Resurrection and Revive Dead

[Larry Fitz]

I like the increasing madness idea.... in the Twin Crowns setting everyone gets 5 gifts , which are essentially lives. Ressurection Magic flat out doesn't work. There's no such thing as a spell to bring someone back from the dead as such. Every time you die you lose a level, and when you die the fifth time you are dead, gone, pushing up the daisies, singing in the choir eternal, etc...

Yes there is a bit more to the metaphysics of this but the point is essentially that low level PC's don't have to have he DM come up with some lame reason why a powerful cleric is deigning to speak with them much less resurrect them, and death does not become a 'minor inconvenience' for high level characters.

This seems familiar, like I've posted this before, maybe we should come up with a FPT (frequently posted topics) section so we don't have to rehash so much....

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Never had a problem with it in any of my campaigns, to be honest. Or teleport, for that matter.

Any trick the PCs use, IMHO, is a trick I can use for an NPC. I love recurring villains. And teleport without error has saved one particular pit fiend NPC more times than he can probably count, especially once he picked up the Quicken Spell-Like Ability feat.

 

[Tsyr]

Why is it that DM's hate these spells (teleport and raise/resurrect)?

They make the game feel like playing a MMORPG... death is a temporary setback of little real important, and the world becomes effectivly very tiny. I just don't like the feel. It feels too much like the world is simply a construct to hold a strategy game in, not a "real world".

Why do DM's want their party to trudge from location to location? Is it really that fun to work out encumbrance and travelling rates and food rations and water supplies?

Actualy, yes, it is, and thank you for asking.

Why do DM's think that death has to be eternal?

Not quite eternal, but anything less than resurection being a fairly signifigant event just ruins it for me (and most people I know). Death becomes, as I've said, just an inconvienience. Death should be horrible, and people shouldn't be comming back from that every day.

Why is death the worst thing that the average DM thinks he can do to a bad guy?

Why do no DM's take advantage of the 10 year/level limit on resurrection?

Why is it that DM's almost never use resurrect or raise dead to recall their BBEGs?

Why must the players be the only ones mildly inconvenienced by death?

All this is tied into *why* I hate resurect and so forth. It just becomes stupid if you take it to its logical conclusion. Death has no more meaning than being knocked out.

"Hey! I killed you seventeen times already! Would you leave me alone!"

"Never! Why don't you stop comming back from the dead every time I kill you???"

"I must continue to foil your evil plans!"

"Prepare to die so that I might rule the world!"

"Ok, but lets make it quick... Mogradath's undying minons should have got him raised by now, and I'll have to pop over to that continent 4000 miles away by tommorow afternoon to make sure he dies again... He normaly stays dead for 3-4 days, and I don't want him to get too much of an advantage. Oh, and could you lay off the barbed arrows this time? My cleric is really frustrated having to yank those out of my brain every time he goes to raise me..."

"Well, I guess... but no more of that fire spell! My eyebrows still havn't regrown from that time last month when you burned me to death in that ale-house fight..."

 

[Allanon]

I DM a Scarred Lands setting and there the answer is simple.
Nemorga the God of Death simply doesn't allow the mortal to return (in this case a PC). Anyone who wishes to return someone from beyond first has to ask permission from Nemorga (this is an optional rule in my campaign, although it is hinted in 'The Divine and the Defeated') if the person's page in his great book is full it's a definitive no-no.

Sure this gives the DM control over the life, death and re-life of PC's but isn't that what the game is all about? If a PC died because of a simple miscalculation or something non-heroic or meant I mostly allow them to return to the land of the living (providing they find someone able and willing to raise someone for them, none of them can do it themselves, luckily )

Player's who on the other hand kill themselves foolishly, by attacking a God's avatar, trying to take on a complete pride of Proud while they're avarage character level is still only 5 (yes they tried this , 3 died and only 1 was allowed to be raised because he advised against it and got unlucky)

I myself think that spells like raise dead and resurrect are like Wish. They're not the type of spells to just automatically have succes, and most of the time it takes effort to make them work.

 

[green slime]

Save or die situations should be avoided. period.

Ressurecting characters should be an Epic story in and of itself, rather than an addendum to a side note.

Strange that many other games seem to be able to handle character death, but the DnD seems somehow to need the ability to constantly bring back the dead. And yet players feel it isn't corny...

 

[jasper]

Come on guys drop another quarter and continue the game. Or should I say drop another 500 gp gem. I have never nixed the raise spells at all. If the party has cleric and I want to be a mule, the gods may decide Derrick the Often Dead needs to stay dead.
Now I have listen to players gripe about loving a character.
Plus unless they in good with NPC clerics and nearby at low levels, the raise by date is passed its freshness date.

