[RPG] the disadvantage of casting Raise Dead and then Restoration twice instead of casting True Resurrection

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We (my group and I) figured out, that in Pathfinder you can use True Resurrection for a price of 25,000 gp but Raise Dead works for 5,000 gp and you can remove the negative levels with Restoration (two times) for 1,000 gp. So the party can resurrect for 7,000 gp. That doesn't work if the corpse is destroyed or damaged, but in the other cases it is a much cheaper possibility.

What are the disadvantages of this combination? Should I disallow that as a gamemaster?

Best Answer

The combination of raise dead and restoration in Pathfinder RPG is not only reasonable, it's intended.

The price difference is a holdover from D&D 3.5, where the combination of raise dead and restoration was actually much weaker than true resurrection. In D&D, raise dead caused a full level loss instead of a negative level, and restoration could not restore the lost level. As the only spell able to revive a character without level loss, true resurrection was significantly more valuable.

In Pathfinder, restoration was explicitly given the new ability to recover permanent negative levels, at the increased price at 1,000gp per level. This suggests that the designers intended for the combination to be available.

Even so, true resurrection still has advantages:

  • You don't need an intact body, which is useful if the body has been maimed, disintegrated, captured, dropped down a pit, or left behind after fleeing
  • You can raise someone who's been dead for 10 years per caster level, instead of 1 day per caster level, which is useful if you took too long to drag the body back from the wilderness
  • The character returns with full hit points and prepared spells, handy if you absolutely have to fight something right away
  • It only takes 10 minutes to cast true resurrection, whereas restoration can only heal one negative level each week
  • You can raise someone even if they were killed by a death effect, or killed and turned into an undead
  • You can raise elementals and outsiders, if necessary