I posted early in this thread and then didn’t get back to it a while, but have finally read every post. I was of two minds when I originally posted, and have now come down firmly against the price increase for the following reasons.
1. As a DM, I find players introducing new characters to be quite disrupting. I’m not running a meat grinder campaign (yet), but as soon as the PCs are of appropriate level, we will begin CotSQ, and I am being much harder on them than they I once was. This is so they will learn the skills and thought patterns to succeed in CotSQ, yet they have already had 3 character deaths amongst 6 players. Still, they campaigns continuity is sound, but would be torn to shreds by a replacement of three of the characters.
2. One of the characters actually must be replaced. She succumbed to the corporeal instability of a chaos beast and became one herself. Despite the apparently “low” price of raise, despite the fact that I’ve been using the treasure rules exactly as written, and despite the fact that two of the PCs have and have made us of item creation feats, all of them are below their wealth level. The equipment of the character who died, which they recovered, if sold for market price and split evenly will put them where they need to be. If they’d had to deduct another 15k for the one raise and one ress they’ve had, it would be much worse, and it’s not a secret how important wealth and equipment are in 3e.
3. The idea that returning from death wasn’t “special” or “unique” enough is just as absurd as the idea that, based on the behavior of a bunch of munchkins who took the rules as written plus a splat book prestige class and a couple of third party weapon enchantments that the DM should probably have known better than to allow, criticals are not “special” or “unique” enough. The only idea more absurd is that this tweak to raise will cause the party cleric to be the returner of life more frequently than an NPC. Right, because most 9th level characters (1st level of access to such magic) are gonna walk around with nearly 1/6 of their wealth tied up in a bag of diamond dust so that they can use one spell, one time.
4. As a player of D&D I love to make characters. I’ve got quite the stash of characters that have never been played just sitting around for a rainy day. As a player in a campaign, I hate to make a new character. I’ve invested time and energy into the character, have a back story enmeshed with the other characters. To prove the point, which of the following statements sounds better in the context of standard D&D? “Hey pal! You can’t die right now, we’re trying to save the world from the evil lich king, remember?” or “Hi there, you look like a lively chap. We’re on a self-appointed mission to save the world from the evil lich king, and we’re kind a short on manpower since he snapped his finger and sent the soul of our buddy speeding off to the netherworld. Wanna take his place and tag along?” The really IC response (assuming a good character) to #1 is probably, “Man, this afterlife is sure nice, but they’re right. We have to beat that bastard.” The IC response to #2 is probably “No! Why would I want to stick my neck out for a bunch of complete strangers obviously in over their head?” There’s your verisimilitude.
5. Someone said that if you’re characters are dying so much that this change will truly effect you in a negative manner, that you’re DM’s not doing his job. Unless you’re in a game where there’s little to no combat (which is a fine campaign style, but in such a campaign complete removal of the raise spells wouldn’t make any more difference), that’s a load of crap. PCs die. They roll 1s on saving throws. Bad guys roll critical hits or nasty damage. Cleric’s botch turn checks, allowing the other PCs to be drained into undeath. It happens, and it’s not the DM’s job correct game mechanics. This is not to say there’s only one good gaming style. Sepulchrave’s campaign sounds like a lot of fun, but the players all knew what the rules were ahead of time, and that they were different from the standard. It takes a skilled DM to pull that sort of house rule off well, and it sounds like Sepulchrave has done a marvelous job with it. However, in principle, the DM’s job is to provide a fun story world for the PCs to inhabit and explore and challenges for them to overcome. It is not the DM’s job, unless he takes it on himself as Sepulchrave has done, to go about changing rules. It’s Wizard’s job to provide a well crafted rules set so the DM doesn’t have to. That’s why we shell out tons of cash to them.
5. The argument that 500 gp raises aren’t heroic enough or dramatic enough, or whatnot, but that increasing that price by tenfold makes it the epitome of good storytelling is horribly flawed. It boils down to this. If a PC dies and the player wants to keep it and has the money, they’ll shell out the cash. Otherwise, they’ll make a new character. How is it any more dramatic to make it more expensive? It isn’t. If death, even with cheap raises is cheap or trivial in your campaign, that’s where the DM is falling down on the job, because how you attain that raise dead or resurrection is up to the DM, and its his or her job to make it special and dramatic.
A quick thought and then I’ll be done with this overly long rant. It strikes me that Andy’s real problem isn’t raise, but true res. True res really can make death trivial, but there’s a simple solution to that. Take the gold costly material component from all of them and induce an XP cost. Now, create a spell that allows willing characters to give up some of their personal power (exp) to the caster for the purpose of casting a spell. Somebody with a better head for mechanics would have to work out the details, but that seems to solve all the problems. If raise costs 500 xp (not too difficult to make up at 9th level) having an NPC cast it will cost at least 2500 gp (that’s just to cover the exp), which means that party clerics will be more likely to use the spell, and what’s more dramatic than your whole party giving up a bit of their spiritual power as a group to restore you to life.
Z
