Critical Role Campaign 4 just made these essential D&D spells impossible to use

Brennan Lee Mulligan just went hardcore

Award-winning Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan has pulled out all the stops for Critical Role Campaign 4 to remind both viewers and his players that the world of Aramán is lethal. As we noticed earlier in the campaign, death and the afterlife play a big role in this world and the story told at the table. With the gods killed and their afterlife realms apparently lost, the souls of the dead are stuck in limbo, or forced to reincarnate. We previously speculated that this could also affect the players of Campaign 4, and now we know how.

It was already established that magic doesn’t work as well as it used to before gods and mortals clashed — which has some serious consequences for how some Dungeons & Dragons spells will (or won’t) work in Campaign 4.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for episode 9 of Critical Role Campaign 4.]

When necromantic wizard Occtis Tachonis (Alexander Ward) woke up after being brutally murdered by his family, Mulligan established that this was essentially a miracle. Returning as a “hollow one” (a background from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount), Occtis no longer has a heart and, for all intents and purposes, isn’t considered alive, but undead. That was only made possible due to the incredible rolls made by Bolaire (Taliesin Jaffe) and Murray Mag'Nesson (Marisha Ray), who managed to extract the divine artifact known as the Stone of Nightsong from Occtis’ body and bring him back as a revenant.

After episode 9 of Campaign 4 and the following Cooldown show, we now know why Occtis’ return is considered an exception. After a successful history roll from Kattigan Vale (Robbie Daymond), who was concerned that the Tachonis family was using necromantic magic to bring people back to life, Mulligan explained that resurrection wasn’t possible.

While necromancers like the Tachonis can create basic undead like ghouls, wraiths, and zombies, this is vastly different from restoring someone to life.

“It’s not really resurrection,” Mulligan further corroborated on Cooldown. “Even Alex’s character, even Occtis, is the closest this world has come to resurrection in 70 years. But even he is a revenant, he’s a hollow one. So even he is still undead. His heart doesn’t beat, he doesn’t breathe. But he, fundamentally, is still him under really horrifying, arcane circumstances.”

A lack of resurrection in the world of Aramán is pretty terrifying, and already makes this world stand out in comparison to Critical Role’s previous campaigns in Exandria. While Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer did make it harder for players to resurrect allies in Campaigns 2 and 3 by adding additional rolls to spells like True Resurrection and Resurrection, Campaign 1’s player characters were killed and resurrected so often that death started to feel meaningless.

Dungeons & Dragons players know that the earliest you can get a spell that helps revive characters as early as level 5, with the third-level spell, Revivify. At level 7 they can get the Resurrection spell. Both can be cast by any character with access to divine spells and a bunch of diamonds. What is the point of both players and audiences worrying about characters’ deaths when you know that they can just as easily be brought back?

However, the setup described and emphasized by Mulligan means that resurrection spells will likely not be available to players. He made it clear that if someone comes back from the dead, there will be a terrible price to pay. This should make the stakes much higher in Campaign 4, and it’s coherent with the approach shown by the new DM until now. He wants to make the players and the audience feel that this is a dangerous world, where things can go wrong very easily.

That doesn’t mean that resurrection is off the table. While Revivify and Resurrection may not be available to players, Reincarnation — a 5th-level druid spell — does seem to play a significant role in the world of Aramán. It’s established that those who walk the Old Path of the Druids can help souls reincarnate, as we learn in episode 9 that the Hounds of the King used to be humans before they, in their desire to keep on serving their King long after their death, were reborn as talking dogs.

However, the Reincarnation spell fashions a new body for the soul, usually resulting in a change of species determined by a roll. This could create some true shenanigans: imagine if the pixie Thimble reincarnated into a dwarf, or if the big leonine Teor came back as a gnome. Alternatively, Mulligan could use the reincarnation rules to forward the story, and tell the viewers more about what’s happening on the other side of the veil.

With spells like Resurrection or Revivify not being an option in Campaign 4, combat gets a lot more hardcore — and it was already pretty gnarly thanks to the new house rules that we got a glimpse at in episode 8. More importantly, the lack of resurrection ties directly into how the world of Aramán changed after the Shapers' War. While mortals reclaimed their freedom and individuality from the gods, this came with consequences that stretched far and wide — and now it’s starting to affect the players directly.