List of ageless monsters

[Nettlekid]

A campaign I'm in the process of planning involves a pocket world where multiple instances of 30,000 years go by in moments as compared to the outside world, and the purpose of that pocket world is to be a power source by draining life energy from the residents inside, so the creator wants the residents to live as long as they can. The main residents are Killoren, Elan, and Warforged, since those are the three main races I can think of which don't die of old age. But for the sake of the players, who I don't want to force to fight dozens of differently statted Killoren, Elan, and Warforged, what other monsters are there that don't die of old age? Undead, Constructs, Elementals, and Outsiders (right?) all come to mind, so anything of those creature types fits the bill. Any other specific creatures? I'd like them even if they do die but only after around 7500-10000 years or so. So even Dragons are too short-lived. If you can think of a way certain creatures could stay alive that long (like a Phasm shapeshifting into younger forms maybe, or any sort of body-swapping monster (but only one that didn't rely on non-ageless bodies, since those won't be around)) that would work too.

[Tvtyrant]

Aboleths are my favorite immortals. They eventually grow to colossal size if given billions of years of life, but they never die from old age.

[Nettlekid]

Aboleths are my favorite immortals. They eventually grow to colossal size if given billions of years of life, but they never die from old age.

Bingo, perfect ageless creature. I can imagine a Jabu-Jabu dungeon inside an enormous Aboleth. (Maybe I should up the lifespan of the bubble universe from 30,000 years to 30,000,000,000 years? Be a bit more impressive.) I suspected there might be some Aberrations that were ageless, but hadn't looked into it.

[Erik Vale]

Anything with the wedded to history feat from Dragon Mag [Force it as a level 1 feat, have a race of pawns of fate or some such].

Outsiders as said, some of which are available as LA 0 Races. Constructs and undead also work, but the number of sentient constructs is low without specific spells, and undead are undead with many of the lesser ones are mindless.

However, I'd just take anything that doesn't have a stated lifespan and say it lives to infinity.


Also, just because compared to the outside world everything inside is short lived, doesn't mean people on the inside don't see time as flowing normally, so there's no reason to not have the usual bevy of creatures.

[holywhippet]

Do trolls die of old age? With their natural regeneration power I'd not have thought so.

[Nettlekid]

Anything with the wedded to history feat from Dragon Mag [Force it as a level 1 feat, have a race of pawns of fate or some such].

Outsiders as said, some of which are available as LA 0 Races. Constructs and undead also work, but the number of sentient constructs is low without specific spells, and undead are undead with many of the lesser ones are mindless.

However, I'd just take anything that doesn't have a stated lifespan and say it lives to infinity.


Also, just because compared to the outside world everything inside is short lived, doesn't mean people on the inside don't see time as flowing normally, so there's no reason to not have the usual bevy of creatures.

I'd prefer to stay away from Dragon Mag stuff. And I don't really care about LA, because I'm just trying to think of monsters for the party to fight, not actually play as.

And yes, people on the inside see time flowing as normal, but there is a reason that the creatures within need to be basically immortal. The bubble universe was created by a Phane who, instead of using Stasis Touch to trap individual victims and make a year pass as a round for them, trapped a whole city and isn't draining them continuously, but is/has/will (time travel and all) harvest that bubble universe's entropy when it reaches heat death. It was really hard to make, and even though he can have as much time go by in it as he likes, because it only exists once he can only harvest it once. As a result, he wants the most bang for his buck, and has stocked it with immortal races that'll live until somehow society collapses, as opposed to just dying out somehow. Feasibly the creatures could be shorter lived, but the Phane wants to hedge his bets and rely on the agelessness of the citizens creating a deliciously juicy blob of entropy. The PCs are going to have to go in and by virtue of a time machine, ruin the universe until it ends up robbing the Phane of all his powers.

[Waker]

How about things like Phoenix or Phoelarch? They are technically immortal since they keep reincarnating.

[Nettlekid]

How about things like Phoenix or Phoelarch? They are technically immortal since they keep reincarnating.

I could work with that. Basically, anything which it's reasonable to say would not be harmfully affected by the passage of time. Phoenixes work well in that. Though I don't know how to make them into monsters that will oppose the party, unless maybe something's using them somehow.

