It seems like a lot of campaigns restrict resurrection to make death stay a big deal. I'm thinking, though, what if you don't do that? What does that do to the setting?
I'm considering whether to treat the upper reaches of society as maybe having a more Eclipse Phase type attitude towards death; if someone kills the count but doesn't make any attempt to retrieve or dismember the body, all they're doing is sending him a warning, say. This begs questions, though. How does that affect systems of inheritance? I'm guessing there are customs for what hoops you're required to jump through before you give up and move on to the heir.
Also, it suddenly makes a difference where people, like, go when they die. Are they reincarnated? In some kind of otherworld? Because the former's probably going to be harder to get them back from, or at least you'd have to go about it radically differently.
I'm also thinking that, given the prominence of capturing and ransoming important figures in a feudal system (assuming the campaign uses something along those lines; mine typically do, but I recognize most published settings are content with the pastiche), how viable is capturing the body, and how does that affect whether people fight to the death?
Have you guys found any cool implications to all this?
Jace Scott
There's a reason that resurrection spells state that the target must be willing. Lots of people who aren't deranged murderhobos would just as soon stay dead.
Oliver Gonzalez
What spells force the unwilling back to life?
Andrew Brown
Necromancy, ya doofus.
Gavin Bennett
Resurrection is a necromancy spell
Jayden Murphy
Watch Altered Carbon. Cyberpunk, but it deals with this. Premise is basically people get flash drives installed in their necks that hold their personality, but resurrection is expensive.
tl;dw >Decadent, rich, immortal elite. >Violence is ok, as long as you don't make it permanent. "Murder" basically becomes property damage. >Because violence is ok, PTSD and trauma are common. Extended torture and repeated violent murder will do that to you.
Carson Nguyen
Unless you bring undeath into the mix, you can't resurrect someone who's died of old age, so incoherence doesn't change.
>go when they die.
Their deity's plane, or the plane that most closely matches their alignment and personality. Or the Wall of the Faithless if you're in the Forgotten Realms, don't have a patron deity, and actively worked against the gods in some way. Faithless in the Realms who don't have a patron deity but otherwise led god-fearing lives or have some kind of complicated circumstance at work can usually make a case to Kelemvor to let them not be mortared into the Wall, and instead serve him in his city as a psychopomp until another deity claims them or they decide to throw their lot in with the Baatezu.
None. There's a few that can force them into a state of undeath, however, but that is not the same thing.
Isaac Wright
>incoherence
*Meant to type "inheritance", but damn if that isn't a funny autocorrect.
Benjamin Cook
>Wow, I look like a shill.
Working off of this, you could have an indentured servitude thing, where people resurrected have to work off the cost of resurrection.
Juan Martinez
Yes, I know, but there are other spells in the school.
