I mean... a mortal wound is a thing what makes ya got 0 hit points, and a not mortal wound is a thing what makes ya got at least 1, which is what revivify puts you at. If you don't have a head, you're still not gonna have a head, but other than that it's fine.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
How so? Its way cheaper to expend a spell slot for revivify than for raise dead, however raise dead is for when a creature has died for much longer days and such; that's their only difference. The rest is flavor words and restrictions. What matters is that they both come back to life and regain 1 hit point. You do not want to cast raise dead if a creature has only died for 3 rounds right? Otherwise they would have gained a -4 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks when you cast raise dead. In fact it may be more beneficial for you to cast revivify immediately than raise dead.
So unless there is a bleed effect in your game it wouldn't necessarily matter, unless specifically stated that mortal wounds would harm you in this way.
I mean... a mortal wound is a thing what makes ya got 0 hit points, and a not mortal wound is a thing what makes ya got at least 1, which is what revivify puts you at. If you don't have a head, you're still not gonna have a head, but other than that it's fine.
Revivify can't replace or regrow a limb or head, but it is possible that it could reattach one.
I would personally rule that as long as all the parts of a body are placed together in roughly the right shape, then revivify should be able to stitch it back together. Any body parts not in the area could not be replaced though.
Mortal means fatal. If you are stabbed and die as a result, that's a mortal wound. Patching up the wound is a prerequisite to bringing you back to life. So revivify needs to be capable of that or else it's useless.
Raise dead explicitly closes all mortal wounds, but revivify does that too, right? If revivify couldn't heal fatal injuries, it would be useless.
Correct - the spell must do what it says it does. So provided it doesn't need to replace any "missing body parts", it should patch up any other damage such that it's possible for you to live after the spell ends.
These spells definitely need to be able to cope with "simple" mortal wounds otherwise they'd be pointless. More complex wounds though are a case-by-case issue IMO. To give a couple of examples:
Missing hand/foot/arm/leg etc.: It should be possible to revive, though obviously the character will suffer the loss of the limb. I think it's reasonable to assume that the spell in this case will somehow close the wound so that the character doesn't immediately bleed out, though a DM may rule otherwise (consult before casting).
Missing head/anything else vital: Character cannot be successfully revived; a generous DM should have the spell simply fail to be cast (no resources lost), as it'd be cruel for it to work only for the character to immediately die again and wasting a spell slot.
Personally I'm a bit mixed on whether having body parts present but detached should be allowed or not; IMO some extra step should be required to repair the body, but this would be down to the DM's individual ruling. If I were DMing I'd be inclined to be more or less generous depending upon the circumstances, i.e- I might disallow a revivify and require more extensive repair and a full raise dead, because otherwise you're taking away too much danger; once a party has revivify, dismemberment should be a valid way to keep death dangerous. Alternatively, you might allow the revival, but treat the body part as damaged until some kind of extra/specialist healing is applied.
Basically I'm conscious of the need to balance fun against threat; for example, I might have basic enemies simply reduce players to zero (no dismemberment or other complications) so a regular revival is simply a drain on resources and nothing more. But if a player goes down to more extreme circumstances like a big boss fight, then I prefer for the party to have to work a bit harder to bring them back, if they even can. So I might have dismemberment mean a stronger spell is required, to force a mini quest to get help, and if it makes narrative sense this may even result in failure; these are also a good way to introduce new characters if the dead player makes one to play temporarily and discovers they like it.
Probably a bit beyond the rules question itself, but I think it's important to consider in how you rule on player character deaths.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Spells do what they say they do, so most (ie those not involving dismemberment or decapitation) mortal wounds would be healed with no issues. For dismemberment, I'd say the spell heals you and heals over the missing limb stump so that you don't immediately bleed out, but wouldn't reattach the limb even if it were placed near the body. For decapitation you would only heal if you can survive normally without your head as your head wouldn't reattach either.
Now, if you were to physically reattach (suture) the body part inside of the time limit for revivify to work (realistically, using gentle repose would give you the time to do so), I'd allow revivify to heal that body part, but there would likely be several medicine checks required at my table to successfully suture and reconnect the missing part.
This question came up because I had an argument with my DM over what would have happened if I was decapitated. Decapitation is obviously a mortal wound, so I argued that raise dead should work if the head is available, but I went a step further and a claimed that revivify would also work because it must be able to heal mortal wounds as well.
