PDA

View Full Version : Morality of Resurrection



ZeroGear
2014-09-27, 10:03 PM
Just so that it has been stated:
We will NOT get into religious dogma of ANY major religions here. PERIOD!

Anyway, this is something that I've run across twice so far while playing Pathfinder. We all know that death plays a big part in that game, as does it's counterpart in the form of resurrection magic.
Now donating money to the church to bring back a fallen PC is all well and dandy, as is having the party cleric do it at a lower price, as long as it is done sparingly. But what happen when the Wizard (yes, the WIZARD!) decided that he can mix some spells and start resurrecting NPC's left and right on a massive scale?
The first time this happened, a fellow PC (yes, the wizard) figured he could bring some of the villagers of a city that had just been hit by a total wave back to life. This involved the use of the Blood Money, Shadow Conjuration, and Summon Monster spells. Blood Money would pay for the expensive components via ability drain, Shadow Conjuration was used to cast Raise Dead, and the Summon Monster spell brought in an archon to cast Restoration on the Wizard and heal the ability damage.

The second time was recently when I was running a test game using the Spheres of Power supplement. One of the characters had just gotten the Resurrection Advanced Talent of the Life Sphere, which lets him bring someone back to life for 2 spell points (provided he dies within 1 hour/level and his body is intact). Almost immediately he declared that he was going to go around offering free resurrections to the populace (As the DM, I, of course, told him no).

Now, putting the costly restrictions of raising the dead aside, what are the moral reasons why you should not go around raising everyone's dead mother on a whim? Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

Fayd
2014-09-27, 10:17 PM
Well, according to my DM, you're pulling a damned soul out of Hell, bringing literal evil to the material plane, or you are pulling a sainted soul out of Heaven, ever so slightly decreasing it's glory and goodness, especially because they can now fall and Heaven can forever lose them.

Expanding on this last thought, by resurrecting someone, because they have free will and agency again, they may ultimately not go back, which brings a LOT of uncomfortable complications with it.

Amaril
2014-09-27, 10:21 PM
So, he used shadow conjuration to mimic raise dead...yeah, no, that doesn't work.


You use material from the Plane of Shadow to shape quasi-real illusions of one or more creatures, objects, or forces. Shadow conjuration can mimic any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 3rd level or lower.

Raise dead is a 5th-level cleric spell of the conjuration (healing) school, so it's out in 3 ways.

However, if you allowed it anyway, there's a perfect way to give it dire consequences. Shadow conjuration's effects are only 20% real, and the target's returned soul would be no exception. You could rule that they're technically brought back, but trapped in a cursed state of partial life with any number of associated problems. Alternatively, you could say that the person's soul functions as normal until they disbelieve the illusion (as per the strict ruling of the spell), at which point any number of unpleasant things could result.

Anyway, to address your question, I think you've pretty much got exactly the right idea. Clerics and other divine casters are empowered by their gods--the rightful authorities over the souls of the dead, in many settings--to call back souls who are still needed in the world of the living. When they do it, it's all sanctioned and allowed to happen without issue. However, if some schmuck who has no ties to the gods starts breaking the rules and doing it without their approval, I could easily imagine that rustling their jimmies. And, of course, those souls might be needed in whatever place they're headed to, so that brings in a whole host of other issues that could arise.

Red Fel
2014-09-27, 10:26 PM
Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?(Emphasis added.)

If I recall correctly, this is more or less the reason that Maruts exist. Technically speaking, Maruts exist to stop those who unnaturally prolong their own lives at the expense of others, but I imagine that the reverse is equally true - in the cases you illustrate, a PC is making death meaningless by bringing everyone back, willy-nilly. Death is Inevitable. Issues of morality aside, that disrupts the status quo of the multiverse, and as any Inevitable will tell you, this chaos will not stand.

Expect to hear knocking on your door late one night. Knocking by Fists of Thunder and Lightning.

NichG
2014-09-27, 11:02 PM
You can make the universe itself dislike it for some reason of course, but that isn't intrinsic to resurrection, its just a particular setting choice (in the same way that casting a Fireball on Athas could be considered an atrocity because it renders a little bit more of that world incapable of ever growing anything again, but on Toril its not a big deal).

But if we're talking about only things that are intrinsic to resurrection, putting particular settings aside, it becomes trickier. I'd argue that there are reasons why its inherently immoral to resurrect people under most value systems (of course, it'd be immoral to cultists of death and so on). But whether its moral or not to resurrect a person, the availability of mass resurrection is going to pull societies through transitional periods and will have long-ranging consequences as well. So the morality ends up being more about whether or not the transitional period and long-ranging consequences are acceptable when balanced against the upside of 'no one need fear death ever again'.

The thing with resurrecting people all over the place is that it removes something which is taken for granted to be a hard reality of life. People live their lives with the understanding that death is an irreversible inevitability, and it becomes very deeply ingrained in culture, philosophy, etc. When you remove that on an individual level, its called a miracle - it hints at something greater, but it still keeps it outside of the realm of things that a person can rely on or expect. But when it becomes common then that particular tacit assumption becomes invalidated, and people just kind of don't know how to react. It creates widespread anxiety in people, because the entire framework of their existence has been built on the assumption of something being true, and now that assumption is being made false so everything has to be determined anew. The immediate impulse is to look for or even create reasons why the old assumptions must be true - e.g. creating fictions by which the universe enforces those assumptions in the long run, even if someone is violating them in the short run.

So if you're a person whose value system puts worth on certain regularities of life as creating the richness of human experience, it could be immoral to mass-resurrect people because the sorts of lives people live without the threat of death would arguably be poorer than the sorts of lives people live when they must fight for their lives and so on. But that's a very abstract morality - probably fairly rare outside of something like Planescape where everyone is looking in from the outside anyhow (a similar morality is what I generally use for playing gods - they aren't interested so much in the prosperity of people as they are in the stories that are still told about their world a billion years from now when all is dust) Similarly, if you value the stability of traditions then mass resurrections could be largely disruptive to that (both from having to change traditions to meet the new reality of the world, and from the issues caused by ancients coming back and telling people 'nah, it didn't happen like that, your clan leaders have been BSing you all this time').

The other consideration is that in the very long-term, there is an impact on the world population from the availability of mass resurrections. There is also the possibility for asymmetric provision of mass resurrections (e.g. only the rich get them, only people belonging to a certain kingdom get them, etc). These are all things that can ostensibly be worked out, so the morality here is more about having due dilligence in taking care of the details of bringing mass resurrection to the world rather than about resurrection itself. The same things could be true of any new boon - technology, new spells, etc.

And of course if old age is still a limiting factor then that changes some of the consequences here and there (though, with Reincarnate it doesn't have to be).

Nagash
2014-09-27, 11:12 PM
So, he used shadow conjuration to mimic raise dead...yeah, no, that doesn't work.



Raise dead is a 5th-level cleric spell of the conjuration (healing) school, so it's out in 3 ways.

However, if you allowed it anyway, there's a perfect way to give it dire consequences. Shadow conjuration's effects are only 20% real, and the target's returned soul would be no exception. You could rule that they're technically brought back, but trapped in a cursed state of partial life with any number of associated problems. Alternatively, you could say that the person's soul functions as normal until they disbelieve the illusion (as per the strict ruling of the spell), at which point any number of unpleasant things could result.


oooohhh. Anyone else read "Pet cemetery" recently? If not, read it. It gives great consequences of this type. Essentially you brought the body back, not the soul. But it seems like something else likes to jump into those empty, walking vessels and take charge.

TandemChelipeds
2014-09-28, 12:05 AM
oooohhh. Anyone else read "Pet cemetery" recently? If not, read it. It gives great consequences of this type. Essentially you brought the body back, not the soul. But it seems like something else likes to jump into those empty, walking vessels and take charge.

Isn't that also basically the premise of Monkey's Paw?

Kitten Champion
2014-09-28, 02:06 AM
Now, putting the costly restrictions of raising the dead aside, what are the moral reasons why you should not go around raising everyone's dead mother on a whim? Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

Why do there have to be any moral implications? In a setting where resurrection is hitherto impossible and suddenly someone starts reviving the dead it would have massive earthshaking significance - but this is more like someone winning the lottery, a rare phenomenon that people know happens but are unlikely to experience personally. The people of the setting would have a frame of reference for it and their philosophy would have come to terms with it through any number of justifications and rationalizations.

Basically, why can't the resource cost be the expense for the PC? And the people resurrected are just beneficiaries to the capriciousness of good fortune.

I suppose the gods can punish them for their hubris and all that, but that's sort of what wizards do with their lives - seek out arcane power beyond our comprehension and wield it to impress women at parties and whatnot. If the gods were so eager to maintain their precious cosmic order they shouldn't have made it so easy for the modding community to get involved.

BWR
2014-09-28, 02:24 AM
Ignoring Blood Money problems and the fact the scheme doesn't work by RAW and the interesting idea of raising something other than you intended. For sake of argument, assume basically costless, widespread raising of dead.

Yes, the cosmic balance is an issue. Things die, and the multiverse seems to be designed around this happening. Upsetting this too much will get the attention of many powerful beings. As noted, inevitables, gods, etc.will all have a say. Some want the multiverse to function as it should, some gods want their power to stay constant or increase - the act of death may be empowering to death gods, souls coming to the realm of the god may grant power, fiends want souls for recruitment, etc. Anything large scale enough to be noticable will be unpopular.

Forcing souls out of the afterlife - not happening. Riase Dead does not compel people to come back. Those happily dead can just say no. No saints will be yanked out of heaven against their will. Bringing evil people back is more likely. Peoplel generally don't want to stay in whatever netheworld they were sent to longer than absolutely necessary and accept. Some might think of it as a stay of execution but go back to old ways, some might actually try to turn their new life around and hopefully end up somewhere better next time they die. This might be the most interesting application of mass resurrection. If done on a large enough scale it could start swining the balance towards Good ever so slightly. I can certainly see some good-aligned people thinking this is a viable strategy.

In societies with lots of death from sources other than old age, this could cause a lot of change. If your average couple has 6 or 7 kids and only 2 live long enough to procreate, this makes for a fairly stable population. If all these prematurely dead come back, population explosion. Possible consequences: society faces lack of resources. The need to feed and house everyone is burden. Aggressive expansion of the society is, barring magic, the only option. Increase agriculture area, start taking over neighboring settlements, raiding, etc. Rapid enroachment on nature will be unpopular with nature types, causing conflict with other sentients, even unintentionally, is not a good thing.

In times of war or plague the population won't drop nearly as badly. Big wars are not only expensive but cause lots of death. Too few people to till the soil and otherwise do useful stuff in society is bad. Diminishing number of troops is a problem for any war. Being able to quickly replenish the number of troops can change the face of war. Actual combat will be about the same but as long as you win the field you can get your troops back on their feet again. The morale boost of knowing you will likely be brought back is incredible, causing people to fight harder, be less likely to run and encourage more wholesale slaughter to ensure the enemy doesn't come back. Hardly a good thing. Corpses of the enemy will be destroyed if possible to prevent people from sneaking them out and bringing them back. Some cultures and gods may not like that.

Legal problems. Inheritance and ownership and whatnot. A dies, her estate is inherited by B. Then A comes back. Who owns it? B, because A died or A because A isn't dead? What if A was sentenced to death - has the punishment been properly executed (hah)? Is death meant to be permanent legal condition or can it be a temporary condition? What about marriage or other contracts with a 'til death do you part' clause (assuming this is taken literally)? Are they still binding if one party is dead then brought back to life?

A single wizard going around and at best raising one or two people per day isn't going to affect much of anything. I don't really see that it should be a big deal for any non-PC party unless the DM wants it to be.

Ettina
2014-09-28, 07:42 AM
Why would there be a morality problem with using resurrection a bunch? Is there a morality problem with using medical techniques to save someone from a heart attack? We used to think heart stopped = dead, but now we can often restart a stopped heart. In a world where resurrection magic is available for 1 hour after death, it would become just like another medical procedure, and people wouldn't be thought of as really dead until they could no longer be resurrected.

If it goes wrong, that's a different matter, but it's just sour grapes thinking to make it that it has to go wrong.

I mean, think about it. It used to be a fact of life that 25-50% of babies wouldn't live to their first birthday, and many of those kids wouldn't make it to five. Now, infant death has become rare. Has this destroyed the fabric of life as we know it? No. It's just changed our lives. We had to learn to have only one or two kids, instead of having dozens just to hedge our bets and make sure at least one made it. There were some people, when infant mortality first went down, who thought the world was going to end because people would have 10-15 kids who'd all grow up to have 10-15 kids each and we'd end up overpopulated.

