RPGMemes

Realistically I imagine that having access to resurrection would have fairly dramatic consequences on how a society applies punishment. It'd probably be a crime of some sort to revive the executed, sorta equivalent to breaking someone out of jail, states might be more harsh with handing out death penalties when it is possible to undo them if new evidence is found, and the remains of the executed probably would be carefully stored and locked up to prevent unwanted revival and to have in case the state decides to bring someone back, assuming the body is needed for it.

Might also get things like a monarchy which kills off heirs to the throne after a certain age and stores them careful to revive when the current monarch dies or abdicates, to prevent scheming between them to increase their place on the line of succession or take over from the current ruler early, and to ensure they are young and healthy when they take the throne.

Nah, this totally makes sense. Revivify costs 300 gp, which is about 5 months of work for a skilled hireling (or 4 years for an unskilled one). Laws are only for the poor.

If you convert to the relative value of labor instead of the real life value of diamonds, it's probably something like $40k to $60k to revivify someone. Seems like enough cash on hand to somehow get away with murder.

The punishment is a sentence of death. Not "being killed". You are to be placed in the state of death for the crime. That's why you don't get to walk away if a lethal method fails. You can keep reviving them, but they'll be incarcerated and killed again until it sticks. And I'll put the rest of the party in contempt of court for attempting to subjorn lawful punishment.

choose how you die

Old age.

And that's how you get your whole party executed.

One should expect that in a world where resurrection is a well known possibility, courts will take that into account. Even if it's expensive and can only be performed by a selected few, the law should make sure that one cannot escape punishment by simply having money and connections.

Then again, when you look at our world...

That's why in my setting criminals get tossed into a kiln if they're sentenced to death without parole

Of course you let them do it. You also let the victims' family be horrified by the miscarriage of justice and make it their life's work to seek revenge.

This is my long standing hot take and point of contention with rules as written in conventional D&D fantasy rule sets: death, if the rules of the game were actually applied to the setting, is less about finality (except for the lifespan limitation contrivance) and more about health insurance or lack thereof. People who die that have enough money should by all means have family that pay for raises (or resurrections when the body isn't available) as a matter of course and the material consequences of that would be that premature death from violence, illness, or accident would be mostly a poor people thing. Funerals would be awkward in setting: "sorry you can't afford a rez. The divines bless the departed I guess, lol."

I would at least grab the body from the corpse pile later. It’s a little less suspicious. Unless there is a time crunch then the rogue might get animated instead.

Gotta be able to get to the body within a minute for Revivify, right?

Isn't this just the Jesus strat?

It is totally something that a sufficiently wealthy medieval or imperial society would do to kill and revive someone as a form of punishment, or even to kill someone and allow them to be revivified as a way of letting the rich get off easy.

Death by russian roulette

Lord Vetinari approves