Post/Author/DateTime	Post
zombieoverlord 04-19-07, 02:38 AM	I do not like ressurection magic. Once the spellcasters in a group get to a certain level, noone has to worry about getting killed anymore. I would disallow ressurection, but that is one of the major benefits of being a high level spellcaster, and that would upset game balance. I have 3 questions 1. What are some bunuses I could give spellcasters to balance this lack? 2. Is it really a big enough benefit that I need to make up for the loss of it?IYHO 3. Is it really so bad that I need to get rid of it?IYHO
AaonGraywolf 04-19-07, 02:49 AM	I do not like ressurection magic. Once the spellcasters in a group get to a certain level, noone has to worry about getting killed anymore. I would disallow ressurection, but that is one of the major benefits of being a high level spellcaster, and that would upset game balance. I have 3 questions 1. What are some bunuses I could give spellcasters to balance this lack? 2. Is it really a big enough benefit that I need to make up for the loss of it?IYHO 3. Is it really so bad that I need to get rid of it?IYHO 1. Dunno if bonuses are really needed. Resurrection spells are really only used when a party member dies and they carry a fairly significant cost. It's really more of a party benefit than a single character benefit, so I'm not sure it'd be appropriate to give the clerics a bonus for its absence. 2. See above. I wouldn't so on an individual level, but on a party wide level, there are a few rules I might change so soften the impact of arbitrary insta-death. I don't use resurrection in my campaign setting, but as a concession to that, I also modify death effects. Any effect in the core rules that would normally kill a player outright (failed coup de gras save, failed massive damage save, Finger of Death, etc.) instead reduces the player to -1 and dying. Otherwise I just wouldn't have the heart to use such effects on players in a world where death was final. 3. Depends on the feel of the setting you're going for. I've always found it sad that at high levels, players fear having a magic item sundered more than dying. Personally, I prefer Resurrection to be rare and difficult at best, but it's really personal preference. It DOES certainly lend to increased tension in battles, require more careful strategy by the players and lends itself well to any sort of "gritty" or "horror" setting.
Fuzzypaws 04-19-07, 02:51 AM	You can make it harder. Maybe raise dead brings someone back who died in the last 1 round per level, resurrection works like canon raise dead, true resurrection works like canon resurrection. If they need a body, sorry, that's what Clone and Wish are for.
navar100 04-19-07, 03:24 AM	Do not have save or die spells. In general, do not have any effect that can kill a character at full hit points in one round. Granted, someone falling off a cliff is going to die, but I'm speaking in a more generic sense.
daggeroflath 04-19-07, 04:20 AM	1. What are some bonuses I could give spellcasters to balance this lack? They're druid and cleric spells. Most people consider these classes the most powerful already. I'd recommend however giving other characters some more lenient rules on dying. You know, go up to your level into negative hit points before they die or whatever. 3. Is it really so bad that I need to get rid of it?IYHO Nope. And my opinions are rarely humble.
Sigst 04-19-07, 04:59 AM	5000 gp worth of diamonds down the drain along with a level drain is a pretty hefty loss, even at mid-level, and while it is affordable, it does discourage recklessness. Also, is it all that easy to get hold of all those diamonds if you're outside the city? Dragon magazine had something on the topic a while ago... one suggestion is that to resurrect one character, somebody else (it may well be an NPC) must die in return, presenting an interesting moral dilemma if you are playing a traditional campaign with good or neutral characters. Some other ideas I can imagine: A resurrected character has some 20-30 years docked off his maximum age (for a human, let it be more for an elf), reminiscent of Sheridan's fate in Babylon 5. This will effectively limit the number of times someone can be raised. The cleric resurrecting a character suffers an energy drain (or level loss, or must make a fortitude save or die himself). This will explain why clerics don't routinely raise dead people, even if all the diamonds in the king's coffer can be provided. If you will outright ban the resurrection spells, I don't think that will be terribly unbalancing from a game mechanical viewpoint, and don't think you need any big bonus to compensate. Being able to resurrect a 14th lvl wizard into to the same 13th level wizard with the same name is not really a big advantage when you can just roll up a new 13th level wizard instead... along with swapping out all your previous bad feat selections. It's in the role-playing viewpoint that the concept of resurrection can be trouble if you are looking for some sort of real impact of death. (The king was assassinated?! Never mind, he's back again... long live the king!) Sig
Etarnon 04-19-07, 08:52 AM	I have played D&D for 30 years without raise, resurrection or any sort of magic like that. PCs get one life, unless upon death they make a 1% X level god-call (clerics get 2 X level) which saves them from losing their soul...i.e. they wake up at 1 HP...a miracle. I always though doing it any other way makes it less dramatic. If an assassin tries to kill the king, being able to raise the king means he's never going down. now a 15th level king might luckily survive 1 in 6 assassinations by poison, but typically he's gone, and mourned. As to unbalancing.. pretend the spells never existed. Something never there doesn't unbalance. It's just that other classes might be more powerful.
rmccowen 04-19-07, 02:44 PM	In my campaigns, resurrection isn't banned, but I make it very rare. Like miracle, it represents a deity directly interfering in the nature of reality. Therefore, the cleric (or rare druid) who requests such an intervention from their god had better have a really good reason. Casting resurrection magic for money, or even as a favor, has consequences similar to a paladin violating his code. If you've read the Dragaera series by Steven Brust, he presents another interesting fillip on the idea of magical resurrection: resurrection magic is reasonably well-known, but so are its flaws. Raise dead and its ilk can only be performed on a subject with a reasonably intact brain and spinal cord, and has to be done before the soul departs the body (a matter of hours). In addition, there's an illegal--but fairly common, among the elite--kind of weapon that drinks the soul of a target it kills, rendering it impossible to bring him or her back from the dead. Another interesting option I've seen is to make resurrection possible only if your party retrieves your soul from the plane to which it travels after death (think Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek myth). If you choose to limit resurrection in your campaign, it won't affect the PCs' power level when they're in a battle. It does affect the power level of the campaign as a whole, but other posters have given plenty of suggestions about how to deal with that problem. :)
RobbyPants 04-19-07, 02:58 PM	Check out Heroes of Horror for some Ressurection varients. One of them includes rolling on a % table to see what odd side-effect happens. One change I implemented in my current campaign (and will continue to use) is that it is considered morally and ethically wrong to bring someone back. It is assumed that when someone dies, it is their time. Clerics have this power to use with great discression, and are only supposed to use it in extreme cases (such as returning an important fallen hero for some great cause). Thus, the only other way to use such magic is to solicit an unscrupulous cleric (who's deity might not care). I like this approach because it answers so many questions, like the one from a previous post about assassinating a king. Now, the king is not allowed to be raised, and if he is virtuous, his soul will turn down any attempt as well.
Stumm_Dolch 04-19-07, 02:58 PM	I, too am not a huge fan of resurrection magic, but I don't dissalow it either. If you don't want it though, I reccomend using "action points" or "fate points". Award your PCs a single fate point at character creation and one more everytime they do something extremely significant to progress the campaign. (Like only 3-5 monumental events throughout the course of the campaign). When something happens that would result in a character death, they may elect to spend one of those points to escape death [but be otherwise taken out of commision]. Call it divine intervention, or just dumb luck, but it works really well in a Warhammer fantasy roleplay game I'm also in.
spectralphoenix 04-19-07, 03:08 PM	I can't see it actually unbalancing the classes as those spells aren't typically used in combat. On the other hand, if you have the Spell Compendium you might want to take a look at the spell that lets you raise a character who died in the past round with no level loss - that might be good for decreasing the turnover rate of characters without introducing the story problems of conventional raises. I would recommend avoiding save-or-die effects, and realize that character turnover will be fairly high at high levels.
lears_fool 04-19-07, 03:16 PM	I've also run several pretty much resurrection-free campaigns, with really no issues. Generally, a couple of good rules are 1) it's okay to allow for resurrection in very game-appropriate and exceedingly rare scenarios. If a character sacrifices his life to save an important innocent who's very favored by a deity than perhaps something can be worked out, or if he dies in particularly heroic form . . however rather than just tossing 5K of diamond dust at it make it a genuine quest and part of the plot 2) as said before, reduce the save-or-dies and increase the buffer before 'true' death (2x level instead of -10 or something) to prevent sudden death based on one bad roll 3) don't penalize players for dying (unless it's truly foolish), some DMs bring in new characters at one level below the old and the like, which just penalizes heroism and sacrifice (and stupidity. . but you can still penalize stupidity in other ways). Giving the a temporary negative level or something also works well enough.
coomber 04-19-07, 05:23 PM	It seems I'm in the minority! I thought things were fine as they were. There are several ways to meet your end that make resurrection impossible. And there's always the threat of TPK hanging over their heads still. Plus, the loss of level, cash and XP make it a fair trade-off in my book.
MacrossSD 04-19-07, 05:45 PM	In my campaigns, resurrection isn't banned, but I make it very rare. Like miracle, it represents a deity directly interfering in the nature of reality. Therefore, the cleric (or rare druid) who requests such an intervention from their god had better have a really good reason. Casting resurrection magic for money, or even as a favor, has consequences similar to a paladin violating his code. I had something similar in a Saxons/Dark Ages campaign I ran about a year ago. There, Christian clerics were flat-out banned from casting resurrection (although God or Christ could let the character come back if they still had work to do -- in other words, for plot purposes) while the Norse gods, while not banning resurrection made Valhalla so damn attractive to those there that the dear departed wouldn't want to go back -- that was a plot point for one of my lesser BBEGs. Of course, the PCs broke magic on Earth at the end of the story, so now it's a moot point.
Sigst 04-20-07, 03:24 AM	I've also run several pretty much resurrection-free campaigns, with really no issues. 3) don't penalize players for dying (unless it's truly foolish), some DMs bring in new characters at one level below the old and the like, which just penalizes heroism and sacrifice (and stupidity. . but you can still penalize stupidity in other ways). Giving the a temporary negative level or something also works well enough. The problem is, that it's the sacrifice which makes the heroism heroic. If a player knows that he can just roll up a new character at the same level with no penalty (and swap out all previous bad feat and skill choices, and tailor make the new character in any way), then much of the drama of the heroic raid and last world-saving stand is gone. Sig
Thomar_of_Uointer 04-20-07, 03:49 AM	1. What are some bunuses I could give spellcasters to balance this lack? None. In fact, you have to take things away. Resurrection spells normally take up spell slots. The benefit of this is that they can use them for other things. However, if save-or-die spells exist, then it's going to be totally unfair that you can't resurrect someone. Alternately, you can make revivify (originally a psionic power, sets a limit of 1 round per 200ish XP spent) the only means of resurrection. 2. Is it really a big enough benefit that I need to make up for the loss of it?IYHO No, not really. However, you do need to account for it, as said above. 3. Is it really so bad that I need to get rid of it?IYHO Depends on your campaign and your group. I would run this by your players beforehand. See how they feel about having their hard-run characters being unrecoverable after death.
Shatari 04-20-07, 04:02 AM	Personally, I'd recommend simply giving all death a permanent failure chance. I use this rule on NPCs to justify why the upper class society members can't keep coming back if they are targets of assassins. Death is a lot less attractive if you have a 50+% chance of not being able to return from it. I make an exception for the PCs, but you can (as the DM) do as you see fit when it comes to the fate of a soul leaving its body.
lears_fool 04-20-07, 08:23 AM	The problem is, that it's the sacrifice which makes the heroism heroic. If a player knows that he can just roll up a new character at the same level with no penalty (and swap out all previous bad feat and skill choices, and tailor make the new character in any way), then much of the drama of the heroic raid and last world-saving stand is gone. Sig In practice, that's not a problem at all. As I said, you can still throw on some sort of penalty, but ones that constantly put someone behind (i.e. level loss) are a bit disproportionate. There's tons you can do in the middle to tweak the feeling of loss. . .and how much you do depends on your players Plus it adds a more novelesque feel to things. And it IS a game, temporary penalties don't leech away the fun as much as permanent ones do.
Waylor 04-20-07, 08:37 AM	Maybe the deity doesnt agree with the resurrection, you can call once lanthander to raise your friend but next time "the phone youre calling is out of battery, please call another deity or become one", ho! and the diamonds dissapear =D We use them as very very very rare spells, i've seen a lvl 16 say no when asked him to cast one of them with the new party member xD Another idea is to allow them but after that the deity (or nature) doesnt allow the char to use power (like losing their powers) for 1 week/2 levels. So if your cleric raises a 10 level character wont have spells for the next month... this could be really interesnting :D
Derren S. 04-20-07, 08:42 AM	Many other RPGs do not have the option for ressurection and some of them are as deadly as D&D so I don't see why you have to change anything when you remove ressurection.