My point is, don't be afraid to let a fantasy world be different from our world. Just because they're putting a different meaning on death doesn't make it a bad thing.

Oh, and by the way, about people being resurrected who didn't want to be - that happens with modern medicine, too. A person who commits suicide, if found quickly enough, will often find themselves waking up in an emergency ward with a psychiatrist wanting to talk to them.

ZeroGear
2014-09-28, 09:11 AM
Thank you all for your replies, but I think I need to clarify a few things first:
-Shadow Conjuration: I think that was the spell he used, but I'm not 100% sure on that. All I know is that he somehow managed to mimic the resurrection/raise dead spell on a decent (7-15 times) scale. Also, I wasn't the DM there.

-Spheres or Power: The way the Talent works is that the only cost is 2 Spell points, plus a mostly intact body. Casters have a daily allotment of Spell points equal to 1/2 their class level + casting stat. You need to be at least caster level 10 to get the Talent, giving you a minimum of 5 Spell points, but you can increase your pool though the use of the Extra Spell Points feat, which gives you 2 more points each time it is taken. The Character in question was 10th level, CL 10, with a +8 casting mod and 6 bonus points, giving him a total of 19 spell points. So that's almost 10 resurrections a day.

Friv
2014-09-28, 10:07 AM
Thank you all for your replies, but I think I need to clarify a few things first:
-Shadow Conjuration: I think that was the spell he used, but I'm not 100% sure on that. All I know is that he somehow managed to mimic the resurrection/raise dead spell on a decent (7-15 times) scale. Also, I wasn't the DM there.

-Spheres or Power: The way the Talent works is that the only cost is 2 Spell points, plus a mostly intact body. Casters have a daily allotment of Spell points equal to 1/2 their class level + casting stat. You need to be at least caster level 10 to get the Talent, giving you a minimum of 5 Spell points, but you can increase your pool though the use of the Extra Spell Points feat, which gives you 2 more points each time it is taken. The Character in question was 10th level, CL 10, with a +8 casting mod and 6 bonus points, giving him a total of 19 spell points. So that's almost 10 resurrections a day.

Nine resurrections a day, from people who have to have died that day and didn't die of old age and want to come back, is going to have a pretty minimal impact on your world as a whole. I mean, it'll be impressive; you'll have a cool faith healer thing going. But in the grand scheme of things? It's not world-shaking.

It is fodder for a heck of a lot of cool stories, though! What happens when twelve people arrive that day looking for resurrections, and you have to send three away? What if some rich merchant tries to bribe his way to the front of the line - or hires his own wizards to hold the other members of the line hostage? What if the church of a God of Death decides that the character is a heretic, and demands he restrict himself to two resurrections a day, or else they'll start killing the extras? Perhaps someone really evil just died, and their second-in-command tries to force the healer to save them. Perhaps someone doesn't want to come back, but their relatives won't take no for an answer...

Ettina
2014-09-28, 04:17 PM
Why would there be a morality problem with using resurrection a bunch? Is there a morality problem with using medical techniques to save someone from a heart attack?

Actually, I'm really curious about this. I've never heard an explanation against spamming resurrection (barring tacked-on side effects) that doesn't also imply modern medicine is evil.

Saidoro
2014-09-28, 10:07 PM
The second time was recently when I was running a test game using the Spheres of Power supplement. One of the characters had just gotten the Resurrection Advanced Talent of the Life Sphere, which lets him bring someone back to life for 2 spell points (provided he dies within 1 hour/level and his body is intact). Almost immediately he declared that he was going to go around offering free resurrections to the populace (As the DM, I, of course, told him no).
You read the part where it said that all of the purely optional advanced magic options could majorly change the setting and advanced talents in particular allow people to do fantastic things as part of their day-to day shdule, right? :smalltongue:

Coidzor
2014-09-29, 12:07 AM
Now donating money to the church to bring back a fallen PC is all well and dandy, as is having the party cleric do it at a lower price, as long as it is done sparingly. But what happen when the Wizard (yes, the WIZARD!) decided that he can mix some spells and start resurrecting NPC's left and right on a massive scale?

There's no moral difference between either class using resurrection magic, so wizard or cleric s irrelevant save for mechanics.


The first time this happened, a fellow PC (yes, the wizard) figured he could bring some of the villagers of a city that had just been hit by a total wave back to life. This involved the use of the Blood Money, Shadow Conjuration, and Summon Monster spells. Blood Money would pay for the expensive components via ability drain, Shadow Conjuration was used to cast Raise Dead, and the Summon Monster spell brought in an archon to cast Restoration on the Wizard and heal the ability damage.

Not sure that works, mechanically.. I don't see why there would be a moral problem with restoring life to victims of violence or natural disasters. Indeed, it would just be callousness to do nothing if one truly could help at such trivial cost.

I can see why a GM may feel threatened, but on the whole, learning to work with magical options is better.


The second time was recently when I was running a test game using the Spheres of Power supplement. One of the characters had just gotten the Resurrection Advanced Talent of the Life Sphere, which lets him bring someone back to life for 2 spell points (provided he dies within 1 hour/level and his body is intact). Almost immediately he declared that he was going to go around offering free resurrections to the populace (As the DM, I, of course, told him no).

No need, you control who has been dead of causes he can resurrect for less than a day that he can reach or can reach him. All you did here was deny yourselves obvious quest hooks & establishing the party's rep as do-gooders.


Now, putting the costly restrictions of raising the dead aside, what are the moral reasons why you should not go around raising everyone's dead mother on a whim? Personally, I like to think that it upsets the cosmic balance and tends to attract the unwelcome attention of Inevitables, Celestials, and Gods, not to mention the ire of most established churches and devil soul harvesters. What's your take on this?

Natural causes and practical concerns are the main limit. There *is* no good reason to rez the party fighter who got ganked by a goblin & then refuse to bring a child murdered by the same goblin on moral grounds.

ZeroGear
2014-09-29, 01:59 AM
Alright, some more clarifications here:

-I just remembered how the wizard did it. It was't Shadow Conjuration, it was Limited Wish. That should work mechanically, but should not be abused.

-Yes, I read the warnings about advanced talents. Mainly I included them because a) they need to be field tested, b) I did not expect him to announce this, and c) resurrection is an expected part of the gaming world and I needed some way to include it. I have learned my lesson and will be more restrictive in future endeavors.

-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?
The other thing I worry about is the Kenny effect, as I call it. Death is part of the gaming session, and while I understand that resurrections do occur, they should not be a every-day occurrence. From a character's perspective, if they guy keeps dying, it's humiliating; form the players perspective, it turns his character into a running joke; and form a DM's perspective, it voids the threat of death that hard bosses should inspire. I want to know what would(morally) prevent this form happening all the time.
More than that though, I want to know why this hasn't happened before in any given game world. The players are most likely not the only high-level characters out there, why are they the first to do this and what moral quandaries does this actually entail when it happens?

NichG
2014-09-29, 03:40 AM
-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?

The other thing I worry about is the Kenny effect, as I call it. Death is part of the gaming session, and while I understand that resurrections do occur, they should not be a every-day occurrence. From a character's perspective, if they guy keeps dying, it's humiliating; form the players perspective, it turns his character into a running joke; and form a DM's perspective, it voids the threat of death that hard bosses should inspire. I want to know what would(morally) prevent this form happening all the time.
More than that though, I want to know why this hasn't happened before in any given game world. The players are most likely not the only high-level characters out there, why are they the first to do this and what moral quandaries does this actually entail when it happens?

The problem is the word 'moral' here. There isn't anything 'morally' keeping them from doing all this, and there's no reason why there necessarily should be! From the point of view of humanitarian concerns, eliminating violent and accidental death from the world is a boon to everyone. The problem you're having is that there's a conflict between the needs of the drama, story, and game and the what individuals within the world of the game would logically desire or do. That's not a moral conflict, its a metagame conflict (which is no less real, but its a very important distinction).

The answer is basically that this should have happened in many game worlds, but it doesn't because of genre conventions and metagame considerations. There isn't a good reason in-world why goodly people should desire the threat of death to exist. So the answer to your conundrum isn't moral in nature. It is either that the setting itself contrives to restrict this or add consequences that are not obvious (e.g. 'inevitables show up and kill everyone who was brought back, because cosmic law doesn't care about humanitarian concerns'), or that you talk with your players OOC about genre conventions and to what degree you as a group want to hold to them or subvert them.

Its like the Wall of Salt thing. By RAW, economics should not be a thing that exists anymore in any sufficiently high level D&D world because of the paradoxes caused by fixed prices combined with the ability to have a significantly cheaper means of production than was assumed. You could ban Wall of Salt and Wall of Iron to prevent this. You could adapt the rules so that resource values do in fact decline when the market is glutted by them. But you could also tell your players 'hey, I know this can be done within the rules, but its pretty silly and breaks the game; can we just agree to pretend that it doesn't exist and in general not use tricks that would generate infinite wealth?'. That's generally the best approach because then, if your players also want the game to be stable and fun, they can understand why you're objecting and they can take action on their part to make it so it doesn't become a problem.

Ettina
2014-09-29, 07:25 AM
-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?

Escalating to what? What is so bad about bringing people back to life? I really don't get how you could have a moral issue with this.

Segev
2014-09-29, 08:11 AM
Morally-speaking, resurrection's no problem whatsoever. As written, it requires a willing soul to choose to come back.

Obviously, if you're bringing back an evil person, you're aiding them in spreading evil, but that's not a moral problem with resurrection so much as a moral problem with how you use it. Giving money to somebody poverty-stricken is generally considered a good deed; giving it to a poverty-stricken terrorist who will turn around and use it to kill people would, however, not be. (We're assuming you act with full knowledge, here, and are not mistaken nor deceived.)

If you want to keep resurrection from becoming industrial, recall the costs associated (and don't allow shenanigans that don't work by the RAW; you can be a stickler, here, if needs be), and remember that only willing souls actually return. If the afterlife is pretty awesome by the definition of the souls who go to it, they may be less willing than one might expect. Peasants whose entire families were wiped out along with them in a disaster (or a slaughter) might not want to come back; their families are (presumably) with them in the afterlife of their alignment, and their lives were hard and unpleasant. What's to come back for?

Even evil types may not wish to return; sure, evil planes have lousy afterlives for the weak, but these are ambitious people. On the other hand, there are a lot of weak evil people who find themselves on the bottom of the heap. Maybe part of the moral implication of over-using resurrection is that you have a higher statistical likelihood of evil people willingly returning than good, so spamming Resurrections can yield an overall shift of a region's alignment towards Evil, just by virtue of who chooses to come back and who doesn't. Notably, it should be the weak-willed, sniveling variety of evil soul who returns most often; the ambitious, BBEG-material (or even lieutenant-material) villains would be having too much fun climbing the ranks of fiend-kind.

So spamming Resurrection would lead to the region becoming overrun with petty crooks, cruel and weak-minded thugs, and selfish pricks.

Frozen_Feet
2014-09-29, 09:36 AM
Escalating to what? What is so bad about bringing people back to life? I really don't get how you could have a moral issue with this.

If people don't die for a long-enough period but continue to breed, you will start having severe population problems in time. This is not a huge problem for D&D/PF resurrection specifically, because people still die of old age, but the birthrate would need to get lower.

There are other answers to the question, but those would be setting-specific. In default D&D cosmos, though, death is its own important step in spiritual advancement and facilitating cosmic justice. Souls are *not* supposed to stay on Prime Material forever and ever, they are supposed to join their gods at one point. That's why, as mentioned, there are Maruts, a class of Inevitable Constructs who will come and kill you if you cheat death too many times.

Rater202
2014-09-29, 09:52 AM
There is no legitimate biological reason for anything to die-Animals die because a genetic flaw means our cells don't divide perfectly.

Giant Tortoises lack this flaw-kept free of predators, diseases, and supplied with an appropriate diet, certain species of giant tortoise are theoretically immortal.

As there is no biological reason to die, and lots of people die of unnatural causes anyway-restoring them to life is morally justifiable, because as said, there honestly, from a scientific perspective, is no reason why people have to die in the first place.

As for population issues-historically, as length and quality of life increase, population growth decreases, and farming practices improve all the time(current conspiracy theories not withstanding) so we'd continue to be able to feed people for a long time. As for space-you could fit the entire population of the planet earth into the state of Texas, and spread out evenly it would be less crowded than new York city-the rest of the US could be used for agriculture(And farmers there means less crowding in Texas) and the rest of the world would be one giant nature preserve

Of course, that's all irrelevant, because Resurrection spells don't' bring you back if you die of old age

And note, that while high ranking Clerics probably know for sure there's a after life-the average commoner doesn't-for all he knows, Cleric MAgic is just wizard magic and there are no Gods.

so, no reason to die, large number of deaths unnatural, population growth being a non issue, even if it was it's still not an issue, and uncertainty about what comes after?

