Deaths in novels (spoilers?)

kinghunter74

hi,
i have a question about the resurrection spell. I'm wondering if it's considered canon in the lore as I hardly see them used in the novels.

Mind you, I've only been reading the Drizzt novels but it seems to me that there are a lot of instance where a cleric was around but everyone just accepts that a character died and did nothing. (Innovindil, Bruenor etc)

As Jaheira said, "We live in an age of miracles"
So, is the spell just not canon or am i suppose to believe that all the clerics in the novel are below LV9?

What are your opinions on the matter? =P

GemHound

It is canon. Salvatore does not treat it as canon. In canon, it would only be available to epic-level priests as they would have to have enough power to break through a deity's own power to retrieve the soul of the dead.

Edit: Basically saying that not every random priest in a temple is bringing people back from the dead. It would be very very rare.

kcwise

The resurrection spell is sort of a throw away spell in the various computer games, rarely having any drawbacks or side effects. In its varied PnP incarnations there have usually been more dramatic impacts to casting it, sometimes even a permanent loss to the casting priest. And, depending on constitution, it did not always work. So, the games don't really handle the spell as being as rare and taxing as it actually is.

Raise Dead in 2nd edition can't restore missing body parts, can't remove poison or disease, and can't usually return elves to life. The raised character must roll a successful Constitution check to survive the ordeal of the casting and will lose 1 point permanently, then must get one day of bed rest for each day dead. Resurrection can restore life to elves and even a long dead corpse but the caster loses three years of his or her life upon casting the spell and must rest for one day for each experience level of the raised character.

As for the novels, healing and resurrection doesn't fit well with the story telling style of most novelists. It's hard to build tension if a friendly cleric can just resurrect the hero every time. Salvatore, in particular, prefers a much more low magic kind of tale (although, in recent novels there has been some change in that area). Ed Greenwood makes use of healing magics quite frequently in his tales, but resurrection is rare (I can't remember an example of it off the top of my head, but other knowledgeable folks around here might). One of the older novels, Pools of Darkness I believe, dealt a bit with resurrection. Some of the characters had signed an adventuring pact to not be brought back from death. Another was resurrected and was changed by the experience. So, novelists prefer to use it as a last resort, and to give it dramatic impact. The way Buffy the Vampire Slayer handled resurrection is pretty much the way I think most novelists would go if they used it at all.

kcwise

One last note: Interestingly, AD&D 1st Edition actually didn't have much in the way of penalties for casting raise dead or resurrection. 2nd added those, 3rd also had drawbacks (like loss of a level for the raised character), and 4th penalized combat rolls for a short time. 2nd Edition seems to have been the worst time to die and be raised!

TethorilofLathander

I've always made my own mini rule that one character can only have Raise Dead and Ressurection casted on them once (or just Ressurection if they're an elf etc.). Plus, it depends if your deity grants you the power to revive that person and how long the body has been dead.

Probably not real lore right there but seems to work for me xD

dunbar

I'm sometimes perplexed by the use of the term 'canon' so, having checked the definitions on both sides of the Atlantic it seems that:
Canon is understood to be a "general rule or law" applicable in certain situations. Such situations can be governed for example by a "collection of sacred books".
Thus an author could have his or her own canon but at the same time be writing within the canon of a specific genre.
In the case of BG whilst the settings and characters can be attributed to an author and therefore subject to the author's canon it is also subject to the D&D canon as well as the fantasy canon.
The question is which canon (if any particular one) take precedence.

In my experience of fantasy reading it generally seems that resurrection has a profound effect, of one form or another, on the recipient and comes at a cost to the one doing the resurrecting, so that, I think would be the fantasy canon.

deltago

One thing that video games get wrong (for obvious reasons) is spell components.

In 3.5 the caster needed 10, 000 gp worth of diamonds to cast resurrection.

For raise dead, it was 5000 gp worth but the recipient only had mere days (equal to the caster's level) to get the spell cast in them.

edit: zeros are hard.

kinghunter74

so basically, the wand of resurrection in TOB is total BS

that would mean bringing Rasaad back to life 10 times in a row is actually something of a miracle XD

Anyways, thanks for the clarification.

MERLANCE

kinghunter74 said:

so basically, the wand of resurrection in TOB is total BS.

Think of it more like an awesome artifact of awesomeness of such power that the gods themselves would be envious of it. If it were pnp, at least.

Dying ten times in rapid succession would still probably drive Rasaad crazy though.

Nonnahswriter

I personally have always viewed resurrection spells as merely a game mechanic. Phoenix Downs, Resurrection, Raise, Max Revives--they're all just items and spells that the player can use just in case their character falls in-battle, and they can get back up without having to restart all over again (unless, god forbid, you run out of said spells and items). As such, I don't think any resurrection powers belong in good storytelling (unless it's an essential part of the plot) because, as @Nimran said, it takes away almost all of the suspense.

