Lord Vetinari approves
It is totally something that a sufficiently wealthy medieval or imperial society would do to kill and revive someone as a form of punishment, or even to kill someone and allow them to be revivified as a way of letting the rich get off easy.
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.
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.
For decades, Forgotten Realms tried really had to be this “peasants have their minds blown if they see even a level one Magic-User spell being cast; this is a grounded and gritty setting sort of” pretense in the official materials, but then there’s basically a magocracy running most cities (even the fucking Luskan pirates and other “savage frontier” big mean guys!) and maps full of “oh a web spell is on this window at all times” sorts of signs that maybe those peasants should be a lot more familiar with the very special very rare spellcasters that rule over them and make all the important decisions.
Yeah, it kind of makes sense if magic is rare, difficult to obtain, but not entirely foreign. Basically a luxury good.
To use an example luxury good, we all know what a private jet is. We couldn’t build one or buy one, but we know there are people who can. It’d be cool to be in one but not some unimaginable experience.
That is why I enjoy settings like the Netherese so much more. Where magic is common and everyone uses it, even the cleaning staff have magical autonomous brooms that sweep on command.
Netherese is also old Forgotten Realms.
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?
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.
Of course you let them do it. You also let the victims’ family be horrified by the miscarriage of justice and make it their life’s work to seek revenge.
I like this. It’s Faust, but make it fun. Keeps things moving
And their complete mistrust of the justice system.
Vive la revolution anyone?
The punishment is a sentence of death. Not “being killed”. You are to be placed in the state of death for the crime. That’s why you don’t get to walk away if a lethal method fails. You can keep reviving them, but they’ll be incarcerated and killed again until it sticks. And I’ll put the rest of the party in contempt of court for attempting to subjorn lawful punishment.
No, It’s one sentence of death. Not infinite sentencing. You get sentenced, you die, you get revived? That means you served your sentence.
I’m not really looking to get into fantasy legal dispute, but I will say that you are debating the count without even touching the core of what I said: the terms of the sentencing. Being sentenced to death is like being sent to prison. If you step in and then juke out, you can’t say “prison sentence over”.
We don’t specify term limits here because it’s typically not a place you come back from.
Right, but if it was a life sentence and you died in prison, would you have to serve again if you were revived?
I guess you don’t want to debate but that was just my reasoning
The Rogue gets stabbed by a Red Wizard blade, made by the Red Wizards of Thay that prevents any sort of resurrection by a cleric.
Get a wizard to cast limited wish which can emulate raise dead. Clearly a wizard casting the spell does not count as resurrection by a cleric.
Isn’t this just the Jesus strat?
And that’s how you get your whole party executed.
tbf, the rest of the party is probably awaiting sentencing
Someone will have to keep a Revivify scroll up their ass to make this work
“Where did you get that, you’re not wearing any clothes!”
choose how you die
Old age.
Sure thing. You will do so in that cage over there. To the guards: He already had his last meal.
Wouldn’t he starve to death before dying of old age?
Nobody dies of “old age”. As you become older, it is becomes harder to survive various diseases or afflictions. But where do you draw the line? If someone was to weak and fragile to leave their bed, and died due to no longer getting any energie from food, is that dying of old age? And what if they are to fragile to leave their cage?
If one is allowed to set timespan for “execution” to “however long it takes me to die of old age”, then I argue it is also perfectly fine to take some liberty with the definition of “die of old age”.
Back in 3.5, there were specific rules for dying of old age. 5e is less clear about it.
Realistically I imagine that having access to resurrection would have fairly dramatic consequences on how a society applies punishment. It’d probably be a crime of some sort to revive the executed, sorta equivalent to breaking someone out of jail, states might be more harsh with handing out death penalties when it is possible to undo them if new evidence is found, and the remains of the executed probably would be carefully stored and locked up to prevent unwanted revival and to have in case the state decides to bring someone back, assuming the body is needed for it.
Might also get things like a monarchy which kills off heirs to the throne after a certain age and stores them careful to revive when the current monarch dies or abdicates, to prevent scheming between them to increase their place on the line of succession or take over from the current ruler early, and to ensure they are young and healthy when they take the throne.
