YA resurrection house rule

[hong]

Objectives:

1) retain an escape hatch for PCs who cop stray crits and instakill spells (same holds for significant NPCs)

2) reduce its potential to wonk up plots ("the princess got killed by the evil wizard? No problem, just resurrect her")

3) remove it as a factor in world-building


A creature to be resurrected makes a level check (d20 + level/HD) against DC 10. For each previous time it has been resurrected, the DC increases by 5, so the second attempt is at DC 15, the third at DC 20, etc. If the creature has no class levels in a PC class, the DC increases by 20. The presence of an expert healer (campaign-dependent, poss. a noncombat PrC) confers a +2 circumstance bonus on the roll. There are no level penalties for dying, but a creature that fails a resurrection check is forever dead.

Thoughts?

 

[Happy Monkey]

Here is my non-mechanical solution. Most, if not all people, do not wish to be resurrected. They simply do not wish to return to the realm of toil.

Pc's and other mighty npc's are battlers however and can choose.

Right, taking a quick look:

1, initial death check is 60% in the pc's favour at level 1. This improves until at level 9 it is 100%. It does not stop progressing beyond 9th however.

2, every death worsens the next death check by -25%. Early deaths will likely be unraisable, is this deliberate?. Each character will need to keep a tab on how often they have died. A 10th level pc can handle 6 raises, the 7th needing to roll a 20. More likely a 10th level character will only make 3 raises, the 4th being unlikely.

3, without a single pc class level the death check worsens by -100% (20 auto succeeds?). Huge HD creatures like dragons can benefit but most npc classed and non-classed 'monsters' will fail.

My %s and statistics are probably inaccurate but close enough. Basically you do have the escape hatch there but each death can be permanent. Randomly so. Plotwise that seems fine but for the issue of auto-success and auto -failure for that matter. I don't fully understand your 3rd objective, could you explain?

Seems okay to me