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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Orc in the Playground
     
    Protato's Avatar

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    Default Does your setting have resurrection?

    Does your setting have immortality? If yes or no, why? I have an idea for a world in my head but not enough written down to post yet, but a rule of my world is no resurrection, at least no resurrection without a cost. As a 5e player/DM I plan to write it for that world and many of the rules and such shall remain, except reviving the dead in their "true" state. To me, it simply doesn't make sense that bringing someone back to life could exist and still have the world exist "as it does" so to speak. Basically, if people could be brought back from the dead without much cost except perhaps money or time, it'd make death cheap, not so much for players but for the world itself. However, undeath (usually with no consciousness) exists, as does resurrecting a soul and putting it in a body. However, this is at best risky. Think of it like Fullmetal Alchemist: One can attempt to bring someone back from the dead, but all you create in a parody of life, or force someone to inhabit a body that could reject the soul outright, and that's the closest thing to bringing people back is.

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    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Whether or not the dead can be returned to life is an important setting design function, but it's not an either/or choice. Rather there's a sliding scale that ranges from 'death is immutable' to 'death is meaningless' and all sorts of weird side routes like undeath tacked on. For instance, even in a setting where no one can come back from the dead it matters if the dead manifestly persist in some kind of afterlife and have the ability to contact the living in some fashion.

    In terms of verisimilitude, 'death is immutable' is on the strongest grounds, since that's the scenario the audience is most familiar with and the only one with factual support. That being said, methods to defy death are among the most powerful tropes in fantasy and in science fiction (in the latter they have become much more plausible leading to an open embrace of transhumanist solutions to the death issue as a common method). As such, there is strong support for having some sort of device to get around death in a setting. Fullmetal Alchemist, as mentioned, has just such a mechanism at the core of its story, it's just horrifying.

    Additionally, when constructing a game, mechanisms to avoid character death are highly valued to avoid frustration by the players. This is doubly true in TTRPGs where you can't just reload a save if someone dies - video games that embrace 'permadeath' of characters often presume that no player will allow this and have cut-scenes with characters who could hypothetically be dead in them, ex. Fire Emblem. One of the reasons the various raise dead type spells were baked into the D&D cake early on is that characters in early editions of D&D die a lot, so a means of bringing them back had high utility.

    Note that you can have some limited availability of resurrection in a setting without it making death cheap. If resurrection is some sort of legendary event that requires direct divine intervention or priceless artifacts or some other special McGuffin then it becomes a story goal and integrates into the setting backstory. The real issue with resurrection is when it becomes sufficiently abundant and reliable that any individual in the setting - and this starts at the top so we're talking archmages or emperors - can actively expect resurrection.
    Now publishing a webnovel travelogue.

    Resvier: a P6 homebrew setting

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    DwarfBarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    I have an idea for a setting/cosmology/campaign where there are no undead. I suppose I should add the no resurrection clause as the whole point of the story is that something comes along and breaks a barrier between the mortal plane and the afterlife and all of a sudden undead start roaming around on the material plane.

    So yes, but only after a world (plane?) shattering event.

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    Eldritch Horror in the Playground Moderator
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    My setting has resurrection possible, but only through a ritual that requires three willing sacrificial victims to die in exchange. Almost all undead are created either through performing said ritual incorrectly, or deliberate variants intended to create animated dead.

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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Since my setting is designed to include all the core pieces from 5e D&D, resurrection is a thing. It's restricted by two factors--

    * Availability. Of the 4 major nations in the main play area, there are a total of 168 people who could conceivably cast Raise Dead (which has a 10-day window and does not replace damaged/missing organs). There are 5 who could conceivably cast Resurrection. One particular nation has no one who can cast either of those--they have druids but they don't get either of those spells.

    * Religion/culture. Of those clerics and paladins, the major religions discourage "frivolous" raising of the dead. Did they die of natural causes? The Lady of Mercy says "let them rest." Did they die in battle? The Sun-Lord says "Don't cheapen their glorious deaths." Did they die of carelessness? The Shadowed Sun says "as you sew, so shall ye reap." The Spring Lady doesn't particularly care about things/people who aren't fluffy or cute. The druid circles (for reincarnate) have a strong "cycle of life" policy, so they're not likely to help much.
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    Troll in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    My campaign is not upgraded to 5e, so my points may not be valid. However, even as far back as 1st ed. Resurrection was exceedingly rare, with Raise Dead being very rare. For typical NPCs, it was out of reach due to cost, and even NPCs with wealth had to find a cleric capable of performing it.

