"Something goes horribly wrong—an evil spirit possesses the body, the body transforms into a special kind of undead, or some worse fate befalls the target."
Anyone have any ideas for how to run this? Like, what kinds of undead should they turn into? I'm also considering a chance of a reincarnate-like effect, turning into a random race or possibly creature.
Or, if you want to run a game where death has a lot of weight, a critical failure might mean that the creature can't ever be resurrected.
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I like the idea of never being able to be resurrected again, then make the body becomes some sort of undead that the party have to destroy with the same stats that it had when alive but with weakness to good and positive damage.
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Invert their positive/negative energy interaction, make them susceptible to good damage of they were not evil, and give weakness equal to 1/2 level against positive damage. They came back alive, but have one foot left in the grave.
Maybe talk to the player about them turning on the party at a crucial moment, either some complex plot they had running since the resurrection or them snapping when placed under a specific pressure. Maybe make this a permanent turning point, the critical failure is supposed to be worse than death so having them come back fine afterwards might not cut it.
A significant rebuild to the character maybe. The barbarian loses touch with the fury of dragons, but gains a connection with the spirit world they returned from. The cleric came back but only in the condition they abandon their deity and work for the Lady of Graves. Or the Prince of Lies. The champion was bent on liberating slaves, but after death to devils they now only desire vengeance. (Swapping to spirit totem, New deity, and a hypothetical revenge cause for champions).
Lots to work with really.
Pet cemetery (1980's one)
Might not be the a great movie, but that is what I imagine.
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The body gets hijacked by an Astradaemon, either completely leaving the soul displaced or maybe they fight each over for control. Or maybe the host doesn't know it now has a malignant rider with it.
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the soul is resurrected into a nearby body instead of the target. :P
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Have you ever seen "How to get ahead in advertising"?
At first the rezzed guy thinks he's fine, but little by little a second identity shows up, slowly increases in power, and then takes over.
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As above, but the second identity is a chicken.
"Something goes horribly wrong—an evil spirit possesses the body, the body transforms into a special kind of undead, or some worse fate befalls the target."
Anyone have any ideas for how to run this? Like, what kinds of undead should they turn into? I'm also considering a chance of a reincarnate-like effect, turning into a random race or possibly creature.
Or, if you want to run a game where death has a lot of weight, a critical failure might mean that the creature can't ever be resurrected.
To pick an undead, I'd probably start by seeing what undead options there are in the bestiary around the level of the character in question. If they have an appropriate suite of abilities, even better, like a Champion becoming a Grave Knight or ghost wizard for a spell caster.
For added drama I'd probably give the player of the deceased the monster stat block to run to try and murder their friends.
hmm, possibly you can also run it as an adventure start where the soul has been captured by a powerful outsider and must be retrieved. give the trapped player a character, that they can play, native to the plane that is willing to help them retrieve their compatriots soul as they also have beef with the outsider.
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Here's an old list of fun ideas:
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I kind of like an idea from "Deadlands" called the Harrowed, the player comes back but with an evil spirit in tow. It is a battle to keep control, basically will saves with dc equal to character level dc...every failure the player gives in and the spirit takes over for a short time(GM takes over) and the will save dc goes up by one. At a certain point the player becomes and evil NPC fighting the party.
Seems like it could be a fun way to handle it :)
Or a level appropriate undead just attacks for a simpler solution
They come back with enemies. Psychopomps that were not so willing to let them back, devils coming to repossess their soul, angels claiming their death was part of the good outcome and needs to be preserved, ghosts jealous of them getting the fast track back to life, or whatever else fits the campaign. As the party rests these enemies start to catch up, and the character faces continued assaults from their enemy until they did again, this time for good.
They come back as a construct made of their own body. They can only be healed using the processes used to repair flesh constructs (which require raw materials of a grizzly sort) and will be destroyed upon death.
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The target resurrects, but is only 'weakly' attached to this new life.
