An interesting question occurred to me today: at what point is it cost effective to bring your dead party member back to life. I looked at both the Raise Dead spell and the Resurrect ritual, with the assumption that the party is buying the casting.
Raise Dead is a 6th level spell, and Resurrect is a 5th level ritual. So the base cost of the former appears to be higher than the latter. Then there's the addition cost of the diamonds needed, which is much higher for Raise Dead than for Resurrect (and increases with the level of the decedent). Then there are maximum limits on both spell and ritual: the ritual only works on bodies of up to 10th level, while the spell works on bodies of up to 13th level.
Anyway, bottom line, it doesn't look to me like a party could afford to raise one dead member until they're about level 9 (for Resurrect) or level 12 (for Raise Dead). This assumes you're buying the casting of the spell or ritual. If you have someone who knows it in the party, the cost goes down, but only a little bit (still gotta pay for those diamonds).
I also have a question about the ritual. It requires a primary "caster" and two secondaries, but I don't see anything about an extra cost for two more people, each expert in a different skill. That would up the cost of buying the ritual (or doing it yourself, if the party doesn't have all the required skills at the required levels).
Anyway, bottom line seems to be "when a PC dies, bury him and move on". Do most folks agree with that? Am I missing something?
I think there are some assumptions going into your findings that aren't necessarily true.
According to my math, if a party really wants a character back (story reasons, player attachment, whatever the reason) they can afford the expense by way of cashing in not just accumulated currency, but their other treasures as well.
And then there is the sidebar on page 510 that tells GMs to make adjustments if there is too much or too little of a particular sort of treasure, which means that long-term there's not necessarily going to be hefty consequences to having done such a "what's a suit of armor and a magic sword compared to my companion returned?" kind of deal.
Yeah, I deliberately ignored that PCs have other assets beside cash on hand. That probably makes a significant difference. I'll look into it.
Both spells can resurrect up to level 20 (look at the heightened levels)
The non ritual route is less risky money wise.
The point is more to do with whether a player wants that badly to come back from the dead or not.
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You forgot the "sell his body off to the local necromancer" option? Unless the party has the local necromancer in their group then its a bit of a wash ;)
Back when I used to play 3.x I’d normally handle party loot and set aside a small cache for healings, curse removals, and similars - including enough to handle one resurrection by lv8 and two by 12. Party accounting.
Now, I know how much characters need to set aside for weapons and armours and staves and stuff, but I haven’t calculated ressing. I might as well...
Edit: huh, so it’s not as bad as I thought, we go from 15% of party wealth at mid levels down to less than 5% at mid-high... I guess it’s the advantage of linear progression of cost into exponential wealth growth.
You forgot the "sell his body off to the local necromancer" option? Unless the party has the local necromancer in their group then its a bit of a wash ;)
Emergency rations!