Plus when you introduce a resurrection feature, you introduce a bucketload of potential plotholes as you're writing your story. The biggest examples I can think of are in video-games, such as:

The famous death of Aeris in Final Fantasy 7 ("Oh, so I guess my 99 phoenix downs are useless?"). There is also Khalid in the beginning of Baldur's Gate 2 ("Why don't we just resurrect him?" "The body is too mutilated!" "Uh... Can't we heal that too?")

Though it should be noted that certain characters' returns in Baldur's Gate 2 are only possible because the resurrection power exists; Drizzt, for example, will remember that you'd killed him in the second game's encounter if you did kill him in the first game.

So I suppose my point is yes, it's canon, but as Samuel L. Jackson said, "given that I think it's a stupid canon, I've chosen to ignore it." :P

meagloth

I just pretend "dead" characters are actually incapacitated, maybe comatose. Raise dead spells are always stupid in games and stories and such.

atcDave

Raise Dead and Resurrection are long a part of AD&D. And since that's what Bg is, they're certainly "canon". Books on the other hand, are not.
At least that's my take. It would probably be reasonable to say each iteration is its own canon.

kcwise

That's the great thing about D&D and comic books, they have been reimagined so many times that it's hard to get too upset by a new change. Every DM who has ever made a change just made an "alternate dimension" version of the base rules, and every game designer has done the same thing to make things work more smoothly for a computer game. In that sense, the novelist also has to make his or her choice about what spells and rules to follow.

Concern about "canon" at Wizards of the Coast seems to be focused more on not blowing up the wrong city or not killing the wrong major NPC, rather than making sure every spell is well represented. And, let's face it, the Realms lore has been battered about every time the PnP rules made a change (Time of Troubles, Spellplague, The Sundering), so even a novelist who made the crazy attempt to adhere to the PnP rules in every case would then have to change everything with each new edition. An example: Liriel, a character written by Elaine Cunningham, spent much of her time in the novels on a quest to retain her drow abilities while on the surface. It was the major driving force for the character. Then the rules changed, and it invalidated most of that work (Cunningham handled it in an interesting way I think). So, I think the novelists try to stay a bit distant from the rules when they can just to avoid having their carefully laid plans blown up by some PnP designer who decides to nuke half the world.

Nimran

Yeh, it wouldn't make sense in any form of medium that isn't a game. Games like BG use it as a crutch for the player so that the game wouldn't seem too hard, though BG is noticeably less lenient about it than other games. In anything else, where the story is set in stone and the characters living or dying is part of the narrative, resurrection doesn't really work unless it's a story about Jesus or something.

TheArtisan

The below is entirely wild mass guessing and headcanon, buuuut...

You know how the Fate Spirit in the Pocket Plane mentions how your party members' fates ("threads") are linked to the PC? It could be that when your party members die, their spirits are still linked to the PC and therefore it's easier to bring them back than normal, also why you can't just walk around raising every other person who dies near you.

Think of it this way: why can you only raise NPCs that are in your party? Because when you boot them, you effectively cut the 'thread' linking you to them, breaking any ties their spirits have to the PC, therefore they are gone forever.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to fill in a game mechanics plot hole...

chbrooks

At least in 3rd edition D&D, coming back from the dead is only possible if the spirit is free and willing to return. That means that bad guys whose souls have been dragged to Hell wouldn't be free, and good guys whose deeds give them a one-way ticket to Heaven need to say no to eternal paradise in order to come back. With that flavor alone, the number of candidates eligible to return from the dead drops significantly.

dreamrider

Everyone here has talked about AD&D, 2e, 3e, 3.5e.
The Raise Dead and Resurrection mechanics go back to the initial White Box edition, and even to the original Gygax campaign. Indeed, in those days the increased chance of revival was one of the principle benefits of a high CON. Recovery was not certain, however, even with a maxed CON, and it had to be via a VERY high level cleric.

Pretty much only attempted if the party had the ability/opportunity to haul the remains back to a major temple, and pay a LOT. (Let's face it - it was pretty much a "DM's whim" mechanic.)

artificial_sunlight

I think I read about resurrection in one novel but I'm not sure. I know that speaking with dead is not very rare, but thats an other matter.

It would be very cool in game, speaking with dead. But all NPC's need special lines of dialog than.

kinghunter74

Another note of interest is that in exchange for this gift of unlimited resurrection in Baldur's Gate , you are completely deprived of any and all long distance teleporting ability.

Seriously, a lv40 mage shouldn't have to walk all the way back to a store to unload stuff. =P

kcwise

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karnor00

kinghunter74 said:

so basically, the wand of resurrection in TOB is total BS

To be fair, the rod of resurrection is straight out of the 2ED Dungeon Masters Guide. And 10 charges is probably something of an understatement.

The DMG version has 50 charges, but uses multiple charges per use, depending on class & race of the person resurrected. Resurrecting a human cleric would be 2 charges (the cheapest combination) whereas an elven mage would take 7 charges (the most expensive)