Yeah, no reason why, if cheep resurrections are a thing, to not give them out like candy-besides, the biggest gift you can give someone is a future, so giving futures to people who had theirs stolen from them is the biggest charity you can do, and charity is a good act by definition, yes?

Segev
2014-09-29, 10:56 AM
There is no legitimate biological reason for anything to die-Animals die because a genetic flaw means our cells don't divide perfectly.

Giant Tortoises lack this flaw-kept free of predators, diseases, and supplied with an appropriate diet, certain species of giant tortoise are theoretically immortal.

Not...quite. It's not a flaw, so much as a different function. Giant tortoises are born "mature," more or less. They may be too small for some adult activities, but everything is there and in place and functional as it will be their whole lives. Provided sustenance, they continue to grow their whole lives (albeit at a logarithmic pace, as it takes more and more energy to keep growing). They have no puberty, no growth spurts, no timed events in their life cycle that are measured as part of a maturation process.

Most animals with which we are familiar - humans amongst them - have timed maturation processes. Using humans as an example, we grow rapidly from infancy to about 4-5 years of age, and then grow steadily (but more slowly) through about 10-12. Then we hit puberty, and all sorts of changes occur. Puberty lasts for 12-17 years or so (tapering off significantly towards the end), and then we stabilize at a mature size and with mature physical biology.

All of this is timed, and over a scale that cannot be controlled with simple hormonal cycles. Hormones themselves have to be triggered in huge concoctions all at once and at more or less the right time.

This timing is controlled by that "genetic flaw." It's not a flaw: it's a fuse. When it hits certain points, our cells flip into new modes to perform maturation processes.

(The name of the tail of "junk" DNA that is this fuse; the way it works, for those who don't know, is that the telomere is shorter each time a cell replicates/splits. Unfortunately, this leads eventually to the non-junk DNA being cut off as the telomere vanishes.)

There are human cells which do not replicate with shrinking telomeres. Cancer. We don't know why, but most anagathic research centers on figuring that out. The problem is that we don't know if it's related: does a lack of this timing fuse result inevitably in cancerous behavior in our cells?

Obviously it doesn't in giant tortoises.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-09-29, 11:07 AM
...The people being brought back to life, which they can't with the method you've described, have a choice if they come back or not. Most people won't choose to come back unless they have some unfinished business that needs doing that is actually important.

Even then, in Pathfinder/Golarion, there's a time limit on raise dead which is, at most, twenty days barring shenanigans. So for one, most people won't come back. Second, most people have been dead too long for Raise Dead. And third, why the hell would he put himself through this as a character? Ability damage (even if hurt!) is horribly painful! Why the heck is he going around the world and randomly bringing people back to life and putting himself through such terrible pain?

Sartharina
2014-09-29, 03:31 PM
I can't think of any moral reasons to object to it at all. If someone can raise the dead and does so, let them.

Galen
2014-09-29, 06:57 PM
If I recall correctly, this is more or less the reason that Maruts exist. Technically speaking, Maruts exist to stop those who unnaturally prolong their own lives at the expense of others, but I imagine that the reverse is equally true - in the cases you illustrate, a PC is making death meaningless by bringing everyone back, willy-nilly. Death is Inevitable. Issues of morality aside, that disrupts the status quo of the multiverse, and as any Inevitable will tell you, this chaos will not stand.

Expect to hear knocking on your door late one night. Knocking by Fists of Thunder and Lightning.
Except the people he resurrects still inevitably die of old age when their time is up. Therefore, they die naturally. In fact, the wizard who goes resurrecting villagers who died of an unnatural tidal wave so that they can live their natural life span and eventually die of natural causes is doing the natural order a favor.

Maruts are made for Liches and Vampires who cheat the natural order and don't die when their time is up.

Coidzor
2014-09-29, 07:30 PM
Ability damage (even if hurt!) is horribly painful!

Why the heck is he going around the world and randomly bringing people back to life and putting himself through such terrible pain?

Is that actually confirmed anywhere?

I suppose you could term it "Martyrdom," if you felt like it.


-One of the things I worry about here is the abuse of the ability. If one person does it, and gets away with it, then it won't be long before several adventuring groups start abusing it. It's like casting a stone in the pond created ripples, I really want to know how one person can (morally) get away with it without others getting the sam idea and the entire thing escalating. What is (morally) keeping the wizards guild form doing the same (possibly aside from the lack of high-level casters)?

...D-Do you not like plot hooks? Or players getting invested in the game by actually doing something that has an impact(Which I seem to have to remind you that you, as GM, entirely control in actuality)? Like.... These are generally considered to be good things, getting people to invest in the game and want to follow it to its conclusion. And y'know, if it's distracting from some save the world plot that they want to instead go off and play good samaritan to the world... That mostly means you need to either A. talk to your players or B. step up your game about getting them involved in the main plot you're run.

You're entirely barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for a moral justification for not bringing the dead back to life when one can. You're also entirely barking up the wrong tree if you're looking for a moral reason to use as a club against your players in lieu of having a Gentleman's Agreement about what kind of game you all want to play and are playing together.

Presumably people have better things to do with their time when they're that powerful than to go around to wherever people have recently died and bringing 'em back.

Or you're already on your way to the Tippyverse and should learn to stop worrying and love the Teleportation Circle. :smallwink:


The other thing I worry about is the Kenny effect, as I call it. Death is part of the gaming session, and while I understand that resurrections do occur, they should not be a every-day occurrence. From a character's perspective, if they guy keeps dying, it's humiliating; form the players perspective, it turns his character into a running joke; and form a DM's perspective, it voids the threat of death that hard bosses should inspire. I want to know what would(morally) prevent this form happening all the time.

More than that though, I want to know why this hasn't happened before in any given game world. The players are most likely not the only high-level characters out there, why are they the first to do this and what moral quandaries does this actually entail when it happens?

That has nothing to do with rezzing NPCs and doesn't need any moral axis. No player *wants* to have the gimp character who keeps dying. Indeed, most of them will want to rebuild or get a new character that isn't gimped if they find themselves in a rut rather than be constantly rez'd by the party, regardless of whether the others begrudge them their loadstone status or not.

Most game worlds aren't designed with the rules in mind. Eberron is the closest of largish, published settings. The Tippyverse is infamous around these parts for having been built with the rules in mind with the particular premise of most being defined by the mass use of Teleportation Circles and the reaction to them. Most of these sorts of things aren't moral quandraries, they're purely practical concerns. Problems for the Engineer.

Beleriphon
2014-09-29, 10:13 PM
Obviously it doesn't in giant tortoises.

Or lobsters, lobsters free of predators can grow to absolutely enormormous sizes, the largest that I'm aware of is well over 100 pounds. Somewhere, on the bottom of the ocean right now there could be a 1000 year old lobster, just doing lobster stuff getting ever larger.

Rater202
2014-09-29, 10:25 PM
Not...quite. It's not a flaw, so much as a different function. Giant tortoises are born "mature," more or less. They may be too small for some adult activities, but everything is there and in place and functional as it will be their whole lives. Provided sustenance, they continue to grow their whole lives (albeit at a logarithmic pace, as it takes more and more energy to keep growing). They have no puberty, no growth spurts, no timed events in their life cycle that are measured as part of a maturation process.

Most animals with which we are familiar - humans amongst them - have timed maturation processes. Using humans as an example, we grow rapidly from infancy to about 4-5 years of age, and then grow steadily (but more slowly) through about 10-12. Then we hit puberty, and all sorts of changes occur. Puberty lasts for 12-17 years or so (tapering off significantly towards the end), and then we stabilize at a mature size and with mature physical biology.

All of this is timed, and over a scale that cannot be controlled with simple hormonal cycles. Hormones themselves have to be triggered in huge concoctions all at once and at more or less the right time.

This timing is controlled by that "genetic flaw." It's not a flaw: it's a fuse. When it hits certain points, our cells flip into new modes to perform maturation processes.

(The name of the tail of "junk" DNA that is this fuse; the way it works, for those who don't know, is that the telomere is shorter each time a cell replicates/splits. Unfortunately, this leads eventually to the non-junk DNA being cut off as the telomere vanishes.)

There are human cells which do not replicate with shrinking telomeres. Cancer. We don't know why, but most anagathic research centers on figuring that out. The problem is that we don't know if it's related: does a lack of this timing fuse result inevitably in cancerous behavior in our cells?

Obviously it doesn't in giant tortoises.

You are somewhat mistaken-Telemere's have nothing to do with the ageing process or Junk DNA-it's not DNA at all, it's made of an enzyme called telemerase, making it a protein.

The flaw of which I speak is that we have no gene for producing telemarase at rates comparable at which its used up, baring a mutation in cancer cells.

The fact that tortoises can generate telemerase at about the rate they use it without developing cancers is the evidence that that this whole "dieing of old age" thing is both unnatural(If death were the natural end of all things, then it wouldn't be imposible for tortoises to die of old age) and a complete load of arbitrary bulls*** becuase terrapins drew the long stra in the game of genetic super powers.

Manly Man
2014-09-29, 10:54 PM
...the biggest gift you can give someone is a future...

You jerk, now I'm crying. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvwYCbBWxT8)

Rater202
2014-09-29, 11:05 PM
You jerk, now I'm crying. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvwYCbBWxT8)

Exactly the point.

Frozen_Feet
2014-09-30, 08:42 AM
Except the people he resurrects still inevitably die of old age when their time is up. Therefore, they die naturally. In fact, the wizard who goes resurrecting villagers who died of an unnatural tidal wave so that they can live their natural life span and eventually die of natural causes is doing the natural order a favor.

Maruts are made for Liches and Vampires who cheat the natural order and don't die when their time is up.

You are completely glossing over the fact that the Wizard is achieving the resurrection effect through invoking arcane powers to summon forth the Shadow Realm and using its power to hubristically mimic divine miracles. That's exceedingly supernatural, and hence, unnatural. Just one pop could make the Wizard a legitimate target for Maruts.

You are also committing a severe fallacy (as is Rater202) concerning what sorts of deaths are "natural"; natural deaths are not limited to just old age. Any death caused by Natural Evils (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_evil) count as a natural death. This includes disease, tidal waves, erupting volcanoes etc. disasters that don't need supernatural (=unnatural) forces or action by sapient beings to happen.

Heck, in D&D 3.x., death by natural weapons would count as a natural death. It should be obvious why.

Rater202
2014-09-30, 09:02 AM
The why is it, when sombody get's killed by a cancer, or by getting cuart in a while fire, or bleeds out after an animal attack, they put "Cancer", "Immolation" or "Exsanguination" down as the cuase of death and not "Natural Causes"?

Besides, inevitables by definition aren't good. I do believe one example of Lawful Neutral played to the degree that inevitables are supposed to be was "Freeing slaves in a country where slavery is illegal, but capturing fugitive slaves in a country were it is."

so just because an inevitable sys it's wrong, doesn't make it wrong, and Marut are explicitly supposed to be dealing with things like Necromancers, Vampires, Liches, and tears in the fabric of reality cousing the positive and negative planes to bleed into the matirial.

The fact that there are so many undead in the word means the Marut don't do their damn jobs in the first place, so if they showed up to stop a guy reversing unatural deaths, they'd both be not doing their jobs, doing the opposite of the jobs, and be the equivalent of a cop busting somebody for littering when there's a guy stabbing random people no ten feet away.

That's ignoring the "inevitables are sorta depicted, quite constantly, as ass****s" thing.

Frozen_Feet
2014-09-30, 09:14 AM
The why is it, when sombody get's killed by a cancer, or by getting cuart in a while fire, or bleeds out after an animal attack, they put "Cancer", "Immolation" or "Exsanguination" down as the cuase of death and not "Natural Causes"?

For the same reason they put down "man-slaughter", "negligence", "murder" or "accident" down as the cause of death instead of "human causes"; because specific terms are more accurate and convey more information. "Death by natural causes" used to be a catch-all category for when people *didn't know* what exactly had caused the death, but just because we can name the exact cause of death doesn't make them any less natural.


Besides, inevitables by definition aren't good.

Neither is nature. In real life, thinking "natural == good" is generally considered a fallacy. In D&D, the natural worlds (= Prime Material) is explicitly True Neutral and those serving it (= Druids) are oath-bound to remain Neutral among one axis. EDIT: Basically this means that death could be the most unnatural thing in the world, and it still wouldn't follow that saving people from it is good. I D&D, though, saving lives is generally considered good and taking them is considered evil, but not because either is really anymore natural than the other.


