Raise Dead and the Diamond Thing


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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allenw wrote:
Sir Ophiuchus wrote:
My elderly paladin who can raise dead for free (Ultimate Mercy feat) is becoming more and more viable...

My young paladin (inspired by Bertie Wooster), who's the local ruler in our Kingmaker campaign, really wanted Ultimate Mercy. He'd put up with always having a negative level, just to be able to bring a deserving subject back to life *every single day*. That's gotta be worth some Loyalty, right? Plus, it's a great party trick; especially if the party is a wake. ;)

Unfortunately, the DM disallowed the feat. :(

That sounds like an amazing character. I'm sorry to hear your GM disallowed it, particularly when it would have created such great roleplay for your character. Sounds more like a reflexive auto-ban to me - the negative level's not a trivial price for the character to pay.

Liberty's Edge

Sir Ophiuchus wrote:
allenw wrote:
Sir Ophiuchus wrote:
My elderly paladin who can raise dead for free (Ultimate Mercy feat) is becoming more and more viable...

My young paladin (inspired by Bertie Wooster), who's the local ruler in our Kingmaker campaign, really wanted Ultimate Mercy. He'd put up with always having a negative level, just to be able to bring a deserving subject back to life *every single day*. That's gotta be worth some Loyalty, right? Plus, it's a great party trick; especially if the party is a wake. ;)

Unfortunately, the DM disallowed the feat. :(
That sounds like an amazing character. I'm sorry to hear your GM disallowed it, particularly when it would have created such great roleplay for your character. Sounds more like a reflexive auto-ban to me - the negative level's not a trivial price for the character to pay.

Plus you are going to have to be at least moderately high level (or very high charisma) to use it. Not to mention the feat commitment to a feat starved class. I don't think the GM fully thought through how much you give up to use it.


ciretose wrote:
Plus you are going to have to be at least moderately high level (or very high charisma) to use it. Not to mention the feat commitment to a feat starved class. I don't think the GM fully thought through how much you give up to use it.

And burn pretty much all your lay on hands for the day, don't forget.

Sorry if this is derailing. Re the raise dead thing more generally, I understand the idea that dead should be nontrivial, and that returning a character should involve sacrifice.

I'm not sure, though, that such sacrifice should be financial.


lordzack wrote:
Most encounters on the first level of a dungeon, according to the 1e DMG will be the equivalent of a CR 3 or 4 Pathfinder encounter. Old school encounters were in general more difficult.

No they were not - at least not unless you insisted on every encounter being a straight on party vs. enemies brawl.

Sneaking past 30 orcs in AD&D is not any harder than sneaking past 30 orcs in Pathfinder.

The funny part though, winning a direct battle with 30 orcs in AD&D is actually easier than the same against 30 orcs in Pathfinder.

Old school encounters did involve higher counts of monsters, but that did not actually make them more difficult.


That's definitely not true. Especially considering the lower amount of hp that PCs had. Yes, you can avoid encounters, but you want because actually fighting them is dangerous.

Could you explain why you believe this? It is completely different than anything I've heard of or experienced.


Sean K Reynolds wrote:
....

Interesting insights, Sean, and thank you.

My DM is thinking about bringing in your ideas as we speak.


AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
lordzack wrote:
Most encounters on the first level of a dungeon, according to the 1e DMG will be the equivalent of a CR 3 or 4 Pathfinder encounter. Old school encounters were in general more difficult.

No they were not - at least not unless you insisted on every encounter being a straight on party vs. enemies brawl.

Sneaking past 30 orcs in AD&D is not any harder than sneaking past 30 orcs in Pathfinder.

The funny part though, winning a direct battle with 30 orcs in AD&D is actually easier than the same against 30 orcs in Pathfinder.

Old school encounters did involve higher counts of monsters, but that did not actually make them more difficult.

30-300 Orcs was the outdoor encounter number in 1E. Plus leaders, etc. Just off hand I'd say 300+ old school Orcs were / are tougher than 30 PF Orcs. As for sneaking past 30 AD&D Orcs, I hope you were all Thieves who could roll really low on those percentile dice. You were lucky if you had 25% Move Silently back then at 1st level. You were probably 8th level before you had better than a 50% chance. No one else (except for Assassins), even a Ranger, had a Move Silently percentage at all. In a dungeon you might run into half a dozen Orcs or half dozen Ogres. Traps and poison weren't small matters. They killed you. Encounters were chancier. You had to be tough, lucky and smart enough to know when to run. 3E is easier on players. The encounters tend to run in the players favor and the PCs are a heck of a lot harder to kill.

As for Raise Dead, it was a 5th level spell when the Cleric only had 7 levels of spells. Maybe it should have bumped up to 6th or 7th. But, 3E design wanted players to be harder to kill and easier to ressurect. Given how long it takes to generate a 3.x character vs. a 1E character I can understand that. Several hours vs. 5 minutes. In looking at the damage and abilities of other 5th level spells vs. Raise Dead there are a couple of points. The newer spells may be overpowered vs. older spells. The spell levels in D&D / PF have always been a bit messed up. And, as mentioned above, maybe Raise Dead is misplaced.

Just some rambling thoughts while I grade papers...

*edit* Oh, and if you think 30 AD&D Orcs were pushovers compared to 30 PF orcs, you just had the wrong DM :)


lordzack wrote:
Could you explain why you believe this? It is completely different than anything I've heard of or experienced.

Characters had less HP, yes. Monsters also did less damage because not every one of them had a strength score included in their damage dealing.

Monsters also had less HP in general because they had no constitution scores.

Hitting your target was all around a little bit more difficult, which meant the advantage of monsters getting more attacks wasn't as potent as it is now - and there was no critical hit rule boosting the damage coming at either side.

AD&D Orcs can be expected for 1 in 5 to have a bow or crossbow instead of just melee weapons, Pathfinder Orcs can be expected to carry 4 javelins, meaning that a party in AD&D has a better chance at being able to use superior range to sway the odds.

...and despite another poster's view that only thieves had any chance to be sneaky, it seemed more common to me that a good description of how you were creeping past something with intent to avoid it was all that it took to get past most things - assuming your description covered all of its methods of noticing you - and the thief skills were for doing things that normal people couldn't even try, like being completely invisible just by standing in a shadow.

Anecdotal evidence: Robilar went into Castle Greyhawk alone (with Gary Gygax behind the screen) and stomped the crap out of the dungeon - a surprising feat with AD&D, and one that is beyond improbable in Pathfinder.

Silver Crusade

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
My thoughts on it are: don't have the gp cost, don't have the negative level be permanent. It sucks to die, it sucks that one of the PCs has to use a high-level spell to fix the problem. We grew up playing video games where you die, hit Continue, and keep playing. These costs are among the last "DM vs. players" mentality of the old style of gaming, and I don't play that way.

In all honesty this sounds horrid. Clerics get every cleric spell in the book so it's not like he has to sacrifice anything except a spell slot that could be used for another spell, which can be changed 24 hours later by the way.

Also, if I want a video game then I will go and play one, table top RPGs are not video games sothey shouldn't try and mimic them. I don't play Pathfinder for a video game experience, that's what my Xbox is for.

Shadow Lodge

Gonna chip in here as someone who actually played in a campaign where there was no material cost to Raise Dead. In fact, every slain PC was promptly resurrected by a mysterious spiritual force, no need for a high-level cleric.

