Resurrection spells

>>51122118
Our 5e DM just removed resurrection magic for player use. Reanimation magic like Animate Dead is still fair game but anything that could do what you mentioned is removed.

We actually really like it. Might be the new gold standard for our games

>>51122118
In OD&D, Raise Dead is a 5th level spell (the highest level of Cleric spells).
Only 7th level Clerics could cast it, and Clerics progression costs are only detailed to 8th level.

God forbid you try to cast the shitty Magic-User knockoff, Reincarnation. That was a 6th level spell.
M-Us have to be at least 12th to cast it, and M-U progression costs are only detailed up to 11th.

>>51122118
I kind of assumed it was widespread common practice that almost everyone banned Ressurection/Reincarnation from their games unless they were specifically going for a high-lethality "videogamey" kind of feel. In 5 years of gaming I've only seen a DM allow that kind of magic once and we were literally playing in "virtual reality" that game.

>>51122118
I don't know that I'd go so far as to say "undermines" but it does change the dynamic significantly. What I find interesting is when resurrection magic is a thing but somehow killing the big bad is going to fix all the problems. It's like villain von douchebag uses completely different world rules or something.

>>51123012
I've never had a DM not use them. Please refer me to your group.

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>>51123121
What I find interesting (read: retarded) about Resurrection magic when high-profile political leaders like Kings and the heads of churches and such get killed for plot reasons and nobody thinks "Huh, for 5,000 gold we could probably ressurct our leader and have him tell us who assassinated him. I mean, his palace alone is probably worth several times that, sooo..."

Then again, magic breaks ALOT of logic in a setting if you're not careful. Magical food and summoning creatures for meat solves word hunger, teleportation eliminates the need for trade routes or most forms of transportation, ect.

I had always assumed that PCs were special and the reason <Insert Pantheon Here> keeps letting them come back is because they're the main characters with important shit to do, Gandalf-style.

Like, even if you're a big important famous guy, you're not Gandalf. PCs have the advantage of always being plot-relevant. There's usually at least one god who has a reason to keep them around.

>>51123237
I always wonder what a high magic setting that actually took logic and such into account would look like. I imagine it would share a lot of aspects with post-scarcity sci-fi in that the problems are less about death and famine and more about political and personal struggles.

>>51123237
The spells in 5e require either a body or a free and willing soul so I guess if you burn the body and either destroy or imprison the soul you could prevent resurrection, no real rules for but its magic so I'm sure it could be done

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>>51123320
I always preferred to just tone down some of the higher end magic or give it some kind of cost that prevents the world from reaching post-scarcity status, but god forbid you ever talk about that in a thread, because then you're "nerfing" the most powerful/versatile class in the game "unfairly" and being an autist.

Nope, "magic is rare" is the only excuse you're ever allowed to use.

It's a fucking weak-ass excuse.

>>51123237
>>51123364
Resurrection magic in world building brings up a lot of questions about the way it works like
Is the value of the diamond used affected by inflation and deflation? would you need more or less depending on the economy of a kingdom?
Does the diamond disappear completely? if so does that mean resurrections are finite or once all the diamonds are used up will the component requirement change?

>>51123344

The question then becomes, how easy is it to prevent ressurection?

Can you make poisons that counter ressurection?
Do you need to bring a soul trap with you when you assassinate or kill someone?
Does destroying a soul prevent ressurection, and how easily can you destroy it?

Depending on the answers to this, most higher end assassins will be walking around with soul trapping devices to prevent their targets from getting ressurected.
If you're about to rob a merchant, you need to deal with the potential ressurection that could pin the murder/thievery on you, so you bring a soul trap.

Could make for some interesting play around death if everyone knows ressurection is available, so if a player in your party gets killed, you actually have to find the murderer and get their soul back before you can ressurect them.

>>51122339
>>51122118
Magic in D&D is so fucked and unbalanced on so many levels.

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>>51123550
>how easy is it to prevent ressurection?
Happens on its own, more often than not.

>>51122118
My 4E DnD group never use Resurrection type rituals for the reason you stated out, OP. He also removed a lot of plot-sidestepping rituals too after a talk with all of us regarding how bullshit are those.