That's ignoring the "inevitables are sorta depicted, quite constantly, as ass****s" thing.

It's more like people forget they even exist. For contrast, my settings are build from the ground-up to account for their equivalents of Maruts; it's near-impossible to do any necromancy whatsoever without running into them or their servants. Another game I'm in, inspired by Bleach, is all about the Shinigami, AKA the people whose task it is to keep the cycle of reincarnation operating smoothly.

Ettina
2014-09-30, 09:22 AM
The why is it, when sombody get's killed by a cancer, or by getting cuart in a while fire, or bleeds out after an animal attack, they put "Cancer", "Immolation" or "Exsanguination" down as the cuase of death and not "Natural Causes"?

Because 'natural causes' is an umbrella term and they want to be as specific as they can? Seriously, no one ever writes 'natural causes' as a cause of death. Even if the guy was 85 and died of congestive heart failure, they'll write 'congestive heart failure' as the cause of death.

Frozen_Feet
2014-09-30, 09:38 AM
As for population issues-historically, as length and quality of life increase, population growth decreases, and farming practices improve all the time...

The causal chain isn't even remotely as simple as you imply. Population growth has decreased primarily due to increase in education and easy availability of reliable contraceptives. Before those two caught on, the population of Earth multiplied by a considerable factor within the 20th century due to the "green revolution". The same would happen if you prevented famine death by magic - just, without the increase in food production. Add to this the fact that being raised from the dead typically decreases your constitution or experience level - hence making all the returnees less able to produce food *and* more likely to catch diseases. That right there is a great way to start a wicked circle of famine and disease epidemics.

That is pretty much what has happened in 3rd world countries, mind you, with modern medicine reducing child mortality rate (etc.) but failing to fix problems in food and wealth distribution. Keep in mind that despite our "improved farming technology" (a lot of the world still makes do with basically medieval methods), 1 billion people in the world still suffer from famine. Also, lot of the food we grow is garbage; in addition to the figure before, 1.5 billion people suffer from obesity. Put together, that's 2.5 billion people suffering from some form of malnourishment - more than the whole world had in the 19th century.

The point being, just increasing lenght of life will not lead to the inventions that enable modern age of abundance; you need several other inventions and effects that need to be put in place separately. Otherwise, the result is a disaster. I'll also note that accounting for those "other inventions" has been done and will lead to Points of Light AKA TippyVerse if you're optimistic, and Borvari from Praedor if you're not.

Rater202
2014-09-30, 09:42 AM
Neither is nature. In real life, thinking "natural == good" is generally considered a fallacy. In D&D, the natural worlds (= Prime Material) is explicitly True Neutral and those serving it (= Druids) are oath-bound to remain Neutral among one axis. EDIT: Basically this means that death could be the most unnatural thing in the world, and it still wouldn't follow that saving people from it is good. I D&D, though, saving lives is generally considered good and taking them is considered evil, but not because either is really anymore natural than the other.

I never said nature was good.

However, this thread is about the Morality of ressurection, and as Iniveitables are amorale and unethical in their pursuit of their fabled "balance", then a Marut saying it's wrong has absolutely no relevance to weather or not it's actually wrong, morally,or ethically.

an other point, sequeing from yours-peole dieing off fevers is natural. Babies diieing in their crips are natural. Famine and plauge are natural.

Yet we don't talerate these things, and work to erradicate them.

So Death, which is only rarely natural, should not be excepted from this, yes?



It's more like people forget they even exist. For contrast, my settings are build from the ground-up to account for their equivalents of Maruts; it's near-impossible to do any necromancy whatsoever without running into them or their servants. Another game I'm in, inspired by Bleach, is all about the Shinigami, AKA the people whose task it is to keep the cycle of reincarnation operating smoothly.

1. That really has nothing to do with the fact that, to my reading, Inveitables are depicted as "Law to the point of trampling on peoples rights" which is a pretty asshatish thing to do.

2.If the Marut were meant to completely stop all forms of necromancy, then the books wouldn't have nearly as many necromancy spells as they do because Necromancer would be dealt with before they could develop anything more than basic spells, further more Resurrection spells and positive energy effects would also not be as developed as they are, because they mess with the "Natural Order" just as much as necromancy does.

The fact that these magics exist at all, means that the Marut were never intended to be this omnipresent force instrantly striking down on anyone who so much as casts an inflict spell..

two options: one, the Marut are not doing there job, either do to lack of numbers or the countless gods of death and undeath,and the deathless, and immortality and ressurection and healing and god knows what else that upsets the "natural" order all intevene on the part of their followers/portfolios, preventing asshat alien constructs from screwing with them becuase bs reasons, or other reasons. Or two, resurection and necromancy only upset the "Natural" order in specific circumstances

3.Bleach is an other example of this-if the Shingami were meant to be hypercometant "no, this never happens ever" types,t then hollows wouldn't exist and main protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki never would have been born.

Frozen_Feet
2014-09-30, 09:58 AM
The fact that Maruts aren't omnipotent is in no way an argument against their jobs being necessary, nor does it even mean they aren't doing everything they can. Law vs. Chaos is amoral, but not aethical. Without effort by Maruts, Prime Material would gravitate from True Neutral towards Chaotic Neutral, which isn't anymore desireable to mortals than Lawful Neutral.

Ditto for Shinigami. Just because they're not perfect doesn't mean they aren't right. Hollows exists largely because they outnumber Shinigami by a ridiculous factor, not because the Shinigami allow them to. There are just 6000 Gotei troopers in canon.

Rater202
2014-09-30, 01:06 PM
No, but it is an argument about tye intent of the creators for them to not be a massive factor.

the fact that a single instance of healing magic or necromancy does not have tangible negative consequences unintended by the spell, or the fact that Marut doin't even try to prevent the creation of undead, only destroying centuries old Liches and the like, is however evidence that such magics are nowhere near as damaging to the balace of life and death as some may claim.

There is also the possbility that there's some Marut out there that murders someone in cold blood everytime someone becomes undead or is ressrected, but that would be an evil act, not a lawful one.

Though to be honest "Lawful Stupid" does seem to be the way inevitables are most commonly depicted(helping slaves escape, then capturing them when the law changes, anyone?)

And once more Inevitables are amoral at best, and this thread is for the purposes of discussing the MORALITY of mass resurrection, not the probaly nonexistant metaphysical ramifications of peoiple who wouldn't have naturally died yet being made not dead.

So I repeat, what the lawful Crazy amoral alien robot tells you is wrong is irreverent, becuase by definition it cares not for right or wrong.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-30, 01:34 PM
You are completely glossing over the fact that the Wizard is achieving the resurrection effect through invoking arcane powers to summon forth the Shadow Realm and using its power to hubristically mimic divine miracles. That's exceedingly supernatural, and hence, unnatural. Just one pop could make the Wizard a legitimate target for Maruts.

Maruts only care about how many people you're bringing back from the dead, not about how you're doing it in the first place.

icefractal
2014-09-30, 01:57 PM
I'm, um ... I'm not sure how this is a problem. So it's ok for adventurers to come back from the dead, but bringing some townspeople back is "out of control" and "a moral problem"? I don't think I even understand your frame of reference here.

If we're talking about, like, actual moral problems, then I have to say my personal stance is - **** the natural order. The natural order is people living in caves and dying of infection in their teens. There's nothing good about that. If you have the ability to change it, you should!

If we're talking about "out of control" as in, has an overly large impact on the setting, I'm not seeing that so much either. In the first example, he can only bring back a few people a day, and at a significant cost (which Blood Money eliminates, but that's a problem with Blood Money). In the second example, he can only bring back people who died quite recently. Unless he retires to stay in town all the time, that's going to be pretty rare. It's a notable thing, but it's not going to change the entire world.

Also, in both cases, we're talking about a 10th+ level character. They're going to have an impact on the setting. If that same Wizard turned his attention to death instead of life, he could singlehandedly raze most smaller villages, start undead plagues, make a likely successful attempt at royal assassination, and generally do a lot of things that cause as much or more upheaval than preventing some early deaths.

I'm not even sure what advice to give here. "Stop worrying and learn to love the bomb resurrection" perhaps.

Wardog
2014-09-30, 05:19 PM
The fact that tortoises can generate telemerase at about the rate they use it without developing cancers is the evidence that that this whole "dieing of old age" thing is both unnatural(If death were the natural end of all things, then it wouldn't be imposible for tortoises to die of old age) and a complete load of arbitrary bulls*** becuase terrapins drew the long stra in the game of genetic super powers.

Dying of old age isn't "unnatural". It's just that the old you are, the less evolutionarily useful it is to live even longer.

If you are born with a mutation that will kill you before you become sexually mature, you cannot pass that mutation on.
If you are born with a mutation that will kill you some time in your late teens, you might pass it on, but there is a good chance you wont.
If you are born with a mutation that will kill you in your 80s, there is a very good chance that you will pass it on.
If you are born with a mutation that will kill you some time after your 500th birthday, you will probably have died of other causes - or become infertile - long before then, and are unlikely to have had many more children than the 80-year old. (Especially if you are living in pre-modern times where most people will probably die in infancy anyway).

So there isn't much selective pressure for extreme longevity (although more so in intelligent social species like humans, where you can help ensure the survival of your genes by teaching or looking after your grandchildren).


***

As to the original question:

If this resurrection doesn't bring back people who die of old age, it is no morally or ethically different from improved medicine / medical care / hygiene. (Or to put it another way, the moral/ethical issues will be about access, affordability, population increase if there isn't a corresponding reduction in birth rate, and the disruption to social order caused by changing demographics).

Rater202
2014-09-30, 05:25 PM
Demographic change is usually cuased by the deaths of the older generation.

Ressurecting people who die young won't disrupt demographic change, just slow it.

Erik Vale
2014-09-30, 07:48 PM
For those saying 'Shadow Plane, thus wrong', I'd like to point out the OP did come back and say limited wish, not shadow conjuration.

Coidzor
2014-09-30, 09:03 PM
You are completely glossing over the fact that the Wizard is achieving the resurrection effect through invoking arcane powers to summon forth the Shadow Realm and using its power to hubristically mimic divine miracles. That's exceedingly supernatural, and hence, unnatural. Just one pop could make the Wizard a legitimate target for Maruts.

Probably because you just kinda pulled that out on the spot and it's the sort of thing that would be completely setting specific besides.

That, and it's frankly bizarre to mischaracterize charitability as hubris.

Rater202
2014-09-30, 09:15 PM
That, and it's frankly bizarre to mischaracterize charitability as hubris.

Again, if the best present you can give is a future, and giving presents without expecting something in return is charitable, than giving a new life to someone who's life has been stolen from them must be the ultimate charitable act-especially if the magics used are taxing or expensive.

Frozen_Feet
2014-09-30, 10:56 PM
Probably because you just kinda pulled that out on the spot and it's the sort of thing that would be completely setting specific besides.

It's specific to the setting and spells used in the original example, so it's kind of relevant.

The general points is that it isn't just the way of death that matters, the way they are brought back must also be accounted for. It's "two wrongs don't make right" situation, or in this case, "two unnaturals don't make a natural".

Rater202
2014-09-30, 11:11 PM
It's specific to the setting and spells used in the original example, so it's kind of relevant.

The general points is that it isn't just the way of death that matters, the way they are brought back must also be accounted for. It's "two wrongs don't make right" situation, or in this case, "two unnaturals don't make a natural".

1. OP later went back and corrected that it was Limited Wish, not Shadow Conjuration.

Amnd as ou're only reversing unatural deaths, you are infact setting nature back on course, yues? Becuase logic?

2.And the Marut are immoral and the way all inveitables enforce Laws nobody but them voted in is horrifically opressive and unethical(bvecuase opressing rightts of oher people)

They are not Morale.

They are not ethical.

So, for the last time, WHAT THEY SAY HAS NO BEARING ON WEATHER OR NOT IT IS MORALE OR ETHICAL TO RESURRECT PEOPLE EN MASS, which is the topic of the thread.

As for Natural vs Unnatural--Natural isn't always good and isn't always good for you. Cyanide is natural. Cyanide is deadly poison.

The fact that humans use tools and don't crap themselves to death in their teens violates the natural order.

By the time "Is it morally or ethically right to raise the dead, but only non evil unnatural deaths that want to come back" is a serious question, the natural order is so f***ed up that it ain't funny, and since dieing for no god damned reason is part of the natural order, the natural order can go f*** itself either way.

Frozen_Feet
2014-10-01, 12:59 AM
1. OP later went back and corrected that it was Limited Wish, not Shadow Conjuration.

Amnd as ou're only reversing unatural deaths, you are infact setting nature back on course, yues? Becuase logic?

