Joana's page

We have the holy symbol which is known to be exclusive to big, important Iomedaean muckety-mucks. What if one of us used the iron circlet to appear as some higher-up from the home office rumored to be here to crack down on the sanctity of the temple and prevent it from being sullied by other faiths, viz. the Desnan services and any others that are held there are going to be disallowed? That ought to stir up some discontent, depending on how many dissenters there are in town.

In the wake of the cheesecake-controversy threads, I want to register my approval of shirtless Valeros.

Agree with tonyz. I ran book 4 largely as written, but I didn't just skim over the time with "roll your skill check for day 1, roll for day 2...." Play out whatever tasks they get. If they roll 'guard a noble on an expedition outside the house,' then come up with someplace creepy and flavorful for the noble to go and let them play it out. One of them went to a play put on by the theater troupe and witnessed a politial assassination carried out as part of the performance; all the talk after the curtain fell was how lucky everyone felt to have been at the performance where the Second Daughter of House Whatever got whacked. Another got sent with the drunken daughter to a Ladies who Lunch social event at the country club, where the hors d'oeuvres were served off the supine bodies of nude male slaves. My players were totally creeped out by Zirnikaynin and desperate to complete their mission and get out of there.

I also played up Gadak. Almost every day, one of them would suddenly feel like they were being watched as they were cleaning the house or running errands and turn around to see him watching them. He'd stroll up to them sometimes and ask leading questions that made them sure that he was on to them. ("Do you feel like your time on the surface changed you? Do you ever feel like you came back a whole different person?") One time he had them all imprisoned and beaten and questioned them separately, trying to find inconsistencies in their stories. (I took the players one by one into the next room, and the guys back at the table were sweating bullets -- the players, not the PCs.) Of course, he told each one that the last one had confessed the whole truth and they might as well stop lying and avoid worse punishment. They hated him.

It took a lot of sessions to play through, going to that level of immersion, but it was fantastic. My players got so paranoid by the end, they didn't trust anything or anyone; they immediately assumed everything that happened, no matter how straightforward, was an intricate trap for them. It was hilarious. That was probably one of my favorite modules to run.

I don't know why; it's a perfectly cromulent word.

Jessica: dammit, hate being an adult

never get to do anything fun :(
Robot Chris: true, but you can get ice cream anytime

This. Nothing like telling my kids they can't have cookies for breakfast while eating cookies for breakfast. :)

Average starting gold table

For non-core classes, starting gold is listed in the class description. Some games roll for starting gold; some use average; some use maximum. It'll differ by DM.

The PRD, d20PFSRD, and Archives of Nethys will be your friends for looking things up online without going to get out your books. Bookmark them. Also, Pathfinder Wiki and Maps of Golarion for campaign setting info.

This thread is a great guide to the conventions of play-by-post gaming on the Paizo messageboards.

So since Paizo staff are all running around showing off shiny new avatars today, is that any sign you might be getting ready to dump some of the excess into the bargain bin for the rest of us anytime soon? *hopeful look*

Report an Issue is a link in a sidebar on the left of every page. Goes to an e-mail address: d20pfsrd.com+problem@gmail.com.

Absolutely. I know I couldn't do it (even assuming I were remotely qualified). I'd hope that the public vote helped cut down on the sheer number of entries the judges had to consider and comment on, but it's still a lot of work during one's leisure hours for no pay.

I would hope, however, that if a woman in game design was approached with the explanation that her hard work would both demonstrate commitment to breaking down gender barriers and encourage more women to enter the field, she'd do all she could to fit it into her schedule.

However, particularly this year, the gender of the judges isn't really relevant to the initial selection. The public basically picks our "keep pile" and then we sort them anonymously--we have no way to know if the entrant is a male or female. So the suggestion that the gatekeepers being all males has some impact I don't think really holds much water. I don't think the lack of women in the top 32 is solved by simply adding female judges. The implication there is that these female judges would somehow secretly find all the female entrants we biased males excluded as gatekeepers. That isn't the problem. The problem is that there just aren't that many female entrants in the contest, not that the "gatekeepers" are male.

There was another thread, started by Sean I think, to discuss ways to get more female entrants. I for one would love to see it.

I actually don't think the two issues are unrelated. Obviously, all judging is subjective, but it's a matter of public perception more than anything else.

