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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5612101" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yeah, I agree they are issues of local milieu, and not part of the RAW.But conversely, widespread accessibility of True Resurrection would also be an issue of milieu and not part of the RAW.   The fact that True Resurrection is a 9th level spell and available only to spellcasters of 17th level or higher is part of the RAW, and can be reasonably understood to make access to such spells very rare.There is nothing in the RAW that insists that 17th level spellcasters need be common, and much that suggests or indicates otherwise.  Ultimately, demographics are always a DM's decision.  If you decide that every town above 5000 people has a 17th level spellcaster, then that's going to have certain profound implications on your campaign world.  Conversely, if you decide that 17th level spellcasters occur on a frequency of about 1 in 5,000,000 individuals in a points of light type setting where overall populations are quite low, then one of the implications of that is that its relatively unlikely that Kings will have one on call.  It's not impossible of course, and were it occurs it should be noted as part of your world building, but still relatively unlikely.That's certainly true, and I'm willing to laugh with you about the utter banality and absurdity of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting where ordinary tavern owners wield as great of power as the mightiest heroes of oother worlds.  Sure, just about anything about FR makes no sense if you think about it.  But you didn't bring it up as a case in point.  You brought up Eberron.  I'm sure we can find tons of things that make no sense at all when it comes to the Forgotten Realms continuity, but your point about continuity issues in Eberron falls flat for me because Eberron is explicitly a world where high level characters are rare but also where the implications of magic are somewhat well considered.  It's not the geek-boy-look-at-me-spasm-of-gosh-wow-DM-PC-empowering mess that FR tends to.   So, the objections made that the more excessible sorts of resurrection like Raise Dead are highly limited spells that are easily foiled ring true to me with regard to the assumptions of Eberron.  First of all, is it a basic assumption that the Fiendish Codexes and the like are in play?  All I see is a basic assumption that high level PC's could exist.  And second of all, if the PC's are 17th level or higher, then that by no means influences general demographics in anyway.  If your world has every century or so a half-dozen towering figures he engage in mighty heroics and change the face of the world, and this time it happens to be the PC's, it doesn't change the facts of life for either the majority of inhabitants or even the majority of kings.   What the PC's do still for most of the world is something that happens 'over there'.  The PC's are figures of legend and song and most of the world is probably convinced that half of what they here about them is exagerration, and legend and song being what they are, half of the time they are probably right.Clearly the PC's weren't around to save King Boranel's older brothers. It should be worth noting I think though that in my 25+ years of play, I've never been the DM when 17th level characters were in play, and only once was I the PC with such a character (and I didn't get that one 'fairly' by starting at 1st level).  While I know that many groups engage in very high level play regularly and I can certainly see attractions to that or even the necessity of it if in the long run you don't want to abandon your characters, I don't think it is the default assumption that everyone must play that way.  I generally plan campaigns to wrap up between 12th and 15th level, and rarely do I ever get such a string of unbroken gaming with the same group that I get them to that point.</blockquote>

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