The Gaming Den

What would it look like?

If the three types of ressurections that people could have include:

-You can raise a Body, this restores flesh, but not bones. This calls the spirit, and the spirit can enter the body or not.

-You can use any remaining part of a body, to make a whole body, this restores flesh and bones. This calls the spirit, and they may choose to inhabit the body, or not.

-You can raise a body, as long as the Spirit is around and willing. This needs the spirit to be available


How might a world look? King Arthur could still be around, if someone was able to resurrect him.

This is of course, assuming a vaugely late middle ages, maybe early Renaissance level of technology, probably higher, as magic is going to increase manufacturing capability and product.

You forget the best part of immortality: the cost.

If resurrection is cheap, you get one world - might be a nice place, might be borderlands

If resurrection is expensive you get a distopian world of the immortals and the soon to be dead.

We live in a world with resurrection. CPR has a success rate in the double digits.

-Username17

So, in this world, resurrection can even overcome old age?

I agree that if it were expensive or otherwise "controlled", you'd have a few immortals closely guarding their power.

Well, in the game system that I'm using, any player can use an ability that is a "minor" power; and the first of those three Resurrection options is the "minor" version.

The "cost" is "you can't start combat with active/offensive powers; you're stuck with defensive and non-combat powers at the start of a combat." Not a huge limitation, but a limitation nonetheless.

That's for any creature in the game who is not mundane (aka, PCs, and other NPC adventurers and heroes).

If a person picked up the actual Resurrection minor power; they could do it 3 times per day, at a minimum; and 45 times per day as a maximum.

The Moderate power would allow them to raise mangled, or bodies in parts, up to 15 times per day.

The Major power would allow the character to raise a person from the dead, even without a spirit. Up to 5 times per day.

Characters are going to max out at 5 Major powers on their character sheet; 15 Moderate powers, and 45 Minor powers.


So, raising people is possible, but it probably won't happen to everyone, and everywhere. People who have power, or are friends of people who can resurrect, will most likely see resurrection used on them.

I could see a rule where once dead, a person's title and power passes on to the next of kin. Unless assassination was involved, in which case such deaths are written off. Also, most assassins might try to destroy the body, not just kill the person, in order to prevent resurrection (although, that doesn't always work, spirits can be resurrected).


Resurrection conquering old age .... maybe the True Res resets your age back to middle age, if you've passed it?

I could see a case where the Res abilities have benefits for the living, as well as the departed.

It depends on the limits of resurrection. In D&D resurrection cannot be performed on creatures that have died of "old age". Now, noone really dies of old age, they die of kidney failure, or cancer, or heart disease or whatever, but the implication is that the human body has a limit to the amount of time it can keep regenerating cells that even magic cannot overcome. So, no immortals, but you can expect heads of state to regularly last over 100 years. I imagine this would lead to more static, less progressive societies as older people are generally less accepting of change.

It also depends on where resurrection comes from. In D&D its granted by the gods, and you would imagine, being a high level and expensive spell, that it is only granted to the strongest proponents of the faith. I would imagine agnostics are pretty rare in D&D when the benefits of dedicating your life to a God include a second chance at life.

If resurrection is expensive but otherwise available to everyone you will get people putting money away for their "resurrection fund". In particular if a certain component (say diamonds) is required, you would expect this commodity to be heavily monopolised by the ruling power. It's availability may be restricted, leading to black market diamond smugglers and vicious power struggles over diamond mines. Blood diamonds anyone? Historically feudal rulers held lavish parties for their subjects on holy days. In D&D the elite may hold a "resurrection lottery" at special holidays, where people can enter their deceased loved ones and win the chance to have them resurrected.

On the other hand if resurrection is restricted to only the powerful in some manner (such as high level characters or only when a God directly decrees it) it would be seen as a miracle, and proof of someones power to come back from the dead. People may even fake their own deaths just to make it seem that they are worthy of the honour when they reappear.

This is all assuming resurrection is without any dangers. I considered having resurrection in D&D cause you to gain some amount of negative levels, with the character instead returning as a Wight if you were reduced to level 0. This would make bargaining for the return of a dead soul a dangerous endeavour, as you wouldn't be quite sure what would inhabit the body of the subject. It would also restrict returning of the dead to those with some class levels, making it out of reach of the general populace. In the end we went with a different approach, but I kind of liked the idea of adding some tension to the process of resurrection.

