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[Evilhalfling]

Raising the dead.

Despite the bad rep of these spells I find them preferrable to other options. As a DM much of the campagin is built around ongoing stories for each of the characters. New characters are a hassle to integrate, and to much change over can kill grand arcs and intresting side quests, plus you have to rebuild relationships with both PCs and NPCs.

That said, death and its reversal should not be without consequences. The social view of Resurrection should vary by society. I have three primary human societies. The first is a Lawful empire, where priests train togeather at Seminaries before choosing a personal diety and there are many strong cross faith friendships and alliances. Here being raised is only done with societies permission, there is a tribunal which acesses the value of the individual to society, and it must grant permission before the dead can be brought back. The tribunal also decides if the person returning keeps his titles. (they always keep personal items) Preserving the body is a common tactic, to allow the tribual time to meet. The tribunal adds an extra 1000 gp to the cost, and some tribuals are willing to take bribes, but this is uncommon. Adventuring priests have been known to get their companions pre-approved to cut down on bueacracy.

In a more chaotic society where the temples are at odds, and power struggles are common,
being raised from the dead means that you owe you life to the priest or faith that brought you back. Society assumes that you are now a bought man, and reacts to you as if you were a member of that faction. Priests will never forget what they have done for you and may call on you for favors, this life debt is hardly ever discharged. You lose all titles and postions, and they pass to your heirs. Few are willing to accept a bought man in a postion of authourity unless there is no other choice. Druids are also common here, and they follow the same system in reicarnations.

The last society is military run, it holds the line against humanoid hordes. There Raise Dead is a matter of rank, anyone with the rank of knight or better (aprox 7th can be obtained by any class) can be raised, and a party is thrown for them on their return. They retain full privlages and honors and no stigma is attached to giving your life valiently in battle.
Unaffiliated people of suffiecent power are asked (speak w/dead) If they are will donate a years service to the military, in return for being raised.

In the first and last cases the priest will never waive the material cost, as ability to pay is one aspect of fitness to return. In the chaotic society a Priest might, in return for a stronger hold on the person and his companions.

Each society has reasons for allowing it and has laws and customs governing its use. It should not be done lightly, but it a better option than true death. Characters have lots of time and energy invested in them, and a death can add to thier history and development.
The DM should give some thought to how death is viewed by society and how laws react. Is it still murder if the victim is recovers? What about inheritance and the king who wants to have himeslf reicarnated rather than giving up power do to old age and poor health? Where are all those diamonds coming from?
<NPC Ironics wanted>

 

[Steverooo]

Sometimes, I hafta wonder...

...are we even reading the same books? Raise Dead, Reincarnate, and Resurrection too easy?

All of them require a caster, of only one class, of seventh level or higher, 1,000 or more GP in material components (in addition to the price for casting the spell, unless another PC can do it), a piece (at least!) of the body from the time of death, and none but the strongest can return a character who was made Undead, or killed by Death Magic, and not even Resurrection can return one who has died of old age! Furthermore, all result in the loss of a level (or two points of permanent CON loss, if first level, or the inability to be raised if level one and with a CON of two or less). There is also a caster-level-dependant time limit, which is roughly a week or so, to start!

Reincarnate is the first spell available, and it requires finding a Druid of seventh level or higher (and they don't exactly grow on trees)! Once found, (s)he still needs paid, and 1,000 GP worth of unguents, etc. Then the 10 minute casting time, and (despite the spell description's duration of "Instantaneous") one more hour for the new body to form (see the end of paragraph two). Then, you get a level lower body of unknown sort, which may or may not be to your liking, and may or may not be optimal to your class... Good luck, with that! You also have a 50% chance of losing any uncast spells.

Raise Dead comes next, and is probably not much harder to find (and might be easier, depending upon how hard Druids are to find, in your campaign world), since it only requires a ninth level Cleric. The price for the material components is about the same, but the price for casting the spell will be higher, due to the increased caster level. This is also the spell with the restriction that any body parts missing from the corpse will also be missing from the Raised Formerly-Dead-One, so a Heal may also be needed. And again with the level- or CON-loss. It's interesting to note, here, that the resting time for patient and Cleric have been removed, but note that the PC isn't returned to full health, in this version... Instead, a character has a number of HP equal to his/her/its hit dice, or level... So your eighth level PC has eight HP, and has to be cured from there. Furthermore, any ability damage remains, unless brought to zero (in which case it is raised to one). Now come all the Cure Wounds spells! Any uncast spells that the PC had suffer a 50% chance of loss.

