Raise Dead now costs 5000 GP!

[Darklone]

For guys who want to make Raise Dead special, use the GRR Martin houserule

 

[Nail]

Reading Andy's "reasoning" on the changes takes away what little faith I had in his game design abilities.

E-B: I respect your opinions and analysis, but this sort of statement from you would mean a great deal more if you used it a great deal less.

 

[Storm Raven]

A creature to be resurrected makes a level check (d20 + level/HD), against DC 10. Each previous time it has been resurrected increases the DC by 5, so the second attempt is at DC 15, the third at DC 20, etc. The presence of an expert healer (typically an NPC) confers a +2 circumstance bonus to the roll. If the creature to be resurrected has any levels in an NPC class, the DC increases by 20. There are no level or Constitution penalties for being resurrected, but a creature that fails its level check is forever dead.

You can reduce the DC of the level check by spending XP, at 1000 per -1 reduction. Hence, in the long run, it should end up costing the raised character about 5000 XP per raise.

I'm seeing no reason to change these rules, or use the new material costs.

That seems like a lot of work. Here's what I'm doing (I haven't had a character who needed raising since I implemented this rule, and the PCs don't know about it yet, since they haven't done any research on the consequences of returning from the dead other than they have been warned that it is an act rife with negative possibilities).

When a character is returned from the dead, the denizens of the underworld get a crack at his soul. Instead of losing a level, the returning individual replaces one of his current levels with a level of the tainted spell caster or tainted warrior prestige class from Dragon 302. The occupying fiend is chosen more or less at random, but is always the most diametrically opposed possibility from the character's alignment (thus, a Lawful Good character would be bound with a demon, while a Chaotic Neutral character would be bound with a devil). Before they return, they must bargain with the fiend as to future advancement, agreeing to advance in the tainted class by at least a certain amount, or the fiend will make the return fail. The bargain required for someone returning via raise dead is harsher than the bargain required for resurrection, since the power of the magic is less.

The only way to avoid this consequence is to be returned via true resurrection.

 

[Darklone]

Well, after reading Andys reasoning, I even started to doubt some of the changes I liked when I first read them

 

[hong]

That seems like a lot of work.

What work? Roll d20 and add your level. The DC is 10 + 5 for each time you've been raised before. Spend XP to get the DC back down again. Easy.

 

[AuraSeer]

Not to mention that most of the proposed "consequences" of death people are so happy about are just different ways of making sure you sit around the table doing nothing because your character is dead, which is not what, in my experience, most gamers are interested in.

Exactly! It's a game, not a novel. The idea is for everyone to have fun, even if the DM needs to modify his grand vision of a perfectly realistic world simulation.

Some people say "just roll up another character," but that's hardly a trivial operation. We play a single two-hour session per week, and the players IMC are not all experts on the rules. Creating a levelled character, choosing feats and skills, and purchasing equipment, can take as long as an hour. That's half a session that the player is just sitting there flipping pages in the rulebooks, not participating in the game that he took time out of his schedule to play. Wasting 50% of your game time for a week is not considered fun.

That's not even counting the extra time that some gamers spend on our characters. We prefer to keep them around, rather than discarding them because of a few low rolls. If my campaign used the 3.5 cost for raise dead, my 9th-level PC would have had zero wealth left after his second death. When he rolled yet another natural 1 on a save and died for the third time, Andy Collins wanted me to burn the sheet, trash the backstory, chuck his campaign diary, destroy all the work I ever did on the character, and start the whole thing over? Because he thinks it'd be "special"? Andy must be a real jerk.

 

[dcollins]

That seems like a lot of work.

One of my very few house rules is to use the equivalent rule from AD&D: raise dead requires a Con check, DC 6, to come back.

www.superdan.net/housrule.html

 

[Al]

I'm inclined to be critical of the new ruling, though it does have its advantages.

The major advantages is that it does solve the 'Joe Noble' gets raised problem. Unfortunately, it does not completely solve this. 'Joe Noble' may not be able to be raised; 'Joe Duke' will be able to. So it merely translates the problem to higher up the wealth table. Whilst this may sound good, likelihoods are that major plot NPCs are likely to be wealthy enough to afford even the 5000gp raise. A king ruling one million subjects, who earn an average 1sp/day, and charges a 10% tax rate (pretty gentle...) can afford two raises *per day* (level loss notwithstanding) or a true res every sixty hours. Of course, his people may have problems with the entire national tax take going to getting him back over and over, but that's not the issue. A better solution all round is to impose roleplaying restrictions, or alternative preventions of raising- assassins usually carry a scroll of Trap the Soul, or whatever.

Roleplaying restrictions, of course, have the useful addition of being optional applied to PCs. This is where I have the major problem with the new rule change. Essentially, when a character dies, the player can do three things.

1. Roll up a new character.
2. Get the old character raised.
3. Tip the table and dice over, storm out of the room, come back to the room, grab his books and dice, storm out again and never return.

Now, option 3. is a non-starter. Aside from the fact that players are hard to come by, it damages the table. So, the availability of raising dead turns into a tension between options 1. and 2. Here's my verdict: I prefer option 2.

The problem with option 1. is that a character evolves over the course of time. It builds up experiences, relationships and interactions. Old friends, old enemies and other long-term character developments are pivotal. The characters bond as a group. At low-levels, this is not so problematic. The exploits of low-level characters are broadly insignificant, and by virtue of not having adventured as long, he has not built up that same NPC network that longer-term, higher-level characters have.

Here's the irony: option 2. favours the roleplayers, but the campaign-world paradigm of easy resurrection can damage the verisimilitude. Option 1.- the 'revolving door PC', I find more objectionable than 'revolving door death'. I once had a player to whom death was not a problem so long as he got a better character next time round- sometimes, he would willingly *not* return from the dead since he'd be losing a level and some cash. It's a difficult choice, but I incorporate roleplaying reasons for not being raised, which the PCs can, if they wish, circumvent. Conversely, raising is relatively easy to be achieved mechanically. Ultimately, I'm less bothered by the same PC being raised over and over than the same player generating characters again and again. Easy raising does damage campaign credibility to some extent- but new characters all the time can tear a whole campaign fabric by stymying long-term plots, annuling old friends and enemies, and rendering all that has gone before an obsolete way of pumping up the PC level.

 

[Galfridus]

I hate the idea of some sort of res-check. How much would it suck to fail that roll?

I like the new cost, especially since they are apparently toning down most of the instant-kill spells (and, one would hope, abilities) in 3.5.

 

[Storm Raven]

I hate the idea of some sort of res-check. How much would it suck to fail that roll?

That is why I prefer my system. It leaves the question of whether to bring back a character in the hands of the player, but there is a price for the choice.