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The Pathfinder RPG has taken the edge off of raise dead and the like, and although that's fine in most situations, I find this doesn't sit well with me for Kingmaker.
One of the characters in my group was killed by the Stag Lord. This should have been harrowing moment and one that leaves them in fear of his prowess (or at the very least saddened by their loss). Instead, the party just marks off a few thousand gold from the loot they just received and makes item creation plans for the rest of it.
When the king dies it should be mean something. If an assassin offs the high priest it should matter. Short of just asking my players to respect death is there any reasonable way to limit or eliminate the triviality of dying?
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I don't personally believe somebody should be able to receive a scroll of reincarnate via mailed order.
Also this is Golarion. High level NPC's are supposed to be exceptionally rare, and I don't believe (at least at low level) raise dead is the kind of spell that should be cast lightly, or hand waived.
If they went back to Brevoy to do it, I would make it a quest in itself to find a caster who can do the magic and convince him/side quest to convince him to do the spellcasting- and at least have the Stag Lord make some progress in some way while they were gone.
Just my personal opinions, but I think characters who die at levels 1-4 should stay dead.
Some thoughts (some of which Alexander has already mentioned):
1. Raising the dead and removing the permanent levels is expensive, especially at lower levels. And in this AP, it's very easy to miss out on treasure and be below expected character wealth (a good thing, IMHO). The loss of coin should hurt.
2. There is no caster in the Stolen Lands of high enough level to raise the dead (though you could add an NPC, like a high level druid the party will have to deal with later as they "civilize" the land).
3. In the Stolen Lands / River Kingdoms where banditry is a very common profession, nothing is "easy enough to import". If PCs want to "mail order" an item, they need to pay in advance and pray the delivery system doesn't get ambushed.
4. Time limitations for Raise Dead and Reincarnate are too short to travel back to Rostov with the body, much less "mail order" a scroll.
5. Reincarnating the king is going to mean something. There should be issues when the party claims a gnome is really the former human king.
A scroll of reincarnate seems easy enough to import.
I disagree. Besides, isn't there a caster level check involved if the PCs cast from the scroll? A druid PC must make a caster level check (only DC 8 but still something of a risk for most low level PCs) or it fails. That's assuming there IS a druid PC in the party of course.
Alternatively, couldn't they just return to (name of kingdom they came from) to find appropriately leveled spellcasters?
PCs should be made aware that wandering back to Restov is going to annoy the local government there, since their conquest of the Stolen Lands is only unofficially connected to Restov. I could imagine the Sword Lords telling them to clear off, for fear of attracting attention from Brevoy.
Also, when it comes to importing magic items. It takes time and raise dead must be cast within 1 day per CL of subject's demise, which will give 9 days in case of most scrolls (or a custom made scroll must be made, which increases costs) and reincarnate gives fixed 1 week time limit.
What are travel times from party's base of operations to Restov? What chance is that such costly scrolls are available. How much time will it take to find NPC who is capable of scribing those scrolls (with level high enough and Scribe Scroll feat taken), how long it will take him to make it and restoration to make low level character functional?
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I don't think that the time limitations (for casting) are all that important to the discussion. I think it is entirely reasonable to assume that the well prepared party has already procured their mail order scroll (if you allow that type of thing in your game), prior to the death it is required to reverse.
Otherwise, to each his own in his game I'd say...
Cheers
I don't think that the time limitations (for casting) are all that important to the discussion. I think it is entirely reasonable to assume that the well prepared party has already procured their mail order scroll (if you allow that type of thing in your game), prior to the death it is required to reverse.
Otherwise, to each his own in his game I'd say...
Cheers
Ahh, yes. Temporal Express - "When it absolutely, positively has to be there yesterday" (tm).
After losing their king in the Stag Lord fight then finding a bunch of money while looting the fort - enough to raise their king - Gallard's players could just drop the money and an order form in the convenient Temporal Express box located just outside the fort. By the time they re-enter the fort, the scroll should be there waiting for them.
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Ahh, yes. Temporal Express - "When it absolutely, positively has to be there yesterday" (tm).After losing their king in the Stag Lord fight then finding a bunch of money while looting the fort - enough to raise their king - Gallard's players could just drop the money and an order form in the convenient Temporal Express box located just outside the fort. By the time they re-enter the fort, the scroll should be there waiting for them.
