I don't understand; how is making raise dead easier trivializing death. At least, how does it trivialize it any more than it already is, considering its a fictional game about fictionals in a fictional world that no one outside the players at the table will ever care about.The reason so many fantasy novels make death something you can't come back from even with magic, or make resurrection a super big deal is because when death is trivialized then there is no sense of excitement or danger to the reader. And then whats the point of your big scary dragon? Death needs to not be trivial, ESPECIALLY in fantasy settings where adventure is the plot if you expect people to care that you characters are in life threatening situations. The same is true if you are playing a game. If this were a game about social structures and romance it wouldn't matter. At least not as much.
You should read the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. Death and resurrection (revivification in the books) are common everyday things. Basically, anyone can be raised within 3 days of death as long as the brain and spinal cord are intact (though there are special weapons, called Morganti weapons, which destroy the soul itself, preventing revivification).
Interestingly enough, the main protagonist, Vlad, is an assassin. Even though death is fairly trivial in most cases, an assassination tends to send the intended message to the target. Of course, there are still assassination jobs that specify to make revivification impossible (typically from a dagger through the eye, into the brain), or even Morganti assassinations, but these cost far more than a routine assassination.
On top of being a very good series in general, it's got a very interesting mix of high and low magic in the setting (teleportation is rather mundane to its inhabitants), and shows that relatively trivial death isn't necessarily world breaking. It has effects on the world on how people act, but it things keep functioning relatively normally.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Challenge accepted. For me, it's a problem because this is a game. The easier it is to come back to life more the game trivializes ITSELF. It removes excitement, danger, and the sense of accomplishment gained by overcoming challenges by granting you infinite extra lives. Actions are less daring, brave or wreckless when you have literal life insurance. The more readily available resurrection is the less meaningful the players actions are. And the rules do trivialize death by making it incredible easy to obtain repeatedly. Not for the first few levels. But for most of your career as an adventurer.
Ok, I can see that; death and its permanency is what maintains the illusion (to use an acting term). However just the mere fact that raise dead is accessible doesn't make it a given. I've been party to many a game where the PC wasn't able to be raised - the other PCs didn't want to go through the hassle of carrying the body back, one guy was consumed in a fire, one guy disappeared on a late-night watch (granted I still suspect THAT one was just the player suiciding) and one guy died as a result of a ghoul's attacks but the ghoul was killed, then the PC re-animated.
I guess what I'm saying is the physical act of having a Rez spell in the game or making it more accessible by lowering the cost (or whatever SKR proposed) does NOT necessarily instantly translate to the entire game of Pathfinder trivializing death. That emotional response is a shared experience perpetuated by and participated in by the people playing the game. Should they decide they enjoy the game as a whole but want more threat/reward from said game, there are numerous ways they can garner that feeling.
And wait, speaking of death not being permanent...what about contingencies, or simulacrums, or any of the millions of other VILLAIN devices we GMs use all the time or epic level players employ to just keep on chugging? Heck, what about the PC in my current campaign: 5th level dwarf fighter (unbreakable) with Diehard? He has TONS of HP, then when he gets into negatives, he just KEEPS...ON...GOING! That's very cool and epic even at these low levels but I've never gotten close to killing him.
Well not getting raised can also be a good thing. Why spend 5K on a character that will be 1-2 levels down and have to spend more money removing the penalties or be stuck wheezing behind the rest of the group? Just get a new PC who is just 1 level below the rest. The group keeps their 5k.
Yay! I brought up Vlad in one of the other Raise Dead threads.
One of the differences of course, is that there is no real way in PF to make death permanent. It's fairly easy to make Raise Dead not work, but there's always Resurrection or True Resurrection. It's not clear to me if the proposal to remove costs applied to those as well.
Resurrection is still simple enough -- you just have to make sure that you don't leave any body parts behind.