Wrong. All spells in D&D are by definition supernatural forces. Using them to bring back the dead means you are by definition overriding the natural law.

In D&D, the concept of natural death is also far broader than you seem to think. Again: death by non-magical disease, natural disaster, natural weapons etc. The only unquestionably "unnatural" deaths are those directly caused by supernatural effects or actors, such as spells.


2.And the Marut are immoral and the way all inveitables enforce Laws nobody but them voted in is horrifically opressive and unethical(bvecuase opressing rightts of oher people)

They are not Morale.

They are not ethical.

You keep being wrong with the second point. They follow ethics as dictated by Cosmic law and make decisions on the natural/unnatural or Law/Chaos axis, not the good/evil axies; they might oppose good decisions when they're chaotic or unnatural (as in our case), but just as well they oppose evil actions.

Also, if you think anyone voted for the Cosmic Law, you are hopelessly uncomprehending of D&D alignment. In D&D, Law is a cosmic force, a natural property, not a legal text; The "law" Maruts upkeep is ensuring that people eventually die and join their gods in the afterlife.


The fact that humans use tools and don't crap themselves to death in their teens violates the natural order.

In the real world, this is considered another type of natural fallacy. Whether it applies to D&D I'll leave for you to decide. To wit: all human actions in the real life follow laws of nature. Unless you can demonstrate human tool use (or tool use among any other species) is supernatural in origin, human actions cannot violate natural order.

Coidzor
2014-10-01, 03:11 AM
It's specific to the setting and spells used in the original example, so it's kind of relevant.

What setting? All I've seen so far is that they're playing Pathfinder, not that they're playing in Golarion, and even if they're playing in Golarion, where does it actually say that? Last I checked, the gods are just as much a mess in Golarion as they are in just about every other D&D-style setting.

Nor does Limited Wish have anything to do with hubris or usurping power.


The general points is that it isn't just the way of death that matters, the way they are brought back must also be accounted for. It's "two wrongs don't make right" situation, or in this case, "two unnaturals don't make a natural".

Medicine is unnatural. Divine Magic is also unnatural. Resurrection magic is Resurrection magic.

Frozen_Feet
2014-10-01, 04:57 AM
Nor does Limited Wish have anything to do with hubris or usurping power.

The Wish-line of spells is literally about overriding natural laws with your own willpower, in this case to use arcane magic to replicate divine magic which is usually reserved to those with very high devotion to gods or religious causes.


Medicine is unnatural. Divine Magic is also unnatural. Resurrection magic is Resurrection magic.

In D&D, medicine may or may not be unnatural depending on which sort of medicine we're talking about. Potions? Yes, those are unnatural, because they replicate supernatural effects AKA spells. Heal checks? Alchemy? A huge load of herbs and other things that naturally grow in the Prime Material? Those are not listed as either supernatural or spell-like, so they are natural.

Same goes for medicine in the real life. Unless you can prove supernatural influence behind antibiotics, they are natural. Vaccines are all about exploiting the natural immune response of recipients. So on and so forth.

Rater202
2014-10-01, 08:27 AM
Wrong. All spells in D&D are by definition supernatural forces. Using them to bring back the dead means you are by definition overriding the natural law.

In D&D, the concept of natural death is also far broader than you seem to think. Again: death by non-magical disease, natural disaster, natural weapons etc. The only unquestionably "unnatural" deaths are those directly caused by supernatural effects or actors, such as spells.



You keep being wrong with the second point. They follow ethics as dictated by Cosmic law and make decisions on the natural/unnatural or Law/Chaos axis, not the good/evil axies; they might oppose good decisions when they're chaotic or unnatural (as in our case), but just as well they oppose evil actions.

Also, if you think anyone voted for the Cosmic Law, you are hopelessly uncomprehending of D&D alignment. In D&D, Law is a cosmic force, a natural property, not a legal text; The "law" Maruts upkeep is ensuring that people eventually die and join their gods in the afterlife.



In the real world, this is considered another type of natural fallacy. Whether it applies to D&D I'll leave for you to decide. To wit: all human actions in the real life follow laws of nature. Unless you can demonstrate human tool use (or tool use among any other species) is supernatural in origin, human actions cannot violate natural order.

1.Supernatural=/= Unnatural. Unnatural=man made or inorganic. this is a setting with thousands of beings with naturally occurring supernatural abilities. There is at least one class that literally fuels their supernatural powers with nature, which would be impossible if those powers were unnatural.

Supernatural powers are natural in this setting

2.Np law is legitimate unless voted on by the people it applies to. we have only the word of the Inevitables that the laws they enforce are even "Cosmic Laws". For all we know, some god of Lawful Stupidness, Anal Reentivness, and Obsessive Note Taking is in Mechinus and built the Inveitables becuase all that humanoid free will and raising the Dead makes things hoorribly untidy, and all that "Cosmic Law" Bulls*** is just that, a load of bull he and the inveitables tell so noone objects to the asshat robots violating peoples rights.

3. Morale is Good vs Evil. Ethics is rights. If I find a corpse somewhere and reanimate it as a flesh golem, it's not evil, but it is unethical becuase I'm violating the previous owner's right to have their mortal remains dealt with in the manner of their choice. As the methods by which the inveitables enforce their potentially nonexistant Cosmic Laws violates mortals rights to free choice, they are, by definition, unethical

4.The point I making, when discussing how nature wants people dead, ism that Nature has a lot of bad S***-plauge, famine, horrible things that kill ya horribly.

And we do not tolerate such things. we do our best to eradicate such things.

So Death being natural is no reason to not do everything possible to keep people dieing before they are good and ready

5.Back to the Inveitables. THIS THREAD IS ABOUT THE MORALITY OF RESURRECTION MAGIC. INEVITABLES ARE NOT MORALE CREATURES. ANY ARGUMENT THAT AN INEVITABLE GIVES FOR WHY IT IS WRONG TO RAISE THE DEAD WILL NOT BE BASED IN MORALE OR ETHICAL CONCERNS. THUS, THE EXISTENCE OF MARUT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO BEARING ON WEATHER OR NOT USING MAGIC TO RESURRECT OTHERS AT EXPENSE TO YOURSELF FOR THE SOLE REASON OF WANTING TO DO SOMETHING NICE IS MORALE OR IMMORALE.

Pay attention to the big bold all caps. You seem to be ignoring it.

5.If the gods did not tolerate Wish spells, mortals woudn't be able to to cast them.

6. As the gods clearly tolerate the existence of wish spells, using them, especially for good cause, is not hubristic, particularly since, as I said previously, Resurrection magic only works on willing people who died of unnatural causes.

If the best present you can give is a future, then giving a future to someone who's had theirs stolen is the ultimate charitable act.

Erik Vale
2014-10-01, 08:44 AM
Ok, so we've come to the conclusion that it may have some moral consequences, in so far as depending on how people view getting loved ones back over letting life run it's course. We've also established that if Inevitables do their job, there's a chance that they'll interfere. Depending on cosmology, you may have to deal with potentially bringing back more petty crooks and/or morally bankrupt people [which depending on your viewpoint may not be bad].

Now, so as to avoid an argument that wont resolve, does anyone have any different ideas?

icefractal
2014-10-01, 01:59 PM
One thing I think is confusing matters is that in some material, the concept exists that "maintaining the balance" or "the natural order" are good things. In D&D, however, they are specifically neutral things. A Paladin doesn't want to maintain the balance - they want things unbalanced in favor of Good.

So some Druids might get annoyed, and Inevitables might show up and object, but none of that would be a reason for a good-aligned character to stop what they were doing. If Inevitables show up and try to stop you rescuing people, you fight them - just like you'd fight a Gelatinous Cube (also neutral) who was trying to eat those villagers.


Of course, I disagree that Limited Wish is "unnatural" in the first place. Three ways to define that:

A) Man Made is Unnatural
In that case, tools and medicine are also unnatural. Learning magic is something that an ordinary human can just do in D&D. It's difficult - like learning medicine - but it isn't an aberrant capability.
Conclusion: Consistent, but I have no respect for a moral system that would have people back in caves.

B) Magic is Unnatural
Most Druid abilities are magical. Enough said.
Conclusion: Obviously not consistent.

C) Arcane Magic is Unnatural.
Not supported by the actual game. Anti-Magic Field works just the same on arcane and divine magic. A lot of the spells are the same. Magic items work the same way. There are many creatures (some naturally occurring) with inherent SLAs that are arcane.
Conclusion: You could declare this, but it would be strictly a house-rule.

Coidzor
2014-10-01, 03:07 PM
The Wish-line of spells is literally about overriding natural laws with your own willpower, in this case to use arcane magic to replicate divine magic which is usually reserved to those with very high devotion to gods or religious causes.

D&D and Pathfinder Gods are not moral authorities in the majority of settings, only moral and immoral champions of various viewpoints, so you need to go on to prove that casting divine magic is an usurpation rather than getting around an arbitrary distinction in the rules to specialize roles of character classes.


In D&D, medicine may or may not be unnatural depending on which sort of medicine we're talking about. Potions? Yes, those are unnatural, because they replicate supernatural effects AKA spells. Heal checks? Alchemy? A huge load of herbs and other things that naturally grow in the Prime Material? Those are not listed as either supernatural or spell-like, so they are natural.

Same goes for medicine in the real life. Unless you can prove supernatural influence behind antibiotics, they are natural. Vaccines are all about exploiting the natural immune response of recipients. So on and so forth.

So you're literally arguing that things that are artifice are natural but that other things of artifice are not natural. Despite magic clearly being part of the natural world in D&D land. :smallconfused:

We refine and syntehsize medicine. These are not natural processes, they are processes of our own invention and artifice and even when we use natural processes to accomplish our aims, we're doing it on a scale and to a directed end which is not natural but that of mankind.

Galen
2014-10-01, 03:57 PM
The Wish-line of spells is literally about overriding natural laws with your own willpower.
You know what else literally overrides natural laws?
Feather Fall
Levitate
Fly
Enlarge Person
Teleport
Dimension Door
Fireball
Protection from Energy
Cure Disease
Burning Hands
Eh... actually, now that I started it, I see that it's going to be a very long list, so let's just say "80% of all spells" and leave it at that.

Wardog
2014-10-01, 04:08 PM
"Natural (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_natural_causes)" and "Unnatural (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnatural_death)" death has a specific, legal meaning in English.

I think people are going to just confuse things if they use them to mean "death [not] by supernatural effects" (unless that is a specific in-universe meaning).

PrincessCupcake
2014-10-02, 01:46 AM
Since we're talking about Pathfinder, we can assume Pharasma and the Psychopomp Ushers would be pretty darn upset by this development. I would think at some point she would call in favors with other deities to get him stopped. Because he's essentially running roughshod over her domain.

Maybe many victims choose not to be resurrected because they actually choose to stay in the afterlife over suffering in the mortal realm. Given the limitations on Limited Wish and Resurrection "How do I choose who to use my resurrections on?" is an entirely valid quandary to throw at the player that decides to do this. Even with many resurrections a day, there will not be enough of them to restore everyone who died from a major disaster.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-10-02, 11:28 AM
an other point, sequeing from yours-people dieing off fevers is natural. Babies dying in their cribs are natural. Famine and plauge are natural.

Yet we don't tolerate these things, and work to eradicate them.

So Death, which is only rarely natural, should not be exempted from this, yes?

In my opinion? Death should be exempt from this because it cannot be exempted. Death will happen, especially in a Pathfinder game, and the stopping of it is impossible. Why? Tons of reasons honestly and Resurrection isn't a fix for it because...it isn't sustainable? Because it doesn't actually solve the problem? It actively creates them? I mean, take your pick! I'll explain these better later.



1. That really has nothing to do with the fact that, to my reading, Inveitables are depicted as "Law to the point of trampling on peoples rights" which is a pretty asshatish thing to do.

2.If the Marut were meant to completely stop all forms of necromancy, then the books wouldn't have nearly as many necromancy spells as they do because Necromancer would be dealt with before they could develop anything more than basic spells, further more Resurrection spells and positive energy effects would also not be as developed as they are, because they mess with the "Natural Order" just as much as necromancy does.

The fact that these magics exist at all, means that the Marut were never intended to be this omnipresent force instrantly striking down on anyone who so much as casts an inflict spell..