They no longer regain hit points naturally, but require healing from external sources to recover health. In addition, every night when they go to sleep, they 'die.' A Heal check or any amount of healing magic will revive them, but for the duration of their 'sleep' they are completely stone dead. In essence, they 'die' every night (or whenever they lose consciousness for other reasons), but are easily revived from these 'little deaths' and suffer no long-term mechanical effects, other than dreamless slumber and always 'waking up' cold and stiff, as they 'come back to life.'
The spell reanimated the body, but fails to bring back the soul. Until the soul is returned to the body, their alignment changes to neutral evil, attempts at possession automatically succeed, they have a permanent -5 to Charisma and Wisdom and lose any divine spellcasting they once had. They gain immunity to dream, fear, healing, mental and sleep effects, and no longer feel pain, empathy, or require sleep, and neither do they dream. If they are a cleric or paladin, they lose their powers as per the anathema penalty for their class. These effects are all permanent and incurable until the soul is reunited with its body through another resurrection ritual combined with additional conditions needed to secure the soul to make the second ritual work.
Edit: I forgot an important detail! The character also suffers an additional -5 penalty to deception, diplomacy and nature checks made to interact with animals, and a +5 to intimidation checks against animals. Dogs bark incessantly in the characters presence, and horses or other livestock panic and attempt to flee should the character get too close.
I find the idea of a critical failure on a resurrection to be a rather dumb idea (just my opinion, it's ok if you disagree). The character is dead, which is punishment enough for whatever they did that caused them to die.
Now if the party wants to resurrect them they need to spend the not so cheap resources to do so. Then if the party totally fails in their 1 roll to restore the character, you want to punish the dead character again by making them role-play their character a certain way and suffer significant ability penalties too?
Doesn't really sound all that fun to me and isn't that the point of these games... to have fun? Now if the affected character is interested in that by all means go ahead but, forcing all that on a character is the makings of a s##+ty GM.
I find the idea of a critical failure on a resurrection to be a rather dumb idea (just my opinion, it's ok if you disagree). The character is dead, which is punishment enough for whatever they did that caused them to die.
Now if the party wants to resurrect them they need to spend the not so cheap resources to do so. Then if the party totally fails in their 1 roll to restore the character, you want to punish the dead character again by making them role-play their character a certain way and suffer significant ability penalties too?
Doesn't really sound all that fun to me and isn't that the point of these games... to have fun? Now if the affected character is interested in that by all means go ahead but, forcing all that on a character is the makings of a s#*@ty GM.
To be fair, it's three rolls, not one.
As for the rest of it, the way I see it, after a character dies, the player getting to play them again isn't a given. It's a possibility. If a player wants to risk changes to their character to bring them back, it's their decision. As an example, in a campaign I'm wrapping up soon, two characters died at one point. As a side effect of all the powerful clerics in the area being killed recently, the only resurrection option available to them was reincarnation. One of the players chose to accept the risk this carried, and went through with it, and the other opted to play a new character.
I'm personally very happy with how Resurect works in 2e, because I've never liked how it's often a "Pay X amount of gold to come back to life" sort of deal. It's never been interesting, just a death tax.
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I find the idea of a critical failure on a resurrection to be a rather dumb idea (just my opinion, it's ok if you disagree). The character is dead, which is punishment enough for whatever they did that caused them to die.
Now if the party wants to resurrect them they need to spend the not so cheap resources to do so. Then if the party totally fails in their 1 roll to restore the character, you want to punish the dead character again by making them role-play their character a certain way and suffer significant ability penalties too?
Doesn't really sound all that fun to me and isn't that the point of these games... to have fun? Now if the affected character is interested in that by all means go ahead but, forcing all that on a character is the makings of a s~*!ty GM.
Who says death or failed resurrection is a punishment for the players? A bad thing happening to a character is not necessarily a bad thing to the players. The whole "my character dying is always bad, and hardship experienced by a character is a hardship to the player" mindset is something that I have found is very limiting in rpgs, and players who learn to move past that and enjoy the story and the challenge and the downs as much as the ups tend to get a lot more out of the game.
