We had our first death during our last PF2 session and the player would like to keep his character. At that point we started diving into how to bring them back to life, and determined Resurrect would be the best option. This led to looking closely at the ritual rules, and we came up with some questions.
1. How much does it cost to hire someone to cast Resurrect? There is a material cost associated to the ritual, but is there any mechanic to determine how much the caster and the two assistants would charge? We determined that they would need to be pretty high level.
2. How easy would it be to find a willing caster/assistants? At the bare minimum you would need a 9th level character along with two higher level assistants. At 9th level, the chances of successful making the check needed for the ritual is pretty low, so the character would need to be even higher then that. How common is it to find NPCs that high level?
3. Do you roll for success of the ritual if an NPC is casting it or just allow an automatic success?
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
I don't think NPCs are meant to perform rituals for you. If they did, it would be extremely expensive. Rituals are risky and time consuming compared to normal spellcasting services. And the supply is further limited by being uncommon. It would be much easier to find someone who you can pay for Raise Dead instead.
I'd simply rely on this table, adding to the given cost the Resurrect costs.
For example a lvl 5 resurrect would be
Spell Service cost 80GP ( +25% cause it's casting time is higher than 1 min. so 100GP ) + ( Cost diamonds worth a total value of 75 gp × the target’s level)
So assuming a lvl 9 character it would be 100GP + 675GP = 755GP
I guess you'll be able to cover up for the secondary casters ( trained medicine + trained society ), but even if not I wouldn't bother in making assumptions how much a secondary caster would cost ( there's the hireling service cost though ).
I appreciate the responses. We are deep in the Mwangi Jungle and level 6. The DM has estimated we are about 15 days from Magaambya, which we figured would be the closest location to us with a good chance of finding a high level caster. Raise Dead would not be feasible because of the time it would take to do to a caster. We did look at the chart for spell casting, but figured that the modifiers would be a lot higher. 25% for a casting time higher then a minute does not seem to take into account rituals that can take days to cast. Plus the ritual is uncommon so there is also the 100% modifier as well.
It seems like death in PF2 is a lot more restrictive then in other additions, unless we are missing something. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but when the character died we assumed it would be pretty easy to bring them back and it looks like its not.
Anyone have experience with applying these rules in a session?
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Coming back from the dead is indeed much harder, and that's intentional. But it is also much harder to die than PF1. (It is probably slightly easier to die than 5e thanks to the wounded condition.) Ressurection had to be common in PF1 because the margins between being knocked out and being killed grow increasingly smaller as damage scaled faster than the con score buffer.
In PF1, the odds of dying are relatively stable and hero points can often prevent it.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Do you have a cleric or druid in your party that could cast gentle repose? That would keep raise dead as an option.
You probably considered the reincarnate ritual already. But it is something your characters could attempt if you gain access to it.
As for paying for resurrect, I wouldn't. I would make you convince some powerful people that you are useful and then charge you a favor or two. Character death is much more interesting as a roleplaying opportunity than a resource sink.
Gentle Repose definitely helps! I didn't even notice that option. If this was a homebrew game, that idea of doing a fun side quest would be great but we are running an AP and the DM does not want to put in the extra work. It sounds like using Gentle Repose and then traveling to Magaambya sounds like our best option. We did consider reincarnate, but the player stated his entire character concept is based on his race and he would prefer to just make a new character if we had to go the reincarnate route. Thanks for everyone's input and assistance with working through our first character death.
rakur wrote: I appreciate the responses. We are deep in the Mwangi Jungle and level 6. The DM has estimated we are about 15 days from Magaambya, which we figured would be the closest location to us with a good chance of finding a high level caster. Raise Dead would not be feasible because of the time it would take to do to a caster. We did look at the chart for spell casting, but figured that the modifiers would be a lot higher. 25% for a casting time higher then a minute does not seem to take into account rituals that can take days to cast. Plus the ritual is uncommon so there is also the 100% modifier as well.
It seems like death in PF2 is a lot more restrictive then in other additions, unless we are missing something. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but when the character died we assumed it would be pretty easy to bring them back and it looks like its not.
Anyone have experience with applying these rules in a session?
I think you didn't miss anything ( thanks for addressing the 100% extra cost for the uncommon spell. I missed that part ).
It all comes down how the DM and the party would like to deal with it.
As for IRL stuff, sometimes people don't have enough money or power to make something happen, and talking about characters in a setting like Golarion, especially low level ones, bringing back people from the dead is no joke.
Since the characters are the heroes of the story which is being told, the DM might be gentle by offering them a task/quest in order to bring back the dead one.
Reincarnate may be a cheaper way to bring the character back, though there's no guarantee that it would come back with its ancestry.
I think the best would be discussing it with your DM, mostly because there are just a bunch of alternatives ( some of them involving the dead player unable to play with the rest of the group for a while ).
also raise dead could work but would cost you a staggering 1200 gp, on top of the spellcasting fee, which your group probably doesn't have right now.
If you are in Age of Ashes, a better deal would maybe be to check with the elves of Akrivel for them to cast reincarnate?
Or go back to breachill which houses two temples that sponsor heroic endeavors and may be willing to get your fallen friend back to life at a discount (Temple of Cayden Caelian and Temple of Desna)
One thing for your GM to keep in mind with whatever method you choose: the game balance assumes that you have a steadily increasing amount of money to buy magic items as a campaign progresses. If the party puts a lot of resources into something like resurrect, then it may be a good idea to either find a way to give the party a discount (perhaps through a quest, though, it sounds like that's not something they want to do, which is fine), or to get the party more resources in some upcoming sessions. It could be as simple as just putting some extra loot over the course of the next level or 2 you go through, so it hurts for a bit but you're back on track eventually.
That's not required, of course, but something to keep in mind for sure.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Aw3som3-117 wrote: One thing for your GM to keep in mind with whatever method you choose: the game balance assumes that you have a steadily increasing amount of money to buy magic items as a campaign progresses. If the party puts a lot of resources into something like resurrect, then it may be a good idea to either find a way to give the party a discount (perhaps through a quest, though, it sounds like that's not something they want to do, which is fine), or to get the party more resources in some upcoming sessions. It could be as simple as just putting some extra loot over the course of the next level or 2 you go through, so it hurts for a bit but you're back on track eventually.
That's not required, of course, but something to keep in mind for sure.
Yeah, one of the tricky things is that leaving a character dead so you can sell their stuff and then just getting a new fully equipped PC is the fiscally sound decision. I try to avoid letting such meta considerations influence the narrative decision though. I don't guarantee a replacement PC will come in appropriate WBL if it doesn't fit with the story or would cause an imbalance.
Recent threads in Rules Discussion
|
