Deaths in novels (spoilers?)
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
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
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Edit: Basically saying that not every random priest in a temple is bringing people back from the dead. It would be very very rare.
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.
Probably not real lore right there but seems to work for me xD
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.
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.
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.
Dying ten times in rapid succession would still probably drive Rasaad crazy though.
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:
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
At least that's my take. It would probably be reasonable to say each iteration is its own canon.
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.
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...
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.)
It would be very cool in game, speaking with dead. But all NPC's need special lines of dialog than.
Seriously, a lv40 mage shouldn't have to walk all the way back to a store to unload stuff. =P
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)