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[all shows] Why don't they ever try rezzing?

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#1

So I’ve been watching Rollplay since Dark Heresy times (Thanks TB!!) and most of the shows I’ve simply devoured. Some I couldn’t get into, but in all the shows I’ve watched, I’ve noticed they never seem to drag a corpse back in hopes of getting a ressurection.

Especially in DnD, ressurections are not that hard to come by, most of the time. I have to wonder why they don’t at least try to get a character back?

Has there ever been a statement made by any of the players or gms about this, or does any of the official rollplayers feel like answering?

#2

I think Neal mentioned something about it a long time ago back in the original show [Legacy]. Basically, in his world resurrection was a super rare gift that very few people knew how to do. Uncle Oris was the most powerful holy spellcaster they ever encountered that might have had that ability, but the general tone of his world was “the dead are dead, we’ll leave it at that”. If they really wanted it, I’m sure they could have gone on a big quest for resurrection, but they never really had the time between their other quests and the players were usually ready to move on with a new character by then (JP specifically since he burned through characters faster than most back in those days).

In West Marches, resurrection was definitely a thing the players were looking into - more than a few of them. But it took them a long time just to find the materials a NPC wanted to possibly be able to cast it, with unknown side effects. Then the show ended.

In Court of Swords, it’s fairly clear from Adam’s GM style that the NPCs of the world are generally just not-that-special, so finding someone who can rez in their current questing area seems unlikely at their level. Also, the tone of the campaign revolves heavily around the challenge cycle and “turning the wheel” on new characters, which the players seem fine with doing.

However, Adam especially expresses a belief in filling out a narrative that the players enjoy, so if they declared they wanted to find a way to resurrect someone, he’d probably flesh out a quest for them… but again, it just seems like they’re not too concerned about running a new character since they don’t last that long to begin with and the investment into their individual stories isn’t that high. But, let’s say Berg survives to level 10 and he has a whole bunch of magical gear and plenty of personal quest threads running - I’m sure the party might consider looking into a rez quest after so long with such character investment behind him.

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#3

The catch in Court of Swords would be that since resurrection would be a reversal of the life’s journey, most likely the only ways they could acheive it would be by dealing with the Mhara. Which would have the very powerful potential of quickly turning into necromancy or some other such madness.

Although Shialbaz did get resurrected in West Marches when they fed that one Plague Avatar to the Snakes.

Honestly, outside of West Marches which had a constantly renewing cast, resurrection was okay. But in most of the shows, you only three or four people and that’s your cast. So to resurrect a character would either mean shelving a newly created character or trying to juggle two at the same time. It’s doable, but just seems like an unnecessary pain in the posterior.

#4

Also, if we’re going to assume that Adam would allow Resurrection it’s very likely he will not change the actual spell, meaning they need not only find a powerful spellcaster but also pay him at least 1000 Gold in materials (or bring them to them) and possibly additional fees. I don’t think any group was ever close to that sum, so…

#5

Spoiler: [spoiler]They should have about enough now after clearing the Rock Gnome dungeon, though Persnidgetron did take a share of the treasure. If not enough, they’re at least close.[/spoiler]

#6

It’s basically like saying why doesn’t everyone who’s sick and dying find a top of the world medical professional to help them.

Top of the world medical (divine in this case) are exceedingly rare. Also, it’d be super expensive and resource intensive in a way that most people can’t handle. And after a while, even if you can meet the previous two problems, if it takes too long it doesn’t even matter – you’re dead.

This is all ignoring any narrative problems. Obviously in Adam’s lower magic (thusfar) universe it’d be even harder to find. But if, say, you were watching Adam’s Adventure League game on the Roll20 channel you’d know that access to the Raise Dead spell is readily available for players in that world – because Forgotten Realms is super high magic.

It’s all circumstance, really.

#7

Thanks everyone for your thoughts so far. It’s nice to see what people watching the shows think.

However what I’m intrested in is the rationale by the players and gms, and I’m not specifically talking about any show, so a special thanks to VyRe40, for sharing his recollection of what neal stated about legacy.

As far as the concerns for CoS, I’d say they have enough funds to at least get close to the price, that there is more than enough divinity in the world to allow for it.

There’s 3 angelic PC’s walking around right now, lord knows how many mhara, monestaries, and plenty of gods.

