What are everyone's thoughts on the Revivify spell? The time limit of having to cast it within a minute of death, and 300gp worth of diamonds material component should restrict it's use a good bit. But still, it just feels wrong for a 5th level cleric being able to bring party members back to life on their own.
I am all for it.
The only thing I might potentially change is the costly component (I am considering, but as of yet undecided - have to see how using them in play feels, completely removing material components that have a cost from the game).
The reason I am all for it boils down to this: I don't mind the players having the choice to establish their own safety net, or reducing the chance that I have to help them find a way to explain how their new character joined the party and is somehow invested in all the same goals as the party to the same degree.
I like my campaigns to keep the same cast of characters more often than not, and this spell just helps make sure that such can be done when desired, even if the players and I might have overestimated their ability to deal with a particular monster, or the dice just went on a streak and laid a character low.
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I plan on keeping control of diamonds. You can't buy them, but can find them as treasure now and then.
But otherwise, it's fine.
mellored wrote:
Revivify is super easy mode Dnd. Will be banned at our table, probably raise dead too. Death ought to be mean something in Dnd.
I actually prefer revivify over later things that raise you from the dead. I don't mind the concept of getting to a person who just died seconds ago and reviving them, it even adds a bit of tension if they die in the middle of a battle or far from the cleric. It's when you can come back days later and bring someone back to life that I start to have problems. I'll probably keep revivify, ban all other ressurection spells, then require a major quest into the underworld if someone ever really wants to bring back a character that died more than a minute ago.
JRutterbush wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
I hate expensive material components for most spells. Other than that, I think the spell is fine.
I am not fan. It makes PCs harder to kill even more quickly than other raising spells. At least it has an expensive material component i can control as a DM.
If you're having too much difficulty killing PCs because of this spell, you can always change it so that it has to be used within 1 round of death. Or, just kill the cleric first. 
The problem is not killing them, its preventing them from coming back too easily
I'm definitely for it since I am limiting other Raise Dead and similar spells only to the Death gods (unless using Divine Intervention feature). Nerull demands the sacrifce of another living being while Wee Jas might settle for a magic item and/or service for the church. Revivify is a kind of death lite that can be used by most pcs after a fight.
Not a fan of it myself, but I've never liked res spells in DnD. They feel to me like the removal of a genuine sense of drama and risk.
Besides, I also find that if it's too easy to recover because of effects like this then the only way to genuinely threaten the characters is to throw enough at them that TPK is a real possibility. I'd rather have more wiggle room.
It brings the "death as just another obstacle" trope in at earlier levels, is all.
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I mulled over this for a little bit, and I am currently worried because of the witch test.
Bound up the witch, toss her in the lake, if she floats she is a witch, kill her. If not.... Yay, she's not a witch. Plus Revivify to this, and this becomes the ultimate 100% sure Doppelganger and shapechanger test with little consequence other than gold. Toss in a forget spell and even the social breach of etiquette could be overlooked. And what about dying declarations of falling allies? All gone since you can wake them up and ask what they meant saying there was another Skywalker...
As written it does simply puts a gold piece value on death from 5th level on, which is not good for drama or tension. The wording does seem intent on shielding the 'Oops dead' which is no fun, and not the heroic sacrifice narrative death, but it is far from only applicable or even reliable on to stick to the former.
I think my table will find this spell in the back of the forbidden lore section of the churches that use it, possibly only on scrolls, with a nice fat warning disclaimer that 'Death does not like giving back what it has claimed like it is a servant of men'. Maybe the revived come back at in a weakened state, maybe they don't come back in this body, and maybe they don't come back alone. You revive a hero who has aided your church in its quests defeating villains, maybe one of those villains comes back too, maybe alive, maybe undead. Maybe to haunt you, maybe to continue the mission you stopped.
I'm fine with it. If the players don't like cheap ways from coming back from death, they can opt not to use it. I personally don't care one way or the other. If my own character died a good death that I'm satisfied with, I'll just ask not to have it cast on me.
Ramble wrote:
I just have people fight over diamond mines.
I don't like that it becomes a "must prepare" spell for the cleric.
I can see this happening:
P1: "Bob died! Good thing we found that diamond dust. Let's revive him."
P2: "Uhh. I didn't prepare that spell today."
P1: "What?! Great, now Bob has to reroll a new char, and it's all your fault!"
P2: "We were just travelling to the mountains. I didn't think we'd see a fight. I especially didn't think that someone would be stupid enough to die!"
Basically, from L5 and above, it becomes the cleric's fault if anyone perminantly dies. Death isn't something that should be happening frequently enough to justify occupying a spell prep slot everyday.
I'd much prefer it having the ritual keyword. 10 minutes to cast, and must be started within 1 minute of death; if the ritual is interrupted, then you've lost the chance to revive. If multiple people die, then you're left with the hard choice of which one to save; unless it happened to be prepared that day because you were expecting a particularly hard fight.
That way it doesn't have to perminantly occupy a cleric's spell prep slot.
