This recently came up as a topic with a friend of mine. I've been involved in D&D since 1986-87. Back in those days Dungeon Crawling was the emphasis and that is obvious from all the adventures published back then given D&D's roots. Not that it couldn't be about more storytelling. The essentially elements are there to do that but you can really see its wargaming influences. Back then there were things that could get in the way of your dungeon delving and make it less convenient. Some creatures could inflict curses. No one wants to have the curse carry over to the next encounter and be debuffed during those fights. So you have remote curse and fixed in seconds. You die? Raise dead. Now off to the next encounter!
Fast forward to today and these spells invented decades ago to easily solve those problems and make your adventuring more convenient now make it less convenient for how I observe the game being played today. For instance, lets look at Curse of Strahd. Curses are an interesting thing to implement here. But what do you do when you hit by a nasty curse there? Don't worry, remove curse and poof, problem solved. Now while a DM can certainly try to come up with some logic as to why it doesn't work, or just outright not allow the spell in the campaign, it is annoying that you even have to especially when you also want to make it so that reason will stay consistent to fit in with the world you are creating rather than making it work in one instance but not in another for no actual reason. Because I said so is never the greatest logic or reason. I also think of Raise Dead or other magic that 'fixes' death and its implications. The king got killed? Well he has the resources to be brought back so now you have to think of why that conveniently can't happen. Die of old age? Reincarnate into a new body, maybe even one with a longer lifespan. While some of this can provoke some narrative consequences or excuses for why it won't work, I just wonder if maybe they should just change the spells in some way mechanically that wouldn't risk upending the whole of society by their mere existence. Maybe having them be even higher level than they are. I feel like there is more to be gained by changing them to make them less effective or harder to do or just outright not be available in D&D anymore than there is by their presence.
Can anyone think of any other decades legacy items that have carried over to the D&D today that introduce potential problems you need to address based on the implications of what they do?
Well, I started in 79, and to the point about "not about storytelling" I will note the earthquake that was Castle Ravenloft. The I series module.
next, as a n old style type, I will note that then, as now, most people created their own worlds, and in the same sense that you describe as the spells staying the same as the game evolved around them, the development of those settings -- those original worlds that are still what the majority of the players today use -- continued in the same vein, negating the points you raise to an extent.
For example, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, and Resurrection. A lot of worldbuilders have asked the same question you did, and addressed that as part of the worldbuilding they did in the game. For sme, that meant removing the spells entirely, for others that meant altering them as you suggest.
Planar spells are another good example: not all worlds use the default D&D cosmology. If you have the spell Gate, and you do not have a plane of Hell, where the heck do you go?
THis variability of the creations of the DMs and their tables is what lies at the heart of the more or less static nature of the spells in the base rules (which, as ever, are the starting place, not the ending place).
So, for example, on one world, Raise Dead may only function for 7 days. After that, the spell fails. It may not be able to extend life beyond the point of "natural death" or the "allotted years of the person". That may extend out to Resurrection, which may only be effective for a certain period of time as well, and be subject to the same limitation of their allotted span of years. Call it 280 days, then figure out the months or whatever. After that, one must turn to Reincarnation, which can be used to extend the life of person beyond the allotted years, but now they are in a new body, a younger body. Who would believe a King was reincarnated as a kid if his enemies made sure it happened elsewhere?
Now, what if there was a moral and ethical cost to doing so? What if bringing someone back to life in this realm meant that people died in other realms? Suddenly the mighty magic has a cost, a price, a penalty -- and what good aligned NPC could be talked into doing it anyway (hello neutral good folks).
And so what if the king does it every 100 years or so? Good ole Wenceslaus has been king for a thousand years. Despite his prodigious appetite. It's a fantasy.
But there is another reason to leave the spells as they are.
A two hundred years ago, the world was saved by the sacrifice of a great and mighty, beloved and honored hero, who fought to stop the Dark from enslaving all. Now, the Dark has returned, but only the ancient hero knows how to defeat the Dark -- the party is charged with the task of restoring that great hero to life, with resurrecting him from the dead to fight once more his ancient foe!
Of course, it was an accident and he hated being dead, but that's a later part of the campaign. So in a circumstance like this, the spell function as a story element that might be less useful if changed.
That said, spells which would benefit from slight changes as a result of time and tide...
TIny Hut. it is an unusually powerful spell for its spell level. A spherical emanation that is proof against all things? It only became that over time -- the original was just a way to keep the weather off you. Then additional versions of it appeared -- higher level, added new features. Then it was all collapsed back down to a single one that's more than the spell level in power.
Divide that puppy back up and spread it out.
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"Well, I started in 79, and to the point about "not about storytelling" I will note the earthquake that was Castle Ravenloft. The I series module."
Ravenloft wasn't released until 83 so it isn't terribly relevant to how the game was influenced and designed in the beginning. I am not saying there isn't some storytelling involved but it was largely superfluous. It was a consideration for motivations behind the dungeons but rarely did the modules get into much about the NPCs and their attitudes unlike the more recent modules of later decades and today. Ravenloft was an exception but not a huge one. To me it also was felt too much like a Dracula story so I was like meh. Seen it done. Want something different.
"next, as a n old style type, I will note that then, as now, most people created their own worlds, and in the same sense that you describe as the spells staying the same as the game evolved around them, the development of those settings -- those original worlds that are still what the majority of the players today use -- continued in the same vein, negating the points you raise to an extent."
How do they negate it? They would have to specifically create the exceptions to the spells as written which is my entire point. What purpose is actually served by still having the spells at all? Remember back in the day we would have creatures that would hit you and curse you. Remove curse was designed to make this no longer a problem for the next encounter. Now there is no longer creatures that do that so what is the point of the spell exactly? To get rid of an upcast Bestow Curse? Which, I'd argue, isn't much of a spell as is.
"For example, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, and Resurrection. A lot of worldbuilders have asked the same question you did, and addressed that as part of the worldbuilding they did in the game. For sme, that meant removing the spells entirely, for others that meant altering them as you suggest."
And a lot don't. Especially new DMs who may not be as creative.
"Planar spells are another good example: not all worlds use the default D&D cosmology. If you have the spell Gate, and you do not have a plane of Hell, where the heck do you go?"
Any other plane that exists?
"THis variability of the creations of the DMs and their tables is what lies at the heart of the more or less static nature of the spells in the base rules (which, as ever, are the starting place, not the ending place)."
Except you are now basically rewriting the rules as written. You have to design your own. And to what end? To remove spells that one can argue no longer need to exist?
All of what you said I actually mentioned. But what you are saying also means one HAS to create the world around spells like that to create the exceptions. And on top of that, you will likely then have to make more exceptions on top of exceptions as to why it may work one way in a specific instance but differently in another in order to keep it consistent. My question is and my entire point is, what is really served by even having them today? There are other games that don't use spells like this so why does D&D still have them? The only reason I can think of is legacy. They have been there since the beginning when times were simpler and the game was played differently. My point is you have to invent something to address the implications of these things even existing and they aren't even obscure implications. They are all out there laid out in front of you if someone spent just a moment of sober, rational thought considering it which one has to as a DM because you never know when a player is going to abuse something even by accident.
And in the scenario you described:
"So, for example, on one world, Raise Dead may only function for 7 days. After that, the spell fails. It may not be able to extend life beyond the point of "natural death" or the "allotted years of the person". That may extend out to Resurrection, which may only be effective for a certain period of time as well, and be subject to the same limitation of their allotted span of years. Call it 280 days, then figure out the months or whatever. After that, one must turn to Reincarnation, which can be used to extend the life of person beyond the allotted years, but now they are in a new body, a younger body. Who would believe a King was reincarnated as a kid if his enemies made sure it happened elsewhere?"
