After reading through this thread, I was thinking of a way to recover from death that also had larger tie-ins to the RPG, and this is what I came up with. This post was originally a reply to that thread but I felt it would be better here instead. I haven't actually tried this yet in a game (haven't had any deaths yet in my home games), so do let me know what you think of it and what your thoughts are if you did try it out.
If a character dies, you have the option of Raising them or Resurrecting them. Raising them is cheaper but has more downsides, whereas Resurrection is far more expensive. Both give negative levels which can be cured by Restoration.
The guideline I had for transforming GP costs into the following went like so: For Adventures 1-2, the party likely can't afford either and therefore you should probably just remake the character using standard rules. For Adventures 2-4, Raise Dead is the likely only affordable option. For Adventure 5-6, Resurrection becomes affordable in addition to Raise Dead. You can either make these hard restrictions (in that even if the party could afford a Resurrection in Adventure 4 they can't do it), or just ignore them entirely (if the party can afford it, they can do it).
All 3 of these "spells" can only be used in between scenarios, they may not be used during a scenario.
Raise Dead:
The character permanently increases the difficulty of all of their checks by 2 and loses 2 card feats (track which feats were removed this way as they can later be restored, see the Restoration spell below). If the character does not have enough card feats, reduce their Constitution skill by 2 instead of the check penalty and card feat loss. This does not impact any skill feats that character may have in Constitution, and the drain can be restored by the Restoration spell. Therefore, a character with a base Constitution score of d10 has their score become a d10-2. A character with one Constitution skill feat (so d10+1) becomes a d10-1, although they keep the skill feat. If the average roll for their Constitution skill would become 0 or less, they cannot be raised. You can calculate the average of the skill by taking the maximum number of the die, adding 1, dividing by 2, and then adding/subtracting skill feats and drain. So the average of a d10-1 would be (10 + 1) / 2 - 1 = 4.5.
Then, the party must spend cards from their decks with a total of at least 50 by adding up all of the adventure deck numbers of the cards + 1, (that is, each card is +1 -- so a deck B, P, or C would give you 0 + 1 = 1, a deck 1 card would give 1 + 1 = 2, etc.). If a card has the Basic trait, it may not be spent for this (or you can treat it as a deck number of -1, so -1 + 1 = 0). Spending Loot gives you twice the amount instead (so a deck 1 loot would give (1 + 1) * 2 = 4, a deck 2 would be (2 + 1) * 2 = 6, etc.). These spent cards are set aside, then each character rebuilds their deck according to their card feats by grabbing non-loot cards from the box that are at least 2 adventure deck numbers lower than the card they just spent. If spending a B, C, P, or a 1 you would grab a Basic to replace it. The set aside spent cards are returned to the box after everyone finishes rebuilding their decks.
Finally, at the start of each scenario after drawing their opening hand, the character discards the top 5 cards of their deck. This effect no longer happens once that character wins a scenario and gains the reward (so if you need to replay due to losing, then you'd do the discard 5 cards thing again, but if you win then this effect stops happening. The gaining reward restriction is meant so that this can only go away by winning scenarios the party has not already played).
RPG tie-ins: The increased difficulty on checks represent the 2 negative levels gained by casting Raise Dead. The loss of the card feats represents the loss of 10 current and total HP by getting aforementioned negative levels. If the character is level 1 (e.g. not enough feats), they get Constitution drain instead of negative levels, recognized by subtracting from Constitution-based rolls. Since this happens between scenarios where you could conceivably think the party could rest 8 hours before starting the next one, there are no rules for losing prepared spells/spell slots since they'd just be able to re-prepare them the next day. The spending of card points worth 50 represents peddling their stuff to purchase a diamond worth 5000 GP (which is then consumed). Rebuilding afterwards has no correlation to the RPG but is a necessity for making sure the deck sizes are right; it is instead a more restricted version of the normal rebuilding rules that prevent gaming character deaths to banish all your crappy cards to fetch better ones from the box (by making it so that the replacement card is based on the banished card rather than the current adventure deck number). The discard 5 cards power represents the fact that Raise Dead does not restore you to maximum HP and therefore you aren't fully healed up by the time the next scenario rolls around.
Resurrection:
The character permanently increases the difficulty of all of their checks by 1 and loses 1 card feat (track which one was removed this way as it can be restored via the Restoration spell below). If the character does not have enough card feats, reduce their Constitution skill by 2 instead of the check penalty and card feat loss. Follow the same instructions as Raise Dead above for this Constitution reduction.
