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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deadguy" data-source="post: 91846" data-attributes="member: 2480">Raise Dead is Dangerous!I just wanted to throw an idea into the ring. I quite like mmadsen's idea of the study of Raise Dead being associated with Animate Dead and similar types of magic, and I may have to look into incorporating that into my setting. But I just wanted to mention how I have carefully worked some ideas into my own Shattered World game:First a little background: the Shattered World is atypical in planar terms. There are no multiple Outer Planes, only the Realms of the Dead, found on the source of Negative Energy, Darkheart. Death follows the very earliest human model - that the place of the dead is a cold one, of ashes and lamentation. And it applies to everyone! There is no escaping this for the vast majority of humanity, it is just a fact. Darkheart is also teh home of the Lords of Undeath, beings that have bought a little comfort in the afterlife, in return for an insatiable hunger for the living.So, in this model, Raise Dead isn't Evil, indeed some people argue that it is even Good to bring people out of there! Of course some would argue that it is both UnLawful (it mightn't be pleasant, but it is where humanity is destined to go) and unnatural. However, into this mix add that to Raise Dead requires opening a conduit to Darkheart. It is something to which the Lords of Undeath are exquisitely attuned, and they can try and use such a conduit to ride into the world of the living, in order to feed! Of course, they don't succeed every time, but often enough that the magic, whilst not Evil, does have moral consequences. Hence for most people, Raise Dead is regretfully set aside... there are too many risks for the remainder of the deceased's family to make it overall worthwhile (let alone the costs!).I put this forward as a rejoinder to the notion of making this spell Evil in order to limit access to it. I suggest that we can build myth and tangible difficulties around this spell that limit it, without distorting the natural structure of the game, whereby helping other people is naturally a Good act (okay perhaps morally Neutral depending on your motivations, but you get the idea!)</blockquote>

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