Pick a damn outcome for your battles.

[shadzar]

I'm not that familiar with 2nd ed what is res. survival?

Sorry for the delay...been busy...

Resurrection Survival lists a character's percentage chance to be successfully resurrected or raised from death by magic. The player must roll the listed number or less on percentile dice for the character to be revived. If the dice roll fails, the character is dead, regardless of how many times he has previously been revived. Only divine intervention can bring such a character back again.


Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

In a nutshell from the CD-ROM.

So basically it has Death as a character such as in Pratchett and other works?

In Lieber's world, Death was a god, with the only general exception being that he (and his sister pain) resided at the death pole of Nehwon and not on the other side where the god pole existed.

But even the gods had to obey the greater powers of Chance and Necessity. Death got burned with a lot of accounting work; his complete failure on multiple times to kill Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser is an interesting element to the general ordering of even the gods compared to the greater powers.

If bringing someone back from the dead requires an adventure that the dead character isn't participating in, that's basically telling the player that they have to sit out a session (or more) or make a new character. Do not want.

Most of the groups I played with would always enjoy a session or two of being in the kibitzer's seat.

I like it for books and such, but having a state of being as an entity kind of falls flat, because you have one death as it were, but no or many "life"s as would all the Gods be.

Seems kind of strange for a game. But as with Pratchett, a great story element.

[Killometer]

No matter which option you choose to axe, you also lose some risk:

A) What's the point of having a combat system at all if you always win?

B) Fatal consequences can be replaced by things that are nearly as unpleasant to many players (destruction of powerful items springs to mind) but nothing quite equals the threat of death (and having a beloved character killed by a monster is usually forgiven more easily than losing an artifact in a stupid way).

C) If players know that their characters won't last very long they'll stop investing anything in them. They'll eventually resort to making a stream of clone characters.

D) Resurrection makes death a temporary threat, but it can have results that echo through a game-a player dies mid-combat, so the party starts to falter, so they can't beat the BBEG, so they can't rescue the princess in time, so the king puts out a bounty on them, so they're suddenly the target of an interplanar pursuit...

My group has always dropped D. I like 2e's Resurrection Survival to mix a little spice ito it, though. That is something that I'm going to work in now that I know about it.

[RandomCasualty2]

D) Resurrection makes death a temporary threat, but it can have results that echo through a game-a player dies mid-combat, so the party starts to falter, so they can't beat the BBEG, so they can't rescue the princess in time, so the king puts out a bounty on them, so they're suddenly the target of an interplanar pursuit...

I've always found the opposite, that having resurrection creates echoing results. Mainly it creates a dependence on it and shit like "Well go ahead and kill the princess, I'm sure the king will pay to rez her."

Or "big deal they killed the king, just resurrect him."

[RobbyPants]

I've always found the opposite, that having resurrection creates echoing results. Mainly it creates a dependence on it and shit like "Well go ahead and kill the princess, I'm sure the king will pay to rez her."

Or "big deal they killed the king, just resurrect him."

Really, that's the only problem I've had with Resurrection in the past as a DM. I was never bothered by PCs coming back. I was only bothered by many typical fantasy plots falling to pieces.

I wrote some crazy political intrigue plot several years back where the princess was assassinated by someone from one nation while blaming another to get these two nations to go to war and weaken each other. It seemed so awesome until one of the players asked why the princess wasn't resurrected.

Damnit! Why wasn't she resurrected? Either I scrap an entire campaign arc or handwave logic away and look like a retard (I chose the latter ).

[tzor]

I like it for books and such, but having a state of being as an entity kind of falls flat, because you have one death as it were, but no or many "life"s as would all the Gods be.

Seems kind of strange for a game. But as with Pratchett, a great story element.

"Death" is more than just a "state of being" but a transition point. Whether there are multiple deaths is a complex point, there is only one for Nehwon. While the gods live on the "life" pole they are in no way the opposite of death.

This is brought in interesting focus in the trans-Leiber's works, such as "Swords against the shadowland" by Robin Wayne Bailey (whcih I just finished reading). Death has a lot of power, and you don't want to make him angry, but he in turn is merely a puppet of the higher powers, all the way up to Chance and Necessity.

In game terms it doesn't really come up; the actions of death or even the gods don't really show up on the player character's radar screens other than what might appear to them as "random encounters."

No really, once I add my touches to the setting, Lankhmar makes Dark Sun seem like such a happy place.

[shadzar]

I guess it really depends on your overall cosmology. As you say, building one or retooling it by adding your own touches, can make a world of difference in having Death as a state of being, or a person. I wouldn't mind so much a vision of the Grim Reaper, one who collects the dead to help them transition. But having Death itself a "creature" wouldn't work so much for me, even as a god like entity. Gods can be killed, and what would happen if one kills Death?