Surely you jest. Or perhaps mis-understood my intent.
I was making no claims... merely pointing out that time restrictions will have little to no effect once the characters have the means (either financially or level wise) to reverse the state of death through magical means. By scroll or any other means.
The OP used an example of a character death by the hand of the Stag Lord, but the question was aimed at the overall AP. At least that is how I read it... meaning insufficient level/wealth will cease to be a factor later in the AP.
In this case the time restrictions (ie spell must be cast within x/days of death) will eventually fail to provide a solution to what the OP has deemed a problem in his game.
I generally try to avoid telling other players how to play their game...
The only way I can see how to achieve his goal is to remove/restrict the magic responsible. This is obviously a house rule solution as the RAW allow for the procurement of magical items, with no caveat about life restoring magic. YMMV.
Cheers
Yeah, I was joking. Sorry.
Eventually, when the party hits 9th level, death becomes trivial except for gp cost. But that's the way PFRPG is built. If the OP wants death to matter, the best way to do so would be to keep character wealth low. Don't add any treasure to the modules and any treasure the party misses disappears.
But until 9th level, having the wealth to pay for a Raise Dead doesn't mean they'll be able to. The party's location during Kingmaker makes raising the dead much harder then it was for other APs. Plus there could be political difficulties, as Neil pointed out. It's not the triviality the OP thinks it is.
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I hadn't thought about the limitations on those spells. It seems the stag lord's recent victim will stay dead.
However, this doesn't solve the problem in the long term. Eventually the PCs will either have scrolls of reincarnate on hand or be able to just cast the spell themselves. Short of house ruling the issue into oblivion I'd like there to be a bigger impact on the overall campaign where a character chooses to cheat death.
Perhaps some sort of kingdom-wide check would be in order. Even if their king was brought back I imagine most folk would be pretty disturbed by the news that their leader was partially digested by a bear/dragon/gru.
Perhaps some sort of kingdom-wide check would be in order. Even if their king was brought back I imagine most folk would be pretty disturbed by the news that their leader was partially digested by a bear/dragon/gru.
In general, the death of the king shouldn't matter to the kingdom since most of the time it will happen while adventuring and the kingdom will never learn about it. The dead PC will be raised by the party cleric the next day and no one outside the party will know.
Now if the king dies and is reincarnated, that can't be covered up. It's perfectly fair for you to apply some points of Unrest to the kingdom then call for a stability check to prevent more unrest.
If a leader's death is observed by those in the kingdom, like during a fight in a town, then it would be fair to apply 1d6 Unrest similar to the assassination event.
One option you could consider is the negative level that can't be removed for a week. If the negative level overlaps the time set for kingdom ruling, you could apply a -1 to the national statistic(s) the king contributes to.
Otherwise, the general concept for making the party fear death in PFRPG is keeping their wealth level low so that the cost to raise a character and remove the 2 negative levels is painful.
I hadn't thought about the limitations on those spells. It seems the stag lord's recent victim will stay dead.
However, this doesn't solve the problem in the long term. Eventually the PCs will either have scrolls of reincarnate on hand or be able to just cast the spell themselves. Short of house ruling the issue into oblivion I'd like there to be a bigger impact on the overall campaign where a character chooses to cheat death.
Perhaps some sort of kingdom-wide check would be in order. Even if their king was brought back I imagine most folk would be pretty disturbed by the news that their leader was partially digested by a bear/dragon/gru.
Bringing people back to life cost a lot of money, and it will affect the amount of gear they have.
Raise Dead
School conjuration (healing); Level cleric 5
Casting Time 1 minute
Components V, S, M (diamond worth 5,000 gp), DF
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If they want to get rid of the pesky negative level caused by Raise dead
Restoration
School conjuration (healing); Level cleric 4, paladin 4
Casting Time 1 minute
Components V, S, M (diamond dust worth 100 gp or 1,000 gp, see text)
--------------------------------------------------------------
If the death was more severe and they still need restoration at the least.