Ramble wrote:
Eraslin wrote:
Once the cleric gets to 9th level and can prepare Raise Dead, they can slack on preparing a resurrection spell on a daily basis, if they wish. Of course, as clerics of the Life domain get it prepared automatically, this shouldn't be an issue to clerics who really want to be healers.
I don't see raising a newly-killed guy from the dead, especially within 1 minute of his 'death,' as particularly problematic. Healing spells do similar things already, there's just an arbitrary line between 'able to be healed' and 'not able to be healed.' Revivify blurs that line at the cost of expensive material components and timely intervention.
For the health and fun of a game, lower-level, restricted resurrection spells go a long way to help the narrative in the case of bad luck. If one really wants people to have to pay dearly for bad luck or bad decisions in what is an adventure story-telling game, that's their prerogative.
As far as the complaint that Revivify makes it "harder to kill PCs (and keep them dead)," I have to question whether such as person assumed the role of DM to collaborate with their friends or to compete with/control them. The second case shouldn't really be an issue, because, as the DM, you generally have final say on making anything you want happen, with or without written rules. The reason why players accept this freedom for dungeon masters, while often more conservatively restricting themselves as PCs to the rules, is because they want a good story and trust the DM to collaborate with them to have fun.
300 gp to fix a mistake that occurred less than 10 rounds ago seems like a reasonable penalty to me. Without party wealth guidelines, it's hard to judge whether the cost is prohibitive right now, but given that Raise Dead costs 500, I'd say it's not free.
2Chlorobutanal wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
2Chlorobutanal wrote:
2Chlorobutanal wrote:
It is always possible to rule a death beyond this spell depending on the functional and narrative circumstances.
Died in a vat of acid - nothing short of True Resurraction is gonna save your ass.
Decapitation from a scythe trap?
Had your heart ripped out by an evil priest 'Indianna Jones stylie'?
Riddled with flesh eating worms - you come back and then die in agony straight away unless they are purged from you first.
Been disintegrated?
Did you drown and were swept away?
Is the pit trap too deep to get into?
Dead in the middle of poison gas the party can't reach you in?
The Orcs drag you off for munchies?
Died of thirst or hunger - because you'll die within moments after coming back - this isn't 'Bob's Marvellous Nutrient, Vital Fluid and Life Restoration Ritual' is it?
No need to weaken the spell - it's expensive enough for low level characters and can be explained away as saving you from 'near death' - the torpid minutes before your brain depolarises, unless you are bruned to ash or at the bottom of a quicksand pit, in which case tough.
What I would have liked would be "if the soul is free and willing" that I think was present i 4e. Not something I would use to mess with a PC, but it could spark a storyline or just give good reasons for why the spell does not work.
I kind of like to imagine this thread as a shopping trolley rolling down a hill, veering wildly from one side (being for game play reasons) to the other ('how realistic is that?') with very little time in the middle ground.
Thoughts apon Death Reversal:-
1. If a dm really wants to kill players, maybe they should not be a dm. There are of course may ways to kill players easily, CR13 monsters against 1st lvl players for example. If is this how you feel as a dm maybe you should stick to video games.
Practical suggestions for the management of re-granting life,
1. Make Revivify, Raise Dead and Reserrection Life Cleric Domain Only.
2. And/Or change the required component, to something that must be quested for eg a demons heart (level of demon to reflect spell level) or if you wish to throw in a moral dilema make the spell require the heart of an elf child.
3. If you wish for story perposes to stay dead or require decent into the underworld to retieve, at the point of death have the corpse snatched away by either a Valkyrie or some denison of the underworld.
A DM doesn't kill players - or at least I hope not. The DM is, however, charged with playing with the players to create an exciting story that involves bold adventurers overcoming deadly perils. If the perils don't have a chance to kill the PCs, they aren't deadly and the DM has failed in this charge. (See page 2, in the last bit before Worlds of Adventure.)
Revivify is self-regulating. Players that seek a challenge without the chance of resurrection will not take it. It is also costly relative to the gold one might expect to acquire. Lost Mines of Phandelver has only about 4300 gp for 5 levels of play to be split between 4 or 5 PCs - and that's if you find it all. At 300 gp, that's over 25% of your earnings in a 4 person party that finds all the loot. Considering the lethality reported at low levels in actual play reports, a lot of cash might be eaten up by overuse of Revivify!
iserith wrote:
I wasn't keen on revivify at first. After some more thought and play it's not bad. 5th level is where we are seeing a checkpoint in progression and clerics and revivify seems like pat of that cleric checkpoint. It also does't really seem like more than magical CPR. It's more likely someone would receive magical healing during death rolls for a lower level spell and this does not seem that far removed in similar ability.
There's also this classic situation.
Cleric: "We're looking at some tough fights ahead; I want to be prepared. Rogue, you've got contacts and charisma, go and get me 300gp in diamonds!"
Rogue: "Kay."
*Rogue goes to get diamonds, proceeds to haggle to save some coin*
Cleric: "Thor-damnit, Rogue! This is only 285gp in diamonds! You should have paid full price!"
In seriousness, though, I think it's an okay spell. I don't allow resurrection in my games so it will make little difference.