[Red_Rob]

what would happen if one kills Death?

Well extreme sports would get a lot less exciting for one. It seems Cthulhu did alright when "even death may die" so maybe we all become super powerful Old Ones?

I actually did some thinking about raise dead and resurrection when i was first setting up a DnD campaign and came to the conclusion that if you could be brought back from the dead if a priest liked you enough it would have major effects on the world. This, combined with the historical results of religions interacting (i.e. violence, crusades and incompatible world views colliding at great speed) lead me to conjecture two things were likely to happen:

A: Everyone would be SUPER devout. I mean, imagine if Christians were actually protected from death in our world, never mind the hyper dangerous DnD world. Religion would no doubt be most peoples overriding driving force, as your priest believing you were a worthy servant of your God could literally be the difference between life and death. Think about how devout people can be today and they only believe they are saving their souls. Imagine if it was proven it could save your life.

B: The Priesthood would rule most countries. If the Kings ability to return from the dead is dependent on being in the good graces of a few Priests, they are going to exert more and more power over him until eventually the Priesthood are running the place. Thus the civilised world will be composed of a number of countries dominated by their most common religion and competing to spread worship of their God. Religion and politics would be inextricably linked, not the seperate entities they are portrayed as in most D&D worlds. Most Gods as written want influence over the world of men so they would most likely encourage their Priests in this rather than dissuade them.

The campaign never really got off the ground but it was interesting extrapolating the effects of a single level 5 spell to such gameworld-warping extremes.

[Quantumboost]

what would happen if one kills Death?

Well extreme sports would get a lot less exciting for one.

Probably not. After all, killing Death doesn't mean you've eliminated things like comas, spinal injuries, and full-body paralysis - and those kind of things already happen to people undergoing extreme physical stresses. They'd happen a lot more often if life-threatening injuries didn't kill you (since some of those would instead cause the above).

After all, from an outside perspective, being unable to move or communicate and not noticeably breathing is very very similar to being actually dead.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Red Rob's analysis is missing a couple of things.

1) If resurrection rituals require some kind of expense rather than just being freesy-peasy, then it would be a luxury reserved for the rich. You could crank up the expense depending on how common you wanted it to be. If you want resurrection to be a bludgeon nobles use against the lower class then you could have it cost things like thousands of gold pieces. If you want resurrection to be a backup weapon for societies (we're going to bring Hercules and Gilgamesh back from the grave) then it could cost something like astral diamonds, a cost so high that people wouldn't even use it on their emperors but would use it if their culture was on the path of destruction.

2) If resurrection pissed off certain entities then it would become a lot less common. Lucifer might allow someone to bring back Charlemange or Robert the Weasel from the dead, but Steve the Crap-Covered farmer? Hell no. Even if you could convince Steve to come back (and you probably could, since they're in hell) no one would do it if the cost of doing it would be that Satan would send pit fiends to flatten your city for your insolence. Heroes could dodge this because they're in good with their overseer or because they could just whup the ass of the deities if they complained about the revolving door afterlife.

Or you don't even have to go that high up the chain. If you had a society in the world who was charged with preventing resurrection that didn't fit their aims, getting resurrected wouldn't do you much good unless you had an 'in' with them or you were badass enough to fend them off. Baron von Snoopy doesn't get resurrected after a hunting accident because the White Wizards would show up to his manor and torch him and his fucking grounds. Or he takes the risk anyway and lives in hiding for the rest of his life.

3) If resurrection required some personal badassery on their parts that would put a limit on resurrection. If resurrection required a fortitude and/or will save unless you died immediately, if you set the bar high enough it would exclude 95% of the people from coming back. You could even adjust the save over time; you could decrease the difficulty over time if you want deaths to mean something within the timeline of society or you could increase the difficulty if you don't want Moses coming back.

4) If the resurrected entity had a reason to refuse coming back to life. Going back to Steve the Crap-Covered farmer, he dies of scurvy after a long, miserable life of plowing the mud fields and watching his family get regularly fucked in the ass by some nobles. But he lived a good life and now he's in heaven! He's handsome, he's got a full set of teeth, he gets a huge selection of food and friends and gets laid by hot angels every night. Or he could just be an evil bastard and end up in Hell, but he likes it there better anyway because he gets to be a slime demon and occasionally beats up on people. Whatever.

The thing is, resurrection is rare because life is such a hell that only the extremely driven or manic (like heroes) actually want to come back.