    And that was the primary li iting factor: finding a cleric capable of performing the rituals. In my campaign I am aware of six NPC's with enough levels to cast Resurrection, with maybe a dozen more capable of casting Raise. Half of them aren't likely to want to raise your character because it doesn't serve their church to do so, and they already have more wealth than they can use.

    They are also scattered around the world, so the PCs might find one of them, if they know where to look.

    For PCs, the rare scroll drop was the only viable choice, and I only included that when I knew the challenge was very high. PCs of high enough level could raise PCs, but the cost was high, mostly because I tended to make sure they were spending as much as they were getting along the way.

    From my perspective it was never an issue, but then in my campaign, an NPC at or above tenth level was very rare, and put there for a specific reason.

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Is there resurrection: YES.

    Do people know what happens after death: NO.

    Is the nature or lifecycle of "souls" well-understood: NOPE.

    Can you buy & sell souls anyway: YUP.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    My setting (a mutants and masterminds fantasy setting) has as an axiom of the magic system 'What Magic Did, Magic Can Undo' so resurrection is only possible if the person was killed by a spell. Speak With Dead and Summon Ghost also exist, but as pure counterfactual divination and calling up the memory of the departed from the mind of an acquaintance. No souls, as far as anyone knows.

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    I haven't decided whether to make it unavailable or just hard to get, but it will be far from assumed. One factor to consider is how hard you want it to be to die. I don't know in 5e, or if you have any house rules, but if Raise Dead and Resurrection are out of the question the you need to have mechanisms that make survival very likely, such as resuscitation, a slow period of bleeding out, etc.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    I like the idea of resurrection being a full on quest in its own right, like in say ancient greek myth where the hero would venture into the underworld to save lost souls, like if you aren't finding an ancient and rare artifact, making a pact with an powerful magical being, or personally punching the gatekeeper of Hell, you aren't getting your buddy back.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    In my setting you're only coming back from the dead by the intervention of dark powers, so as an undead or a demon of some kind. If your party wants to be able to run a revolving door to the underworld then someone needs to learn necromancy or everyone needs to make pacts with demon lords and someone has to be able to summon their newly demonic party members. It's also possible to bust into the underworld and free the deceased the hard way, but they're still not alive in their original state, but undead/demonic just without any strings attached.

    In the absence of one of the above coming back as a spontaneous undead sooner or later is possible in some regions of the world.

    There is one being capable of truly ressurecting the dead, the settings most powerful god, but he is himself dead and choosing to stay that way out of what is essentially spite, because coming back to life would end the vengeful curses he put on the world when he died.
    Sanity is nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    From a game perspective, my problem with "resurrection as quest" is what to do with the player of the dead character.

    Can't play for N sessions? No thanks.

    Replacement character for N sessions? Could work, but apt to cause issues (especially with verisimilitude if you just drop one in). And if you're just going to get an at level replacement, why bother resurrecting the dead dude? He'll be behind one he returns, so...

    Something else?
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  13. - Top - End - #13
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Resurrection as a massive quest is unsuited to use for PCs. Taking a long time - essentially more than a single session - to resurrect a member of the party is not worth doing. An epic quest to resurrect an NPC is simply another form of McGuffin quest, though it often goes over poorly since it explicitly elevates an NPC to more important than the PCs.

    Resurrection as a method to deal with lethality issues is frankly a bad tool. It only makes sense for high powered characters which means that implementing it creates stratification and a resultant cascade of distortions that you probably want to avoid (ie. welcome to level 9, past this point you never die). Using resurrection for this purpose is really only suitable to low verisimilitude settings that aren't really interested in the implications of design choices and are all about the action. DBZ is a good example of a setting that works this way. Death is mostly a minor inconvenience that is actually used as a plot point to build fight tension - because death means you're out of the fight for a while not actually gone - rather than anything else. This works for low-concept action comedies, but is poorly suited for much else. Fair point: the lion's share of actual TTRPG games play out as low-concept action-comedies that don't sweat the details, so resurrection may work just fine.
    Now publishing a webnovel travelogue.