Resurrection actually is not against a Marut's specific directive of stopping for the very explicit reason that resurrection comes from the gods, who are part of the natural order/cosmic law, and they have such a grander comprehension of 'what is right' that the inevitables act, in part, to ensure their continued existence. When a cleric brings someone back to life, they practically go through a screening process (so do the other divine casters to be honest)! Are they still a cleric (clerics can lose their spellcasting after all)? Do they have the expensive and rare material components needed? Does the person being raised agree to come back to life? Can the person being raised survive being raised (have enough Con/Levels left to actually be raised)? If all of those questions, and probably some others that I'm forgetting, are good then the cleric can bring someone back to life. It is a very heady ability after all and, if they abuse it, guess what? Their god takes away their ability to keep doing it, thus being punished before a Marut ever notices that something has happened because it is a self-policing system.

Maruts are specifically to stop the creation of undead (not necromancy) and the use of such a state to extend their lifespans. Are there still undead? Well duh, of course. Maruts are powerful, but they are few in number so they focus on the dangerous undead that can also possibly propagate more undead. Vampires, liches (who always seem to make more undead despite not having the natural ability to), graveknights (who draw more undead to them), any powerful undead that create spawn, etc because they tend to have far reaching effects on the the area around them. There's enough of those in the world and they are cagey enough that most maruts find their time completely occupied in trying to solve them but this wouldn't stop them from stopping to slay a zombie horde or a fledgling necromancer intent on raising the dead if they happened across such a thing and destroying it wouldn't significantly impede their hunt for their original target. Same applies to inevitables as a whole really, they are meant to uphold...greater concepts than laws that need to be agreed on. 'Keep to the deals you make', 'don't infringe on the gods', 'don't break time', etc. Sure, they obey the laws of wherever they're at, but that is because that is a function of them being creatures formed out of law and order not what they were designed to do. It is also worth noting that the 'older' an inevitable is, the more morals it develops in its pursuit of fulfilling its concept (one set of moral or another to be honest) and the more it will try to find loopholes and ways to bend the letter of a law to what they feel is the intent of it.

So are are inevitables amoral? Yeah, if they were just made, they can be. Are they without ethics? Well...yes and no. If you're encountering a random inevitable and it decides to chime in on whatever you're doing than you might want to listen and process what it's saying in relation to what your doing or if it attacks you because it found out that you broke some law no one has heard of in the country your in, you can ascribe it to the inevitable being a creature of law and order. However, if an inevitable shows up because of you, that is an entirely different ball game because it means you are doing one of the 'Things Not Meant to Be Done' trademarked and you need to seriously reconsider what you've done to make an inevitable show up to tell you to knock it off!

Here's the thing though, in my opinion, a marut may very well show up to deal with the PC in question here because of the methods they've used to mimic a divine caster's ability to raise the dead but go through absolutely none of the system that divine casters do. There is no....'self-policing' there and it sounds like the PC is going around and using this ability willy-nilly. If they restrained themselves for bringing back the dead in emergency situations the universe at large isn't really in danger because of that and a marut won't be created with their names engraved in its Fists of Lightening and Thunder but if for some reason they're able to bring back EVERYONE who fulfills the requirements of raise dead than yeah, they definitely should be expecting a marut to kick in their door but also to deal with the ramifications of that because there might be something that the PC has overlooked or simply doesn't know about. Is the good they're doing (if any!) out weighing the harm that the multiverse/balance apparently feels they are doing? Should they keep doing it anyway (balance is exactly that, balance, it isn't the be all and end all)? How many maruts do they think they can fight before one puts them down? How is what they're doing bad for the multiverse and what side-effects has it had? etc. Maruts themselves would only be a passing issue to bring up philosophical and moral quandaries for the PC though, because if this is Pathfinder (and it is!) and the OP is using the Pathfinder pantheon which...we have no reason to suspect he's not, then a marut isn't the problem.

The real problem is 'how does what the PC is doing impact the River of Souls and thus how does Pharasma feel about it?'. 'Cause at the end of the day, if the Lady of Graves deigns what you're doing important enough to send a psychopomp to investigate than you are dealing with the ethical and moral authority on the subject and should heed her words on the subject. Or don't, but then don't try to hold the moral high ground either. But...that doesn't really help out the OP because how Pharasma feels on the subject is what the OP feels she would believe on the topic and he came here for opinions.

These points some up several times, in varying degrees of detail so I figure it will be best to answer them above and some others below.



Again, if the best present you can give is a future, and giving presents without expecting something in return is charitable, than giving a new life to someone who's life has been stolen from them must be the ultimate charitable act-especially if the magics used are taxing or expensive.

This is...arguable in our world based solely off of if someone has actually had their life stolen from them. I mean, it is a great concept but there is definitely room for it to be argued. ...however, this isn't the real world, it is a Pathfinder one. Someone who has died doesn't cease to have a future because souls continue onward in the Outer Planes as denizens of their gods' realms or as inhabitants of their particularly aligned plane to eventually become the outsiders that inhabit them. They have a future that is actually impartially 'ideal' for each individual soul and, if it isn't, the ruling can be argued and the decision possibly over-ruled.

However, raise dead nicely circumvents almost all of this. It can't bring back someone who doesn't want to come back and it can't bring back someone who has died of old age which means that if you manage to successfully bring someone back than it is because they wanted to come back and were allowed to by Pharasma because they really aren't cheating Death...they're just getting an extension and their natural end will still come eventually via old age which is just fine as far as the multiverse is concerned on its own terms (what you do with your extension might cause problems though!).



2.And the Marut are immoral and the way all inveitables enforce Laws nobody but them voted in is horrifically oppressive and unethical(because oppressing rights of other people)

They are not Morale.

They are not ethical.

Inevitables really aren't horrifically oppressive or unethical though just...too goal-driven. The 'laws' they police weren't voted in by anyone, they are a function of having a stable and functioning multiverse that isn't pure chaos (which isn't good for anyone except proteans and a select few other outsider races) so you can't say they're wrong for enforcing them. When it comes to oppressing the rights of other people, that is solely in the function that an inevitable is in a country and is abiding by the laws of that country. If an inevitable has a problem with you when you meet them in that capacity (and that is honestly how most PCs will meet one or as an ally, PCs are rarely the target of inevitables) than it is in the same way that you would be in trouble with the local town guard or lawful authority in that you've broken a law formed in that country and the inevitable is only oppressing your rights if you happen to be in a country that routinely tramples the rights of its citizens. Cause if not, an inevitable will only act as a particularly rigid judge if it is a 'newborn' that adheres to the letter of the law and without taking into account all but the most severe extenuating circumstances (including the penalties for whatever crime you have committed, no corruption or overly harsh sentencing either) or as a particularly knowledgeable authority of the law if they are 'older' since they'll work within the grounds of their newly forming morals and the law.


2.No law is legitimate unless voted on by the people it applies to. we have only the word of the Inevitables that the laws they enforce are even "Cosmic Laws". For all we know, some god of Lawful Stupidness, Anal Retentiveness, and Obsessive Note Taking is in Mechanus and built the Inveitables because all that humanoid free will and raising the Dead makes things horribly untidy, and all that "Cosmic Law" Bulls*** is just that, a load of bull he and the inevitables tell so no one objects to the asshat robots violating peoples rights.

3. Moral is Good vs Evil. Ethics is rights. If I find a corpse somewhere and reanimate it as a flesh golem, it's not evil, but it is unethical becuase I'm violating the previous owner's right to have their mortal remains dealt with in the manner of their choice. As the methods by which the inveitables enforce their potentially nonexistant Cosmic Laws violates mortals rights to free choice, they are, by definition, unethical.

5.If the gods did not tolerate Wish spells, mortals wouldn't be able to to cast them.

6. As the gods clearly tolerate the existence of wish spells, using them, especially for good cause, is not hubristic, particularly since, as I said previously, Resurrection magic only works on willing people who died of unnatural causes.

If the best present you can give is a future, then giving a future to someone who's had theirs stolen is the ultimate charitable act.

1. On the non-inevitable stuff: The definition of a good cause can be a bit fuzzy. Gods tolerate wishing existing, sure and they certainly don't have a problem with mortals returning to life (or, if they do, their clerics lose the ability to return people to life) but the problem is that said spellcaster (in Pathfinder) is circumventing one of the checks and balances for raising the dead back to life, that of the oversight of far more knowledgeable and wise entities over-seeing their actions (which is a bit of hubris since you are essentially making the decision, consciously or not, that you are just as good a judge as the gods on the matter). This can cause problems but it is also the stuff of adventures and so on, because the core tenant of raise dead remains...you can't bring back the unwilling. Thing is...who wants to come back? 'cause the answer is primarily adventurers/heroes (who have unfinished business that needs finished), those too proud to think the world can go on without them (and they tend to come back as incorporeal undead of one sort or another), OR those who caught a glimpse of what waited for them in the afterlife and did not like it. And if you're wondering why they wouldn't like an afterlife in a plane aligned perfectly to their own morals...than I think you are beginning to see the problem with what the wizard PC is doing. 'Cause just because you're lawful evil doesn't mean you want to go to the Nine Hells (neutral evil/Abbadon, chaotic evil/Abyss).

So if the PC is having a great deal of success in just bringing back random people the question is only partially 'is it moral?' but rather...who the f*** are they bringing back? Because Cabbage Farmer #43,568 has absolutely no reason to come back to life unless he did some bad crap that he is now intimately aware of the fact he'll be punished for. And that is a very real problem since, again, there is no divine oversight that can strip the PC of their powers for abusing (even accidentally) the ability to bring people back to life like for divine characters (except oracles I guess?). A good divine caster will likely lose their casting for bringing back a great source of evil unless they have a damn good reason and the opposite is true for an evil divine caster. The arcane PC can just keep bringing people back to life so long as he is continually willing to take 13 Str damage and somehow recover from it, but he really should be questioning why those people want to come back if a whole ton of people do accept the invitation for an arcane caster (which the resureactee does know since you always know who is trying to raise you) to bring them back to life when, traditionally, arcane casters both do not have the ability to do so and rarely have benign purposes in mind for souls.

2. Back to the Inevitables 2: Electric Bugaloo!: Okay, I mentioned this up above but it bears repeating, the 'laws' that inevitables are made to govern do not oppress anyone unless you consider linear time, having to keep a deal struck in good faith, the right of the gods to not worry about being killed, and so on to oppress someone's rights rather than enable them to exist in the first place. 'cause other than that, an inevitable is only oppressing someone's rights if the country that they (the inevitable and their 'victim') are in oppresses their rights and even then...you cannot blame the inevitable. It is MADE of law and order and will simply abide by the laws of the country that it is in and uphold them. If it is oppressing you then your problem is only partially the mechanical terminator trying to bring you to justice, it is the fact that your country is oppressing your rights because said said terminator is only the latest symptom of a greater problem that needs fixing. If you are in a goodly nation with solid laws that respect the rights of its citizens and an inevitable still has a problem with you than either you are a danger to the stability of the multiverse (unlikely) or, far more likely, guess what? You are the bad guy, not the inevitable. The morality and ethical nature of an inevitable is almost entirely based upon the nation it finds itself in because they will act as an impartial face of that nation's laws and that nation's punishments for breaking those laws. They are not, as you put it, a**hats that trample over everyone else because they're Lawful Stupid and force their own laws on to people because inevitables don't have any laws of their own aside from 'you've been in the field too long, return to your creche-forge to be reforged as a pure being of law and order again' and that doesn't apply to anyone else but themselves.

More importantly, we do know who made the inevitables (at least in Pathfinder), it is Mechanus itself and again, the 'laws' they are actually designed to uphold don't impose on anyone's right to free will unless that individual is being such a colossal D-bag that they've decided their right to free will means everyone else doesn't get a working universe to live in. And I don't care how much you want to time travel, I will support the living hell out of any inevitable that ensures I have linear, stable time because that is the choice of my free will! :smalltongue: Because remember, that same inevitable who would free slaves in one country only to capture them again if they crossed over into a nation where slavery is the law and escaped slaves must be captured will do the opposite just as happily. He'll free the now illegal slaves if they cross back over the border and send them on their merry way. Hell, an inevitable that has been around long enough could rightly decide that since they crossed the border into a nation where slavery is illegal that said slaves are now freed since they've successfully crossed the border and thus cannot be recaptured under the law. Heck, a young one would probably do that as well considering that honestly just makes sense.

...I spent more of this post arguing that inevitables are not a**hats than I did arguing the morality of resurrection. Is that weird?

Cause honestly, the morality of resurrection pretty much is self-regulating in the sense the goddess of death really doesn't mind, inevitables won't care, and you are only bringing back people that want to actually come back. And the only real problem is 'the PC will likely be disappointed when they discover that very few of the people who accept that free resurrection and those that do might actually be trouble and that is something the PC has to deal with, not you as the DM beside presenting the problem and reacting to the PC's actions they take on it.