Resurrection
School conjuration (healing); Level cleric 7
Components V, S, M (diamond worth 10,000 gp), DF
----------------------------------------------------------------
Restoration, Greater
School conjuration (healing); Level cleric 7
Components V, S, M (diamond dust 5,000 gp)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
True Resurrection
School conjuration (healing); Level cleric 9
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Components V, S, M, DF (diamond worth 25,000 gp)
Note the caster levels also, and they have to get their hands on the material component if anyone in the party decides to scribe scrolls.
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The one thing I liked about the Eberron world back in 3.5 (or was it Iron Kingdoms? I forget which one, ah well), the bringing back the dead is an iffy thing. The correct soul might come back, then again, sometimes something else comes back too.
but yeah, as Wraithstrike has pointed out, those costs will add up a bit if there's lots of deaths.
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The one thing I liked about the Eberron world back in 3.5 (or was it Iron Kingdoms? I forget which one, ah well), the bringing back the dead is an iffy thing. The correct soul might come back, then again, sometimes something else comes back too.
but yeah, as Wraithstrike has pointed out, those costs will add up a bit if there's lots of deaths.
IK made healing and raising the dead harder then any other D20 game I am aware of. Granted my knowledge of Eberron is limited. To make up for it in IK though they had healing salves to make up for the less effective magical healing, but nothing to help out for death. Which make death more likely to be something you don't walk away from. :D
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IK made healing and raising the dead harder then any other D20 game I am aware of. Granted my knowledge of Eberron is limited. To make up for it in IK though they had healing salves to make up for the less effective magical healing, but nothing to help out for death. Which make death more likely to be something you don't walk away from. :D
Thanks! That was it, IK was nasty! Eberron was not the one I was thinking about, though Eberron has a special place in my heart for the world, there was some memorable adventures/characters from there. IK, I just wish that they had made more rpg books for d20.
Still, that's something one could incorporate, a little extra nastiness from IK for resurrection, yeah, it's a step further away from Golarion, but it would make characters fear death.
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I agree, I was really hoping to see IK make the leap to Pathfinder or just do their own version of D20 ala Conan by Mongoose. But it seems they are planning on making their own game system some day, but with how well their mini game is going it could be a really long time if ever. Before we see more RPG stuff which is sad.
Returning the dead to life wasn't formally harder in Eberron - the only restriction was very-very limited availablity of NPC of high enough level to be capable of casting such spells. And they usually were too busy to create scrolls and other items for market purposes.
IK was another story. Mere curing wounds was painful and restricted.
Also this is Golarion. High level NPC's are supposed to be exceptionally rare,
Really? I must have imagined all those high-level dudes in the temples of greater cities. Restov has a level 10 cleric of Erastil and is reasonably nearby.
Also this is Golarion. High level NPC's are supposed to be exceptionally rare,Really? I must have imagined all those high-level dudes in the temples of greater cities. Restov has a level 10 cleric of Erastil and is reasonably nearby.
It now occurs to me that there doesn't appear to be any sort of rules regarding the building of a community in my PF Core rulebook, like there were in Core DMG 3.5. Hrm. So *is* there any word from above what the numbers look like for high level NPCs in communities, rather than "there aren't many"?
AFAIR it was already stated in another thread some time ago by The-Powers-That-Be that it is their deliberate decison to not implement any such NPC-level determining mechanics and leave actual determination of NPC levels for GMs to decide as it suits them in their respective campaigns.
Actually there kind of are rules in the Gamemastery Guide for that... not "how many high-level NPC's are there in this town", but "which level of spellcasting is available for purchase in this town".
On page 205 we have a table which tells us that in a town the size of Restov, level 7 spells are available for purchase. Logically, that means that there are at the very least some level 13 casters there.
I agree, I was really hoping to see IK make the leap to Pathfinder or just do their own version of D20 ala Conan by Mongoose. But it seems they are planning on making their own game system some day, but with how well their mini game is going it could be a really long time if ever. Before we see more RPG stuff which is sad.
I'm another IK DM that would love to it in PF form but I guess it's not gonna happen. I love that setting, except for the mechanika construction stuff - way too clunky. I also found that once you had two healers in a group it wasn't worth worrying about Pain of Healing.
