Revenance + Revivify

[Wrathamon]

My Cleric 15/Contemplative 2 currently carries 7800gp of diamond dust. It used to be 12800, but I wrote a scroll of raise dead recently.

It's needed for so many spells it seems silly not to carry it. Whenever there are diamonds in the loot, I claim them.

Yah but you are 17th level... you have gold to burn in material components. At 9th or 10th level that 7800 can be used in more permanent items that will be more needed.

My archivist basically has no magic items because I have to burn gold to scribe prayers into my prayer book 100gp per spell level + the cost of the scroll. Then I need money for all the expensive material components... silver dust, diamond dust, etc.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

We use Revivify in our own games. Instead of Revenance, however (which generally leads to a "it killed me again" situation) we use Delay Death. Delay Death additionally removes the need for Revivify since you can cast a Heal or something before the duration is up.

For us, I think, it has worked out well. We are generally more concerned with two things: The Story and The Immediate Tactical Situation.

A character being "out" is fine, but writing in new characters breaks the feel of the story, especially with how deadly high level combat is. I can't think of more than two combats in the last few levels that one character or another wasn't "killed" outright rather early in the combat. We use Delay Death and carry on, then patch up the fallen afterward and move on with the story. If we had to True Rez folks we'd be out of money already and after that it would be The Parade Of Replacement Characters.

I'm quite happy with the way it is working out. I don't see that losing a character in combat is necessarily a requirement of the game. And we have lost a character. At one point we were pinned down and one character was split from the group by enemy forces, killed, and captured. By the time we were able to retrieve it was past any of those short-duration spells.

At the same time it seemed a properly dramatic situation to us. As opposed to the first round: "The giant hits you ... four times ... for 280 points of damage." "Oh, I'm dead, awesome."

--fje

 

[Borc]

True Rez at 25kg a pop seems rediculous to me. I have only played a character up into the upper teens once. High end encounters seem to be somewhat low on gp value. Not sure how it affects other people in their campaigns though.

Basically, after every major part of the campaign we run into town and burn all the gold we earned in that part of the campaign, thus leaving us with very little gold after the fact. We do keep enough to do a rez if needed or barter/bribe if needed for the storyline.

I have to agree with an earlier poster. True Rez basically has no limit to it being cast on a player to rez them from the dead. And that is a major reason for the enormous reagent cost.

Revivify is extremely limited in its use, and likewise, not very wise to use in heavy combat as it can (and possibly should) lead to another death.

The combo effect uses up a 5th level cleric only spell (Revivify) which can only be used within the round after death. a 4th level cleric or paladin spell (revenance) which to the cleric is not very significant at lvl 17. However, to the paladin, that is an equivelant to a 9th lvl cleric spell (they do not get a 4th level spell until a few levels before a cleric gets lvl 9 spells).

I think to prevent abuse of this combo I would restrict revenance to paladin only. so that the cleric cannot have the combo in effect for cheaper than a true rez. Reserving the spell for that situation only is a pretty significant expense of a spell slot for a paladin which only gets 3 level 4 spells (Excluding wis bonus). That is one less heal they will be able to cast and they cannot spontaneously cast heal spells.

Scaling the GP value up to 5000 would penalize the party a little more. But, the true penalty is not being affected on the person that incurred the death in most cases, it is just taken out of group loot.

The DM has a wide array of ways to kill a member of an adventuring party. The party has very few ways to cheat death. And death seems to come much quicker and with higher consequences at higher levels.

Frankly, I think this gives the DM more leaway in being able to slaughter NPCs at least once a day >