Raise Dead Removes Sense of Danger

[DMFTodd]

The Raise Dead spell (and his cousins) are removing the excitement from my game. Players have no fear in combat because they no they can always be raised later. A player death means nothing in the game: His body gets stuffed into the bag of holding until they get back to town.

I know there's all sorts of meta-gaming around this problem: Steal the body, use rays of disintegration, have the cleric in town unavailable; but those all leave me flat.

What I'm looking for is a way to change the spells to create some fear of death. Some ideas I've had:

* Tried imposing a "death lowers your CON by 1" rule. This resulted in severely hampered CON 6 PC. This is also a vicsious circle: Low con means low hit points, hence you die more often, hence your con goes even lower. This resulted in PCs having to be retired (a 10th level Paladin with 18 hit points) rather than a PC ever dieing.

* Get rid of all raise spells except Raise Dead. Then you'd at least have a reasonable time limit and a requirement for a full body. Adventures centered around a murder are at least possible now (the killer took the head, if the PCs leave a party member behind and then return - the kobolds have eaten his liver).

* Increase the penalty for dieing by losing 2 levels instead of 1. Lots of paperwork. Results in PCs being retired rather than killed.

* Bring back the System Shock check. Require some CON roll/Fort Save or something when being raised. Failure means, sorry Charlie, you're dead. A 1 always fails.

* Increase the point where death occurs (-20 or maybe -10 - your level) but eliminate all raise spells. If you're dead, you're dead.

Any other ideas?

 

[hong]

The Raise Dead spell (and his cousins) are removing the excitement from my game. Players have no fear in combat because they no they can always be raised later. A player death means nothing in the game: His body gets stuffed into the bag of holding until they get back to town.

Hm. Personally, I haven't experienced this. Losing a level is still a pretty big disincentive to getting killed, at least in the group I game with.

* Increase the penalty for dieing by losing 2 levels instead of 1. Lots of paperwork. Results in PCs being retired rather than killed.

This tells me that your players don't _want_ to be frightened of death, if they're willing to make up a new character rather than play a de-powered one.

 

[Drawmack]

You might wish to check out the weakening the magic system thread that I have going in this forum. It has rules for resurection in it which significantly reduce the chances of being brought back, limit the number of times you can be brought back and give you a pretty major hit for being resurected.

Although I would say if you're PCs are dying so often that their con gets down to 6 then either you are throwing impossibly hard tasks at them or they are just bullrushing into everything when they shouldn't. Either way if 1 point of con damage for every resurection gets your 10th level paladin down to 18 hit points then there is something seriously wrong with that game.

 

[Kyramus]

Main and VERY main thing to think about.
Raise dead and cousins are divine spells. They are therefore given to the CLERIC by the deity and the deity MAY decide NOT to grant it.

Especially if the recipient is not even a follower of their temple/church. ALSO multiple Raise Dead from the same deity will eventually come down to making the PCs do a task before the Raise Dead is applied to the dead char.


Lastly, the fear of death/sense of danger can always be there. There are different ways of dying.
Hmm what if he died and his soul got trapped elsewhere? How is raise dead going to affect that? A soul less body = undead. hehehehe

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Raise dead and cousins are divine spells. They are therefore given to the CLERIC by the deity and the deity MAY decide NOT to grant it.

In a future campeign, I know I am going to restrict benevolent divine spells to only working on the devout. I want to see how that goes over.


FD

 

[Kyramus]

Can you imagine a whole party actually worshipping the same deity?? WOW we mgiht actually lessen party bickering that way. hehehehe

 

[DMFTodd]

Just checked out the Slowe Dieing rules over at Sean K Reynolds. http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/variantdyingrule.html

How about instituting those rules and removing all raise/resurrection type spells from the game? I'd add one other qualifier, from positive hit points, the lowest you can go is -10. You then start the bleeding from there.

So, you're dead at -10 - your Con. No chance of being raised.

 

[Fenris]

What I did once was I gave a rod of resurrection to the party cleric. But when they used it what ended up happening was that the cleric had to go and fight an astral battle with the Spirits taking away the soul. The cleric did not use it very often after that. It made for some interesting choices too, do I rest so I can go fight for the soul but if I do will the soul be beyond recovery?

 

[drnuncheon]

How about making the cleric who casts the spell lose a level as well? (Giving up some of his life force to restore the dead to life.)

That would still make it possible...but you'd damn well have to make it worth it. Just money won't cut it, we're talking serious debt here. Quests. Adventure seeds.

That said, hong has it right. If they're willing to roll up new characters because of a couple of levels lost, then they're not going to mind rolling up new characters because their character couldn't be brought back. So even if you removed raise dead and its cousins, it still wouldn't do much good.

J

 

[Al]

Interesting fix:

Make most people regard 'raised' people in the same category as undead.

This would cause several interesting points.

1. Most people would be very scared and reluctant to co-operate with PCs: and at high-level, legend will quickly get round of the 'walking dead hero'.

2. Higher authorities would be reluctant to deal with them for fear of popular backlash.

3. Most NPC clerics will be reluctant to help them.

4. PC clerics who raise them will be deemed as heretics...perhaps even cast out of their church.

5. The only clerics likely to raise them are those which deal with undead anyway...meaning the party will need to seek out an evil cleric: who will probably want some measure of dispensation.

Not a complete fix, but adds an interesting roleplaying slant without it becoming mechanically more difficult to raise the dead.