Anyway - character death - as long as they've got the cash and the time is taken to get the corpse and the magic in the same place then I wouldn't worry. Even if they think they're justified in using the Treasury (hey, it's a perk) treating the Kingdom as a Ressurection factory won't do it any good.
Cheers
Mark
I don't personally believe somebody should be able to receive a scroll of reincarnate via mailed order.
Also this is Golarion. High level NPC's are supposed to be exceptionally rare,
Good joke.
Answering to the original question, if you want death to mean much, don't play DnD. Simple as that. Alternatively, make everyone of note make use of various ways to kill souls, or at least to hamper simple Raise Dead, such as undead reanimation. Houseruling stuff is also an option, to make the world saner, but raising the dead should not be any less avaiable for PCs, or things will get ugly.
Nonwithstanding this, Reincarnate is broken since 3.0 and should not be allowed as written unless the GM is OK with everyone who matters getting to live indefinitely on cheap. And I do mean indefinitely, Reincarnate allows you to get a young body every time your current one grows old.
4. Time limitations for Raise Dead and Reincarnate are too short to travel back to Rostov with the body, much less "mail order" a scroll.
Time limitations are meaningless. See: Gentle Repose and/or simply stuffing bodies into a Bag of Holding.
5. Reincarnating the king is going to mean something. There should be issues when the party claims a gnome is really the former human king.
Why? I'm dead serious. This is the world, where appearances are easily mutable, within humanoid range. Why should they mean anything to anyone who matters?
Perhaps some sort of kingdom-wide check would be in order. Even if their king was brought back I imagine most folk would be pretty disturbed by the news that their leader was partially digested by a bear/dragon/gru.
Do you realize that these people are at PCs mercy and highly likely to be eaten by monsters or wiped by neighbors if PCs simply get fed up with them one day and leave? Do you realize that most these people realize how dependent on their rulers they are, and so are unlikely to annoy PCs for really stupid reasons, like PCs being so awesome that even death has no sway over them?
I don't personally believe somebody should be able to receive a scroll of reincarnate via mailed order.
Also this is Golarion. High level NPC's are supposed to be exceptionally rare,
Good joke.
Answering to the original question, if you want death to mean anything, don't play DnD. Simple as that. Alternatively, make everyone of note make use of various ways to kill souls, or at least to hamper simple Raise Dead, such as undead reanimation.
Nonwithstanding this, Reincarnate is broken since 3.0 and should not be allowed as written unless the GM is OK with everyone who matters getting to live infefinitely on cheap. And I do mean indefinitely, Reincarnate allows you to get a young body every time your current one grows old.
Most DM's rule it so that a creature goes off it's life span, not the body it inhabits. That stops nonsense like getting the venerable bonuses to mental stats several times, while still enjoying the physical stats of a young body, not that immortality comes up in most game, but it kills silly background stories that a player might try to come up with.
Time limitations are meaningless. See: Gentle Repose and/or simply stuffing bodies into a Bag of Holding.
Gentle Repose will work, if the cleric remembers this oft-forgotten spell. Bag of Holding does not work.
Why? I'm dead serious. This is the world, where appearances are easily mutable, within humanoid range. Why should they mean anything to anyone who matters?
5. Reincarnating the king is going to mean something. There should be issues when the party claims a gnome is really the former human king.
The Unrest score means the whole population of the kingdom matters, not just certain people.
As for your assertion that appearances shouldn't matter, we have an NPC in the first module (Tartuk) that proves otherwise.
Do you realize that these people are at PCs mercy and highly likely to be eaten by monsters or wiped by neighbors if PCs simply get fed up with them one day and leave? Do you realize that most these people realize how dependent on their rulers they are, and so are unlikely to annoy PCs for really stupid reasons, like PCs being so awesome that even death has no sway over them?
I'm guessing you haven't read Guide to the River Kingdoms. The people are not at the mercy of or dependent on their rulers.
Gentle Repose will work, if the cleric remembers this oft-forgotten spell. Bag of Holding does not work.
It does. The cleric has at least 9 days to remember memorizing Genrle Repose, most of them don't dump Int that low.
The Unrest score means the whole population of the kingdom matters, not just certain people.