Mortal means fatal. If you are stabbed and die as a result, that's a mortal wound. Patching up the wound is a prerequisite to bringing you back to life. So revivify needs to be capable of that or else it's useless.
Idk... you ever see Death Becomes Her? Magic sometimes works in ways common sense would disagree with. Because, well, because it is magic.
Maybe they're brought back to life but the wounds aren't closed. They're somehow alive but also have these horrendous and foul seeping festing wounds that never go away. Who's to say. Probably the DM I guess.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
This question came up because I had an argument with my DM over what would have happened if I was decapitated. Decapitation is obviously a mortal wound, so I argued that raise dead should work if the head is available, but I went a step further and a claimed that revivify would also work because it must be able to heal mortal wounds as well.
The issue isn't whether revivify can work on mortal wounds in general -- obviously, it does work on at least some of them.This really boils down to "what does 'missing' mean for body parts?". It's clear that if someone gets decapitated and then the head is carried off/eaten/whatever, neither revivify nor raise dead will work, but are severed body parts considered missing?
I'm not aware of any rules text that specifically addresses this.
All depends if a DM considers a body part missing when it's detached or just lost. One can say a decapitated body is missing head wether it's still nearby.
This question came up because I had an argument with my DM over what would have happened if I was decapitated. Decapitation is obviously a mortal wound, so I argued that raise dead should work if the head is available, but I went a step further and a claimed that revivify would also work because it must be able to heal mortal wounds as well.
The issue here is what do you, or more specifically your DM, think that these spells do to the severed head? If the purpose of healing the mortal wounds is just to prevent you from immediately dying once revived then it may just mean that wounds are closed, but for a severed limb that would mean the end of the stump closing up, it doesn't mean the limb is reattached, so the spell would ultimately fail unless the limb/head is reattached properly first.
Another issue is what is meant here by "missing"; it's a somewhat vague and unhelpful term as if a limb is detached but present in the room (and you know where it is) then you wouldn't necessarily say that it's "missing", only "severed". But in terms of intent, being able to trivially recover from having your head cut off seriously undermines the danger and challenge of the game. We have much higher level spells that specifically restore missing limbs, and can recover even badly mutilated or disintegrated characters, so it seems fairly clear that the lower level spells are not intended to trivialise death in D&D; revivify is like a magical equivalent of a paramedic when somebody's heart stops, you've got ten minutes to save a person that is reasonably recoverable, anything more is going to require greater effort.
The other question is why did your DM decapitate you? The purpose of severing a limb (or head) in D&D is usually to impose a lasting injury that's difficult to overcome; it shouldn't be made trivial by a 3rd-level spell, otherwise the game is never going to feel challenging or dangerous, or worse, you're going to start an arms race against your DM who's going to feel forced to ensure that not only are your characters dismembered, but that severed body parts are utterly destroyed, and I don't see that being fun. On the other hand, was decapitating your character unwarranted? Sometimes DMs do go too far and are unduly harsh in how things play out, but the solution to that is to talk to them, make clear that you don't want your character to be brought back, and discuss how you can do that mechanically and narratively.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
This question came up because I had an argument with my DM over what would have happened if I was decapitated. Decapitation is obviously a mortal wound, so I argued that raise dead should work if the head is available, but I went a step further and a claimed that revivify would also work because it must be able to heal mortal wounds as well.
The issue here is what do you, or more specifically your DM, think that these spells do to the severed head? If the purpose of healing the mortal wounds is just to prevent you from immediately dying once revived then it may just mean that wounds are closed, but for a severed limb that would mean the end of the stump closing up, it doesn't mean the limb is reattached, so the spell would ultimately fail unless the limb/head is reattached properly first.
Another issue is what is meant here by "missing"; it's a somewhat vague and unhelpful term as if a limb is detached but present in the room (and you know where it is) then you wouldn't necessarily say that it's "missing", only "severed". But in terms of intent, being able to trivially recover from your head cut off seriously undermines the danger and challenge of the game. We have much higher level spells that specifically restore missing limbs, and can recover even badly mutilated or disintegrated characters, so it seems fairly clear that the lower level spells are not intended to trivialise death in D&D; revivify is like a magical equivalent of a paramedic when somebody's heart stops, you've got ten minutes to save a person that is reasonably recoverable, anything more is going to require greater effort.