True Resurrection is a bit harder, but by the time your enemies should have reliable access to it, you still have the tools to deal with it. Spells like Trap the Soul, or even a simple Flesh to Stone, will work wonders. (While a bit morbid, if you have a good, safe place, you can petrify all of your major enemies, get a permanent Shrink Item on them, and keep them in a display case. Shrink Item makes them 1/16 the size in all dimensions, so even that 30 foot tall colossal creature ends up being a 2 foot tall statue afterwards.)
Of course, since removing costs on Resurrection spells is a house rule anyway, you could also just house rule in an equivalent to Morganti weapons for high levels.
|
You should read the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust.
It's not a coincidence that Steve Brust played RPGs, including (I'm pretty sure) specifically D&D. I used to play poker with him on a semi-regular basis, and we would sometimes nerd-out about gaming. "VT" is almost certainly him exploring exactly what the implications of trivial resurrection would be, because of his gaming experiences.
Ok, I can see that; death and its permanency is what maintains the illusion (to use an acting term). However just the mere fact that raise dead is accessible doesn't make it a given. I've been party to many a game where the PC wasn't able to be raised - the other PCs didn't want to go through the hassle of carrying the body back, one guy was consumed in a fire, one guy disappeared on a late-night watch (granted I still suspect THAT one was just the player suiciding) and one guy died as a result of a ghoul's attacks but the ghoul was killed, then the PC re-animated.I guess what I'm saying is the physical act of having a Rez spell in the game or making it more accessible by lowering the cost (or whatever SKR proposed) does NOT necessarily instantly translate to the entire game of Pathfinder trivializing death. That emotional response is a shared experience perpetuated by and participated in by the people playing the game. Should they decide they enjoy the game as a whole but want more threat/reward from said game, there are numerous ways they can garner that feeling.
Death doesn't have to be permanent to be meaningful. I posted a house rule I use that makes death easy to come back from AND meaningful in ways the characters actually care about earlier in this thread. I'm not saying that my way is the best way. Just that it can be done and it isn't even that hard. The Vlad Taltos example people are suggesting is no different. Death simply isn't trivial in that world the way people are claiming it is. It is recoverable. But not trivial.
I'm perfectly in favor of Resurrection as a game feature. But the easier it is to access and the less price there is for it the less your characters actions matter. You have a buffer that protects you from failure. The bigger that buffer is the less your dice roles matter.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
even if you trivialize death for the PCs by removing the drawbacks of Raise Dead and the like. it still shouldn't have too much impact on the setting.
clerics high enough level to cast raise dead are a rarity, unless the DM chooses to make them a dime a dozen.
450 gold pieces for a 5th level spell only available in a metropolis, it doesn't do much trivialization. and 450 is the minimum.
peasants are going to stay dead because they don't want to resume a life of starvation
and the nobles that could afford this have to deal with the following issues, as would PCs
- desecration of the corpse, whether by mutilation or cremation
- debts to the patron deity of whoever raised you, not many nobles (or PCs) want to become some outsider's whipping boy
- the poverty they could enter if they were the frequent target of assassins and rebels
- the political rumors that could be told about frequent ressurection and the related stigma
- the distrust related with a reckless individual
if the character died of natural causes (such as age) or doesn't have a functional body to return to. there is no raising.
going to a metropolis to get your "penalty free Resurrection" has the following drawbacks attached
- you have to be able to identify a metropolis
- you have to know how to get to said metropolis
- you have to travel to said metropolis
- you have to survive the encounters and obstacles on the way to said metropolis
- the corpse to be raised has to be fully intact and transported to said metropolis. humanoid bodies are heavy
- you may have to re-clear the levels you just cleared due to enemy reinforcements and restocking of enemy supplies
- the floors you have to re-clear may now be harder to re-clear due to the enemy being more aware of your presence
- any hostages remain hostages for even longer
Death doesn't have to be permanent to be meaningful. I posted a house rule I use that makes death easy to come back from AND meaningful in ways the characters actually care about earlier in this thread.
I read your house rule, and I like it. You're using an approach opposite of the one I posted, but the key feature remains the same - dying is kind of a big deal.