1)And this is another point where the kingdom-ruling subsystem does not interface with actual DnD.
2)While we're at it, why do you want a rule that both makes little sense and further disincentives PCs from having their own kingdom, at least one that is not populated with magically obedient things and terrorized slaves, in a game that is supposed to be about ruling a kingdom? Take note, that as present in Kingmaker the kingdom already is mostly a burden, that gives PCs nothing tangible and demands much. Unless your players quietly agree to ride on rails for metagame reasons, citizens should basically kiss PCs... boots non-stop to make them agree to stay on the stated conditions.
As for your assertion that appearances shouldn't matter, we have an NPC in the first module (Tartuk) that proves otherwise.
Tartuk proves that you should cast Speak With Dead before Reincarnation to check if the recipient isn't an evil scumbag from birth.
I'm guessing you haven't read Guide to the River Kingdoms. The people are not at the mercy of or dependent on their rulers.
They are. That's a fact. That's more than a fact - that's very nature and essence of DnD. (You known why there is "hero" in "heroic fantasy", right? The whole genre is built on the presumption that actions of the chosen few are pivotal and world-changing, which necessarily means, that the unchosen many are secondary in importance.) How many times PCs' kingdom will be levelled in the course of AP without PCs to save it from fire? Yes, exactly. And their enemy kingdom was taken over by a nobody from nowhere just because he swindled the old rulers. This alone confirms without any shade of doubt, that the realities of DnD hold true elsewhere as well, and the kingdoms are widely accepted to be property of their kings. As this is what the plot is actually based into, statements to the contrary are immaterial.
It does. The cleric has at least 9 days to remember memorizing Genrle Repose, most of them don't dump Int that low.
Gentle Repose will work, if the cleric remembers this oft-forgotten spell. Bag of Holding does not work.
OK, I'll bite. How does sticking a body into a Bag of Holding make time limitations meaningless?
Int score doesn't matter if the players forget that Gentle Repose exists.
Tartuk proves that you should cast Speak With Dead before Reincarnation to check if the recipient isn't an evil scumbag from birth.
As for your assertion that appearances shouldn't matter, we have an NPC in the first module (Tartuk) that proves otherwise.
Tartuk was the village hero before the villagers scraped up the money for the reincarnation. After reincarnating as a kobold, the villagers didn't know how to react to him. Appearance mattered.
They are. That's a fact. That's more than a fact - that's very nature and essence of DnD. (You known why there is "hero" in "heroic fantasy", right?) How many times PCs' kingdom will be levelled in the course of AP without PCs to save it from fire? Yes, exactly. And their enemy kingdom was taken over by a nobody from nowhere just because he swindled the old rulers. This alone confirms without any shade of doubt, that the realities of DnD hold true elsewhere as well, and the kingdoms...
I'm guessing you haven't read Guide to the River Kingdoms. The people are not at the mercy of or dependent on their rulers.
Feel free to try to prove that people being at the mercy of and dependent on their rulers is the "very nature and essence of D&D".
The PCs are gathering people into the kingdom they are creating, so yes, they are responsible for defending their kingdom. But the people are perfectly free to leave the kingdom, as GttRK makes clear.
A look at Varnhold shows the kingdom's farmers continue on without their rulers - so they are not dependent on them.
A look at neighboring Galt shows a kingdom where the rulers are actually at the mercy of and dependent on the people. A ruler rules (and avoids the guillotine) until he loses the support of the people.
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In D&D death happens, if you limit the resurrecctions, players will just roll a new character, I personally will continue with the same characters from start to the finish of the campign, than have a new character every other sesion, and none of the original characters alive at the end, wich makes nosense to the plot, continuity, logic or anything.
In short I will take the revolving door of death any day over the factory of churning out player character sheets.
If you relly want dead be meanigful, make the character to come back with a "guest", but remember that this is for fun/roleplaying potential not as a way to punish the player for have his character dead.
The reasons there are things for PC's to do are because there are stories written with the PC's in mind. The author created an issue for the PC's, and a away for them to solve it. Had the author not written about this trouble no PC's would be needed.
I removed a post that was excessively aggressive and used some unwelcome language.
