Celanian wrote: The rest are just hit point damage which can be cured first before raising as long as the body is recovered. You seriously would rule a fire breath or fireball spell to stop raise dead in your campaign? RAW, a person's body becomes an object when they die and flesh has a hardness of 0. The fireball spell is hot enough to melt metals. So, yes, a killing blow should destroy a body if sufficiently powerful enough to do so. In-world, it makes sense, too. I don't think that's unreasonable to assume that getting overkilled with a fireball or a breath weapon will burn your body to a crisp. I've seen a precedent in D&D for burning bodies to stop the raise dead spell. Most of the parts of a sufficiently burned up body are lost during the combustion chemical process, so raise dead wouldn't work. Even mending or make whole can't repair that.
I don't understand why you're denying this or saying I'm unreasonable for suggesting this. I'm trying to help you. I'm pointing out ways you can easily stop raise dead (and Ultimate Mercy) and you're just handwaving any suggestion I offer. At this point, I feel like you're just making excuses. If you hate raise dead so much, then talk with your players and remove it from the game entirely.
Celanian wrote: In your campaign, it may be super hunky dory that death is trivial and easy to reverse. Maybe in your campaign, churches of 7-10th level paladins go around raising everyone who is ever killed from the lowest peasant to the mightiest lord.
That is not how I want my campaign to operate and I'm pretty sure that many if not most other people feel the same way.
Death is not trivial, even with resurrection magic. That's my point! It's why I suggested you shouldn't need to make house rules to punish or have it not work for some characters. A sufficiently decisive death stops raise dead. 10th level paladins are rare, especially ones that have a 19 Charisma. That's something you can control. Even so, they wouldn't be able to raise everyone, doing it only once per day in a highly populated city.
Celanian wrote: And the guy who wrote Pharasma specifically stated that if she has already judged someone, they are not subject to return. That's true, but the flipside of that is also true. Pharasma always knows if a person will ever have a chance to be raised. She likely won't judge them until then, though that's up to the GM. This is another reason why I think the raise dead failure chance with NPCs is silly. If you don't want an NPC to get raised, just say it doesn't work.
Celanian wrote: I am not removing the ability. I am just going to make it not a sure thing for non-PCs which is very much in keeping with Golarion lore and even the spell description. Honestly, I felt the same as you do until I read this really well argued, well researched article by Sean K Reynolds against the notion of the revolving door of death mentality.
Cyrad wrote: RAW, a person's body becomes an object when they die and flesh has a hardness of 0. The fireball spell is hot enough to melt metals. So, yes, a killing blow should destroy a body if sufficiently powerful enough to do so. In-world, it makes sense, too. I don't think that's unreasonable to assume that getting overkilled with a fireball or a breath weapon will burn your body to a crisp. I've seen a precedent in D&D for burning bodies to stop the raise dead spell. Most of the parts of a sufficiently burned up body are lost during the combustion chemical process, so raise dead wouldn't work. Even mending or make whole can't repair that.
I don't understand why you're denying this or saying I'm unreasonable for suggesting this. I'm trying to help you. I'm pointing out ways you can easily stop raise dead (and Ultimate Mercy) and you're just handwaving any suggestion I offer. At this point, I feel like you're just making excuses. If you hate raise dead so much, then talk with your players and remove it from the game entirely.
I think declaring that energy attacks automatically stop raise dead if it provides the killing blow is a bit too harsh.
As GM, I can do whatever I want. I think it's a bit of a straw man to suggest that I remove raise dead/ultimate mercy from the game just because I dislike the revolving door aspect of death. I can simply do as I suggested earlier and allow automatic success for PCs and a chance of failure for NPCs. It fits my needs since it keeps the PCs on track throughout the adventure, but makes death still a scary prospect for the vast majority of people in the world.
Cyrad wrote:
Death is not trivial, even with resurrection magic. That's my point! It's why I suggested you shouldn't need to make house rules to punish or have it not work for some characters. A sufficiently decisive death stops raise dead. 10th level paladins are rare, especially ones that have a 19 Charisma. something you can control. Even so, they wouldn't be able to raise everyone, doing it only once per day in a highly populated city
You don't need to be 10th level to raise dead. A 3rd level paladin could potentially do so if they went all in on this. Feats are extra LOH, greater mercy, ultimate mercy.
18 base Cha +2 for race gives 5 usages of LOH. 1 usage for level. +4 cha and 2 usages when his buddy casts eagle's splendor on him. 2 from extra LOH. That's 10 usages. This is a bit unrealistic for an adventuring paladin, but it's not that much of a stretch for a 6th level adventuring paladin to be able to do this.
The paladin army in WotR has 100 4th level paladins in it. Having a couple of them specialize in this would make perfect sense in a world where this was legal. And this army is just a fraction of the paladins in the crusade.
Cyrad wrote:
That's true, but the flipside of that is also true. Pharasma always knows if a person will ever have a chance to be raised. She likely won't judge them until then, though that's up to the GM. This is another reason why I think the raise dead failure chance with NPCs is silly. If you don't want an NPC to get raised, just say it doesn't work.
That would certainly be valid to fiat the NPC not coming back. IMO, rolling dice with an escalating chance based on previous deaths is just as valid and will produce less arguments from the players than the fiat.
