Ways for druids to bring back the dead

[yeetusmcgeetus]

Super weird question. I have a player who is a druid, but wants to convince others that he is a cleric. He can bull**** away most of his unique druid abilities as spells that he somehow got access to (e.g. Polymorph), but how can he hide his inability to raise the dead?

He can use Reincarnate, but that spell is pretty noticeably different. I found Last Breath in the Spell Compendium, which works, as long as they don't realize that it shouldn't be putting them at 0hp if it's supposed to be normal Raise Dead. And as long as he never has to raise someone who's been dead longer than 6 seconds.

What are the ways a druid can resurrect someone, and do any of them allow the druid to effectively emulate the Raise Dead spell?

[Doctor Despair]

UMD a scroll of raise dead

[yeetusmcgeetus]

UMD a scroll of raise dead

I mean yeah, but using a scroll might be a bit of a giveaway.

However, I do allow the pathfinder cleric domains and subdomains, so a Domain Icon with the Resurrection subdomain would work, and could easily be disguised as a holy symbol

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Just say he worships some god that treats death as final, so he's not allowed to bring back the dead. A nature god who views death as part of a natural cycle, for example, may view raising the dead as an affront to that.

[GeoffWatson]

"Sorry, I don't have raise dead prepared. I didn't think I'd need it, and I don't have the material components anyway."

[Lilapop]

Animate with the spirit to call in a... movanic or monadic? I can never remember, but one of the devas from Fiend Folio. It's got raise dead as an SLA, and the 100 gp dust for restoration to clean up the sacrifice is way cheaper than the components for the regular resurrection spells. Also comes in a spell level early (at the cost of an additional second level slot, fair) and is available spontaneously. Generally, this is the better option even for a cleric, so it shouldn't blow your cover.

Of course, this all depends on your DM allowing you to pick the animating spirit :P

[Darg]

"Sorry, I don't have raise dead prepared. I didn't think I'd need it, and I don't have the material components anyway."

This wouldn't work on its own. Raise dead gives you days of time to prepare and cast the spell.

Then again, if players are 9th level they likely have access to teleport which means getting to another cleric shouldn't be an issue. Which actually plays really well with this suggestion:

Just say he worships some god that treats death as final, so he's not allowed to bring back the dead. A nature god who views death as part of a natural cycle, for example, may view raising the dead as an affront to that.

[Inevitability]

Dragonlance Campaign Setting has the Restoration domain, which contains Raise Dead and Resurrection both. A level in Contemplative would get them both available to you, but that requires first getting Knowledge (Religion) on your list first. The Education feat and Knowledge Devotion feats can both get the job done.

[Quertus]

OK, I've got to ask the dumb question: why isn't "I'm still a novice" / "I'm not powerful/faithful/whatever enough to do that yet" not a valid answer here?

[Darg]

OK, I've got to ask the dumb question: why isn't "I'm still a novice" / "I'm not powerful/faithful/whatever enough to do that yet" not a valid answer here?

Might not be a possibility if they showed off some high level magic. Then again, if no one recognized the spells being cast, they must not be lucky in their spellcraft checks.

[vasilidor]

The spell reincarnation. It is a bit random, but you get to come back to life with your levels.

[Remuko]

The spell reincarnation. It is a bit random, but you get to come back to life with your levels.

If you (re)read the original post, you will see that's both, not what OP is asking for, and was already mentioned by them.

[Pezzo]

A cleric needs to be of an high enough level to cast raise dead, not all clerics can. Knowledge of this is not automatic, so you could be a 20th level druid and fake being a low level cleric.
And if somebody points out that you can cast way more powerful spells and should be able to cast it, you can point out that not all clerics are blessed enough to even turn undead (for example clerics that took an ACF to turn something else than undeads) and likewise some are not capable of casting raise dead.
Or you could be a planar sheperd and wildshape into a solar.

[eBarbarossa]

The Holt Warden prestige class gives you the Plant Domain (and generally makes you more priest-y, with knowledge Religion and Turn Attempts and suchlike) while being easy access for most druids. The find something to gibe you an extra domain and take the aforementioned Restoration Domain.

[Ashtagon]

*waves hands mystically*

"Sorry. His soul has chosen not to return to this mortal coil."

[rel]

Just refuse to cast the spells you don't have.
Exactly how a selfish cleric will generally refuse to spend their spell slots and other resources on healing other people and usually end up more effective as a result.

[StreamOfTheSky]

It's basically using a nuclear bomb to demolish a building, but...

My last druid wanted to be able to do "cleric stuff" to deal w/ all the weird status effects and the fact that no one in the party wanted to do the random race roll of Reincarnate, so I went Planar Shepherd... Pick a plane that has good outsiders like Elysium and at level 14 you can turn into a number of angels/devas/archons/eladrin that get raise dead or resurrection as a spell-like ability*. Several have at-will change shape so you can Russian nesting-doll it to be "a human that's an angel that's disguised as a human" and the NPCs are none the wiser that it's not you're doing anything "weird". I did exactly that and pretended it was my own casting ability, lol

Probably the lamest use of Planar Shepherd ever and it probably isn't allowed in your game, but...it gets the job done.

*(not just raise dead either, but all kinds of classic cleric goodies like remove curse, hero's feast, etc...)