@Ability Damage: I have literally only read a single source where ability damage is not described as something terrible and that is the ravages from BoED and that is actually one of the reasons they are supposed to be 'gooder' than using regular old poisons. Every form of ability damage represents either your body or mind suffering some form of catastrophic failure that could result in your life ceasing if left unchecked UNLESS, and there are a few examples here and there, said damage is actually noted as the exception. ...So yeah, at least in the Pathfinder version, I'm more confused about why the PC's character is willing to go through such tremendous pain and agony for what is realistically a very small turnover rate of successful resurrections. Cause honestly, he' spending a 7th-level spell and 9th-level spell (only good creature that can use Restoration on Summon Monster is on the 9th level version azata) along with whatever level spell Blood Money is and has no idea if the soul actually wants to come back barring more intensive investigation into the matter which...is that really wants to spend all of his time on? Cause if it is, you may want to talk to your player about what he wants to really do in a game. Cause if it's just that character and he's intent upon doing that for everyone than he might be better served with a new character. If he's just found a workaround for not needing a cleric and only offers the service to those who ask and goes through a more thorough vetting process (does the person want to come back? Should the person come back? etc.) then...what he wants to do is nothing but quest-fodder and you should embrace it. how do churches (NOT gods) react to what he's doing? Who shows up to ask for his help? Will someone try to blackmail him into bringing a villain back because no divine caster could? Have fun with it in that case!

Benthesquid
2014-10-02, 11:30 AM
Isn't that also basically the premise of Monkey's Paw?

Nah, Monkey's Paw is basically an **** genie story. We don't ever see the resurrected son, so it's hard to say exactly what happened with him.

Rater202
2014-10-02, 12:45 PM
The Aesop behind a The Money's paw was "Don't tamper with fate" but the thing is, in the original story the paw was a man made artifact whose creator deliberate arranged for the paw to grant wishes in the worst way possible to teach people a lesson about tampering with fate

Or in otherwords, a mortal hubristicly screwed with fate to teach a cruel lesson about hubristicly screwing with fate, and to be honest "an extra 200 dollars" and "my son not being dead from the horrible accident you cuased" are pretty humble wishes

Segev
2014-10-02, 01:10 PM
The Monkey's Paw is the ur-source of the chain of experience that leads to people's first wishes being things like, "I wish for all wishes - including this one - I make to be granted as I intend for and imagine them to be granted." While clearly envisioning this pertaining only to wishes to which he is entitled based on the nature of the wish-granting device.

Mewtarthio
2014-10-02, 11:19 PM
The causal chain isn't even remotely as simple as you imply. Population growth has decreased primarily due to increase in education and easy availability of reliable contraceptives. Before those two caught on, the population of Earth multiplied by a considerable factor within the 20th century due to the "green revolution". The same would happen if you prevented famine death by magic - just, without the increase in food production. Add to this the fact that being raised from the dead typically decreases your constitution or experience level - hence making all the returnees less able to produce food *and* more likely to catch diseases. That right there is a great way to start a wicked circle of famine and disease epidemics.

That is pretty much what has happened in 3rd world countries, mind you, with modern medicine reducing child mortality rate (etc.) but failing to fix problems in food and wealth distribution.

Ah, there's the solution right there. Resurrection comes with long-term damage (level/Con loss), which eventually builds up to the point where resurrection is no longer viable in a given subject. Therefore, unlimited free resurrection does not lead to a world full of immortals; it simply leads to a world where everyone has "extra lives"; that is, where everyone can survive a limited number of accidents or diseases that would have otherwise been fatal. It's not that much different from modern medicine, if you think about it; sure, resurrection's a bit more reliable, but the end result is longer lifespans either way. (And surely you wouldn't suggest that it's morally wrong for developing nations to have access to modern medicine, would you?)

To be honest, I find that a lot of the "immortality is unnatural" talk feels a lot like someone parroting a trope without really thinking of the reasons it exists in the first place. Implemented well, the "death is inevitable" trope is just using fantasy as a metaphor. You've either got someone laboring to bring a loved one back from the grave (a metaphor for refusing to accept the finality of another's death) or you've got someone trying to become a lich or vampire or something (a metaphor for refusing to accept the inevitability of one's own death). In both cases, death really is as inevitable in their world as it is in ours: Sure, it seems like you can cheat death with magic, but it's ultimately a false hope that just causes pain for everyone around you

The trouble with D&D, of course, is that resurrection does exist, and it's very reliable at that. You can't import a story about the inevitability of death into D&D, because death really isn't inevitable. If you try to claim that death is natural, or even good, you just end up making "goodness" and "nature" into arbitrary labels. If Robocop shows up and kills anyone who raises the dead en masse, then Robocop just looks like an alien monster (just like if someone marched into a modern hospital and started gunning down doctors because "Cancer is perfectly natural!"). If the gods complain about you taking their petitioners away, you can just compare the marginal utility of Singing Virgin #54932462 to the utility of Farmer Joe's freaking son and tell the gods to stuff it. If you say that it's just cosmically Evil for some ineffable reason, then are you saying Hell is full of doctors and healers? Because that sounds like a pretty nice place to visit, actually.

Regardless of what handwave you come up with, you're always going to be imposing some sort of arbitrary restriction on the universe. A story about resurrection problems in D&D is really just a story about a Kafkaesque bureaucracy and the misery it inflicts; you can tell some good stories in that vein, but you shouldn't expect them to look at all like stories about accepting the inevitable.

ZeroGear
2014-10-03, 03:44 AM
EVERYBODY STOP RIGHT NOW! I

First off, some things I want to get off my chest:
-Plot hooks: OK, having a group of characters resurrected at the same time would make a good plot hook if this was done for apparently specific reasons. I agree with you. One problem: the guy doing the razzing is doing it "for the lolz". He is a Chaotic Neutral character by the name of Richard who's goal (in and out of game) is to drive me (the DM) completely insane because he thinks I'm "too sane".

-Morality issues: Humanitarian issues aside, morality (at least the version I mean) is not decided on an individual level. I'm asking about the general morality of most societies. Primarily those involving the churches, rulers, deities, and populace. I want to know what kind of consequences follow form the continual use of these kinds of abilities. Do the gods get angry when someone does this? How do the churches react? Do the rulers send troops to arrest these guys? Do the masses beg and plead to these people? Do the druids find this appalling because it goes against the laws of nature? Let's focus on issues like those, shall we?

-Biology and natural causes: ok, no more genetics arguments on this thread. Genetics does't as matter as much and is not a valid argument one way or the other because it might not apply the same way in every game. So for now, let's assume that any time we talk about "natural causes", we talk about things like disasters, wild animal attacks, old age, and illness. We shall assume from now on that any "unnatural" death is caused by an intelligent entity, be it through controlling animals to maul people, stabbing them with a knife, or using magic to blast them with fire. Yes, if the "disaster" was caused by a person's spell (i.e. someone used magic to cause an earthquake) it is considered to be "unnatural" as it was caused by an intelligent entity. Is that fair?

You may now continue the discussion.

NichG
2014-10-03, 07:07 AM
EVERYBODY STOP RIGHT NOW! I

First off, some things I want to get off my chest:
-Plot hooks: OK, having a group of characters resurrected at the same time would make a good plot hook if this was done for apparently specific reasons. I agree with you. One problem: the guy doing the razzing is doing it "for the lolz". He is a Chaotic Neutral character by the name of Richard who's goal (in and out of game) is to drive me (the DM) completely insane because he thinks I'm "too sane".


So before anything else, the following needs to be said:

This is an OOC problem and, if you want to retain your sanity, thats where its best to deal with it. You need to talk with the player about him being hostile towards you rather than try to make the world punish him for it. Because if the reaction is in-character, he's basically achieved exactly what he set out to do - he's made you compromise your game for the sake of the power struggle which he's created.



-Morality issues: Humanitarian issues aside, morality (at least the version I mean) is not decided on an individual level. I'm asking about the general morality of most societies. Primarily those involving the churches, rulers, deities, and populace. I want to know what kind of consequences follow form the continual use of these kinds of abilities. Do the gods get angry when someone does this? How do the churches react? Do the rulers send troops to arrest these guys? Do the masses beg and plead to these people? Do the druids find this appalling because it goes against the laws of nature? Let's focus on issues like those, shall we?


How various groups react:

- The various gods view it in various different ways. However, as is often the case, it's likely that either they have bigger fish to fry or have mutually-assured-destruction pacts and treaties that prevent overly direct intervention in the events (after all, mortals do tons of stuff that particular gods really dislike, but generally speaking the god of justice doesn't go and personally smite every murderer). Its more likely that the particular gods who would are most bothered by it seal their afterlives and all attempts to resurrect people from those afterlives simply fail as if they refused to return. Any particular gods whose schtick is representing 'death as a good thing' are likely to be a bit miffed. Evil gods of death might send info to their worshippers to help pervert the resurrections and basically use them as an opportunity for mischief and scheming. Gods of 'the aspects of human life' I would generally not expect to care overly much or would be strongly in favor - e.g. love gods, money gods, family gods, etc.

If the resurrector used this to garner faith to themselves, e.g. making themselves out to be a deity, then I'd guess that might tick off gods who lose followers to him but probably not enough to provoke overt action. One extreme possibility would be that whatever treaties/agreements are in place to limit the meddling of deities get forcibly applied to the guy (if you want to be a god, you have to play by our rules).

Another possibility would be that some gods start to take credit for it, and basically turn the guy into an unwilling prophet. Essentially recognizing 'okay, it looks like mortals might have this death thing licked, the revolving door afterlife is going to become an open portfolio as this enters human awareness, so I'm going to jump on it and claim the new domain before anyone else has a chance to'.

- The churches generally make a much bigger fuss than their patron deities. There will always be people within each the church who see it as an opportunity for promotion: they come out as being opposed on the grounds that it violates the things the gods ostensibly put in place, make a big fuss about it, and then use the conflict that generates as a way to be of service to their church. Churches whose gods take strong stances or communicate directly with the faithful are likely to have a more normalized response. Churches of money-gods or crime-gods might try to shut the guy down because he's costing them business.

Another possibility, depending on the degree of extraplanar communication in the setting, is that churches glom onto the resurrected and turn them into 'messengers from the heavens'.

- Rulers would absolutely love the guy for what he's doing, and will be willing to fight wars over him. This will probably be the biggest issue. Every ruler is going to want to save those 9 resurrections a day for people in their service, nobles who get assassinated, etc. The guy is going to get large offers from many different countries to become their 'court resurrector'. When inevitably he turns down one or more of those offers, things may well escalate to 'the crown requires this service of you', kidnapping, and at the extreme end 'if we can't have him neither can you'.

Depending on how the guy plays the politics game, this could end up with him having lots of power, influence, and wealth. Or it could end up with him being some king's captive pet. Principled refusals to save his resurrections for the kings' cronies is likely to end poorly, but some sort of bargain could work out. For example, if the guy offers something like: 'I'll be on call for you and save one a day for your emergencies, but part of the deal is I get to do my thing too. If you disagree, just think of the bad PR it'd be when it gets out that the king stole the miracle of eternal life from his people. By the way, you probably should give me some funds to hire bodyguards, 'cause the prince of the neighboring land has been eyeing my services too.'

- The masses absolutely love this guy. People come from all around for hope of bringing back family members and the like. People spontaneously start religions around the guy, whether he likes it or not. They may even make up stories about why he's doing it and how he can do it and who will be blessed or who will be denied and fight with eachother (even to the point of violence) about which of those views is true. What Richard says about it is just as likely to get swept under the rug as taken up by the crowd (and things that are taken up by the crowd will often end up twisted).

The village he starts his project in is likely to feel incredibly possessive. As more people arrive, some conflict may break out as that village tries to claim him 'hey, its our miracle, we get priority!'.

- Druids'd react in a variety of ways. Some will prophesy doom because of how unnatural this is, others will shrug and not care so much, others will worry that people will grow more numerous and encroach on the wilderness, others will be happy that the people around them are going to be more prosperous and healthy. In general I'd peg the average as wary of unforseen consequences, but not enough to do more than warn the guy about the possibility or hang around and watch for stuff starting to go wrong.

Erik Vale
2014-10-03, 07:21 AM
I think that's a pretty apt summery. However you forgot to add that the people that get passed over for others are going to be livid, catch 22 is going to be all over the place... This can be reduced by stocking up on pearls of power.

