How much does 'raising dead' cost in PnP? I want to change the price accordingly.

IntoTheDarkness

Hi there. I posted a thread asking whether resting is cheesy in RP perspectives/balance-wise a few days ago. After hearing various opinions, I decided that I am only going to rest in INNs or only once in each area after cleaning the area of dangers for a role-playing purpose. I enjoy restricting myself from any kind of abuses of game mechanics. (resting after each battle = infinite spamming of level 9 spells)

I have come across another one of these balance problems; that is, raising dead. In the game, it is treated so casually that it's a common practice to raise the same dead party member over and over again throughout the course of the game. Afaik, raising dead should be extremely expansive, restrictive with Constitution-based chance and such, and only doable by few individuals favoured-by-gods. PnP's gold value also must be more valuable than in BG where gold drops like rain everywhere you go. In game raising the same party member like 100 times won't even be a strain to your coins. Chunking does not happen as often as I like, so I felt I want to make a house rule.

I do not want to abuse the raise-dead function and want to change the price at temples accordingly using DLCEP. I want to find a right balance so that raising the dead is not an obvious choice but something that you will consider carefully. Of course, raising the dead will in most cases preferable to abandoning the dead party member, but at least I want to make it so I have to work towards it by doing some quests and collecting loots.

I need some sort of reference from PnP to decide what price will be appropriate. I cannot implement time restriction(only raise within 24 hours, for instance) and I do not want to over complicate this, so I just want to adjust price. I've thought of two options so far. I would like to hear your feedback as to RP relevance and balance.

1. increase price by 10 times. 1000 to raise dead at level 1, 2000 at level 2, etc upto 300,000 at level 40ish.

2. increase price by 50 times at level 1 and fix it to that amount. 5,000 gold to raise dead throughout the game.

In both cases, when I have an access to raise dead spells/scrolls, I will only use those as much as affordable then donate the appropriate money to temples as soon as possible. If I used raise dead spells 5 times, with the rule 2, I will donate 25,000 gold to temples after wards. If I feel the party member is not worth the price, I will simply drop him/her from the party.

However at this point these numbers are completely arbitrary and I have no PnP knowledge or RP perspectives to justify the number. Some feedback would be appreciated.

abacus

I think that in PnP it actually cost the casting priest a number of years from their life... but I'm no expert. Perhaps one way to make it prohibitive would be to enforce an attribute cost after every casting?

Maybe you could use a save editor to remove 1 point of Constitution (representing their health) or Dexterity (representing their youth/vitality)? Or a randomised one of either from the caster *and* the spell's target?

Once HP and AC start plummeting, it'd really make you think about whether it's worth bringing someone back...

JuliusBorisov

I think that permanently decreasing CON at -1 (which you can do with the EE-Keeper) every time you raise someone may be better.

lunar

In the Dungeon Masters Guide, spell costs are listed for various spells. Raise dead is special because it is marked with a * which means:
'This spell is normally cast only for those of similar faith or belief. Even then a payment or service may be required.'

In another source I have seen 1000gp + 500gp/caster level; which may be transferred to 1000+500 per character lvl to be raised. Thus, a lvl 1 character costs 1500 gp, a lvl 2 2000, and so on.

Still, bear in mind you can not raise a chaotic evil npc in a lawful good temple. Just not possible.

abacus

bengoshi said:

I think that permanently decreasing CON at -1 (which you can do with the EE-Keeper) every time you raise someone may be better.

That was what I was going for... forgot to say permanently though.

Maybe caster loses 1 Con and the raised character loses 1 Dex, so both are diminished with each raising.

semiticgoddess

You can probably just tweak the spell itself to subtract 1 from the dead character's CON. But that might result in a potential exploit in which you could lower their CON to 1, killing them permanently, and then cast the spell once more, at which point their zero CON might roll around to 25. There's a similar trick with the Rod of Terror and CHA (you wear the Ring of Human Influence until the CHA drain rolls your CHA around to 25), but EE might have fixed that.

A better fix might be to make the character lose XP when being raised. Lots of powerful spells in PnP require XP to be lost, as a means of limiting their use, so not every goblin gets nailed with a Wish spell.

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semiticgoddess

If the caster lost 1 CON I'd just make Anomen or Viconia take the hit every time.

Zalson

In 3.0, 3.5, raise dead requires a high value material component (like a 1000 gp diamond). It also forces you to lose a level.

In this case, you could mod the game to check for a diamond in inventory and then take that plus the price of the spell in exchange for raise dead.