Meta Gaming Support Blog

Question: Dear Dungeon Monkey, I’m playing in a fantasy campaign in which dead heroes can come back from the grave, normally I don’t raise questions about the balancing nature of the mechanics of a game but I have noticed that the capacity to raise heroes from the dead seems directly proportional to how much money the characters have amassed.  Each spell requires some sort of massive gem or precious object to bring back a dead hero, so in a low-level point in a campaign it is very hard to come back from the dead but as you amass treasure as a character the expense becomes almost pointless.  If it was designed to balance the game, or the campaign world, why punish low-level characters who need resurrections more often instead of high level characters who have, in theory, more treasure but also more goodies to keep them alive?

Answer: Honestly it is moments like this when in a fantasy world you have to wonder about either the true morality of the gods or the morality of the clergy who serve them, death is supposed to be the barrier between two worlds, the line which is only crossed with the greatest of dread, something which should cause great surprise and shock if a person returns from the dead.  Ideally you would imagine that a hero raised who had fallen in battle, or from eating bad clams, would be a point of shock to the local villagers when they returned.  Instead most fantasy campaigns reach a point where returning from the dead becomes almost common place, to the point that some temples might do well to often a “frequent raises” discount program.  Some games do make a bit of an effort to make it seem more uncommon or put a restriction or two in the way of death, such as making it so that heroes who come back from the dead need to complete a quest or prove themselves worthy to return, others put actual game penalties on returning from the dead to discourage heroes from relying upon it too much.  Honestly though a true resurrection is there for the simple reason that players who have invested in a character often want to keep playing that character and become very unhappy if they are forced to start over with a new character from scratch.  Which, honestly, is why coming back from the dead should be easier for a higher level character then a lower level character, from a wealth perspective.

Think of it this way, let us say the price of coming back from the dead fluctuated based on how experienced your character was and it got more expensive to return a more powerful character from the dead.  As a Game Master (GM) this would put a market pressure on your players to keep their higher level characters safer from danger, because the death of a higher level character would cost more resources to raise then a lower level character.  As well it would also create probably one of the greatest nightmares for a GM to handle in a campaign, the grossly imbalanced player party.  Nothing screams of external intervention more then a group of high level characters running around with a low level starting character who cannot remotely take care of him or herself at the challenge level the rest of the group is following.  Think about it, if you are attempting to run a campaign and you have a group of powerful heroes adventuring together, able to face minor demon lords and small dragons, what are you going to toss at Bob, the starting out warrior who is about able to deal with a pixie on his or her own and little more?  Give the demons an annoying pet that latches onto the low level hero while the rest of the more advanced warriors due great battle with the demon lords?

If that sounds like a viable solution for you as a player or a GM by the way, I suggest you give it a whirl, you will find out fairly quickly that the more advanced players will often show a disturbing penchant for focusing in on killing the annoying pet before dealing with the demon lord threat.  Many players seem to take a perverse pleasure in stomping the living tar out of something they are really over-matched against, just for the sheer joy of watching it explode.  Often a low level hero in a more powerful group is relegated to the task of holding weapons and carrying loot while the more powerful heroes face off against the great threat of the week.  So honestly the fixed expense of raising the dead is actually a good tool for avoiding this problem, for allowing more powerful heroes to stay in play longer, and for more powerful heroes to be increasingly willing to put themselves on the line for whatever foolish quest their noble patron has sent them on this time.  Plus any sort of system that modified the cost of raising from the dead based on your ability to pay would smack of socialism and most fantasy worlds are distinctly capitalistic in their political outlook you know.

- Dungeon Monkey

Have a question for the Dungeon Monkey?  Want to seek out some gaming suggestions?  Email Dungeon Monkey at dungeonmonkey@umich.edu and get your answers!