Heck, you could even argue that it’s helping a soul to finish his journey on the wheel, since his path got cut short by the violent end he faced.

West Marches never really gelled with me, so I knew that they were considering it at some point, I just didn’t know they actually pushed through, and even succeeded.

As far as this argument goes: [quote=“TwoToneTerran, post:6, topic:915”]
It’s basically like saying why doesn’t everyone who’s sick and dying find a top of the world medical professional to help them.
[/quote]
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. It’s saying “I want to look into every avenue available to me to bring back someone I cared for.”

Besides, Would you NOT look into getting any kind of treatment that could make you better if you had something seriously wrong with you? That’s unltimately what I’m asking, I suppose.

What is the motivation to leave corpses be corpses, instead of trying to bring back your friends? And that’s something that only the people playing the characters (or GM) could answer.

Not saying I want them to do actively res every dead character, I quite like the finality of death, it makes every fight a lot more tense, since we might lose someone, but they seem to shake it off and move on, as opposed to actually caring.

Seeing Day9 respond to the death of JP and Dan is what made me wonder why nobody really gave a hoot if a companion died. For as much as that guy goofs, he is an amazing roleplayer.

#8

Yes but think of Dying as the most extreme, hard to cure disease that only maybe 3 doctors in the entire world can cure and you don’t have the ability to just book a flight to where they live. It’s not a matter of what you’re willing to do, it’s what you’re able to do.

Corpses rot and bloat and are heavy and you don’t even know where to take them to get revived. The most readily available Resurrection magic, of which most people don’t even know EXISTS, has a 10 day limit. Imagine trying to find a doctor you don’t know about to do a procedure you’ve never heard of with no internet to look stuff up. And then having to walk there if you somehow found it out. By then it’s too late, which is why in low magic settings reviving people is basically unheard of.

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#9

There can be additional complications to it too, at least far as fantasy is concerned. Take for instance in series like Full Metal Alchemist, where bringing someone back from the dead is stepping beyond what mortals should be allowed to do. Where god(s) get angry for doing something only they “should” be allowed to do, or upsetting the natural order of things in a way mortals couldn’t possibly comprehend. It might be something said 3 doctors CAN do, but to do so people require something beyond just monetary value., either to make the danger worth it for the spellcaster, or so that forces in charge don’t start going down the list of who to smite.

#10

Resurrecting people in d&d 5e isn’t actually that hard IF YOUR GM IS OKAY WITH IT (crucial point) and if you know your spells and your team is prepared (which seriously mean it will never happen in rollplay, LUL). Gentle Repose (wizard/priest level 2 spell) basically “freeze” and protect a decayed player from corpse decay and necromantic raising, and “time spent decaying” is the decisive factor to decide what spell you need to resurrect people alongside the amount of the body you can save (ideally the full corpse, but it’s not always possible). If you cast it as a normal non ritual spell on someone who just got killed in the last minute, it’s frozen in the “dead for less than a minute” for 10 days and you can cast the spell again as a ritual anytime during those ten days to expand the duration. Allowing you to keep that corpse ready for a revivify spell (level 3 priest spell, only work on corpse who are fresh and decayed in the last minute) allowing a level 5 priest to bring it back to life for 300 gold. If you have only a body part (like the skull of an half orc barbarian) you will need a level 9th druid (harder) to cast Reincarnate on a less than 10 days of decay corpse and there will be some random change (mostly racial). So never leave a corpse behind. Of course it depends on what info your gm want you to have access to.

They tried in west march they literally stole a tome of insane power to give it to an obviously evil night hag (the “heroes” helping evil people and making the march a more horrible place by their terrible choices without realizing it was kinda a recurring theme)

#11

For 5e this here is the key. While not priests but clerics, level 3 spell can get a character back up and going for 300 gold worth of diamonds. This requires a level 5 Cleric, level 9 Paladin or a level 6 Lore Bard. It might be that the spell revivify will not be usable by players or the diamonds will be hard or expensive to get.

My guess is that when the players eventually get to the next character level “checkpoint” their clerics will start having revivify readied for use. While level 6 lore bards can get it, they can get two spells of level 3 or lower from any class. There are some really crazy spells at level 3… i’m not sure if i would ever pick revivify if it wouldn’t be critical for the character background. It will be a while until the characters get to level 9 for paladins to get the spell.

