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Babale
2012-09-25, 11:06 AM
I think D&D death is way too easy to overcome. A character who dies can come back in a few hours, completely healthy and ready to kick some ass. Well, frankly, that's boring. There's a few stories that manage to make D&D Resurrection exciting (With OOTS being one of them) but in most campaigns, once you have a cleric capable of raising, death is more of a minor inconvenience. Let's say that, in the next OotS strip, Roy is killed by Malak, who is then beaten off. Durkon then Resurrects him, and the party is down a few thousand gold. Is that exciting in any way whatsoever? Nope, which is why we know it probably won't happen. But that's literally what a death is like in most campaigns. So, what's the solution? Nobody likes to lose a character, so simply having no way of coming back, ever, doesn't make much sense in the D&D world. This thread is going to try to come up with a good compromise.

First of all, we need to kick out all the Raise Dead and Reincarnate chain of spells. The question is, what do we replace them with? I have a number of suggestions.

Gaming for Souls
A classic trope involves the recently deceased challenging Death for their soul. If a character dies, they may challenge the appropriate type of Outsider that comes calling to one of the following games (This may only be done once per skill per character, as Death will make sure to be ready next time):
*DCs should be modified based on optimization level.
1) A Musical Duel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDm_ZHyYTrg)
The player and Death make opposed Perform checks. Death has a bonus of +25 to Perform.
2) A Game of Chance
The player and Death both roll a d6. If the player wins, he may stay alive. If he looses or ties, he must move on. A particularly sneaky character may try to fudge the dice, making a Sleight of Hand roll. Death's Spot modifier is +20. If Death rolls a 6, the character can't beat that even by cheating; he must make a second Sleight of Hand check with a -15 Circumstance penalty to fudge both his and Death's dice.
3) Other Skill Checks
Pretty much any skill could be modified to work as a contest vs. Death. For example, a Ranger who maxed out Ride might outrun Death itself. A Rogue might Hide from Death when it comes calling. Knowledge (Religion) might find a loophole. Bluff might convince Death that the character shouldn't even be dead in the first place. If the player comes up with a creative use for a skill he can hit a DC of 25-30 in, let him cheat Death.

"You want to take me? Go ahead, try!"

So the dead PC is a Fighter who didn't max out any skills. The doomed soul stands there, waiting for Death to come for him. And it does; an Outsider of the appropriate alignment shows up. The Fighter smiles, draws his sword, and says: "You want me to come with you? Make me!"

The exact type of Outsider is up to the DM, but I would recommend going with one whose CR is roughly equal to the dead PC's level. If the PC manages to fight off Death, it will come back stronger next time; if the PC dies again, the collector will be more powerful (CR=1 1/4 times level, then 1 1/2, then 2, etc.) as the Outsider's boss sends more powerful collectors.

The downside is that if the PC is beaten in a fight, his soul isn't simply taken away; it is destroyed when it dies in combat. This means that he can never, ever be Raised.

I Come Back With a Little Help From My Friends
Not every character is badass enough to cheat death, and even those that are can't succeed every single time. So sometimes, your character will die. Does that mean it's game over? Not if the rest of the party decides to mount a rescue mission! If the PCs have Plane Shift or other similar spells, they can travel to whatever afterlife their ally went to and bring him back. Bringing a PC back from one of the Good afterlifes is usually a matter of finding someone with the proper authority, explaining why its important that the PC come back to life, and perhaps agreeing to perform a service on the material plane. Bringing a PC back from Hell is much harder, and usually involves fighting through the gates of Hell and either busting out or holding an authoritative demon/devil hostage and forcing him to release the PC.

Through the Gates of Hell
Some people are so badass that they can leave Hell on their own. A PC who succeeds on a DC 30 Will save (Allow substantial circumstance bonuses if the PC's unfinished business is important enough) retains his memories of the Material Plane in the afterlife, and may choose to attempt to escape. A high-level rogue might sneak out, a high level fighter might fight his way out, and a high-level bard might walk out while playing a song so beautiful no one dares stop him. Spellcasters may not cast any spells that allow Planeshifting while in the afterlife. Keep in mind that the dead PC will have no equipment at this point.

A Final Note
Cheating death in any of the ways presented above is pretty much guaranteed to get a Marut mad at you. Someone who cheats death repeatedly just might wish he was already dead.

Zagaroth
2012-09-25, 04:37 PM
I like Gates of Hell and A Little Help from my Friends (nice Beatles reference BTW), but I think coming all the way back on your own leaves you in a ghost state. Friends retrieving you might have the same problem if a deity-equivalent isn't convinced to actually grant life back on his/her own

There should be rituals, some what expensive, for restoring the ghost to a body.

Also maybe high level will saves for becoming a ghost straight away? with DM's judgement vs emotional state that might cause the person to need to be a ghost (unfulfilled cause or duty usually)

Yitzi
2012-09-27, 07:03 AM
One idea I'm playing with is that clerics can resurrect the dead, but it's a major event and the cleric's deity (or the quasi-deity ideal they serve, if you allow that) requires a quest from the cleric and/or resurrectee. (In addition to making death not at all trivial, it's a great plot hook.)

