Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7992066" data-attributes="member: 53980">An idea I had, which I haven't actually gotten around to trying, is that the life force is taken from the cleric.If the cleric casts Raise Dead on someone, the caster loses half of their remaining lifespan and the target gains it. So if a cleric has 20 years left to live, after raising a target both they and the target only have 10 years to live.However, willing individuals can participate in the spell and share their life force. If one other creature aids the caster, then they both only sacrifice 25% of their remaining life spans (which is gained by the target). If 9 other individuals assist, then everyone only sacrifices 5%. But trust is important, since if any of the individuals is unwilling (they agreed to save face but aren't actually willing to make the sacrifice) all of the other participants shoulder the additional burden.On top of all of this, life force is roughly the same for everyone. Elves and other long lived races burn their life force more slowly than other races, while short lived races burn more quickly. As such, races have a multiplier that normalizes their life force. An elf who raises a human may be giving up hundreds of years of life to grant the human mere decades, while the opposite is true if a human raises an elf.I added that part so that an elf raising a human doesn't grant the human an unnaturally long life span, although that could be an interesting direction to go if you were interested. That could even be the origin of half elves.What this means is that clerics will be quite ungenerous with regard to raising the dead, particularly for strangers. After all, if the stranger's "friends" say they are willing but prove unwilling, the cleric is giving up half their remaining life span, which is likely no small thing. It is likely only a boon granted to very trusted individuals or under extreme circumstances.</blockquote>

Verification