I would argue what you are saying gets ruined by the existence of Revivify as a spell. It makes any time restrictions you place on those spell (which both of them already have by the way) now unnecessary because now the spells no longer have a purpose beyond some exceptional death or some NPC story issue you want to make up but want a spell in the rulebook to support. Revivify has to be quickly applied to bring one back from death. All the societal problems that should exist in all D&D worlds by the other spells just existing now go away. And this is a spell that wasn't around when you and I were first playing. You no longer have to make something up to work around those other spells and you still have a way to raise a player characters from the dead.
Also, in your scenario as to who would believe the king was reincarnated as a kid or something else. Well, for starters, one simply needs to have multiple witnesses around for this event if this was a thing that actually happens as an official act of state. Pretty simple solution that anyone could come up with. One would hope the king in this story, or the government in question, are not complete morons to not consider this. I know my players would certainly be asking these questions.
"And so what if the king does it every 100 years or so? Good ole Wenceslaus has been king for a thousand years. Despite his prodigious appetite. It's a fantasy."
I would argue there are other ways to do the same thing without these spells needing to exist in the rulebook. But if you really want to have something like this consider the implications of the Clone spell. This one is probably less troublesome than those returning from the dead legacy spells only because of how high level it is thus the implication is that it would be less readily available. But this one effectively makes one immortal. Pair it with a Demiplane spell and good luck eliminating that person. This makes for a much better story because now you have players having to deal with a high level spellcaster's immortality.
"But there is another reason to leave the spells as they are.
A two hundred years ago, the world was saved by the sacrifice of a great and mighty, beloved and honored hero, who fought to stop the Dark from enslaving all. Now, the Dark has returned, but only the ancient hero knows how to defeat the Dark -- the party is charged with the task of restoring that great hero to life, with resurrecting him from the dead to fight once more his ancient foe!
Of course, it was an accident and he hated being dead, but that's a later part of the campaign. So in a circumstance like this, the spell function as a story element that might be less useful if changed."
That isn't a good reason. I'd argue it isn't a reason at all to keep them. You can literally make a story out of anything without the need for any spell in the rulebook to support it. You can have it be some offscreen magic that isn't available to the players like some kind of ritual to perform and they have to hunt down the means and tools for performing it. This type of thing is done all the time. Again, you can keep Revivify and take away all the others to fix death and it would only eliminate the societal implications created by these spells existing in the rulebook and thus made available to players in order to fix problems that happened during constant dungeon crawling.
"That said, spells which would benefit from slight changes as a result of time and tide...
TIny Hut. it is an unusually powerful spell for its spell level. A spherical emanation that is proof against all things? It only became that over time -- the original was just a way to keep the weather off you. Then additional versions of it appeared -- higher level, added new features. Then it was all collapsed back down to a single one that's more than the spell level in power."
I thought about this one as well. Because it takes so much time to cast helps but there are certainly scenarios in which this could be a problematic spell. They recently added some new restrictions to it.
Fast forward to today and these spells invented decades ago to easily solve those problems and make your adventuring more convenient now make it less convenient for how I observe the game being played today. For instance, lets look at Curse of Strahd. Curses are an interesting thing to implement here. But what do you do when you hit by a nasty curse there? Don't worry, remove curse and poof, problem solved.
That's not actually a legacy issue; remove curse in AD&D was significantly more limited and often involved some jumping through hoops. For example, in AD&D to cure the curse of lycanthropy, the requirements are
Eat belladonna within an hour of being attacked. 25% chance to cure, incapacitates the character for 1d4 days.
Remove curse on the night of a full moon, or one of the adjacent nights, allows the character to make a save vs polymorph; on success, the lycanthropy will be cured. Note that this happens at the same time as the character would turn into a werewolf, so if the save fails the character turns into a werewolf and presumably attacks or otherwise becomes a problem.
Most old-school adventure modules would have level-appropriate challenges and what spells, equipment and abilities were available to the players at certain levels were part of the consideration of the modules. I say that, with acknowledgment that there were many really poorly created adventure modules that failed on this front, but this was the basic idea. You also had the class Archetypes..: like going through a wilderness without a Ranger or Druid is going to be 1000 times harder than if you had one. Removing a curse or a disease is a snap if you have a Cleric or Druid, but if you don't, suddenly those things are "impossible" challenges.
Classic D&D could be a lot of things, but it was definitely designed from the ground up to be a dungeon crawling - dungeon survival game. At least in terms of what the rules supported. So sure you could make it a Horror game or a Mystery solving game or a game about politics, but there were no rules or structures that supported any of that, so you would be doing it mostly free-form. If you did Dungeon Survival, however.. you had the equipment list designed for that, every class ability, most spells, the entire encounter system, and specific dungeon adventure rules. I mean, there was a ton of support for this style of play so yeah, it's definitely a game "about Dungeon Crawling". Did everyone use it that way? Definitely not.
I think you might be underestimating the popularity of the spells you are mentioning.
I wouldn't enjoy or want to play in a game that didn't have resurrection options.
Also, I consider Revify more of a resuscitation spell then truly a resurrection spell. It's cast before the soul really leaves / the brain is fully dead etc. and is only a step up from a medkit and medicine check in that can narratively better explain the healing of otherwise mortal injuries that normal doctoring wouldn't be able to; but it's not the same as those spells that require a soul to travel back from an outer plane through another transitive plane and into an empty body.
Revify is more of a combat rez and sometimes it just doesn't get to happen. eg the episode in critical roll where 3 party members died and they only had 2 revifify's and had to race against the clock round by round to cast it within the limited time frame. They needed better than Revify to restore Laudna (and even that only succeeded by the skin of teeth and a lucky dice roll by the DM). So you can add things like those mechanics to make resurrection a less trifling matter, but I don't think it should be eliminated completely.
I'd wager it's missing from 5e, but I do remember 'natural death from old age' actually being a condition in which resurrection doesn't work. It's a mechanic mostly for players who don't want to stop playing that particular character when it gets killed during the campaign, not really a mechanic for permanently cheating death in the larger narrative context of the world -even reincarnation. If it were, there would be no impetus for evil mages to pursue lichdom. Lichdom is only appealing as a way to live beyond your natural years specifically because you can't just cast 'reincarnate' etc. to do that.
Interestingly, from 3e Kalimar anyway, another way a human could extend their lifespan a bit would be by becoming a werefox. For some reason, a side effect of being a werefox was that your race slowly changes from human to half-elf bringing with that change a longer lifespan. EDIT: Which I suppose means you could use reincarnate a little bit, but I don't think to really become younger, just to become something that gets to be older and perhaps looks younger as is appropriate to the race, but still only 1 lifetimes worth of time in the grand scheme of things.
I think a game that wants to ban or modify spells like curse removal and resurrection, in order to evoke themes of despair/horror/caution/grit, is valid. As long as you disclose those changes to your players up front in session zero, go nuts.
But saying the game as a whole shouldn't have those things is silly. If curses couldn't be removed at all, entire swathes of monsters and items would need to be reworked from the ground up, otherwise they would be insanely lethal for their CR. Far better to expect the DM to make those adjustments at their individual table to attain whatever thematic objective they're seeking for their own game.
It’s also worth noting that “curses” are actually a fairly niche set of debuffs within 5e; most spell debuffs meant to last beyond a single encounter require Greater Restoration or Wish to fix. Ditto ongoing debuffs from creatures like Night Hags.
The thing we’ve used remove curse for most often is cursed items.
As for raise dead, etc. it’s pretty easy to say there’s just not many 9th+ level clerics running around. No matter how many diamonds the king is sitting on, he needs someone to cast the spell. I guess that might be the sort of contrivance the OP was talking about, but, well, one DM’s contrivance is another DM’s world building.
Also, I will point out they do seem to be removing some of the more vestigial spells and powers. Diseases aren’t really a thing anymore, and they’ve dropped cure disease as a spell and lay on hands power.
And in a larger sense, I don’t know why this is a modern vs. older edition thing. I don’t see how Raise dead was less world altering in 1e than it is today.
"I think you might be underestimating the popularity of the spells you are mentioning."
