What's the problem with bringing PCs back from the dead?

[Hussar]

D&D doesn't scale well if the NPCs aren't roughly equal to the heroes or even superior.

In literature and real world myth coming back to life is a cosmic event. It robs the epic feel of the game when life and death are trifles.

I don't randomly kill characters. Thus, if a character dies it is a meaningful event in the story. If they come back to life then the emotion is robbed from the sacrifice or the feeling of loss.

Sure, this fits your playstyle, but, that doesn't make it remotely universal. Raise dead in your world doesn't fit because of the style of game you play. That doesn't make raising wrong, it just means that it's wrong for you. I most definitely randomly kill PC's. I roll all combat dice 100% in the open. If the dice say you die, then your dead. 22 PC deaths (15 permanent) in 76 sessions of the World's Largest Dungeon shows how lethal random death can be in D&D.

[quote
Buffy The Vampire Slayer also illustrated an important point. Heroes who die are rewarded after death. Let the new guy take up the quest for good because the dead hero earned his reward. Only blatant materialism or a Greek take on the afterlife makes every character think life is better than afterlife.
[/quote]

Yet, Buffy features coming back from the dead multiple times. Not just for Buffy but for numerous other characters as well.

Society would be heavily weighted towards the elderly (rich) if raise dead existed. Many people die of unnatural causes especially in medieval times. The world would be unrecognizable to me if anyone with the money could live as long as he chose to.

The existence of Cure Disease would have a much larger effect than Raise Dead. Never minding that dying from disease prevents Raise Dead by and large, since you'll only die immedietely after being raised.

It doesn't make sense, in game, if everyone comes back from the dead for anyone not to come back who can. So everyone has to suspend disbelief when one player decides to retire his character that just died for a new character.

I would point to recent OOTS strips for an excellent reason why you wouldn't come back. Hrm, live a decent life, get murdered horribly, wake up on the Elysium Fields surrounded by buxom wenches and unlimited beer. Or, conversely, go back to the living world. Yeah, tough choice. Never minding the plethora of reasons why you can't simply whack on a raise dead in the first place.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Having a return to life be easy -- and yes, 5000 gp and a fifth-level spell is easy -- simply doesn't feel like heroic fantasy to me. It feels like -- yes, I'm gonna say it -- a video game. "Just pump in your quarters and start over at the beginning of the level, son."

On the other hand, I also understand the other arguments: party cohesion, story coherence, the anticlimax of losing a character to sheer horrendous luck, and so on.

So I gave it a bunch of thought and decided that if it's the feel of being brought back to life that I dislike so much, the smart thing to do is change that feel. Continuing to think on it, I decided to simply make it harder -- not by any means impossible, but definitely harder -- for characters to die. I approached it from a couple of angles:

(1) I use Arcana Evolved's disabled and death rules. (0 HP down to negative Con bonus for Disabled; equal to full negative Con score is Dead.)

(2) I use Action Points, a la Eberron.

(3) I changed the life-returning spells from being mystical to being medical. Basically, a magical healer who gets to a "corpse" in time -- rounds or minutes after death, depending on the level of the spell -- can keep the soul from departing. Effectively, these spells bring back someone who, in our world, would be considered clinically dead.

There are interesting implications to these changes that I also like a lot, starting with the fact that unlike with raise dead, the patient doesn't have a choice in the matter; and how do the gods of Death feel about it?

Anyway, even with these changes, one character died in my last session, and one was barely brought back from the brink. (Who'd have though five 6th-level PCs would have such a hard time with one CR 8 Tyrannosaur?) I really like the changes a lot.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Yet, Buffy features coming back from the dead multiple times. Not just for Buffy but for numerous other characters as well.

Out of curiosity, who else was brought back?

Joyce presumably came back, but very, very wrong. Darla ended up alive again, but not through any kind of resurrection. Angel was thought dead, but was just trapped on another dimension. (Besides, vampire.) Other than vampires and zombies, who else came back?

Death was pretty damned final in Buffy ... so much so that probably the most powerful witch in the world couldn't bring back her lover.

 

[Aaron L]

Because it turns RPGs into video games, where you can 'save' a character or get more lives or any of that crap.

(And Stephen Brust has it because he is a talentless hack).

Ah yes, here we are, the "D&D is turning into a video game" insult again.


