Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

My clerics never charge for raises... its one of the main jobs of a cleric and should be done in charity, (at least for good aligned clerics). I will even raise anyone i find dead in my travels because thats what a good aligned priest is supposed to do.

V'rass wrote:My clerics never charge for raises... its one of the main jobs of a cleric and should be done in charity, (at least for good aligned clerics). I will even raise anyone i find dead in my travels because thats what a good aligned priest is supposed to do.

Yea no.. At 5 thousand a cast and very few souls wishing to leave the bliss of after life to return to the prime (Pretty much just silly adventures). Its not something a good priest would do all the time, In-fact i would think most good priests would offer a nice clean burial and let them rest in peace. That said it is what a nice player might do.

V'rass wrote:My clerics never charge for raises... its one of the main jobs of a cleric and should be done in charity, (at least for good aligned clerics). I will even raise anyone i find dead in my travels because thats what a good aligned priest is supposed to do.

That's not true. I don't know where you take your information but all temples require a great service in exchange of raising someone from the deads and a freaking diamond. If it was so true, why are there people dying in poverty in all major cities when there are clerics capable of raising them?

The answer is simple. It's too expensive and they are going to be selective about whom they raise, and why.

Why not remove raise dead and resurrection scrolls altogether? That would certainly make death have an impact. Gives more value back to the faiths. Hard for a cleric to make some dramatic RP surrounding raising someone and the Joe Schmoe Barbarian with UMD comes along and totally undermines it.

I would personally just get rid of all Raise/Resurrect items (scrolls, wands, etc) and only allow dedicated divine casters and NPC priests to do it. There should be no "battlefield" resurrection from non-divine casters to begin with. You can and probably should impose a gold cost here, I see no issue with that. (though I agree with handling it as a Diamond cost rather than a flat gold cost, as it requires people to prepare their own reagents ahead of time. Probably would want to have a vendor that sells Diamonds).

I disagree with changes to shaman's recall spirit though. Frankly it is more fitting as its own variant rather than either raise or resurrection. A shaman's recall spirit is supposed to be a last ditch holding onto the soul to keep it from departing. It is not a full power resurrection. In PnP, it's an ability that can only be used one round after the person died, after which point it becomes no longer usable. Personally that is how I've RPed it as well (though being a bit liberal on the number of rounds), if I can't use it immediately after death then I treat it as no longer possible (if people run up and snatch up the body before I can cast, then oh well, you're going to have to get your rez from someone ese). In PnP it also has a one week cooldown instead of once per day.

What the ability does have going for it is it imposes no negative effects on the raised person because that person didn't "really" die. Ergo I believe the shaman's version of the ability should impose no negative side effects. It's supposed to be purely a "battlefield" rez.

ya know... once upon a time there actually use to be rods of resurrection sold for 10,000g with 10 charges at candlekeep... they were removed because the clerics complained it was undermining their role (which of course was totally true)

it would be completely fair to pull all raise dead and resurrection scrolls from loot tables and shops

this of course, like the rod of resurrection, would not affect any items already in circulation but of course sooner or later those items will get spent

but it would put power back into divine roles as far as dead people go, as well as let the few who have scribe scroll make and sell them for use

as for the diamond price that was ultimately just an example, but either way i think we would all agree it should be a price that is able to be handled in hole numbers as far as the diamonds go; 1000g = 5 diamonds so thats ok, 2000g = 2.5 diamonds so that wouldnt work, 2500g = 2 diamonds so thats fine, which means last choice if shooting for low numbers would be 5000g = 1 diamond

Removal of raise dead, resurrect scrolls etc would be a good start imo. Make res only available through the cleric class and at npcs in temples. Also, jack up the price. 5k + to represent the use of a diamond. Will make dying a little less trivial ...

AC81 wrote:Removal of raise dead, resurrect scrolls etc would be a good start imo. Make res only available through the cleric class and at npcs in temples. Also, jack up the price. 5k + to represent the use of a diamond. Will make dying a little less trivial ...

Resurrection scrolls are fine. They require UMD, are uncommon to find, and would share any reagent costs associated with the spell itself.

If we went this route, Raise Dead scrolls should also require UMD. As of now, it doesn't.