You'd never see a jury seated with no women on it. "American Idol" and similar shows all have at least one woman on the judging panel. Justice is supposed to be blind and impartial, but it's generally accepted that it's a good thing to have women and minorities on the Supreme Court. No establishment who expected to be seen as having a firm commitment to diversity would have its hiring or admissions offices made up of nothing but white males, even if they're the most fair and impartial guys in the world. It just looks bad.

I would predict that if Paizo put a female judge on the R1 panel next year and promoted it, they would see an uptick in submissions from females who felt more welcome because there was someone "like them" on the panel. It would demonstrate Paizo's commitment to increasing female presence in the hobby more than any podcast or marketing campaign or similar gimmick. I know I would be really interested in keeping up with the contest and reading judges' comments from a different perspective than we usually get.

On Charles' note, I would love it if Lisa (or some other woman in gaming) could be persuaded to be on the R1 judging panel next year. It would be fantastic if the gatekeepers weren't all guys for once.

Paizo developers are running at the absolute ragged edge of disaster of what they can get done in a month now. It's a constant battle with deadlines. (The modules line got months behind this last year and has now gone from bimonthly to quarterly, and the Visions of WAR book that's an "extra" non-subscription-line product has already slipped from May to July.)

Asking for more product from Paizo is unlikely to be met with approval unless and until they get the product lines they're producing now under control.

Isn't she in charge of putting up new avatars for aliases? Every thread that she has to moderate represents another month before we get pics from "new" products. :P

Savannah has been a very popular girls' name in the US since the 1990s.

"Hush thy own tunga," she flares back, eyes flashing. "I am neither your thrall nor your wife, and no one will tell me when I can or cannot speak, Lochlannach."

If you'd really rather do that than swing with your sword, that's an unarmed strike (you don't have a bite attack) at 1d20+6-2 (net 1d20+4) doing 1d3+5 damage, while raging.

Oh, good point: She can attack the tatzlwyrm, but she can't make AoOs either so she's not technically threatening its square. :P Just trying to get you up to a 17 to hit. Hopefully, the -4 to Dex will help; I don't actually have any idea what a tatzl's AC is.

I believe Annalisa's Northern Ancestry gives her a bonus here as well, but at this point in the conversation I'm actually pretty lost as to what all to add to a roll.

Your sheet's kind of a mess. :P

Base Fort save of +2; Con bonus (which you don't have included and should) +2; cold-weather outfit +5; Northern Ancestry +1 for a total of +10. (+12, if you make your Survival roll.)

Then you get Cold Resistance 2, which applies to the nonlethal damage you're at risk of taking if you fail the save.

You really should have a separate section for stats while raging too, as most of your numbers will change: hp, saves, etc.

EDIT: Also, your attack bonus should be +4 non-raging, and your Str bonus to damage is +3. Looks like you didn't recalibrate your numbers when you adjusted your Str upward (CMB is wrong, too), and you never included it in your damage listings.

EDIT again: Hm, you also didn't add your Con bonus to hp. You're going to want those. ;)

Here's a new suggestion that I haven't seen called out yet...

More cool mini's of female heroes. My daughters have been especially drawn to Kyra and Merisiel...and even Seoni (to a lesser degree). They often argue over who gets to play those characters (and use their mini's) in the various scenarios I've run for them with the Beginner Box. In general, I've always noticed that whenever they see any artwork in a Paizo product...or any "artwork" in the form of a new miniature...they always identify with and ask questions about those that are obviously female. Not so much the monster or evil NPC ones, mind you...but the ones they see as heroes fighting against the bad guys/monsters. So, give them more of those to inspire them and I think it helps foster their continued interest in the game.

In some ways, miniatures are kind of like tiny dolls or action figures in their minds. Both are toys they already have an intense interest in. So, I think this is a product line that could benefit from more positive role models to depict for them, as well.

Just another penny,
--Neil

Maybe because there's already a thread in the minis forum complaining that there are too many female miniatures in Pathfinder Battles. Because, after all, there aren't enough female gamers to use all those female minis, and you don't need minis for barmaids and townspeople and noncombatants. :P

As Isker the blacksmith begs off on behalf of the locals who simply cannot be spared and stares down the strangers, the corner of Halla's mouth twists into a smirk. This, then, was why outsiders had been specifically summoned to a town þing: to foist on them the dangers the townsfolk chose not to shoulder. She keeps her seat and holds her tongue, giving the woman called Annalisa a curious glance; she appears to be a local, known to the leaders of Heldren. What has she done that they are so eager to send her off into the wilderness with an assortment of strangers?

This thread wasn't so much about attracting new players as about making existing female gamers feel welcome. The devolution of this thread is a textbook example of how not to do it.

