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Okay, I'm really getting into the background of my campaign world (things like customs, beliefs, superstitions, etc...) and one thing that has been in the back of my mind for some time is raising the dead. Religion is a big deal (as I'm sure it is in most campaign worlds) but what I'm trying to emulate is the power that the Catholic Church revelled in during the times like the crusades or the Spanish Inquisition.
I started to think that since this is a polytheistic world with many gods representing different spheres of influence, what would the feelings of all these beliefs have on raising the dead. I know that in game terms, one can cast a spell (Raise the Dead, Resurrection, True Resurrection, etc) and ask the departed soul to return to his/her former life, however, I wanted this to have more of an impact in the world besides the resurrected character being penalized 1 level. So I have listed possible consequences of raising a person back to life that I would like an opinion on. Do any make sense? Is it too restrictive? Does it effect the balance of gameplay or the rules? If you have any suggestions to add, please feel free.
1. A cleric can only raise a dead character if that character is of the same faith. Doing so otherwise, would cause the cleric to be stripped of their rank, lose their parish (or equivalent), and would no longer gain levels as a cleric. Also, they could no longer cast divine spells as a cleric.
2. A Character can be raised only by a Wish or Miracle Spell. All other spells that raise the dead do not exist.
3. Raising the dead requires an XP cost by the cleric. This would force the church to require a sizable payment to be made (either in a standard tithe or some other means such as land, an artifact).
4. The friends, families, companions, of the dead character are themselves sent to the plane of existence to seek out the character themselves and convince him/her to come back with them to the material plane.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. Again, let me know what you think of each of these ideas, and if you have any to add, feel free.
Hey Edge,
I think these ideas are very cool indeed. One of the weakest elements of D&D is the lack of finality of death. Anything to make it harder to raise someone is great in my book. I especially dig your first proviso: Clerics can only raise fallen characters of the same faith or they are defrocked. Very fun. I might start incorporating this in to one of my cleric heavy campaigns. Also makes other party members much more likely to see things your way and convert to your religion if it is they're only chance at being saved from the great beyond. Cool stuff.
I read somewhere online an idea about limiting raise dead (and similiar spells) to only those clerics with the Death domain. This would give a reason why good religions would tolerate some potentially evil religions to exist within the same city.
If you want to have someone raised you are going to have to deal with the clerics of Wee Jas. What are they going to want? coin, a quest?
Hey Edge,
I think these ideas are very cool indeed. One of the weakest elements of D&D is the lack of finality of death. Anything to make it harder to raise someone is great in my book. I especially dig your first proviso: Clerics can only raise fallen characters of the same faith or they are defrocked. Very fun. I might start incorporating this in to one of my cleric heavy campaigns. Also makes other party members much more likely to see things your way and convert to your religion if it is they're only chance at being saved from the great beyond. Cool stuff.
Thanks for the kind words Nicolas. I too think that death is not as final as it should be in a lot of games. Personal preservation seems to diminish sharply when one can simply be resurrected. To me, being raised should be more of a traumatic event that should have huge ramifications. Especially in the light of one being raised by a cleric of a different faith. I imagine that with the way most religions are (some what power hungry and protective of their own flocks), having a cleric from another religion enter your realm to see if one of your worshippers would like to leave and return to the material plane, might tick you off just a little bit. Heck, it could start a holy war!! Anyway, I know that this is not a big deal to most DM's out there, but I think it would make the players think a little more harder on their character's actions.
Oh shoot, I thought I'd thrown in my two cents... Ah well, here we go again. Hopefully my ISP won't flake out again.
Another option for dealing with "bring back to life" spells is to deal with it in-character. For normal, day-to-day activity, the gods probably can be assumed to rely on their clerics to spend the deity's power wisely. For raising the dead... that's a little different. It's quite reasonable to assume that the deity takes a personal interest in every one of these cases. That means that the spell simply cannot succeed unless the god *wants* it to, which in turn means that anyone who's been raised from the dead has earned the personal interest of at least one deity. That might be earned by something as simple as large donations of coin -- the god's work takes money, and it's got to come from somewhere -- but the god could just as easily demand that the dead character's friends perform a quest.
This then has long-term consequences. After all, the god has enemies. Those enemies are going to know that the god put forth the effort to raise the dead. They're then going to want to find out why, and they're probably going to try to interfere with the god's plans for that character. Even if the character manages to avoid those problems, s/he's going to forever afterwards be a subject of reverence for the followers of the god as living proof of their patron's might and wisdom. Even people who aren't members of that religion are likely to react very differently to someone who came back from the dead. Can you imagine trying to buy even something as simple as a sword when the smith is overcome with emotion just looking at you? Any number of people will view the resurrected character with suspicion ("Why's he so special then?" or "Are we sure it's really him?" are probably pretty common), any number more will insist that the character is now able to perform miracles including raising their own deceased children or whatever, and a great number more will follow the character as some sort of generic holy icon.
