Ressurection in RPGs

[baronjohn]

Doesn't this break immershun?

Oh NPC #234 your wife was killed and... wait, why didn't you just use a Potion of Death to LIfe on her? What? The King was assassinated by bomb throwing anarchists? Why don't you have the court mage rez him? etc

In some games you can get party members ressurected in pubs, using a spell, with a potion, or through the power of luv. Lets not even go into games where they're auto-rezzed after battle ends...

At what point do you start to wonder how anyone in this world can die at all?

Why have healers at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have cleric kill sick people and then raise them, like new?

 

[Baron]

5,000gp diamond is a necessary component. Not everyone can get their hands on them except Kings and successful adventurers.

And before you ask, they eventually die after their ailing Constitution fails a system shock. Gygax (PBUH) thought of everything.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I suppose in some games you have to make offerings to the gods and then pray to them and maybe you will get ressurected. Paying out the nose and then maybe getting ressurected sounds less affordable for the avarage peasant.

 

[Lesifoere]

Why have healers at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have cleric kill sick people and then raise them, like new?

Rez costs too much mana, of course?

 

[Daemongar]

Why have healers at all? Wouldn't it make more sense to just have cleric kill sick people and then raise them, like new?

Rez costs too much mana, of course?

Not every city has healers high enough level to raise dead. In addition, once found, they may reserve such spells for believers only. Why should they spend the time resurrecting a non-believer: so they can sin or blaspheme more? Not every diety is a turn the other cheek type like the Christian God.

We've all seen the story of the bitter, lovelorn fellow who drags the body of his dear wife/gf/tranny life partner to the big city, only to be shunned by the high priest...

 

[Castanova]

2/10

 

[Baron]

As per my alignment I've always felt that Animate Dead was an acceptable substitute.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

BG's gibbing was a decent compromise, I thought

 

[Phelot]

It's a stupid concept and should be considered outside the game world. Either reload a save or be forced to sacrifice XP or something.

 

[JarlFrank]

Resurrection is always a problematic thing in any setting. I prefer death to be final - you die, you go to afterlife or cease existing or whatever. You can't come back. Resurrection spells just are kinda stupid and silly, and take away the finality and the mystery of death.

"lol my girlfriend died but whatever I'm a rich fuck I'll just pay the clerics and then I'll ask her what afterlife is like, now death won't be a mystery to me anymore!"

Meeh.

 

[Nukester]

I liked the way the early Wizardry games dealt with this. Either leave the dead party member there and carry on with 5 in the party, or carry his dead carcass back through the maze and back to town with only 5 party members to fight the way back out, and then if the resurrection didnt go very well, POOF, goodbye character. No reloading to get him/her/it back. So you roll up another character to bring with the party, but now you have a level 1 character fighting alongside level 10's or whatever. That was cool

 

[Berekän]

There's no game ever that has dealt with this, plot-wise, succesfully.

Mechanic-wise, the only game that should benefit from this should be the MMO's, for (semi)obvious reasons, but in the rest of games if any of your companions dies, though luck, reload or fuck off.

The only way of implementing "death" in a good way would be like in BG, as Jimbob said, your characters don't die but fall unconscious, but if they get killed, they should stay dead.

 

[denizsi]

It might be nice if there was a chance that the resurrected person lost some personality traits and gained others that weren't immediately transparent to the character. Or resurrection carried about symptoms and an associated social stigma.

 

[Lesifoere]

There's no game ever that has dealt with this, plot-wise, succesfully.

Not even PS:T? I mean, technically it's not resurrection, but TNO does come back from the dead over and over.

 

[soggie]

Resurrection is always a problematic thing in any setting. I prefer death to be final - you die, you go to afterlife or cease existing or whatever. You can't come back. Resurrection spells just are kinda stupid and silly, and take away the finality and the mystery of death.

"lol my girlfriend died but whatever I'm a rich fuck I'll just pay the clerics and then I'll ask her what afterlife is like, now death won't be a mystery to me anymore!"

Meeh.

And unlocking the doors to countless necrophilliac fan fictions...

 

[Dark Elf]

It might be nice if there was a chance that the resurrected person lost some personality traits and gained others that weren't immediately transparent to the character. Or resurrection carried about symptoms and an associated social stigma.

What if it required demonic possession of some sort? Oh, sure, you managed to squeeze your companion's soul back into their cooling corpse but hey, something else made its way in too.

 

[Norfleet]

5,000gp diamond is a necessary component. Not everyone can get their hands on them except Kings and successful adventurers.

Yes, but most of the time the deceased individual is, in fact, a king or other extremely important figure, and when that character croaks it, you fail the mission rather than having to simply pony up that 5K GP diamond to raise their asses. The gist of it all is that magic allows players to do so many ridiculous things that if taken to its logical extremes, the world would no longer resemble Generic Fantasy World and become the Bizarro Land that is the Tippyverse.