It isn't actually about popularity . It is more about the implications behind them and what they originally had them for to be able to do for what the game was originally designed to do.
"I wouldn't enjoy or want to play in a game that didn't have resurrection options."
Do you often drop dead for several days and have to be brought back to life in your games? Because that is the only difference between Revivify and Raise Dead. Shouldn't real death be a consequence otherwise there would be no risk whatsoever?
"Also, I consider Revify more of a resuscitation spell then truly a resurrection spell. It's cast before the soul really leaves / the brain is fully dead etc. and is only a step up from a medkit and medicine check in that can narratively better explain the healing of otherwise mortal injuries that normal doctoring wouldn't be able to; but it's not the same as those spells that require a soul to travel back from an outer plane through another transitive plane and into an empty body."
That is certainly one interpretation of it. There is no mechanics that spell that out though. Is the concept of time for an incorporeal spirit on another plane even a consideration while dead?
"Revify is more of a combat rez and sometimes it just doesn't get to happen. eg the episode in critical roll where 3 party members died and they only had 2 revifify's and had to race against the clock round by round to cast it within the limited time frame. They needed better than Revify to restore Laudna (and even that only succeeded by the skin of teeth and a lucky dice roll by the DM). So you can add things like those mechanics to make resurrection a less trifling matter, but I don't think it should be eliminated completely."
I know. I was reminding Sam on twitter about Ashley having the spell always available so they could try to bring two people back instead of just one. We had a short back and forth about how the logistics would work. The cast were in a panic after the session because of the numerous deaths. But again, this is all based solely on your subjective interpretation of Revivify. I'm talking about original intent for the design of how death could be a problem during the dungeon crawling. I'd argue if they made Raise Dead like Revivify way back during the first days of D&D we wouldn't be having this conversation about returning from the dead in the game. They would have what they needed it to do which was bringing people back from death during a dungeon crawl. There wouldn't have been the need and death would have more consequence than an inconvenience baked into the rules as designed.
"I'd wager it's missing from 5e, but I do remember 'natural death from old age' actually being a condition in which resurrection doesn't work. It's a mechanic mostly for players who don't want to stop playing that particular character when it gets killed during the campaign, not really a mechanic for permanently cheating death in the larger narrative context of the world -even reincarnation. If it were, there would be no impetus for evil mages to pursue lichdom. Lichdom is only appealing as a way to live beyond your natural years specifically because you can't just cast 'reincarnate' etc. to do that."
There isn't. Which is my entire point. You have to create one out of thin air and then keep consistent with how it is applied if you want to keep the spell around but make exceptions in how it works for you. But if you want to actually live forever, Reincarnate is actually a pretty good way to do it as there is nothing there to say anything about age. You could perhaps make an argument that Raise Dead brings you back as the same age. It is the same body. But Reincarnate gives you a new body. So even if an argument was made that said being reincarnated as a human back into a human makes you the same age, just kill yourself and do it again until you hit one of the long lived races. Problem solved. I know if I was someone living in this society where such a spell existed that is what I'd be doing since nothing in the wording of the spell actually prevents it.
Clone (which can bring you back at any age you want) might be better overall for living forever than Lichdom but at least that is restricted to much higher level gameplay whereas any rich person in your D&D world could just arrange to have themselves brought back from the dead, potentially upending the fabric of society. Clones also make Lichdom a bit redundant. Lichdom carries some benefits but also has some downsides. There is still that phylactery we are talking about that if it is destroyed so are you. If you have access to the Clone spell, you have access to the Demiplane spell. So if you die, your soul goes into your clone that is waiting in your private demiplane. Then you can spend days in there preparing a new clone all the while scrying on the enemies that killed you then go back out again and there is very little your enemies can do about it. See how easy that was to exploit? But again, at least it is restricted to higher level gameplay and wouldn't be completely shattering society. Just make for a really difficult to defeat villain.
The thing we’ve used remove curse for most often is cursed items.
As for raise dead, etc. it’s pretty easy to say there’s just not many 9th+ level clerics running around. No matter how many diamonds the king is sitting on, he needs someone to cast the spell. I guess that might be the sort of contrivance the OP was talking about, but, well, one DM’s contrivance is another DM’s world building.
Also, I will point out they do seem to be removing some of the more vestigial spells and powers. Diseases aren’t really a thing anymore, and they’ve dropped cure disease as a spell and lay on hands power.
And in a larger sense, I don’t know why this is a modern vs. older edition thing. I don’t see how Raise dead was less world altering in 1e than it is today.
The other side of revival spell limitations is how many diamonds are going to be floating around in the world when they’re a consumable resource rather than something that will last more or less forever once dug up. Even if they’re more accessible on the Plane of Earth, the plane itself is not exactly something you can just send merchant convoys to and from.
"I think a game that wants to ban or modify spells like curse removal and resurrection, in order to evoke themes of despair/horror/caution/grit, is valid. As long as you disclose those changes to your players up front in session zero, go nuts."
I removed them because of the societal implications in the world they'd exist in. Or any world really when you think about it. Revivify stays. It wouldn't carry those problems.
Much higher level return from death spells I don't take much issue with. The implication is that being high level they are harder to come by for anyone.
"But saying the game as a whole shouldn't have those things is silly. If curses couldn't be removed at all, entire swathes of monsters and items would need to be reworked from the ground up, otherwise they would be insanely lethal for their CR. Far better to expect the DM to make those adjustments at their individual table to attain whatever thematic objective they're seeking for their own game."
It is more about them no longer being necessary. Again, death was a problem in the early days that got in the way of continuing a dungeon crawl. Spells like Raise dead fixed it. I also never said that there shouldn't be a way to undo curses. But having Remove Curse makes any type of curse the game inflicts on you just a minor inconvenience rather than a challenge to be overcome. No monsters really inflict one anymore so you are only getting it one of two ways using strictly the books on ways that inflict them, the single creature remaining that does inflict one or a magic item. And if it is a magic item, it becomes a trivial matter for removing it if you have spellcaster that with the spell. It makes having cursed items a waste of space to even include in the books when you think about it. It then falls to the DM to invent a reason why a remove curse doesn't work to remove one if they want to have it be part of some story plotline. So I no longer see a reason to have the spell anymore available. It feels like a legacy artifact for a specific problem the way the game was originally designed to run. This way the DM only has to invent one thing, the curse itself and not also a reason why it can't be removed. I'm also somewhat against the idea of cursed items being designed in the game without listing a way to remove them without remove curse. Like the Berserking Sword. There is a better, simpler way of doing the whole concept of curses for the game rather than just having them be some minor inconvenience so they can easier to have as a plot element and a challenge to get removed. It just feels like D&D is still awfully attached to the past. They may have gotten rid of THAC0 and other relics of design from intent but not everything.
"It’s also worth noting that “curses” are actually a fairly niche set of debuffs within 5e; most spell debuffs meant to last beyond a single encounter require Greater Restoration or Wish to fix. Ditto ongoing debuffs from creatures like Night Hags."
Which is part of my point. There is only one spell as written that remove curse affects and that would be Bestow Curse which isn't all that great anyway compared to other spells you could do. Beyond that we are going into one creature (a werewolf) and the cursed magic items which now become just a minor inconvenience to be removed unless the DM makes up a reason why they can't be removed that way which then makes you wonder why have remove curse anyway?
This is the first item that got me wondering what other relics from D&D past exist today that are no longer really needed.
"The thing we’ve used remove curse for most often is cursed items."
Exactly, making it only necessary for those and thus making those curses an inconvenience only. So why have cursed items at all? So you have to take the spell? Dull.
"As for raise dead, etc. it’s pretty easy to say there’s just not many 9th+ level clerics running around. No matter how many diamonds the king is sitting on, he needs someone to cast the spell. I guess that might be the sort of contrivance the OP was talking about, but, well, one DM’s contrivance is another DM’s world building. "
You could certainly make a world that way where there wouldn't be one. I find it stretches the incredulity so much it snaps though. What are the chances that in the entire Forgotten Realms, for example, there is only a handful of individuals that can cast Raise Dead or Reincarnate? And wouldn't there be lines of influential people around the block wanting their services? Heck, imagine the fortune the players could rake in from those wanting this spell to be used. The ramifications are significant.