In my game it meant the players did some traveling, interacted with a god or priest, gathered an offering. . .roleplaying! In your game, the players have contracts to fulfill, meaning more roleplaying!
As far as I am concerned, the only obstacle to getting raised is that you are taking 5000 GP out of the groups collective treasure and, according to SKR, the GM is supposed to reimburse that loss anyway.
As such, at the point the party has reliable access to Raise Dead, getting raised already is trivial. It just means that in the short term the party has to scramble for some funds if they are like my guys, who like to immediately spend everything they get.
|
As far as I am concerned, the only obstacle to getting raised is that you are taking 5000 GP out of the groups collective treasure and, according to SKR, the GM is supposed to reimburse that loss anyway.
As such, at the point the party has reliable access to Raise Dead, getting raised already is trivial. It just means that in the short term the party has to scramble for some funds if they are like my guys, who like to immediately spend everything they get.
I believe SKR is dead wrong about reimbursing money spent on consumables and how the WBL is interpreted.
even if you trivialize death for the PCs by removing the drawbacks of Raise Dead and the like. it still shouldn't have too much impact on the setting.
hhhwhat now? If you trivialize death for the PCs it will have a HUGE list of consequences to the setting. The PCs are not the only ones effected by spell changes. The more you trivialize death the more you increase two lists. The first is the list of people who have being brought back from the grave as an available option. The second is the list of people who will get to use the green mushroom multiple times. As those two lists expand you will have massive changes in the way that the settings population views death, self-sacrifice, and religion.
Trivialize death enough and you will completely change the entire structure of the world. One example is that the assassination game becomes a much more lucrative deal for the assassins because of the costs of effects like Trap the Soul, but as a result also becomes exceedingly rare due to the high difficulty and costs.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
]I read your house rule, and I like it. You're using an approach opposite of the one I posted, but the key feature remains the same - dying is kind of a big deal.
In my game it meant the players did some traveling, interacted with a god or priest, gathered an offering. . .roleplaying! In your game, the players have contracts to fulfill, meaning more roleplaying!
Thank you.
Roleplaying is an excellent way to make death meaningful, I agree. Whether it's through obligations after contracts with powerful outsiders as I have done, or questing for an offering and interacting with a deity or ...some other method. It's something that forces the player to care about his life because his death has consequences.
As an aside it is also a good way to explain why commoners and rich kids and all the random people who aren't so special can't come back to life the way heroes and villains do. They aren't capable of fulfilling the contracts or they just cant go on that quest to get that offering because it's too dangerous for them to succeed or the god they are petitioning just doesn't care enough about them because them being alive doesn't help him increase his influence or maybe they have been s$$!ty followers ...whatever really. As long as its interesting.
I believe SKR is dead wrong about reimbursing money spent on consumables and how the WBL is interpreted.As far as I am concerned, the only obstacle to getting raised is that you are taking 5000 GP out of the groups collective treasure and, according to SKR, the GM is supposed to reimburse that loss anyway.
As such, at the point the party has reliable access to Raise Dead, getting raised already is trivial. It just means that in the short term the party has to scramble for some funds if they are like my guys, who like to immediately spend everything they get.
His interpretation on how a magic item crafting feats financial advantage is only supposed to benefit the person who takes said feat was really quite a bit arbitrary. It broke with a decade of precedent and presented no mechanical or lore-related reason for that FAQ entry.
That being said, he is one of the lead guys who make the official rules, and as such said FAQ entry and his opinion on how consumables interact with WBL hold weight.
And in the case of the need for an expensive Raise Dead/Ressurection material component, I think he is completely right. As a GM, I'd rather have players want to continue their characters story to the end of the campaign, rather than even think about metagaming for more wealth by adding a new character to the group and spreading the wealth of the dead character around.
I can see how people might see the danger of players beginning to find character death trivial, but as SKR pointed out, even in the existing game before level nine it is a matter of finding a friendly cleric and after level nine it is just a matter of having the material component at hand, both of which simply result in grinding the game to a halt and the strong possibility of all sorts of story problems cropping up for the GM.