In the Forgotten Realms, the Kingdom of Cormyr has strict penalties against resurrecting monarchs. The penalty is death for the resurrector, and castration + exile for the former king. And the famed War Wizards of Cormyr absolutely have the capability to enforce that law.
I’m not certain (and don’t have either my notes or the novel those notes were taken from to hand), but IIRC a resurrection of someone formerly in the line of succession puts them at the end of the line, even if they were as high up as the king’s eldest son prior to death.
This naturally creates an issue if the prince dies and is resurrected while a long way from the capital, and returns to the kingdom to find the king has also died while he was gone. Who died first is going to matter greatly, but might be rather difficult to determine.
How powerful are the monarchs? Are they absolute monarchs or far more limited?
I’d hesitate to call it an absolute monarchy because they do seem somewhat constrained by law or tradition, but I’m not aware of any formal process by which either the nobles or the commoners (I don’t believe there is any Parliament) can officially exert any authority.
I believe it’s based on a mediaeval English or French monarchy.
The closest non-D&D fantasy kingdom I can think of would by Andor in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, except that there is a very clear very strict line of succession instead of Andor’s nobles essentially voting on a successor.
Book 4 of Erin M. Evans’ excellent Brimstone Angels series is set in Cormyr and deals extensively with its politics, and I would highly recommend that book to anyone interested in that sort of political intrigue.
These are great world building ideas. Thanks!
Death row is just instant execution, and the date you would be killed is now the last day you could be revived with common means.
If a trial is ongoing during the date you’d become unrevivable or it’s considered important to extend the date for some other reason, maybe they just revive you and kill you again to reset the timer
maybe they just revive you and kill you again to reset the timer
The Gentle Repose industry will object…
Gotta wonder how that goes for innocent people that decide that the afterlife is cool.
Must suck for victims of cults and devil bargains that get dragged into the hells regardless of their deeds.
I started reading Jhereg by Steven Brust, and it takes resurrection magic into account with the world building. Part of assassination involves hiding the body until the resurrection window passes. IIRC, the legal penalties for murder are also much less severe if you just kill someone, rather than make sure they’re permanently dead.
There are also “Morganti” weapons. They’re pretty much the Black Blade from Elric, so they eat souls. So not only do they make resurrection impossible, but the victim is extra dead, not even existing in an afterlife. As a result, using one is a high crime, punishable by death… by Morganti blade.
Lol. It’s Morganti blades all the way down.
using one is a high crime, punishable by death… by Morganti blade.
Man, if I were a soul killing assassin, with knowledge that souls and the afterlife is real… Getting my soul dissolved vs going to my eternal reward … sounds like a pretty good deal.
Fair, I guess it depends on what the afterlife looks like in the fictional world. :P I actually didn’t get that far in the series, what with real life getting in the way, but I enjoyed it and mean to return to it.
Girl Genius explores this a bit, with resurrected nobles losing all succession claims. Of course, that’s if anyone finds out.
You forgot revival being included in the sentence, possibly multiple times over.
Hey now this is a nice fantasy game you can’t do that
ψ(｀∇´)ψ
Nah, this totally makes sense. Revivify costs 300 gp, which is about 5 months of work for a skilled hireling (or 4 years for an unskilled one). Laws are only for the poor.
If you convert to the relative value of labor instead of the real life value of diamonds, it’s probably something like $40k to $60k to revivify someone. Seems like enough cash on hand to somehow get away with murder.
Honestly it seems like a waste to revivify the party member post trial when they could have let the rogue fight to the death solo and revivify in the streets much sooner, or they could have revivified somebody they murdered unless that person really deserved to remain dead, but doing it at the execution is silly they’re going to have to roll initiative for all the guards again.
If anything, the DM is probably angry that they now have to freestyle regional laws about the use of revivify on death row criminals and create a brand new series of combat encounters with law enforcement, and becoming outlaws definitely has some effect on the main story arc.
Fun fact: that’s exactly how much it cost for a single day of the OJ Simpson defense.
Hey, that is a fun fact!
It’s fucked up that you can just pull that fact out of thin air and drop it on a DnD post.
Take my upvote you sonnovabitch
Going with the cost of living equivalent, it’s only about $15,000, which I think still does the job of pricing out the poor
I would at least grab the body from the corpse pile later. It’s a little less suspicious. Unless there is a time crunch then the rogue might get animated instead.
