New spell suggestion: True Resurrection

[SoThereIWas]

Implement True Resurrection as describe in PhB

If I remeber correctly, the PhB would describe True Resurrection as raising one from the dead that has been long dead from unnatural causes, X amount of years per caster level.

I would like to raise the question of, what are the draw backs, and how might they be prevented?

I personally see this spell only used by DM, as I can see possible issues between the community if one consensually agreed for perma death to a player without DM management. Then the player with the dead PC decides to change their mind suddenly down the road, thing is someone will find a way around it in the end. That's my concern of this spell being accessible to all for a price.

Secondly...

Folks are saying it's NPC use only from what I gather, I would like to raise the question of how do you limit the targets of a spell both from a mechanically and RP standpoint, as I'm sure I could easily use raise dead or resurrect as we have it now with a DM's blessing to a True Resurrection.

With my concern now addressed about moderation issues, what are ways to prevent that happening, if in the off chance this would be implemented? And keep in mind, saying plainly "it wont" is not the answer I'm looking for, as I could very easily see ways I could work around the system in the favorable situation to be a jerk, if I wanted.

[NegInfinity]

DMs are not authors. They are the world's pro/re|active aspects.

They are authors. They decide what happens in the world. The threats you're dealing with, are created and written by DMs and not you.

The only people remotely close to an "author"'s powers are the people with the keys to the server machine, for they can decide on a proverbial flood to cleanse the land or to send in the headless horsemen.

DMs have the power to summon all sort of nightmares onto the land if they wish, and portion of the staff has access to the server, meaning they can reboot and shut it down. DM team also have a power to inflict permanent change on the world, even though this is very rarely utilized on BG.

Stories are simply records of the experience gained so that they can be shared, and are not the primary goal.

The point of participating on roleplaying server is participating in a story.
You either walk onto the stage yourself, wearing a mask, or create a puppet and pull its strings. And then participate in play.

Character is an actor, the world is the stage. That's why it is called "role playing". This is what it was always supposed to be.

[Hoihe]

So you people are arguing that railroading is fine and is the natural state of the universe?


Reminder: This is neither a Single Player computer game nor a Pen and Paper campaign.

There is no such thing as a "story." The only thing approaching a story is when a set of cohesive experiences is reported to either a third party or recounted by the people who enjoyed/suffered said experiences.


You know what tends to lead to shitty DMs? When the DM assumes that THEY are telling a story.

A DM, if anything, is a Deist's God. The DM will give you a sandbox in which you are able to do whatever you wish. If the developers didn't provide a reaction, the DM will then arbitrate between written mechanics and the reality of the medium, while considering all the confounding factors, to provide a reaction. A DM that does anything else will be railroading.

"Uh, you can't do that because that makes all my prepared work moot" - quote of DMs who railroad.

Another thing that leads to shitty DMs is the assumption they are competing with the players.


If I wanted to be railroaded, I've already got amazing media for that. They're called CRPGs, such as the amazing Gothic trilogy, Obsidian CRPGs, BioWare CRPGs. The quality there is guaranteed, but all your actions there boil down to green, blue and red.

If I wanted a somewhat flexible railroad system, I'd poke my friend to start DMing again and find us a group to play with. Even P&P railroad-systems are nowhere as rigid as you people propose DM powers to be. The PCs pretty much accidentally started a civil war thanks to our newbie druid who was not very familiar with D&D style RPGs that pretty much killed whatever plans he had. He adapted to his players and we had fun.

So what's the third variant? It's called a roleplaying sandbox. Either the players (ambitions) or the DMs (proactive world) try to affect it, and leave it up for the players with respect to a certain degree of setting-induced inertia to alter the world.

[NegInfinity]

Reminder: This is neither a Single Player computer game nor a Pen and Paper campaign.

When everything is done properly by every participant, the main difference is that npcs you encounter are much more advanced than in any other game in existence, and possibilities are broader - you no longer have predefined scripted dialogue, and talk with them freeform. With most of them, anyway. You also can't reload earlier save.

But that's pretty much it. Aside form that detail, you absolutely can play BG as if it was a single player game, and have a blast doing it. I also participated in "weekly RP" group, which played BG as if it was a pen and paper campaign - short adventure somewhere, rest, etc. Works as well.

There is no such thing as a "story." The only thing approaching a story is when a set of cohesive experiences is reported to either a third party or recounted by the people who enjoyed/suffered said experiences.

Hoihe, you're no longer making any sense.

You're trying to grasp at arbitrarily selected dictionary definition to "prove" your point. Dictionary thumping doesn't really work as an argument. Same applies to randomly designed formulas. Talk like a human would.

All I can see is that you're obviously going through some sort of RL ordeal, and it resulted in your recent incredibly odd behavior. I wish you luck with whatever that ordeal is, but I'm honestly not interested in dealing with this and I don't really have a capacity of doing so, and would prefer if you snapped out of it already. As I said, there were already few people lsot to "strange moods". Anyway.

Getting back to the subject

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Implement True Resurrection as describe in PhB

If I remeber correctly, the PhB would describe True Resurrection as raising one from the dead that has been long dead from unnatural causes, X amount of years per caster level.

I would like to raise the question of, what are the draw backs, and how might they be prevented?

The issues with True Resurrection spell is that it can further cheapen death and that its cost is too low for bgtscc.

The main utility of the spell is to resurrect someone whose body is gone, as long as they can be identified. The pproblem with this is that people can attempt to use this to dodge any possibilities of consequences. Which is a bad thing, because it creates a world where it is pointless to do anything.

Another problem is that the casting cost is too low for BG - only 25 k gold. This is tiny.

One other thing is that this spell quite obviously is supposed to be an incredibly big deal - not on a "wish" level, but quite similar to this.

So...

The way I see it, in its default form it shouldnt' be allowed.

However, it could be plugged in if:

• It has SIGNIFICANT cost, for example, 2.5 million gold, or a king's tear or something similar.
• It does not bring back characters killed by permastrike.
• It requires a DM approval and can only be cast with DM present.Otherwie it does nothing.
• If the target is alive, it wastes material component and does nothing.

Then it would make some sense.

Basically, all things considered, ther'es no real reason to implement it, and basically people can simply conduct business as usual - "when you need true resurrection, poke a DM".

However, there are already some "RP spells" in spellbook, that do nothing useful without, and just have a description (Hmm... "Guards and Wards" or whatever it was called, for example).