this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
761 points (97.3% liked)
RPGMemes
13402 readers
1052 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."
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.
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.