 

[Dark Eternal]

Actually, my high level group hit on the idea of using True Resurrection as teleport... the party was always having to deal with different threats at different places at the same time, so we'd be split up seven ways on sunday. Getting the group back together could be difficult - especially when we were scattered across two or three planes. So the party cleric hit on the idea of just having people deal with their part of things, then wax themselves, and he'd just cast True Resurrection. Bam - party's reassembled, no fuss, no muss, no loss of levels.

We didn't actually use this methodology - but the only real reason we didn't was out of respect for our DM, who wouldn't have really had happy thoughts about us pulling stunts like this. Not that we couldn't have, or that he wouldn't have allowed it. He just wouldn't have appreciated it, and we respected that.

Maybe we were just a little bit jaded?

(Via Sending) - "Sorry, out of plane shifts. Still in outlands? Find a fiend and get killed, will resurrect you back here. Hurry up - we're fixing dinner."

 

[Tonguez]

IMC I dump the Raised Dead and True Res spells as they are just plain stoopid!

The Resurection spell only opens a doorway into the Realm of the Dead through which the PCs may travel and attempt to kidnap and/or bargain for the soul of the deceased. This must be done within three days from Death and the body must be intact and available for the soul to reenter

The Road to the Realm of the Dead is long and dangerous with all manner of guardians, random undead, fiends, hags and ghosts (including a collosal feindish Otyugh Ghost - that devours any mortals in the Realm of the Dead). Once they find the soul they are after and have actually convinced it to return, they then have to fight their way out again against hordes of the Dead (or find some other manner of escaping)

So yeah I'm in the Epic Quest might work to attempt to bring the dead back but NO stoopid raise spells!

 

[Orryn Emrys]

Actually, my high level group hit on the idea of using True Resurrection as teleport... the party was always having to deal with different threats at different places at the same time, so we'd be split up seven ways on sunday. Getting the group back together could be difficult - especially when we were scattered across two or three planes. So the party cleric hit on the idea of just having people deal with their part of things, then wax themselves, and he'd just cast True Resurrection. Bam - party's reassembled, no fuss, no muss, no loss of levels.

We didn't actually use this methodology - but the only real reason we didn't was out of respect for our DM, who wouldn't have really had happy thoughts about us pulling stunts like this. Not that we couldn't have, or that he wouldn't have allowed it. He just wouldn't have appreciated it, and we respected that.

Actually, I have no qualms about nixing this kind of abuse outright. The gods would not have looked kindly upon such a disrespectful application of their mighty miracles... and I don't think the characters in that particular campaign would have had any problem understanding why. I'm just glad you guys never tested my resolve....

 

[EricNoah]

Fantasy novels must establish the scope or "limits" or "rules" of magic as they work in the world that has been presented. Some fantasy settings will have different rules than others, and this contributes to its uniqueness and flavor. There's nothing wrong with a person who enjoys low magic, or high magic, or some of each. It's simply a matter of taste.

I think D&D can be used to tell a lot of different stories -- from low magic to high. But it does appear that one seemingly little change can cascade through the rules and make it hard to implement.

For example, I've been considering requiring my PCs (and most NPCs as well) to go through some "NPC" levels before starting a regular PC class. So in essence the PC classes would almost be like a kind of PrC. Maybe a wizard could only be a wizard after he's taken a couple of levels of expert and gained skills in various languages, spellcraft, arcane knowledge, alchemy, and so forth. So a first level wizard might actually be an Exp2/Wiz1. Now, though, I have to consider how much equipment and what challenges are right for someone of that level.

Another example, I am thinking that I want clerical healing to be less effective -- using the method from Wheel of Time, I want cure wounds spells to turn hp into subdual damage. This cascaded into a whole bunch of other issues -- do I want to mess with the Heal skill and make it more viable, what about Herbalism and alchemical concoctions, etc. Also, with healing less available, combat is deadlier. The "shape" of adventuring changes -- fewer combats, maybe fewer "big bad boss with 6-10 henchmen set piece battles in the deepest room in the dungeon" type encounters, more running away, more need for safe places to recuperate, maybe PCs don't range far from civilization, stuff like that.

Here's another option: what if the "highest level" that a person (or PCs anyway) can achieve isn't 20th but somewhere around 12th? That could certainly limit the amount and power of magic available, magic items, etc. But then you might want to mess with the XP system so each of those 12 levels lasts a bit longer than they do in core 3e.

I think someone could make money off of a set of "core rules" for d20 that were aimed at a lower magic level, but they would have a lot of work to do to make it all fit.