Resurrection is the best, hardest to find, and most expensive, as well. You still need a piece of your PC, which has to have been a part of him/her (it?) at the time of death. The time limit is more lax, on this one, 10 years per caster level, so this isn't usually a problem. The 10,000 GP diamond is pretty tough to find, however, and usually means that the PC's gear will have to be sold, in order to get him Resurrected! This one can even bring back those slain by Death Magic, or turned into Undead and then slain (and restores any ability drain, and full HPs), but still can't cure old age. Of course, the 13th level Cleric should be kind of tough to find, but it is doable, if you try hard enough, no doubt. Raising the funds for the diamond merchant and temple probably won't be, though...

Depending upon how free a GM is with gold and other treasure in his campaign, the "problem" of Raise Dead, Reincarnate, and Resurrection may not be a problem, at all. Also, if your campaign runs in the wilderness, a lot, large towns with Druids/Clerics of the proper levels may also be more than a week away, making these spells unavailable until Teleport, or somesuch, is gained.

Once past about third to fourth level, the 1,000 GP for the lower level spells will be no problem, and the caster level costs not add enough to be a problem. The finding of a seventh level Druid or ninth level Cleric, and travel time to get there, still might be.

By the time Resurrection is affordable, Teleport probably will be, as well, and the travel time will have ceased to matter. The availability of high level NPCs will certainly still be a problem, though. How tough are these to find, in your campaign?

Finally, Miracle and Wish are all that exist to recover PCs who fell into the acid pit, black pudding, volcano, etc., where no portion of the body could be recovered. These, of course, cost more to get cast than any other spells, and... how much will the Clerics and Wizards charge for the XP loss?

And all of this is based strictly upon the RAW (Rules As Written). Will Clerics of Tyr want to bring back CN Rogues, who engaged in thievery? (Probably not!) Will Baldur/Freya bring back cowardly Oathbreakers? (I doubt it!) Will any godlets bring back non-worshippers in a time of war, when many of the faithful are fallen? ("Get in line!")

No, I don't believe that coming back needs to be made any harder than it already is! Simply enforcing the RAW is bad enough! YMMV.

 

[RangerWickett]

I kinda think resurrection would be illegal, and only those officially deemed 'national treasures' would be allowed to be brought back from the dead. You'd have to put a measure on the value of human life, and unless a person has donated a few thousand gold pieces to the nation's coffers, or has significantly improved the nation, I can see rulers refusing to allow people to come back from the dead.

Sure, in a time of war, a 9th level wizard is nice, but if he dies, are you going to spend 1000 gp for an 8th level wizard, or are you going to hire a thousand 1st level conscripts?

 

[StupidSmurf]

There are two instances I can think of where even having some sort of dead-raising magic is not a guarantee of undoing a death. As the comedian said, "Stop me if you've heard this one."

1. Steveroo mentioned the reluctance of some gods raising people who are antithetical to their ethos. That's great, and how about taking that a step further? What's to stop a god from executing a Divine Override if the soul in question belongs to them, but has not distinguished itself in life? For instance, you have Tempus, god of battle in the Forgotten Realms. Some fighter dies while turning tail and running away from a more or less evenly matched battle. Well, for some bizarre reason, the survivors of the battle decide to bring their cowardly friend back. Tempus says "No way" and prevents the soul from returning.

Perhaps his comrades need to perform a quest to bring their friend back. This speaks a lot about the ultimate character of the dead soul....having companions willing to undertake such a risk speaks a lot for the soul's character. Or perhaps the raising is temporary, and is piggybacked onto a quest. "Sir Runs-a-lot, you have been brought back to life for one month, and during this time, you must travel to the lair of Ripya Faceov, the double-sized mountain troll, and slay him. Succeed, and you have redeemed yourself and the raising will stand. Fail, and you come back to the realms of the dead, so that your cowardice and incompetence will no longer cause me shame among the living."