    Resvier: a P6 homebrew setting

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    From a game perspective, my problem with "resurrection as quest" is what to do with the player of the dead character...
    I'm not endorsing or condemning quest-for-resurrection in general, but in answer to this, the player often can temporarily take over a prominent NPC. I've done this successfully; it wasn't a resurrection situation, but a different case of a player who needed a character that would last only one adventure.

    Spoiler: Self-serving Tangent
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    I was taking over as DM for one adventure to give the regular DM a chance to play a character in the world he'd created. I took a favorite NPC, a centuries old, very successful elven shop keeper, and gave him a past as a high level thief (AD&D) on a lifelong quest to regain a family heirloom. He'd gone into business on the theory that if you sit long enough in one place the whole world will pass by, and it worked; when he obtained a lead on a piece of it, he asked his friends - the party - for help retrieving it, and he went along. His skills had gone rusty over the years, but came back during play with each success. It was a great success, if I do say so myself.
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  15. - Top - End - #15
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by jqavins View Post
    I'm not endorsing or condemning quest-for-resurrection in general, but in answer to this, the player often can temporarily take over a prominent NPC. I've done this successfully; it wasn't a resurrection situation, but a different case of a player who needed a character that would last only one adventure.

    Spoiler: Self-serving Tangent
    Show
    I was taking over as DM for one adventure to give the regular DM a chance to play a character in the world he'd created. I took a favorite NPC, a centuries old, very successful elven shop keeper, and gave him a past as a high level thief (AD&D) on a lifelong quest to regain a family heirloom. He'd gone into business on the theory that if you sit long enough in one place the whole world will pass by, and it worked; when he obtained a lead on a piece of it, he asked his friends - the party - for help retrieving it, and he went along. His skills had gone rusty over the years, but came back during play with each success. It was a great success, if I do say so myself.
    I can see that working, as long as it's explicitly "this one session" (or otherwise a known time-limited case). I had one character that died (low level so no resurrection available) half-way through a session, and his new character couldn't come in until halfway through the next session. So he ran some monsters for me. That was a bit of a punishment, since he had died through unmitigated, utter stupidity (no, that CR 9 Dire Yeti isn't an appropriate challenge for a level 2 Paladin all by himself, so when the DM says "are you sure?" a dozen times...)
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    DM: "Here's your resurrection quest. You play the monsters in all our encounters until you manage to kill another PC. Then you can come back, and that player has to sit in the penalty box running monsters."

    There, full participation for the player(s) of the dead.

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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    DM: "Here's your resurrection quest. You play the monsters in all our encounters until you manage to kill another PC. Then you can come back, and that player has to sit in the penalty box running monsters."

    There, full participation for the player(s) of the dead.
    I hope that was in virtual blue text? Because that sounds like a recipe for disaster except in very particular groups. Not quite Deck of Many Things disaster, but close.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    I hope that was in virtual blue text? Because that sounds like a recipe for disaster except in very particular groups. Not quite Deck of Many Things disaster, but close.
    It does take a particular group dynamic to support over time. We didn't do this for long, but it was fun while it lasted.

    Not really sarcastic, though -- it would be more fun than sitting on the sidelines, at least, which was the competing non-blue suggestion.

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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    It does take a particular group dynamic to support over time. We didn't do this for long, but it was fun while it lasted.

    Not really sarcastic, though -- it would be more fun than sitting on the sidelines, at least, which was the competing non-blue suggestion.
    I see. I happen to hate inter-player antagonism (even at the "I get rewarded if your character suffers" level), so that wouldn't fly with me. To each their own, I guess.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    It does take a particular group dynamic to support over time. We didn't do this for long, but it was fun while it lasted.

    Not really sarcastic, though -- it would be more fun than sitting on the sidelines, at least, which was the competing non-blue suggestion.
    Wait what, that wasn't a joke? Day-ahm!
    Last edited by jqavins; 2018-04-17 at 02:04 PM.
    -- Joe
    “Shared pain is diminished. Shared joy is increased.”
    -- Spider Roninson
    And shared laughter is magical

    Always remember that anything posted on the internet is, in a practical if not a legal sense, in the public domain.
    You are completely welcome to use anything I post here, or I wouldn't post it.

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    I see. I happen to hate inter-player antagonism (even at the "I get rewarded if your character suffers" level), so that wouldn't fly with me. To each their own, I guess.
    If you've got a group which really enjoys tactical combat, and wants to WIN that combat rather than breezing through on DM fiat, then it's actually pretty nice to be able to step back and referee a conflict between two separate groups, both of whom are trying their best to beat the other.