 

[PWSteal.Ldpinch.D]

It might be nice if there was a chance that the resurrected person lost some personality traits and gained others that weren't immediately transparent to the character. Or resurrection carried about symptoms and an associated social stigma.

Arcanum handled resurrection best out of all RPGs in this manner after you resurrect

Spoiler

Virgil

and you can see that the experience changed him.

 

[DraQ]

The gist of it all is that magic allows players to do so many ridiculous things that if taken to its logical extremes, the world would no longer resemble Generic Fantasy World and become the Bizarro Land that is the Tippyverse.

This.

Resurrection is a kind of thing that will break about any universe unless it's specifically designed around it and, unlike almost any other magic or technology it has unique potential of destroying drama and emotional engagement because it completely alters the way the world works so it's uncertain if a good universe can even theoretically be designed around it.

And no, even PS:T didn't handle resurrection gracefully. As unique phenomenon affecting the TNO, yes, but not in-universe, as the universe itself is essentially DnD multiverse and the resurrection is already in, breaking the shit out of it. Also, you could raise companions.

 

[Berekän]

There's no game ever that has dealt with this, plot-wise, succesfully.

Not even PS:T? I mean, technically it's not resurrection, but TNO does come back from the dead over and over.

I thought of giving PS:T as a counterexample, but then I remembered that you're given a skill to resurrect your companions always you want.

 

[Flanged]

It might be nice if there was a chance that the resurrected person lost some personality traits and gained others that weren't immediately transparent to the character. Or resurrection carried about symptoms and an associated social stigma.

What if it required demonic possession of some sort? Oh, sure, you managed to squeeze your companion's soul back into their cooling corpse but hey, something else made its way in too.

If resurrection is used at all, that's how it should work. Those raised from the dead should be transformed, altered, and not in a good way - but not in an overly obvious one either. There was a great short story about Lazarus after Jesus raised him - how he was shunned by his fellows, and no man would meet his eyes, which knew the truth of death. He could no longer take any pleasure in life, and having been dead for four days, he spent the rest of his second life looking and feeling like somebody who had been dead for four days. I thought maybe this was in the Apocrypha or something, but it seems it was a short story.

Seems a lot more interesting than Jesus just throwing a Pheonix Down into his throat and Lazarus jumping up all brand new. That kind of resurrection in games is frankly shite. In older games it doesn't bother me so much - you can just take it as part of the high-camp ultra-fantasy setting usually. But with characters looking more like real people, and games getting more and more grimdark, repeated death and resurrection just gets silly, and a bit creepy. It ruined Bioshock, and that wasn't even an RPG ... hell, it wasn't even a game.

 

[Lumpy]

I'd rather have character fall unconscious and wake up after combat, because at least that doesn't screw up the world logic. Though of course, that's less than ideal.

A decent system is one like in SoZ, where character have to get to minus whatever to die permanently (except, without resurrection afterwards). That can actually pose strategic challenges - first kill the mage spamming AoE spells, because the warriors won't bother attacking a target that's already down. Or perma-kill the leader of a group to have morale drop.

 

[denizsi]

It might be nice if there was a chance that the resurrected person lost some personality traits and gained others that weren't immediately transparent to the character. Or resurrection carried about symptoms and an associated social stigma.

Arcanum handled resurrection best out of all RPGs in this manner after you resurrect

Spoiler

Virgil

and you can see that the experience changed him.

Yes, I thought about mentioning that but decided against it since it's an isolated exception with its own quest, not a part of the game mechanics, ie. it's basically as good as LARPing. Except it's done well.

 

[Nickless]

It might be nice if there was a chance that the resurrected person lost some personality traits and gained others that weren't immediately transparent to the character. Or resurrection carried about symptoms and an associated social stigma.

I know in Ravenloft there's like a 50% chance that the victim ends up an undead creature. Plus I think they're reincarnated regardless

 

[DraQ]

I'd rather have character fall unconscious and wake up after combat, because at least that doesn't screw up the world logic. Though of course, that's less than ideal.

A decent system is one like in SoZ, where character have to get to minus whatever to die permanently (except, without resurrection afterwards). That can actually pose strategic challenges - first kill the mage spamming AoE spells, because the warriors won't bother attacking a target that's already down. Or perma-kill the leader of a group to have morale drop.

Incapacitation in general is a good mechanics, as while a lucky crit or massive damage can kill a character outright, most injuries aren't immediately fatal. Of course, in many cases an injured and incapacitated character would actually be dying slowly so you'd have to help them ASAP, but that would still make them effectively less fragile than simplistic existence failure at 0HP.

Negative HP is an example of very simplistic implementation of such mechanics, but it would be cooler to model actual injuries and modify incapacitation/death thresholds according to stats - for example, a berserker wouldn't necessarily be physically stuirdier than regular guy, but he would be able to keep swinging hard way beyond the point where the regular guy would be lying curled up in the mud, staring at the growing pool of his own blood.