4E, Raise Dead officially only works on creatures that are important to the plot.

Raise dead didn't make anyone immortal, you could never bring someone back who'd died of old age.

What changing the profile of raise dead does is cause some significant changes in both what PCs, and bad guys can do. Particularly PCs can't raise the dead to use as a witness, bring back victims of assassination back from the dead (a very important function of the spell), bring back an emeny minion dominate him and use him to get at his master, and so forth.

Restricting the availibity of the spell also makes little logical sense in game, why can only certain people be raised? Why are PCs so special?

It's just an option restriction that seems unnecessary. It was always easily within the DM's power in previous editions to restrict who could or could not be raised (his spirit refuses to return from the realms beyond, deal with it) so this seems another completely unnecessary 4e change.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with raise dead being tied to destiny, but it does restrict some options, and I don't think it works for all (or many) types of campaignes.

In many campaigns, the PCs aren't doing anything that puts them in too exclusive of a club: they may be saving towns or cities or mayor's daughters or whatever, but it can be asumed that many other people are doing similar things, so you'd still kind of expect anyone of marginal importance to be raiseable. One of the central points of Planescape, for example, is that you aren't the most important thing out there.

Also, many campains have multiple arcs, each of which typically ends with a confrontation with a BBEG. Does a character's destany always refer to "the last arc of the campaign?" Or can the PCs occasionally get hung out to dry by destany as well? Maybe it was the King's destany to get assasinated, the Evil Mastermind's destany to die fighting the PCs, and the Paladin PC's destany to die during the battle. It kind of strains belief if the PCs are always destined for bigger and better things than their current death, but their enemies and allies are often destined to die just when they did.

Lastly, I never really had a problem with Raise Dead in the first place. As was pointed out on the EN world forums, the list of things that can kill you deader than Raise Dead can cope with is actually pretty extensive. The Resurection spells have greater power, but they're also higher level, and even still can be defeated through the rather mundain measure of kidnapping the target instead of killing them. Raise Dead then just ensured that important people in the campaign world don't die of being gored on a hunt, slipping down the stairs, or getting stabbed by Joe Nobody, which is exactally how things normally work, IME.

I thought that they did away with law and chaos...

Anyway, I think the problem that most of us have with the new rules of resurrection is the metagaming element. The rules of D&D are, by definition, metarules - set in place by the DM to create a sense of consistency. Consistency by itself is not, however, necessarily belieable. To add a sense of believability to the game, the metarules must be cleverly hidden behind (and explained by) believable fluff. 4e focuses way too much on the rules and treats the fluffy coating as a mere afterthought. While I've not read the rulebooks, the various examples leaked to the web make it seem like the rulebooks are saying "Why can only PC's resurrect? Oh, I dunno, how about because they're special." Yeah, that's believable!

Agreed. To be more specific, tying resurection to fate works in campains where the PCs are legendary, predestined heros. This is the case in some campains, but most certainly not in all. In campains where it is not the case, the destiny thing could end up looking a little silly if used to explain why only PCs can resurect, or being almost the same as the previous system, if followed logically.

In fact, to my mind one of the central ideas of DnD is that the PCs are not predestined and that victory is not assured.

Every edition of D&D starts out as being supposedly for new players, and often they need to spell things out clearly for them. Raise Dead is certainly one case.

While I find it amusing that there are "quest cards" it's something I laughed at with all the controversy about them, when they are almost like designing quests in the Neverwinter Nights engine. However the 2e Planescape modules almost had something like that, as I remember all of them specifically gave XP values to certain story points completed.

Based on the uproar, I was expecting something a lot worse, but the paraphrased quote actually sounds pretty good to me. If the rule basically comes down to "only certain people can be brought back by Raise Dead," then isn't it still up to the DM to decide which people those are? How does that change anything, in the end?

I'd certainly wait to see the actual text in the rulebook before I made final judgement, but, like Captain Barbossa, I've always seen the rulebooks as "more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules." House rules wouldn't exist if we didn't sometimes need to reinterpret things to fit our styles or campaigns.

It seems to me that the rules for Raise Dead are there to give the DM an "in character" reason for why the spell won't work on someone they don't want raised for plot/story purposes. (Instead of simply restricting the spell's power.)

In 3rd edition the DM would say, "The murder victim can't be raised because his spirit does not wish to (or can't) return." In 4E it's not as clear why, in game terms, the corpse can't be raised: "He can't be raised because he isn't important to the plot." just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Maybe WotC expects DMs to house rule the in-game reasons for certain mechanics.

-420

Just house-rule away the stuff you don't like...
At least that's what I'd do, if I were going to go to DM* with 4th edition rules.

(*I am aware of the possibility that this sentence might include a major grammatical flaw.)

Right now I'm working on my own 3.75e compiled from extensive house rules and when done I'll throw it out on the net. Since I'm inputing everything into a tiddlywiki it will all by hyperlinked and easily transportable. Though not so easily printed.

There is alway Pathfinder, guys. It's Paizo's 3.75 system in development. It's currently in open playtest, and unlike certain wizards who live on the coast, they actually listen to feedback on their work. It's a great system , and meant to be mostly backwards compatible with 3.5 too. You should go to Pazo's website and download the alpha release and then tell them what's wrong with it so they can fix it. They plan on updating the PDF every few weeks with new changes.

Amen. But a good sytem to use as a base helps.