There's never one that's exactly right. Try playing a gnome that doesn't look like Lini. :P

I'm pretty sure the context of that quote means: Don't mind-control her character as a vehicle to introduce sex into the game. Which should pretty much go without saying.

It's not just that. It's, Don't make assumptions about what her character would or must do.

I was once starting a new game, and the GM had one PC sitting in a tavern when the prime antagonist started harassing the barmaid so the PC stepped up to defend her. After the jerk with the roving hands had been sent packing, the GM turned to me and said, "Okay, you can go ahead and join in, Joana. The barmaid is your PC."

"Excuse me? No, it's not. She's not a barmaid."

"Well, it's been a while since her last adventure. She has to do something to pay for her room and board."

"If that were my PC, she would have drawn her own weapon and defended herself instead of letting some loser paw her."

"Well, no, she really needs this job. It's better to put up with sexual harassment than to be on the streets."

"So you're saying my PC's only options are working in a bar or prostitution? She's a freaking fifth-level fighter! You don't think the city guard would be happy to have her?"

I was so mad, he eventually retconned the barmaid to being an NPC and let me introduce my character another way, but he never got why I was so offended by it.

Well, then ... yeah, that's stupid. Heck, even holiday Seoni wore fur-trimmed scraps of nothing.

Doesn't take away from my hearty approval of NPCs dressed appropriately for adventuring in the climate, though.

It's bad enough that so many Paizo illustrations feature cleavage windows and stripper dresses, but do Lini and Feiya really need to walk around half-naked in the midst of a snowstorm...?

Unfortunately, the iconics are always pictured in the one set of clothes they apparently own so people recognize them, just like Charlie Brown always wears that yellow shirt with the black zig-zag. Personally, I find this less jarring than the shot of Alahazra in spotless white robes and silly hat swabbing the deck on a pirate ship.

"And the Valdemar name means nothing, I suppose!" Corinna bristles. "I tried to help Ameiko when I told her that coming here was a very bad idea that could put her in grave danger, and she stamped her little foot and said 'I don't care; I want it, I want it, I want it!' Well, I'm sorry, but she got what she wanted. If we had found a single clue in that village that pertained to her family, that indicated we might not be on a fools' quest, going back in might be worth the risk, but all we found was death and the promise of more. I searched every crate and barrel in those storerooms, hoping for some sort of sign we were on the right track, a name or a seal or a scrap of parchment: anything! I won't throw my life away because we hope that maybe there might be some sort of cure in there somewhere. I should think all of you would be happier to have a competent cleric or expert arcanist sent to your aid than to entrust her well-being to a group of amateurs stumbling blindly through unfamiliar territory looking for a needle in a haystack that might not be there in the first place."

Does that mean Sara Marie is Cosmo's boss now?

My RL group waives all material components. Honestly, I find a spell component pouch which simultaneously contains live bugs, butter, pinches of dirt and hair, pieces of various monsters, tiny pies, and all kinds of insane odds and ends and from which you can draw exactly what you need as a free action without having to dig around for it utterly immersion-breaking.

If you're going to require a component, then require it. You might as well just make a little bag be an Arcane Bond. :P

For "building" armies of creatures often encountered in large numbers, maybe?

Most disgusting spell ever. (Well, except for maybe that one where you peel the skin off your body and animate it like the chick from Doctor Who.) I mean, drinking blood is one thing; spiders in your mouth is just too horrific even to contemplate. :P

That being said, Pathfinder's female iconics are unequivocally more conventionally attractive than any of the male iconics, which I find to be offensive in a weird, reverse-sexism sort of way (the cavalier, perhaps, being an exception). If there are new iconics introduced down the line, this disparity in gendered hotness really should be addressed.

This. And not just the iconics. Female NPCs (especially humans) almost uniformly look hot and airbrushed. Even the Gray Maidens are sexy-scarred. The guys look dirty and sweaty and unshaven. Which, quite frankly, is how they should look if they're out adventuring in a dungeon, but the same standard doesn't get applied to the women who, like June Cleaver, look like they wake up in makeup and pearls.

Personally, I'd like see some unrealistically-attractive male art. I like eye candy, too. Female NPCs are always drawn hot to appeal to the male gamer, but I almost never see an attractive depiction of a male NPC for my PC to romance. Flip through The Wormwood Mutiny and compare Rosie Cusswell and Sandara Quinn to the male pirates the party is supposed to befriend. Heck, Sandara Quinn is described as "looking like someone you wouldn't want to cross," but she's drawn like Pirate Barbie.*

Why should it be any more interesting to see a female DM to "handle" a male NPC than it is to see male DMs speak for female ones?

