, college...)

What I'm not going to be grateful for is effectively losing a month's worth of character advancement, because that's not an imaginary character's loss, it's my time, my progress that's getting set back, and my time that's being completely wasted as I wait for a Raise Dead or generate a new character and wait for it to be introduced.

 

[mmu1]

Death is such a huge part of life, our stories, myths and legends, and yet in this game, it is as meaningless as the porridge the farmer had for breakfast. No Epic quests of legend to defeat death here.

Being raised from the dead isn't heroic. Let the heroes avoid the death, through use of action points or similar. Then should bad misfortune strike, the story and legend of the character can continue, in the memory of the players.

You're forgetting that you only get to come back from the dead (unless we're talking about a 9th level spell, which is not going to be readily available) if your body can be recovered - so going into a fight which has a chance of killing everyone in the party, or of leaving your body in enemy hands is certainly heroic enough.
Same goes for facing enemies who can disintegrate you, burn you to ash, devour you, turn you to stone, turn you into an undead creature, etc.

Yeah, the standard for heroism might be a little different, but even with Raise Dead available for 500 gold, you can still easily end up very permanently dead.

 

[Celebrim]

"If it wasn't so riduculaously easy to get killed in d&d i might agree. As is though one crit or one failed save and your toast all too often. The absurdly high offense and low defense of the game almost necesitates relativly easy access to raise dead spells."

And this is opposed to what? Chill? Call of Cthullu? GURPS? Shadowrun? L5R? Please tell me about the system by which in comparison it is so tough to get killed. About the only system I can think of that compares to D&D's player durability is WEG Star Wars. By and large, it is rather tough to get killed in D&D. It is so tough to die in D&D that it totally changes the way that D&D players (especially those that only play D&D) approach the game. Even getting injured in a fight is a pretty significant thing in most other systems. Once hit in GURPS and you go into a shock cycle from which you are unlikely to recover, even if that first hit didn't cleave you to the floor. In D&D, you are good to go right down to 0 hit points. Hack-n-Slash is so definatively D&D precisely because there is a pretty good chance that a reasonably high level party can fight thier way out of anything, so you end up with parties whose solution to anything is to whip out swords and start slashing.

As others have said, it is almost impossible to impress on the average party that they are outmatched and should surrender or negotiate. Players tend to fight to the death in every situation.

Raise Dead being an effective repeated solution to party death is a relatively new edition to the rules. In 'old skool' D&D every time you got raised you not only lost CON, but you had to make a resurection survival check (a type of CON save) to see if you had experienced final death. Even dying once was potentially grevious to a power gamer, if it meant his CON dropped from 16 to 15 or such.

I am in the camp that says that miracles shouldn't grow on trees, but that is hardly my primary interest. My primary interest is getting players to act like getting killed is a big deal, not an annoyance, so that they actually try to avoid and start playing a little better. After sufficient story line gets invested in a character, even I don't want to see characters die so I control the hazards accordingly. But the last thing I want is a party of six characters with 28 resurrections between them turning my story line into a video game.

Finally, whenever the DM feels that the character's death was just plain bad luck and the character was worth saving he can always fiat the character back to life through a plot device and coming up with the 500 or 5000 g.p. is the easiest part of doing this.