Cyrad wrote:
Honestly, I felt the same as you do until I read this really well argued, well researched article by Sean K Reynolds against the notion of the revolving door of death mentality.
Most of that argument is on allowing PCs to have the revolving door. I am not changing my policy for PCs at all, so most of the article doesn't apply.
For the rest, I don't find most of his reasoning to be convincing. His philosophy seems to be that tabletop rpgs should be more like video game rpgs which I reject. He seems to think that all clerics/paladins, even the most kind-hearted, will all charge enough gold to stop this on a large scale. I find this very unconvincing.
I'm trying to help you, but you seem more intent on making excuses. Especially when you don't seem to understand how the spells and abilities that bother you work. Celanian wrote: You don't need to be 10th level to raise dead. A 3rd level paladin could potentially do so if they went all in on this. Feats are extra LOH, greater mercy, ultimate mercy.
18 base Cha +2 for race gives 5 usages of LOH. 1 usage for level. +4 cha and 2 usages when his buddy casts eagle's splendor on him. 2 from extra LOH. That's 10 usages. This is a bit unrealistic for an adventuring paladin, but it's not that much of a stretch for a 6th level adventuring paladin to be able to do this.
You need to be 2nd level before you can get any lay on hands feat--they require the class feature in question. Same goes for mercy, which a paladin gets at 6th level. Even assuming a paladin had enough Charisma and uses per day, they can't get Ultimate Mercy until character level 9 because they don't get the mercy class feature until 6th level. Unless you break the NPC creation rules for wealth and ability score generation, it's not possible for even a heroic paladin NPC with a racial bonus to have 19 Charisma before level 8. Finally, temporary ability score increases typically do not give you extra ability uses per day. No matter how you look at it, there's not going to be an army of 4th level paladins running around resurrecting people.
Good point about the LOH class feature. However, the Mercy class feature is received at level 3, not level 6. So it merely delays it to level 5 before you have NPC paladins capable of raising dead.
L3 Greater Mercy
L5 Ultimate Mercy
At level 5
2 LOH from class levels
6 LOH from Cha.
2 LOH from spell.
Nothing stops an army of 100 paladins from pooling their wealth to give some of them a +4 headband even if you are an EXTREME stickler for NPC wealth and ability score generation. It would make perfect sense in an army setting to have dedicated medics.
Finally, can you show me where it says that eagle's splendor doesn't give extra LOH?
Edit:
eagle's splendor wrote:
The transmuted creature becomes more poised, articulate, and
personally forceful. The spell grants a +4 enhancement bonus
to Charisma, adding the usual benefits to Charisma-based skill
checks and other uses of the Charisma modifier. Bards, paladins,
and sorcerers (and other spellcasters who rely on Charisma)
affected by this spell do not gain any additional bonus spells for
the increased Charisma, but the save DCs for spells they cast while
under this spell’s effect do increase.
It looks like you do get extra LOH for eagle's splendor. It only rules out extra bonus spells from the extra Cha.
A PC specializing in this would have no problems getting this online by level 5.
Why don't you just retrain lower level feats to get the extra LOH?
Snowblind wrote: Why don't you just retrain lower level feats to get the extra LOH? Thank you! Now the NPC paladins only need to pool money for a +2 headband for their medics! Easily affordable. :)
That's...not quite how NPCs work...
With regards to eagle's splendor and uses of LOH, you're referencing the spell, not the rules on temporary ability score increases. They're shown on the chapter/section on ability scores. The rules says that temporary increases to Charisma only affect checks and spell/ability DCs based on Charisma whereas permanent bonuses can increase your other statistics.
Even if temporary increases did affect uses per day, it wouldn't change how many times you used an ability in a day. In other words, consider a scenario where you could use LOH 3 times per day, cast eagle's splendor, and used LOH twice during the duration of the spell. After the spell ends, the two uses still count towards your daily limit.
Fortunately with the retraining rules, we don't need eagle's splendor anymore. A 5th level NPC paladin can have the following:
15 base Cha + 2 racial + 1 4th level +2 headband = 20 cha = 5 uses of LOH
2 uses of LOH from level
4 uses of LOH from retraining both 1st level feats into extra LOH.
When you have 100 paladins, each one only needs to contribute 80 gp to have 2 +2 headbands for their medics. Very easily affordable and very plausible in an army situation where ultimate mercy is available and where such specialists are vitally needed. This is also assuming that Queen Galfrey doesn't contribute the headbands even though it would be completely logical for her to do so.
There can also be one or two 3rd to 5th level clerics with a wand of gentle repose attached while the army is campaigning in case of more deaths in a day than the medics can handle.
Cyrad wrote:
In other words, consider a scenario where you could use LOH 3 times per day, cast eagle's splendor, and used LOH twice during the duration of the spell. After the spell ends, the two uses still count towards your daily limit.
And in such a situation if you used all 5 uses, then the spell end doesn't cost you any additional penalty. If you cast another instance of the spell, you've already used up 5 uses for the day, so you don't gain any more LOH.
Unless there is a cite somewhere, I'm going by the specific rule, the eagle splendor description, over a general rule for temporary ability score increases.
Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
welp, i know how i'm breaking the leadership feat next time.
Celanian wrote: ** spoiler omitted ** Arguably, the PCs could be charged for enabling a murder... what is the official charge? accessory to murder or aiding/abetting a murder?
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