Maybe it’s about a system, a specific mechanic, lore, builds, types of players, ttrpg-adjacent products - whatever they are, share them.
Maybe it’s about a system, a specific mechanic, lore, builds, types of players, ttrpg-adjacent products - whatever they are, share them.
Resurrection magic is a mess that most tabletop games outright ignore when it comes to what their material and sociopolitical consequences would be in rules-as-written application.
Death in most settings should be perceived, if resurrection magic really is just a sufficiently leveled cleric and some diamonds away, as a lack of health insurance and nothing more. A punishment for poor people. Sure, typically there’s a maximum lifespan limitation, but so much killing and death that happens in a typical D&D setting is basically just untreated yet treatable medical conditions. Funeral services at a typical temple would have a pretty loud subtext of “the deity comfort you in your grief, but if you had more money, you wouldn’t be grieving at all.”
On top of that, pretty much any slain enemy with money and means that doesn’t have extensive preparations made against them to prevent resurrection should basically be as returnable as a typical saturday morning cartoon villain, and pretty much anyone with sufficient means should also be the same way. The fact that so many stories as written sort of ignore that and just have the dead stay dead unless they’re player characters is too damn high.
It would cheapen a lot of dramatic moments, but that’s the price that having such predictably applicable death-cheating magic should have in a typical setting.
I’ve got a recurring oneshot villain based around this idea - he’s rich as Creosus, so just has a bunch of contingency spells cast on him for being attacked, killed etc. True Ressurection is just a drop in the ocean to him.
Big Team Rocket energy, especially if the returns become a sort of in-setting meme.
DND requires the soul to be willing to return. Most afterlifes would provide a strong incentive to stay dead.
That’s an interesting take and one I never thought about before, but very rarely does that reluctance actually come up in play, established settings, or fiction unless it’s for a specific individual intrigue moment. Why do dead player characters come back so readily? Are adventurers just adverse to the afterlife? Also, there’s a weirder implication: does that mean bad people with some sort of damnation waiting for them are statistically far more likely to return?
Probably because they were in the middle of doing something and want to finish.
Bg3 has a neat note about one of the npc characters resenting being resurrected. He was a follower of bhaal and enjoyed the afterlife that seemed like a damnation.
I still don’t see many official materials through the decades I’ve played D&D that suggested that it was that rare for resurrection magic to actually fail that often by way of people not wanting to return.