The other question is why did your DM decapitate you? The purpose of severing a limb (or head) in D&D is usually to impose a lasting injury that's difficult to overcome; it shouldn't be made trivial by a 3rd-level spell, otherwise the game is never going to feel challenging or dangerous, or worse, you're going to start an arms race against your DM who's going to feel forced to ensure that not only are your characters dismembered, but that severed body parts are utterly destroyed, and I don't see that being fun. On the other hand, was decapitating your character unwarranted? Sometimes DMs do go too far and are unduly harsh in how things play out, but the solution to that is to talk to them, make clear that you don't want your character to be brought back, and discuss how you can do that mechanically and narratively.
The DM ran a Dullahan, which beheads people. It never actually happened, but the DM voiced his concerns to me over what would happen if it did.
The DM argued that if my head came off, it wouldn't be my head anymore, and that if revivify and raise dead could reattach body parts then regenerate would be pointless. I disagreed with him on both counts. Any accurate description of ny head would refer to it as my head, severed or otherwise. And regenerate doesn't just reattach body parts, it grows them back. Furthermore, low level spells stepping on the turf of higher level spells is nothing new. For instance Revivify can reduce exhaustion because all manner of bringing back the dead does that (a little known rule).
This question came up because I had an argument with my DM over what would have happened if I was decapitated. Decapitation is obviously a mortal wound, so I argued that raise dead should work if the head is available, but I went a step further and a claimed that revivify would also work because it must be able to heal mortal wounds as well.
The issue here is what do you, or more specifically your DM, think that these spells do to the severed head? If the purpose of healing the mortal wounds is just to prevent you from immediately dying once revived then it may just mean that wounds are closed, but for a severed limb that would mean the end of the stump closing up, it doesn't mean the limb is reattached, so the spell would ultimately fail unless the limb/head is reattached properly first.
Another issue is what is meant here by "missing"; it's a somewhat vague and unhelpful term as if a limb is detached but present in the room (and you know where it is) then you wouldn't necessarily say that it's "missing", only "severed". But in terms of intent, being able to trivially recover from having your head cut off seriously undermines the danger and challenge of the game. We have much higher level spells that specifically restore missing limbs, and can recover even badly mutilated or disintegrated characters, so it seems fairly clear that the lower level spells are not intended to trivialise death in D&D; revivify is like a magical equivalent of a paramedic when somebody's heart stops, you've got ten minutes to save a person that is reasonably recoverable, anything more is going to require greater effort.
The other question is why did your DM decapitate you? The purpose of severing a limb (or head) in D&D is usually to impose a lasting injury that's difficult to overcome; it shouldn't be made trivial by a 3rd-level spell, otherwise the game is never going to feel challenging or dangerous, or worse, you're going to start an arms race against your DM who's going to feel forced to ensure that not only are your characters dismembered, but that severed body parts are utterly destroyed, and I don't see that being fun. On the other hand, was decapitating your character unwarranted? Sometimes DMs do go too far and are unduly harsh in how things play out, but the solution to that is to talk to them, make clear that you don't want your character to be brought back, and discuss how you can do that mechanically and narratively.
If someone tried to revivify a beheaded corpse, and didn't have the head present for reattachment. I'd let the spell successfully bring the body back to life. Obviously. But unfortunately it'd still be headless. It'd probably thrash around for a moment. Then die again because it lacks a head so blood is just spraying out its open jugular. It'd be a gruesome cautionary tale about the misapplication of magic.
Or, maybe even more gruesome but in an existential way, it seals the wounds and the body comes back to life. Lacking a head they're blind, deaf, cannot taste or smell. Only feel. But they cannot be conscious, or control their body, lacking the brain to do so, their souls is simply trapped in a prison of flesh. And the heart beats and the lungs pump, not because they should but because magic made it so. And they live out their natural life this unmoving coma like state, just a headless living body who would scream, if he had a mouth.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Unless you use optional rules, there's no specific mechanism in the game for actually creating a situation where you would need to reattach severed limbs, right? So if you cast revivify on a creature, then the base game assumes that must be the entire creature.
Unless you use optional rules, there's no specific mechanism in the game for actually creating a situation where you would need to reattach severed limbs, right?
sword of sharpness is about it for lopping off limbs; vorpal sword and certain monsters that use similar effects are about it for lopping off heads.