Honestly, the concept that we're some exotic species that needs further study is a bit off-putting from the beginning.

I've tried to play a non-channeling healing class in parties without a cleric. It stinks. My 5th-level non-life oracle almost never gets to cast anything other than cure lights. I am now at the point that I will not play a non-channeling healing class in a party unless another PC has channeling because I'll be nothing but a healbot most of the time. That's my anecdotal experience.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of healing wands flavor-wise, but given the option between buying one and the non-channeling healer being forced to cast nothing but healing spells if the party gets beat up, I'm taking the wand.

I'm female. I GM. I virtually never make up new items or classes, and when I do, it's to shore up a weakness in the party ("No one wants to play a cleric? Don't worry about it; I'll take care of it.") or because one of my players has come to me with an idea of how they want their character to develop ("You want to be an unarmored paladin with sacred tattoos? I can make a prestige class for that."). Iow, I can see an itch and figure out a way to scratch it that is hopefully not unbalancing, but I don't tend to just dream up new statblocks and monsters for fun. I do make my own NPCs, encounters, campaigns, settings, and maps; that's the creative part of adventure design to me, not the numbers and mechanics.

I have no idea whether I can be considered "normative" for female GMs or not. Like DeathQuaker, I'd rather that the bar for entry not be another wondrous item, but if Paizo's looking for people who can design items and statblocks, it makes sense that they ask for items and statblocks.

Not to mention that 3PP provide character options that Paizo hasn't yet or chooses not to. Psionics specifically come to mind. I would surmise that having options available for the Pathfinder ruleset in niches that Paizo hasn't explored encourages people interested in those types of options to play Pathfinder and buy Paizo products that might otherwise migrate to another ruleset that includes their favored options out of the box.

But that's just conjecture on my part.

Heh. I was wondering about putting a window in a vampire's coffin to let the sunlight in. :)

It's way more useful than Door Sight since it lets light, gaze attacks, etc., through.

Now my cleric can be fully replaced with a wand of cure light wounds and a bar of soap. :P

I could see this being both an item found in a horde (loaded with a swarm - suprise!)

Only if it's been in the hoard less than ten minutes. :P

The ten-minute time limit works against the item's coolness, IMO. I'd rather have the swarm stay in there indefinitely, but you can't use the item again until it's been released. And I really hate the name.

Love the Tower Girl. I can totally see myself using her as a PC. Not like when my brother-in-law would spend 10 minutes digging through his piles of WotC minis and say, "This one is a girl, I think," and I'd just end up using a d12 as a marker. :P

It doesn't really.

It's ridiculous for a monk/paladin to have two wands when the actual casters in the party don't have one between them.

It's ridiculous for a new party member to have more equipment than the remaining four members of the party put together.

He's obviously built to waltz through the dungeon we just got our rear ends handed to us in with his 24 AC, so the wights can only hit him on a natural 20, and make us look even more like bumbling idiots than we already do.

However, since he's managed to arrive here in the middle of nowhere, alone, without even burning a charge off one of his wands so he's obviously met nothing that might have given him any indication he might have been in any danger at any time, he's just demonstrated that it's safe for Corinna to leave, so that's what she'll do. Obviously, the NPCs have been lying to us about how dangerous this countryside is just to ensure we don't leave Ameiko.

The possessive is correct, although the phrasing is a bit esoteric: the history of violence belonging to dwarves and orcs goes back to the beginning of their races.

"There's" would create a run-on sentence with a comma splice; "there's been" would do the same and additionally be a colloquial contraction for "there has," usable in common speech but not in a published text.

From what I read in these boards the guys that argue that crafting should be done for free never take Master Craftsman and Craft Magic Arms and Armor even if they are playing a fighter with a large number of feats and that can benefit greatly for those feats.

It is always the spellcaster that should spend the feat for them.

Actually, in the one campaign I personally saw in which players took Crafting feats, while they were all involved, it was the fighter who was the main crafter. His story was that during downtime he operated an arms and armor shop, and the party members helped him out with it. He crafted magical arms and armor; the ranger made bows; and the cleric cast spells for them as needed and made wondrous items too, I think.