And all for a spell that was made so people could continue running through the dungeons uninterrupted by the inconvenience by death. That is why I am more of a fan of Revivify. It addresses the same issue without the wide ranging implications. It makes those other ones, even two spell levels higher, redundant. How often do you stay dead in your gaming group where Raise Dead and Reincarnate are necessary? And assuming that happens, why not have some kind of quest to bring them back to make it more significant and death more consequential?
The higher level ones feel less problematic due to the implications of what you are referring to. They would only be something a much higher level individual would have. And you could easily justify a quest for having it performed on the dead character. It makes the whole experience better. In the more narrative gameplay going on today this makes the spells feel like unneeded relics of the past. And revivify addresses death for those people wanting to still dungeon crawl.
"Also, I will point out they do seem to be removing some of the more vestigial spells and powers. Diseases aren’t really a thing anymore, and they’ve dropped cure disease as a spell and lay on hands power."
Yes! And that is a good thing. They wrapped it all into Lesser and Greater Restoration. They got rid of those relics of the past because they became less necessary. Although that was 10 years ago.
"And in a larger sense, I don’t know why this is a modern vs. older edition thing. I don’t see how Raise dead was less world altering in 1e than it is today."
Because as I stated, when the game was first designed it was more of a dungeon crawl and there was not much consideration given to balance of effects on a wider world beyond the dungeon. Remember its roots. It certainly didn't have to be played like that but that was the original design. It certainly would have the same implications in a 1E world, not that there was any designed except Blackmoor which wasn't much of a world back then either compared even to the first design of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.
I see your points. I will say I can easily see an FR where there are not many high level clerics, or high level anythings. I always assume that’s the default, otherwise why is it always a bunch of bumbling 1st level PCs who stumble onto world ending cultist plots and then manage to wrap things up by level 10-12? But I don’t play in the FR since I bought the original box set in the 80’s and decided it wasn’t for me, so maybe my take is wrong.
As for the dungeon-crawly-ness of 1e, I remember it well. (You should talk to those folks in a different thread who remember it as the golden age of free form role playing, but that’s a whole different topic.) But even with 1e being a dungeon crawler, the problem still stands. The spell is there, and even the most crawly of dungeons still nodded toward a wider world with kings and other folks with ample resources in it. As an academic exercise, the question has always stood.
The big problem with doing a quest to raise someone is metagame. What does the player do? Either sit out a few sessions or make a temporary PC who just happens to be doing the same thing as the party. Neither is very satisfying.
It isn't actually about popularity . It is more about the implications behind them and what they originally had them for to be able to do for what the game was originally designed to do.
Do you often drop dead for several days and have to be brought back to life in your games? Because that is the only difference between Revivify and Raise Dead. Shouldn't real death be a consequence otherwise there would be no risk whatsoever?
That is certainly one interpretation of it. There is no mechanics that spell that out though. Is the concept of time for an incorporeal spirit on another plane even a consideration while dead?
I'm talking about original intent for the design of how death could be a problem during the dungeon crawling. I'd argue if they made Raise Dead like Revivify way back during the first days of D&D we wouldn't be having this conversation about returning from the dead in the game. They would have what they needed it to do which was bringing people back from death during a dungeon crawl. There wouldn't have been the need and death would have more consequence than an inconvenience baked into the rules as designed.
There isn't. Which is my entire point. You have to create one out of thin air and then keep consistent with how it is applied if you want to keep the spell around but make exceptions in how it works for you.
But if you want to actually live forever, Reincarnate is actually a pretty good way to do it as there is nothing there to say anything about age. You could perhaps make an argument that Raise Dead brings you back as the same age. It is the same body. But Reincarnate gives you a new body. So even if an argument was made that said being reincarnated as a human back into a human makes you the same age, just kill yourself and do it again until you hit one of the long lived races. Problem solved. I know if I was someone living in this society where such a spell existed that is what I'd be doing since nothing in the wording of the spell actually prevents it.
Clone (which can bring you back at any age you want) might be better overall for living forever than Lichdom but at least that is restricted to much higher level gameplay whereas any rich person in your D&D world could just arrange to have themselves brought back from the dead, potentially upending the fabric of society. Clones also make Lichdom a bit redundant. Lichdom carries some benefits but also has some downsides. There is still that phylactery we are talking about that if it is destroyed so are you. If you have access to the Clone spell, you have access to the Demiplane spell. So if you die, your soul goes into your clone that is waiting in your private demiplane. Then you can spend days in there preparing a new clone all the while scrying on the enemies that killed you then go back out again and there is very little your enemies can do about it. See how easy that was to exploit? But again, at least it is restricted to higher level gameplay and wouldn't be completely shattering society. Just make for a really difficult to defeat villain.
I wouldn't have thought it would be about popularity, but then we have what we have now because the company apparently went with what was wanted over what was needed.
Once is once too often for me. No, 'real death' should not be a consequence. There is a compromise between consequence free resurrections and permadeath. Both extremes make things less fun to me rather than more fun. Death should have consequences, but not be a consequence in and of itself. 3e had more consequences associated with resurrections such as level loss, xp costs, maybe ability loss though that might have been a house rule, etc. to prevent the recklessness associated with not having to worry about dying at all. This is consequence enough for me in a fantasy game.
I don't know, but the spells have or had time frames in which they could be applied, so time had some bearing on how the magic would interact with the souls. Someone on youtube figured the time frames were relative to the fates that befall souls in the outer planes, from being a petitioner to becoming a part of the plane itself.
If raise dead were functionally revivify all along. I still suspect later higher level resurrection spells would have been added over time for when the revivify window was missed. Like I said I wouldn't enjoy or want to play in a game where I knew I couldn't come back. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Similarly, I think PC's tend to die less often at higher levels when bosses are all who are likely to be able to do them in, whereas as low level characters can find themselves killed by standard encounters, hence the inclusion of things like spare the dying, and revivify being only a 3rd level spell to begin with.
There is another thread discussing the lack of mechanics in 5e relative to potential overload of them in 3e and whether that's because the 5e lack of mechanics are meant to give dm's the opportunity to fill in their own relative to the wants and needs of their table. I prefer the more mechanics heavy version myself, but even so the lack of mechanics doesn't mean the spell is meant to function only as described with no additional limits. I wouldn't do pc exceptions. The spells work the same accross the board, but with limits such as those described above or something like the DC increase mechanic that critical roll uses particularly for your reincarnation example.
Reincarnate can't work like that, if after a few tries the king is a level 1 aristicrat with no xp or viable attribute/ability stats. Simialrly if the spell has a higher dc each time it were cast/failed/succeeded etc on the same target, eventually the spell fails to work anymore on that target unless perhaps on a nat 20 with all other costs included. The spells aren't meant to be (left) open ended but to actually have mechanisms in place which function in such a way as to prevent this kind of abuse. Reincarnate also splits the difference between wanting to play a new character, and not wanting to loose the (back)story progress of your previous one. It's a different flavor than wanting to just keep playing your previous character.
I don't have any experience yet with how clone or demiplane work, but unless they fixed it for 2024, one complaint I've often heard about 5e is that the game tends to end by 14th or so level rather than making it all the way to capstone, which is why so many are comfortable multiclassing early on. Simlarly, Gish is apparently very popular playstyle vs pure caster these days. If true, this means that higher level resurrection spells will likely be out of reach not only for the npc's, but for most pc's also. A mid-level spell like raise dead may be the only one of its kind many PC's would actually have access to.
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I removed them because of the societal implications in the world they'd exist in. Or any world really when you think about it. Revivify stays. It wouldn't carry those problems.
