Death is a part of any D&D campaign, and characters in the East Marches are just as susceptible to it as any. However, the East Marches doesn't have one consistent party with the same goals and same progression. The "pick-up" nature of this campaign necessitates some changes to the rules regarding death and revival.
The process of dying remains the same as always. Three failed death saving throws results in the death of your character, and all other rules or spells that result in instant death will be adhered to as normal.
The process of reviving a dead character is going to change significantly. Using hundreds or thousands of your character's own hard-earned gold to revive a companion who you might have only played with for a single session may feel like a waste, but playing as a healer and reviver shouldn't be discouraged. As such, the material component costs for the following spells have been eliminated:
- The 3rd-level spell Revivify
- The 5th-level spells Raise Dead and Reincarnate
- The 7th-level spell Resurrection
- The 9th-level spell True Resurrection
All other workings and limitations of the spell will remain as written. If the spell requires a body or body part, that component must be present, whether the spell is cast during the adventure or during downtime on the airship (meaning the surviving members of the party must return with the body or body part).
The trade-off is that a penalty will be imposed on the character who died instead, to represent the seriousness of death. Typically, the more powerful the spell, the less the penalty becomes. The penalties suffered by the dead character are as follows and are assessed at the conclusion of the adventure:
- Revivify* - Loss of 5 credits
- Raise Dead - Loss of 7 credits
- Reincarnate - Loss of 6 credits
- Resurrection - Loss of 4 credits
- True Resurrection - Loss of 3 credits
- Wish - No penalty
*Note: Revivify's credit cost is lower than more powerful spells like Raise Dead and Reincarnate because of the inherent limitation of the spell which requires it to be cast one minute or less after the death of the target character as opposed to the 10 day limit for Raise Dead and Reincarnate.
A character may also be revived using either the Revivify, Raise Dead, or Reincarnate spells by the presiding guild cleric or druid at the airship's temple, provided their companions brought back the requisite body or body part. This method of revival results in the same credit penalty but also an additional penalty of no resting credit/gold rewards for the next three adventures that the character does not participate in, as the guild attempts to recoup its costs.
For the purpose of handling the passage of time in such a fragmented campaign, the following rules apply:
- In the adventure that the character dies in, time is counted as normal. A day in the adventure counts as a day against the time limit for all resurrection magic. At minimum, an adventure will count as one day towards that limit.
- Once the body is returned to the ship, one day will pass for each adventure completed by the guild.
Credit Loss and De-Leveling
Loss of credits may result in deleveling if the deceased character does not have enough credits to pay the revival penalty. If such an event occurs, the character will delevel enough to pay the remainder of the penalty, but will keep the leftover credits from that delevel.
As an example, a level 7 character dies and only has two credits and is brought back to life with a Revifify spell at a penalty of five credits. The two credits that the character has are subtracted plus an additional three from the character's previous level up. The result is a level 6 character with three credits (as it normally takes six to level up to 7th level).
A character may only delevel a maximum of one level per death.
Removal from the Active Roster
A character who dies and is not revived before either the end of that adventure or the beginning of the guild's next adventure is removed from the active roster and placed into a separate roster for retired and deceased players as shown in the EAST MARCHES EXPERIENCE/CREDITS TRACKER. While the character is removed from the active roster, the following applies:
- The character ceases to earn any passive credits or gold from adventures completed by the guild.
- The character does not count against its player's number of allowable characters, meaning the player is immediately free to create a new character and add it to the active roster.
In the event that a player creates a new character (thus filling that active roster spot) and then chooses to revive the deceased character, the player will need to retire one of their characters from the active roster to make room for the character they are reviving. Alternatively, the player can choose to retire the revived character immediately after it is brought back to life.
Permanent Death
A character who is unable to be resurrected is considered permanently dead. A player may also elect to declare their character permanently dead rather than pay the penalty and deal with the potential of falling a level.