What if Rauise Dead/Ressurection was an evil spell...

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

What if in order to raise someone from the dead, you had to kill someone (sentient) in order to "buy" the person to be raised's way out of the world of the dead? That would be an evil act.

What if the person raised instead had to murder a sentient being every month to continue to exist? That would be evil, too. And they would have to murder a person right away (within 1 minute) of being raised or they would die again (instantly brought to -10 hp).

Some ideas, anyway.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

I cause characters to advance one age category whenever tehy come back from the dead. For details see here

The aging factor is also an interesting take. That would limit the number of times you could be raised to maybe 3 (middle age, old, venerable), depending on the character's age and age limit.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Well it should be...

You are robbing a person of their just rewards of the afterlife.

You are causing conflict between family members on wills and inheritence. Don't forget organ donars!

In a world where undead are common do you ever trust someone that comes back?

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This is where a good world myth (my soap box) comes into play. As long as it is explained to your players.

 

[Plane Sailing]

When I used to DM "Empire of the Petal Throne" many, many years ago, we used a particularly brutal consequence of the revivification (aka raise dead) spell.

Basically, the ledger books of time had to be balanced - so to bring someone back to life, the caster of the raise dead had to die.

Thus, the power was used very rarely, and normally only when someone senior in the temple heirarchy commanded it of a powerful underling.

I don't use this brutal approach in my current campaign, but I can easily imagine a world where I would use this.

Cheers

 

[xjp]

Hmm, some good ideas about limiting resurrections. I'll have to consider all these alternatives. Currently, I have scratched resurrection and true resurrection, and shortened the max. amount of time between death and raising. I've also raised the price of components considerably. The victim will always come back with some mental and/or physical quirks. If a cleric can't perform the ritual right after death and the players have to seek a healer the cost and permanent damage to the player goes up. The victim usually comes back quite sickly and has to prescribe to expensive medicines to return to anything close to their former health.

I'm intrigued by the idea that raise dead/resurrection is a dark forbidden ritual, though.

 

[mkletch]

What if in order to raise someone from the dead, you had to kill someone (sentient) in order to "buy" the person to be raised's way out of the world of the dead? That would be an evil act.

What if the person raised instead had to murder a sentient being every month to continue to exist? That would be evil, too. And they would have to murder a person right away (within 1 minute) of being raised or they would die again (instantly brought to -10 hp).

The life for a life scenario is very interesting, but not necessarily evil if the caster uses his or her own life to pay.

Perhaps another option is that both the returning character and the caster should lose a level irretrievably. Or to take that further, the returnee always loses a level or Con point as normal, but the caster loses one level for Raise Dead, two levels for Resurrection and three levels for True Resurrection.

-Fletch!

 

[Kichwas]

In my own world (Fahla) the Gatekeeper is the god of death and rebirth; guardian of the well of souls.

It takes a very keen interest in making sure ALL souls follow their proper course.

If you want to 'go back' to a past life you had better get one of the gods to come there in person and explain to the Gatekeeper what makes you so darned special and who the heck they think they are to even ask it to let them keep one soul from being reborn (most gods are afraid to do this for fear they might get 'pushed' through the well; though saying such is a heresy in the church's of most lands).

If by some means a mortal finds a way to trick the process and avoid rebirth by returning to their past life; they can expect a lot of 'visits' from the Gatekeeper's few followers in the mortal world.

They might also find a lot of the divine beings trying to 'distance themselves' from that particular tricky mortal and any who ally themselves with said mortal.

Both good and evil divine beings will do this.

However if the Gatekeeper is somehow convinced to let a soul go back to it's past life and interupt the cycle everybody will turn a blind eye and try their best to act like it never happened and they have no idea who that mortal is... But the Gatkeeper and it's followers will remember. When that soul inevitably appears before the Well again... the Gatekeeper will be a lot less talkative and a lot more hurried about pushing it through into the next life.


Once a soul is into it's next life (3 days after death) any magic that recalls it to it's past life will have to answer to the death of the new life and whatever repercussions that incurs.