Thread by @diceaveragejack

== Jack’s Spellbook #335 The Resurrection Spells ==
There are five spells in #dnd5e that can raise a creature from the dead: Raise Dead, Reincarnate, Resurrection, Revivify, and True Ressurection. I’ll be reviewing them all together today.

#dnd #dnd5e #ttrpgs #JacksSpellbook

Each spell has its own costs, requirements, and drawbacks for bringing a creature back to life. I'll be reviewing them in ascending order of power.

Revivify is a 3rd-level spell that costs 300 gp worth of diamonds and resurrects a creature you touch that has been dead no longer than a minute, raising them to life with 1 hit point.

The spell can't resurrect a creature that has died of old age and it doesn't restore missing body parts (so if you head got chopped off, you're fucked).

The flavour here is that in the 1-minute timeframe after a creature dies, its spirit is still nearby and can be brought back into its body, restoring them to life.

Basically just divine magic resuscitation.

Revivify is basically the benchmark in D&D for when the game gets much less stressful. Once a full-caster hits 5th or a half-caster hits 9th, assuming they have access to the components, you've always got one Revivify in the pocket to bail people out of untimely death.

This spell combos incredibly well with Gentle Repose, which extends the 1 minute timeframe for casting Revivify to 10 days!

While this is more a testament to how good Gentle repose is, it's very much worth knowing.

See my review of Gentle Repose here:

https://twitter.com/diceaveragejack/status/1612076836225257478

Raise Dead is a 5th level spell that takes an hour to cast, costs 500 gp worth of diamonds, and restores a dead creature to life that's been dead for up to 10 days with 1 hit point.

The spell also neutralizes poisons and curses diseases that affected the creature when it died. It doesn't stop magical diseases, curses, or similar effects and it also doesn't restore missing body parts.

Further, the target takes a -4 penalty to attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. Each time they take a Long Rest, this penalty reduces by 1 until it's gone.

Raise Dead is the second rung on the ladder for 9th-level, allowing even the most careless party that misses the Revivfy window or doesn't have Gentle Repose on hand to bring someone back.

Assuming they weren't eviscerated or decapitated, Raise Dead does the job pretty well.

Reincarnate is the black sheep of the family, being exclusive to Druid and was formerly their replacement for Raise Dead (as of Tasha's, Druids now also get Raise Dead too).

It works the exact same as Raise Dead, except it costs 1,000 gp, it only works on Humanoids, and instead of raising them from the dead, it makes them a new adult body.

What this means is basically, you come back to life, but you're a different player race and potentially a different gender (spell says nothing on the matter, so DMs discretion really)

On an objective level, Reincarnate is much more powerful than Raise Dead, allowing even a totally obliterated creature to come back.

In reality though, for a lot of players, Reincarnate is worse than just being dead.

Your character's appearance and player race are a big part of who they are. For many people, who we are and what we look like is a BIG deal and can define major aspects of who we are. The same is true for the characters we create.

A player who wants to make a character whose concept revolves around their appearance in some capacity (either by exploring some part of themselves or fitting an archetype they find fun), taking that away from them by changing their character entirely arbitrarily is awful.

This isn't true for all players. I'm sure for some people there's fun in their female goliath barbarian being Reincarnated as a male kobold, but I think the number of people who'd think that was fun is VASTLY outweighed by the number of people who would feel openly betrayed by it

Moving on from a weirdly-heavy subject, Resurrection is a 7th-level spell that is exactly like Raise Dead, except it costs 1,000 gp, you can target a creature that's been dead up to 100 years, and it returns the target to life with all its hit points and missing body parts.

There's a second caveat in, if you cast the spell on a creature that's been dead longer than a year, you're weakened until you finish a long rest. During this time, you can't cast spells and you have disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws.

Much like Revivify and Raise Dead, Resurrection is just another step on the ladder. The next level of resurrection power, allowing you to resurrect with even less in your way. Only destruction of body or soul or the creature simply wanting to stay dead can stop it.

True Resurrection is a 9th-level spell that takes an hour, costs 25,000 of holy water and diamonds, and restores a creature to life that's been dead no more than 200 years and didn't die of old age. It's restored to life with all its hit points.

The spell ends poisons, dieases, and curses, restores body parts, and can return Undead creatures to their non-Undead form.

The spell can make a new body from scratch for the creature if it's dead and you know its name. Unlike Reincarnate, it's their actual, original body.

Besides the Wish spell, this is the best you can get with resurrection. It's pricy, but it solves the problem.

Basically all of these spells are good (even Reincarnate, horrible as it is), but placing them all at 5/5 seems unfair really, as some are clearly better than others.

Revivify Final Score: 5/5
Raise Dead Final Score: 5/5
Reincarnate Final Score: 1/5
Resurrection Final Score: 4.5/5
True Resurrection Final Score: 4.5/5

Revivify and Raise Dead, especially when combined with Gentle Repose, are unbelievably efficient. They're the main reason 5e characters are so hard to permanently kill.

The second players get access to them, the game immediately loses a layer of tension.

Resurrection and True Resurrection are very niche. Most of them time you'll just need Raise Dead or Revivify, but they do a good job of doing what they set out to do.

Reincarnate is an absolutely miserable spell. There is no reason to ever cast it unless a player is specifically fine with it, especially now that Druids get Raise Dead anyway.