This is my long standing hot take and point of contention with rules as written in conventional D&D fantasy rule sets: death, if the rules of the game were actually applied to the setting, is less about finality (except for the lifespan limitation contrivance) and more about health insurance or lack thereof. People who die that have enough money should by all means have family that pay for raises (or resurrections when the body isn’t available) as a matter of course and the material consequences of that would be that premature death from violence, illness, or accident would be mostly a poor people thing. Funerals would be awkward in setting: “sorry you can’t afford a rez. The divines bless the departed I guess, lol.”
There’s this constant tension with D&D where it wants to be medieval and it wants to have easily-reproducible magic. Follow the magic through to its logical conclusion and you get essentially modern technology with a mystical/medieval aesthetic, ignore it and you get big blatant plot holes.
There’s this constant tension with D&D where it wants to be medieval and it wants to have easily-reproducible magic. Follow the magic through to its logical conclusion and you get essentially modern technology with a mystical/medieval aesthetic, ignore it and you get big blatant plot holes.
For decades, Forgotten Realms tried really had to be this “peasants have their minds blown if they see even a level one Magic-User spell being cast; this is a grounded and gritty setting sort of” pretense in the official materials, but then there’s basically a magocracy running most cities (even the fucking Luskan pirates and other “savage frontier” big mean guys!) and maps full of “oh a web spell is on this window at all times” sorts of signs that maybe those peasants should be a lot more familiar with the very special very rare spellcasters that rule over them and make all the important decisions.
Yeah, it kind of makes sense if magic is rare, difficult to obtain, but not entirely foreign. Basically a luxury good.
To use an example luxury good, we all know what a private jet is. We couldn’t build one or buy one, but we know there are people who can. It’d be cool to be in one but not some unimaginable experience.
That is why I enjoy settings like the Netherese so much more. Where magic is common and everyone uses it, even the cleaning staff have magical autonomous brooms that sweep on command.
It’s the same thing with superhero and paranormal ttrpgs. Everyone wants that 🤯 moment when civilians sees the party in action, because it’s very rewarding.
I haven’t played it other than in videogame form, but I think Vampire: The Masquerade is one of the few systems that addresses this problem head-on
I don’t know if 5e has starting age tables? 3e and Pathfinder do, it’s an optional character creation thing that helps show the general age of most things. It starts off with the starting age of a given race and then has a table with different classes and dice. So for a human the starting age is 15, Barbarian/Rogue/Sorcerer is 1d4, Bard/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger is 1d6, and Cleric/Wizard/Monk/Druid is 2d6.
So a typical cleric starting age would be 16-27. At that point they are a level 1 Cleric and have a grand total of one level 1 spell per day. 5e is more generous and gives them two level 1 spells per day.
That spell should do a lot, and in a small village would be amazingly effective, but at a certain point there just aren’t enough spells per day for everyone. It should actually be hard for adventurers to get healing because the local cleric should probably have spent all his healing for the day by the time they get to him, he can probably squeeze them in tomorrow when he’s recovered spells.
Except that it’s exceptionally expensive. 5e is probably the most forgiving with its currency, a Raise Dead spell costs only 500 GP (assuming no extra fees) and while it’s hard to approximate wealth in the game I found an old Reddit post that approximated it to ~1 GP = ~$1,000. So $500,000 minimum for a Raise Dead.
While there are probably people in your life that would sell everything to bring you back, would you really want them to? How many times could your family and friends pull together $500,000 to raise someone in the group?
If you’re so obscenely wealthy that you could afford multiple Raise Dead in your lifespan you’d have other, more political problems. For example you’d have people lined up down the street asking you to raise [insert tragic story].
Speaking of Political problems, you have to find someone willing to raise you and someone willing to finance it. If the king dies and the Prince takes over what are the odds that he’s going to raise his dad and give up that power? If he’s a bad king it might be hard to find a cleric willing to do so and even if he’s a good king a benevolent cleric might not have 500 GP to finance it himself. You could leave the money with a cleric you trust, but he could always just keep the money. If the Prince isn’t willing to Raise the king he’d also probably go out of his way to hide, protect, or destroy the body to make a Raise Dead by an outside source more difficult.
In setting I think you’re right, a good person, who is exceptionally wealthy, can probably ignore death. Someone like Lord Nasher from Neverwinter probably doesn’t have to worry about a simple stabbing, someone will Raise him in 10 min and probably be rewarded 100 fold. However, if you’re able and willing to attempt that sort of assassination you’d also know how limited the effect would be and probably wouldn’t even try something so simple.