    It's not what I want every single game night, but it was interesting and fun as a sometimes food.

    Quote Originally Posted by jqavins View Post
    Wait what, that wasn't a joke? Day-ahm!
    It's funny and also potentially useful. So it was humorous, but it was not just humor.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Typically, no, I don't allow resurrection at all. If death isn't a big deal to the party, they won't care if they die and will never resort to anything other than combat to solve most issues. If death is final, and they are from time to time put into actual danger (facing a level 6 at first level for example), they might want to try alternatives to Spam Attack As Much As Possible, like negotiating, bribing, setting traps, ambush, or just flat out running.

    Even undeath doesn't bring back the soul once it leaves the Material. The undead in my campaigns are usually inhabited by demons or other evil spirits which will follow every command they are required to (limits depending on the spell and the spirit), but twist them to prolong their task as much as possible without actual disobedience so they can remain "alive" as long as possible.

    Reincarnate isn't something I use either. When the soul leaves the body, it's gone for good.
    May the gods watch over your battles, friend.

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Normally, resurrection that isn't immediate is banned when I DM. It explains why you can't keep resurrecting the king, but it gives the players a little more leeway in accidentally dying. I want the world to make sense more than to run a very challenging game.

    However, I do love the Came Back Wrong trope. If I could marry that trope I would. It also makes for an excellent plot hook in my opinion, as the players can either figure out what happened to summon of these abominations or attempt to stop such a ritual.

    Quote Originally Posted by AGow95 View Post
    I like the idea of resurrection being a full on quest in its own right, like in say ancient greek myth where the hero would venture into the underworld to save lost souls, like if you aren't finding an ancient and rare artifact, making a pact with an powerful magical being, or personally punching the gatekeeper of Hell, you aren't getting your buddy back.
    But I like the way you think. I think that idea will go to my library of stolen ideas in case someone REALLY wants their PC back.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    I usually allow standard raising and resurrection when I DM, with no "came back wrong" twisting or any sort of mechanical alterations. I don't find there's really a need to explain the effect of a "revolving door afterlife" on the world, since it's not nearly as much of a revolving door as it's often portrayed.

    To use 3e values, you can bring anyone you want back to life provided you can:

    (A) afford to pay 7,250 gp (5,000 gp in material components plus 2,250 gp in spellcasting fees for a basic raise dead)
    (B) to the one to four 9th-level-or-higher clerics you might find in a Large Town or larger settlement
    (C) within 9 days after the person died
    (D) if the cleric belongs to a faith that is willing to resurrect anyone who pays,
    (E) if the dead person is willing to return, and
    (F) if there's no law or interested party preventing the dead person from returning.

    This isn't exactly an easy task. To use Forgotten Realms, the setting with the most statted high-level NPCs, there are few clerics able to cast raise dead in all 3e FR products. Of these, most are evil or crazy/selfish/evil-leaning neutral, and are therefore not likely to be trusted either by the dead person's family or the resurrected soul (who only gets to know the alignment and patron deity of its resurrector). Of the remaining NPCs, only one (Sunrise Lord Ghentilara, LG cleric 6/morninglord of Lathander 10 and high priestess of Waterdeep's Spires of the Morning) is described as being the type to resurrect petitioners, being "as comfortable tending to an ill family in a small hovel in Dock Ward as she is while attending the most extravagant gala of the year, and she makes time for both in her busy days."

    The rest are all very remote, like Sovial (LG human cleric 6/hand of the Adama 4), who would probably be happy to resurrect someone but only if they follow the upright teachings of the Adama and who can be found only in the remote Golden Water bay faaaar to the east of Faerûn; unlikely to resurrect anyone, like Acting Priest-General Gorym “Brightshield” Harndrekker (CG human fighter 2/cleric 9/divine disciple of Tempus 1), who leads the Abbey of the Sword in Cormanthor (which doesn't list resurrecting people under its list of available services), is described as an aging strategist, and who doesn't habitually prepare raise dead; very picky in who they might help, like High
 Harvestmaster
 Tolgar
 Anuvien (NG
 
human 
cleric
 16/divine 
disciple 
of 
Chauntea
 3), who is nicknamed "the Patiently Vengeful," is a retired adventurer, is solely focused on running and expanding his city of Goldenfields, and only welcomes followers of Chauntea or Lathander; far too busy with other pursuits, like Sunlord Daelegoth Orndeir (LN fire genasi cleric 10/sunmaster of Amaunator 10/evangelist 5), who is an epic-level heretical priest leading a schism with and crusade against the Church of Lathander while he tries to resurrect Amaunator, and probably doesn't have the free time or the desire to resurrect much of anyone; and so forth.

