Gangrelrumbler
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 4,201
Citizen I thought i had this covered in my third point ...
Well, a loss of 1 CON point by a caster won't prevent the aristocracy of the world to be ressurected by well paid clerics who are more than glad to give up some CON points for the coin. Even if the ressurection is SOOO TAXING that no one will perform it by their own will, the wealthy would force divine magic users to ressurect their own with some good ol' dungeons & tortures (that's a cool idea for a fantasy setting btw, divine magic users are being held captive by the elites as the human ressurection machines, even tho the process is extremely painful/taxing for the caster)
You are trying to say that if the ressurection is harder to perform then it doesn't affect the world around your party, but it's not like this. The society where the ressurection ritual is affordable enough to be performed by a party of adventurers would not live by the same rules the society without ressurection does. Why would your party even scavenge for gold in dirty-ass sewers? They could just make a big coin by provoding the ressurection services to the elites of the world
The "ressurection is done by the gods, so only your party on a holy quest can get ressurected through cleric's powers and not the general population" theme is good enough to keep the setting consistent
There is another way. Make resurrection more taxing not on the caster, but on the people being brought back to life. The more powerful you are the easier it is to bring you back. Old DnD editions and early Wizardry games had % chance of resurrection, based on condition/vitality. If you add character level and age to the mix keeping people who should be dead in their graves shouldn't be hard.
Young, fit adventurers with years of battle experience and magical powers are easy to bring back over and over again, while commoners and nobility are more likely to not survive the resurrection process. And if you need to kill someone who should theoretically qualify to be resurrected, just say that resurrection didn't work this time. Murder victims are weak commoners, nobility is full of pussies, politicians are too old. And of course if villain need to assassinate someone who should be able to get resurrected 100% of the time there can be in-universe ways of preventing them from getting back. Sure theoretically now player characters can also be lost forever due to simple bad lack, but it's fine Dying should be dangerous and players should try to avoid it at all price.
Typically replacing dying with being knocked out is a perfect solution, but the downside is that now nobody can die in combat, sine they won't be able to be brought back. So no killing spells, no poison, no poison gas, no killing gaze, no vorpal blades etc. Basilisk that "knocks you out" with his gaze is just silly.