Dying is Serious (3.5e Variant Rule)

Dying is Serious
With so many various ways of resurrecting people, bringing them back to life and the old "revolving door" heaven, death has become less of a grievance in Dungeons and Dragons and just more of a parking ticket. At level 9, death takes a back seat. For the mere pittance of 5,000 gold pieces and a single lost level (which will soon be reachieved, due to the XP/ECL guidelines), you can cheat death; you're out a bit of money, but that'll soon be remedied as well, so it doesn't matter. All that matters is your body be in a decent condition. At level 13, this price rises to 10,000gp and your body doesn't even have to be in a good condition. Infact, it could just be a little piece of flesh vomitted up by the now-slain creature. Just get that to your cleric and he'll heal you up a wonder! You're back and walking again after a ten minute ritual, congratulations. Then, level 17; for the pittance of 25,000gp, you're now raised even without a body, full hit points and no level loss.

Death has lost its meaning when the game goes beyond level 9. This mere hitch of being dead may be fine for some; but it belies the true fact of death; it's serious business. Many may not like to see their precious characters they've so become attached to die forever, they may not like it when they lose something they worked hard on, but it's that fear of permanent death that stops people from doing really stupid things, like charging in headlong to die, or get eaten by a giant flaming wildebeest with flailing tentacles of youbane.

Rez plz?
To create an impact and permanent feel of death, the rules must be changed to remove certain spells and certain effects of spells. These changes are;


 * Remove Raise Dead.
 * Remove Resurrection.
 * Remove True Resurrection.
 * Wish can no longer use the Revive the Dead option.
 * Remove similar spells, like Revive Outsiders, Revive Undead and Revivify (all from Spell Compendium).

The removal of these easy to access spells will create that same sense of "fear" for the lives of a character that was there before level 9; death becomes far more permanent. Without a way to easily revive party members, a more "realistic" feel is given to fights and every fight has the potential to permanently end a characters life, rather than just fine them for doing something minorly stupid.

But, how do I come back to life?!
In order to replace resurrection magic, spells that actually cost something greater than meager money will be used. Two spells, instead, replace the spells and previous effects; Devil's Pact and Call to the Reaper. These spells offer something non-material for the lives of another, they have a real cost to them. Devil's Pact allows someone to trade their soul for their colleague's soul by making a deal with a devil. This can put the bargainer's skills at dealing to the test to create a proper deal, but it also presents the opportunity for the Dungeon Master to easily find loopholes in the pact or manipulate it. Call to the Reaper calls forth a Reaper, a powerful entity with dominion over life and death, transcending the mere cosmology (described below). They adhere to the idea of balance between life and death, returning one person to life will cause another person to die; which can easily be used by the Dungeon Master to cause grief to the players for doing such a heavily burdened thing.

The Reaper
The Reaper is a quintessential figure in many folklore; a being that presides over death. Death, The Grim Reaper, Shinigami and so on, reapers are known by many names and they are believed to be either one being or many beings. But, for the effects of this rule, they will be described below and can be easily switched out between being multiple reapers or just a single reaper.

A reaper is a being with omniscient power over life and death. A reaper appears to collect each and every soul that dies, from the lowliest of persons to the highest of kings. They have no concept of time and can manipulate it to their own liking with ease. A reaper comes from beyond the great wheel (or any other cosmological pattern you wish to use) and are more powerful than any deities (even they have to be collected at some point).

A reaper is uncaring about mortal affairs; they have nothing to do with them. All that matters to a reaper is the balance of life and death; everyone has to die at one point and they will die at that point. The only way to change this fact of life is to switch two people's "life timers", effectively switching the time that each has to live. This is how a reaper returns a person to life; they switch the two souls out, and the being returned to life gains the "life-force" of the one who died for them. The apathy of a reaper does not mean they do not have a cruel sense of irony; mortal affairs merely amuse them and cruel jokes are a twisted form of humour that can make eternity slightly shorter (although the concept of time is lost to the all-seeing reapers). A reaper does enjoy being called; they can fully refuse to be called if needs be, there is no magical compulsion for them to aid the person calling them.

Spells that forestall the death are literally "hiding" a person from the reaper, disallowing the reaper from taking the person's soul to the respective place of afterlife.

A soul that is bound or otherwise owned by another being is out of the reaper's domain; he must deliver the soul (if it is owned) to it's owner, but a reaper cannot take the soul back from whoever rightfully owns the soul; a reaper can only revive a soul that is free, but it does not have to be willing. Mortals, especially souls, are powerful against a reaper and, if asked to, a reaper will force a soul back into it's body.

A reaper's appearance is fully mutable, they can change it at will and simply appear as they wish to, as they transcend normal abilities.

--TarkisFlux 17:51, January 8, 2010 (UTC)