Unless you use optional rules, there's no specific mechanism in the game for actually creating a situation where you would need to reattach severed limbs, right? So if you cast revivify on a creature, then the base game assumes that must be the entire creature.
There are no rules against breaking an object into smaller peices. Corpses are objects, after all. Remember that this game is about narrative, storytelling. And if someone wants to do something that is normally possible, like hack a hand off a corpse with their axe, the game just assumes the DM will adjudicate that without hiccup.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
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Raise dead explicitly closes all mortal wounds, but revivify does that too, right? If revivify couldn't heal fatal injuries, it would be useless.
I mean... a mortal wound is a thing what makes ya got 0 hit points, and a not mortal wound is a thing what makes ya got at least 1, which is what revivify puts you at. If you don't have a head, you're still not gonna have a head, but other than that it's fine.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
How so? Its way cheaper to expend a spell slot for revivify than for raise dead, however raise dead is for when a creature has died for much longer days and such; that's their only difference. The rest is flavor words and restrictions. What matters is that they both come back to life and regain 1 hit point. You do not want to cast raise dead if a creature has only died for 3 rounds right? Otherwise they would have gained a -4 penalty on all attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks when you cast raise dead. In fact it may be more beneficial for you to cast revivify immediately than raise dead.
So unless there is a bleed effect in your game it wouldn't necessarily matter, unless specifically stated that mortal wounds would harm you in this way.
Revivify can't replace or regrow a limb or head, but it is possible that it could reattach one.
I would personally rule that as long as all the parts of a body are placed together in roughly the right shape, then revivify should be able to stitch it back together. Any body parts not in the area could not be replaced though.
Mortal means fatal. If you are stabbed and die as a result, that's a mortal wound. Patching up the wound is a prerequisite to bringing you back to life. So revivify needs to be capable of that or else it's useless.
Correct - the spell must do what it says it does. So provided it doesn't need to replace any "missing body parts", it should patch up any other damage such that it's possible for you to live after the spell ends.
Unless the mortal wound resulted in the loss of a vital body part, revivify should return to life with 1 hit point.
These spells definitely need to be able to cope with "simple" mortal wounds otherwise they'd be pointless. More complex wounds though are a case-by-case issue IMO. To give a couple of examples:
Personally I'm a bit mixed on whether having body parts present but detached should be allowed or not; IMO some extra step should be required to repair the body, but this would be down to the DM's individual ruling. If I were DMing I'd be inclined to be more or less generous depending upon the circumstances, i.e- I might disallow a revivify and require more extensive repair and a full raise dead, because otherwise you're taking away too much danger; once a party has revivify, dismemberment should be a valid way to keep death dangerous. Alternatively, you might allow the revival, but treat the body part as damaged until some kind of extra/specialist healing is applied.
Basically I'm conscious of the need to balance fun against threat; for example, I might have basic enemies simply reduce players to zero (no dismemberment or other complications) so a regular revival is simply a drain on resources and nothing more. But if a player goes down to more extreme circumstances like a big boss fight, then I prefer for the party to have to work a bit harder to bring them back, if they even can. So I might have dismemberment mean a stronger spell is required, to force a mini quest to get help, and if it makes narrative sense this may even result in failure; these are also a good way to introduce new characters if the dead player makes one to play temporarily and discovers they like it.
Probably a bit beyond the rules question itself, but I think it's important to consider in how you rule on player character deaths.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Spells do what they say they do, so most (ie those not involving dismemberment or decapitation) mortal wounds would be healed with no issues. For dismemberment, I'd say the spell heals you and heals over the missing limb stump so that you don't immediately bleed out, but wouldn't reattach the limb even if it were placed near the body. For decapitation you would only heal if you can survive normally without your head as your head wouldn't reattach either.
Now, if you were to physically reattach (suture) the body part inside of the time limit for revivify to work (realistically, using gentle repose would give you the time to do so), I'd allow revivify to heal that body part, but there would likely be several medicine checks required at my table to successfully suture and reconnect the missing part.
This question came up because I had an argument with my DM over what would have happened if I was decapitated. Decapitation is obviously a mortal wound, so I argued that raise dead should work if the head is available, but I went a step further and a claimed that revivify would also work because it must be able to heal mortal wounds as well.