Much higher level return from death spells I don't take much issue with. The implication is that being high level they are harder to come by for anyone.
Okay, great? As I said, if that's what your group finds fun, go for it. That's exactly what houserules are for.
It is more about them no longer being necessary. Again, death was a problem in the early days that got in the way of continuing a dungeon crawl. Spells like Raise dead fixed it. I also never said that there shouldn't be a way to undo curses. But having Remove Curse makes any type of curse the game inflicts on you just a minor inconvenience rather than a challenge to be overcome. No monsters really inflict one anymore so you are only getting it one of two ways using strictly the books on ways that inflict them, the single creature remaining that does inflict one or a magic item. And if it is a magic item, it becomes a trivial matter for removing it if you have spellcaster that with the spell. It makes having cursed items a waste of space to even include in the books when you think about it. It then falls to the DM to invent a reason why a remove curse doesn't work to remove one if they want to have it be part of some story plotline. So I no longer see a reason to have the spell anymore available. It feels like a legacy artifact for a specific problem the way the game was originally designed to run. This way the DM only has to invent one thing, the curse itself and not also a reason why it can't be removed. I'm also somewhat against the idea of cursed items being designed in the game without listing a way to remove them without remove curse. Like the Berserking Sword. There is a better, simpler way of doing the whole concept of curses for the game rather than just having them be some minor inconvenience so they can easier to have as a plot element and a challenge to get removed. It just feels like D&D is still awfully attached to the past. They may have gotten rid of THAC0 and other relics of design from intent but not everything.
As I stated, without player-driven curse removal a number of monsters become too powerful for their CR and will very likely need to be reassessed. This includes classics like werewolves (were-anything really), mummies, and hags, as well as any NPC spellcaster that would use curse magic.
If you're going to go to that effort yourself, or consciously avoid running modules that involve such monsters, that's completely fine - but the designers benchmarked those creatures' difficulty with the assumption that these tools wouldn't need fiat to be accessible. Just because you don't see them as necessary, doesn't mean everyone else playing or designing this game agrees with you.
As I stated, without player-driven curse removal a number of monsters become too powerful for their CR and will very likely need to be reassessed.
Curses are supposed to be plot points, not boring makework after a fight. If you don't want to deal with curses... just don't give monsters the ability to apply curses.
As I stated, without player-driven curse removal a number of monsters become too powerful for their CR and will very likely need to be reassessed.
Curses are supposed to be plot points, not boring makework after a fight. If you don't want to deal with curses... just don't give monsters the ability to apply curses.
*I* didn't give the monsters anything. You should be e-mailing Perkins with this ask.
Most of the problem here is just that there’s not a good way that jumps to mind to name the spell to indicate it’s supposed to work on comparatively temporary debuff curses but not big plot point ones.
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This recently came up as a topic with a friend of mine. I've been involved in D&D since 1986-87. Back in those days Dungeon Crawling was the emphasis and that is obvious from all the adventures published back then given D&D's roots. Not that it couldn't be about more storytelling. The essentially elements are there to do that but you can really see its wargaming influences. Back then there were things that could get in the way of your dungeon delving and make it less convenient. Some creatures could inflict curses. No one wants to have the curse carry over to the next encounter and be debuffed during those fights. So you have remote curse and fixed in seconds. You die? Raise dead. Now off to the next encounter!
Fast forward to today and these spells invented decades ago to easily solve those problems and make your adventuring more convenient now make it less convenient for how I observe the game being played today. For instance, lets look at Curse of Strahd. Curses are an interesting thing to implement here. But what do you do when you hit by a nasty curse there? Don't worry, remove curse and poof, problem solved. Now while a DM can certainly try to come up with some logic as to why it doesn't work, or just outright not allow the spell in the campaign, it is annoying that you even have to especially when you also want to make it so that reason will stay consistent to fit in with the world you are creating rather than making it work in one instance but not in another for no actual reason. Because I said so is never the greatest logic or reason. I also think of Raise Dead or other magic that 'fixes' death and its implications. The king got killed? Well he has the resources to be brought back so now you have to think of why that conveniently can't happen. Die of old age? Reincarnate into a new body, maybe even one with a longer lifespan. While some of this can provoke some narrative consequences or excuses for why it won't work, I just wonder if maybe they should just change the spells in some way mechanically that wouldn't risk upending the whole of society by their mere existence. Maybe having them be even higher level than they are. I feel like there is more to be gained by changing them to make them less effective or harder to do or just outright not be available in D&D anymore than there is by their presence.
Can anyone think of any other decades legacy items that have carried over to the D&D today that introduce potential problems you need to address based on the implications of what they do?
Well, I started in 79, and to the point about "not about storytelling" I will note the earthquake that was Castle Ravenloft. The I series module.
next, as a n old style type, I will note that then, as now, most people created their own worlds, and in the same sense that you describe as the spells staying the same as the game evolved around them, the development of those settings -- those original worlds that are still what the majority of the players today use -- continued in the same vein, negating the points you raise to an extent.
For example, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, and Resurrection. A lot of worldbuilders have asked the same question you did, and addressed that as part of the worldbuilding they did in the game. For sme, that meant removing the spells entirely, for others that meant altering them as you suggest.
Planar spells are another good example: not all worlds use the default D&D cosmology. If you have the spell Gate, and you do not have a plane of Hell, where the heck do you go?
THis variability of the creations of the DMs and their tables is what lies at the heart of the more or less static nature of the spells in the base rules (which, as ever, are the starting place, not the ending place).
So, for example, on one world, Raise Dead may only function for 7 days. After that, the spell fails. It may not be able to extend life beyond the point of "natural death" or the "allotted years of the person". That may extend out to Resurrection, which may only be effective for a certain period of time as well, and be subject to the same limitation of their allotted span of years. Call it 280 days, then figure out the months or whatever. After that, one must turn to Reincarnation, which can be used to extend the life of person beyond the allotted years, but now they are in a new body, a younger body. Who would believe a King was reincarnated as a kid if his enemies made sure it happened elsewhere?
Now, what if there was a moral and ethical cost to doing so? What if bringing someone back to life in this realm meant that people died in other realms? Suddenly the mighty magic has a cost, a price, a penalty -- and what good aligned NPC could be talked into doing it anyway (hello neutral good folks).
And so what if the king does it every 100 years or so? Good ole Wenceslaus has been king for a thousand years. Despite his prodigious appetite. It's a fantasy.
But there is another reason to leave the spells as they are.
A two hundred years ago, the world was saved by the sacrifice of a great and mighty, beloved and honored hero, who fought to stop the Dark from enslaving all. Now, the Dark has returned, but only the ancient hero knows how to defeat the Dark -- the party is charged with the task of restoring that great hero to life, with resurrecting him from the dead to fight once more his ancient foe!
Of course, it was an accident and he hated being dead, but that's a later part of the campaign. So in a circumstance like this, the spell function as a story element that might be less useful if changed.
That said, spells which would benefit from slight changes as a result of time and tide...
TIny Hut. it is an unusually powerful spell for its spell level. A spherical emanation that is proof against all things? It only became that over time -- the original was just a way to keep the weather off you. Then additional versions of it appeared -- higher level, added new features. Then it was all collapsed back down to a single one that's more than the spell level in power.
Divide that puppy back up and spread it out.
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"Well, I started in 79, and to the point about "not about storytelling" I will note the earthquake that was Castle Ravenloft. The I series module."
Ravenloft wasn't released until 83 so it isn't terribly relevant to how the game was influenced and designed in the beginning. I am not saying there isn't some storytelling involved but it was largely superfluous. It was a consideration for motivations behind the dungeons but rarely did the modules get into much about the NPCs and their attitudes unlike the more recent modules of later decades and today. Ravenloft was an exception but not a huge one. To me it also was felt too much like a Dracula story so I was like meh. Seen it done. Want something different.