If you play in a basically hack-and-slash campaign, none of this matters. But if you've got a fair bit of role-playing going on, you can play this up and make life interesting for the character and make certain that the players know that "simply" raising someone from the dead isn't simple at all. You also don't have players complaining that you're mucking about with the rules, which is pretty much inevitable anyway but at least it keeps it to a minimum.
After considering my options, I have decided to go with option number 1. I think it adds a level of realism and an element of political intrigue into the campaign world. I can't wait to see the looks on the PCs faces when they attempted to have one of their comrades raised by a cleric of a differing faith.
Hey Edgewood - this is beginning to be an issue in my campaign I've been tossing around a few ideas re: this subject.
The "only allowed to raise someone of your own faith" idea seriously limits that spell however, I agree it is open to being "abused" as a utility of the cleric, with no-one really paying attention that someone has been brought back from the dead! This should be a pretty big deal! Without causing too much of a "breaking" of the rules and the usefullness of the cleric in the party:
1) Cleric can cast "Raise Dead" on someone of his own faith with no level loss for the character - for he first time they need to be raised. Any subsequent times he needs to be raised normal level loss occurs
And…
…Clerics can cast “Raise Dead” on those who worship other gods, but the level loss for that character is doubled – lose 2 levels - and no” Get of death free card”. However this isn’t entirely fair to the dead character who has no control over who he is being raised by
So I would prefer:
2) The cleric raising a character of another faith might have to also pay the same Level loss as the character being raised. So rather than stripping the cleric of his powers it becomes a deterrent to abusing the spell. In this scenario, the character has to make no extra XP expenditure. They both lose a level.
BUT rather than direct any undo penalties towards the cleric,
3) A character has been raised from the dead by god that they don’t worship, might suddenly be compelled to convert to that clerics religion! Once that characters soul has been touched by the deity, it might be hard to justify why he pays no special heed to the power that saved him, and just continues to worship his own god like nothing happened.
If this sounds like a viable option, I would suggest no level loss for the cleric – work the spell normally, and use it as a role-playing opportunity.
Of course in all of these cases particular attention could be paid to the relationships that the gods themselves have with each other, and if the gods in question (Cleric’s god vs. Dead characters god) are not friendly with one another, the clerics god won’t raise the dead character, and if they are friendly they will.
However, if you like the idea that a raise death forces a worship change –the gods might happily allow their cleric to raise the character that worships another character– new convert! With no extra XP cost – just the normal rules. However the character might have to deal with a pissed off god...
I would sway in favour of not punishing the cleric who performed the deed to much, and making them both suffer – a little OR make the person raised really suffer a question of faith.-The person who got raised can take the heat from the deity that raised him or his own deity that demands a cleansing quest to prove his faith. No real need to change the rules – they do work fairly well but lots of opportunity to turn a raise dead spell into a great opportunity for role-playing.
Keep in mind that “raising folks from the dead” is a pretty good advertisement for any god as a reason for conversion. So why wouldn’t a cleric want to do it and why would showing off how wonderful they are be an unwanted thing for any (good aligned) god.
You make a good point Die Fledermaus. The idea of making them a convert is very attractive as it does show the power of that god. But, seeing that every cleric of every god can do this, it seems to become a matter of "My God can do what your God can" which in itself does not make a very good selling point for converts.
What I'm really going for here is the social impact raising the dead has on both a society and the many religious orders in my game world. There certainly isn't something from stopping a cleric of Pelor raising a character who worships Garl Glittergold, but I would imagine that the governing church of both faiths might have a problem with it.
In our real world, we have religions that are so close in their beliefs yet they act as if they're so different (ie Protestants and Catholics) yet if a Catholic priest raised a protestant christian, there would be more political turmoil than anything else. I'm not sure if this is making sense.
Anyway, the ideas you present are really good though, and I may re-think this again to make a better game balance. The whole point to me though, is that it creates good role-playing opportunities.
In our real world, we have religions that are so close in their beliefs yet they act as if they're so different (ie Protestants and Catholics) yet if a Catholic priest raised a protestant christian, there would be more political turmoil than anything else. I'm not sure if this is making sense.
On the other hand, in our world faith is a matter of... well... faith. Believers believe in their version of God because that's what they believe. There's no proof. (Some would argue, but keep reading.)
In a D&D campaign world, on the other hand, no-one questions that the gods exist. It's hard to dispute the existence of a deity when he keeps lobbing lightning at people, the undead walk the earth, and you can bump into wizards buying their groceries. Rather than trying to convince people that the deity exists, the churches are trying to convince people that their deity will do more for them than other deities will. If I believe in Glittergold but a cleric of Pelor raises me from the dead, you can bet that it'd be hard for Glittergold to beat that. I mean, really, what's the best he can offer? "Uh, I can make that cold go away?" The character becomes living proof of the power of the deity who did the raising.
