Legal loophole

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.
- I started reading Jhereg by Steven Brust, and it takes resurrection magic into account with the world building. Part of assassination involves hiding the body until the resurrection window passes. IIRC, the legal penalties for murder are also much less severe if you just kill someone, rather than make sure they're permanently dead.
  There are also "Morganti" weapons. They're pretty much the Black Blade from Elric, so they eat souls. So not only do they make resurrection impossible, but the victim is extra dead, not even existing in an afterlife. As a result, using one is a high crime, punishable by death... by Morganti blade.
  
  using one is a high crime, punishable by death... by Morganti blade.
  Man, if I were a soul killing assassin, with knowledge that souls and the afterlife is real... Getting my soul dissolved vs going to my eternal reward ... sounds like a pretty good deal.
  
  Lol. It's Morganti blades all the way down.
- Death row is just instant execution, and the date you would be killed is now the last day you could be revived with common means.
  
  If a trial is ongoing during the date you'd become unrevivable or it's considered important to extend the date for some other reason, maybe they just revive you and kill you again to reset the timer
- In the Forgotten Realms, the Kingdom of Cormyr has strict penalties against resurrecting monarchs. The penalty is death for the resurrector, and castration + exile for the former king. And the famed War Wizards of Cormyr absolutely have the capability to enforce that law.
  I'm not certain (and don't have either my notes or the novel those notes were taken from to hand), but IIRC a resurrection of someone formerly in the line of succession puts them at the end of the line, even if they were as high up as the king's eldest son prior to death.
  This naturally creates an issue if the prince dies and is resurrected while a long way from the capital, and returns to the kingdom to find the king has also died while he was gone. Who died first is going to matter greatly, but might be rather difficult to determine.
  
  Whose idea was that law? If I were the king and someone discovered resurrection, I'd say that if I die, I get resurrected and keep my kinghood. Likewise if I conquer an area and become a king after it already exists.
  Does it at least not apply to cloning? That's the only way to avoid old age as far as I know, and I can't imagine kings would be in favor of a law that requires they grow old and die.
  
  How powerful are the monarchs? Are they absolute monarchs or far more limited?
  
  Who died first
  Naturally.
- These are great world building ideas. Thanks!
- You forgot revival being included in the sentence, possibly multiple times over.
  
  Imagine getting burned on the stake multiple times.
  
  Hey now this is a nice fantasy game you can't do that
- Girl Genius explores this a bit, with resurrected nobles losing all succession claims. Of course, that's if anyone finds out.
- How is the afterlife involved? It's not much of a punishment if you send someone to heaven. And sending someone to hell early for sending someone to heaven early seems disproportionate.
  
  On the other hand given that death is known not to end one's existence, it suddenly feels more akin to exile, so it seems like it would be much more prevalent. Ideally you want legal punishment to either rehabilitate the offender or isolate them from the society if rehabilitation is deemed impossible. Death sentence now serves as a cheaper alternative to a life in prison.

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.
- Fun fact: that's exactly how much it cost for a single day of the OJ Simpson defense.
  
  Hey, that is a fun fact!
  
  It's fucked up that you can just pull that fact out of thin air and drop it on a DnD post.
  Take my upvote you sonnovabitch
- Going with the cost of living equivalent, it's only about $15,000, which I think still does the job of pricing out the poor
- But in that case, they'd probably fine you so that they get that money instead of just letting those diamonds be destroyed.
  Also, Zealot Barbarians can be Revivified for free. They'd probably want to close that loophole.
  
  Yeah. I'm running into that problem with higher level players now. They are being held to account for burglary, kidnapping and property damage they did 8 levels ago before they were nobles with land from another king.
  You can't really imprison or execute people this powerful. The amount of force you'd need to bring to bear isn't worth the collateral damage. You just fine them and force a public apology if they want to do business in the capital ever again. Their wealth and social standing is more important.
- Seems like enough cash on hand to somehow get away with murder.
  Good point. And it's even less on discount Thursdays.
- Honestly it seems like a waste to revivify the party member post trial when they could have let the rogue fight to the death solo and revivify in the streets much sooner, or they could have revivified somebody they murdered unless that person really deserved to remain dead, but doing it at the execution is silly they're going to have to roll initiative for all the guards again.
  If anything, the DM is probably angry that they now have to freestyle regional laws about the use of revivify on death row criminals and create a brand new series of combat encounters with law enforcement, and becoming outlaws definitely has some effect on the main story arc.
- Don't forget they'll likely have brain damage from being dead so maybe you can write that in somewhere

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.
- But reincarnation is canon in D&D so that would require hunting down that soul and repeatedly executing them for all eternity.
  
