In a magical setting which reviving is possible, why is death considered a big deal...

In a magical setting which reviving is possible, why is death considered a big deal? Why not just revive the King who was murdered by the villain?

Don't you need a diamond for the resurrection? Shit's going to be rare and expensive, plus you have to get hold of one within a week.

But the real answer is that it probably depends on the setting

Depends on the setting. Both the limitations of the magic and the culture that surrounds it.

I can't remember where I heard it from, but I saw an interesting idea a while ago of a setting where death meant your titles passed on, regardless of if you were revived afterwards. A dead king meant a new king, even if the old one comes back. I thought it was an interesting notion.

The spell requires a willing target.

Sometimes, you're taking them from paradise.

"Possible" in no way means "Easy."

>applying logic to fantasy

Generally in settings, people who are killed need to be in some kind of not-entirely-obliterated state or something to be resurrected or there's a time limit or both, so there are ways to kill someone and either do it in a way that leaves nothing to rez or keeps the body hidden for long enough.

You need a caster STRONG ENOUGH to resurrect. Those are VERY rare, and the PCs may in fact have the only one powerful enough.

Games and settings deal with this in different ways.

The first way is to actually deal with it, incorporate it into the plot. Resurrection is possible under certain circumstances, people know about it and make their plans with it in mind. Perhaps the villain murders the king and destroys some part of the body necessary for his revival. Perhaps only some people can be resurrected, and they're treated as special (The Secret World does this, it's an interesting take.) Perhaps resurrection is possible, but rare and difficult, and reviving the king is a whole quest.

The other option is to not deal with it. Players getting to try again is just a game mechanic, ignored by the story. In WoW, to use the example from your picture, people can come back as undead, but NPCs can't (story-wise) just get rezz pls. Players wiping and coming back, city leaders getting raided ten times a week, these aren't part of the in-game reality any more than the PCs are actually carrying 5 giant backpacks apiece.

Like I said, depends on the setting/system. In some D&D editions resurrection is very low-level, to the point where you'd expect probably a dozen people per city to be able to do it. (Again, very GM dependent)

There is a quest in boring tundra horde side where you bring an apprentice shaman her masrer's bones and she rezzes him with the standard shaman rez spell. I was very confused by that.

When the Emperor dies, his Coda begins. The Coda is a tradition established by Emperor Qin the First, who, upon being assassinated, was raised by his court wizards as a powerful undead. He spent a year punishing those who had schemed against him, settling some affairs of state, and formally selecting and passing power to his successor. He then deanimated and was interred in a grand state funeral.

Ever since, each Emperor gets a Coda, a final twilight year of undeath. This eases the transition of power, and the time limit established by Mighty Qin prevents society from becoming a stagnant necrarchy.

Qin never really deanimated, and is leading an army against sickass demons in the blighted lands on the other continent.

Think about this. If you knew resurrection magic was a thing, and you wanted to kill the king, would you really kill him in a way that let him be brought back?

So, obviously, you'd kill him in a way that meant it was impossible to undo. Disintegrating the body and scattering the ashes, killing him and then destroying his soul, etc, etc.

Warcraft: Literally zero consistency since 2, or maybe halfway through 3

In a magical setting in which everybody is undead, why is life desirable?

Depends on what sort of undead you become. Becoming a zombie or something usually sucks, because zombies rarely have free will and just shamble around moaning about brains (except in Urban Dead, where they're absolutely hilarious). But becoming an intelligent undead like vampire or lich is a classic villain scheme. Generally speaking, the sorts of people that would agree with your question are either undead already or working on it.

In 3.PF, the minimum level to raise the dead back to life is 9th level. That's actually fairly high, and the numbers of clerics able to do so are fairly few in number. More powerful spells that allow longer periods of death and have fewer penalties are of much higher level and have casters that are much more rare. True Resurrection is more than likely only possible for the PC Cleric at the end of the campaign, and like maybe 2 NPCs in the entire setting's world.

People always seem to overestimate just how common resurrection magic is and base it almost entirely off the PCs who are very much anomalies when it comes to leveling. They tend to ignore the spells material components and their expense, the levels of the people involved and how rare those people are and how expensive it's going to be.

because assassins and proper smart villains have developed ways to prevent resurrection

and they sure as hell would use that on a king to prevent exactly what you described

It is *possible* in real life, using currently existing technology, to create particles of antimatter.
Why hasn't antimatter completely replaced fossil fuels by now? It's possible, so that must mean it's a net gain of energy!
Come on scientists, it's the current year, try harder!