Regardless, there are a lot of limiting factors you could put on resurrection that could make it available but still rarely used. If you used a combination of 2 and 4 then resurrections would really be a once-in-a-generation event within society.

[tzor]

Gods can be killed, and what would happen if one kills Death?

Two options:

1) You can't kill death; period.
2) Necessity promotes someone else on the spot.

That's the difference between death and some other random Nehwon god. The specific function of the Nehwon god isn't important, Necessity only requires that it is good for the manifestation of the spiritual desires of the living. Death, or the function of ensuring that all men die in proper accord and that one cannot cheat the rolls of death is a specific function which is demanded by necessity, requiring Necessity to implement it.

Thus the difference between 1 & 2 is literally whether Chance has a say to override Necessity on this matter. One could make an argument either way.

[MGuy]

Red Rob's analysis is missing a couple of things.

1) If resurrection rituals require some kind of expense rather than just being freesy-peasy, then it would be a luxury reserved for the rich. You could crank up the expense depending on how common you wanted it to be. If you want resurrection to be a bludgeon nobles use against the lower class then you could have it cost things like thousands of gold pieces. If you want resurrection to be a backup weapon for societies (we're going to bring Hercules and Gilgamesh back from the grave) then it could cost something like astral diamonds, a cost so high that people wouldn't even use it on their emperors but would use it if their culture was on the path of destruction.

2) If resurrection pissed off certain entities then it would become a lot less common. Lucifer might allow someone to bring back Charlemange or Robert the Weasel from the dead, but Steve the Crap-Covered farmer? Hell no. Even if you could convince Steve to come back (and you probably could, since they're in hell) no one would do it if the cost of doing it would be that Satan would send pit fiends to flatten your city for your insolence. Heroes could dodge this because they're in good with their overseer or because they could just whup the ass of the deities if they complained about the revolving door afterlife.

Or you don't even have to go that high up the chain. If you had a society in the world who was charged with preventing resurrection that didn't fit their aims, getting resurrected wouldn't do you much good unless you had an 'in' with them or you were badass enough to fend them off. Baron von Snoopy doesn't get resurrected after a hunting accident because the White Wizards would show up to his manor and torch him and his fucking grounds. Or he takes the risk anyway and lives in hiding for the rest of his life.

3) If resurrection required some personal badassery on their parts that would put a limit on resurrection. If resurrection required a fortitude and/or will save unless you died immediately, if you set the bar high enough it would exclude 95% of the people from coming back. You could even adjust the save over time; you could decrease the difficulty over time if you want deaths to mean something within the timeline of society or you could increase the difficulty if you don't want Moses coming back.

4) If the resurrected entity had a reason to refuse coming back to life. Going back to Steve the Crap-Covered farmer, he dies of scurvy after a long, miserable life of plowing the mud fields and watching his family get regularly fucked in the ass by some nobles. But he lived a good life and now he's in heaven! He's handsome, he's got a full set of teeth, he gets a huge selection of food and friends and gets laid by hot angels every night. Or he could just be an evil bastard and end up in Hell, but he likes it there better anyway because he gets to be a slime demon and occasionally beats up on people. Whatever.

The thing is, resurrection is rare because life is such a hell that only the extremely driven or manic (like heroes) actually want to come back.


Regardless, there are a lot of limiting factors you could put on resurrection that could make it available but still rarely used. If you used a combination of 2 and 4 then resurrections would really be a once-in-a-generation event within society.

I've used a form of one and 2 but I like your version of 2 a lot. The whole white wizards thing could be the start of a compelling campaign one day.

[Ice9]

Another option - Resurrection doesn't work on anybody who's actual gone on to the afterlife; the only way you can be resurrected is stick around as a ghost (and not the badass Ghost template either).

This is a fairly exhausting process, so most people don't even try; also you're not invulnerable in ghost form - someone can come along with a force effect and destroy you, and that's that. Sure, you can hide underground to stay safe, but then how are your friends going to find you? (Resurrection would require the ghost actually being there).

End result - PCs will usually be able to come back, unless the foes force the rest of the party to retreat and then hunt down the ghosts. People with a significant reason to return (and the required resources) can do so if they die by accident or in battle, but a good assassin will make sure to vaporize the ghost and prevent that.

[shadzar]

Gods can be killed, and what would happen if one kills Death?

Two options:

1) You can't kill death; period.
2) Necessity promotes someone else on the spot.

That's the difference between death and some other random Nehwon god. The specific function of the Nehwon god isn't important, Necessity only requires that it is good for the manifestation of the spiritual desires of the living. Death, or the function of ensuring that all men die in proper accord and that one cannot cheat the rolls of death is a specific function which is demanded by necessity, requiring Necessity to implement it.