    While it's certainly possible that there are other 9th+ level clerics to be found using the random settlement generation rules, with the number and alignment skew of FR gods it's very likely that you wouldn't find any more clerics willing and able than those named NPCs. So even in FR, a settling stereotypically overflowing with epic-level retired adventurers and high-level bartenders with overflowing pockets full of gold, it's entirely possible that even a beloved dead king wouldn't be able to be brought back from the dead.

    And that's assuming no impediments to the process as per point F above. If the creature was beheaded, zombified, snuffed out with necromancy, or otherwise killed in an unpleasant manner, they can't be raised, requiring the dead person's relatives to find someone who can cast resurrection or true resurrection which is an even harder task, and as per the Cleric Quintet assassins routinely take or mutilate body parts to prevent raising. And laws are a factor as well:

    Quote Originally Posted by Ed Greenwood
    [I]n most places (Waterdeep and Cormyr definitely among them), laws prevent nobles from being raised. This stops all sorts of power struggles, conflicting claims for lands and money from "back from the dead" claimants or pretenders purporting to be someone dead centuries ago (whom nobody alive today would be able to swear is an impostor), pretenders "rewriting history" by writing diaries, accounts, false wills, documents purporting to be old agreements, and so on.

    Over time, the laws are backed up by social custom: if you break it by raising someone, you threaten the social order, and are apt to be shunned, exiled, or no longer treated as noble by anyone. So folk grow up thinking it’s simply not a possibility.
    So unless you're an adventurer with tons of gold and a flagrant disregard for law, social custom, and propriety, or are a member of a particular religious order with a cleric on hand for guaranteed resurrection, getting raised is a very rare, expensive, and not-at-all-guaranteed proposition.


    And this all assumes you're going for a setting where death is relatively permanent. I've run high-magic settings before where people routinely lived for centuries because life-extension and resurrection magic are plentiful, dystopian settings where the nobles extorted the common people and revolution was nearly impossible because the nobles could be resurrected and punish the revolutionaries, a timeline-advanced and higher-(magi-)tech version of Eberron where House Jorasco had perfected an altar of true resurrection and guaranteed resurrection was a simple (if incredibly expensive) life insurance policy away, and other different takes on the standard setting.

    So I generally find that, rather than resurrection and other powerful world-changing magic magic "cheapening" the setting, it helps get away from the standard early-Renaissance-with-magic feel of most settings and lets them stand out a bit.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
    (B) to the one to four 9th-level-or-higher clerics you might find in a Large Town or larger settlement
    According to the standard D&D demographics a large town has a 17% chance of having a 9th level cleric (1d6+3), but a small city has a 75% percent chance of having a 9th level cleric (1d6+6, roll twice), a large city is guaranteed to have multiple 9th level or higher clerics (1d6+9, roll three times) and has a 42% chance of having a shockingly powerful 15th level cleric. A metropolis is guaranteed to have at least four 13th level clerics (1d6+12, roll four times) and has a 47% chance of having a game-breakingly powerful 18th level cleric (which also means you get an extra 2 9th levels in the bargain).

    Keeping in mind that D&D defines settlements in restricted fashion, so these larger categories are not uncommon. A small city only requires 5000 people, a large city only 12000, and a metropolis only 25000. This is actually fairly common. This list gives me 36 such metropoli in Europe in 1300 AD. A rule of thumb is you'll get a metropolis under D&D assumptions for every 50,000 square miles (depending upon environmental and political factors) an area roughly the size of Greece. That will also net you around 5 small and large cities and at least a dozen large towns. So even a relatively small kingdom (Greece is less than half the size of Italy or Poland) has a pretty good chance of having close to a dozen clerics of level 9 or higher. Assuming a roughly even distribution of alignments among the high-powered servitors of the gods (which is necessary of your kingdom is not strongly pulled in one ethical direction), there is almost certainly at least one cleric capable of casting raise dead for a person of any alignment in a given state.