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-27, 09:58 AM
I like most of these except for Gaming for Souls, which reduces the entire process to a single skill roll- hardly exciting.

My big concern with anything that makes resurrection easier, however, is that save-or-die spells still exist. I don't mind SoDs when raise dead spells are fairly easy to obtain, but if it's an ordeal to get raised, it should take more than a single die roll to kill you. (Assuming a level appropriate fight).

bobthe6th
2012-09-27, 10:28 AM
actually, most of the ways to "cheat" death come down to a skill check... Woo?

See, now Malek drops Roy, and we rely on a d20 roll to see if the charicter we know and love is gone forever? If he wins though, he hops right back into existence... free of charge. Death becomes both more temporary, and more likely to stick.

So... what does this fix?

Yitzi
2012-09-27, 04:27 PM
My big concern with anything that makes resurrection easier, however, is that save-or-die spells still exist. I don't mind SoDs when raise dead spells are fairly easy to obtain, but if it's an ordeal to get raised, it should take more than a single die roll to kill you. (Assuming a level appropriate fight).

Not quite; if a single die roll could kill you with extremely low probability, then making it an ordeal to get raised is still ok (as you still have to undergo that ordeal rarely.) It's only when you have save-or-die spells that have a moderate or high chance of actually killing the target that it's a problem.

Of course that still exists in 3.5, but at least when you've better identified the problem you have a better idea of what solutions can exist.

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-27, 05:34 PM
Not quite; if a single die roll could kill you with extremely low probability, then making it an ordeal to get raised is still ok (as you still have to undergo that ordeal rarely.) It's only when you have save-or-die spells that have a moderate or high chance of actually killing the target that it's a problem.

Of course that still exists in 3.5, but at least when you've better identified the problem you have a better idea of what solutions can exist.

Yes; they're called "all the SoD spells in the game except maybe Phantasmal Killer." If you've houseruled SoDs into a different form, of course the debate changes.

And as for the "extremely low probability," even if I had to roll a natural one to die, I'd be very upset if I did and the only alternatives were "make a new character" or "force the rest of the party to spend 1+ sessions questing to resurrect me, while I sit there and watch because I'm dead.

Basically, you can have kill spells AND resurrection spells, but if you take out one, the other should probably follow.

(Disclaimer: I use SoD houserules myself, and I've ruled that no single attack can drop a PC to less than -9, giving players a desperate struggle to save their ally)

Yitzi
2012-09-28, 08:46 AM
And as for the "extremely low probability," even if I had to roll a natural one to die, I'd be very upset if I did and the only alternatives were "make a new character" or "force the rest of the party to spend 1+ sessions questing to resurrect me, while I sit there and watch because I'm dead.

No, you misunderstand, the quest is after the character gets resurrected. So the character takes part in his own resurrection quest, and is in fact expected to be the primary character for it (since it's for his benefit).

Deepbluediver
2012-09-28, 09:55 AM
There's actually two issues here: resurection is very easy, and many DM's allow new character creation without any sort of penalty.
(maybe two-and-a-half issues, since this ties into the screwy WBL measurement as well).

The basic Raise Dead spell is supposed to drop you down a level when you come back, to represent the drain of death on your soul (I think), but I know some players tend to whine if they are even the teensiest bit behind their fellow party members in any aspect, and a lot of DMs houserule it out just to avoid the annoyance factor.
If your character drops dead, and there's no easy way to get him back, a lot of players just roll up a new character and dump him right into the fray where they left off. And I've heard of at least one group that would regularly suicide one character at a time, so the rest of the party could collect their magic items and then add it to whatever the new character entered with.


The groups I've played with had a couple different solutions for some of these issues: One DM had a rule that when you rolled a new character, he had to be a different race and class combination.
We also tried at least one game with the "magic items are bound to your soul and can't be used by anyone else" method.

Another DM had you roll a dice to find out how many levels below your dead character the new one was; he let us spend points from our new character's point buy to decrease the die roll (obviously, you could spend a lot of point to eliminate the level penalty, but then you ended up with a less powerful character anyway, and if you spent a ton of points and then rolled low, they would go to waste.

Another DM who put a ton of detail into his campaigns and statted out everything would frequently just hand us an NPC character sheet and go "here, you're this guy now".
The typical response to any "I was a wizard I don't want to play a fighter!" was to reply "I guess you shouldn't have died then".


I like your idea of having to "fight for your soul" or whatever. I would require it in conjunction with the normal resurection effect, and have the spell cast first. You can roleplay it out as the party is trying to raise you, but the god of death (obviously) doesn't want to let you go. Then if you fail, the party is out some resources at the very least.

I'd also like to swap some spells around. Make Raise Dead level 7 and Resurection level 9. True Resurection becomes epic magic. Keep the spell Reincarnate where it is, because even if it doesn't address the power issue, it can make for some interesting gameplay.

