I"m just wondering how people handle death and resurrection. To me resurrection spells seems to be something that shouldn't be commonly available, but it's something that one of my players in particular has been adamant would be readily available and they have the gold for it. I've always felt death should be meaningful, and am not against raising characters, but I feel that having people always able to be resurrected cheapens the risk factor. It's not going to be an issue for my next campaign as we are running tomb of annhialation, but it's still something I want to address in the future. It's also something I would address at session 0 for future campaigns, this campaign has ended up with a very different party than what started, due to people having to drop out due to scheduling and stuff.
I think their should be some obstacle or someone they have to persuade to ressurect the character. Otherwise death is nothing something dreaded but just a minor inconveniance for PC's with a decent amount of gold.
But, yes, it would probably be quite possible to ressurect people ( especially if you're running ToA in the forgotten realms)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
Something like the Matt Mercer rule can work. DC 10 Con (I think) to see if the caster can locate the soul to bring it back. Fail means gone forever. And each time the character tries to be brought back it increases by 1. First edition had a system shock percentage roll tied to your CON to see if the character survives the process. And 5e certainly makes death far less common than before.
PCs being able to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s common. PCs routinely do exceptional things. And if you want to throttle it back, just don’t give out the material components. Give them 1 diamond, and force them to think about when they want to use it, and don’t have high-level cleric NPCs. Or don’t give any diamonds and make finding one a side quest if they need it.
Something like the Matt Mercer rule can work. DC 10 Con (I think) to see if the caster can locate the soul to bring it back. Fail means gone forever. And each time the character tries to be brought back it increases by 1. First edition had a system shock percentage roll tied to your CON to see if the character survives the process. And 5e certainly makes death far less common than before.
Mercer and other people also have systems in place where Resurrection also can have lingering effects on the PC. I forget whether Mercer goes into his system in Wildemont or Tal Dor'el revised (or whatever its called).
In addition, OP, unless the pCs are the wealthiest people in the world, they should be coming across some of their dead adversaries again and again too. A situation like that could result in a Tomb of A/nnhiliation type problem, and the characters would be in part responsible for it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There are vanilla mechanics to make resurrection more difficult.
Limiting the diamonds
counter spell
Effects which spawn monsters on death requiring those monsters to be killed before resurrection
Effects which damage or destroy bodies
Lingering curses and diseases which continue after death
Another option is to also just make death more common as the levels go up. Its perfectly valid to have a super hero like world only survivable by people capable casting resurrection magic.
That’s a great point. I was in a game once where my character was killed by spiders. I was brought back at a temple, but after that if there we encountered spiders or bug-like things I had to make a wisdom save or I panicked and ran or just dropped and was frozen in fear. Really made encounters interesting and an Interesting character quirk. I love things like that as a consequence. As a DM the consequences are endless.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I"m just wondering how people handle death and resurrection. To me resurrection spells seems to be something that shouldn't be commonly available, but it's something that one of my players in particular has been adamant would be readily available and they have the gold for it. I've always felt death should be meaningful, and am not against raising characters, but I feel that having people always able to be resurrected cheapens the risk factor. It's not going to be an issue for my next campaign as we are running tomb of annhialation, but it's still something I want to address in the future. It's also something I would address at session 0 for future campaigns, this campaign has ended up with a very different party than what started, due to people having to drop out due to scheduling and stuff.
I think their should be some obstacle or someone they have to persuade to ressurect the character. Otherwise death is nothing something dreaded but just a minor inconveniance for PC's with a decent amount of gold.
But, yes, it would probably be quite possible to ressurect people ( especially if you're running ToA in the forgotten realms)
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Something like the Matt Mercer rule can work. DC 10 Con (I think) to see if the caster can locate the soul to bring it back. Fail means gone forever. And each time the character tries to be brought back it increases by 1. First edition had a system shock percentage roll tied to your CON to see if the character survives the process. And 5e certainly makes death far less common than before.
PCs being able to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s common. PCs routinely do exceptional things. And if you want to throttle it back, just don’t give out the material components. Give them 1 diamond, and force them to think about when they want to use it, and don’t have high-level cleric NPCs. Or don’t give any diamonds and make finding one a side quest if they need it.
Mercer and other people also have systems in place where Resurrection also can have lingering effects on the PC. I forget whether Mercer goes into his system in Wildemont or Tal Dor'el revised (or whatever its called).
In addition, OP, unless the pCs are the wealthiest people in the world, they should be coming across some of their dead adversaries again and again too. A situation like that could result in a Tomb of A/nnhiliation type problem, and the characters would be in part responsible for it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
There are vanilla mechanics to make resurrection more difficult.
Another option is to also just make death more common as the levels go up. Its perfectly valid to have a super hero like world only survivable by people capable casting resurrection magic.
That’s a great point. I was in a game once where my character was killed by spiders. I was brought back at a temple, but after that if there we encountered spiders or bug-like things I had to make a wisdom save or I panicked and ran or just dropped and was frozen in fear. Really made encounters interesting and an Interesting character quirk. I love things like that as a consequence. As a DM the consequences are endless.