"next, as a n old style type, I will note that then, as now, most people created their own worlds, and in the same sense that you describe as the spells staying the same as the game evolved around them, the development of those settings -- those original worlds that are still what the majority of the players today use -- continued in the same vein, negating the points you raise to an extent."
How do they negate it? They would have to specifically create the exceptions to the spells as written which is my entire point. What purpose is actually served by still having the spells at all? Remember back in the day we would have creatures that would hit you and curse you. Remove curse was designed to make this no longer a problem for the next encounter. Now there is no longer creatures that do that so what is the point of the spell exactly? To get rid of an upcast Bestow Curse? Which, I'd argue, isn't much of a spell as is.
"For example, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, and Resurrection. A lot of worldbuilders have asked the same question you did, and addressed that as part of the worldbuilding they did in the game. For sme, that meant removing the spells entirely, for others that meant altering them as you suggest."
And a lot don't. Especially new DMs who may not be as creative.
"Planar spells are another good example: not all worlds use the default D&D cosmology. If you have the spell Gate, and you do not have a plane of Hell, where the heck do you go?"
Any other plane that exists?
"THis variability of the creations of the DMs and their tables is what lies at the heart of the more or less static nature of the spells in the base rules (which, as ever, are the starting place, not the ending place)."
Except you are now basically rewriting the rules as written. You have to design your own. And to what end? To remove spells that one can argue no longer need to exist?
All of what you said I actually mentioned. But what you are saying also means one HAS to create the world around spells like that to create the exceptions. And on top of that, you will likely then have to make more exceptions on top of exceptions as to why it may work one way in a specific instance but differently in another in order to keep it consistent. My question is and my entire point is, what is really served by even having them today? There are other games that don't use spells like this so why does D&D still have them? The only reason I can think of is legacy. They have been there since the beginning when times were simpler and the game was played differently. My point is you have to invent something to address the implications of these things even existing and they aren't even obscure implications. They are all out there laid out in front of you if someone spent just a moment of sober, rational thought considering it which one has to as a DM because you never know when a player is going to abuse something even by accident.
And in the scenario you described:
"So, for example, on one world, Raise Dead may only function for 7 days. After that, the spell fails. It may not be able to extend life beyond the point of "natural death" or the "allotted years of the person". That may extend out to Resurrection, which may only be effective for a certain period of time as well, and be subject to the same limitation of their allotted span of years. Call it 280 days, then figure out the months or whatever. After that, one must turn to Reincarnation, which can be used to extend the life of person beyond the allotted years, but now they are in a new body, a younger body. Who would believe a King was reincarnated as a kid if his enemies made sure it happened elsewhere?"
I would argue what you are saying gets ruined by the existence of Revivify as a spell. It makes any time restrictions you place on those spell (which both of them already have by the way) now unnecessary because now the spells no longer have a purpose beyond some exceptional death or some NPC story issue you want to make up but want a spell in the rulebook to support. Revivify has to be quickly applied to bring one back from death. All the societal problems that should exist in all D&D worlds by the other spells just existing now go away. And this is a spell that wasn't around when you and I were first playing. You no longer have to make something up to work around those other spells and you still have a way to raise a player characters from the dead.
Also, in your scenario as to who would believe the king was reincarnated as a kid or something else. Well, for starters, one simply needs to have multiple witnesses around for this event if this was a thing that actually happens as an official act of state. Pretty simple solution that anyone could come up with. One would hope the king in this story, or the government in question, are not complete morons to not consider this. I know my players would certainly be asking these questions.
"And so what if the king does it every 100 years or so? Good ole Wenceslaus has been king for a thousand years. Despite his prodigious appetite. It's a fantasy."
I would argue there are other ways to do the same thing without these spells needing to exist in the rulebook. But if you really want to have something like this consider the implications of the Clone spell. This one is probably less troublesome than those returning from the dead legacy spells only because of how high level it is thus the implication is that it would be less readily available. But this one effectively makes one immortal. Pair it with a Demiplane spell and good luck eliminating that person. This makes for a much better story because now you have players having to deal with a high level spellcaster's immortality.
"But there is another reason to leave the spells as they are.
A two hundred years ago, the world was saved by the sacrifice of a great and mighty, beloved and honored hero, who fought to stop the Dark from enslaving all. Now, the Dark has returned, but only the ancient hero knows how to defeat the Dark -- the party is charged with the task of restoring that great hero to life, with resurrecting him from the dead to fight once more his ancient foe!
Of course, it was an accident and he hated being dead, but that's a later part of the campaign. So in a circumstance like this, the spell function as a story element that might be less useful if changed."
That isn't a good reason. I'd argue it isn't a reason at all to keep them. You can literally make a story out of anything without the need for any spell in the rulebook to support it. You can have it be some offscreen magic that isn't available to the players like some kind of ritual to perform and they have to hunt down the means and tools for performing it. This type of thing is done all the time. Again, you can keep Revivify and take away all the others to fix death and it would only eliminate the societal implications created by these spells existing in the rulebook and thus made available to players in order to fix problems that happened during constant dungeon crawling.
"That said, spells which would benefit from slight changes as a result of time and tide...
TIny Hut. it is an unusually powerful spell for its spell level. A spherical emanation that is proof against all things? It only became that over time -- the original was just a way to keep the weather off you. Then additional versions of it appeared -- higher level, added new features. Then it was all collapsed back down to a single one that's more than the spell level in power."
I thought about this one as well. Because it takes so much time to cast helps but there are certainly scenarios in which this could be a problematic spell. They recently added some new restrictions to it.
That's not actually a legacy issue; remove curse in AD&D was significantly more limited and often involved some jumping through hoops. For example, in AD&D to cure the curse of lycanthropy, the requirements are
Most old-school adventure modules would have level-appropriate challenges and what spells, equipment and abilities were available to the players at certain levels were part of the consideration of the modules. I say that, with acknowledgment that there were many really poorly created adventure modules that failed on this front, but this was the basic idea. You also had the class Archetypes..: like going through a wilderness without a Ranger or Druid is going to be 1000 times harder than if you had one. Removing a curse or a disease is a snap if you have a Cleric or Druid, but if you don't, suddenly those things are "impossible" challenges.
Classic D&D could be a lot of things, but it was definitely designed from the ground up to be a dungeon crawling - dungeon survival game. At least in terms of what the rules supported. So sure you could make it a Horror game or a Mystery solving game or a game about politics, but there were no rules or structures that supported any of that, so you would be doing it mostly free-form. If you did Dungeon Survival, however.. you had the equipment list designed for that, every class ability, most spells, the entire encounter system, and specific dungeon adventure rules. I mean, there was a ton of support for this style of play so yeah, it's definitely a game "about Dungeon Crawling". Did everyone use it that way? Definitely not.
I think you might be underestimating the popularity of the spells you are mentioning.
I wouldn't enjoy or want to play in a game that didn't have resurrection options.
Also, I consider Revify more of a resuscitation spell then truly a resurrection spell. It's cast before the soul really leaves / the brain is fully dead etc. and is only a step up from a medkit and medicine check in that can narratively better explain the healing of otherwise mortal injuries that normal doctoring wouldn't be able to; but it's not the same as those spells that require a soul to travel back from an outer plane through another transitive plane and into an empty body.
Revify is more of a combat rez and sometimes it just doesn't get to happen. eg the episode in critical roll where 3 party members died and they only had 2 revifify's and had to race against the clock round by round to cast it within the limited time frame. They needed better than Revify to restore Laudna (and even that only succeeded by the skin of teeth and a lucky dice roll by the DM). So you can add things like those mechanics to make resurrection a less trifling matter, but I don't think it should be eliminated completely.
I'd wager it's missing from 5e, but I do remember 'natural death from old age' actually being a condition in which resurrection doesn't work. It's a mechanic mostly for players who don't want to stop playing that particular character when it gets killed during the campaign, not really a mechanic for permanently cheating death in the larger narrative context of the world -even reincarnation. If it were, there would be no impetus for evil mages to pursue lichdom. Lichdom is only appealing as a way to live beyond your natural years specifically because you can't just cast 'reincarnate' etc. to do that.
Interestingly, from 3e Kalimar anyway, another way a human could extend their lifespan a bit would be by becoming a werefox. For some reason, a side effect of being a werefox was that your race slowly changes from human to half-elf bringing with that change a longer lifespan. EDIT: Which I suppose means you could use reincarnate a little bit, but I don't think to really become younger, just to become something that gets to be older and perhaps looks younger as is appropriate to the race, but still only 1 lifetimes worth of time in the grand scheme of things.
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I think a game that wants to ban or modify spells like curse removal and resurrection, in order to evoke themes of despair/horror/caution/grit, is valid. As long as you disclose those changes to your players up front in session zero, go nuts.
But saying the game as a whole shouldn't have those things is silly. If curses couldn't be removed at all, entire swathes of monsters and items would need to be reworked from the ground up, otherwise they would be insanely lethal for their CR. Far better to expect the DM to make those adjustments at their individual table to attain whatever thematic objective they're seeking for their own game.
It’s also worth noting that “curses” are actually a fairly niche set of debuffs within 5e; most spell debuffs meant to last beyond a single encounter require Greater Restoration or Wish to fix. Ditto ongoing debuffs from creatures like Night Hags.
The thing we’ve used remove curse for most often is cursed items.
As for raise dead, etc. it’s pretty easy to say there’s just not many 9th+ level clerics running around. No matter how many diamonds the king is sitting on, he needs someone to cast the spell. I guess that might be the sort of contrivance the OP was talking about, but, well, one DM’s contrivance is another DM’s world building.
Also, I will point out they do seem to be removing some of the more vestigial spells and powers. Diseases aren’t really a thing anymore, and they’ve dropped cure disease as a spell and lay on hands power.
And in a larger sense, I don’t know why this is a modern vs. older edition thing. I don’t see how Raise dead was less world altering in 1e than it is today.
"I think you might be underestimating the popularity of the spells you are mentioning."
It isn't actually about popularity . It is more about the implications behind them and what they originally had them for to be able to do for what the game was originally designed to do.
"I wouldn't enjoy or want to play in a game that didn't have resurrection options."
Do you often drop dead for several days and have to be brought back to life in your games? Because that is the only difference between Revivify and Raise Dead. Shouldn't real death be a consequence otherwise there would be no risk whatsoever?
"Also, I consider Revify more of a resuscitation spell then truly a resurrection spell. It's cast before the soul really leaves / the brain is fully dead etc. and is only a step up from a medkit and medicine check in that can narratively better explain the healing of otherwise mortal injuries that normal doctoring wouldn't be able to; but it's not the same as those spells that require a soul to travel back from an outer plane through another transitive plane and into an empty body."
That is certainly one interpretation of it. There is no mechanics that spell that out though. Is the concept of time for an incorporeal spirit on another plane even a consideration while dead?
"Revify is more of a combat rez and sometimes it just doesn't get to happen. eg the episode in critical roll where 3 party members died and they only had 2 revifify's and had to race against the clock round by round to cast it within the limited time frame. They needed better than Revify to restore Laudna (and even that only succeeded by the skin of teeth and a lucky dice roll by the DM). So you can add things like those mechanics to make resurrection a less trifling matter, but I don't think it should be eliminated completely."
I know. I was reminding Sam on twitter about Ashley having the spell always available so they could try to bring two people back instead of just one. We had a short back and forth about how the logistics would work. The cast were in a panic after the session because of the numerous deaths. But again, this is all based solely on your subjective interpretation of Revivify. I'm talking about original intent for the design of how death could be a problem during the dungeon crawling. I'd argue if they made Raise Dead like Revivify way back during the first days of D&D we wouldn't be having this conversation about returning from the dead in the game. They would have what they needed it to do which was bringing people back from death during a dungeon crawl. There wouldn't have been the need and death would have more consequence than an inconvenience baked into the rules as designed.
"I'd wager it's missing from 5e, but I do remember 'natural death from old age' actually being a condition in which resurrection doesn't work. It's a mechanic mostly for players who don't want to stop playing that particular character when it gets killed during the campaign, not really a mechanic for permanently cheating death in the larger narrative context of the world -even reincarnation. If it were, there would be no impetus for evil mages to pursue lichdom. Lichdom is only appealing as a way to live beyond your natural years specifically because you can't just cast 'reincarnate' etc. to do that."
There isn't. Which is my entire point. You have to create one out of thin air and then keep consistent with how it is applied if you want to keep the spell around but make exceptions in how it works for you. But if you want to actually live forever, Reincarnate is actually a pretty good way to do it as there is nothing there to say anything about age. You could perhaps make an argument that Raise Dead brings you back as the same age. It is the same body. But Reincarnate gives you a new body. So even if an argument was made that said being reincarnated as a human back into a human makes you the same age, just kill yourself and do it again until you hit one of the long lived races. Problem solved. I know if I was someone living in this society where such a spell existed that is what I'd be doing since nothing in the wording of the spell actually prevents it.
Clone (which can bring you back at any age you want) might be better overall for living forever than Lichdom but at least that is restricted to much higher level gameplay whereas any rich person in your D&D world could just arrange to have themselves brought back from the dead, potentially upending the fabric of society. Clones also make Lichdom a bit redundant. Lichdom carries some benefits but also has some downsides. There is still that phylactery we are talking about that if it is destroyed so are you. If you have access to the Clone spell, you have access to the Demiplane spell. So if you die, your soul goes into your clone that is waiting in your private demiplane. Then you can spend days in there preparing a new clone all the while scrying on the enemies that killed you then go back out again and there is very little your enemies can do about it. See how easy that was to exploit? But again, at least it is restricted to higher level gameplay and wouldn't be completely shattering society. Just make for a really difficult to defeat villain.
The other side of revival spell limitations is how many diamonds are going to be floating around in the world when they’re a consumable resource rather than something that will last more or less forever once dug up. Even if they’re more accessible on the Plane of Earth, the plane itself is not exactly something you can just send merchant convoys to and from.
"I think a game that wants to ban or modify spells like curse removal and resurrection, in order to evoke themes of despair/horror/caution/grit, is valid. As long as you disclose those changes to your players up front in session zero, go nuts."
I removed them because of the societal implications in the world they'd exist in. Or any world really when you think about it. Revivify stays. It wouldn't carry those problems.
Much higher level return from death spells I don't take much issue with. The implication is that being high level they are harder to come by for anyone.
"But saying the game as a whole shouldn't have those things is silly. If curses couldn't be removed at all, entire swathes of monsters and items would need to be reworked from the ground up, otherwise they would be insanely lethal for their CR. Far better to expect the DM to make those adjustments at their individual table to attain whatever thematic objective they're seeking for their own game."
It is more about them no longer being necessary. Again, death was a problem in the early days that got in the way of continuing a dungeon crawl. Spells like Raise dead fixed it. I also never said that there shouldn't be a way to undo curses. But having Remove Curse makes any type of curse the game inflicts on you just a minor inconvenience rather than a challenge to be overcome. No monsters really inflict one anymore so you are only getting it one of two ways using strictly the books on ways that inflict them, the single creature remaining that does inflict one or a magic item. And if it is a magic item, it becomes a trivial matter for removing it if you have spellcaster that with the spell. It makes having cursed items a waste of space to even include in the books when you think about it. It then falls to the DM to invent a reason why a remove curse doesn't work to remove one if they want to have it be part of some story plotline. So I no longer see a reason to have the spell anymore available. It feels like a legacy artifact for a specific problem the way the game was originally designed to run. This way the DM only has to invent one thing, the curse itself and not also a reason why it can't be removed. I'm also somewhat against the idea of cursed items being designed in the game without listing a way to remove them without remove curse. Like the Berserking Sword. There is a better, simpler way of doing the whole concept of curses for the game rather than just having them be some minor inconvenience so they can easier to have as a plot element and a challenge to get removed. It just feels like D&D is still awfully attached to the past. They may have gotten rid of THAC0 and other relics of design from intent but not everything.