Granted, this was a homebrew 3.5 campaign with unlimited downtime between adventures so they could make exactly what they wanted. I can't even imagine party dynamics in which they'd leave the crafter behind while going adventuring unless it was to cover sessions the player wasn't there, especially since you can craft at half-speed while adventuring anyway.

Starbuck_II wrote:

While 4E might not be as good as it can be (I liked 3.5 better), it is the longest running D&D system....So 4.0 is still running (8 years)

4E has been out for 8 years? That's some might fuzzy math you are using there. It's barely been 4. 2E was much longer running.

Yeah, the release date for Player's Handbook is June 6, 2008. Not sure where you're getting 8 years from.

To recap, for those who didn't follow "that other thread," the basic question is whether characters with Crafting feats should craft for other party members at cost. One side says that it increases the effectiveness of the whole party and thus benefits the crafter who would be selfish to charge his friends for gear; the other says (I think) it's unfair for anyone other than the crafter to benefit from the feat he chose and while he's crafting the rest of the party is out having fun so he should take a page from the Little Red Hen. ;D

I thought this post by Weirdo was germane:

Gauss wrote:

The WBL FAQ is to prevent non-crafters from benefiting from the crafter's feats. Prior to that FAQ a crafter's fellow PCs could tell the crafter to craft for them. Thus benefiting the party with a bonus feat that they did not earn, do not have, and should not have.

Crafting is INTENDED to increase the power of the crafter's magic items relative to the rest of the party. After all, he spent a feat on it didn't he? They did not.

This line of thought feels really weird to me. Crafting feats are not the only scenario in which the character taking the feat is not the only character who directly benefits. Fearless Aura, Lucky Halfling, and Bodyguard all benefit allies without benefiting the feat holder at all. In Harm's Way actually benefits allies at the expense of the feat holder, and the Intimidate form of Antagonize may have a similar effect. The argument that Craft feats shouldn't benefit party members who haven't taken the feat doesn't hold water given that there are non-Crafting feats that do exactly that.

Crafters should be allowed to benefit their party members by making cheap items. Parties should be able to sort out for themselves whether it actually makes sense for the crafter to make cheap items for other members, just like parties currently sort out for themselves where the money for healing items (or that 5K diamond) is coming from.

Joana wrote:

But I do find the reasoning behind your proposal somewhat repellent.

If that were my reasoning, I would find it repellent to.

My reasoning is failure should have consequences. Not failing should be rewarded.

Anything else you are adding to that, you are adding to that.

Perhaps, but you're the one who keeps using loaded and derisive terms like "builds that fail" and "Bob the Failbot."

Competely apart from the fact that most PC deaths have nothing to do with defective builds but with poor dice luck (and considering that your argument in the other thread was that the ultimate struggle wasn't 'GM vs. player' but 'table vs. dice,' it's odd that you've now locked onto a player with a poor character build as your poster child for why the PC should suffere consequences), Pathfinder is already a game in which the system mastery bar is set at a very high level, due to the complexity of builds and plethora of options. Do we really want to enforce another hurdle for new players wherein their inexpertly-built PCs are continually weakened? When you've made poor decisions in putting a PC together, you're already facing the consequences of being less effective than your more experienced party members. Do we really want the "You suck at this" message like a drumbeat echoing throughout gameplay?

Or, what thejeff just said while I was typing. :)

It is assumed that some of the treasure that the PCs find is consumed in the course of the adventure (such as potions and scrolls) and that some of the less useful item are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased and that after those items have been used/sold this is what the PCs have at various level thresholds.

That's how I read that sentence. Not that a 10th-level character should have received treasure equal to 62,000 gp but will have less than that depending on what he's spent it on. Otherwise, if a new PC came in at WBL, he'd be overpowered compared to the rest of the party because he gets to spend all his WBL on what he needs now, whereas they've had to sell weapons no one in the party used and buy wands and potions and so on and now only have, say, 52,700 gp worth of gear.

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game assumes that all PCs of equivalent level have roughly equal amounts of treasure and magic items.

PCs have roughly equal amounts of treasure and magic items, not have gotten roughly equal amounts but those who don't blow their money on consumables or use what they find instead of selling items to buy more customized gear will end up wealthier.

Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level.

They are expected to have this amount of treasure at a specific level, irrespective of what they've received and spent. WBL is for use by GMs to determine if their party is overpowered or underpowered in relation to the average party vs. a given CR; it's not a value judgment on how wisely they've spent their money.

So, to circle back on topic, the assumption of the game is that the PCs will have the same amount of treasure and gear whether they've paid to have allies raised or not; thus the 5k price tag is mere window dressing and has no lasting effect on the party, which is what SKR was saying.

