D&D 5E Resurrection and Revivify

[Yaarel]

A consequence that you may not have thought about here is the effect of being able to use these spells on NPCs. It's a lot more difficult to run a "murder mystery" style adventure when you can just resurrect the victim and ask what happened.

Yes, there's speak with dead, but (1) that spell has limitations on it while questioning a resurrected NPC has none, and (2) you could easily have a party where no one took speak with dead but there's virtually no way you'll have a party without revivify under your new guidelines.

Generally speaking.

I am less a fan of sabotaging character concepts for the sake of making a dungeon crawl secretive.

For example, D&D mostly destroys the classic ability of being able to Phase thru solid objects, delaying it to ridiculously high levels, just so the DM can keep a room secret.

In the case of Phase, I would rather low level be normal. When the DM needs a room to shut out player characters, then there needs to be low level spells like ‘Wall of Protection against Evil’ that also shut out phasing characters, thus can seal off a room.



Regarding murder mysteries. I find them almost untenable in D&D. Even a low level nonplayer character can hire someone to cast Raise Dead. The murder no longer has serious consequences.

In a magical world of resurrection, prescience, scrying, and contacting souls elsewhere. A murder mystery in D&D would need to be ingenious to even remotely feel believable.

Part of the solution is spells like Nondetection to block attempts to identify the murder.

The success of a murderer depends on contests between powerful mages.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

@Yaarel

On another note regarding destroying undead:


I think a save is probably a good idea for any 'insta-kill' spell anyways. In fact, save or die spells were done away with in 5e, so maybe offensively resurrecting undead should require a save and have it do piles of damage to the undead. If they get destroyed this way, the soul is resurrected.

 

[Yaarel]

I like these. I particularly like the levels of exhaustion adjustment to Revivify. That said, I would keep Resurrection at level 7 but require a level adjustment for lack of a body. These are all meant to keep the story going and that is a good thing.

I prefer slot 9 Resurrection be the ‘fix everything’ spell, that only Legenary characters can do.

I feel, even as the official Revivify spell is now, it is so good that there really is no use for the slot 7 Resurrection spell. Only in situational corner cases would Raise Dead or Resurrection ever matter.



Regarding the Revivify in the original post. If you revive an ally within 1 minute, then the ally is fine, without Exhaustion.



This thread emphasized to me how, the Revivify spell never removes scars. It might ‘close mortal wounds’, but the scars of these wounds remain even while the character is alive and well. Some scars might be gruesome.

As DM, I like the idea of players recording a new scar, each time they reach 0 hit points. At least it has the narrative of enduring injuries even if currently lacking the mechanics.

 

[Yaarel]

Well, resurrection doesn't work at all if the soul isn't willing. You can't actually, offensively, resurrect people for the purposes of torturing them over and over. So, since a lich has willingly made himself undead, the spell would auto-fail. It would deny him his 'immortality' and he would never accept that. It might be the same for most intelligent 'natural' undead. (like those Giant negative energy ones...I forget what they're called) Zombies and the like would have unwilling 'tortured' souls trapped inside. A vampire is a hedge case. They probably weren't willing participants when they were turned, but now they might deny a Resurrection. So you might have to do it on a case-by-case basis or put in a saving throw.

Undead is probably a good candidate for DM ‘yes-no-maybe’.

If the DM knows the undead character doesnt want to be undead, then it is an autosuccess.

If the DM knows the undead character chose to be undead, then it is (barring any remorse) an autofailure.

If the DM feels that in this case, the undead character could go either way, then a roll for success is necessary.

 

[Quartz]

A consequence that you may not have thought about here is the effect of being able to use these spells on NPCs. It's a lot more difficult to run a "murder mystery" style adventure when you can just resurrect the victim and ask what happened.

This really isn't a problem. We've been dealing with it since 1e days. Speak with Dead? A corpse without a head cannot speak. Revivify / Raise Dead / etc? The victim isn't omniscient. The victim may have been killed from behind, may have been killed by someone (or something) disguised as someone else, may not know why she was killed, etc etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

revivify has a fun unique feature

You touch a creature that has died within the last minute. That creature returns to life with 1 hit point. This spell can’t return to life a creature that has died of old age, nor can it restore any missing body parts.

Specifically it's missing something that other spells to bring back the dead all have.... it does not require a willing soul/victim.