>>51122118
we've had resurrection spells a plenty in my setting ,and no one has complained yet

so my party in particular is not affected greatly

>>51122821
Resurrection magic I agree with you on. Reincarnation; however, I see it differently. At least with the latter dead PC's can come back as something new, and with other strange results. Always felt that reincarnation should have been a thing for non-believers in Forgotten Realms. Instead of sticking souls of non-believers in some wall to dissolve their souls..just let the souls be reborn in a new family who are more if not highly religious. Then when said person dies again the deity they worship in their second chance of life comes to collect.

>>51122118
Resurrection spells are way higher level than I like running my game so I don't think it's a big deal to leave them in

>>51122118
>>51122339
Did exactly the same thing. Instead, if a player really wants their character rezzed (and to their credit, not all of them do), they rely on the generosity of the group to agree to do a somewhat lengthy sidequest to bring them back, and even then, it always comes with consequences.

>>51122118
You know, if you have access to resurrection spells then do you have the moral imperative to bring back people from dead? Also, it costs 5k IIRC, so would it be more ethical to donate that money to charity for the living? If death is the greatest evil then shouldn't it be an acceptable price for an orphan to go hungry, after all?

>>51122118
I'm considering this option:
>You can't be revived if you died a "hero's death" or a "villain's death", because your soul is claimed by the gods (who also decide what your death qualifies as). In practice:
>If your character died to unfair or mundane shit, you can have it back for a relatively small price
>If your character died in a heroic sacrifice, or when knowingly taking a huge risk, or after becoming evil and turning on the party, then nah
>Which also means:
>The bad guy necromancer won't come back after you defeat him during the evil ritual at the climax of the campaign
>But if you one-shot him with a good roll of the dice at the start of the campaign, when he's telling you to leave the Wastelands of Evilbad and never return, his apprentice may raise him from the dead, since the gods didn't think he was evil enough to have his soul claimed by whatever rightful divinity

Alternatively, if my group is mature enough, I might do away with resurrection entirely, and let the player decide whether they feel like their PC deserved to die. Assuming they're mature enough, obviously. They can choose a permanent injury+stat penalty combo if to feel less guilty about cheating death.

>>51124965
Reincarnation was a bad spell because you came back at level 1d6.
If your party could cast it you probably died at a much higher level than that.
Good way to level hirelings though.

>>51122118

Yes, it is a drama-killer.

>>51122339
Good choice!

Seems to me that the problem disappears if you seriously consider the condition that the spirit has to be willing and you impose the permanent CON loss upon being raised. With that condition, good characters won't return unless they have unfinished business, because they are in their final reward with their family. Also, evil characters would be most willing, but unable, if evil priests can't resurrect.

If you add the condition that the priest's god has to approve the resurrection, then mostly heroes end up getting resurrected.

>>51122118
They cheapen death significantly, so I disallow them and make sure character deaths matter.

What I WANT to do for resurrections is for them to be earned in an epic quest, crossing the planes to track down the deceased's soul before they forget their original identity.

>>51123121
It's because nobody wants to resurrect villain von douchebag. He's a dick.
>>51122118
I'd rather have it then not have it. D&D is just a stupid hyperviolence dungeon game anyway.
Besides, it's not like the magic doesn't have limits. You need to have their intact body and you need to have it within in a short period of time. If someone is making a heroic sacrifice it's reasonable to assume their corpse won't be readily available or in good condition. If it's just some narrow death in a scuffle they could have easily survived by dice rolls, they can just be revived instead of losing their character to something dumb. Read Dungeon Meshi, its setting has resurrection that is far easier to use than D&D versions, but there is still suspense due to the protagonists losing the corpse of one of their companions and having to rush to recover it before it is too late.
>what about extremely high level D&D, where resurrection spells don't require the whole body and have century long time limits?
Player characters are literally demigods by that point.

>>51132056
Same guy, I forgot to mention that getting someone resurrected in 5e requires the cooperation of a 9th level Cleric or Druid. People seem to forget that class levels themselves are not common, and a 9th level character is basically a legend.

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>>51122118

In my homebrew system resurrection involves the PCs have to recover the dead persons soul from the afterlife. What the afterlife is like depends on the dead persons religious beliefs and PCs can be killed attempting to resurrect the dead person.