Then, the party must spend cards from their decks with a total of at least 100 by following the same instructions as Raise Dead above for determining card value and rebuilding afterwards.
RPG tie-ins: The increased difficulty on checks represents the 1 negative level gained by casting Raise Dead. The loss of the card feats represents the loss of 5 current and total HP by getting the aforementioned negative level. If the character is level 1 (e.g. not enough feats), they get Constitution drain instead of negative levels, recognized by subtracting from Constitution-based rolls. The spending of card points worth 100 represents peddling their stuff to purchase a diamond worth 10000 GP (which is then consumed). Rebuilding afterwards has no correlation to the RPG but is a necessity for making sure the deck sizes are right; it is instead a more restricted version of the normal rebuilding rules that prevent gaming character deaths to banish all your crappy cards to fetch better ones from the box (by making it so that the replacement card is based on the banished card rather than the current adventure deck number). The character is restored to their total HP so there is no additional power to discard cards at the start of the next scenario.
Restoration:
There are three flavors of Restoration, based on exactly how potent you want it to be. All of them get rid of the Constitution drain incurred by low-level characters being raised, and the second two can additionally remove the difficulty increase and restore lost card feats.
Restoration (skill drain only):
The party must spend cards with total value of at least 1, using the same rules as in Raise Dead for determining card value and rebuilding your deck afterwards. The character then removes all of their skill drain from one skill of their choice.
Restoration:
The party must spend cards with total value of at least 10, using the same rules as in Raise Dead for determining card value and rebuilding your deck afterwards. The character regains 1 lost card feat and removes 1 off the penalty of their checks (this cannot be used to gain additional card feats or make checks easier, it may only be used to restore card feats lost by Raise Dead or Resurrection and remove the penalty on checks). Additionally, the character removes all of their skill drain from one skill of their choice.
Greater Restoration:
The party must spend cards with total value of at least 50, using the same rules as in Raise Dead for determining card value and rebuilding your deck afterwards. The character regains all lost card feats and no longer has a penalty on their checks (this cannot be used to gain additional card feats or make checks easier, it may only be used to restore card feats lost by Raise Dead or Resurrection and remove the penalty on checks). Additionally, the character removes all of their skill drain from every skill.
RPG tie-ins: The first two flavors are the regular Restoration spell, which either costs 100 GP if only removing stat drain, or 1000 GP if removing a negative level. The second flavor is Restoration, Greater which costs 5000 GP and removes all negative levels.
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While I applaud your thoughts behind the Revival houserules and tying them into the RPG, I think they're a bit much. (I really do admire the thought behind all of this.)
When this occurred with our RotR group, we had three choices: introduce a new character with all the same feats and cards on the same level as the rest of the party, resurrect the dead character with less feats but the same card deck, or resurrect the dead character with the same feats but less card levels. The person opted for a completely different character in this case.
But the thought behind ours was that bringing the character back from the dead meant losing a level which was translated into a skill feat and power feat and card feat. He would keep the same cards.
The other option was suggested but didn't go anywhere.
These rules are indeed super complex and I wouldn't recommend using them unless all of your players also play RPGs to understand where the rules came from. I'm thinking of ways to simplify/streamline them as well by making the tie-ins more abstract but also fit within an easy-to-understand paragraph or two for those without the RPG background. I like the spending cards idea so will probably still incorporate that in some fashion.
No reason we can't! There is also some nice work by Orbis to create a scenario that looks like the party busting into the afterlife to save you, and get all of your misplaced stuff back in the process. If we were to combine the three, I'd envision a process like so:
- Bleeding out rules should be the easiest to overcome as that is still during the scenario itself. If you stabilize, you're good and alive.
- Failing that, the party should have a choice between the fast route of spending a bunch of their cards to revive you or by playing a revival scenario. The card spend will be very expensive and should hamper the party's effectiveness for quite some time. The scenario will be cheaper in that the party isn't spending anything and you can get most of not all of your cards back. However, it is still a scenario complete with a villain, henchmen, and other baddies so there is inherent risk involved that you or someone else may die (and possibly for good of the scenario says that dying during it means your character is gone for good).
The Bard Class Deck actually has a Raise Dead card in. They shuffle their buried cards and use ten as their deck.
Yes, this discussion is about reviving from death AFTER a scenario ends, the Raise Dead card only works during the scenario the character died in.