Maya Deva's page

Not to mention a Good leading a small army of undead saints against the Evil Cleric's equal army of undead just seems really dang epic to me.

You mean like this? Order of the Stick

For the rest, in my campaign mindless undead are neutral aligned, lacking the brains to have an alignment.
And they ARE mindless, just as a computer is mindless despite being able to do some really complicated things. There's a program that can look at pictures and identify the animals the scientist using the program is interested in, and give a beep (or other signal) when it sees such an animal. It won't beep for rocks, plants, or even other animals (unless they really look pretty similar), and yet it is small and simple enough to run on a cell phone.
In a similar way, I see skeletons etc as being able to use weapons or follow spoken instructions because they have been magically programmed to do so.
Currently (in my campaign) their ability to detect life is blocked by a wall, but not by a bedsheet, though this may chance as I kinda like the idea of huddling under a blanket actually *working*.

Ghouls, ghasts and the like are intelligent, but generally are evil because their mind is not functioning properly: that's not Uncle Jack, that's just his body, and while the brain functions, the soul is gone, although random memories popping up *might* make it act in unexpected ways like hesitating before attacking somebody the real Uncle Jack knew in life.
Uncle Jack meanwhile is happily spending his time in the afterlife.

Truly INTELLIGENT undead such as vampires and liches can and do have any alignment, though they do tend towards evil, or at least towards being utterly indifferent to what mortals would considder important.
This has a lot to do with people acting in the way (they think) they are expected to, as seen in psychological experiments where the subjects are told that it's OK to do a certain thing that normally would be somewhat or even extremely NOT ok.
Nevertheless, just as some people will refuse to obey a direct order if they considder it bad, some undead will refuse to "act the part", and maintain their original alignment.

All this of course being my own home brewn campaign which you can ignore at will :)

PS: WHAT was the name of those good-aligned liches that WotC brought out at some point? I think they were in the Spelljammer supplement?

I'd say it depends more on the deity than on the settlement. I would imagine a nature/hunting deity to have a more indiviualistic religion, and so be more into a simple shrine, possibly tended by the local druid, possibly not even that.
A deity of law and order on the other hand I'd envision being worshipped communally in a church, with a clear program of what prayers/rites are performed when, and an equally clear structure of clergy attending.

Frodo and Samwise never wanted to go adventuring in the first place.

Aragorn kept fighting with the Riders of Rohan even after he got married and became king.

So not good examples.

I thought you listed unwilling heroes as part of the group that would want to continue if not for lasting death issues. Must have misread something.

Also, remember, SKR is advocating removing the cash penalty as well. So it wouldn't be about scraping cash. It would be about basically nothing at all but the spells.

IF that is how he wants to play, that's his choice. If Pathfinder decided to remove the gold cost in the books, I'd not be greatly concerned either, though I'd probably houserule some sort of quest, it's just too good a plot hook to pass up on.

I am not opposed to the roleplaying suggestions, but they don't seem realistic plug in options beyond Material Component:Maguffin on a side quest, and they don't answer the questions of "What happens if you fail the side quest" or worse "What if someone dies on the side quest?"

Hm? I thought that one was pretty obvious: if the quest fails, no Raise Dead. Or if that already happened, you still owe the church/deity a big one, and still need to find a way to settle the score. If somebody dies on said quest, well, then you will have to arrange for ANOTHER Raise Dead.

My main thing is I don't want it to be a "press continue" type scenario that kills the narrative.

Now that I can agree with, though it would depend on the story. To me, at low level death is a big issue; the party generally doesn't have the means to cast the spell themselves, and the cost is pretty significant. So, lots of roleplay opportunities.

Maya Deva wrote:

ciretose wrote:

At that point, nothing has a lasting impact on a player. There is basically no reason to hang up your sword other than old age.

Assuming this was aimed at my post: Well yes, that is entirely correct.

Although in reality, most PCs at some point (read: when the players decide they want to play something else) will settle down and get married, and spend their days raising kids and running their lands, be it a farmstead or a kingdom.
You seem to imply this is a bad thing, but neither I nor my players have ever found it so.

I am implying that when you remove disincentive and fear from death, you change the narrative of the game.

Adventurers, by definition, prefer to adventure rather than settle down. The narrative historically is the adventurer hung up his sword when it got to dangerous or they got to old.

Too dangerous becomes much less of a factor if death isn't an actual problem. That changes the narrative.

In games I've played in 3.5, generally if a player started falling behind the party because of multiple deaths, they retired. They could catch up because of the leveling system in 3.5, but often it was just a concept that stopped working at higher levels, leading to death and and party (and player) frustration.

I don't think "most" adventurers retire in the narrative of the worlds we adventure in. Most die adventuring, while a lucky few get out before that happens with enough loot to live comfortably.

Only, if you remove the penalty for death..."Daddy, don't go to the cave with all the treasure, it would be too dangerous, we would have to find a cleric to keep bringing you back over and over again until you beat the level!"

Although there are many tales of heroes riding off onto the sunset to their next adventure, there are at LEAST as many of the hero saving the day, marrying the princess, and... settling down. Especially the ones that never DID want to be a hero, but were forced into the role by circumstances. Frodo sails to the elven ancetral lands to settle, Samwise gets married. So does Aragorn.

Yes, by removing the penalties from death you change the narrative: you get a different story. Whether or not this is a bad thing depends entirely on the type of story you want.
Our group makes a big deal of dying roleplay-wise, especially when there wasn't enough cash to pay for the spell and an alternative method of payment had to be found.
But loosing a level (or a con point) was one of the first things that got houseruled out as unrealistic and undesirable.

While I admit it's a bit of a leftover from 2E, I've always ran it so that when the wizard takes a week of downtime to craft, the cleric does the same, as does any other PC with a crafting feat, while the tank, the rogue and so on take a training course to practize the new abilities they mastered at last level-up, or want to take next time.
Or sometimes they do a stint as caravan guard, or escort for a wealthy prince or elderly wizard -despite what some people seem to think, amazingly enough, such jobs often DON'T involve fighting off big bands of brigands or marauding dragons, and when the PC's return home 3 weeks later, they may have gained a few coins and a nice tan, but certainly nothing the stay-at-home crafters need to feel jealous about.
At higher level, while Lady Startree is crafting a headband +6/+6/+6, Lord McGreatsword is setting the affairs of his keep in order, dealing with all those decisions his scheneschal lacks the power to make.

In short, as others have said, while the crafters craft, the non-crafters do other non-adventuring things.

Regarding crafting time: It's not come up so far in my gaming, but I could see having a properly equiped lab reduce crafting time. I could also see it as a nice money sink for those worried about WBL, if handled well.