I was playing a grave cleric in a CoS campaign & one of the npc's committed suicide rather than answer questions about Strahd.. The GM's jaw dropped when I immediately responded to that with "Revivify does not require a willing victim, I bur the 300 gp to cast it & $fluff $rp while pointing out that I'm not going to allow him to escape quiestioning & we can move to looping torture>death>repeat if needed". The rest of the table laughed while the GM checked the phb & the npc promptly began to sing

 

[Lanefan]

Revify:
casting time: 1 action
components: 300 gp of diamonds or diamond dust, which is consumed.

Returns to life a creature who has died in the last hour. The body must be present. Mortal wounds are healed, and the creature has 1 hp. If they have died in the last minute, they come back with a level of exhaustion (unless they died with more). If longer than a minute, two levels of exhaustion. If they died from exhaustion, they come back with 5 levels of exhaustion.

Any Poisons and Disease that killed a creature are not cured by this spell, but their action is delayed for 30 minutes.

At higher levels: As a 4th level spell, works on a creature which has died in the last 24 hours. At 5th level, a week. At 6th level, a month. At 7th level, a year. At 8th level, 100 years. For each time increment beyond 30 minutes. If the creature was dead more than an day, week or year they come back with 3, 4 or 5 levels of exhaustion.

A few points here:

What if the body, or most of it, isn't present? Or is Resurrection still a separate spell under this idea?

Also, to avoid the issue raised by the post after this regarding mystery solving - and some other headaches - I'd suggest raising the material component cost by at least 10x, if not 20x or more, for all versions except the very basic died-in-the-last-hour variant.

 

[Lanefan]

Generally speaking.

I am less a fan of sabotaging character concepts for the sake of making a dungeon crawl secretive.

For example, D&D mostly destroys the classic ability of being able to Phase thru solid objects, delaying it to ridiculously high levels, just so the DM can keep a room secret.

In the case of Phase, I would rather low level be normal. When the DM needs a room to shut out player characters, then there needs to be low level spells like ‘Wall of Protection against Evil’ that also shut out phasing characters, thus can seal off a room.

What character concept is sabotaged by keeping some setting elements secret? (other than the "I want to know everything right now" concept, which is more a player problem IMO and not something I want to cater to)

Regarding murder mysteries. I find them almost untenable in D&D. Even a low level nonplayer character can hire someone to cast Raise Dead. The murder no longer has serious consequences.

Fixable immediately by raising the material component cost of Raise Dead beyond the means of any but the most wealthy, i.e. adventurers and nobility.

Speak With Dead remains an issue, but if the murderer doesn't reveal him-herself while doing the deed the dead corpse can't tell you what the live corpse didn't know.

 

[Yaarel]

@Lanefan

At slot spell level 3, the Revivify spell becomes available. This helps characters keep the story going. So, as long as the body is in viable condition, or at least all of the important pieces are present, Revivify will do almost all of the character resurrections even at the highest levels. Folding Raise Dead into slot 3 Revivify is moreorless irrelevant, since almost all resurrections will be within a minute anyway, either during combat or immediately after.

There was vague concern that Revivify can interfere with murder mysteries, if Revivify revives a murdered nonplayer character (within say 10 days of death), thus reveals the murderer. As others pointed out, even the victim might not know who the murderer is (because of mask, invisibility, shapechange, distant attack, poison, or so on). So, even reviving the victim wont necessarily expose the identity of the murderer. Moreover, a murderer could take precautions to prevent a revivification (or a Speak with Dead spell) by destroying the dead by fire, acid, or else remove some other vital organ such as the heart.

In any case, character concepts need to be viable. Vague concerns about ‘mystery’ or ‘secrecy’ can be addressed in other ways.

 

[Yaarel]

Note I dont use gp costs as a means of limiting the use of a spell.

The amount of money that player characters might have access too, depends completely on the setting. For example, an urban setting might have the player characters be wealthy nobles (with access to family money or business loans), while a wilderness setting might have the player characters never actually see any ‘money’.

I generally eschew all gp costs. (If the gp refers to the actual object that the spell is targeting, then it is the object that matters, not the gp.)

I prefer other methods when necessary to prevent spell spamming, including frequency limits: only once per day or once per week (or once per 9 days). Flavorwise, the explanation is a ritual is necessary to prepare the spell for casting, and it includes specific astronomical positions and sacred calendar times.

So far I have had no issues with Revivify, because the players dont like to die. They work well together, and feel free to avoid combat if the encounter appears above their level (which it sometimes is).