Did it devalue death? Nope. It did lead to us being a bit more willing to commit to major encounters, since as long as one PC survived to complete the mission we didn't have to worry as much about getting the casualties sorted out. But it actually got my character very worried about the hidden cost of these resurrections, especially as there were hints that too-frequent resurrections could lead to mental or physical corruption. Did it feel like a video game? No, because when a PC died it still had an impact on the story - the character was still killed by a particular person and if the killer survived (and two PC-killers did) both would remember that encounter. Two of the PCs had a minor argument when one did something reckless, died, and was annoyed with the second for not bailing him out in time. Not to mention that a TPK would mean mission failure and the consequences for that were sometimes dire. And that's without the option of allowing raise/resurrection to occur solely on divine approval based on previous services to the faith or expected future deeds.

In conclusion: very much in favor of tying return from the dead to story rather than simply cost in diamonds.


AaronOfBarbaria wrote:


Characters had less HP, yes. Monsters also did less damage because not every one of them had a strength score included in their damage dealing.

Monsters also had less HP in general because they had no constitution scores.

Yes, both monsters and PCs had less HP. Monsters did not have Constitution bonuses. And not every PC had a Strength bonus to hit or a Constitution bonus to HP either. Fewer than in 3.x. If you didn't have a 15+ Constitution or Strength, no bonus for you. Non Fighters bonus to hit / damage for Strength topped out at +2 as well (Fighters could go +4 or higher with an exceptional percentage score to an 18 Strength -- the maximum in 1E).

AaronOfBarbaria wrote:


Hitting your target was all around a little bit more difficult, which meant the advantage of monsters getting more attacks wasn't as potent as it is now - and there was no critical hit rule boosting the damage coming at either side.

It was more difficult for both PC and monster to hit. And there were no iterative attacks for characters. A distinct advantage for those basic Orcs vs. higher level PCs.

AaronOfBarbaria wrote:


AD&D Orcs can be expected for 1 in 5 to have a bow or crossbow instead of just melee weapons, Pathfinder Orcs can be expected to carry 4 javelins, meaning that a party in AD&D has a better chance at being able to use superior range to sway the odds.

Bows and crossbows far outrange javelins and an archer or a crossbowman carries 20-30 arrows / bolts. I'm failing to see a significant advantage for the party here when the bows and crossbows open up at twice the range of the javelins. Unlike javelins, those bows and crossbows outrange most of the combat spells of AD&D as well. Those 1E orcs also tended to have javelins, polearms etc. as well as swords and shields. The exact percentages escape me at the moment, but they had a good variety of weapons...

AaronOfBarbaria wrote:


...and despite another poster's view that only thieves had any chance to be sneaky, it seemed more common to me that a good description of how you were creeping past something with intent to avoid it was all that it took to get past most things - assuming your description covered all of its methods of noticing you - and the thief skills were for doing things that normal people couldn't even try, like being completely invisible just by standing in a shadow.

You hid in shadows, you were not invisible. If any shadows were available. Otherwise, you kind of stood out. You couldn't hide in bright light, complete darkness (oddly enough) or from anything with Infravision (including Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves, Elves etc.). I used to think that humans were about all Hide in Shadows was good for. Move Silently was necessary to move without noise. You *might*, given the right circumstance sneak by an Orc patrol. At a distance given sufficient background noise etc., up close, nope. I don't think descriptions of creeping ever bought me anything except strange looks from the guys on watch :)

AaronOfBarbaria wrote:


Anecdotal evidence: Robilar went into Castle Greyhawk alone (with Gary Gygax behind the screen) and stomped the crap out of the dungeon - a surprising feat with AD&D, and one that is beyond improbable in Pathfinder.

Anecdotal evidence about an Archmage. The guy had how many spells in the book with his name on them? Not your typical low to mid level Magic User. Drag some 18-20 the level Wizard into a typical dungeon full of low to mid level stuff and see what happens. The general superiority of high level Magic Users (casters in modern parlance) is not a recent development. They just used to be a lot more vulnerable at low levels.

I played D&D and later 1st edition AD&D religiously back in high school and college. I DM'd more than a little as well. I've played / DM'd quite a bit since then too. One of the first things that struck me about 3E was how hard it was for PCs to die (in comparison to earlier editions). There had been a slight upward trend in survivability steadily as each edition came out. It was a vast leap forward with 3E / 3.5. And another hop with PF...


Robilar was a Chaotic Good human Fighter, actually. He had zero spells in the book with his name on them... and he "soloed" a dungeon built by a mad archmage.

A note on AD&D orc ranged weapon usage: Spear, which could be thrown at a range of 1/2/3, showed up 30% of orcs (33% of which had no other weapon, and none of which were listed as having multiple or not) and the ones that had bows had ranges of at least 5/10/15 while crossbows had at least 6/12/18.

My point on the matter is that the PC characters could, simply by having bows, out-range all but 20% of a typical orc force.

...and in pathfinder, every orc is assumed to have javelins which are less extremely out-ranged by bows or crossbows since their maximum range is no longer roughly half the first range increment of the long range weapons.

And a note on attacks: I was saying that the relative benefit of monsters receiving more attacks than the party is less by comparison, not that there wasn't still a benefit.

30 attacks that need a 15 to hit you is no where near as bad as 30 attacks that need an 11 to hit you - especially when some of those attacks that only need an 11 to hit also have the chance of doing twice as much damage.

And AD&D fighter types actually do get "iterative" attacks (their attack rate going from 1/1 round at 1st through 6th-7th level, up to 3/2 rounds, and then later to 2/1 round) - and they don't have any to-hit penalty to them either, so they actually matter regardless of the opponent being fought.

A challenge:

Take an AD&D fighter with completely average stats according to the standard creation method (scores of 9 through 12 in every ability score, your choice within that range as to what is what) and give him gear that could easily be available to him by 7th level (where he actually happens to have 3 attacks every 2 rounds) and have him fight AD&D orcs in droves, over and over and over, keep track of how many he can kill before he dies each time.

Then take a 7th level Pathfinder fighter with completely average scores according to the standard creation method (scores of 10 or 11 if I remember the math right) and equip him as expected for 7th level, and have him face off against Pathfinder orcs until he dies. Repeat until you can't stand it any more...

Then, compare the totals. My experience has shown me that the AD&D guy is likely to have a much higher average kill count - perhaps with some more samples added to mine, I might be shown my mistake.


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Guys, this may be interesting, but the AD&D vs. Pathfinder argument is really not on topic.


Spacelard wrote:

In my campaign its not just about chucking gold and diamonds at the nearest Cleric and I think this is the crux of the problem.

My players have earned the right to be Raised, etc. by suck-ups to the church and asking if there is anything they can do for the church before they need that Raise Dead.

If in your campaign Clerics will willingly raise anyone with the cash no matter what then the McDonalds drive through issue is going to be there.

If however you DM your NPC Clerics as part of a church the problem is somewhat alleviated. They may not have the spell memorised or just feel that the person doesn't deserve to be raised...
"Sorry but when was the last time you worshipped here?"
"Sorry but as a follower of a pacifist deity I don't see the need of bringing another warrior back into this world"
You get the idea.

1. What if someone in the party is a cleric?

2. Why can't they go to a church that matches their god?

Silver Crusade

Weirdo wrote:

Gonna chip in here as someone who actually played in a campaign where there was no material cost to Raise Dead. In fact, every slain PC was promptly resurrected by a mysterious spiritual force, no need for a high-level cleric.