  It's canon for elves, not so much for everybody else (unless you mean the spell). Though that sounds like some Mercy Killer thinking right there
- Isnt there a story of a woman who was hung who survived and had to be let go so they changed the wording to "hung till death" or something?
- Can't it just be that one soul must be dead? So uno reverse the Cleric.
- but they were put in the state of death! for a solid 5s but it should count
- No, It's one sentence of death. Not infinite sentencing. You get sentenced, you die, you get revived? That means you served your sentence.
  
  I'm not really looking to get into fantasy legal dispute, but I will say that you are debating the count without even touching the core of what I said: the terms of the sentencing. Being sentenced to death is like being sent to prison. If you step in and then juke out, you can't say "prison sentence over".
  We don't specify term limits here because it's typically not a place you come back from.

choose how you die
Old age.
- Sure thing. You will do so in that cage over there. To the guards: He already had his last meal.
  
  Wouldn't he starve to death before dying of old age?
- That actually worked once, for a Jester named Triboulet who did things like slap the King's bottom and spread gossip. He chose his execution method as a joke and the King actually laughed, so he was exiled.
- In earlier editions, Ghosts rapidly aged anyone they touched by draining their life force. Just saying.
  
  And now just seeing it (and failing a save) ages you.
  
  Still would.
- "big ass tiddies, your honor"
  
  DEATH BY SNU SNU
- "Not that merciful. Guards, off with his head!"

And that's how you get your whole party executed.
- tbf, the rest of the party is probably awaiting sentencing
  
  Someone will have to keep a Revivify scroll up their ass to make this work

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...
- Using our world as a template, it probably would be illegal to revive a convict, but itd be an open secret that a few well placed bribes and a bit of influence is all it'd take to bend the rules
  
  No, no. It would be illegal to revive a convict using abilities that are affordable or available to the general public. And it would be a crime to both use those methods and to be revived by them.
  For more elite methods, though, they wouldn't even be covered by law. They'd go unmentioned and unregulated by statutes and edicts.
- Oh but that's clearly the opposite of what the law is for!

That's why in my setting criminals get tossed into a kiln if they're sentenced to death without parole
- death without parole
  🤣
- That only works if they can't be brought back with resurrection spells.
  
  With a 9th level slot, sure

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.
- I like this. It's Faust, but make it fun. Keeps things moving
- And their complete mistrust of the justice system.
  Vive la revolution anyone?

- I don't know if 5e has starting age tables? 3e and Pathfinder do, it's an optional character creation thing that helps show the general age of most things. It starts off with the starting age of a given race and then has a table with different classes and dice. So for a human the starting age is 15, Barbarian/Rogue/Sorcerer is 1d4, Bard/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger is 1d6, and Cleric/Wizard/Monk/Druid is 2d6.
  So a typical cleric starting age would be 16-27. At that point they are a level 1 Cleric and have a grand total of one level 1 spell per day. 5e is more generous and gives them two level 1 spells per day.
  That spell should do a lot, and in a small village would be amazingly effective, but at a certain point there just aren't enough spells per day for everyone. It should actually be hard for adventurers to get healing because the local cleric should probably have spent all his healing for the day by the time they get to him, he can probably squeeze them in tomorrow when he's recovered spells.
- Except that it's exceptionally expensive. 5e is probably the most forgiving with its currency, a Raise Dead spell costs only 500 GP (assuming no extra fees) and while it's hard to approximate wealth in the game I found an old Reddit post that approximated it to ~1 GP = ~$1,000. So $500,000 minimum for a Raise Dead.
  While there are probably people in your life that would sell everything to bring you back, would you really want them to? How many times could your family and friends pull together $500,000 to raise someone in the group?
  If you're so obscenely wealthy that you could afford multiple Raise Dead in your lifespan you'd have other, more political problems. For example you'd have people lined up down the street asking you to raise [insert tragic story].
  Speaking of Political problems, you have to find someone willing to raise you and someone willing to finance it. If the king dies and the Prince takes over what are the odds that he's going to raise his dad and give up that power? If he's a bad king it might be hard to find a cleric willing to do so and even if he's a good king a benevolent cleric might not have 500 GP to finance it himself. You could leave the money with a cleric you trust, but he could always just keep the money. If the Prince isn't willing to Raise the king he'd also probably go out of his way to hide, protect, or destroy the body to make a Raise Dead by an outside source more difficult.
  In setting I think you're right, a good person, who is exceptionally wealthy, can probably ignore death. Someone like Lord Nasher from Neverwinter probably doesn't have to worry about a simple stabbing, someone will Raise him in 10 min and probably be rewarded 100 fold. However, if you're able and willing to attempt that sort of assassination you'd also know how limited the effect would be and probably wouldn't even try something so simple.

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?
- Yes, although you could use Gentle Repose can look like a post death ritual and give you a ten day window.

Isn't this just the Jesus strat?
- That'd be if he sentenced himself to death to appease himself for everyone else breaking the rules he wrote, then re-vivified himself.
  The ol' single deity circlejerk.
  
  The Holy Trinity is just 3 demi-gods in a trenchcoat.

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.