#12

I think in Court of Swords specifically where the cycle of birth and death are considered normal (though whether that’s their religious belief or how the actual universe works is not actually clear), Resurrection would be considered extremely heretical.

#13

For the most part it’s been stated as a bit of both. The Cycle is basically the natural state of the universe. The Mhara seek to disrupt that state by screwing with the cycle. This is where necromancy and other “unnatural” things come from.

So there could be resurrection, but it would almost have to either come directly from a Mhara, a servant of the Mhara, or someone who gained the knowledge from either source.

More likely there should be a Reincarnation system, but since that would almost require a new character anyways, they might as well just keep on making new characters.

#14

West Marches:

  1. Shialbaz (Gassy) was successfully resurrected by sacrificing an ascended creature to a higher entity (Snek of Awesome).
  2. There was a multi-week and multi-group effort to gather materials required to resurrect Juliette (Dodger). (ongoing, then end of show).
  3. Shaldrick (Cohh) attempted to bring back Maldrick (Zeke) by dipping into necromancy. He got Animate Dead, which not quite hit the mark, yet. He was also taking notes on the Juliette resurrection runs. (ongoing, then end of show)

Also keep in mind that on a TPK (:itmejpgmtpk::itmejphype:) often the campaign ends or the new group would start somewhere entirely else in the world. As characters they’d not know who died and why to care!

So it has been tried. But the GMs opinion about it is “it’s op, so it’s rare, expensive, time consuming and in short: Difficult.”

#15

Raise Dead, Resurrection and Revivify are all cleric spells and as such i believe such powers are also available to the servants of the Arcana and might not be considered breaking of the cycle.

Revivify can be basically viewed as saving someone who is at death’s door, but not yet dead in a mystcal sense. You have a minute to use a powerful magical defilibrator to keep someone from “actully dying.”

Raise Dead, Resurrection, True Resurrection are trickier. Some settings/campaigns/DMs/GMs use a reasoning that such spells work only on people with strong fate or “it wasn’t yet their time.” This might also be a case in CoS verse, maybe experiencing deaths and return to life is meant to be a part of the character’s current life. Of course its possible that there are rare second chances to those whose path ended to early…

Reincarnate is an interesting case, being a druid spell, its more connected to the animistic nature spirits that the other forces. Considering that the reincarnated gains a new form and a highly possible race change, it can be viewed as a new incarnation, with still having access to old memories and abilities a sort of a shortcut, but still somehow in accordance with the cycle.

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#16

So it just dawned on me like flying into I-4 at 60 miles an hour(don’t recommend it; not nice on the clothes), that there might be a way of resurrecting characters in Court of Swords that still follows the cycle of reincarnation while allowing the actual character to be resurrected: the Aasimar.

Now, in vanilla D&D, we know the Aasimar are the diametric opposite of the Tieflings in that an Aasimar is a half-celestial rather than half-fiend.

But in Court of Swords, if I remember the episode correctly, the Aasimar come in two flavors; 1)entities created directly by the Fountain and 2)mortals that are given a divine spark and are reincarnated into Aasimar with all the memories of their first life.

I imagine its akin to the Dalai Lama, or the Elder Vampires from Black Blood Brothers. Actually, probably more like the latter since the former is supposed to incorporate their own unique views and experiences into the identity.

Anyway, point is, there might actually be a way if the players could find a way to entreat the Fountain. And Volnacht should be reincarnating anyways.

#17

I’m going to present a different take here:

I’m not remembering that episode any better than you do (and I would have looked to the character creation video for that info, tbh), but I’d say “reincarnated” would be the wrong word in this case. I imagine it more as an “uplifting” of the character by putting a seed into his body, which then transforms him and any future decendants. Especially because Volo’s Guide explicitely calls them mortals too. Obviously it’s Adam’s call at the end of the day, but it seems unlikely to me that the character suddenly dies to be reborn in a completely new body in some shape way or form.

And at this point I’m arguing, yeah, probably. Just like everybody else (except Raziel, I suppose) :slight_smile: Maybe Volnacht would even remember his life(s) from before, but the question is when he is reborn and where. And possibly at what age… that would be interesting from a roleplay perspective, to be completely honest. :smiley: