I’ve struggled recently with the question of resurrection and similar spells in D&D and other fantasy role-playing games. It is often narratively convenient for a powerful NPC to die permanently and not return from the dead, but there are spells that can do just that. Under the right circumstances, resurrection, raise dead, and wish can all return people to the land of the living. So what’s keeping powerful NPCs from living forever?

First, this is not much of a problem in all systems. In AD&D 1e and 2e, while the spell descriptions (bizarrely) say nothing about it, the ability score descriptions say that the character must roll a resurrection survival check and, if successfully resurrected, permanently lose 1 point of constitution. That expressly puts a hard–tho very generous–limit on resurrections.

But this rule is not in 5e, for some reason. There are a few online forums that have tackled the question, but the answers are almost invariably bad:

• It’s expensive.
• High-level casters are rare.
• The deceased must be willing to return.
• The god may not allow it.
• blah blah blah

If the spells exist in the setting, then somebody has to be able to cast them, and the most powerful people in the realm are the people they are going to cast them on. That’s what it means to be powerful.

It takes a 1000 gp diamond? No sweat. I’ll do whatever it takes to get my hands on some (mostly just be willing to pay 1000 gp), and I’ll keep a couple on my person and give one to the high priest to keep on his person just for me.

I’ll also curry favor with him and every other high priest and priestess I can swing a cat at. And I’ll live the sort of life our god wants. And, duh, if I do all that then logically I will be willing to return. I mean, how great can the afterlife be if multiple spells exist to bring us back from it?

This is just what real-life nobles did in Europe in the Middle Ages. They literally drank drafts of powdered gemstones and paid people to taste their food to avoid being poisoned. They curried favor with the church and bought indulgences and went on pilgrimages.

Also, the rarity of high-level casters idea is just silly. Every adventuring company has two or three spellcasters in it, and they meet spellcasters all the time in their adventures; spellcasters can’t be that rare. Besides, if anybody can cast the spell, the most powerful people in the realm are going to know who that is and curry favor with them.

Last… resurrection isn’t even that big of a deal. I mean, the fantasy setting doesn’t need to be as deadly as the real Middle Ages. Nobles and high priests and priestesses can live to be elderly; that doesn’t hurt the narratives at all, because that happens in real life now that we have modern medicine.

Heck, forget resurrection, just cure disease would eliminate the great majority of deaths in a medieval-type realm, at least among the wealthy. Then monarchs, nobles, and high church officials would live into old age, as they do in the modern world.

But what stops them from living forever this way? I think you just need to put a couple of simple strictures around the spells.

Resurrection Rules

On top of the requirements for the spells themselves (raise dead and resurrection in particular):

• You cannot return to life if you die from old age. (This is already a requirement of the 5e 7th-level resurrection but, oddly, not of the 5th-level raise dead.)
• You can only be returned to life once.

That’s it. Now if you want a noble to die, triggering a war of succession, just say that he or she was already raised from the dead once previously in their life. Now death has meaning for PCs with access to resurrection spells, but they do at least get a second chance. If you want to be generous (but not as generous as AD&D), make it twice. That’s three lives, same as you’d get for a quarter in a game of Pac-Man.