Resurrection . . .

Let me try to phrase it better :Respawning is like flipping back a page in a book; resurrection is adding a new page.

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I know. My points are still valid though. There are just a lot of games that build on those mechanics but will still annoy you if you dislike that sort of thing

I know what you mean, its just that in that specific case I found it justified due to the buildup and not despite of it.
Anyway discussions on the internet :smiley:

In my games I usually do two things:

  1. I make resurrection relatively expensive by being stingy giving out the needed ingredients.
  2. I put a DC on the spells that gets higher by a deathcounter on PCs and can be lowered by doing the resurrection as a ritual with skillchecks. And only giving people two tries on resurrection on death with the second one having to be a ritual.

I think the readily availability of resurrection spells removes a part of the game that I love, which is the real possibility of PC death. It makes you think about you are doing when playing.

IMO resurrection is among the worst “deus ex machina” tropes I know. Although its legendary roots (along with immortality) can be retraced to J.C., Gilgamesh, or Osiris, resurrection destroys a few fundamental laws of storytelling and worldbuilding, one usually wants unharmed. Causality and consequence generate suspense in a story, or a rpg. If you downgrade death into a temporary status-effect, you also take away things like heroic sacrifice, grief, or the thrill of mortal combat. 1000 gp D&D resurrections would also have a major impact on a game world. Feuds with antagonists would stretch into (boring) eternity (Guess what – Lex Luther was raised from the dead. AGAIN!). In general only the poor will meet a timely death, while the rich can basically live as long as they want. The death penalty would become an inadequate form of punishment, while murder would possibly be treated as a trivial offense. Maybe resurrecting a dear friend may weaken the law of death in a certain area, and cause undead creatures to rise? The list goes on …

Of course it is up to any DM if he/she allows resurrection in a game, but – somewhat warned by the Thomas Covenant novels – I prefer the law of death to stay intact.

The way you embedded it, nobody can tell that it’s a youtube link before clicking it ^^

On topic: I think it just depends on what kind of game you want to play. If you like it gritty and have no qualms shuffling through characters - nay resurrection. If you are heavily invested into a character’s story and would not enjoy them being permanently killed off - yay resurrection.

Particular to Adventurers League: AL is a system designed for casual play, it discourages grittiness and “unfair” fights by sticking pretty much to the encounter calculations in the DMG. These are ludicrously skewed in favor of the players. In my home games, I usually don’t even put my players in front of fights that the DMG considers at least “deadly” (and I never had a character death in 3.5 years of DM’ing in my home games). I think the main reason is that AL is designed to draw new players into the game, who might not be super firm on all the rules, know how to fight which monsters, or be able to utilize their characters to full effect. The fact that party composition is basically random also plays into this, it is difficult to play into each others strengths, which overall decreases the power-level of AL games (a minor additional factor to that is the PHB +1 rule). Many people playing in AL also might not get the chance to play very often and would hate losing their character randomly.

There is no general answer - it just depends on what you enjoy and what you want from the game. I personally am a fan of resurrection being an option. The bar to resurrection is also still relatively high in 5E if you play a standard power level game, you can’t pop it off anytime you want to most of the time.

That’s not so much of an issue. Resurrection doesn’t work on creatures that died of old age, so feuds won’t extend indefinitely. Also, it requires a 7th level spell, i.e. a 13th level caster. Outside of major hubs, this is pretty much going to be inaccessible. 1000 gp also is nothing to sneeze at. A major noble, merchant, or villain might field that, but it may well be out of reach even for local nobles, at least if they have enough feuds that might require them to do that repeatedly. Also, consider that 1000 gp is the base cost for the spell itself - you might expect that such a limited commodity isn’t going to be given away charitably in all situations, there might be an additional fee for the caster :wink:

Nah. Ysee, I dont think that it should. I like some gray in my stories. Aaaand accidents happen😅