A mod that makes raise dead/resurrection non-trivial?

[Quester]

Is there such a thing?

I would like raising the dead to be something difficult (and costly) to achieve - not just a minor inconvenience, like it is now.

[Angel]

If there is one, I don't know of it.  It's also not trivial to do, since the magic system of BG does not have any provision whatsoever for spells that require components.  Other than removing these spells entirely and replacing it with some sort of dialog (which would require revising a lot of spells and items, both vanilla and mod-added), I don't see any way of achieving this.

EDIT: I thought about it a bit more on my evening walk, and checked the 2e rules on raising the dead.  There are a couple of things that can be done:

• Increase the cost for raising dead party members at temples. (Trivial)
• Restrict which temples even offer resurrection services. (Easy)
• Implement the permanent constitution loss on death under P&P rules. (Easy)
• Implement a resurrection survival chance. (Easy for a flat percentage,  near impossible for actually con-based.)
• Take away the free Rod of Resurrection in Merkath's Lair. (Trivial)
• Reduce the number of charges available to Rods of Resurrection.  (Easy)
• Implement a cost in diamonds, gold or some other item for player-cast spells. (Difficult)

So when you say you wish you wish to make raising the dead more difficult and costly, just how difficult and costly were you thinking exactly?

Edited October 13, 2022 by Angel

[subtledoctor]

I think it would be quite cool if all those things were implemented. (Except the last one which is difficult and 'meh,' and thus has a poor cost/benefit ratio.)

[jmerry]

You can remove gold as a spell effect; the Wish effect "Lose 10000 gold" does that using opcode 105. (SPWISH23)

But ... there's a bug with that effect. If a clone casts the wish spell, then instead of the party losing X gold, the clone is given X gold from nowhere. Kill the clone, and it drops for you to pick up. The effect in question just doesn't work right unless it's actually targeting a party member.

So yeah - given that difficulty, putting a cost on the player-cast spells isn't a good idea. You'd have to do things with script actions instead, which is quite a lot of added complexity.

[Angel]

Well, no promises, but I'll see what I can do.  I share the opinion that raising party members feels a little too trivial at times, and adding a bit of a cost could add some spice to the game.

[ahungry]

Magic Store of Vergaden essentially enables a "rez anywhere via store menu", since the ghostly merchant allows you to revisit (and use) temple services.

Instead of modding the rez spells themselves, maybe just remove them entirely and add a similar item that'd just open up one store (temple services) menu, with a label implying it's your team consuming resources to use those temple effects (you could add an item restriction to limit the item's use to a cleric of level 9+ or w/e as well).

The other perk of this approach is "fixing up" your team after some tough fight is a little more UX friendly via this menu than a bunch of manual rezzing/healing steps.

Edited October 13, 2022 by ahungry

[Endarire]

You could play with the campaign mode/ironman mode/no reload challenge.

[Quester]

13 hours ago, Angel said:

So when you say you wish you wish to make raising the dead more difficult and costly, just how difficult and costly were you thinking exactly?

I don't know.

Basically I would like some kind of limiting factor to how many times / how often you can resurrect someone. Something that forces you to retire an NPC once they've died too many times. The idea is both to make death meaningful, and to give an incentive to having to find new companions along the way, because not every one you started out with may have made it through all the way.

Permanent con loss is one way to do it, I suppose.

[Quester]

I do play the game with no reloads, just because I like to be challenged. But even then if your frontline fighter bites the dust, you can just rez him or her over and over and over with no consequence, which is a little jarring.

I want an NPC to be able to die their final death, without it necessarily ending the game as long as the main PC is still alive.

I think it also makes for a more memorable playthrough, if not every one makes it back from that dungeon or that romp through another plane.

[polytope]

14 minutes ago, Quester said:

I do play the game with no reloads, just because I like to be challenged. But even then if your frontline fighter bites the dust, you can just rez him or her over and over and over with no consequence, which is a little jarring.

I want an NPC to be able to die their final death, without it necessarily ending the game as long as the main PC is still alive.

Well, it's always been the case that fire/cold/electricity/acid or melee damage taking a character to -9hp or less is permanent death. Unless you play with the difficulty slider below core.

The issue of the cost and difficulty of resurrection usually only comes up in an Ironman/roguelite playthrough without save scumming. It's not common that an experienced player will have multiple attempts at any given battle where the best result ends with a dead party member.

I have succeeded at SCS+Ascension without reloads and only one party member needing resurrection, repeatedly tried and failed at Improved Anvil for exactly this reason; permanently dead party members making the rest of the game probably unwinnable (SCS can be completed with a small party or solo, IA can't), it's usually that rather than a TPK or the main character's death that ends these runs.

[Endarire]

Also remember that this is a video game with save and load functionality that's very intended to be used to the player's advantage.  Not using it makes the game more difficult.

[polytope]

8 hours ago, Endarire said:

 this is a video game with save and load functionality that's very intended to be used to the player's advantage

Debatable how intentional it is. You can't save in combat, and certain interactions like Thalantyr/Melicamp and Aesgareth with his Deck of Many things are intentionally random in terms of reward. It doesn't make sense to have such randomness if you're expected to save scum because it's just slowing the game down as you repeat things until you get the desired result. Neither does the Raise Dead spell which specifically remedies a bad outcome to a battle and is otherwise useless (besides the kid in Saradush whose recently dead father you can raise).

I mean, conceptually in AD&D a TPK usually means rolling up new characters and restarting the campaign, which would seem the baseline for how the game is supposed to be played, the difference is that in BG2 you need to keep your PC alive at all times (I think mostly because some dialogue wouldn't make sense without Charname on his/her feet, there's fluff about Bhaalspawn unable to be raised but obviously not because it works for Imoen).

[Quester]

How about this?

For Raise Dead, whether paid for at a temple or cast by a party member, let there be a 50% chance that the raised character loses 1 point of constitution permanently.

For Resurrection, a 33% chance of the same.

This way you can still resurrect a party member a number of times over the course of the game, but eventually their constitution is going to run thin (think of it as their life force being spent).

Not too harsh, but still limiting.

You can still get lucky and have someone cheat death again and again without suffering consequences, but statistically, dying repeatedly will start to get to you (lol).

This, together with an increase in cost for these spells at temples, would achieve at least some of what I was looking for.

[polytope]

5 minutes ago, Quester said:

How about this?

For Raise Dead, whether paid for at a temple or cast by a party member, let there be a 50% chance that the raised character loses 1 point of constitution permanently.

For Resurrection, a 33% chance of the same.

There are a couple of cutscenes where Resurrection is cast on the entire party (except the Bhaalspawn), CUT57C.bcs and CUT59A.bcs and these would need to be changed.

Another possibility, which is more harsh, each type of return from the dead only works once for each recipient. I.e. they can be revived:

• Once by Raise Dead/Harper's Call
• Once by Resurrection
• Once by the rod (need to externalize it as a spl)
• Once by the Mass Raise Dead HLA
• Once by Wish

This means that characters can genuinely stay dead for some time, as none of the party yet have access to the type of magic that would bring them back. Some tinkering with spl files is needed to ensure the timing mode 9 protection from that spell only applies if the character actually was dead.

[jmerry]

57 minutes ago, polytope said:

There are a couple of cutscenes where Resurrection is cast on the entire party (except the Bhaalspawn), CUT57C.bcs and CUT59A.bcs and these would need to be changed.

If you're worried about the effects on living party members, 2.6 fixed that for you. Resurrection spells lock their payload behind a 326 filter, so they don't do anything to living targets. As long as you edit that payload rather than just the base spell, you're good.