Only Death Can Pay For Life

It’s a phrase I’ve pinched from A Song Of Ice And Fire by George RR Martin (though he was not the first to think it). I think it’s Melisandre the Red Priestess of Asshai that says it. It also finds influence, for me, from the 1982 epic Conan The Barbarian (my favourite movie). Conan’s love - Valeria - promises to pay the gods for Akiro to resurrect her love, and pays with her life, with a snake arrow from the sorcerer Thulsa Doom. 

But now in nearly all of my campaigns (which all take place on the same planet), this phrase has become a mantra. All of my players know it and are scared to revivify, raise dead, reincarnate and resurrect dead NPCs or PCs, even though sometimes they  know that they must. 

One of the reasons for this philosophy coming about is the simple fact that I run a relatively low magic game most of the time (see RPG Philosophy: The Land and the King are One!). 

I think that people coming back from the dead should be scarred, and bringing them back costs life somewhere else in the game, or upon them directly. 

It also stems from the truth that coming back from death is banal in D&D, resurrection through the spells is easy, as long as it isn’t the cleric dying. 

This mantra applies across all systems I run, not only D&D. 

How does this manifest in play? 

Usually characters have things that they love in my games, be that NPC family members, NPC friends or locations they own and the people who live on their land. 

These people will suffer, death, illness, ruin of land with dying of crops, loss of wealth, various curses etc. 

So when a character dies and the cleric will obviously raise them because they are playing D&D with friends and want the game to go on as it was, the players know that it will cost them in-game. 

One example was an NPC the players had rescued, the Dowager Queen, and she was in a severe state after her capture. A player had been raised from the dead in the next adventure fighting fire snakes in a dread temple where they had burrowed.

They returned to their lord’s castle. Later that night they found that the Dowager Queen had gone off and died with her old horse, and was swinging from a noose tied to a tree. Extremely dark, extremely tragic, it was an epic roleplaying moment in the game and the players were totally invested. They subsequently looked after the Dowager Queen’s child, taking it into their castle and custody. They connected the dots and believed it was their resurrection that had caused the tip in her mind, the gods had demanded their price. 

But was it? Or was it a natural action from the Dowager Queen? Did the gods whisper in her nightmares? 

What if they have no obvious price to pay? 

If they have no obvious connections, they will in the future, death can wait for its price to be paid. What if they are really a loner?

If they really are a loner, then it will simply affect the player-characters around them or their character directly. Perhaps the cleric who raised them has to pay with their own life or owes some debt to their god, perhaps it takes ability points from the cleric or the character who died (usually from their uncritical important abilities, sometimes from their important ones, depends how I adjudicate it). 

The ability points are the least interesting way to punish death without them dying, but also hurts the players, trust me. 

Perhaps it punishes them with some curse that cannot be removed, infertility, bad luck (a roll of 2 is always a roll of 1 on a d20) and so forth. 

Different Types

Reincarnation I punish the least, then it goes up in power levels. Revivify, Raise Dead, Resurrection, then True Resurrection has the most costly price. The more power they have and use, the greater the cost. 

A True Resurrection spell might plague the whole land, bringing back someone who is a century dead should hurt all. 

Conclusion

I want the players to feel responsible. 

Their actions must have consequences. 

Great power with magic has to extract something out of them. 

I also want the ambiguity to remain, they have no true way of knowing if it was their doing. If they cast a Divination spell, they will receive vague answers. 

I will say these moments are not taken lightly, and we explore all sorts of themes in our games, it’s not always doom and gloom! 

But we love deep stories as a group, I wouldn’t run these types of games with anyone except my friends whose tastes in story I know. 

It’s probably one reason I don’t want to stream my games, they are personal to us and explore complex ideas that would receive hatred. 

The best stories are about three things, love, death and stories. I find that our games are elevated when we have the feeling that magic, especially necromancy, has a price. 

“Only death can pay for life,” said Lord Voltaire, blaming himself for the Dowager Queen’s fate. Jeremiah dug a deep grave beneath the apple tree from where she hung. 

Kazar and Ferribrand watched solemnly as their allies atoned for the sins of power. 

The four friends hoisted her down and lay her to rest. Jeremiah spoke calmly and functionally the Vows of the Vigil, to sanctify the Queen’s grave. Finn Voltaire swore an oath to protect her child and uphold her name. 

The heroes watched the sunset fade and die, becoming dusk over the grave, daydreaming of Goriendor, King of the Spire, the looming shadow over Skirmishland.