The risk of death makes the challenge and consequences meaningful - and when a character dies, that can actually be a really interesting and fun experience where the impact and stakes feel so much bigger. A guaranteed resurrection isn't as tense and dramatic and interesting as one that has risks (and a guaranteed resurrection undercuts the good things about the death thing in the first place).
I know players (and this includes myself) who secretly hope that a 1 is rolled, because the party having to deal with the soulless husk of their dead friend trying to murder them has so much inherent weight and drama and can be really fun (especially if I get to creepily roleplay an off-putting wrong version of my character and get to fight my party in the bargain).
Death doesn't have to be a punishment to the player or the party - there are so many fun avenues to explore with a character death (and botched resurrection).
I find the idea of a critical failure on a resurrection to be a rather dumb idea (just my opinion, it's ok if you disagree). The character is dead, which is punishment enough for whatever they did that caused them to die.
Now if the party wants to resurrect them they need to spend the not so cheap resources to do so. Then if the party totally fails in their 1 roll to restore the character, you want to punish the dead character again by making them role-play their character a certain way and suffer significant ability penalties too?
Doesn't really sound all that fun to me and isn't that the point of these games... to have fun? Now if the affected character is interested in that by all means go ahead but, forcing all that on a character is the makings of a s~*!ty GM.Who says death or failed resurrection is a punishment for the players? A bad thing happening to a character is not necessarily a bad thing to the players. The whole "my character dying is always bad, and hardship experienced by a character is a hardship to the player" mindset is something that I have found is very limiting in rpgs, and players who learn to move past that and enjoy the story and the challenge and the downs as much as the ups tend to get a lot more out of the game.
The risk of death makes the challenge and consequences meaningful - and when a character dies, that can actually be a really interesting and fun experience where the impact and stakes feel so much bigger. A guaranteed resurrection isn't as tense and dramatic and interesting as one that has risks (and a guaranteed resurrection undercuts the good things about the death thing in the first place).
I know players (and this includes myself) who secretly hope that a 1 is rolled, because the party having to deal with the soulless husk of their dead friend trying to murder them has so much inherent weight and drama and can be really fun (especially if I get to creepily roleplay an off-putting wrong version of my character...
That's great that you all had great experiences doing that, that's literally the point of these games. I too once had a NG Lv. 15 Ranger die and upon his resurrection with the GM's knowledge played him as a N/NE sociopath because a part of him didn't come back. "I" as the character pursued that story line because "I" thought it could be cool and fun.
What I'm trying to say is that a critical failure of a resurrection spell will essentially force that outcome possibly without the player's want or desire. I personally would rather just start a new character then be forced to play a character the way someone else wants. Basically, the GM and player should talk and agree about this development before applying it. That was the moral argument I was trying to make.
Pet Cemetery.
So I realized today that a failure on a ritual still spends the material components, unlike, Crafting or Identifying a spell. Resurrection doesn't charge you if the creature doesn't want to or can't return, but if they can and you fail the check you get charged.
Given the very hard DC of a creature on your level, that seems rather harsh. Especially when you consider you can't use hero points or other fortune effects, and it is quite hard to get bonuses to the checks in general. (Unless a heightened version of the ritual doesn't increase the DC, but that seems unlikely.)
My players were trying to bring back a dead PC tonight by pretty much emptying their coffers. There would be no second tries. I realized the problem: failure is not only punitive but isn't interesting. Success is obviously interesting, but so is critical failure. Failure is not, and it is demoralizing if nothing happens.
I actually wound up bending the rules tonight and letting the player character come back, but his soul had to be freed from a Devourer that came along for the ride. Letting the player run the undead monster was pretty fun and they got their friend back in the end. But I think a better solution might be if a failure didn't consume your diamonds and just cost you time. You can try the ritual again the next day, so it only costs you time... But you're hoping you get that success before you roll a critical failure.
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The target resurrects, but is only 'weakly' attached to this new life.