Look, a friend of mine with whom I talked about the topic a few days ago proposed an exchange of the material component for a diminishing returns mechanic, where every time you get raised/resurrected, there is a greater chance that the spell simply doesn't work and you get a permadeath. That way "Turin the Mad campaign"-style suicide bomber tactics could be avoided. So maybe that is the way to go.
|
|
Having the experience be forboding/traumatic and/or so blissful that it's painful to actually go back followed by post-revitalizing fuzziness have tended to work for me for the most part.
Then again I haven't tended to have too many deaths.
(it seems that if you really wanted to trivialize death, going back to the Tomb of Horrors/meatgrinder/"bring a stack of replacement characters" route would be the way to go) ((i'd much rather not))
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There's a balance to worry about with this as well. We have a local GM that is otherwise great, but all of his player's get frustrated because their essentially puppets to his narration. It doesn't make for an engaging game. I think there needs to be a balance between the two.I approve of this message.My old favorite GM once said.
"My world (game I run) does not center around the PCs. You are merely playing a character who exists in this world and living/creating his adventures. You might die and be a chump or you may become the greatest adventurer to ever live. I guess we will find out"
That to me was the best way to describe the perfect game (personal preference obviously). Death depended on the event. Getting swallowed whole and dying was permanent, but maybe not so much a melee hit that happened to drop you to -CON
Hey, those are not the same things at all! They're not even on the same sliding scale. The world may be bigger than the party, but the story should always be about the PCs. The story may end with them dying at level one to a Kobold ambush, but it's still their spotlight.
If your GM is constantly using NPCs to upstage the players, then he's not being "gritty" or "realistic", he's being a jerk. I ran Forgotten Realms for years, and I never once had Elminster swoop in to save my PC's from anything. My players knew if they got in over their heads, they were on their own. They knew death was a big deal, and they played smart.
Stuff plus... And, honestly, that's a question that probably varies not only group to group, but even between specific games with a given group.
This is true. The degree to which any group can suspend disbelief is something that will vary. Some players will just hand wave the logical conclusions of simpler, easier accessed resurrection abilities. That's actually okay. Honestly, what the game should be doing at this point is acknowledging that some people want different difficulty levels and put the rules for Resurrection in its own section with multiple options running the full gambit from "pheonix downs everywhere" to "I love dark souls" to "Hardcore mode" and everything in between. And then you can drag and drop whatever your group decides it likes. It could even change based on the needs of your setting.
This is true. The degree to which any group can suspend disbelief is something that will vary. Some players will just hand wave the logical conclusions of simpler, easier accessed resurrection abilities. That's actually okay. Honestly, what the game should be doing at this point is acknowledging that some people want different difficulty levels and put the rules for Resurrection in its own section with multiple options running the full gambit from "pheonix downs everywhere" to "I love dark souls" to "Hardcore mode" and everything in between. And then you can drag and drop whatever your group decides it likes. It could even change based on the needs of your setting.
Stuff plus... And, honestly, that's a question that probably varies not only group to group, but even between specific games with a given group.
This is an excellent idea.
I will just remention that I believe the current cost of resurrection is intended as a compromise between different play styles. It works to make resurrection unusable by most of a setting's populace, hits the players in the hip pocket, but doesn't gimp them like Con cost or xp cost might.
But I like your idea better.
|
|
Okay, but do you understand that sometimes D&D campaigns are ABOUT the characters and characters aren't the nameless people observing the story. One unfortunate thing that has happened with D&D and other games is that the characters are very separate from the story. This is because published modules are largely character agnostic because they want you to be able to insert any character you want. As someone who writes a lot of his own material I can tell you that the way I run a game is that I have each character write something, maybe a piece of background or some piece of a story, and then I combine and expand on it to create a campaign that is a story about those specific characters. When they die the story gets derailed because the story is about the charactersi think PC deaths can be meaningful, they can be remembered and recalled,
their lives and stories can continue to be known by NPCs in the world,
and the presence can still be felt by new (replacement) PCs.
heroic deaths are part of heroism. ...