    And that's just clerics. Druids - which have a really weird demographic presence in D&D - can bring people back from the dead starting at 7th level using reincarnate, which is both cheaper and doesn't care about the condition of remains. Yes, it sticks you in a new form, but there are various ways around this.

    Additionally, you don't actually need a 9th level caster to cast raise dead, you just need a divine caster of any level with a raise dead scroll (which only costs 6125 gp). It only takes one cleric of one appropriately greedy faith (FR has several, starting with Waukeen, any church of wealth in D&D is effectively big pharma) to flood the market with scrolls of this type. Any rich family with any sense keeps just such a scroll in a vault somewhere in case of need and has their resident cleric cast it when such a need arises. Effectively, anyone whose net worth hits the mid five figures (50,000 gp and up) should be expected to have a raise dead contingency of this kind in place, and anyone in the six-figure range swaps in resurrection instead. This certainly includes any king. A king is the highest level aristocrat in a metropolis, and therefore has a minimum level of 13 and 120,000 gp to his name personally.

    Ed Greenwood's paragraph about the laws actually confirms this. It's special pleading on the part of the author intended to neutralize a distortional effect built into the rules that would ruin the feel of the world he tried to generate. In point of fact, banning the use of a rare but exceedingly valuable process from access by the upper classes is the exact opposite of how social systems work. This is one of several examples of special pleading inserted by Ed Greenwood into FR campaign materials that make it very clear how actually playing by the rules makes FR impossible.

    At the end of the day you basically have one of four scenarios when it comes to any powerful magical effect that violates known understanding of living processes, and the corresponding distortions on the historical condition you are attempting to match as a result:
    1. Not available at all, no distortion.
    2. Requires an epic question, minimal distortion that may have historical significance but does not impact everyday life.
    3. Rare, restricted to a special subgroup or those with vast resources, significant distortion that will have a broad impact on everyday life.
    4. Common, available to roughly everyone to at least some degree. Distorts setting such that it bears little to no resemblance to historical model.

    In D&D, resurrection operates under the third grouping, but the distortions are largely ignored in extant settings along with the impact of a massive number of other magical abilities because at the end of the day no one has any idea what really results because you're dumping too much weirdness into the system and attempting to redesign from first principles throws up possibilities that are not amenable to functional gameplay - such as eternal rule of dragons over everyone else with humanoid civilization never developing.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    *statistics snipped*
    I'm well aware that on a global scale raise dead is relatively common, but it's the local scale the small chances of having a raise-capable cleric in a given settlement are noticeable. If Baron Joe dies in Joeburg, a small city that rolled the 25% chance of not having a raise-capable cleric, and the next city is more than 9 days away on a galloping horse, he's out of luck. If Joeburg is a metropolis, Baron Joe is CN, and the four randomly-rolled high-level clerics are LG, LG, LN, LE and refuse to raise insufficiently-lawful people, he's out of luck.

    And that's just clerics. Druids - which have a really weird demographic presence in D&D - can bring people back from the dead starting at 7th level using reincarnate, which is both cheaper and doesn't care about the condition of remains. Yes, it sticks you in a new form, but there are various ways around this.
    Assuming druids are willing to bring back a noble who spent all his time cutting down forests to build his towns and flattening hills to build his roads and didn't even pay lip service to revering nature, which again isn't a guarantee.

    Additionally, you don't actually need a 9th level caster to cast raise dead, you just need a divine caster of any level with a raise dead scroll (which only costs 6125 gp).
    This is true...but of course a cleric with CL below 9 has a chance of failing to cast the spell from the scroll and having a mishap instead, which one shouldn't chance with raise dead lest the person Come Back Wrong.

    Ed Greenwood's paragraph about the laws actually confirms this. It's special pleading on the part of the author intended to neutralize a distortional effect built into the rules that would ruin the feel of the world he tried to generate. In point of fact, banning the use of a rare but exceedingly valuable process from access by the upper classes is the exact opposite of how social systems work.
    Except that "the upper classes" include both King Bob who would like to get resurrected upon his untimely death and Crown Prince Bob Junior who would like to inherit the kingdom upon King Bob's untimely death, to say nothing about various Cousin Robs and Uncle Roberts in the line of succession and Dubiously Evil Vizier al'Bob who might also want a piece of things. If nobles don't want to hand back their wealth to resurrected ancestors and kind-hearted nobles don't want to see their families disrupted by succession crises and nations torn by civil war after their passing, that sort of law is a perfectly reasonable one to pass.


