This is hardly a problem unique to Raise Dead.
At level 1, Detect Poison starts to make murder mysteries work differently.
At level 1, Endure Elements makes the "man against the elements" story difficult to pull off.
At level 1, Detect Evil makes some plots difficult for some DMs to pull off.
At level 3, Zone of Truth makes some mysteries harder to pull off.
At level 3, Invisibility makes sneaky stuff much less of a challenge
At level 3, Make Whole makes non-magical object centered adventures hard to pull off. (Our boat has a hole in the bottom; how are we going to get off this island now? Make Whole. We've got to protect the priceless glass sculpture while being attacked by summoned bison! Make Whole).
At level 3, Locate object makes a lot of recovery and mystery adventures work differently too.
At level 3, Augury can make some puzzles or challenges obsolete. When confronted by a group of strange jars in one adventure, my party wasn't sure whether we should destroy them, take them with us, or leave them alone and do our best to collapse the entrance to the temple where they were so that no-one else could ever find them. An Augury revealed that smashing them would be a REALLY REALLY bad idea and thus saved our party from certain death.
At level 5, Speak With Dead really changes the way murder mysteries work.
At level 7, Discern Lies makes a lot of mysteries hard to pull off. (+12 sense motive scores, +22 search scores, and +17 spot scores also cause difficulties in this regard).
At level 7, Scrying makes a lot of adventures work differently.
At level 7, Divination makes nearly all adventures work differently.
At level 9, Raise Dead (3e cost) changes the way murder mysteries work yet again. It also changes the way protection missions work.
At level 9, Teleport changes the way lots of adventures work. We've got to kill the evil general? Scry, Buff, teleport in, kill, teleport out. We need to get this package from Wintershiven to Rel Mord in a week through bandit infested territory while dodging the agents of people who want war between Nyrond and The Pale at every turn? We'll Teleport there.
If you're going to DM D&D at all, you have to come to terms with the fact that some challenges are suited only for characters without certain magics. And that it's possible to design adventures that are only solvable if you assume the use of certain magics. When 2/3 of the classes have magic, you should expect "how well the players can manipulate the PH spell selection" to be a vital part of "good detective work." (In fact, many DMs would be grateful to have players who saw the non-combat options of magic instead of simply having their spellcasters be walking artillery platforms/first aid stations). If you want a game where magic doesn't enter into good detective work or what plots are available to the DM, you should be playing something other than D&D.
green slime said:
Because it disrupts the versimilitude of my game? Because none of the other examples listed actually cause any player expectations as to how ordinary people live their lives? Because there is then no logical reason why even the moderately wealthy die young? Because so many plot devices and adventures become completely pointless, or at best contrived and ludicrous, after a certain level.
You can't have a murder mystery, without involving magic in the murder, and once you involve magic, any use of logic flys out the window. Thus the solution of the murder relies not upon the use of logic (as a good detective story) but on how well the player can manipulate the PHB spell section.
And, incidentally, as long as the DM actually gives thought to how the NPCs did what they did, it's not true that "once you involve magic, any use of logic flys out the window." If you make sure that the NPCs have the ability to do what they did, your players may end up saying things like, "Well, the dog was barking outside but the neighbor didn't see anything smash the window. So we know that, whatever killed the merchant was probably invisible. Now, as far as we know, many wizards, priests of trickery gods, bards, and skilled assassins from the Greyhawk guild can do that. So can more ordinary thieves with scrolls. Now, in the Theocracy of the Pale, all arcane spellcasters must register with the church and, when we checked we know that there are only 20 registered arcanists in the city of Holdworthy (present company excepted) and they were all at the Arcanist's guild last night. It could have been an unregistered arcanist, but since Griswold was killed by some kind of shortword--and it was a very precise strike right to the carotid artery, the unregistered arcanist would have to be some kind of dilletante skilled with weaponry and sneak attacks as well. There was no indication that Griswold was involved with any cults and there was no indication of religious ritual on the body, so it probably wasn't an evil priest. From the markings on the window, the murderer wasn't able to pick the lock so it probably wasn't the Greyhawk Assassin's guild--they'd be more competent. So our best bet is probably some kind of unregistered dilletante wizard or a rogue using scrolls of invisibility. Let's head out to the city and find out who might have been buying scrolls or spell components recently--probably from the underworld since the Arcanist's guild storehouse only serves its members. We might check the jewelers' too--if he can cast spells of the third circle, he might well ward himself from divinations with nondetection and that requires Diamond dust."
It seems to me that logic can operate quite well in conjunction with magic as long as the magic in the world operates according to a stable system that is relatively well known to the players. In fact, players can do CSI style analysis of magical and aligned auras and the spells used at the crime scene.