Idk... you ever see Death Becomes Her? Magic sometimes works in ways common sense would disagree with. Because, well, because it is magic.
Maybe they're brought back to life but the wounds aren't closed. They're somehow alive but also have these horrendous and foul seeping festing wounds that never go away. Who's to say. Probably the DM I guess.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
The issue isn't whether revivify can work on mortal wounds in general -- obviously, it does work on at least some of them.This really boils down to "what does 'missing' mean for body parts?". It's clear that if someone gets decapitated and then the head is carried off/eaten/whatever, neither revivify nor raise dead will work, but are severed body parts considered missing?
I'm not aware of any rules text that specifically addresses this.
All depends if a DM considers a body part missing when it's detached or just lost. One can say a decapitated body is missing head wether it's still nearby.
The issue here is what do you, or more specifically your DM, think that these spells do to the severed head? If the purpose of healing the mortal wounds is just to prevent you from immediately dying once revived then it may just mean that wounds are closed, but for a severed limb that would mean the end of the stump closing up, it doesn't mean the limb is reattached, so the spell would ultimately fail unless the limb/head is reattached properly first.
Another issue is what is meant here by "missing"; it's a somewhat vague and unhelpful term as if a limb is detached but present in the room (and you know where it is) then you wouldn't necessarily say that it's "missing", only "severed". But in terms of intent, being able to trivially recover from having your head cut off seriously undermines the danger and challenge of the game. We have much higher level spells that specifically restore missing limbs, and can recover even badly mutilated or disintegrated characters, so it seems fairly clear that the lower level spells are not intended to trivialise death in D&D; revivify is like a magical equivalent of a paramedic when somebody's heart stops, you've got ten minutes to save a person that is reasonably recoverable, anything more is going to require greater effort.
The other question is why did your DM decapitate you? The purpose of severing a limb (or head) in D&D is usually to impose a lasting injury that's difficult to overcome; it shouldn't be made trivial by a 3rd-level spell, otherwise the game is never going to feel challenging or dangerous, or worse, you're going to start an arms race against your DM who's going to feel forced to ensure that not only are your characters dismembered, but that severed body parts are utterly destroyed, and I don't see that being fun. On the other hand, was decapitating your character unwarranted? Sometimes DMs do go too far and are unduly harsh in how things play out, but the solution to that is to talk to them, make clear that you don't want your character to be brought back, and discuss how you can do that mechanically and narratively.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The DM ran a Dullahan, which beheads people. It never actually happened, but the DM voiced his concerns to me over what would happen if it did.
The DM argued that if my head came off, it wouldn't be my head anymore, and that if revivify and raise dead could reattach body parts then regenerate would be pointless. I disagreed with him on both counts. Any accurate description of ny head would refer to it as my head, severed or otherwise. And regenerate doesn't just reattach body parts, it grows them back. Furthermore, low level spells stepping on the turf of higher level spells is nothing new. For instance Revivify can reduce exhaustion because all manner of bringing back the dead does that (a little known rule).
If someone tried to revivify a beheaded corpse, and didn't have the head present for reattachment. I'd let the spell successfully bring the body back to life. Obviously. But unfortunately it'd still be headless. It'd probably thrash around for a moment. Then die again because it lacks a head so blood is just spraying out its open jugular. It'd be a gruesome cautionary tale about the misapplication of magic.
Or, maybe even more gruesome but in an existential way, it seals the wounds and the body comes back to life. Lacking a head they're blind, deaf, cannot taste or smell. Only feel. But they cannot be conscious, or control their body, lacking the brain to do so, their souls is simply trapped in a prison of flesh. And the heart beats and the lungs pump, not because they should but because magic made it so. And they live out their natural life this unmoving coma like state, just a headless living body who would scream, if he had a mouth.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Unless you use optional rules, there's no specific mechanism in the game for actually creating a situation where you would need to reattach severed limbs, right? So if you cast revivify on a creature, then the base game assumes that must be the entire creature.
sword of sharpness is about it for lopping off limbs; vorpal sword and certain monsters that use similar effects are about it for lopping off heads.
There are no rules against breaking an object into smaller peices. Corpses are objects, after all. Remember that this game is about narrative, storytelling. And if someone wants to do something that is normally possible, like hack a hand off a corpse with their axe, the game just assumes the DM will adjudicate that without hiccup.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.