Did it devalue death? Nope. It did lead to us being a bit more willing to commit to major encounters, since as long as one PC survived to complete the mission we didn't have to worry as much about getting the casualties sorted out. But it actually got my character very worried about the hidden cost of these resurrections, especially as there were hints that too-frequent resurrections could lead to mental or physical corruption. Did it feel like a video game? No, because when a PC died it still had an impact on the story - the character was still killed by a particular person and if the killer survived (and two PC-killers did) both would remember that encounter. Two of the PCs had a minor argument when one did something reckless, died, and was annoyed with the second for not bailing him out in time. Not to mention that a TPK would mean mission failure and the consequences for that were sometimes dire. And that's without the option of allowing raise/resurrection to occur solely on divine approval based on previous services to the faith or expected future deeds.

In conclusion: very much in favor of tying return from the dead to story rather than simply cost in diamonds.

I actually tried this once and I got the exact opposite because death became just an inconvenience. The players became very reckless because they new they could be raised at any time. They quickly became bored and asked that it be changed back.

Liberty's Edge

@weirdo - But in your game you added potential consequences for death above and beyond the game by hinting at hidden effects.

You didn't remove penalty, you replaced it.

Liberty's Edge

Little nitpick Sean: Harm can only drop you to 1HP, not into negatives.

You make some good arguments, though I am not wholly swayed. I have a house rule though where anydropped below -con has until their next turn to get healed up to above that threshold to stay alive as my way of mitigating risk. As a result most of my pc kills are from stupid player things like jumping across a lava pit with a huge armor check penalty.

Sovereign Court

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Your modern-day bias is showing. We're not talking about a smart young person getting a scholarship and going to medical school, we're talking about sponsorship of a talented student by a wealthy person. If a noble sponsored someone to become a doctor, that noble has probably invested thousands of gp into that doctor's training. And with pseudo-feudalism in most fantasy settings, that noble all but owns that doctor. The doctor is in debt to the noble... but the doctor probably doesn't want to leave because his job is to take care of a handful of people (the noble's family) rather than deal with hundreds of unwashed peasants... he probably has a nice little house or lives in the noble's manor... it is a good life, compared to someone treating commoners with plague, syphilis, and dysentery.

To be fair, Sean, comparing real-life feudal practices to a fantasy world is also building bias into the setting. No one can really say how society functions in a game setting other than the writer. One can reason that a good-aligned country or organization can have completely altruistic intentions and train/educate/level up clerics for free. Barring altruism, in a setting where the gods have direct influence on the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants, come churches could consider it their duty to do so.

Sovereign Court

BTW, I am also in the camp wherein death should be a penalty, but bringing in a new character is an even bigger penalty. I don't do this from some perverse desire to make my players miserable, but to add an element of danger/risk to the game. Do the players really want to risk pressing further into the lower levels of the dungeon or do they retreat to rest? If they do, more zombies could rise, things from the lower depths could wander up from the lower levels, etc.

But, I also like to consider how the system as a whole works. I really like the idea of changing the material component to a "resurrection stone" and the supply/demand possibilities that brings up. Sure, the church of Iomedae could devote its time to training as many higher-level clerics as possible, but if they can't get the stones, it doesn't mean much. Enter plot hook!


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Elamdri wrote:

<snip>

When I introduced the teleportation circle world, the players immediately caught on to the fact that "This is basically an airplane, but MUCH better than and cheaper to boot." and once that happened, it was pretty smooth sailing from there and they were a lot more open to ideas like traveling and exploring than they were before.

I like this. I may borrow something similar for my setting when it reaches an appropriate point in its timeline for most cultures to realize this is more beneficial to them than Sean's more historical, medieval mindset.

Designer, RPG Superstar Judge

Nebelwerfer41 wrote:
To be fair, Sean, comparing real-life feudal practices to a fantasy world is also building bias into the setting.

1) Which is another reason why the rules shouldn't have a built-in bias that group plane-travelling magic (5th level) is cheaper than one-soul-resurrection magic (5th level).

2) You're ignoring that the game mechanics don't allow you to "train up" a 9th-level cleric except through adventuring. Or perhaps story awards, which are much slower, which is why high-level non-adventuring clerics are old. So yes, if you want a bunch of clr9's available for raise dead, you either need to (A) send them off to risk their lives adventuring, or (B) wait a long, long time.

Silver Crusade

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
2) You're ignoring that the game mechanics don't allow you to "train up" a 9th-level cleric except through adventuring. Or perhaps story awards, which are much slower, which is why high-level non-adventuring clerics are old. So yes, if you want a bunch of clr9's available for raise dead, you either need to (A) send them off to risk their lives adventuring, or (B) wait a long, long time.

Well, with all due respect, I don't think there's a good reason why you can't say that an NPC can't attain higher levels in a class by training.

There's a good game mechanics reason for why it doesn't work for PCs: Because then you wouldn't really have a game, you'd have a education simulator.

But as for NPCs, I don't see a real bar to saying that "Bob the cleric has trained for 12 years from a young age with the church becoming a stronger person and growing his faith, and has attained x level."

Now, obviously, RAW, that's total fiat. But then again, so is removing the 5000g cost component of the raise dead spell.

Sovereign Court

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Nebelwerfer41 wrote:
To be fair, Sean, comparing real-life feudal practices to a fantasy world is also building bias into the setting.

1) Which is another reason why the rules shouldn't have a built-in bias that group plane-travelling magic (5th level) is cheaper than one-soul-resurrection magic (5th level).

2) You're ignoring that the game mechanics don't allow you to "train up" a 9th-level cleric except through adventuring. Or perhaps story awards, which are much slower, which is why high-level non-adventuring clerics are old. So yes, if you want a bunch of clr9's available for raise dead, you either need to (A) send them off to risk their lives adventuring, or (B) wait a long, long time.

Regarding #1, I agree, plane travelling magic should be more expensive.

Regarding #2, lives are cheap, so why not send out masses to gain life experience? Also, when you have elves, you have plenty of time. I think it could work.

Designer, RPG Superstar Judge

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Elamdri wrote:

Well, with all due respect, I don't think there's a good reason why you can't say that an NPC can't attain higher levels in a class by training.

There's a good game mechanics reason for why it doesn't work for PCs: Because then you wouldn't really have a game, you'd have a education simulator.

"My NPCs can do this simple thing, but you can't" is pretty lame. I'm all in favor of stuff like "This NPC has a special ability that you haven't seen before, and you don't know how he got it" is fine, but "you know all that hard work YOU have to do to level up, well, I don't, ha ha" is lame and reeks of GM-NPC favoritism.

Elamdri wrote:
But as for NPCs, I don't see a real bar to saying that "Bob the cleric has trained for 12 years from a young age with the church becoming a stronger person and growing his faith, and has attained x level."

Sure, as long as "X" is "1." Otherwise, why aren't the PCs able to do that? Aren't the PCs supposed to be exceptional characters? Aren't they supposed to be the hero of the story? Why does Bob get to level up while praying in church, and Kyra has to kill monsters and complete quests?

Elamdri wrote:
Now, obviously, RAW, that's total fiat.

Fiat that benefits NPCs and not PCs. Try running that one past your players. ;)

Elamdri wrote:
But then again, so is removing the 5000g cost component of the raise dead spell.

Except I've yet to see and game mechanical reason to justify keeping the diamond cost in the game. Several campaign reasons and "I don't like the feel of it" reasons, but not one game mechanical reason.

