Wasn't raise dead supposed to be harder at low levels?

[Amphimir Míriel]

Making Raise Dead require a quest is a nice idea, but I don't think "Make the DM come up with a quest on the spot" should be a spell. A hefty monetary price is a good baseline.

True that... although you could have your cake and eat it too. For example, the Cleric who's doing the ritual needs to get paid AND a favor. Or maybe they have enough money and the PC Cleric can do the ritual, but he needs to borrow some implements from a temple to complete it...

I almost never give my PCs any money :evilgrin:, so I might involve a loanshark and a thieves guild into that equation.

 

[JohnSnow]

Yeah, I might go with there being a quest that the party must accomplish after the person is raised in order to make it 'stick.' In other words, the party must accomplish something that the person doing the raising wants done as "payment." That's one reason you don't want evil clerics raising your buddy.

However, I don't totally dislike the default. It works very well to enable 'Miracle Max' type characters. Moreover, tying raise dead to the Heal skill, rather than Religion, just further reinforces that concept.

 

[Fobok]

I actually did a quest once in a situation like that in 3e, though it was a very high-level player. I didn't put a timer on it, but until the quest was completed if the character died again, he'd be returned as if Reincarnated. The quest ended up taking him the last few levels to 20 before he finally finished it and got his original body back. Really fun roleplaying as the character was a sun elf, and he was cut off from home until he finished it.