There is no point to removing those scrolls. If we did, for the reasons above, we should also remove other utility spells (such as teleport scrolls, dimensional door wands, etc) from items. But, why wouldn't those spells be able to be crafted, when all others are? That would be a conundrum. We could limit them to drops and crafted items from clerics/favored souls, however.

I would have suggested this route, but, I doubted it would have been supported. None-the-less, this is a decent idea as well. I'll support it.

well the reason why raise dead doesnt require UMD is that they are the OC player friendly ones

there are in fact class restricted raise dead scrolls out there as well

but dont confuse getting rid of them as removing them from the server entirely, it would only be loot and vendors which would cut down the ease of access of them

we could just remove them from loot tables and move any scrolls to be available only from temples as well, since that would then still make you have to pay the clergy one way or another

but it is not the same as teleportation because there is no travel service for that... although that would be a good gold sink, adding a teleport service in the cities that charge the same amount as the spell plus a service fee...

I've never RPed a Raise Dead/Resurrection cost with Aeili as being less than 1-2 diamonds at 5,000gp ea. respectively for each spell. I will not Raise/Resurrect someone for no fee, and in one instance I actually refused to resurrect someone on moral grounds (looking at you, Celestia! )

The suggestion to remove Raise Dead & Resurrection scrolls from loot tables (and one particular merchant) is a good one, however with so many scrolls already in circulation it would take some time for supply to dwindle and prices to increase.

Pity Aeili is on the retirement march because she'll not be able to cash in on the Raise/Resurrection scroll trade if these changes ever take place.

Tsidkenu wrote:The suggestion to remove Raise Dead & Resurrection scrolls from loot tables (and one particular merchant) is a good one, however with so many scrolls already in circulation it would take some time for supply to dwindle and prices to increase.

Lots of players dying all the time Tsid ... I don't think it'd take that long. People have gotten careless!

One major RP benefit would be that people would start really respecting cleric RP again, they may also start being a bit cautious. I'd also take Raise Dead away from Favoured Souls if that were possible.

Wow, I must say I'm impressed to see this topic addressed in a way that supports the cleric class. As someone who plays a cleric, most of the time I feel like a low damage melee healer, (except in the vaults) who waits for someone to need a renew buff while concentrating on my spiritual rp

1. I love the idea of removing the scrolls and items from vendors and loot tables; give the power of the gods back into those who serve them.

2. I also think raise dead and resurrect scrolls should either be made un-scribable, or the cost of scribing them be made close to or equivalent to taking them to the temple.
(I don't like the idea of clerics turning into merchants, selling divinity on paper btw - which god answers letter mail anyway? it seems immoral to hand out your god's personal number to random adventurers, or especially to sell it to them.

3. Temple cost for resurrection could be scaled to your level instead of a set fee, the same way the xp loss is scaled in Myrkul's realm ie 100gp / level

4. I don't agree that the caster should be paying the fee upon casting. the option to charge should be made into a rp choice (such as tsidkenu was saying)

I agree that scrolls out there will disappear more quickly, and perhaps we'll see a few more priests in the realm, as there certainly seems to be much less than others, and perhaps even see them brought along for those deep dungeon crawls and far from town adventures.

Here's hoping.

Give raise dead and resurrect a spell component cost. Make it expensive. This also impacts the scroll use. These are arguably two of the most mindblowingly powerful spells in PnP. There is a reason the temples charge for this.

Remove raise dead scrolls from the loot tables, or at least make them much rarer.

I would prefer if we had a mechanically enforced pantheon relationship which dictated the cost of the casting (or if the deity would even allow it), but as we don't, this is left for the player to RP correctly. Every time I see a player priest just casually throw a raise/res after a random adventurer they don't even know, I cry a little inside. Making it rare/expensive will actually enforce the priests wanting more RP around this.

Removal of scrolls from loot and stores sounds good and simple way to give death some more punch and empower divine caster RP.

Everyone would stock up on scrolls, but just the fact that everyone knows they can't be bought again makes everyone thinks twice when and if to use them.

I think removing scrolls from NPC shops is a great idea, When i started here there was no NPC selling these scrolls and it was considerably less common for someone to have a scroll. It made taking scribe scroll worth while on a cleric, Then it was added in. The market to sell them died and everyone has some. Now with the new system its actually ineffective to make use of the spell in combat situations, on top of the scroll value being low.