Contributor

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Removing the cost component saves a lot of trouble from the adventuring perspective, but also causes a worldbuilding problem since you then start to wonder why the clerics of good gods who are powerful enough to throw a Raise Dead aren't doing it for their parishioners for free. Look at Erastil, Shelyn, Sarenrae, and Cayden Cailean and imagine their 9th level clerics. Are they really going to shake the collection box and demand 450 GP from the grieving mother whose only child was just crushed by a runaway turnip cart, or are they just going to raise the kid because they can, since their god will grand them the same miracle the next day?

Clerics of Abadar would totally hold out for the 450 GP, or maybe raise the kid if they could take him as an indentured servant until such time as the debt is paid off, but I don't see the good clerics doing that. There might be a line of people crowding in for free miracles and the cleric might have to choose which of twenty dead children is most worthy, but if they're in a small town and there's not a catastrophe, there's no reason for anyone to stay dead barring them being an evil jerk the good cleric decides the town is better off without. And even then you'd expect the cleric of the Goddess of Redemption might still do one for free, especially if the raised evildoer has memories of being rescued from the lower planes (or even just threat thereof) by an angel of light.

Liberty's Edge

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Barging in from the end and not willing to read everything, so maybe I am repeating something that was already said.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:
But as for NPCs, I don't see a real bar to saying that "Bob the cleric has trained for 12 years from a young age with the church becoming a stronger person and growing his faith, and has attained x level."

Sure, as long as "X" is "1." Otherwise, why aren't the PCs able to do that? Aren't the PCs supposed to be exceptional characters? Aren't they supposed to be the hero of the story? Why does Bob get to level up while praying in church, and Kyra has to kill monsters and complete quests?

Because Kira want to get more than 1 level every few years? [I see you have already suggested that]

Because Kira don't want to listen for hour after hour of confessions about lusting after John wife and cheating on the grain weight?
Officiating mass could be worth 1 xp. Getting someone to truly repent his sins (regardless of what are sins for your religion, if you are CE a sin could be not having taken advantage of the possibility to harm someone) could be worth 10 xp multiplied his level.
An so on with different options for each class.
Traning and low level problems can get someone to rise in level, but at a way lower pace than an adventurer.

Silver Crusade

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Just to throw this out there, I honestly prefer Reincarnate to Raise Dead. In our Council of Thieves game, we actually used it as our raise of choice, except for the Tiefling who didn't want to lose his racial ability. Some of us used spells later on to change race back, I didn't. It's only 1000g, and it's for the most part the same, except for the possible race change. (which can end up beneficial if your lucky.)

In actual relation to the topic, how about using the Diamond as a focus instead of material component, especially if it's a lure for the soul.


Sean K Reynolds wrote:

1) Kind of like how in the modern day we train doctors, who literally have the ability to resuscitate dead people. Given, they're only doing it 10–60 minutes after death (depending on circumstances) instead of 1–9 days after death, but they are most definitely dealing with people who are clinically dead, and who according to Pathfinder rules are irrevocably dead without high-order magic (–10 hit points = dead for your typical 10 Con person.

... Also note that Pathfinder rules say a typical person dies 60 seconds after being brought below 0 hp by normal damage (1 hp per round, 9 or 10 rounds to get from dying at –1 to dead at –10), and the only way to reverse that is with magic, whereas modern emergency medical professionals often don't arrive on-scene until minutes after the person is already unconscious, yet we have a remarkably high rate of success at helping these "dead" (according to the Pathfinder rules) people. The game world is an odd mix of "you're perfectly healthy until 0 hp," "you're dying in 1 minute at negative hit points," and "you're irrevocably dead at –10 unless we can find a powerful cleric."

Using your doctor example, maybe it is a matter of changing semantics. Perhaps the name of the spell to "Resuscitate" and have the effects be something more like real-world resuscitation. i.e. maybe the negative levels wear off over time, something like one per a week (or gaming session) or something similar. Also, if the rules were changed so the character only came back with 0 hp, then there would be the added cost of one or more healing spells needed to bring the player back to full health.

I feel similarly to the Law-Chaos axis of alignment. I think that the word "Law" comes with some pre-loaded connotation, and that it should be changed to "Order."

Joseph Davis wrote:

Just to throw this out there, I honestly prefer Reincarnate to Raise Dead. In our Council of Thieves game, we actually used it as our raise of choice, except for the Tiefling who didn't want to lose his racial ability. Some of us used spells later on to change race back, I didn't. It's only 1000g, and it's for the most part the same, except for the possible race change. (which can end up beneficial if your lucky.)

In actual relation to the topic, how about using the Diamond as a focus instead of material component, especially if it's a lure for the soul.

I also like Joseph's idea of using the diamond as focus.

Liberty's Edge

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Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Your modern-day bias is showing. We're not talking about a smart young person getting a scholarship and going to medical school, we're talking about sponsorship of a talented student by a wealthy person. If a noble sponsored someone to become a doctor, that noble has probably invested thousands of gp into that doctor's training. And with pseudo-feudalism in most fantasy settings, that noble all but owns that doctor. The doctor is in debt to the noble... but the doctor probably doesn't want to leave because his job is to take care of a handful of people (the noble's family) rather than deal with hundreds of unwashed peasants... he probably has a nice little house or lives in the noble's manor... it is a good life, compared to someone treating commoners with plague, syphilis, and dysentery.

Sorry Sean, but it is your bias that is showing. Most university students during the late medieval era had parents rich enough to pay for their studies, were experienced moochers and did worked to get extra income (generally giving tuition to less intelligent and more rich people).

A bit later that the medieval era Galileo was raising extra money renting his house to students, giving private lessons, making horoscopes and crafting precision instruments for sale (like his military compass, telescopes and microscopes). He later choose to move at the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany for a better pay, but wasn't in debit with him for being his sponsor during his studies.

Medieval university was very different from today university, you shouldn't project today costs and mechanics both ways.

Edit: I have read your original post and not only the citation, so the argument is a little different from what I thought reading the citation alone.
On the other hand a city like Padua in the XIV century had more than one thousand notaries, and that people had attended several years of university. That is more than 1% of the city population at the time.
The hamlets around the city probably hadn't a single notary in them, but still the number of learned people with a long university training wasn't necessarily low. Instead it was heavily influenced by how rich your city or nation was.

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Diego Rossi wrote:
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Your modern-day bias is showing. We're not talking about a smart young person getting a scholarship and going to medical school, we're talking about sponsorship of a talented student by a wealthy person. If a noble sponsored someone to become a doctor, that noble has probably invested thousands of gp into that doctor's training. And with pseudo-feudalism in most fantasy settings, that noble all but owns that doctor. The doctor is in debt to the noble... but the doctor probably doesn't want to leave because his job is to take care of a handful of people (the noble's family) rather than deal with hundreds of unwashed peasants... he probably has a nice little house or lives in the noble's manor... it is a good life, compared to someone treating commoners with plague, syphilis, and dysentery.

Sorry Sean, but it is your bias that is showing. Most university students during the late medieval era had parents rich enough to pay for their studies, were experienced moochers and did worked to get extra income (generally giving tuition to less intelligent and more rich people).

A bit later that the medieval era Galileo was raising extra money renting his house to students, giving private lessons, making horoscopes and crafting precision instruments for sale (like his military compass, telescopes and microscopes). He later choose to move at the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany for a better pay, but wasn't in debit with him for being his sponsor during his studies.