"It’s also worth noting that “curses” are actually a fairly niche set of debuffs within 5e; most spell debuffs meant to last beyond a single encounter require Greater Restoration or Wish to fix. Ditto ongoing debuffs from creatures like Night Hags."
Which is part of my point. There is only one spell as written that remove curse affects and that would be Bestow Curse which isn't all that great anyway compared to other spells you could do. Beyond that we are going into one creature (a werewolf) and the cursed magic items which now become just a minor inconvenience to be removed unless the DM makes up a reason why they can't be removed that way which then makes you wonder why have remove curse anyway?
This is the first item that got me wondering what other relics from D&D past exist today that are no longer really needed.
"The thing we’ve used remove curse for most often is cursed items."
Exactly, making it only necessary for those and thus making those curses an inconvenience only. So why have cursed items at all? So you have to take the spell? Dull.
"As for raise dead, etc. it’s pretty easy to say there’s just not many 9th+ level clerics running around. No matter how many diamonds the king is sitting on, he needs someone to cast the spell. I guess that might be the sort of contrivance the OP was talking about, but, well, one DM’s contrivance is another DM’s world building. "
You could certainly make a world that way where there wouldn't be one. I find it stretches the incredulity so much it snaps though. What are the chances that in the entire Forgotten Realms, for example, there is only a handful of individuals that can cast Raise Dead or Reincarnate? And wouldn't there be lines of influential people around the block wanting their services? Heck, imagine the fortune the players could rake in from those wanting this spell to be used. The ramifications are significant.
And all for a spell that was made so people could continue running through the dungeons uninterrupted by the inconvenience by death. That is why I am more of a fan of Revivify. It addresses the same issue without the wide ranging implications. It makes those other ones, even two spell levels higher, redundant. How often do you stay dead in your gaming group where Raise Dead and Reincarnate are necessary? And assuming that happens, why not have some kind of quest to bring them back to make it more significant and death more consequential?
The higher level ones feel less problematic due to the implications of what you are referring to. They would only be something a much higher level individual would have. And you could easily justify a quest for having it performed on the dead character. It makes the whole experience better. In the more narrative gameplay going on today this makes the spells feel like unneeded relics of the past. And revivify addresses death for those people wanting to still dungeon crawl.
"Also, I will point out they do seem to be removing some of the more vestigial spells and powers. Diseases aren’t really a thing anymore, and they’ve dropped cure disease as a spell and lay on hands power."
Yes! And that is a good thing. They wrapped it all into Lesser and Greater Restoration. They got rid of those relics of the past because they became less necessary. Although that was 10 years ago.
"And in a larger sense, I don’t know why this is a modern vs. older edition thing. I don’t see how Raise dead was less world altering in 1e than it is today."
Because as I stated, when the game was first designed it was more of a dungeon crawl and there was not much consideration given to balance of effects on a wider world beyond the dungeon. Remember its roots. It certainly didn't have to be played like that but that was the original design. It certainly would have the same implications in a 1E world, not that there was any designed except Blackmoor which wasn't much of a world back then either compared even to the first design of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.
I see your points. I will say I can easily see an FR where there are not many high level clerics, or high level anythings. I always assume that’s the default, otherwise why is it always a bunch of bumbling 1st level PCs who stumble onto world ending cultist plots and then manage to wrap things up by level 10-12? But I don’t play in the FR since I bought the original box set in the 80’s and decided it wasn’t for me, so maybe my take is wrong.
As for the dungeon-crawly-ness of 1e, I remember it well. (You should talk to those folks in a different thread who remember it as the golden age of free form role playing, but that’s a whole different topic.) But even with 1e being a dungeon crawler, the problem still stands. The spell is there, and even the most crawly of dungeons still nodded toward a wider world with kings and other folks with ample resources in it. As an academic exercise, the question has always stood.
The big problem with doing a quest to raise someone is metagame. What does the player do? Either sit out a few sessions or make a temporary PC who just happens to be doing the same thing as the party. Neither is very satisfying.
I wouldn't have thought it would be about popularity, but then we have what we have now because the company apparently went with what was wanted over what was needed.
Once is once too often for me. No, 'real death' should not be a consequence. There is a compromise between consequence free resurrections and permadeath. Both extremes make things less fun to me rather than more fun. Death should have consequences, but not be a consequence in and of itself. 3e had more consequences associated with resurrections such as level loss, xp costs, maybe ability loss though that might have been a house rule, etc. to prevent the recklessness associated with not having to worry about dying at all. This is consequence enough for me in a fantasy game.
I don't know, but the spells have or had time frames in which they could be applied, so time had some bearing on how the magic would interact with the souls. Someone on youtube figured the time frames were relative to the fates that befall souls in the outer planes, from being a petitioner to becoming a part of the plane itself.
If raise dead were functionally revivify all along. I still suspect later higher level resurrection spells would have been added over time for when the revivify window was missed. Like I said I wouldn't enjoy or want to play in a game where I knew I couldn't come back. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Similarly, I think PC's tend to die less often at higher levels when bosses are all who are likely to be able to do them in, whereas as low level characters can find themselves killed by standard encounters, hence the inclusion of things like spare the dying, and revivify being only a 3rd level spell to begin with.
There is another thread discussing the lack of mechanics in 5e relative to potential overload of them in 3e and whether that's because the 5e lack of mechanics are meant to give dm's the opportunity to fill in their own relative to the wants and needs of their table. I prefer the more mechanics heavy version myself, but even so the lack of mechanics doesn't mean the spell is meant to function only as described with no additional limits. I wouldn't do pc exceptions. The spells work the same accross the board, but with limits such as those described above or something like the DC increase mechanic that critical roll uses particularly for your reincarnation example.
Reincarnate can't work like that, if after a few tries the king is a level 1 aristicrat with no xp or viable attribute/ability stats. Simialrly if the spell has a higher dc each time it were cast/failed/succeeded etc on the same target, eventually the spell fails to work anymore on that target unless perhaps on a nat 20 with all other costs included. The spells aren't meant to be (left) open ended but to actually have mechanisms in place which function in such a way as to prevent this kind of abuse. Reincarnate also splits the difference between wanting to play a new character, and not wanting to loose the (back)story progress of your previous one. It's a different flavor than wanting to just keep playing your previous character.
I don't have any experience yet with how clone or demiplane work, but unless they fixed it for 2024, one complaint I've often heard about 5e is that the game tends to end by 14th or so level rather than making it all the way to capstone, which is why so many are comfortable multiclassing early on. Simlarly, Gish is apparently very popular playstyle vs pure caster these days. If true, this means that higher level resurrection spells will likely be out of reach not only for the npc's, but for most pc's also. A mid-level spell like raise dead may be the only one of its kind many PC's would actually have access to.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Okay, great? As I said, if that's what your group finds fun, go for it. That's exactly what houserules are for.
As I stated, without player-driven curse removal a number of monsters become too powerful for their CR and will very likely need to be reassessed. This includes classics like werewolves (were-anything really), mummies, and hags, as well as any NPC spellcaster that would use curse magic.
If you're going to go to that effort yourself, or consciously avoid running modules that involve such monsters, that's completely fine - but the designers benchmarked those creatures' difficulty with the assumption that these tools wouldn't need fiat to be accessible. Just because you don't see them as necessary, doesn't mean everyone else playing or designing this game agrees with you.
Curses are supposed to be plot points, not boring makework after a fight. If you don't want to deal with curses... just don't give monsters the ability to apply curses.
*I* didn't give the monsters anything. You should be e-mailing Perkins with this ask.
Most of the problem here is just that there’s not a good way that jumps to mind to name the spell to indicate it’s supposed to work on comparatively temporary debuff curses but not big plot point ones.