Quote from: McrowYeah, fumbling a fire breath spell  is bad! Well it made the session interesting for me atleast. I think he was at 5th level or something like that @ the time. Ohh well, it's not every day you get to see a Kolbas head blow up like framing balloon.

Well, I do have a rep to maintain you know. How else am I supposed to reinforce that I am a killer GM?

Bill

Quote from: HinterWeltWell, I do have a rep to maintain you know. How else am I supposed to reinforce that I am a killer GM?

Bill

more like evil bastard GM!! :eek:

just kidding.

Quote from: MaddmanWouldn't it make more sense to change the rules so they aren't getting killed, but just incapacitated?  If you think about it and change 'dead and need a raise' to 'badly wounded and need powerful healing' things don't need to change much at all mechanically.

I heartily agree. I'm not comfortable with most of the raise mechanisms


Chacal

How do I feel about getting brought back to life? Better, usually.

There was a recent OotS script that highlighted that being brought back to life isn't that easy.

So far, in the campaigns I DM, there have been three deaths. Only one was temporary, and this one because it would truly have fucked up the campaign too much. (I had just started DMing and didn't get a good grasp of how to evaluate challenges for the party, so I let die in what was just supposed to be a diversion a PC that had just been given a divine quest by an avatar of her goddess... Alright, divine intervention presto! It was that or stopping the campaign just after it began...)

Both others happened in more controlled situations so the PCs were on their own if they wanted to raise their fallen friend -- and it turned out in both case, they had no mean to do it, unsurprisingly.

I run a high power, high magic, high level campaign setting (Well, for the Pre-Winter War setting, post is a whole new story) where resurrection CAN be done. Temples often use speak with dead to discover if the dead can be brought back to life, or if they are willing.

However, we also have the spell "Lay to Rest" which drew a lot of reviewer flack for making it so the victim of the spell could not be raised, resurrected, reincarnated, without the interference of a god. "Too mean" I think it was called.

BUT, in my campaign, dying is the least of your worries.

Case in point: The party gets in a MASSIVE fight with some powerful foes, who escape. The combat ressurection spell was used already, so that was no help, but the party's mage was snatched by the bad guy.

Who tricked the wizard into thinking it was his friend resurrecting him.

When the party tried True-Rez... Wah wah wah...

Psionics, brain washing, etc, and WHAM! Here came the NPC at the party, screaming: "YOU LEFT ME BEHIND TO DIE, FUCKERS!" and the fight was on.

Plus, you have to look at this...

Is the character a worshipper of good standing with the God? No? Then the god will be appealed to for Rez and go: "I don't know this asswipe. I'm not rezzing him, and he won't even swear to serve me. I'm going back to poker."

The thing is, many players and GM's read the rules, and want to completely eliminate the human element. They don't want a GM, they want a walking talking NWN server.

Go ahead, give a simple experiment a try. Send the cleric player a note stating that his God has sent him a dream where he will no longer provide his gentle grace to the "heretics" that the cleric insists on wasting his power to protect, heal, and ressurect.

Watch your players reactions, and tell me what goes on.

It depends.

In a popcorn D&D game, I include it as a convenience and nobody thinks too hard about the consequences.

In a stock fantasy game it either doesn't exist, is extraordinarily difficult or has massive drawbacks.

Other thoughts:

1. Drawing a bit from Exalted, I would postulate a world where heroes who are slain are offered a chance at ressurection and immortality by ancient evil beings.  In return, the hero agrees to further their will in the world.  I don't see many PCs doing this, but it could be a story hook.

2. Raising the dead draws a demon into the world and binds it to the life of the target.  Slaying the demon kills the person, killing the person slays the demon.  This may be something the players do, or it may be something they stumbled upon.  The moral quandary involved in raising the dead would certainly increase.  I can imagine PCs hunting down a demon and imprisoning it in order to save the life of their comrade, but this type of epic adventure seems adequate to have raising available to heroic characters like the PCs while making it undesirable to the world at large.

3. Those who are raised are marked, either spiritually or physically, and suffer severe social stigma.  Perhaps people distrust those who have visited the lands of the dead, perhaps they are said to bring misfortune or the ability to curse those around them, perhaps raising the dead is considered unnatural or against the will of the gods.  If the person is spiritually marked, there must be a way to detect it that is not too complicated (they don't cast reflections or have no shadow).  The reason for the mark can be anything, from a toll paid to the ferryman on the river Styx to the idea that everytime you are brought back a piece of you is left behind.  Few people will want to be raised in a culture where raising the dead is severely stigmatized.

I'll have to think of some more. hmmm.....

I had a pacifist character who was killed - and the GM made him stand before the god of the dead.  The god (whoever it was - can't 'member) sent me back to mock my beliefs, and told me that for one year I had to send one soul to him per day or he would take an innocent person for that day's kill... starting with those closest and dearest to me.  Amazing roleplaying experience... my character ended up a sociopath cold-blooded killer after sending 365 people to their doom.  It started with people who deserved it... but towards the end he really didn't care who he sent.  Went from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil in a game year.

When he finally died again - long after all of this - he was put in a special hell where he was tormented for all time by the souls of those people he killed.  Ironic...

and yet other people would winge that the DM was railroading their character. :rolleyes:

In Book of Jalan, all magic is temporary unless you 'seal' it with a permanent loss of your magic potential. Raising the dead is fairly easy, but keeping them alive isn't.

-mice

Quote from: Bagpussand yet other people would winge that the DM was railroading their character. :rolleyes:

Yeah - at first I was pissed, but I saw it as an excellent roleplaying opportunity... dealing with being forced to violate morals, building a hatred for myself that bled to all around me... insanity and coping...  O the fun misery!

My fantasy campaigns tend to be low-magic, so priests capable of casting Resurrection tend to be on the rare side... and even if the PCs can find one, there's no guarantee that he or she will agree to do it...

9 out of 10 times, I will refuse resurrection for my PC. The 10th time is when a GM really tries to make my character part of the campaign and not a random stand-in. Then, there's usually a reason to come back beyond "I want to kill the one that killed me", plus I "reward" the DM for his/her work.

Quote from: VarajReally ... my distaste for rez is speaking as a player.  As a GM I don't care.

Oh... ditto. Though I really like maddman's idea of re-phrasing death and resurrection to badly wounded, comatose and in need of powerful healing.

I LOVE getting brought back to life! I think it rocks, and I get more and more happy every time it happens. My characters like it too.  :pimpdahoe:

As a DM I fall mostly on the side of very rare resurrections. I may have allowed it once or twice in my years of running games. My feeling is that if PC's don't think that death is the "end", they could start playing sloppy and part of the danger the characters face is minimized.

I believe resurrections should only happen when it furthers the story - and it should be treated like the miracle it would be.