Medieval university was very different from today university, you shouldn't project today costs and mechanics both ways.

Edit: I have read your original post and not only the citation, so the argument is a little different from what I thought reading the citation alone.
On the other hand a city like Padua in the XIV century had more than one thousand notaries, and that people had attended several years of university. That is more than 1% of the city population at the time.
The hamlets around the city probably...

+1 to this.

If you want to look at a reasonably accessible period source for student life in the middle ages, just pull out Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" and read about Nicholas the student who was renting a room from the miller with the young pretty wife. See, here:

Chaucer, The Miller's Tale wrote:

3219 And thus this sweete clerk his tyme spente

And thus this sweet clerk spent his time
3220 After his freendes fyndyng and his rente.
Living on his friends' support and his (own) income.

And earlier it's made pretty clear that Nicholas is making his extra money by casting horoscopes.


Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:
But as for NPCs, I don't see a real bar to saying that "Bob the cleric has trained for 12 years from a young age with the church becoming a stronger person and growing his faith, and has attained x level."

Sure, as long as "X" is "1." Otherwise, why aren't the PCs able to do that? Aren't the PCs supposed to be exceptional characters? Aren't they supposed to be the hero of the story? Why does Bob get to level up while praying in church, and Kyra has to kill monsters and complete quests?

Elamdri wrote:
Now, obviously, RAW, that's total fiat.
Fiat that benefits NPCs and not PCs. Try running that one past your players. ;)

I imagine most players would be perfectly okay with it, Sean. Most players play the game to go out and adventure, tell stories, and experience awesome plots and combats. I have no problem with telling a player "Yes, if you settle down for a few years, do such-and-such duties, and all that sort of thing, you'll gain a level from the experience you'll gather doing non-combat things in that time". And I imagine most of my players wouldn't argue with the fact. Sitting in town and doing the occasional non-combat "quest" for ~50 XP a pop when you need 50,000 to get your next level isn't going to sound like a fun time to most players, and unless the entire party retires that way it doesn't make sense to time-skip it.

If I had a player who would rather gain levels that way than adventuring, I'd happily say, "Okay, your character retires to town. When two/five/ten years pass and you gain a level, we'll get back to you. The plot will probably be over by then. In the meantime, gonna return focus to the rest of the party who's continuing to adventure."

PCs will gain a level in a month or so of adventuring time - at least in my experience, and that's of course prone to fluctuate based on downtime and other factors - whereas that retired character will take a year or more. I hardly consider that favoring the NPCs at all.

Designer, RPG Superstar Judge

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:
Are they really going to shake the collection box and demand 450 GP from the grieving mother whose only child was just crushed by a runaway turnip cart, or are they just going to raise the kid because they can, since their god will grand them the same miracle the next day?

You could ask the same question about the 10 gp for a cure light wounds to bring Barkeeper Bob from his –5 hp stab wound back up to full. Churches take care of their congregation through donations for services. People who can pay, do, and those payments cover the expenses of the on-site priests and for charity work like curing Barkeeper Bob and raising Little Tommy Turnip Cart.

Which is also a campaign justification for the cost, not a game-mechanics reason.

Diego Rossi wrote:
Barging in from the end and not willing to read everything, so maybe I am repeating something that was already said.

I think Elamdri is talking about a cleric "training for 12 years from a young age and is now age 20 and is level 5," to which I repeat, "then why does PC Kyra start at level 1?" You're talking about "spend 5 years helping in a church, gain a level," which I'm totally fine with whether a PC or NPC wants to do it.

Hawkins wrote:
Using your doctor example, maybe it is a matter of changing semantics. Perhaps the name of the spell to "Resuscitate" and have the effects be something more like real-world resuscitation. i.e. maybe the negative levels wear off over time, something like one per a week (or gaming session) or something similar. Also, if the rules were changed so the character only came back with 0 hp, then there would be the added cost of one or more healing spells needed to bring the player back to full health.

... which is altering game mechanics, and if you're doing that then there's no reason to keep the 5,000 gp cost of raise dead because there isn't a mechanical reason for it... or because "resuscitating" a "dead" person is something you could do with a cure wounds spell right after a PC has "died" because there's not much difference between barely-alive at –9 and clinically dead at –10. Which means spells like raise dead would only be used for "Bob died and 24 hours have passed, he's most definitely dead, cast raise dead on him to bring him back."

I'm still looking for a valid game-mechanics reason to keep the 5,000 gp cost, haven't gotten one yet. :)


Hawkins wrote:
Also, if the rules were changed so the character only came back with 0 hp, then there would be the added cost of one or more healing spells needed to bring the player back to full health.

The rules for raise dead right now specify that the raised character comes back with hp equal to their HD; so a 9th-level character has 9 hp when raised. There's already a cost of healing spells to bring them up to full.


Somewhat off-topic, but a few years back when I was running a homebrew campaign setting in 3.5 it involved a concept whereby the raising of the dead was something of a social/religious taboo. Spells that raised the dead back to life (permanently) did not have costly material components, but instead you had to sacrifice an equivalent HD of living creatures in exchange, so that the greedy god of the dead would release the soul.

Death, typically, became a permanent thing in these instances. A hero would die and the price for their return -- morally -- was too steep. One of the best roleplaying instances to come out of that, however, was from a party that had their leader die on an extremely important quest. They wound up tracking down the party leader's killer (who was a powerful sorcerer/rogue), captured him, and then the party's cleric sacrificed him to bring their companion back.

The guilt/stress they all in-character had over violating moral/religious lines was really fantastic and it made the party leader's return all the more dramatic and intense.

Long story short, I've never liked diamonds either and I'm with SKR these days.

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Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:
Are they really going to shake the collection box and demand 450 GP from the grieving mother whose only child was just crushed by a runaway turnip cart, or are they just going to raise the kid because they can, since their god will grand them the same miracle the next day?

You could ask the same question about the 10 gp for a cure light wounds to bring Barkeeper Bob from his –5 hp stab wound back up to full. Churches take care of their congregation through donations for services. People who can pay, do, and those payments cover the expenses of the on-site priests and for charity work like curing Barkeeper Bob and raising Little Tommy Turnip Cart.

Which is also a campaign justification for the cost, not a game-mechanics reason.

True enough. Though then comes the obvious question of whether any spells should require a GP component.

Getting rid of the whole thing would keep my players from continually taking everything to the moneychangers to get it turned into spell-component-quality gems.

And there's probably nothing more disheartening for a dwarven gemcutter who loves his art than to watch the stone he's spent months cutting and polishing get crushed and snorted by a wizard or lobbed at an uncaring god by a random cleric.

Or, as put by one of my player's wizards in character, when asked why he needed diamonds, "Don't ask me why, but the one universal constant of magic I've managed to discover is that reality is a whore for bling."

If we did away with the GP component for all spells, I for one would be happier.

Liberty's Edge

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Sean K Reynolds wrote:


Diego Rossi wrote:
Barging in from the end and not willing to read everything, so maybe I am repeating something that was already said.

I think Elamdri is talking about a cleric "training for 12 years from a young age and is now age 20 and is level 5," to which I repeat, "then why does PC Kyra start at level 1?" You're talking about "spend 5 years helping in a church, gain a level," which I'm totally fine with whether a PC or NPC wants to do it.

Then we are on the same wavelength. There is a minimum adventuring age that depend on your class for a reason.

In my vision of the game world there is a good number of level 1-3 NPC, but above that the numbers dwindle very fast.