Actually by default, you become a hero if you make it to the end. Now if your DM wants to homebrew the game then thats up to him, but nobody is guaranteed to make it with the PC they want.
From where I'm standing, when a character dies, there's three possibilities for what ensues:
1) Standard D&D rules--the PCs retreat to a friendly temple, or at high enough levels, restore the dead themselves. They're out a not-insignificant chunk of cash, both for the Raise, and, until True Res, for Restoration as well. But they get back to things pretty quick.
2) Resurrection is rare or difficult, and requires the surviving characters to embark on a grand quest to restore their ally. Adds a bunch of hoops to jump through, leaving a player sitting out of the game for ultimately the same mechanical effect.
3)Resurrection is impossible. The player rolls up a new character, and is ready to get back into the game relatively quickly, once the DM and party get through the frankly convoluted process of introducing a new character into an established adventuring party. This can strain belief at the best of times ("You seem a goodly fellow, stranger. Would you like to join us in our quest against the Shadow?"), and only gets more convoluted or prolonged if the party is on some other plane or wasteland or some such. Again, the player could be sitting out with nothing to do for a while
There's no good solution to character death. Standard D&D rules strike me as the best of a bad lot, because they keep people playing
| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
even if you trivialize death for the PCs by removing the drawbacks of Raise Dead and the like. it still shouldn't have too much impact on the setting.
hhhwhat now? If you trivialize death for the PCs it will have a HUGE list of consequences to the setting. The PCs are not the only ones effected by spell changes. The more you trivialize death the more you increase two lists. The first is the list of people who have being brought back from the grave as an available option. The second is the list of people who will get to use the green mushroom multiple times. As those two lists expand you will have massive changes in the way that the settings population views death, self-sacrifice, and religion.
Trivialize death enough and you will completely change the entire structure of the world. One example is that the assassination game becomes a much more lucrative deal for the assassins because of the costs of effects like Trap the Soul, but as a result also becomes exceedingly rare due to the high difficulty and costs.
trivializing Raise dead shouldn't be a problem.
450 gold pieces minimum for a spell only available in a metropolis requires for the average Joe, a minimum of 3-4 years worth of saving assuming they buy no other luxuries assuming 5-7 gold pieces per week and an average lifestyle. this is just for one raise dead spell.
the nobles who get Resurrected frequently will either enter poverty from frequent Resurrection or a negative stigma for being extremely reckless when the news are spread.
and raising the dead requires a minimum of a level 9 cleric, or level 10 oracle. of which would be limited in numbers.
and do you want to know how easy it is to prevent a raise dead spell from working? here are 3 nonmagical methods anyone can use.
- Destroy the body, flint and tinder does this just fine
- mutilate the body, a simple beheading with a blade is sufficient
- harvest the organs and either sell them on the black market or consume them as food. a body with none of the required vital organs cannot function
usually this merely means that death row inmates are either beheaded or cremated.
|
I've played a lot of 3.5 and Pathfinder. In 3.5, we used to call Raise Dead "the Retirement spell", as it drained two levels from you that you could never get back. No one ever kept characters that died at that level in our games, they didnt want to be that behind. Resurrection only took one level, and while there were mechanics to help people that were behind in levels catch up, it usually took many levels to do so, leaving that character feeling under-powered and bitter about it. My players would generally only keep their characters at that point if they REALLY liked them.
In Pathfinder, death is not trivialized, it is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to fix. Not to mention if it was from a death effect, it becomes extremely difficult to fix. It costs lots of money, takes time out of the party's adventuring, and until you're ninth level, you cant even do it. Most APs end at level 14-16. And in most APs (and in my games) there are not lots of clerics sitting around willing to bring people back from the dead. What pathfinder has done, is made it so someone that loves the character they have, does not need to suffer unfixable level loss because a monster crit them. I like the changes. Just my two cents.
