Rezzing

[Lonely Tylenol]

Calling an idea a stupid idea in now an insult? You can't insult an idea.

There are rules concerning treating other board users with respect. Calling their ideas stupid is disrespectful.

 

[Rel]

Calling an idea a stupid idea in now an insult?

Yes, Sun Knight, it is. Perhaps in the world of seething negativity that is Sun Knight, calling something "stupid" is just your way of saying, "I respectfully disagree with this notion." But here at ENWorld, we like to keep things a bit more civil and friendly. I welcome you to adopt such an attitude sometime over the course of the next three days.

 

[Fenes]

I don't like that at all...where's the risk, the danger? If characters can never die, players won't feel that there's any form of cost to their decisions.

And it's just, unrealistic.

Banshee

You can lose gear, status, your family, your realm, your honor, your freedom. All without dieing. And most of it usually much much more of a "Punishment" than death, especially if you have access to true resurrection.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Increase the penalties and difficulties of casting the spells on the caster and the stiff.

If that raise dead spell cost the caster 1 (or more) point of CON until they next levelled up, they might not cast it very freely. It's not permanent but it's still a drain.
The raised person should take a similar or more severe hit.

Being "not dead" is a huge reward IMHO. If it costs more then it currently does under the rules it will be treated differently.

 

[Woas]

Well in Iron Heroes there is no regular source of magic and thus, no raise dead spells of any kind. So going unconscious in combat can be pretty harsh since once you are gone there is only one, higher level in-game feat that lets players basically give advanced CPR to a dead character but it further is limited in that it must be done within 2 rounds of the characters death.
But thats pretty steep. My personal answer to this, to give Iron Heroes that much more grit around the edges, is to have a maimed/handicap system. When a character dies the player has a choice: Do I want to keep playing this character or start a new, a level or so weaker. If a player wants to keep their character around then the character gets a permanent handicap. It depends on how they died and what seems appropriate. But it could be a missing eye, severed finger/hand/arm/leg, a badly broken bone that never heals right, brain damage... the list goes on. Each of these handicaps comes at a mechanical price though. So it isn't just a "free Rez". The system counterbalances itself so that players can't just throw their characters into death traps and come back either. The characters would be so maimed it would be nigh-impossible to play them and thus need to retire them. Typically players can get away with 2-3 of these before its time to retire though.

 

[2WS-Steve]

...so what was the solution? Why can some characters be raised, but others not?

Essentially what Treebore said.

In Mongoose's The Drow Wars, the player characters are special -- they're Starborn. This is a template that is added to all the players and provides a bonus that varies based on the constellation under which you're born. They also get signature magic items that they're sort of destined to connect with, and have some other abilities.

In the setting, only the starborn can be resurrected or raised, and this is all in service to fighting against the onslaught of the dark.

There are also some bad guys called The Host, which are like corrupted starborn. Essentially these would be for your key bad guy NPCs.

 

[Counterspin]

The complaint about the Drow Wars method of resurrection is that it is a fluff fix and not a systemic fix.

 

[2WS-Steve]

The complaint about the Drow Wars method of resurrection is that it is a fluff fix and not a systemic fix.

I think any solution might have to be largely a fluff fix.

I think one of the main reasons for including raise dead is to make the game more fun and playable, so it's a gameplay device -- but the problems it creates are mainly to the fluff: things like the kind of story the DM wants to tell (or world the DM wants to create).

Essentially, it's one of the areas where the Roleplaying part of D&D comes into conflict with the Game part of D&D.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Essentially what Treebore said.

In Mongoose's The Drow Wars, the player characters are special -- they're Starborn. This is a template that is added to all the players and provides a bonus that varies based on the constellation under which you're born. They also get signature magic items that they're sort of destined to connect with, and have some other abilities.

In the setting, only the starborn can be resurrected or raised, and this is all in service to fighting against the onslaught of the dark.

There are also some bad guys called The Host, which are like corrupted starborn. Essentially these would be for your key bad guy NPCs.

What's the difference between this and just saying "the PCs can be raised, but NPCs can't." It's not like you're fooling anyone. I expect that one can come up with an in-game fluff reason that justifies any arbitrary mechanical limitation or allowance. That makes me wonder why actually going to the bother of doing so to justify your mechanical changes is considered a better fix than just implementing the mechanical changes. It seems to me to be just as much a hand-waving fix either way.

 

[lukelightning]

If you get rid of raise dead then a player can just bring in his character's identical twin brother who says "you can still call me Landfill in honor of my deceased brother..."