To continue the example about medieval times, getting a Theology Degree was extremely long for modern standards. I am going from memory but the course to get it would require something like 15 years of academical studies, generally from 16-17 years to more than 30.
In our games character starting in a trained class, with a maximum age of 15+2d6, get a good deal. :)


Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

And there's probably nothing more disheartening for a dwarven gemcutter who loves his art than to watch the stone he's spent months cutting and polishing get crushed and snorted by a wizard or lobbed at an uncaring god by a random cleric.

Or, as put by one of my player's wizards in character, when asked why he needed diamonds, "Don't ask me why, but the one universal constant of magic I've managed to discover is that reality is a whore for bling."

If we did away with the GP component for all spells, I for one would be happier.

I could get behind this.

Silver Crusade

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:

Well, with all due respect, I don't think there's a good reason why you can't say that an NPC can't attain higher levels in a class by training.

There's a good game mechanics reason for why it doesn't work for PCs: Because then you wouldn't really have a game, you'd have a education simulator.
"My NPCs can do this simple thing, but you can't" is pretty lame. I'm all in favor of stuff like "This NPC has a special ability that you haven't seen before, and you don't know how he got it" is fine, but "you know all that hard work YOU have to do to level up, well, I don't, ha ha" is lame and reeks of GM-NPC favoritism.

That's a fair interpretation, although it's not my intent certainly. To be honest, in my games I typically don't like the idea of NPC's scaling to level with the party. I typically don't have NPC's above 5th level, because otherwise, you run into the classic problem of the PC's are 7th level and in a town populated by 10th level guards and 15th level bartenders, and everyone starts to wonder why THEY have to go risk THEIR lives when the local farmers are more adepts at combat.

My point was more a thought about the world building side of the game: That is if the power exists to provide a huge boon to society, such as raising the dead, wouldn't society do everything in it's power to cultivate as many individuals with that power as necessary?

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:
But as for NPCs, I don't see a real bar to saying that "Bob the cleric has trained for 12 years from a young age with the church becoming a stronger person and growing his faith, and has attained x level."
Sure, as long as "X" is "1." Otherwise, why aren't the PCs able to do that? Aren't the PCs supposed to be exceptional characters? Aren't they supposed to be the hero of the story? Why does Bob get to level up while praying in church, and Kyra has to kill monsters and complete quests?

I think there's two different takes on what it takes to become a level one character. I think the rules assume that a character attains level 1 by rigorous training and study. After that, they must go adventuring to "level up." And that's fine, but I've always viewed a 1st level character as someone's who's just born into the world with some inherent calling.

And to be honest, there is something of an interesting disconnect between the concept of adventuring and leveling up, vs how some classes function. For example, I think it makes perfect sense for a fighter to level up by adventuring and fighting monsters, because he's a fighter. His whole life revolves around combat and perfecting his martial craft through fighting.

But what about the wizard? After all, we look at most wizards as being the result of many years of magical study. But what connection is there between a wizard improving his craft and running around fighting monsters and the like? Could you not make an argument that it would be easier and perhaps more practical for him to apply his craft in some arcane tower, spending his days reading books and practicing his spells with fellow wizards?

Perhaps not, but I don't necessarily thing that's an invalid take on the concept of leveling. Granted, it's not a concept that facilitates gameplay.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:
Now, obviously, RAW, that's total fiat.
Fiat that benefits NPCs and not PCs. Try running that one past your players. ;)

Touche

Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:
But then again, so is removing the 5000g cost component of the raise dead spell.
Except I've yet to see a game mechanical reason to justify keeping the diamond cost in the game. Several campaign reasons and "I don't like the feel of it" reasons, but not one game mechanical reason.

...Knowing my players, I could see them arguing that they fight each other to the death each night and then the cleric brings the loser back to life, and the victors all get EXP equal to the value of the dead player and then all chip in to get him a restoration.

EDIT: And I say that after already having to deal with "Well if Jessica spawns with 42,000g every time she makes a new character because that's the appropriate gold value of her gear for that level, why don't we just keep killing her new character over and over again and looting her characters until we've farmed enough money to get some better gear for the entire party."

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2009 Top 4

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

if you're doing that then there's no reason to keep the 5,000 gp cost of raise dead because there isn't a mechanical reason for it... or because "resuscitating" a "dead" person is something you could do with a cure wounds spell right after a PC has "died" because there's not much difference between barely-alive at –9 and clinically dead at –10. Which means spells like raise dead would only be used for "Bob died and 24 hours have passed, he's most definitely dead, cast raise dead on him to bring him back."

I'm still looking for a valid game-mechanics reason to keep the 5,000 gp cost, haven't gotten one yet. :)

In the previous edition of the game, you lost a level due to being raised. Getting whacked with a 5,000gp fee for being raised helped to mitigate the problem of having Wealth=X while being Level=(X-1). Pathfinder removed level loss, and therefore the additional 5,000gp fine throws the Level/Wealth system out of balance the more often death occurs. I generally agree that it's a relic and should be refactored to better fit the updated rules.


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I'm all for removing the negative aspects of the spell. In my campaign the dead PC typically got looted while the player rolled up a new character. Then you've got a player out of action instead of playing. Then you've got a new character to introduce who is strangely fully customized for the current setting and situation. Bad.

Liberty's Edge

Even earlier version of the game had you rolling a % dice against the chance of permanent death. And I have seen a guy with a 99% chance of returning throwing a natural 100.

I see a in world reason to keep the cost of raising the dead:
Let's take an example a city with a stable population of 10,000 persons, 1 9th level cleric and do some very rough mathematics.
With an average lifespan of 30 years we have about 333 dead every year. A single level 9th cleric could raise from the dead all of them if there wasn't an extra cost.
As most good clerics would do that for future considerations, not hard cash, the other churches would have a heavy competitions if they were strict on asking for a hard cash only. So almost every church would end raising the dead for small donations and promises of "good" work for the church.
So removing the cost would change the shape of the world to something very different from our experience and hard to conceive.

Personally I think that making the world "hard to conceive" is a valid "game-mechanics reason to keep the 5,000 gp cost".

On the other hand I don't like the idea of the diamond as the rule-all currency for magical effects, so I allow alternate materials and generally, for divine spells, I say that it disappear, not that it is consumed. What really happen of the diamond is anyone guess.

Gururamalamaswami wrote:
I'm all for removing the negative aspects of the spell. In my campaign the dead PC typically got looted while the player rolled up a new character. Then you've got a player out of action instead of playing. Then you've got a new character to introduce who is strangely fully customized for the current setting and situation. Bad.

That raise the question: why the players are so little attacked to the characters that a PC death is meaningless?

If a character die and the other characters reaction is "Well, we loot his body and throw him in the nearest dump." why the characters aren't killing each other for the valuables they have? Or they are already doing that?

We all know the adage: "Who lose a friend find a treasure." but the friend part generally is more important than the treasure part.

Silver Crusade

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The 5,000gp diamond mechanic is incongruent with the spell's origin from AD&D, but if needed I could justify it. Personally, I'm in favor of AD&D mechanics.

AD&D - the Origin of Raise Dead

In AD&D, raising the dead was a big event and limited in # of times and use. Raise dead was only available to clerics whose diety granted "major" access to the sphere of Necromancy, so not every cleric had it. Those who did only had spells up to 7th level, so raise dead was one of the game's most powerful spells. Even so, it needed protection against abuse. Otherwise, death would lose its sting. Even today, there'd be little thrill if one knew character death was meaningless and penalty-free. Just raise me up and back I'll go computer-game style to kamikaze charge the enemy once more.