Belladonna Blue wrote:

Sulaco wrote:

Aberzombie wrote:

I'm not sure about the OP, but I stopped voting for two specific reasons:

1. None of the entries gave the name of the person.

Why would the name of the submitter be material to the voting process?

I don't get this either. It's not like the names of the winners won't be revealed, and anonymous submissions allow for a lot of people who ordinarily wouldn't have bothered to enter to give the contest a try (like me).

Sadly, I have the curse of giving extra love and attention to folks I consider friends. But that's just me. Those are usually the only real life names I'd recognize.

Mostly though I guess it just bugs me for completeness sake. I'm weird like that.

At the point that names, whether forum or RL, are provided with entries, this stops being a "find a good designer" contest and becomes a popularity contest.

It's not really a question of "completeness," as the first round of RPG Superstar has always been anonymous, even when it was Sean or Neil or Clark or whoever judging it; they never knew who had submitted which item, as they're not immune to bias creeping in when they see a favorite or non-favorite poster's name attached to an item either. They were always just as surprised as everyone else to see who designed the advancing items (and, sometimes, to see that they had panned an item from a past advancer they had championed and expected to do very well).

I fail to see how allowing low-level characters to have access to raise dead in any way involves altering the rules of the game so no one loses. It doesn't make the PCs more powerful or give them an unfair advantage after they're raised; it just gives their players the same chance the players of high-level characters have to not have to make up a new character if they would rather play the one they already have.

Besides, as SKR said, the PCs are supposed to win. It's not a level playing field in the first place. If your party TPKs in book 1 of an AP, you never get to play the rest of the adventure. It's lose-lose for everyone, in-game and out.

What is "good story telling" differs based on whether you're a spectator on that story or a participant in it. An enjoyable football game means something different to a spectator who just enjoys watching a close and well-played game and to a fan of one of the two teams; the former cares about the "drama" and the latter about the outcome for their chosen side. And it means something else entirely to a player in that game. A quarterback breaking his leg in the first half and being replaced by a rookie back-up who proceeds to dazzle the world with his unexpected talent makes for a great Hollywood movie -- but it sucks to be the quarterback who just lost his job. I don't think he'd tell you he enjoyed the game.

As I said, if I want a good story, I'll read a book or watch a movie; if I want to participate in a story, I play Pathfinder, and I have fun to the extent that I am able to contribute to that story, regardless of its putative literary merits.

The point I was making, which I will remind you that you attempted to dismiss by saying the references were not the same not me, was that in stories death has a role in large part because of how serious an effect it has on the story.

I absolutely don't disagree that death is viewed differently in games where death is final and in those where it can be recovered from. I simply posit that, in a world where death can explicitly be recovered from, it plays a different role than in Fight Club or Serenity or real life. In a world where people can cast fly or feather fall, falling off a cliff isn't as much of an obstacle as a world where they can't. Pathfinder simply isn't as gritty a ruleset as you think it is or should be.

Also, in none of your examples were financial considerations part of a reason why a character died, never to return. Fairly certain that if the 'verse had the equivalent of a raise dead, Mal and Zoe would have moved heaven and earth and stolen whatever treasure they had to to bring Wash back. In character, they're not concerned about telling a dramatic story; they care about their friend/husband.

The logical consequence is that really you should be GMing yourself or just writing fan fiction about yourself, if the stories of others have absolutely no interest to you.

I'm concerned about the story of the little cadre of heroes we call our adventuring party. I feel the same way about the death of anyone else's PC in the group. I want to contribute to their personal goals and successes just as they contribute to mine. I don't want to play a solo campaign or be a lone wolf hero; my enjoyment is in the group dynamics. I find the relationships and interaction among the PCs to be far more interesting than the metaplot of the campaign. I'm not claiming my way is the only way to enjoy the game, but it's how I enjoy the game.

Respectfully, you aren't seriously going to try and make the argument that the D&D/Pathfinder setting doesn't conceptually spring largely from from Tolkien, are you?

You can't really be trying to make that case, can you?

I am making the case that in the Lord of the Rings, death was final. Mortal beings have no power to return souls to bodies at all, no matter how powerful they are. Therefore, using it as an example for a ruleset that includes raise dead as a 5th-level spell (and reincarnate as a 4th and resurrection as a 7th and true resurrection as a 9th) is specious. By reference to Tolkien, even your high-level characters shouldn't be able to be raised.