Reconsidering Raise Dead Costs

[Twily]

This isn't a suggestion to outright swap things back to how they were, more just a perspective on the impacts of the change, and wondering if a better solution than the current one exists. I don't have any specific suggestions to offer on the matter, but do feel a balance somewhere between how it was and how it is now would be better in cases like mentioned below.

I would have posted this in feedback, but I admittedly didn't want to open that can of worms in a public thread.



While the increase in cost to both create and use Raise Dead has undoubtedly helped with giving death more meaning(primarily in the case of deaths within dungeons), I feel it's resulted in a larger divide in cases of PvP.

When PvP shows up, most often it only ends when one person is dead.
In the past, taking people prisoner wasn't too uncommon of a occurrence. Cordor Guards who have to kill a fleeing criminal would bring them to the cells and raise them, drow who kill surfacers would be more likely to raise them in a cell or attempt to clamp them. (with player permission naturally)

I feel there's far less of this follow up roleplay and interactions between parties following this change though. People have less motivation to raise someone for what is temporary and potentially very short follow up roleplay when doing so is going to cost them 10-15k, half an hour at an altar and a scroll that can be hard to locate for sale, and this can be easily seen in many cases.

The Cordor Guard comes to mind as the largest, given that my characters have been guards off and on for ages now, but I'm near certain it extends beyond the occurrences with this group.



There was a point where nearly every criminal killed by the guard while fleeing would be raised in a cell for talking to and sentencing. The Guard even provided raise scrolls for their guardsmen due to the affordable cost at the time.
Following this change, literally the massive majority of cases I've seen that would have resulted in someone being raised for follow up RP instead have their corpse tossed in the graveyard.
While it depends on the crime committed with the following being more likely to occur for worse crimes, sometimes the guards go after the individual to bring them in for sentencing when they see the person alive a day or two later (sometimes resulting in another death if they flee, and repeat).

In these specific cases, the result can easily become someone being killed a bunch of times with no progress in the story being made, and sometimes an individual feeling unfairly treated, either due to the number of times they've been killed by the guard, the fact they felt their punishment paid as a result of being killed, etc.

Some systems that can help with this do exist, such as the subdual system which seems drastically underused by the guard, but the penalties and restrictions associated with the use of subdual make it a dangerous choice for a guard to try against some individuals. It's a system that should be used more, but can't be relied on in all cases.