This thread contains food for thought. I hadn't yet considered how a citizenry might react to the the death and resurrection of a ruler. Two possibilities spring to mind:
1) The citizenry, having a natural & spiritual respect for the inevitability of death, might view the monarch's resurrection with suspicion or fear. Being ignorant of the minutiae of divine magic, they might believe that their monarch is now undead, or that s/he made a pact with evil outsiders to prolong his/her life. Unrest ensues.
2) The citizenry, having been shown the glories of resurrection magic, starts asking why can't *everybody* be immortal? The local temples are flooded with bereaved commoners, begging (or threatening) for resurrection magic. Unrest ensues.
There are plenty of other ways the people could react, of course. But I'm drawn to the scenarios that provide dramatic potential and create complex problems for PCs to solve. The notion (implied by FatR) that the PC/rulers are indisputable hero-gods doesn't strike me as very dramatic, and it certainly poses no challenges for players.
Why do everyone assume that the people even LEARNS of a king/queen's death? Most revivals happen in the field. If someone is reincarnated, go to a bigger town and buy a scroll of that lv8 polymorph spell to fix it before coming home.
Another possibility to consider, and this only works for worlds where Raise Dead and the like aren't "common" in the eyes of the NPCs: it might cause a big legal dispute.
- The King died.
- It's time for his heir/successor to take the throne!
- But, he came back. Hoo-boy. What do we do?
- Consult the scholars and learned men!
- Hrm, they disagree...
And you could write any level of civil unrest (up to civil war as each side rallies behind a different soveriegn) if you really wanted to.
Just another item to throw into the GM toolkit...
Another possibility to consider, and this only works for worlds where Raise Dead and the like aren't "common" in the eyes of the NPCs: it might cause a big legal dispute.
- The King died.
- It's time for his heir/successor to take the throne!
- But, he came back. Hoo-boy. What do we do?
- Consult the scholars and learned men!
- Hrm, they disagree...And you could write any level of civil unrest (up to civil war as each side rallies behind a different soveriegn) if you really wanted to.
Just another item to throw into the GM toolkit...
To my knowledge it was never clearly stated, but Ed Greenwood has said that in the Forgotten Realms, because of issues of inheritance and succession, kings and hereditary rulers in most parts of the heartlands agreed to not use any magic that would bring them back from the dead.
It might be an interesting bit of roleplaying to have someone suggest that as one of the organizational tenants of the kingdom.
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To my knowledge it was never clearly stated, but Ed Greenwood has said that in the Forgotten Realms, because of issues of inheritance and succession, kings and hereditary rulers in most parts of the heartlands agreed to not use any magic that would bring them back from the dead. It might be an interesting bit of roleplaying to have someone suggest that as one of the organizational tenants of the kingdom.
And I would retort, in character, that it makes no bloody sense in time of war or great challenge, for a good leader, with the skills and wisdom necessary to lead her people, to be struck down and remain fallen, when her countrymen need her.
To my knowledge it was never clearly stated, but Ed Greenwood has said that in the Forgotten Realms, because of issues of inheritance and succession, kings and hereditary rulers in most parts of the heartlands agreed to not use any magic that would bring them back from the dead. It might be an interesting bit of roleplaying to have someone suggest that as one of the organizational tenants of the kingdom.And I would retort, in character, that it makes no bloody sense in time of war or great challenge, for a good leader, with the skills and wisdom necessary to lead her people, to be struck down and remain fallen, when her countrymen need her.
I think the point was to garner support from people that were in the line of succession, which, admittedly, is less important in a new kingdom such as the one the player's forge in Kingmaker.
Why do everyone assume that the people even LEARNS of a king/queen's death? Most revivals happen in the field. If someone is reincarnated, go to a bigger town and buy a scroll of that lv8 polymorph spell to fix it before coming home.
Where's the fun in that?
This is a game in which pretty much ANYTHING can happen. There are, after all, spells called "Wish" and "Miracle." The game mechanics can be interpreted to suit just about any scenario.
Me, I like the scenarios in which actions have consequences, and players need to solve problems creatively. If my PCs tried to sneak their way past their own citizens like that, you can be sure that some gossip would see them in Restov, before & after they used their scroll...and complications would ensue.
I removed a post. Civility first.