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Raise Dead is an Uncommon lv6 spell that takes 10 minutes to cast and resurrects one creature whose body you have available. Gives you week-long penalties. Cost 200gp (lv13) to 3200gp (21) x lv.
No other scaling.
Resurrect is an Uncommon lv5 ritual that takes 8 hours to cast and resurrects one creature whose body you have available. Likely to give you penalties. Costs 75 gp (lv11), 125gp (lv13) to 1000gp (21) x lv.
The ritual scaling allows for lower penalties and reduces the body requirements, but requires more high-level secondary casters.
So... One is cheaper, but takes longer and requires a lot of allies. The other is more expensive, quick, but sticks your ally with a hefty penalty and requires you to have the body.
As a small extra? Resurrect lets you raise back the Cleric. Raise Dead does not.
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Also Raise Dead doesn't require checks to succeed, while Resurrect requires checks by three people (severe-difficulty Religion, high-difficulty Medicine, high-difficulty Society). Unless you're significantly higher level than the minimum required I believe passing those is nontrivial. And the diamonds are expended when the primary check is made, so failure can get expensive. Really, Raise Dead is not to be snubbed if available.
Remember that scaling Resurrect also requires extra casters. It could be as many as 16 secondary checks.
Remember that scaling Resurrect also requires extra casters. It could be as many as 16 secondary checks.
No, the number of checks is fixed (1 primary + 2 secondary for Resurrect). More secondary casters just means you need more people (of appropriate level), they don't need to make rolls.
Secondary Casters: Many rituals require additional secondary casters; like the primary caster, secondary casters do not need to be a member of a spellcasting class. A secondary caster entry indicates the minimum number of secondary casters, without which the ritual is impossible. Often, a ritual requires additional secondary skill checks to represent specific facets of the ritual, with a high-difficulty skill DC of twice the ritual’s spell level.
Oh, my bad.
...you still need about a dozen lv10 npcs... time to call in some favours.
Yeah, I really do t like the way it works this time around. Its way too hard to bring someone back (heightening should improve the actual spell, not raise the level cap), and the DM might just say "nope, it was their time to go, can't bring em back".