For the games where this spell saw a lot of use, the DM houseruled that racial status-changes affected mental stats as well, and insisted on doing all the rolls himself behind a screen.
One time we started out as a drow raiding/adventuring party, and eventually ended up with an Orc Sorcadin, human cleric of Lolth, and a Gnome dragon-shaman meatshield (with a different color dragon, too!). The druid had prepared a scroll in the event of his possible/inevtiable death (we figured we could pay some NPC to cast it) and we where taking bets on what monstrous abomination of nature he'd come back as (odds were on the bugbear, 3-to-1, with "1" being "other").

Babale
2012-09-28, 09:09 PM
To address the "Skill checks not being special" issue, I'd remind you that you can only do it once per skill per character. So the Fighter might be able to Intimidate death once, which is pretty badass, but next time he'll either need to fight or die. The bard or rogue will be able to get out of death a lot of different ways, sure, but hey; they're skill monkeys. Cheating death both fits the flavor and is something they SHOULD be able to do...

ArkenBrony
2012-09-29, 10:14 AM
The player and Death both roll a d6. If the player wins, he may stay alive. If he looses or ties, he must move on. A particularly sneaky character may try to fudge the dice, making a Sleight of Hand roll. Death's Spot modifier is +20. If Death rolls a 6, the character can't beat that even by cheating; he must make a second Sleight of Hand check with a -15 Circumstance penalty to fudge both his and Death's dice.
What about if you cut your die in half in mid air, causing it to reveal 2 numbers that add up to 7

Grod_The_Giant
2012-09-29, 10:44 AM
What about if you cut your die in half in mid air, causing it to reveal 2 numbers that add up to 7

Death cuts his into six pieces that add up to 21?

Analytica
2012-09-29, 11:43 AM
The groups I've played with had a couple different solutions for some of these issues: One DM had a rule that when you rolled a new character, he had to be a different race and class combination.
We also tried at least one game with the "magic items are bound to your soul and can't be used by anyone else" method.

Another DM had you roll a dice to find out how many levels below your dead character the new one was; he let us spend points from our new character's point buy to decrease the die roll (obviously, you could spend a lot of point to eliminate the level penalty, but then you ended up with a less powerful character anyway, and if you spent a ton of points and then rolled low, they would go to waste.

Another DM who put a ton of detail into his campaigns and statted out everything would frequently just hand us an NPC character sheet and go "here, you're this guy now".
The typical response to any "I was a wizard I don't want to play a fighter!" was to reply "I guess you shouldn't have died then".

This is all a set of reasons why the player wouldn't want their character to die. I would rather have reasons why the character wouldn't want to die. I also wouldn't want to play with any of these DMs, but to each their own.

For the OPs ideas, my main problem with them are that they only make sense in a world where people stay dead because some evil creature forces them to, not because they, being dead, no longer have the capacities they need to live. You can certainly have that kind of world, but it doesn't really make sense for every setting.

ArkenBrony
2012-09-29, 12:36 PM
Death cuts his into six pieces that add up to 21?

No, I was referencing something from a classic story that I just can't remember what it was

Deepbluediver
2012-10-01, 08:39 AM
This is all a set of reasons why the player wouldn't want their character to die. I would rather have reasons why the character wouldn't want to die.
I'm not really sure I understand the difference?
You can roleplay your character as a coward or a reckless fool who laughs in the face of death, but either way if you want to make death actually seems like a fate to be feared or at least an obstacle to overcome then you need to give it some teeth.


I also wouldn't want to play with any of these DMs, but to each their own.
Because everyone's schedule was always changing, we played a lot of stuff that could be finished in a single weekend or a few weeks at most. This meant out games tended to be a bit more lighthearted, I think, and we didn't mind so much because if you DID die you only had to put with it for a little while.
Also, I may have given the wrong impression, but while these rules where in place, we didn't actually need them all that often. Either my DM's where more merciful or (with few exceptions) we just where more cautious. If there was a game with a lot of death in it we usually got a warning ahead of time and kept the feeling lighthearted rather than dramatic.

Thomar_of_Uointer
2012-10-01, 10:21 AM
I liked this set of drawbacks to raising the dead: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12933904&postcount=5


Make resurrection come with side effects. Here is a fast d10 table of effects ( Brackets indicate worsened effect if one is raised twice and same effect comes up.)

1. Hair turns white. [loss of all hair]
2. Color blind. [blindness]
3. Loss of taste. [lose sense of hunger]
4. Skin turns pale. [skin turns translucent and must be moistened every hour]
5. Unable to laugh. [unable to feel joy]
6. All music sounds horrible. [music makes ears bleed]
7. Can see far realm creatures. [far realm creatures can interact with resurrectee]
8. Unable to dream. [unable to create art]
9. Sees dead people. [dead people see resurrectee]
10. Can't enter houses uninvited. [can't cross streaming water]

One other solution might be that the cleric you ask to raise your party member demands a quest out of the party.

Virdish
2012-10-01, 12:02 PM
I've always liked the idea that once a soul passes to the next plane they are changed in some central way. Passing from this stage of existence into the next is a visceral experience and it leaves a mark on a person's soul. It also would make death interesting if not more meaningful.