They no longer regain hit points naturally, but require healing from external sources to recover health. In addition, every night when they go to sleep, they 'die.' A Heal check or any amount of healing magic will revive them, but for the duration of their 'sleep' they are completely stone dead. In essence, they 'die' every night (or whenever they lose consciousness for other reasons), but are easily revived from these 'little deaths' and suffer no long-term mechanical effects, other than dreamless slumber and always 'waking up' cold and stiff, as they 'come back to life.'
Omigod this is terrible!
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1. Death wants them back. Whenever there is a chance of bad things happening, it happens to them. And probabilities are increasingly stacked against their survival.
2. This is their last lease on life. Once they die again they will not come back. And they know it.
3. The whole campaign turns out to be an illusion. They were not brought back. They just believed they were.
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Given how many avenues there are to save someone from dying in the first place I honestly think the harsh failure results for Res are more than fair.
If there is one thing in the new system that I jive with the least it's that player characters are so much harder to kill given an encounter that is on-par for their level.
That may just be me though.
Its a YMMV thing, some players like to have bigger consequences and stakes then others, and those players probably prefer less reliable/more costly resurrections, or even permadeath.
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I'd probably go with the PC's soul trading place with a soul that has been captured by a Devourer, i.e. the other PCs have to figure out that their friend is now imprisoned inside the chest cavity of a Devourer, and the poor, babbling, mad soul that now inhabits their friend's body is the previous victim of that undead.
I might even go as far as to pretend everything goes as planned; the dead PC is resurrected, although they seem confused and there is probably some kind of fake (mechanical) consequence for the crit failure, such as that sould cannot be resurrected ever again. Then I'd have a private discussion with the player of said PC and give hints how to run the "new" character. It would be even more interesting if this soul is evil or depraved, but only if the players are comfortable with this. In any case the player could occasionally blurt out hints that would eventually lead the PCs into the lair of the Devourer, but only if they pay attention and put together all the pieces of the puzzle. :)
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In the parties desperation to be reunited with their fallen comrade, they are reunited with their fallen comrade - in Abbaddon. Instead of bringing their comrades soul back to the material plane, the botched ritual brings the party to the location of their comrades soul, which has gotten lost and is in abbaddon fleeing from daemons. The ritual rips a hole between planes, leaving a portal back to the material plane - the party must fight a pack of hungry daemons to get back through the portal, and have the option of going after their friends soul, which is being pursued by a more powerful daemon. If they defeat the more powerful daemon, they can reunite their friends soul with their body, and merely have to get through the lesser daemons to escape to the material plane.
They don't come back alone. An evil spirit (undead or fiend) comes back with them. Defeating this foe only temporarily banishes it, as it will come back 1d10 days later. Only the death of the resurrected character will cause it to stop returning.
Given how many avenues there are to save someone from dying in the first place I honestly think the harsh failure results for Res are more than fair.
If there is one thing in the new system that I jive with the least it's that player characters are so much harder to kill given an encounter that is on-par for their level.
That may just be me though.
You're not wrong, and I really liked the idea of ressurection being a risky endeavor in theory. In practice it gets a little wonky. There's a lot of narrative reasons to want to keep your same character in the rotation, but a lot of meta reasons why you might be better off just making a new character.
At level 11 a fully optimized character with master religion, +5 wisdom, and a +2 item bonus only has a 50% chance to succeed on the check. And the check costs a little under half the lump sum value of a kitted out new 11th level character. By contrast it costs the party nothing to get a new party member, and that's before you get to the prickly question of selling the possessions of the deceased.
I think spending all that money for nothing half the time or more feels pretty bad. Upon further reflection, I think the solution I landed on in play might be a good one in general. Basically treat a failure as a mixed success. They return to life, but there's a complication, hard choice, or thing the party has to do to get them back. The thread has had various ideas generated for what that could be.
I dunno, I'm still work shopping it.
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we got this covered already
And that thread has plenty of fantastic ideas, but it is a generic thread, and this one is all about what happens when you critically fail in casting the ritual.