A world with resurrection could look vastly different depending on the limits imposed on it.

I don't understand why you're insisting that nobles control the resurrection market, because they only get resurrected through the charity of those powerful enough to not worry about diamond mines.

I've never worried about resurrection as a setting-breaker. I mean, only the wealthy and powerful can afford it, and these are the people most likely to be killed for a reason because they have money and power. That m makes them the most likely to be killed in a way that prevents resurrection.

I mean, raise dead and resurrection can be prevented by cutting off the head because the body needs to be whole. True resurrection needs barely anything at all, but if a near-epic level caster is available then the killer will probably invest in some thinaun or something.

Those limits matter. Perfect and ideal resurrection that costs nothing and could be performed by anyone would break the setting, but some basic costs pulls back the crazy to acceptable limits.

FrankTrollman wrote:We live in a world with resurrection. CPR has a success rate in the double digits.

That's revivify, not resurrection.

Well, right now, I'm not sure on what limits I want to put on Resurrection, or Death.

They're both pretty important concepts, and you need to know how they work in your setting, or how you want them to work in your setting.

I think that restricting access to special powers might be how I do it.

I'd like to think that investing in one type of power, should count as allowing you do do things within the same pool, at a reduced capability (half as effective as you would normally be).

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:We live in a world with resurrection. CPR has a success rate in the double digits.

That's revivify, not resurrection.

People have been dead for minutes and brought back with little apparent harm, though level loss or Con loss both seem somewhat appropriate. Anyways, it's sure as hell more than 6 seconds, yes, even of flatline.

TavishArtair wrote: People have been dead for minutes and brought back with little apparent harm, though level loss or Con loss both seem somewhat appropriate. Anyways, it's sure as hell more than 6 seconds, yes, even of flatline.

Even still, you're talking about people dead under a half an hour. Raise dead and resurrect are bring back people dead for days or even decades.

Judging__Eagle wrote:Well, right now, I'm not sure on what limits I want to put on Resurrection, or Death.

They're both pretty important concepts, and you need to know how they work in your setting, or how you want them to work in your setting.

Honestly, I think you're best off making death really rare for heroes in the first place and having resurrection be a plot device ability.

Resurrection absolutely should not be a mechanic by any means. It isn't something that happens all the time, it's just something that happens to suit the plot.

I sorta like the idea that the realm of the dead is kinda like a complex computer system or something, and occasionally people find ways to hack it, but the god of death rapidly closes the loophole after its used, so nothing you use is reliable. Also, people tend to store these loopholes and save them for the right moment, so it's not unheard of to come across an ancient scroll of resurrection that someone never got around to using.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Resurrection absolutely should not be a mechanic by any means. It isn't something that happens all the time, it's just something that happens to suit the plot.

No waiiiii. "Resurrection as plot device" works in a story. In your own game, you never know when a character might die, and players will get dissatisfied when John falls to -13 and a valkyrie gives him a lift from Valhalla but Jim, also at -13, is merely unconscious and gets water dumped on him as a means of awakening because one resurrection story is enough for one day. And it certainly won't do when you're writing a game for distribution ("This shouldn't happen, but if someone dies, make shit up.")

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Judging__Eagle wrote:Well, right now, I'm not sure on what limits I want to put on Resurrection, or Death.

They're both pretty important concepts, and you need to know how they work in your setting, or how you want them to work in your setting.

Honestly, I think you're best off making death really rare for heroes in the first place and having resurrection be a plot device ability.

Resurrection absolutely should not be a mechanic by any means. It isn't something that happens all the time, it's just something that happens to suit the plot.

I sorta like the idea that the realm of the dead is kinda like a complex computer system or something, and occasionally people find ways to hack it, but the god of death rapidly closes the loophole after its used, so nothing you use is reliable. Also, people tend to store these loopholes and save them for the right moment, so it's not unheard of to come across an ancient scroll of resurrection that someone never got around to using.

Well, right now, this is for a game that will have both a large player population (10-50 as a larp; and 100k+ if used as an MMO). Player Character death will happen both in a frequent, and a widespread fashion.

There needs to be a good way to have common resurrections in a game.