Thus the difference between 1 & 2 is literally whether Chance has a say to override Necessity on this matter. One could make an argument either way.

Death of Rats get promoted, and everyone comes back as a rat instead of human/elf/dwarf/whatever

Lose a party member and get a sack ready for collecting diversions....

Hypothetically speaking, in order to kill Death would a minoir death be required, or owuld one have to be promoted a split second prior to Death dying?

Could you imagine a game where someone like Cyric wants to become the next Death?

It might work, but, for me, just feels out of place in a game of D&D. Something set up for it would probably work fine. Just can't teach an old dog new tricks for some things for D&D I guess.

[tzor]

Death doesn’t cause all deaths, he just has to account for them all and perform adjustments as needed in order to ensure that no one is cheating and that all the required numbers given to him from Necessity are met.

But the big thing is that no one really wants to be Death. (They want what they think Death’s powers are, but that is a different situation; everyone loves to have someone’s powers without knowing what someone’s problems are.) Death is one of the major functions that is required of Necessity, and in effect reports directly to Necessity and in turn is commanded directly by Necessity. Death therefore knows the rules. (In essence he knows that Necessity is; to put it in gaming terms; one bastard of a railroading DM and all the rules of the universe are set up to be an efficient but uncaring bastard. Free will is an illusion; or rather it is the perpetual annoyance of Chance perturbing the cosmic dictates of Necessity.) The only bright news is one can keep a perpetual focus on the perpetual task that is required.

Because of Death’s position, he is also keenly aware of the God Trap; therefore he takes great pains to ensure that he does not get “defined” by the faith of those who worship him. (It is probably for this reason that in the AD&D setting it was joked that anyone who declares himself a priest of Death is immediately killed by Death. Death remains a mystery and a mystery is harder to define; harder to pin down; harder to contain.)

[RobbyPants]

I guess it depends on how you define Death.

If Death is more of a concept or a cosmic force, then you can't kill it anymore than you can kill Law or Evil.

If Death is a god/demigod/awesome dude, then he could likely be killed, but that could have many different outcomes:

1) He comes back similar to a ghost, as his purpose isn't yet resolved (and likely won't be until every living creature is dead).

2) The person who kills him becomes death.

3) Some powerful deity or group of deities creates a new death.

4) Death stays dead, people still die, but now their souls linger in the material plane instead of being shepherded to their appropriate afterlife.

5) All living creatures become immortal, but can still be incapacitated by being dropped below 0 HP.

[shadzar]

What Robby said sums up my thoughts as well there.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, people who don't like resurrection, I was wondering--

Do you not like it because it sucks the tension out of combats (big deal, we can just get rezzed) or because it kills a lot of the typical fantasy-era tropes (big deal about the assassination, we can just raise the king)?

The two situations have different solutions.

[RobbyPants]

Honestly, it doesn't come up that much in my games, but I have had an assassination-based story fall flat because of this once.

So what's your solution to the second situation?

[TavishArtair]

I dislike the things it does to stories, rather than combat. I prefer solutions in terms of fixing death that instead avert, sidetrack, and outwit death, letting people effectively buy second chances in combat against fatal situations, and retreat (with the consequent admission of failure and loss). There is still tension if you can lose, and be driven back. Hell, even in a straight resurrection setting, "total party death" is still a point of tension, because then there is no one to resurrect you.

Being capable of returning people who are already quite dead to life makes many stories untenable. It enables some more, but I feel it also limits the number of stories you can tell forever more.

[MGuy]

I don't like it for both reasons and because what it gives to the game is not worth it in comparison.

[The Man Who Killed Death]

I've always found the opposite, that having resurrection creates echoing results. Mainly it creates a dependence on it and shit like "Well go ahead and kill the princess, I'm sure the king will pay to rez her."

Or "big deal they killed the king, just resurrect him."

Really, that's the only problem I've had with Resurrection in the past as a DM. I was never bothered by PCs coming back. I was only bothered by many typical fantasy plots falling to pieces.

I wrote some crazy political intrigue plot several years back where the princess was assassinated by someone from one nation while blaming another to get these two nations to go to war and weaken each other. It seemed so awesome until one of the players asked why the princess wasn't resurrected.

Damnit! Why wasn't she resurrected? Either I scrap an entire campaign arc or handwave logic away and look like a retard (I chose the latter ).

The only logical way to do it was to make the princess suicidal/not willing to ressurect.