Also, unrelated to the topic but related to the plot of the campaign, can anyone think of a way or reason that, by the PC's actions, the bubble universe will either cease to be stable and break down or in some other way not end up as the Phane wishes? I'm giving them the ability to change stuff (the mini-universe's time self regulates, so killing a dictator as a baby will just make someone else become the same dictator, but killing them moments before they rise to power makes that crisis averted) but I'm not sure how it will end up ruining the Phane's plans, unless they just outright kill everyone in the bubble universe, and I think I don't want that to happen. (Bonus points if you can think of a reason that shouldn't happen, beyond "Well it's probably bad to kill everyone ever.")

[Waker]

Well, how about having some kind of anchor or antenna that is stabilizing the pocket plane? If the doodad gets broken, the connection to the Phane is cut off, the planar barriers get all wobbly and the place get subsumed back into the Material Plane.

[holywhippet]

Aboleths are my favorite immortals. They eventually grow to colossal size if given billions of years of life, but they never die from old age.

What's the source on that? It's not stated in the monster manual.

[Aegis013]

What's the source on that? It's not stated in the monster manual.

I believe it's in the Aboleth chapter of Lords of Madness, the book about Aboleths, Mind-Flayers, and Beholders.

Edit: At least the part about the being ageless. Supposedly they survived the collapse of a previous universe and survived into the present one. Uncertain about the colossal growth thing, but wouldn't be surprised.

[Nettlekid]

Well, how about having some kind of anchor or antenna that is stabilizing the pocket plane? If the doodad gets broken, the connection to the Phane is cut off, the planar barriers get all wobbly and the place get subsumed back into the Material Plane.

But that's a bit too...normal. Like, that boils down the mission to "hunt down the stabilizer and destroy it," when I want to incorporate time travel between eras of this pocket world and stuff. I want to set up some Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask type puzzles (which I could also use help with, by the way.) But I don't know how solving those puzzles would end up cutting off the Phane's power.

Here's the sort of setup of the campaign I've planned so far.Because ____, the PCs are collected to stop this threat. Meet the Phane, who uses time shenanigans to know all the PC's strengths and counter them. Source of Phane's power is a city locked out of time. Instead of eating the potential of the future, where a year in the city passes in a single round, the Phane reversed the temporal dilation so he could harvest the city's entropy. He does this when the city's bubble universe ends. From the point of view of the city, their own universe begins at some point and carries on for thousands of years, then terminates, and that's the end of it. From the point of view of the PCs, after the end of the universe it loops back to the beginning, in a time loop. However, because each “beginning” and “end” is the same one, the Phane can only harvest this city once. Thus, he has ensured that three immortal races populate the city, perpetuating the buildup of entropy to the highest potential. Every instance of the Phane's past, present, and future is powered by the harvesting of this one city. To prevent it from ripening would mean that not only will the Phane lose his power, but he will never have had it.
They seek the monastic order of the Zerth Cenobites, psionic monks who have learned to flow with time. In their possession is a relic from the lost city, a dais whose coding key is lost, but is locked to three distinct time frames, each one million years apart, plus probably a bit of "decline of one" and "rise of the next" thrown in. The dais also has the capability to lower a Quintessence Veil to keep its occupants in stasis for a pre-programmed amount of time, but always forward, never backward. In fact, the dais is incapable of moving backward in time at all. However, it is a constant between the end of the universe and the beginning, so that if you are in stasis at the end of the universe then time will reset and you will be at the beginning of it. In this way, it appears to travel both back and forth in time, since to travel to the year 500 from 2 million you can remain in stasis for a million years, the universe resets, and you wait another 500 years to your destination time. The three eras are the Era of the Earth, the era of the wild and nature as populated by Killoren; the Era of the Mind, the era of flesh and blood as populated by Elan; and the Era of Steel, the era of machinery and urbanization as populated by Warforged.
This method significantly reduces paradoxes. Every moment in the universe's 3 million year long history is predetermined by the past cycles, so barring external interaction, each iteration is identical. Before the PCs, there was no external interaction. Now there can be. The universe begins by using the blueprints of the dead universe. If something occurs, the newly formed universe changes to make it occur. For example, if in the year 11500 a great tyrant leader rises to power, but earlier in time the PCs kill the leader, there are two options. One is that, if the PCs kill the leader too far in the past, then the universe can fix the error by assigning the role of tyrant leader to another creature, rectifying the error like closing a small wound without a scar. But if the stage is set for a specific creature to become that tyrant leader, and the PCs kill that creature, then the universe can only accept that there was never meant to be a tyrant leader, and future iterations of the universe will not contain that tyrant leader in any form. Similarly, if the PCs create an artifact that didn't exist originally, there are two options. Either they created it long enough before the end of the universe that it could be destroyed, and the universe doesn't have to deal with it, or they make it late enough/keep it safe enough that the universe has to alter itself to enable the artifact to be created in its next iterations, without the players' actions. Making small and big changes like this, the players can shape the world, and hopefully break the cycle enough that the Phane can no longer use it.