Notably, it was a 1-round cast spell with range and no components. Combined with a heal spell and one could be raised in combat, in theory. The stronger Resurrection at 7th level would age the caster 3 years, making it a carefully and rarely used spell, as one might expect from any culture.

Hence, AD&D had a CON-based resurrection % chance, and the loss of 1 CON per raise dead. Unlike later editions, you don't get this loss back without wish type magic. Over time, the PC would have to be retired due to low hit points or just would fail the resurrection chance roll. This explained why even the most powerful could not be eternally raised from the dead. Versimilitude is preserved. [In line with Dragon Magazine, I house-ruled the resurrection % chance would decrease each time but didn't lower a player's hit points. It kept the mechanic of eventually being unable to be raised in place.]

Third Edition Mucks it Up

3rd Edition introduced more durable characters but death was still a reality. Designers weren't keen on taking 1 CON away per cast, well, who's going to keep their character that way? But, they need a way to make death mean something. 3rd edition is more gear-based than before; characters have 15 slots for magic items and need items to boost major stats and so on. Hit the players in the wallet, they think.

Aha, diamonds without rhyme or reason are chosen as the focus. 5K should hurt anyone's wallet, and we'll take away levels that can easily be restored for more money (because any party that can get raise dead can get restoration just as well. They'll balance abuse, make the spell take a minute, so it probably can't be used in combat. But now we've lost versimilitude. Anyone with a fat wallet can be raised and restored? Plus any cleric can cast the spell, even Goofy the Blessed who worships the God of Destruction who is all about destroying things, not bringing them back.

There's nothing historical to draw upon "diamonds" as compared to any other gemstone as having to do with raising the dead. At best, 2nd edition's Volo's guide mentioned diamonds as being suited for spells that locate, so maybe finding a soul?

Pathfinder - same story

Why one diamond instead of multiple? Who knows...

If I needed to explain why a 5K diamond, it'd be that the diamond will help the cleric find the soul and bring it back. Only a diamond of very heightened quality, size, and durability could house the soul for that brief time it takes to return the soul to the body. Anything less and the gemstone would be destroyed, the soul lost. Woe to the infamous High Priest Dartag who tried casting this spell with a fake diamond supplied to him by a scheming thief.

However, I'm so heavily leaning on going back to AD&D concepts. Remove the cost of raise dead, remove the level loss (because that's a pain anyways to track and just another mechanic to drain money). Bring back the CON mechanic: # of times to be raised is limited to your "base" CON score (without enhancements). Hit that magic number and you aren't coming back ever. Maybe even bring back the CON %, so players don't feel like a "cat with nine lives" and there's some feeling of trepidation to being raised.

Liberty's Edge

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This is an interesting discussion of cost, but I think risk would be a more interesting motivator.

I think adding some spell failure chance to non-combat spells could meet both the desire for the show to go on without financial disincentive, as well as making it a real risk.

The concern I have is that we tend to drift toward devaluation if there is no disincentive. One of the changes from 3.5 to Pathfinder that I didn't fully agree with (but understood) was the removal of XP cost. I agree that it was not a good approach, but financial penalty isn't really the same, and now we are talking about removing that...

Wouldn't it make sense to add in some unavoidable failure risk in some spells? The spell would still be available for story purposes, but the risks would make players have to do the cost benefit more first, or at least fear failure if the cleric raising you rolled a 1 and you could no longer be brought back at all (or at least without some deus machina)

And I would like to add that I'm glad Sean is joining in this convo and hopefully everyone keeps the civil tone. This has been an interesting discussion.

Shadow Lodge

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This indeed has been an interesting discussion, and useful to me as I'm considering playing with the Raise Dead mechanic in my upcoming campaign. (Among other things considering giving the Goddess of Death veto power over all use of Raise Dead, limiting wide-scale use.)

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

In 3.5, using the quick "build a community" rules, the highest-level cleric in a community was level 1d6 + the community modifier, which meant that you couldn't have a level 9 cleric until a large town (community modifier +3, 2,000-5,000 people). So at best, one in 2,000 people in a large town might be a 9th-level cleric capable of casting raise dead.

That cleric ... (5) can only do it once a day, so there's probably a waiting list of important people ahead of you, which (6) means you may run up against the max-days-dead-equal-to-caster-level limitation, which means you can't just raise everyone after an orc attack, at most you can bring back 9 people before the remaining dead are out of luck.

I did a bit of stats checking, and barring large-scale orc attacks or plague, that cleric is probably not going to have a problem keeping up with the death rate. Wikipedia says that in ancient times and the middle ages, the death rate was about 40 per 1,000 people per year. Using that benchmark, in a typical large town of 3,500 people we will see 140 deaths in a year, less than one per day. Unless those deaths are clustered close together due to large-scale tragedies, the 9th level cleric in that town is capable of raising every person killed by accident, violence, or disease. That's only within that settlement, but nearby smaller settlements or large towns not lucky enough to boast a suitable cleric would probably attempt to bring in their dead, especially if they can manage Gentle Repose to give them a few extra days travel time (which requires a 3rd-5th level caster).

Now of course the question becomes whether that cleric is benevolent enough to raise the dead pro bono and whether the social structure encourages or prohibits the cleric from doing so. And whether that's the case - and how the resulting changes in availability of raise dead affect the setting - is really a campaign building issue.

I also tend to assume that NPCs above level 5 or so are fairly rare, and that this is partly because it is not easy to train high-level characters.

ciretose wrote:

@weirdo - But in your game you added potential consequences for death above and beyond the game by hinting at hidden effects.

You didn't remove penalty, you replaced it.

First, I didn't add or replace anything - I was a player in this one, not the GM.

Second, the consequences were pretty much identical to those of a standard Resurrection. We carried around a negative level for a while, until they were removed after meeting major campaign goals (we didn't have access to Restoration). The threat of deterioration after frequent deaths was just our GM's way of saying in-character "don't abuse this, guys, or I'll have to make dying harder on you," and he didn't have to because not dying was still largely preferable to dying for our characters (though again there were situations in which we were more willing to sacrifice a single PC for the sake of the mission). The idea of being in debt to the supernatural force that resurrected us was entirely made up by my (mildly paranoid) character. The resurrector was really just interested in our adventure, and there never was any real evidence that it wanted anything other than to continue watching us. And the RP elements about dying itself - the blame and the consequences of failure apart from simple dying - are really the sort of realistic story details that belong in any PF game no matter whether death is permanent, requires a 5000gp diamond to reverse, requires a quest or divine intervention to reverse, or is easily reversed by a suitably powerful character.

shallowsoul wrote:
I actually tried this once and I got the exact opposite because death became just an inconvenience. The players became very reckless because they new they could be raised at any time. They quickly became bored and asked that it be changed back.

My first question would be whether the story elements were there - were there consequences for failing apart from dying? Was there a risk that if the PCs died and failed to rescue the princess, she would be eaten by a dragon? Did they get any reactions from people who had seen the PCs die and now encountered them alive again (with those reactions depending on whether the common person or even the average adventurer also had easy access to raise dead?)