Have the people trying to kill her get her to want to do it herself (or just unwilling to come back to life after death) through ruining her life, etc. Maybe if she thinks her loved one is dead she won't want to come back. Under raise dead it specifically dictates that the subject's soul has to be willing. Illusions are a great way to do this.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Thinuan does wonders for assassination.

[RobbyPants]

I've always found the opposite, that having resurrection creates echoing results. Mainly it creates a dependence on it and shit like "Well go ahead and kill the princess, I'm sure the king will pay to rez her."

Or "big deal they killed the king, just resurrect him."

Really, that's the only problem I've had with Resurrection in the past as a DM. I was never bothered by PCs coming back. I was only bothered by many typical fantasy plots falling to pieces.

I wrote some crazy political intrigue plot several years back where the princess was assassinated by someone from one nation while blaming another to get these two nations to go to war and weaken each other. It seemed so awesome until one of the players asked why the princess wasn't resurrected.

Damnit! Why wasn't she resurrected? Either I scrap an entire campaign arc or handwave logic away and look like a retard (I chose the latter ).

The only logical way to do it was to make the princess suicidal/not willing to ressurect.

Have the people trying to kill her get her to want to do it herself (or just unwilling to come back to life after death) through ruining her life, etc. Maybe if she thinks her loved one is dead she won't want to come back. Under raise dead it specifically dictates that the subject's soul has to be willing. Illusions are a great way to do this.

That's sort of what I ended up doing.

That campaign spurned a period where I said that resurrection was sort of taboo. It could be done but it was often frowned upon. So, many people would be unwilling to come back.

[The Man Who Killed Death]

That's sort of what I ended up doing.

That campaign spurned a period where I said that resurrection was sort of taboo. It could be done but it was often frowned upon. So, many people would be unwilling to come back.

That works, especially if you go with healing being necromancy and most good deities against it (specifically if you have deity intervention fairly common).

Or you could even have a group who actively pursues people for being resurrected for similar reasons for destroying undead. That seems most appropriate for a church, but it doesn't necessarily have to be obviously.

[Lich-Loved]

This death thing is something I have been struggling with lately. Has anyone considered a mechanic like that seen in the Neverwinter Nights games? For those that do not recall/never played, when a character is "killed" they are down for the rest of the battle, their icon turns to a gray skeletal thing and they are no longer helping your group. If at least one person survives the battle, these "killed" characters are restored to the group with minimal HPs.

My thoughts on translating this to D&D would be:

(1) Everything runs along like normal D&D combat, including dropping unconscious and being in-combat healed to rejoin the fight
(2) If someone hits whatever "death threshold" you play with (-10HP, -CON whatever) they are OUT for the rest of the fight and are on "death's door", beyond mortal magic (except perhaps wish/miracle?)
(3) If at least one person survives, the whole group survives
(4) If everyone is killed, that's it, TPK, re-roll
(5) The player of the downed character can opt to die a heroic death even if the party survives; they simply find him dead.
(6) If one or more people decide to cut and run and leave their fallen on the floor, so be it. It then falls to the players of the fallen heroes and the DM to decide what next: a rescue mission or character death. I opt for death as it prevents players from sitting out a session, unless a rescue can be affected in short order. Regardless, it is up to the player to decide which is more important to him/her: waiting the balance of the session or even two (playing a cohort or helping the DM) to retrieve a beloved character or let the character perish and rejoin the game as soon as possible with a new character.

Some benefits of this approach are:

* It puts final death firmly in the hands of the player
* We still have dramatic tension because failure is absolutely an option
* In such a game, you can do away with resurrection and raise dead altogether
* It avoids the "death is cheaper than item replacement" issue because death doesn't occur unless the player wants it to in which case the point is moot

Looking at the downsides:

* What happens in an AOE situation when Bob the Fighter is "down" and a fireball goes off nearby? In NWN, the spell had no effect on the character. Why? Hell if I know. For the same reason the hero that is grievously wounded in a story is not CDG'd, or his shield protected him from the blast or whatever. Maybe the character is just "more out of it", and whatever life remains in him is further eroded at that point. In effect a character in this state stops counting discrete hp loss. I know it isn't fully simulationist, but it is plausible.
* What about CDG's? Well damn if I know, really. I do think a DM that CDG's or has a giant step on a character is really being a hard ass if that player's character is already down and out of the fight. As far as "standing CDG's" like a Hold Person/ghoul paralysis/whatever, I believe the DM can still carry this out and the character just gains the "killed/down/whatever we call it" condition.
* Vorpal swords and other "no really you are fucked" type things? Hmm, perhaps these really are a "yep, reroll". I don't know. I don't like this answer though; it isn't consistent with the rest of the death mechanic described here.

Thoughts?