[Waker]

But that's a bit too...normal. Like, that boils down the mission to "hunt down the stabilizer and destroy it," when I want to incorporate time travel between eras of this pocket world and stuff. I want to set up some Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask type puzzles (which I could also use help with, by the way.) But I don't know how solving those puzzles would end up cutting off the Phane's power.

Well, I just used that as a lazy example. How about the Phane only managed this shenanigan with imprisoning the city due to a exploiting a loophole in a prophecy? If the players want the break the Phane's grip on the plane, they just need to see said prophecy through to it's fruition. So maybe the legend went something like, " Golden <City> lays twixt Beginning and End, awaiting the Herald". But the ancestors of the Herald died out, so they gotta go into the past and save this dude's great-granpappy. He also needs an electric boogaloo if he's gonna make everyone happy, but those weren't invented yet, so time for a quick jaunt to the future.

[Nettlekid]

Well, I just used that as a lazy example. How about the Phane only managed this shenanigan with imprisoning the city due to a exploiting a loophole in a prophecy? If the players want the break the Phane's grip on the plane, they just need to see said prophecy through to it's fruition. So maybe the legend went something like, " Golden <City> lays twixt Beginning and End, awaiting the Herald". But the ancestors of the Herald died out, so they gotta go into the past and save this dude's great-granpappy. He also needs an electric boogaloo if he's gonna make everyone happy, but those weren't invented yet, so time for a quick jaunt to the future.

........I LOVE IT. I was so hung up on trying to think of what WAS happening that the players could prevent from happening, that I never thought of what WASN'T happening that the players could make happen! Perhaps the energy needed to power whatever is keeping the bubble universe stable is derived from a paradox that the Phane has personally ensured keeps self-replicating through the iterations of the universe, and in undoing that paradox and bringing things together, the players break it!

Perhaps that's what the three main races of Killoren, Elan, and Warforged are for. I was liking the idea of immortal races living across millions of years, but it was always bugging me that "how do I get one race to decline and one to rise if they have no reason to die out?" But this is perfect: The Phane ensures that the Killoren die and the Elan take over, and then the Elan die and the Warforged take over. In order to break the bubble, the PCs have to ensure that these three immortal races make it from the beginning of time to the end, together. Brilliant, and it helps work in some other stuff I was thinking about.

[John Longarrow]

Depending on your preference, you could use the "Fey are immortal/reborn with the seasons" angles. This tends to be in folk tradition, not spelled out in the rules, but it would add a lot of diversity.

You could also have the players find out how the Phane created the bubble in the first place, then go back in time to before he made it to stop it from being created. Maybe they made the original prophecy they need to complete?

[mabriss lethe]

I would suggest utilizing the deepspawn from forgotten realms.

If they eat a creature, they can then clone it ad infinitum.

[Nettlekid]

Depending on your preference, you could use the "Fey are immortal/reborn with the seasons" angles. This tends to be in folk tradition, not spelled out in the rules, but it would add a lot of diversity.

You could also have the players find out how the Phane created the bubble in the first place, then go back in time to before he made it to stop it from being created. Maybe they made the original prophecy they need to complete?

Oh yeah, forgot about that for Fey. I'm divided, but I'd say that some (like Dryads) could definitely be ageless. That'll work well.

And the problem with that is that they can only time travel within the bubble, by using the continually looping time. So there's no way they can go either "before" the bubble, or back in time anywhere outside of the bubble.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I did not see anyone mention elan. They are explicitly ageless.

[Zanos]

I did not see anyone mention elan. They are explicitly ageless.
Nettle mentioned them in his original post.

This is kind of weird, but there's a PrC in one of the Dragon's called Incantifier. They basically feed off of magic to stay alive and become pretty withered looking. They're not undead, though.