2. Secondly, and this one's nasty... How many of you DMs out there have had evil cultists sacrifice a PC or NPC, only to have a rescue party come in, slay the cultists, take the body, and have it raised?

Excuse me? Can anyone else see what's wrong with that? The cultists have given the SOUL of the victim to their GOD. Unless it's the God of Takebacks we're talking about here, no bit of clerical magic is going to tear away the soul of the dead from the clutches of a god on his/her/its home plane. Cthulhu doesn't give refunds, bube.

I have a House Rule, and it's been agreed to by my group. If evil priests have managed to capture someone, and successfully do a full-out elaborate sacrificial ritual (as in, taking at least an hour, in a temple/shrine dedicated to the god, consecrated altar, full costumes and regalia stuff), offering the victim's soul to the evil god, then dude, that soul is GONE. Not even a successful Divine Intervention will undo that.

Want the victim back? Then make like the heroes of Greek myth and journey to the afterlife and get them back. And if you think THAT's going to be easy, you have another thing coming.

Due to what can be the utter finality of this, I rarely use it.

Come to think of it, both suggestions should be cleared in advance with the party.

If this post has been entertaining and/or informative, I wouldn't say no to that Figurines of Wondrous Power thingy!

 

[Estlor]

Ghostwalk - Yes, this is on topic

I love Ghostwalk. I've always wanted to use Ghostwalk. Never got the chance, but man, my homebrew world incorporates it from the get go. War is a big element of that world. So is religion and the divine vs arcane aspect of magic. The priests of the world believe arcane magic is gained through a pact with demons (I'm using non-standard classes, and the warlock and hexblade as the primary arcane casters doesn't help appearances). Anyway, just over the next hill, not far from the major civilizations, is a tiny little city called Purgatory. It's a "last stop" before the world of the dead. If you die with a strong enough reason to stick around, you find yourself in Purgatory but you don't really remember how you got there. Of course, in the setting, resurrection magic is hard to come by. Most priests are contemplatives who can't cast spells at all. Pretty much, if you want to come back to life, you had better have a spellcaster in the party that can do it.

That's basically my view of raising the dead in a nutshell. I like to focus not on the party's desire to have their heavy hitter back in the fold, but what does the soul of the deceased want to do? By all rights, if the party has reached a level where raise dead and reincarnation is in their toolbox, they have a right to use it. But I also fully understand it goes about causing the perceived immortality of a PC. (But once you start dealing with save or die high level situations, shouldn't you be able to call for the redo once in a while?)

3.X is all about options, not restrictions. That's why I love Ghostwalk. You don't have to shred that character sheet, even if you don't want to come back to life. If you're dead in the middle of a great quest, you can always go after that last great task so your soul can rest. Or maybe you need time to put together a raise dead spell and can haunt your party until they do it. It adds a whole new level of possibilities to dying that weren't there before SKR snuck that product through the 3.0/3.5 split. That's also what I love about the D20 system. There's so much you can do with the same mechanic, it really shows the versatility of the game.

And really, high level play is all about doing stupid things and somehow coming out of it smelling like a rose. Raise dead is for those times a few "1"s come into your life.

(Still fishing for Elements of Magic: Mythic Earth, unless of course I "won" yesterday, in which case don't pick me anymore. Give the free swag to someone else.)

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Reincarnation, though...that's another story. I mean, yes there are people who use every chart they get their hands on, and you end up having a squirrel.

You say that like its a bad thing....

3.5 reincarnation sucks, cause everything has thumbs. I houseruled even 3.0 so that instead of the random chart, I made up a list of animals and dire animals appropriate to the fallen character's class, personality, etc. So the frenzied berserker who died had a chance of coming back as a badger, boar, wolverine or less likely a dire version of one.