    Look, I'm not trying to argue resurrection doesn't happen a lot in D&D and affect the setting; like I said, I run it by-the-book in my games and there are plenty of twice- or thrice-resurrected rich people running around, noble families who keep scrolls of resurrection and experts with high Use Magic Device modifiers on retainer, and cities where the legal code allows you to portion out inheritances only after the resurrection timer runs out. I'm just saying that the common perception that death loses all meaning in D&D settings is false, because there are plenty of existing flavor and mechanical reasons why "Just resurrect him!" isn't the solution to any and every death-related plot point, and you don't need to ban or heavily houserule resurrection effects to prevent society from becoming unrecognizable.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Additionally, you don't actually need a 9th level caster to cast raise dead, you just need a divine caster of any level with a raise dead scroll (which only costs 6125 gp).
    I don't agree with the 'only' in this sentence. How many individuals, or even families, can shell out 6125 GP in case of a accidental death, or even a expected one? I think that's out of reach of most of the population, making death the standard for everyone but the 1%. Sure, a few people in society has a lot of money and can afford services which elevates their life above that of most, but that does not change the 'world', it changes life for a small part of the population.

    A peasant or merchant might dream about being able to resurrect their dead relative/lover, but it's unlikely they can afford it.

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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    One note is that using 3e's demographic information for this produces some weird results--of all editions 3e is very far on the "high-power NPCs are common" spectrum. 5e hasn't published demographic information like that (and probably won't), but 9th level-equivalent casters aren't exactly growing on trees--you might have a dozen or so per nation, lumping clerics, wizards, and druids together. And then you run into the issues of cash (3500 gp is ~ 1 year of aristocratic lifestyle), willingness, time, etc.

    People who can cast resurrection are even scarcer.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    According to the standard D&D demographics a large town has a 17% chance of having a 9th level cleric (1d6+3), but a small city has a 75% percent chance of having a 9th level cleric (1d6+6, roll twice)...
    I'll read the whole wall of text and its responses when lunch time comes, but for the record 1d6+6 rolled twice gives an 89% chance of yielding 9 or higher at least once.

    -------------------------

    OK, it's lunch time and I've caught up.

    Some time back there was a thread about resurrection and inheritance; I can't find it now, I'm afraid. One of the possibilities proposed as I recall, and one I liked, is that nothing is inherited, be it wealth or ruling title, until the Raise Dead clock runs out. After that, the inheritance is final even if someone is resurrected. The family of the returned would probably take him/her in as a member of the household, but not as the owner or ruler. (Of course, if they choose to give back some comfortable amount of wealth and personal items, that's all well and good, but the law does not make the returned entitled to it.) I can even see a king's will saying "Resurrect me, but wait a while and don't Raise me! This is my retirement."

    Quote Originally Posted by drakir_nosslin View Post
    I don't agree with the 'only' in this sentence. How many individuals, or even families, can shell out 6125 GP in case of a accidental death, or even a expected one? I think that's out of reach of most of the population, making death the standard for everyone but the 1%. Sure, a few people in society has a lot of money and can afford services which elevates their life above that of most, but that does not change the 'world', it changes life for a small part of the population.
    Raising and Resurrecting only directly affect the 1%, but those include the rulers, both official economic. If the rulers are able to live so much longer (should they want to) that will have indirect effects on life for 99% as well.
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    Default Re: Does your setting have resurrection?

    Quote Originally Posted by jqavins View Post
    Raising and Resurrecting only directly affect the 1%, but those include the rulers, both official economic. If the rulers are able to live so much longer (should they want to) that will have indirect effects on life for 99% as well.
    Exactly. Having a special capability that is only available to the 1% has massive impacts on life, since the 1% have dramatically outsized influence, power, and wealth. There are real-world examples of things like this - a relatively mild one being private air travel - but in D&D context they are so much greater. The availability of magic to allow the rich to bypass all the horrors and ills of the medieval world is a setup more like the dystopian movie Elysium than anything in most D&D settings (except, as usual, Dark Sun, which always seems to get closer to what the rules actually imply than any other setting).
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