Do remember that much of the current fuss is over a proposal to remove the material cost from Raise Dead. That removes a good deal of the "expensive" part.I've played a lot of 3.5 and Pathfinder. In 3.5, we used to call Raise Dead "the Retirement spell", as it drained two levels from you that you could never get back. No one ever kept characters that died at that level in our games, they didnt want to be that behind. Resurrection only took one level, and while there were mechanics to help people that were behind in levels catch up, it usually took many levels to do so, leaving that character feeling under-powered and bitter about it. My players would generally only keep their characters at that point if they REALLY liked them.
In Pathfinder, death is not trivialized, it is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to fix. Not to mention if it was from a death effect, it becomes extremely difficult to fix. It costs lots of money, takes time out of the party's adventuring, and until you're ninth level, you cant even do it. Most APs end at level 14-16. And in most APs (and in my games) there are not lots of clerics sitting around willing to bring people back from the dead. What pathfinder has done, is made it so someone that loves the character they have, does not need to suffer unfixable level loss because a monster crit them. I like the changes. Just my two cents.
makes it cheaply affordable for PCs, but most NPCs, whether noble or commoner wouldn't be able to afford it as frequently as percieved. a noble might set aside funds for one preplanned raise a year, and it would take most common people a minimum of 3-4 years of saving up money for such a cost, assuming they never dip into their luxuries fund during that time. one farming family getting one raise dead per 10 years seems reasonable.
and do you want to know how easy it is to prevent a raise dead spell from working? here are 3 nonmagical methods anyone can use.
...
- Destroy the body, flint and tinder does this just fine
- mutilate the body, a simple beheading with a blade is sufficient
- harvest the organs and either
SKR says numnber 2 won't work. Unless you are hiding the head they can just stick it to the bosdy and raise dead does the trick.
He said in the OP's SKR thread discussion that he mentioned.Now, 1 and 3 might work.
Do Organs get repaired by raise dead?
and do you want to know how easy it is to prevent a raise dead spell from working? here are 3 nonmagical methods anyone can use.
...
- Destroy the body, flint and tinder does this just fine
- mutilate the body, a simple beheading with a blade is sufficient
- harvest the organs and either
SKR says numnber 2 won't work. Unless you are hiding the head they can just stick it to the bosdy and raise dead does the trick.
He said in the OP's SKR thread discussion that he mentioned.Now, 1 and 3 might work.
Do Organs get repaired by raise dead?
the organs have to be intact for the body to survive the raising. there is nothing that states that raise dead restores missing organs or reattaches severed heads. if it did, that is a house rule.
so technically, #2 does work. as do #1 and #3. reattaching the head requires a regenerate spell cast before doing the raise to keep the head attached to the neck. much akin to applying glue.
trivializing Raise dead shouldn't be a problem.
Raise dead is more available than that. [ No the average joe will not have enough money to get ressed. But, unlike before, it won't be completely barred to him anymore either. And everyone will at least know somebody that's been brought back to life.
the nobles who get Resurrected frequently will either enter poverty from frequent Resurrection or a negative stigma for being extremely reckless when the news are spread.
It would have to be VERY frequently to drive him to poverty.
and do you want to know how easy it is to prevent a raise dead spell from working? here are 3 nonmagical methods anyone can use.
...
- Destroy the body, flint and tinder does this just fine
- mutilate the body, a simple beheading with a blade is sufficient
- harvest the organs and either
Yes. And in the real world, with the exception of cremation, those are abhorrent actions. In D&D they are still abhorrent, but slightly less so because it can stop people who are evil from coming back to life. If you further trivialize death, then these will no longer be abhorrent. They'll be common place and the views people have on mutilating a dead body will be completely different in that kind of world. That is a major setting consequence. I don't even want my paladin thinking its okay to do that. But who can blame him in the world that's being proposed?
Would it help to have traditional or even ritual ways to do this?