I could see a point for making higher end Resurrections harder to be able to do, but not that they shouldn't be used at all. I'm honestly a fan of the "immortality is an option" idea.

Steven Brust's world for the Vlad Taltos series has resurrection where people can be brought back but also killed in a non resurrectable way ( brain damaging death usually) though may be reincarnated some later day, and weapons that further kill someone and destroys the soul (so no reincarnation either).

Just thought I would throw that out there as an example of a society with resurrection.

Judging__Eagle wrote:
Well, right now, this is for a game that will have both a large player population (10-50 as a larp; and 100k+ if used as an MMO). Player Character death will happen both in a frequent, and a widespread fashion.

There needs to be a good way to have common resurrections in a game.

I could see a point for making higher end Resurrections harder to be able to do, but not that they shouldn't be used at all. I'm honestly a fan of the "immortality is an option" idea.

Well honestly, if you're going to have the idea that nobody dies, MMO style, you might as well just hand it out to everyone.

If you still want a world capable of change, you're probably best off checking out EVE's online model, where effectively everything is based around currency and possessions. Your character can't die, but you can totally get your ship blown up and the ship is permanently gone.

Either that or you can go full MMO and just say that nobody ever dies. Of course, surprisingly this would lead to a world similar to a real MMO, where the guards are all max level, because they seriously never die and have been around a while. It's a boring world to play in, because nothing you do ever matters, but MMORPGs don't cater to people like me anyway, so people who like that sort of thing obviously have learned to live with it. Basically it'd just be like fighting on the plane of Valhalla or whatever where you automatically resurrect the next day and nothing is permanent.

Hm, I'm wondering why nobody brought up the druidic D&D Reincarnation. It gets you around the age limitation, yet you might come back as something different than a human.

Judging__Eagle wrote:
Well, right now, this is for a game that will have both a large player population (10-50 as a larp; and 100k+ if used as an MMO). Player Character death will happen both in a frequent, and a widespread fashion.

There needs to be a good way to have common resurrections in a game.

Basically, yeh.

In FFXI, they show you once a year how many times you've died, as well as other info. I checked mine today and I've died 1700ish times, and killed 49,000ish monsters.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

TavishArtair wrote: People have been dead for minutes and brought back with little apparent harm, though level loss or Con loss both seem somewhat appropriate. Anyways, it's sure as hell more than 6 seconds, yes, even of flatline.

Even still, you're talking about people dead under a half an hour. Raise dead and resurrect are bring back people dead for days or even decades.

This is just In My Experience, but generally if someone is going to be rezzed, it will be decided that it will happen within the hour. I have seen only one instance of a character being killed without retrieval within the hour (and even then, I'm not sure it wasn't, time was fuzzy then), and dozens of instances of "get back up on your feet, soldier" after an enemy boss monster flings out something cruel like hundreds of damage or tens of Con damage or just sudden death and for some reason they aren't death warded.

Granted, the one person I can think of who was actually hit with an SoD and failed their save was in such a high level game that they were roundly mocked for NOT having a death ward effect on (or even mentioning they needed one).

Now, as to actually answering JE's request.

I would simply posit that the restless dead are.... well, just that. People who aren't properly disposed of reanimate as ghosts or zombies or whatever, and the experience is traumatic, sufficiently so that most of them then get angry. Have this be a common and by no means unusual experience. Watch "Fido" to get an impression of the resulting play-out. The real magic is not in getting people back on their feet, it's making them stop trying to eat your brains.

If we assume that people can be relatively easily resurrected but the basic spell which is most commonly used and most accessible can be circumvented by certain conditions (say, a lot of damage to the body or even destroying the body) then it would make sense if people who -want- people to stay dead have institutionalized those circumventions.

Meaning if destroying the body in your world prevents cheap resurrection then assassins all likely carry "firebrand daggers" or whatever that light the target on fire. This way when they kill someone they burn up and tend to stay dead. And even if there was no way to stop -high- level resurrection that sort of "firebrand" method would still be seen as a message. Rather akin to the mafia breaking your leg or something. It's people saying "I know this will be fixed, but we're serious".

Basically think about daggers that light people on fire. That's my advice for this and most situations.

deanruel87 wrote:Basically think about daggers that light people on fire. That's my advice for this and most situations.

This is an appropriate answer to most questions, really.