>>51122118
1. Material components. Diamonds aren't just left lying around, and you can't exactly crush them with your bare hands. I've run multi-session sidequest just to find the diamond dust.

2. The vast majority of NPC's are content to remain in the afterlife. Only the stubborn, reckless, heroic, or fearless (like the PC's) are excited to come back and have another go at it.

3. The body. It needs to be intact for Raise Dead, and you need a piece of it for Resurrection. There are lots of ways, as a DM, to throw a wrench into this.

4. A mid-high level cleric. Your average big temple in an average city probably has a level 9 cleric to do Raise Dead. But you need a level 13 cleric for Resurrection and that's not someone you can just find anywhere. A level 17 cleric for True Resurrection is practically a god in their own right and there's probably only a couple of them on the whole damn material plane.

5. Convincing the cleric to do the job for you. First of all your alignment had better fucking match theirs. A donation to the church will probably do for a low-level cleric, but a high-level cleric already has so much more money, gear, power, and influence than you, it'd be a miracle (literally) if you can even get an audience with them.

>>51122118
>Does anyone else feel that the very existence of resurrection spells undermines a lot of potential character drama its hard to have a character make a heroic sacrifice or whatever when they can be brought back with a spell at any point past the mid level range

It worked a little better in the older editions of D&D when there were restrictions like:

>only priests of certain churches can cast it
>must be an upstanding member of the church in question to even be considered a candidate for resurrection
>must find a suitably-high level priest to cast it (only one per kingdom)
>must pay exorbitant amount in "tithe" (harder when players didn't automatically receive money every time they leveled up)

I agree with this guy though >>51122339

>>>51129472 Good way to level hirelings though.
Good way to get attack ad by your hireling.

Eh, not necessarily. A few points:
1) The soul needs to be willing to return. Most non-adventurers are perfectly content in the afterlife.
2) For all but the most powerful resurrection spells, you need to be in the possession of their remains to resurrect someone. For Raise Dead and the like, you actually need the body to be relatively intact(and not an undead creature, for instance). This means that if you die in a chance encounter which the party still wins, resurrecting someone is a (relatively) simple matter as long as you have the money and a divine caster of a high enough level. If you're doing the heroic sacrifice thing, though, there's a good chance that your remains won't be intact and if you're, say, battling the BBEG over a pit of lava, they may even be destroyed sufficiently to stop them from being recoverable. Not to mention that, depending on how the sacrifice went down, just recovering the remains might be a quest all by itself.
3) Finally, so far all my games have been relatively low level, so finding a 9th level cleric, convincing them to help and paying for the resurrection can be non-trivial challenges themselves.

If those aren't sufficient, you can always introduce a chance for the resurrection spells to go wrong. Ravenloft, for instance, has a chance of any resurrection spell creating an undead creature instead.

>>51132388
The easiest means of preventing Raise Dead from working is simply beheading, or the removal and destruction of the heart or other vital organs. The spell heals grievous wounds, but only those on an intact body. No head, or separated head, means no coming back. No heart means no coming back. Burned body missing lots of flesh? No Raise Dead. The spell has some fairly good means of stopping it from working just by way of the body alone.

And that diamond you need? Converting gold cost to dollars, it's a $500,000 diamond. Even in our world with its mass mined diamond mines, those are fairly uncommon. And the diamond for Resurrection is double that cost, and even rarer. And True Resurrection, the pinnacle of bringing back the dead? 2.5 million dollars. That's a single diamond worth that much, and those are rare.

Its almost like most of those complaining have never really read the rules or reasoned out the limits of the spells and seen just how rare the use of these spells actually are.

>>51123471

You ever stop to think that such questions should never be relevant in a game?

>>51122118
Not really.
You'd be a bad DM if you just let your players Rez whenever they want.

Yes, the spell does exist in my games, but if the setting's knockoff Pope can't do it on a whim, a couple of adventurers sure as won't be able to.

Say a necromancer cast raised dead on the corspe, and or skeleton of one that's deceased...what happens with the soul? Would the person's soul in the afterlife feel some disturbance due to their corpse, and grave being defiled by dark magics? Or would said spirit not feel anything at all, or at worse be sucked back into their now undead body?