(as it turned out he came back as a wolverine, which in a low item game significantly raised his power level even with the level loss. He was resentful of the character change for the rest of the game, even though he had excepted animal reincarnation vs a new character. It wasn't until after I was married to the player in question that I finally realized it was all about his obsession with Notre Dame )

I loves me some thumbless characters, so I'm all about the heavily house ruled reincarnation.

 

[Zappo]

According to old Planescape cosmology, the souls of dead sentients travel through the Astral, losing their memories in the process, and end up somewhere on an Outer Plane according to deity or alignment. If they are raised, they pick up "most of" their lost memories on the way back, provided that not too much time has passed.

Here's the idea - you can travel to the Astral; what if you could search for the memories of a dead person? There are plenty of reasons to do so. You could be just trying to gather information, and that's the most obvious one. But it could also be a way to break the limitations on raise dead and similar spells.

Finding the memories of a lost comrade would be quite hard. Even assuming that memories are scattered away by astral winds after some time, the plane must have millions of such locations. It'd probably take a special spell, maybe using something (or someone!) that the dead one used to love dearly as a focus and guide.

Once you find them, what do they look like? On the Astral, they may become psychic projection of the deceased's mind. The best remembered places, items and persons would be present - their home, their parents, but also everything that has ever shocked them. As pure memories, with no intelligence, these elements would move like psychic automatons, perpetually reenacting the scenes that were most vivid in the character's mind.

And then, what do you do? Maybe, if you can interact with these projections, if you can somehow enhance and pull together the drifting memories, and especially those that would make the character want to be raised, you could push the raise dead limits a bit. Or you might be able to reduce the XP loss.

And what if you find the petitioner on the Outer Planes that is the soul of the dead character, what if you bring him to that place on the Astral? Maybe he would remember his past life. That could make him easier to raise; maybe it could even allow a simple raise dead to overcome a [Death] effect. Or maybe it would empower him somehow, turning him into a true planar being through the merging with his former self.

(Elements of Magic revised, if you like this )

 

[RangerWickett]

Ooh, for yesterday it is such a tough choice. I'm going to go with Estlor, for pointing out that the game is about dungeons AND dragons, so make sure your critters are evocative, and with demiurge1138 again, because the Crazy Thorn Man was a hoot. I'll send out those pdfs, plus some PnMs, in a bit.

 

[smootrk]

I find easy access to raises/ressurections rather disappointing. Characters lack any real sense of danger besides the loss of some XP.

On the other hand, reincarnate, although mechanically not perfect, allows for some really interesting characters to develop after a major change of body... Paladins in Kobold bodies, Mages who find themselves in the body of an Ogre, and lots of other goofy and interesting predictaments.

 

[Shallown]

Never used reincarnation much in my past campaign. No one had it as a spell in the group.

As far as raising dead and such that happened a few times in my campaign.
I'd love to go into how my cosmology worked but He'll have to make it a daily subject.

The spells themselves worked mechanically the same in my game but role playing wise I had the party as a whole take part in the ceremony and I usually drew each player aside and asked them IC what they were willing to do to bring this person back. Bringing back the dead was a touch subject since Death (as a diety) was no ones frined and trampling on his feat was a no no.

Each character offered up something to the God who was doing the raising dead. Often it was more a matter of what were they willing to give up that was the point of the discussion not that they always had to give something up.

Also since the only cleric in the group worshiped the pantheon of the Gods and not all Gods he had to choose which God to ask and that often determined what each God may want dependingon the area of influence.

Heres a list of things offered up to the Gods to raise other party members. The person being raised was also asked.

My Life
the family heirloom weapon of a nobleman fighter
A life of subservience once the present quest was filled.
Money, gems and magic items.
The lives of my enemies.
Knowledge

It was always interesting to see who would offer what up.

Things actually lost
Feats
Skill ranks in knowledge skills
A characters life - Was actually funny since they didn't die when the deal was made but later when the raised character was dropped below 0 the other character dropped to -1 instead and the raised character healed. The one that had given up his life in exchange then always made sure the raised character was protected and not at risk since he wasn't sure if he would die again when the raised character got below 0.


It allowed me to keep within the D&D theme and power levels/expectations while turning the spells into more a roleplaying then just cast and your alive again thing.

Later