D&D 5E [Tomb of Annihilation] Less absolute Curse?

[Ath-kethin]

Let's focus on the mainstream campaign here. Ath Ketin has himself admitted his campaign isn't the intended recipient of the ToA story. Thanks

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Yeah, sorry about that. I didn't mean to derail everything here.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Why not have the curse function as normal for anyone brought back by raise dead or higher, but not by revivify? The soul hasn't had time to move far from the body, or be subjected to the curse.

That way you still have a safety valve, but there's still an element of worry/drama. "What if we don't bring Bob back in time?!"

I mean, IME, revivify is really the "safety valve" spell, anyway.

 

[Charles Rampant]

My real concern would be that, in my experience, only rarely are characters raised from the dead. They either never go to 0 for more than one round, or they die and want to make a new character anyway.

So I would be tempted to dick about with the Death Saving Throws stuff, instead. Maybe make it that your failures are not removed by being healed, and instead linger until a Long Rest. For even more punishment, you have to spend 1 Hit Dice per failure to remove them. This will probably result in much more cautious players and the characters spending a lot of time huddling in their tents to recover, which might suit your tastes.

 

[SmokeyCriminal]

Maybe the party is given a special Artifact by the Quest Giver. It'll keeps the Soulmonger at bay for a little while and allows you to bring a party member back to life without any ill effect. It can even be like 5 special rings that the party wears so it only works on them, and if you want it can have X charges. Or it can be something they eat or drink that wards off the Soulmonger for X days/weeks/months, if you want to be cheeky you can make them eat "Sword Mountain Oysters" which are just dragon testicles or something weird and gross like that.

 

[SmokeyCriminal]

I've been ruminating on this kind of thing too. I don't allow spells like raise dead in my campaigns, so right off the bat this whole adventure is unusable for me. Which is really disappointing, since I really like everything else about it.

Maybe you can invert the curse in your campaign. Essential the adventure is about changing the status quo; you are able to resurrect people and now you can't. So for your campaign it's; you can't resurrect people and now you can. Maybe, people that are brought back have the Withering Curse because Resurrection Spells haven't been perfected and the party needs to stop it before it's too late. You can hook them in by having a BBG that they defeated pop up all withered and hell bent on revenge. Then you can be all like "Oh no, if your don't stop this all your old foes will be brought back to life, and also Hitler" or something.

I think if nothing else it'll give you the chance to emphasize everything wrong and bad with resurrection and why your world didn't pursue it. And it gives the characters an opportunity to decide if they are for or against resurrection and why, and how the party dynamic is affected by the decision.

 

[Sunseeker]

Thinking about the death curse...

Do you have any ideas as to running a "light" version of it?

That is,

On one hand, I'm not sure I want to commit to a "no Raise Dead" policy for this, or any other campaign...

On the other, I understand the nature of the threat needs to be sufficiently threatening, or people will just leave the jungles of Chult to rot all by themselves.

So, what to do? I assume there are no other encompassing motives or story hooks in the campaign? (I mean, obviously "enter the jungles to find ancient relics and get rich" always works)

Do you think it's a good idea to leave some kind of opening, or a safety valve, for those odd instances where a beloved character dies when that isn't appreciated - when the player really wants to keep playing that character?


Zapp

PS: Haven't read the module yet

In my upcoming Ravenloft games, all "bring XYZ back from the dead" require a humanoid sacrifice. (Incoming: I'm doing this my way) When you "die" in Ravenloft your soul does not actually go to eternal rest, it is intercepted by the Dark Powers for them to play with as they choose. So all "raise dead" type spells require you to make them a trade. Maybe your soul. Maybe someone else's soul. But it must be a trade of roughly equal value.

Perhaps for this Death Curse something similar happens and if the bartered soul is found wanting, the reanimated player gets the wasting disease. If the bartered soul is determined to be of fair value, the player does not get the wasting disease.

 

[hastur_nz]

PS: Haven't read the module yet

At the risk of suggesting the obvious... maybe have a read of it, then you'll get more of an idea on what the adventure includes, what it doesn't and just how important the Death Curse might be to your campaign if and when you actually run it.

Personally I skimmed the playtest version nearly a year ago now, and it didn't do much for me overall, but the Death Curse part seemed entirely in keeping with the overall tone of the campaign, it's just the "low-level PC's save the whole world" theme that I didn't like; all indications are that they haven't changed much of significance based on our playtest feedback.

I suspect that if your players don't like the possibility that their beloved PC might die for good, then this isn't a campaign for them, much like not all players will like Curse of Strahd, et. al. Depends on how much change you're prepared to make...

Anyway... the campaign plot is "PC's try and save the world, or die trying". Obviously, you can alter that plot, and still run some or all of the stuff in the book.

 

[Greg Benage]

I just wanted to note how amusing it was to find this comment from the OP in a thread from July that bubbled up today.

The game needs much more than a death save bump or a raise dead limit to become significantly more challenging as I see it.

I'd treat the deadliness talk mostly as marketing bluster or at least background atmosphere detail.

Life comes at you fast.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Soften the curse just enough so that instead of no revive magic of any kind working, only reincarnate works, and if a character dies, the reincarnate spell brings them back as a race native to Chult. Enter a man, exit a grung.

 

[CapnZapp]

Life comes at you fast.

I am happy to provide entertainment for you.

In other news, I stand by my statements.

Yes, the game isn't challenging enough. No, removing resurrection is probably not a good solution.

Why? I'll leave that as a puzzle for you, Greg!