>>51125625
well i guess it depends on if your setting has a afterlife proven real and if it does then you could probably go the other direction and have a villain try and kill everyone in the world so they can all go to the nice afterlife

>>51132160
Yes but all it takes is one of these kinds of people and they can bring back one person a day if they have the gold

>>51134560
Answers vary wildly by setting.
I'd say...

Soul is forced to manipulate their old body, at least in part.
It stays in the afterlife, and keeps doing afterlife type stuff, but has to constantly multitask.
The soul is "unharmed", but the process is extremely tedious and stressful.

For souls in punishment afterlives, this is generally viewed favorably.
Helps you take your mind off your surrounding and provides a sense of stability.
But souls in reward afterlives consider the practice tantamount to robbing them of their due.

>>51134755
For all the things wrong with the series in general I really liked the Naruto equivalent of zombies where the people kept their morals and minds but where forced to fight against their former allies while giving them tips on how to fight back

Why not have it so that every time someone is raised, it ages the person variably.

Each race has a maximum lifespan,and once it's hit, there's no coming back.
Adjust the variable dicerolls by race as well by level (as a way of representing the weight of a soul as a person is more and more experienced as an adventurer)

Example:

Elliot Elf and Hodor Human have just ate shit from a lightning bolt and their party has managed to scrounge up funds to raise them.
Assuming both are willing to come back to life, their bodies will age as a part of the stress of being raised.
Elliot was a young elf, aged 120, and Hodor was a 40 year old man. For elves, their lifespan is usually 500 years, and for a human, about 100.

So for when you roll the results as the DM, use 2d10x 5 for the elf(the floor being a minimum of 10 years, and the roof being 100 years),and 2d6x2 for the human (minimum 4 years, max 24 years).
If you want to add level, add half level in years (round down or up depending on how generous you are).

Now, your party might have second thoughts upon rushing into somewhere gungho if they're all concerned about aging to death with this in mind.

Some possible exploits and ways to address them

>What if they all make really young characters?
Well first off, make sure to disbar this idea at the getgo, and if not, if your system has young age penalties, apply them. All else fails, you're the fucking DM, demand they make reasonably aged characters or at least give you a good damned reason why they'd be so young.

>What about a monk who gets a class feature that makes it so he can't age?
If I remember correctly, some variations in some editions that the monk dies when their time is up, but if the edition you're working with does not have that proviso, then add it.

>How will they unage themselves? If they don't they'll be super cautious and not want to adventure!
Simple! Make some adventure hooks based around trying to unage them. Perhaps a powerful fey could help them.

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>>51133113
It makes for fun world building or story concepts though IMO. Like >>51123320 said, I think the idea of a setting where magic is taken to its logical extreme is really interesting.

Personal take. Dying frees the soul. Soul might not want to return to the living world due to any combination of reasons, such as being trapped in hell, mellowing out in heaven, partying in Valhalla or whatever.

Most living things have souls that would rather stay dead than resurrect. Maybe the BBEG or Saint could come back.
Player characters have a "soul" outiside of their world. The players can resurrect their characters because the PCs are more or less soulless tool used for a grand game.

Really wish any of my games lasts until they kill the DM (ingame).

I just rule it that certain magic requires particular components/locations, and even occasions to work.

The ressurection spell of a cleric of a moon goddess may require the milk of a new mother, the hair of a old dead woman, and must be enacted on the second full moon of the 3rd month of the year, or something equally as complex and esoteric as that.

Spells with components as such are seeds for adventure.

>>51126753

Homestuck trash.

Well, people still think Eclipse Phase is cool and resurrection there's as simple as loading up another copy. What makes the same not ok in D&D?

It's hard to maintain the drama unless rez is heavily restricted. Like, "you can only do it once."

I prefer when it is attached to an item.

For example diamonds you could easily force only high valueable diamonds that are rare to find and need a lot of skill to work it to be the only materials capable of being used for ressurection spells.

it turns the whole let's just pay for it into a quest to supply the cleric with a suitable diamond.

>>51141986
I would go further and raise the rarity and cost of these diamonds. In 5e an only 1000gp would be too common.