Too bad resurrection magic in D&D predates such things in any video game by, oh, say, years? Were their even any video games when D&D came out, (with resurrection included?) And any such magic in video games is inspired directly from D&D?


And mixed with an insult to a pretty good author all in one post, too! You win a cookie.


People being returned from the dead, being reborn, and the like is an old, established, and respected part of mythology, fantasy, and religion. To claim that it's inclusion in D&D somehow turns the game into a video game, and equating it with crap, is not only insulting to those of us who use it, it is highly ignorant of the source material of fantasy in general.


Hell, did you miss the part in the Lord of the Rings where one of the main characters comes back after he dies???!!!



If death is the only outcome of failure in your games, I could infer that all those games are about is combat; but I won't do that, because it's a sweeping generalization that I don't want to make. There are many more ways to fail than death. I've failed at a lot of things, and I'm still around. But if a character does happen to die in the middle of a battle (as just happened in our most recent game on Sunday), having the ability to bring them back to life not only fits in the genre of fantasy, it also helps make the game more fun for players who don't want to lose beloved characters.

 

[Korgoth]

I'm generally more concerned with NPC death than PC death.

In a world where resurrection is a matter of price, it's impossible to assassinate a king unless you have conspirators standing by to immediately jump in and take his place - and even then, the conspiracy darn well better have the support of the military or the populace, or preferrably both, because everyone *knows* they could just get the king back if they cared to. Or, you have 'weapons that can kill so you can't be raised,' which then brings the whole problem full circle - if you use those weapons against PCs, they can't be raised either.

Losing a loved one (except to age) basically means an expenditure of gold to a mid- to high-level PC. Rather than coming home from adventure to finding his wife and children murdered and swearing vengeance on the foe who did the foul deed, he comes home, finds them dead, and slips the party cleric a few thousand gp to bring them back. Then he asks them who killed them and puts revenge on his to-do list - for what it's worth, since any halfway competent villain will also be able to come back from the dead at this level.

It's actually *worse* than the superhero cliche that no one stays dead, because people in the setting know what's required to cause it. It's not a genre convention, it's a financial expenditure.

Absolutely perfectly well said.

It makes the whole fantasy stop making any kind of sense, even as a fantasy. In 2005 my grandfather died (not of old age). I'd do anything reasonable to get him back. How much does a Raise Dead cost... as much as a house? Fine, we'll sell the house. As much as a ranch? Fine, my aunt (his daughter) will sell her ranch. Who would not do such a thing?

Nobody would let their loved-ones die, and everyone would liquidate whatever it took to get them back. Within a decade the vast majority of wealth in the entire nation would concentrate in the hands of those who could bring back the dead. If it's clerics, then every nation would be a theocracy, bar none.

Nobody would even spend money on other things... everybody would be sitting on the biggest bringing the dead back to life, can you believe it!!!?? fund they possibly could.

It absolutely turns any world upside down.

 

[Delta]

(Edit) Well, clearly no one was really interested in a discussion of "Why some people have a problem with bring PCs back from the dead". I retract my earlier hypothesis, and submit that no one has ever in fact had a problem with the concept. Good day!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Again I see that you're telling me in no uncertain terms how D&D is meant to be played and interpreted. I thank you again! I'll pass along the note to all my players over the years that we've been playing it wrong and look for another game system as soon as possible.

I will also tell potential players I meet who are interested in myth, legend, or fantasy literature that they should find some other game, because D&D is clearly not the one they should be interested in. You've truly been a vast help to us all today!

Please get a thicker skin. I told you nothing of the sort.

 

[Delta]

Hmm, whenever someone starts hounding me in a particular thread and trying to provoke me 90 seconds after I post, I know it's time to depart. Clearly that time is now.

 

[Sejs]

Don't put out what you can't take in return, Delta. Goes for a lot of things, including sarcasm and smartassery.

 

[Hussar]

Out of curiosity, who else was brought back?

Joyce presumably came back, but very, very wrong. Darla ended up alive again, but not through any kind of resurrection. Angel was thought dead, but was just trapped on another dimension. (Besides, vampire.) Other than vampires and zombies, who else came back?

Death was pretty damned final in Buffy ... so much so that probably the most powerful witch in the world couldn't bring back her lover.

Spike came back. Buffy came back. Granted, the mechanics wasn't per D&D, but, they still came back.

OTOH, I wasn't a huge fan of the show, so I could be wrong on this one. The point still remains, characters DID come back from apparent death.