Crimson Assassin

Resurrection Sense (Su)
At 5th level, a Crimson assassin senses if a creature she has slain within the last year has been restored to life, as long as they are both on the same plane.

And probably abilities like so to know if some came back so they can make sure they stay dead.

This is cool.

I feel like this would get really old after a while if you don't get paid until they're dead and stay dead. Now I am just picturing an assassin getting really frustrated since he got a really lucrative contract for hitting some rich nobility but can never get pain because they have the resources necessary for rezzing.

*ding* Your target ...-DUKE REDDINGTON-... has been resurrected after ...-4 DAYS-... and you have _5_ unheard messages.

"SONOFABITCH."

To revive, you need...
>Arcane or Divine casters powerful enough to revive the Evil King
>Expensive and rare materials needed to revive the Evil King
>Enough strength of the Evil King's soul so that he can survive the Revival (I.E. he needs to be level 2+)
>To revive him quickly, before his soul is processed in the afterlife

That last point is really key. Looking at flavor over mechanics (as you should), it's a lot easier to revive Good characters than it is to revive Evil characters. This is because Good characters go to Good Planes, where they naturally get reabsorbed by the Plane over centuries before becoming Good outsiders; Evil characters go to Evil Planes, where they get processed by Evil Outsiders in a matter of weeks or months.
This is why Good characters deal with death by being revived constantly, while Evil characters deal with death by becoming liches or vampires or other immortal creatures.

I know Girl Genius has that. In Mad Science world people come back or become immortal or transfer their consciousness etc etc, so all the heirs who got pissed off at that decided that, once you die, your claim to the throne ends.

I think its Girl Genius, where sufficiently powerful Mad Scientists can resurrect people by pumping enough volts into their corpses.

Regular death is a minor inconvenience. Your spirit hangs around your body as a ghostly apparition, so you can still talk and use magic and stuff, but you can't physically interact with anything. It isn't so hard to come back from, so long as you don't mind annoying the Reaper's Union a bit. Double Death is a little more tricky though, since your ghost doesn't leave a body to get shoved back into. Nobody comes back from True Death, but thankfully the sources of that are exceedingly rare.

Undeath often comes with a loss of physical pleasures; you can't eat, you can't masturbate, you can't sleep. It's just your immortal soul trapped in a piece of meat that used to be your body. Probably why Liches are so angry and evil, how do you feel after just two days without sleeping or eating?

Other undead come with their own drawbacks. Vampires will never see a sunny day again. I know that to the average fa/tg/uy that's no real change, but to most people going without another day at the beach or summer picnic or even jsut a walk in the park in the spring is going to really wear on their psyche. It's basically Seasonal Depression 24/7 for a theoretical eternity. Plus the whole thirst for human blood and the danger that brings if you aren't already in a position of power.

Zombies are falling apart, smelly, hideous, and have barely any motor control, Mummies are stiff and dry and jerky, and have you ever spent 12,000 years with sand between your wrappings? Not pleasant. Ghouls hunger for flesh, Ghosts have a whole host of problems depending on the mythos, undeath is generally just not pleasant.

Unless you're a skeleton. Those guys just have fun.

>it's hard
>the guy might get killed super hard

Requiem Chevalier Vampire. Everyone is dead, but some people want life because the afterlife is beyond shit.

You permanently lose a point of CON every time you get resurrected, regardless of whether you make your system shock check. That's a pretty big fucking deal, user.

its either good crunch with shitty fluff or good fluff with shit crunch most of the time

just don't play shit systems or/and settings and youll be fine

This, right here.

>no real change for fa/tg/uys

Not even. Even at my most NEET I still have to leave every Saturday, and all of my living friends are diurnal. This board is incredibly slow after midnight EST, too. Also, I can't give up pizza, or ramen (instant OR authentic, not picky), or asparagus (don't ask). Now, vampires can apparently still feel arousal, so that's one thing I don't lose, but even the most despicable of the living lose something from undeath, is what I'm saying.