Shedeo wrote:
Indeed, so it pays to work at adjusting merchants to a Friendly attitude (if those guidelines are provided in the PHB/DMG) so that you can use your social skills to get minor or major discounts depending on the DC of the check. If the expectation is only 1000 gp from 1st to 5th, nearly a third of your earnings would go to being brought back from the brink just the one time!
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
I like to make resurrection magic a bit more difficult in general. For example, I multiply the costs of raise dead and resurrection by 10, I cause the d20 roll penalty to reduce by one per month (rather than long rest), I create potential story-based and metaphysical consequences (rare, but possible), and invoke a social stigma based on the fact that people know bad stuff can happen with such spells.
I want dying to be something PCs fear and players put a lot of effort into avoiding. Easy resurrection magic can cause players to take unwise risks and not play cautiously enough for my campaign style. I want PCs to get raised, I just don't want them to take it lightly. Knowing that you'll have to pay a king's ransom and then take a season of downtime from adventuring after a PC dies (and if stopping an adventure for downtime isn't an option, then that penalty to your d20 rolls is going to hurt), should be a pretty good incentive to play smart.
That said, I'm okay with revivify. 300gp worth of diamonds isn't something easy to come by in my campaigns until higher levels, and as has been said, it's basically a magical CPR. A possible restriction that I would impose is that revivify won't bring you back if something killed you outright--either through massive hp damage, a spell, or anything else. Access to revivify can make the more severe penalties for the higher level spells a bit less likely to occur.
So in the way I'm planning to run it, if a healer can't get to you before you fail your last death save, revivify is an expensive option to bring you back under certain conditions, if available. If not, your options are really expensive, require downtime and/or adventuring with a constant penalty on your rolls, and might occasionally cause unforseen consequences (potentially dangerous, but always designed to be fun and add to the experience).
Errant wrote:
It is Breath of Life two levels early. I believe it was put there to increase survivability of PCs, which is in my opinion extremely high already. There was probably also the issue of spell slots and their use to consider, since magic took such a nerf. Since it has a material component which is controlled by the DM, the spell is fine as it is, though.
If wealth is kept comparable with the amounts in Lost Mine of Phandelver, I am fine with Revivify as it is. I might consider giving it the same penalty from returning from the dead as for Raise Dead, etc, if I feel it is called for. Preliminary, I like that death at least slows you down a bit, and that effect seems balanced. You can wait it out or play with it and suffer a bit while recovering.
- Vargtass
I've only got one thought on Revivify...
"Clear!"
Okay, two thoughts: This spell brings back a character that has flatlined. No fixing, no detoxification, just straight up CPR with a touch. It is by far the least obtrusive of the raising spells - and barely qualifies at that. It's the difference between a success or failure on a death save - and one that is pretty costly out-of-pocket (and I'd seriously consider deciding on a quantity of diamond, noting the typical market price). You're restarting the heart - or if you prefer a more fantastic reason, you have a narrow window of time after death before the soul departs. You can revive them without having to resort to calling souls back from other planes. This is why I don't think it should be a ritual, unless you want to toss it over the fence into Necromancy.
The party expecting the cleric to have it on hand is a concern. That makes two of your... 5-9 spell preps that are locked in (cure wounds being the other must-have). So the preparation game is still in effect - you have to anticipate what you may need - and if it can be used. Do you expect someone to drop? Do you have the diamonds to cast it?
Also note that this is the only "ressurecter" that does not require a willing target. Corner case or no, there are some fun and horrific things you can do with a drow interogator and a diamond mine.
I am both a DM and a player
As a DM I view it is my responsibility to provide the players with suitable challenges that may tax their creativity but should be otherwise surmountable. If I present them with a challenge that is too difficult, then that is on me, not them (and "oh well, characters die" is not an attitude I think is fair for what is effectively an omnipotent being in the universe I created) and I feel responsible to allow them to recover from my failings
If a player dies due to their own poor judgement or stupidity, in a situation I deem entirely fair and fitting then they have to pay some consequence. And 300gp consequence seems pretty fair to bring a 5th level character back. If they continue to make obvious mistakes or have poor judgement, they will eventually run out of resources to make up for their mistakes, and thefor the character is done.
Saying the spell is "easy mode" etc to me is a sign of vindictive DMing, people who view the game as the DM vs the players with a "yes, I took one of them out!" attitude that I find apalling in a role that is supposed to be a story teller and a guide.
Joe_the_Rat wrote:
Joe_the_Rat wrote:
Value of diamonds is equivalent to mid point between the buy price and sell price as listed at De Beers/IDB or local equivalent....
kanageddaamen wrote:
mrsrockguru wrote:
Revivify, raise dead, and all of that sort of power is really D&D's in-game answer to iteration time, that is, how long before a player can get back into the action when the character dies. In a video game, you're back in as soon as you can reload the save point. In D&D, you're sat there having to make a new character and waiting to introduce it while others play on. These spells are the answer to that. (So are backup characters, but that's an out-of-game solution not suggested by the game as yet.)
mellored wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Kalani wrote:
mellored wrote: