The RAW rules actually allow you a myriad of ways to “raise yourself from the dead”.
Clone is tailor made to raise yourself from the dead.
An Arcana Cleric can cast contingency with revivify as the contingent spell. (There’s other ways to do this but they’re either more complicated or setting specific.)
A wizard can can cast contingency with danse macabre as the contingent spell. (This’ll have a very limited duration.)
Magic jar can let you possess another creature to animate your own body if something happens to it while you’re “away”.
If you’re a humanoid, hitting yourself with a finger of death just before you’re about die can let you rise as a zombie permanently under your own control at the start of your next turn.
Make a simulacrum of yourself to raise the original you at your leisure.
Summon a planar ally to raise you if you die within an agreed upon time frame. (Probably requires bribery.)
The whole concept of liches is basically raising yourself from the dead.
Also of note; Most reanimation spells (animate dead, create undead, raise dead, etc…) are instantaneous and can’t be ended by an antimagic field or dispel magic. (The same can’t always be said for a creator’s control. The creature(s) these spells create usually don’t die/cease to be animated when the creator’s control ends either though.)
I imagine the contingency + danse macabre version, or a variant of this, is what /u/[email protected] what thinking of, since it would break with loss of concentration.
Not all of these work, sadly - if you’re being very strict about RAW. - however many of these would work fine as the explanation for this with a DM who was willing to bend the rules a little to allow you to play the concept.
Clone makes a copy of you that the soul transfers to when you die, this isn’t technically “raising yourself from the dead” and your soul is now occupying a vessel, so the old body can’t be raised (most spells that raise you from the dead require a soul to be “free” or “able” to return, and most DMs interpret that to mean that the soul isn’t currently trapped or occupying anything else.)
Contingency can’t choose Revivify. Contingency requires a spell that targets “you” - Revivify targets “a corpse”. Generally speaking, the target “you” means “the creature: you”. It’s maybe a little philosophical whether or not your corpse has the identity “you” that you have while living, but in 5e, corpses tend to be mechanically viewed only as objects, and not as creatures. (As an example of this, it’s invalid to target a corpse with a buff spell like bless or enhance ability - something you might otherwise want to do if you know a revivify is coming after.)
Danse Macabre, similarly targets “five corpses” - which probably doesn’t count as “you”
I would count “Summon Planar Ally to raise you” as someone else doing it, the same way I’d count “paying the party cleric to raise you”
These ones I think pass muster.
It’s probably possible to raise yourself from the dead with Magic Jar. If your body is dead, and you’re possessing something else, you can cast an appropriate spell, then action surge and use that action to leave the body you’re possessing within the same turn, and most people would allow you to say that was “simultaneous” with completing the spell.
Finger of death is absolutely fine.
Anti magic fields suppress magic. Spells that are instantaneous, but make something that still has ongoing magical effects (e.g. a magic item) are usually suppressed by anti-magic fields or targeted dispel magic. This part of the game is very variable by DM, so you pretty much have to check with the DM of your game how it works there. However, if your DM is suppressing ongoing magical effects, many of the effects that animate something and give you control would suppress the control, and maybe even the animation… 5e is ambiguous enough with rulings that what happens then is somewhat up to the DM to define.
I mean, if we’re getting very strict about RAW revivify does target a creature†, not the corpse of a creature. (Most DMs I know don’t make you hunt them down in the afterlife, or cast animate objects on their body first, but if we’re picking at technicalities I think I’m on solid footing.)
On the philosophical note, if your corpse doesn’t have the identity “you”, there’d be no way to raise “you” “yourself”. Though your objections to clone and planar ally counting as “raising yourself” are valid, but potentially debatable. I think it mostly comes down to how you define it.
The magic jar trick doesn’t rely on getting back into your body on the same turn, but even if it did, you could just push the jar off a shelf as a free interaction and break it to end the spell and return to your body. No Action Surge required.
I’m also well aware of how antimagic fields work, and (as with all aspects of the game) that it’s DM dependent. But online discussions that attempt to account for varying DM interpretations aren’t usually constructive, since some DMs can disagree about anything. I’m basing this position on the literal rules as written, and the interpretation of this very question by the official Sage Advice Compendium.
(i.e. )
However, many of the control effects depend on telepathy, which according to the Monster Manual, is explicitly magical. So I agree, antimagic fields could potentially suppress control with some methods of reanimation. Dispel magic is pretty nerfed in 5e though, and only spells or things that specify they’re affected by dispel magic are dispelled or suppressed.
†Albeit with some qualifiers, but still a creature rather than an object. Which now that I’m considering it means I think the spell qualifies on a technicality for glyph of warding as well, but the “[…] it targets the creature that triggered the glyph.” clause might cause it to fail if you’re an object at the time it’s triggered.
Yeah, the fact that revivify targets “a creature” is… really weird. It’s probably one of those situations where WotC wrote something inconsistent with the rest of their rulings and metaphysics (a corpse is never a creature, so under super strict RAW revivify can never actually do anything) - and rather than errata it to “the corpse of a creature” they’re just behaving like the wording is intentional.
For most purposes, it’s pretty obvious how it’s intended to work, so it’s sort of fine. But it irks me all the same.
I think there’s a difference between the philosophical concept of “you” (which for me means the holistic construct of your body, your soul, and your experiences and thoughts and personality) and “your corpse” (which for me means a sack of meat and bones.) - different people might differ on this though.
Sage Advice has some tangential stuff on whether or not a summon you create counts as “you” doing something that might be helpful for whether summon planar ally (or summon celestial etc) counts as “you” doing something - specifically they’ve said that if you cast a spell like “summon celestial” and it goes and attacks someone, that doesn’t break an ongoing sanctuary spell on you, even though it’s using your spell attack modifier. I’m not sure I super agree with Crawford on this point in the wider sense (he said that spirit guardians wouldn’t break sanctuary!!!) - but it’s an interesting data point on what counts as “stuff you do”
In general, my recommendation with any of this stuff is to talk to your DM, because the metaphysics of 5e aren’t really explicit enough for anyone to predict how their DM interprets them, and this idea is flangy enough that you’re gonna want to talk it over before trying it :)
Oh I forgot to talk about dispel magic. You’re correct that in RAW, dispel magic only ends spells.
However… it’s a common ruling of DMs that dispel magic can suppress ongoing non-spell magical effects or the effects of items etc. This is also backed up by a myriad of examples in published adventures where there’s some ongoing magical effect, and the book says “if you cast dispel magic on this, it stops the effect for a while” - including things like magical wards, traps, items etc etc. So… the rules don’t say that anything would happen, but the wider set of examples in adventures implies that something could happen, and it’s up to the DM what they want to do with this.
This is one of the areas where the strict RAW has never remotely resembled what I’ve seen at tables, both at my own and online or in shows.
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The RAW rules actually allow you a myriad of ways to “raise yourself from the dead”.
The whole concept of liches is basically raising yourself from the dead.
Also of note; Most reanimation spells (animate dead, create undead, raise dead, etc…) are instantaneous and can’t be ended by an antimagic field or dispel magic. (The same can’t always be said for a creator’s control. The creature(s) these spells create usually don’t die/cease to be animated when the creator’s control ends either though.)
I imagine the contingency + danse macabre version, or a variant of this, is what /u/[email protected] what thinking of, since it would break with loss of concentration.
Not all of these work, sadly - if you’re being very strict about RAW. - however many of these would work fine as the explanation for this with a DM who was willing to bend the rules a little to allow you to play the concept.
These ones I think pass muster.
Anti magic fields suppress magic. Spells that are instantaneous, but make something that still has ongoing magical effects (e.g. a magic item) are usually suppressed by anti-magic fields or targeted dispel magic. This part of the game is very variable by DM, so you pretty much have to check with the DM of your game how it works there. However, if your DM is suppressing ongoing magical effects, many of the effects that animate something and give you control would suppress the control, and maybe even the animation… 5e is ambiguous enough with rulings that what happens then is somewhat up to the DM to define.
I mean, if we’re getting very strict about RAW revivify does target a creature†, not the corpse of a creature. (Most DMs I know don’t make you hunt them down in the afterlife, or cast animate objects on their body first, but if we’re picking at technicalities I think I’m on solid footing.)
On the philosophical note, if your corpse doesn’t have the identity “you”, there’d be no way to raise “you” “yourself”. Though your objections to clone and planar ally counting as “raising yourself” are valid, but potentially debatable. I think it mostly comes down to how you define it.
The magic jar trick doesn’t rely on getting back into your body on the same turn, but even if it did, you could just push the jar off a shelf as a free interaction and break it to end the spell and return to your body. No Action Surge required.
I’m also well aware of how antimagic fields work, and (as with all aspects of the game) that it’s DM dependent. But online discussions that attempt to account for varying DM interpretations aren’t usually constructive, since some DMs can disagree about anything. I’m basing this position on the literal rules as written, and the interpretation of this very question by the official Sage Advice Compendium.
(i.e.
)
However, many of the control effects depend on telepathy, which according to the Monster Manual, is explicitly magical. So I agree, antimagic fields could potentially suppress control with some methods of reanimation. Dispel magic is pretty nerfed in 5e though, and only spells or things that specify they’re affected by dispel magic are dispelled or suppressed.
†Albeit with some qualifiers, but still a creature rather than an object. Which now that I’m considering it means I think the spell qualifies on a technicality for glyph of warding as well, but the “[…] it targets the creature that triggered the glyph.” clause might cause it to fail if you’re an object at the time it’s triggered.
Yeah, the fact that revivify targets “a creature” is… really weird. It’s probably one of those situations where WotC wrote something inconsistent with the rest of their rulings and metaphysics (a corpse is never a creature, so under super strict RAW revivify can never actually do anything) - and rather than errata it to “the corpse of a creature” they’re just behaving like the wording is intentional.
For most purposes, it’s pretty obvious how it’s intended to work, so it’s sort of fine. But it irks me all the same.
I think there’s a difference between the philosophical concept of “you” (which for me means the holistic construct of your body, your soul, and your experiences and thoughts and personality) and “your corpse” (which for me means a sack of meat and bones.) - different people might differ on this though.
Sage Advice has some tangential stuff on whether or not a summon you create counts as “you” doing something that might be helpful for whether summon planar ally (or summon celestial etc) counts as “you” doing something - specifically they’ve said that if you cast a spell like “summon celestial” and it goes and attacks someone, that doesn’t break an ongoing sanctuary spell on you, even though it’s using your spell attack modifier. I’m not sure I super agree with Crawford on this point in the wider sense (he said that spirit guardians wouldn’t break sanctuary!!!) - but it’s an interesting data point on what counts as “stuff you do”
In general, my recommendation with any of this stuff is to talk to your DM, because the metaphysics of 5e aren’t really explicit enough for anyone to predict how their DM interprets them, and this idea is flangy enough that you’re gonna want to talk it over before trying it :)
Perfect.
Oh I forgot to talk about dispel magic. You’re correct that in RAW, dispel magic only ends spells.
However… it’s a common ruling of DMs that dispel magic can suppress ongoing non-spell magical effects or the effects of items etc. This is also backed up by a myriad of examples in published adventures where there’s some ongoing magical effect, and the book says “if you cast dispel magic on this, it stops the effect for a while” - including things like magical wards, traps, items etc etc. So… the rules don’t say that anything would happen, but the wider set of examples in adventures implies that something could happen, and it’s up to the DM what they want to do with this.
This is one of the areas where the strict RAW has never remotely resembled what I’ve seen at tables, both at my own and online or in shows.