This is my long standing hot take and point of contention with rules as written in conventional D&D fantasy rule sets: death, if the rules of the game were actually applied to the setting, is less about finality (except for the lifespan limitation contrivance) and more about health insurance or lack thereof. People who die that have enough money should by all means have family that pay for raises (or resurrections when the body isn’t available) as a matter of course and the material consequences of that would be that premature death from violence, illness, or accident would be mostly a poor people thing. Funerals would be awkward in setting: “sorry you can’t afford a rez. The divines bless the departed I guess, lol.”
There’s this constant tension with D&D where it wants to be medieval and it wants to have easily-reproducible magic. Follow the magic through to its logical conclusion and you get essentially modern technology with a mystical/medieval aesthetic, ignore it and you get big blatant plot holes.
For decades, Forgotten Realms tried really had to be this “peasants have their minds blown if they see even a level one Magic-User spell being cast; this is a grounded and gritty setting sort of” pretense in the official materials, but then there’s basically a magocracy running most cities (even the fucking Luskan pirates and other “savage frontier” big mean guys!) and maps full of “oh a web spell is on this window at all times” sorts of signs that maybe those peasants should be a lot more familiar with the very special very rare spellcasters that rule over them and make all the important decisions.
Yeah, it kind of makes sense if magic is rare, difficult to obtain, but not entirely foreign. Basically a luxury good.
To use an example luxury good, we all know what a private jet is. We couldn’t build one or buy one, but we know there are people who can. It’d be cool to be in one but not some unimaginable experience.
That is why I enjoy settings like the Netherese so much more. Where magic is common and everyone uses it, even the cleaning staff have magical autonomous brooms that sweep on command.
Netherese is also old Forgotten Realms.
It’s the same thing with superhero and paranormal ttrpgs. Everyone wants that 🤯 moment when civilians sees the party in action, because it’s very rewarding.
I haven’t played it other than in videogame form, but I think Vampire: The Masquerade is one of the few systems that addresses this problem head-on
I don’t know if 5e has starting age tables? 3e and Pathfinder do, it’s an optional character creation thing that helps show the general age of most things. It starts off with the starting age of a given race and then has a table with different classes and dice. So for a human the starting age is 15, Barbarian/Rogue/Sorcerer is 1d4, Bard/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger is 1d6, and Cleric/Wizard/Monk/Druid is 2d6.
So a typical cleric starting age would be 16-27. At that point they are a level 1 Cleric and have a grand total of one level 1 spell per day. 5e is more generous and gives them two level 1 spells per day.
That spell should do a lot, and in a small village would be amazingly effective, but at a certain point there just aren’t enough spells per day for everyone. It should actually be hard for adventurers to get healing because the local cleric should probably have spent all his healing for the day by the time they get to him, he can probably squeeze them in tomorrow when he’s recovered spells.
Except that it’s exceptionally expensive. 5e is probably the most forgiving with its currency, a Raise Dead spell costs only 500 GP (assuming no extra fees) and while it’s hard to approximate wealth in the game I found an old Reddit post that approximated it to ~1 GP = ~$1,000. So $500,000 minimum for a Raise Dead.
While there are probably people in your life that would sell everything to bring you back, would you really want them to? How many times could your family and friends pull together $500,000 to raise someone in the group?
If you’re so obscenely wealthy that you could afford multiple Raise Dead in your lifespan you’d have other, more political problems. For example you’d have people lined up down the street asking you to raise [insert tragic story].
Speaking of Political problems, you have to find someone willing to raise you and someone willing to finance it. If the king dies and the Prince takes over what are the odds that he’s going to raise his dad and give up that power? If he’s a bad king it might be hard to find a cleric willing to do so and even if he’s a good king a benevolent cleric might not have 500 GP to finance it himself. You could leave the money with a cleric you trust, but he could always just keep the money. If the Prince isn’t willing to Raise the king he’d also probably go out of his way to hide, protect, or destroy the body to make a Raise Dead by an outside source more difficult.
In setting I think you’re right, a good person, who is exceptionally wealthy, can probably ignore death. Someone like Lord Nasher from Neverwinter probably doesn’t have to worry about a simple stabbing, someone will Raise him in 10 min and probably be rewarded 100 fold. However, if you’re able and willing to attempt that sort of assassination you’d also know how limited the effect would be and probably wouldn’t even try something so simple.