Also, as thought about in the OP, depending on what happens to the character, if they can figure out his method, they may parrot it should he have been successful, depending on their power, PR, and political ability, they may do better or worse.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-10-03, 09:38 AM
...If that is his one and only reason, then nothing good comes from it whatsoever. Indulging it IC will only encourage the player to keep pulling stunts like this because he thinks it is funny. Talk to him OOC if it bothers you that he's doing this, if it doesn't bother you then the consequences are actually pretty simple to determine...not much will actually change. He can't do it on a large enough scale to actively change how things work for the world at large, most of his resurrection actually won't be successful, and the Big Players (gods, outsider races, etc.) simply will not care, partially because of the scale and partially because the one most inclined to care Pharasma, has no reason to. He is, after all, only offering an extension to people who do return, they can't be brought back if they die of old age after all so their life is still finite, just longer then expected. Plus, the average townsfolk will not be able to tell the difference between the spells that he is using and the ones a cleric would use. The vast majority will just assume that he is a cleric unless told otherwise and if he goes out of his way to tell him that doesn't mean that they'll believe him because bringing back the dead is in fact the domain of divine casters exclusively before now.

Wanna know the only people who will care? The high-level NPCs who can actually tell what he is doing. Arcane casters will be excited about the possibilities this 'loophole' (it really isn't one honestly) presents before realizing that his way kinda sucks and the alternative method is expensive for something they can easily have done by someone else for no effort and the same money. Organized churches will care depending on a religion by religion standard but again...he shouldn't be having a huge degree of success, not enough that churches will have a huge chance of noticing what he's doing and, if he does get their attention, their smart course of action is just to ignore him. If they don't like it that will just draw other attention and people towards him anyway and if they don't mind what he's doing (the majority) then...why would they do anything about it? Sure, there might be some philosophical debates between caster types and some particular zealots will try (and fail, he's capable of casting freaking 9th level spells) to deal with him in a more violent way, but once the novelty wears there won't be any real fuss.

Normally I don't favor such a...realistic approach to a clever tactic a PC has come up with when it could result in plot hooks but from all accounts he isn't looking to drive his own quest/plotline, he's just looking to be a jacka** so you don't need to do the extra work to make this a bigger event than it really is. I mean most arcane casters are Int-based and have genius-level intellects that honestly, players odn't possess themselves, I doubt what he thought of hasn't occurred to other arcane casters but they either reserve it for emergencies or otherwise leave it to divine casters since it is easier for them. Honestly, this is an OOC situation that you want an IC way to resolve.

Sartharina
2014-10-03, 09:52 AM
The causal chain isn't even remotely as simple as you imply. Population growth has decreased primarily due to increase in education and easy availability of reliable contraceptives. Before those two caught on, the population of Earth multiplied by a considerable factor within the 20th century due to the "green revolution". The same would happen if you prevented famine death by magic - just, without the increase in food production. Add to this the fact that being raised from the dead typically decreases your constitution or experience level - hence making all the returnees less able to produce food *and* more likely to catch diseases. That right there is a great way to start a wicked circle of famine and disease epidemics.We have the food. We don't have the distribution models. Also - we were afraid of a worldwide famine, but wanna know what happened? Someone saw the impending food crisis, looked at the situation with food production, said 'We can do better' and fixed the problem. Same thing will happen in a fantasy world, especially with magical means of producing large amounts of food.


EVERYBODY STOP RIGHT NOW! I

First off, some things I want to get off my chest:
-Plot hooks: OK, having a group of characters resurrected at the same time would make a good plot hook if this was done for apparently specific reasons. I agree with you. One problem: the guy doing the razzing is doing it "for the lolz". He is a Chaotic Neutral character by the name of Richard who's goal (in and out of game) is to drive me (the DM) completely insane because he thinks I'm "too sane".Well - most of the people probably wouldn't want to come back (Especially not from someone who pings as Chaotic Neutral). You get plot hooks from those he does successfully res - and they'll probably have questions. They may resent him if he fails to adequately answer their questions (Wait, you brought me back from there for THIS!?).


-Morality issues: Humanitarian issues aside, morality (at least the version I mean) is not decided on an individual level. I'm asking about the general morality of most societies. Primarily those involving the churches, rulers, deities, and populace. I want to know what kind of consequences follow form the continual use of these kinds of abilities. Do the gods get angry when someone does this? How do the churches react? Do the rulers send troops to arrest these guys? Do the masses beg and plead to these people? Do the druids find this appalling because it goes against the laws of nature? Let's focus on issues like those, shall we?The biggest response would probably be people trying to overtax his ability to resurrect people, or hating the ones he does raise. People tend to develop ridiculous over-entitlement complexes when something becomes available and they aren't allowed/aren't able to get it.


-Biology and natural causes: ok, no more genetics arguments on this thread. Genetics does't as matter as much and is not a valid argument one way or the other because it might not apply the same way in every game. So for now, let's assume that any time we talk about "natural causes", we talk about things like disasters, wild animal attacks, old age, and illness. We shall assume from now on that any "unnatural" death is caused by an intelligent entity, be it through controlling animals to maul people, stabbing them with a knife, or using magic to blast them with fire. Yes, if the "disaster" was caused by a person's spell (i.e. someone used magic to cause an earthquake) it is considered to be "unnatural" as it was caused by an intelligent entity. Is that fair?
Also - Animals are intelligent, and ALL disasters are controlled by a deity if a setting/system has deities. So, in D&D, the only 'true' "Natural Death" is Falling Over from Old Age. Died in a shipwreck? Killed by either an incompetent crew(Either sailing or construction), or by the God of The Ocean. Killed in an Earthquake? Killed by the God of Earth. Struck by lightning and killed? Slain by the God of Storms. Killed by heatstroke? Slain by The Burning Hate or a weather god. etc.

ZeroGear
2014-10-03, 11:08 AM
Oh, one last thing I neglected to mention about the guy in my campaign:

Due to the way the system works, he was capable of pulling this at 10th level. Sure he needs an in-tact body and has a limit of 1 hour per level, but this becomes less restrictive once he gain she Greater Resurrection talent which only requires a piece of the body and ups the limit to 1 day per level (he'll need to be level 15 to get it).


Also - Animals are intelligent, and ALL disasters are controlled by a deity if a setting/system has deities. So, in D&D, the only 'true' "Natural Death" is Falling Over from Old Age. Died in a shipwreck? Killed by either an incompetent crew(Either sailing or construction), or by the God of The Ocean. Killed in an Earthquake? Killed by the God of Earth. Struck by lightning and killed? Slain by the God of Storms. Killed by heatstroke? Slain by The Burning Hate or a weather god. etc.

Alright, stop. Please. This argument ends right now. I am not having this thread turn into a "this is natural and that is not" argument. There are thousands of views on this issue, and many may be correct on their own way. But for the sake of simplicity (and most people's sanity) let's just use the basis of "if it was intended by a god, then it is natural", and "if it was done via humanoid, monstrous humanoid, aberration, awakened creatures, outsiders serving their own ends (i.e. not under the direct order of a deity and/or the plane of existence), undead, or dragons, then it is not natural". And to be clear, it is to be assumed that zealots that do this on their own volition (i.e. not under the direct orders of their god) still count as unnatural deaths.
Now, the discussion of natural/unnatural deaths ends here.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-10-03, 05:09 PM
Oh, one last thing I neglected to mention about the guy in my campaign:

Due to the way the system works, he was capable of pulling this at 10th level. Sure he needs an in-tact body and has a limit of 1 hour per level, but this becomes less restrictive once he gain she Greater Resurrection talent which only requires a piece of the body and ups the limit to 1 day per level (he'll need to be level 15 to get it).

...This....uh...what? How on earth is he casting 9th level spells at level 10? That is just...all kinds of wrong.

Erik Vale
2014-10-03, 08:15 PM
...This....uh...what? How on earth is he casting 9th level spells at level 10? That is just...all kinds of wrong.

9th at 15, 5th [or 6th] at 10th.
And yes, in general.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-10-03, 08:50 PM
9th at 15, 5th [or 6th] at 10th.
And yes, in general.

My point exactly, he's using Limited Wish to emulate Raise Dead (7th level spell) and using a creature summoned with Summon Monster to heal the ability damage from Blood Money, the only one of which on the standard summoning lists is on Summon Monster IX (9th level spell)....so how's he doing this at 10th level is my question!

Erik Vale
2014-10-03, 09:34 PM
*Looks through*
He can't cast limited wish, so the original method doesn't work. Summoner could get the spell lower, or perhaps a different list from the standard, but for limited wish he needs to be at least 13th level.

ZeroGear
2014-10-03, 10:31 PM
{{scrubbed}}

To Be Absolutely Clear On This:

Limited wish guy: Wizard, co-player, I wasn't the DM, he was level 17 or above.

Other guy: Soul Weaver, Spheres of Power System (play testing), I am the DM, was level 10 at this point.

It is the Wizard that used the Blood Money, Archon Summoning, and Limited Wish abilities. He was high level.
Now the Soul Weaver is the guy with the Spheres and Talents that can only resurrect intact bodies that died within 1 hour/caster level. This guy is level 10.

There were two different cases here; hope this is clear now.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-10-04, 12:39 AM
{{scrubbed}}

To Be Absolutely Clear On This:

Limited wish guy: Wizard, co-player, I wasn't the DM, he was level 17 or above.

Other guy: Soul Weaver, Spheres of Power System (play testing), I am the DM, was level 10 at this point.

It is the Wizard that used the Blood Money, Archon Summoning, and Limited Wish abilities. He was high level.
Now the Soul Weaver is the guy with the Spheres and Talents that can only resurrect intact bodies that died within 1 hour/caster level. This guy is level 10.

There were two different cases here; hope this is clear now.

Yeah, that is much clearer now because I'll be honest it was not that clear before when you were talking about which. I can only comment on the Limited Wish guy, I have no experience with Spheres of Power System.

Lacuna Caster
2014-10-04, 05:37 AM
The causal chain isn't even remotely as simple as you imply. Population growth has decreased primarily due to increase in education and easy availability of reliable contraceptives. Before those two caught on, the population of Earth multiplied by a considerable factor within the 20th century due to the "green revolution"...
Just thought I'd jump in, because you're touching on a number of interesting points here, though I think you might be misrepresenting a couple, and I'll have to address them in broad strokes.

I think the overall picture in reality isn't quite that bleak (http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/04/17/remarkable-declines-in-global-poverty-but-major-challenges-remain), and I would also contend that population growth slowed down mainly in response to increased economic security. (Handing out contraceptives and sex education, by itself, has only a slight impact on fertility rates wherever it's been tried.)

At any rate, I think many people would feel there is something intrinsically wrong with allowing poor people to die from easily treatable diseases even if they do live in countries where the spectre of famine or disease makes it likely that the population will eventually crash one way or another. A moral obligation to fix the long-term social problem doesn't negate a moral obligation to fix the short-term individual problem.

The green revolution is a good example- it didn't fix the underlying social factors driving population growth, but it did expand food supplies enough to prevent the starvation of something around 1 billion human beings between the 60s and 2000s, which at least bought time to address said large-scale factors in the meanwhile. That hardly strikes me as an immoral thing to do.

(As others have pointed out, dragging Inevitables or 'the Natural Order' into it doesn't really answer anything- these are morally-indifferent, LN and TN forces respectively. CON or XP drain also doesn't affect the picture, any more than limb loss to stop gangrene would: It beats the alternative.)

So, anyway. Applying this to our hypothetical fantasy scenario: I would broadly agree that what the OP is describing is neither any better or worse than any other kind of advanced medical treatment. Of course, our hypothetical good doctor is charging people for the privilege, so it's not exactly altruistic. But even so, and even if all cheap resurrection does is delay the inevitable or maintain status quo, then it's no more intrinsically wrong than charging for Hold Poison or Restoration spells.

tomandtish
2014-10-04, 12:25 PM
When it comes to raising dead, there’s a part of the description that often seems to get missed. It may have been said earlier, so I apologize if I missed someone saying it.

In addition, the subject’s soul must be free and willing to return.

In many cases, someone may have claim to that person’s soul. This is probably more true for evil characters. That evil wizard? Sure, he wants to come back. But Orcus has first dibs and can veto.

It can be argued that even good characters who have dedicated their lives to a power may be in this situation, although it might work differently. That Paladin of Pelor might be willing to return, until Pelor tells her he has more need of her soul elsewhere.

Bottom line: except for player characters who have not given up their rights (and clerics/paladins may have done so), you can have a reason for any person to not return. Good people may not want to, and evil people may not be free to do so.

ZeroGear
2014-10-04, 08:00 PM
Thank you all for participating in this discussion.
All of you bring up some interesting points, and a good amount of information to consider.
You have also given me various forms of addressing and dealing with situations like this.
I would consider this topic fully explored, ad as such would request that this thread gets locked.
Thank you.

(P.s. I apologize for the scrubbed section of my earlier post. Callos_DeTerran and EriK Vale, I'm sorry.)