| Paul Breen |
TabulaRasa wrote:Kill/Gimp: Raise deadD&D 4e, for all of its flaws, fixed this one very, very nicely, I thought. I would say that the 3.5 version could be fixed in a very similar way.
4e states (from what I have read) that Raise Dead (and some other spells, for that matter) only work on those that have a "destiny" or "fate" or "<insert metaphysical explination here>" that remains unfulfilled. So if the rich and powerful noble is not "one of the chosen few" then raise dead just has no effect on him. Player Characters, by default, have this spark within them and can be raised...
Yes. Actually my preference would be to eliminate raise dead entirely (or more accurately make it incredibly rare and hard to come by, and unique each time - maybe you need the only remaining Urn of Osiris, maybe you get catapulted back in time and can change history the moment before Count McEvilpants snuffed out brave Bilbo Hobbiton, maybe you can enter Hades and distract Charon long enough to pull the party paladin off his boat, whatever) and simultaneously de-deadlyfy combat (how doesn't really matter, but I like Warhammer Roleplay's fate points as one example), but since a big goal of Pathfinder is backwards compatibility, that isn't going to happen, and some handwavey explanation that allows high level NPCs to die in order to drive plots is the best we can hope for. Raise dead, if pursued to it's logical end, basically makes it impossible to construct a world that resembles fantasy literature in any way, and the spell has just been conveniently ignored by adventure writers who want to put together anything other than dungeon crawls for years, so why not make it official?
Other "ruin the adventure" spells are easier to houserule out anyway, but I'll mention the detect spells (actually, I'd prefer to chuck alignment completely and replace it with a list of what the character holds to be important - could be philosophical positions, could be organisations, could be Gods, could be individuals (including yourself). I believe d20 modern has something similar - retains the "at a glance" value of alignment without the accompanying rules headache, tendency to shallowness of characters and alignment arguments), discern location (really, what were they thinking there?), find the path, commune, zone of truth and locate creature/object. Augury/divination I don't particularly like (making decisions is surely the fun of the game?), but it isn't world/plotbreaking like the others, so it can stay. Geas/Quest just annoys me in its laziness - "can't think of a plothook? Here is a handy spell that will make those pesky PCs go on a quest whether they like it or not (PS: Now with 100% less saving throw)", but again, not particularly plotbreaking. Fly should probably be higher level. Teleport doesn't bother me that much, and whether it stays or goes is probably down to the feel of your campaign world.
I'd like to see more spells that aim to be useful but not plot destroying in non-combat situations. The much maligned speak with dead is actually a good example of this - it can give clues, but in most cases won't actually spoil the adventure completely (the idea that is often repeated - that it spoils murder mysteries is just false - if the bodies aren't intact, or if the victim didn't get a good look at his killer, or if illusions were involved, or if they were masked, or if the killer is only an underling of the true threat etc then it can provide additional clues without outright clearing up the mystery). Speak with animals/plants can also be used this way (the dog in the kennel heard a strange hissing noise just before a cry of pain from his master, for instance, doesn't immediately point to "Yuan-Ti did it", but can be a clue). Perhaps spells that allow you to get flashes of the past history of objects as per "real" (and those really are crucial quotation marks) psychics?