Of course. Alterations to the way the spell behaves obviously alter the way people behave as a consequence of that spell. And something like having a player just sprinkle some holy water on the corpse or making a knowledge religion check to give him the last rites, is going to effect the players and the setting and their enemies. How those rituals are performed will matter. If they cost a vile of holy water but otherwise don't require any investment on the player than that's going to be drastically different paradigm than if you make it a knowledge (religion) check that comes with a consequence for failure (like leaving the body open to possession by demons).
Of course, in a lot of situations just leaving the body out will take care of it, unless he's got someone waiting to raise him as soon as the PCs leave.
This will only be true in situations where the PC's murder everyone and leave everything behind. Which may be common for your characters (certainly not mine) but as a hole will not be the most common for the setting as a whole. And that will still matter.
Of course, most of this will have little effect on the PCs lives. Their enemies are likely to have the resources to bring back at least important villains from mid-levels on even with the current costs.
Of course it does. When you change the nature of the game you change the nature of the way the characters interact with the world around them. And like it or not, making death more trivial, makes death more trivial all around. Not just for the PC's. But for everyone. The more the cost is reduced, the more it is trivialized. There really isn't any way to reduce the cost of coming back to life (kind of a big deal) and have it not matter a crossed the board.
|
|
450 gold pieces minimum for a spell only available in a metropolis requires for the average Joe, a minimum of 3-4 years worth of saving assuming they buy no other luxuries assuming 5-7 gold pieces per week and an average lifestyle. this is just for one raise dead spell.
You keep repeating "available only in a metropolis". 5th level spells are available in a Large town with 2,001-5,000 inhabitants.
7th level spells are available in a Large city, 10,001–25,000 inhabitants.there is no guarantee to find a caster willing to cast a 9th level spell for money in any settlement.
It is all in the GMG.
Abhorrent Actions?
don't push your modern Geneva convention views on my grim and dark fantasy game.
it was considered an honorable act to keep the severed head of an enemy officer slain on the battlefield as a trophy of valor. assuming you slew said officer. it was a symbol of your heroism in times of war.
and burning corpses was especially common, and in a setting where even a single necromancer exists, people would know, that a fully intact body waiting to be resurrected is a body a necromancer can reanimate as an undead horror. so the practice of burning corpses with flint and tinder, or even oil and a match would become commonplace.
acquiring a resurrection would be a race to recover the body before it is cremated or reanimated.
|
|
and do you want to know how easy it is to prevent a raise dead spell from working? here are 3 nonmagical methods anyone can use.
...
- Destroy the body, flint and tinder does this just fine
- mutilate the body, a simple beheading with a blade is sufficient
- harvest the organs and either
All that can be bypassed by casting reincarnate, and it will cost even less than raise dead, with the added benefit of giving you a young body, even if probably from a different race.
450 gold pieces minimum for a spell only available in a metropolis requires for the average Joe, a minimum of 3-4 years worth of saving assuming they buy no other luxuries assuming 5-7 gold pieces per week and an average lifestyle. this is just for one raise dead spell.You keep repeating "available only in a metropolis". 5th level spells are available in a Large town with 2,001-5,000 inhabitants.
7th level spells are available in a Large city, 10,001–25,000 inhabitants.
there is no guarantee to find a caster willing to cast a 9th level spell for money in any settlement.It is all in the GMG.
i forgot that PF made high level spells more readily available. but 9th level casters aren't a common thing. except in Golarion, where the average hobo or whore is a 2nd level PC classed character, your average dervish is a 10th level rogue and your average lay priest is a 9th level cleric.
I can almost promise you that if a GM had his BBEG's raised almost every session then the player's would get because they believe on they should be able to do that and BBEG's are supposed to stay dead.
the PCs could fix that by simply throwing some oil on the BBEG's body a lighting a match.
even Reincarnate and True Resurrection require at least a finger. by leaving not even a single digit. you effectively negated all ways to resurrect them short of using wish to recreate the body. which requires a 17th level wizard to spend a 9th level slot and those generally aren't guaranteed, even within a metropolis.