If I believe in Glittergold but a cleric of Pelor raises me from the dead, you can bet that it'd be hard for Glittergold to beat that. I mean, really, what's the best he can offer? "Uh, I can make that cold go away?" The character becomes living proof of the power of the deity who did the raising.
I agree with that. It also enforces (to me) that if a cleric of Pelor raises a follower of Glittergold, the church of Glittergold may not look favorably upon that act, because of the risk of loosing that follower to Pelor. It would be interesting to have all of these different gods co-existing and working together on one level, yet being opposed on others. What I'm trying to capture here is the political struggle that this would create amongst the different churches. On the surface they seem to agree with one another, they work together (for the most part) and seem to have similar goals, but underneath that surface would be some strict dogma that could break an alliance pretty quickly if that dogma is violated in some way.
Are we getting too metaphysical here?
What I'm trying to capture here is the political struggle that this would create amongst the different churches. On the surface they seem to agree with one another, they work together (for the most part) and seem to have similar goals, but underneath that surface would be some strict dogma that could break an alliance pretty quickly if that dogma is violated in some way.
On the other hand, some of the gods probably have true friendships, or at least really strong alliances. I'm not very familiar with the default pantheon here, but for this example, let's assume that Pelor and Glittergold have a long tradition of working closely together. I'm a follower of Glittergold, and I get killed in a quest. A cleric of Pelor raises me. No-one involved gets in trouble -- Pelor was just performing a favour for his friend. Maybe I'll do a little work for Pelor in thanks, and maybe later Glittergold will have to return the favour by raising one of Pelor's followers, but in the grand scheme of thing it's really just business as usual. As a follower of Glittergold, I just assume that my god intervened on my behalf to ask Pelor to raise me. Now, if I'm a follower of Vecna and Pelor's cleric raises me from the dead, there's a lot more complicated stuff going to happen, because the gods are opposed to each other.
And no, I don't think we're getting too metaphysical. :-) As a player, I love playing in games where the DM has invested this much effort figuring out these kinds of things, because it breathes so much life into the world. Even though I'll probably never run into most of the details the DM slaved over, they still creep into the world and make it so much more real. It's things like... instead of just saying "Hey, a caravan's been attacked, kill the bandits," the DM actually takes the time to figure out who was in the caravan, why they were travelling to somewhere, what the connections are in the economies of the two places, where the bandits came from, how they recruit new members, what they do with the booty, and so on. Figuring out the political and theological effects of a "Raise Dead" spell falls into that category for me. Not necessary for a straight hack-and-slash adventure, but an awful lot of fun in the right group. :-)
let's assume that Pelor and Glittergold have a long tradition of working closely together. I'm a follower of Glittergold, and I get killed in a quest. A cleric of Pelor raises me. No-one involved gets in trouble -- Pelor was just performing a favour for his friend. Maybe I'll do a little work for Pelor in thanks, and maybe later Glittergold will have to return the favour by raising one of Pelor's followers, but in the grand scheme of thing it's really just business as usual. As a follower of Glittergold, I just assume that my god intervened on my behalf to ask Pelor to raise me. Now, if I'm a follower of Vecna and Pelor's cleric raises me from the dead, there's a lot more complicated stuff going to happen, because the gods are opposed to each other.
I have worked out the relationships between the gods and how they view one another, so it does make sense that depending on the relations between the cleric's god and the god of the deceased character would have an affect on whether or not said cleric would perform the spell.
I just think that with magic being so prevalent throughout a common D&D world, death does not take on the same meaning as it does with us in the real world. I find that self preservation would be less important (I guess that would explain the insane amount of adventurers in any given campaign which is the whole point of the game anyway). The mystery of death (and it's finality) in these games is diminished so much that having someone raised is as traumatic as having a hernia operation. It's an inconvenience but it's common. Of course a character has the final say whether he or she agrees to be raised or not but I find that the mystique is lost. Either way, it's making me think a lot about the approach I take as a DM when handling such weighty background information.
I came across a nice illustration of this discussion in a dragonlance game I played in not so long ago. We were playing through the original dragonlance modules, with some of the players playing Goldmoon / reiverwind et al and some players bringing other characters into the fray (I played a minotaur bounty-hunter with a life debt to one of his ex-quarries).
During the course of our adventures, Shadowstar, a plainsman barbarian got himself killed by Draconians and subsequently raised by Goldmoon. Awed by this miracle of healing magic in a setting deprived of it, Shadowstar's player had him convert to worship of Mishakal - he followed Goldmoon around for two whole modules bugging her with questions about the return of the gods, before taking a level of cleric during the interlude between DL3 and DL4.