this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
761 points (97.3% liked)
RPGMemes
13402 readers
683 users here now
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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."
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.