If story elements were included, then clearly this didn't work too well for you. But it doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to remove the 5000 gp "death tax" or replace it with something thematically more interesting (such as the favor of a church or at least a friendly high-level cleric who might be put at risk by the BBEG). I had a very positive experience. I think that death was at least as meaningful in that game as in another recent game where once the party hit level 9, it was assumed that we'd pay out the 7000 gold for a Raise and two Restorations for any dead PC (or 3000 if the PC was willing to try reincarnation). In both games the real drama wasn't in whether the PCs would die, it was whether they would succeed, through what methods, and at what cost.

I really have no strong opinion as to whether raise dead ought to be available at no cost, at material cost (diamonds or otherwise), at intangible cost such as performing a quest, or just not available. I do think it's a story issue and a playstyle issue, not a game mechanics issue. I think that GMs should be encouraged to treat it as such and judge what suits their table best.

Grand Lodge

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Sean K Reynolds wrote:
My thoughts on it are: don't have the gp cost, don't have the negative level be permanent. It sucks to die, it sucks that one of the PCs has to use a high-level spell to fix the problem. We grew up playing video games where you die, hit Continue, and keep playing. These costs are among the last "DM vs. players" mentality of the old style of gaming, and I don't play that way.

To some extent I can see this for today's generation. But when I grew up playing video games, when you died you inserted another quarter, hit continue before the timer counted down to 0, and kept playing. There was a very real world cost for resurrecting your character.

I'm also not sure I care for a game where character death is treated as a trivial matter. In fact without the threat of character death I'm not quite sure what point there is to even playing the game. Essentially the GM could just as easily sit down at the first session and say "Here is Rise of the Runelords. Your characters encountered these creatures, you killed them all. Yay you. You are now legends in Varisia. Game over. Wasn't that exciting!? Okay what AP do we want to 'play' next? Skull and Shackles? Okay give me 30 minutes and we'll knock that out right quick too."

We have to remember that Pathfinder and DnD 3.x are not exactly "roleplaying" games. They are table top miniature combat games with the occasional roleplaying intermissions. For the role-player, the costs and penalties make character death something to be played and embraced. For the metagamer or power gamer character death provides an opportunity to play a different class or different "character" at the very least. For both it is a win-win situation.

Removing costs and penalties to character death in fact penalizes the role-player. There is no obstacle, no consequence, no risk and therefore no real reward, to his actions. For the role-player it is boring. You know you will win before you even begin the game. There is no suspense, it is all a foregone conclusion. I don't want to play that way.


Krome wrote:
Essentially the GM could just as easily sit down at the first session and say "Here is Rise of the Runelords. Your characters encountered these creatures, you killed them all. Yay you. You are now legends in Varisia. Game over. Wasn't that exciting!? Okay what AP do we want to 'play' next? Skull and Shackles? Okay give me 30 minutes and we'll knock that out right quick too."

I'm totally proposing this to our GM next session! (If I come back with a black eye and a dead character, I'm suing you, Krome.)

:)


Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Elamdri wrote:

Well, with all due respect, I don't think there's a good reason why you can't say that an NPC can't attain higher levels in a class by training.

There's a good game mechanics reason for why it doesn't work for PCs: Because then you wouldn't really have a game, you'd have a education simulator.

"My NPCs can do this simple thing, but you can't" is pretty lame. I'm all in favor of stuff like "This NPC has a special ability that you haven't seen before, and you don't know how he got it" is fine, but "you know all that hard work YOU have to do to level up, well, I don't, ha ha" is lame and reeks of GM-NPC favoritism.

Elamdri wrote:
But as for NPCs, I don't see a real bar to saying that "Bob the cleric has trained for 12 years from a young age with the church becoming a stronger person and growing his faith, and has attained x level."

Sure, as long as "X" is "1." Otherwise, why aren't the PCs able to do that? Aren't the PCs supposed to be exceptional characters? Aren't they supposed to be the hero of the story? Why does Bob get to level up while praying in church, and Kyra has to kill monsters and complete quests?

Elamdri wrote:
Now, obviously, RAW, that's total fiat.

Fiat that benefits NPCs and not PCs. Try running that one past your players. ;)

Elamdri wrote:
But then again, so is removing the 5000g cost component of the raise dead spell.
Except I've yet to see and game mechanical reason to justify keeping the diamond cost in the game. Several campaign reasons and "I don't like the feel of it" reasons, but not one game mechanical reason.

Do you allow npcs to use the same methods as your players? After all, if raise dead is free what stops the big bad from being resurrected by his lower level minions?

Shadow Lodge

When my group things the BBEG's allies may use Raise Dead we very carefully retrieve the body, preventing all but True Resurrection. Hypothetically speaking, even lopping off and disposing of the head will prevent Raise and will require the BBEG's allies to go to the extra trouble to get a Resurrection.

Which is another reason why even when Raise is easy, it's an act of faith to die and assume that your allies will be both willing and able to raise you from the dead.

Krome wrote:

I'm also not sure I care for a game where character death is treated as a trivial matter. In fact without the threat of character death I'm not quite sure what point there is to even playing the game. Essentially the GM could just as easily sit down at the first session and say "Here is Rise of the Runelords. Your characters encountered these creatures, you killed them all. Yay you. You are now legends in Varisia. Game over. Wasn't that exciting!? Okay what AP do we want to 'play' next? Skull and Shackles? Okay give me 30 minutes and we'll knock that out right quick too."

Removing costs and penalties to character death in fact penalizes the role-player. There is no obstacle, no consequence, no risk and therefore no real reward, to his actions. For the role-player it is boring. You know you will win before you even begin the game. There is no suspense, it is all a foregone conclusion. I don't want to play that way.

Well, that gets rid of the whole "how did we get there" bit. And that's the good bit. Historical movies are proof that for many people, even if we know how it ends we still like to see events unfold.

Question for the discussion - how many people would be OK with removing the cost of a single Raise Dead if there were mechanisms preventing a character from being raised repeatedly or frivolously?

Silver Crusade

Weirdo wrote:

When my group things the BBEG's allies may use Raise Dead we very carefully retrieve the body, preventing all but True Resurrection. Hypothetically speaking, even lopping off and disposing of the head will prevent Raise and will require the BBEG's allies to go to the extra trouble to get a Resurrection.

Which is another reason why even when Raise is easy, it's an act of faith to die and assume that your allies will be both willing and able to raise you from the dead.

Krome wrote:

I'm also not sure I care for a game where character death is treated as a trivial matter. In fact without the threat of character death I'm not quite sure what point there is to even playing the game. Essentially the GM could just as easily sit down at the first session and say "Here is Rise of the Runelords. Your characters encountered these creatures, you killed them all. Yay you. You are now legends in Varisia. Game over. Wasn't that exciting!? Okay what AP do we want to 'play' next? Skull and Shackles? Okay give me 30 minutes and we'll knock that out right quick too."

Removing costs and penalties to character death in fact penalizes the role-player. There is no obstacle, no consequence, no risk and therefore no real reward, to his actions. For the role-player it is boring. You know you will win before you even begin the game. There is no suspense, it is all a foregone conclusion. I don't want to play that way.

Well, that gets rid of the whole "how did we get there" bit. And that's the good bit. Historical movies are proof that for many people, even if we know how it ends we still like to see events unfold.

Question for the discussion - how many people would be OK with removing the cost of a single Raise Dead if there were mechanisms preventing a character from being raised repeatedly or frivolously?

And there are lots of us who don't like "movie style" games.


I have not read this entire thread, but it has inspired me to put more valuable and useful gems in loot from now on.

Mostly just to see if my players immediately sell them instead of saving them for a rainy day.

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