3.PF Keeping Somebody Dead

[Maquise]

I'm mostly interested in Pathfinder, but 3.5 material is a possibility too.

How many ways, available to all alignments, are there to keep a dead person dead? I'm aware of Trap the Soul, and that one ability of the Red Assassin PrC that blocks raising the dead.

[DrBurr]

Why are you trying to stop raise dead? If your the DM and just don't want it in your games just have Raise Dead not be an available spell. Done and now you can worry about other things, or are you just looking for a way to stop the BBEG or something?

[Maquise]

I would like to keep Raise Dead and the likes available, but have a means for both players and NPCs to counter it.

[Slipperychicken]

Raising the body as an undead makes resurrection harder IIRC. You need a true rez to come back from that, and true rez ain't cheap.

You can make a Barghest use its feed ability on the corpse. That gives a 50% chance to destroy the soul IIRC.

You can kill it with a Thinaun weapon (complete warrior) which traps the creature's soul inside. That should even work against craft contingent revivifys. Once you have the soul trapped, you can destroy it in a number of ways (using it as a material component, or to offset craft XP costs), or simply drop the sword into a bag of holding and puncture it.

[jedipotter]

How many ways, available to all alignments, are there to keep a dead person dead? I'm aware of Trap the Soul, and that one ability of the Red Assassin PrC that blocks raising the dead.

The classic is......don't kill them. It is that simple. Raise Dead and the like only work if the person is dead. If they are not dead, the spells are useless. All you really need is to get the person out of the way, you don't need to kill them.

There are plenty of ways to do it:

*Just lock them up, of course. In a secret place.
*Flesh to Stone
*Polymorph
*Sleep

They all get rid of the character, but leave them alive.

If you make the dead creature undead or use [Death Magic], raise dead won't work. For raise dead you also need the dead body.

[duboisjf]

Convincing the target, prior to its death, that it don't need to come back :)

[stack]

I believe pf has an item called quieting needles that are inserted into a corpse. When rezzed, they cause severe pain and I think con damage. Low level and mundane, but interesting.

[The-Mage-King]

Requiem Jar. Magic item from Dragon Compendium, prevents raise or resurrection by turning the body into dust and storing it, with name.

Fairly cheap, too.

[Story]

The easiest method I know of is the little known 3rd level spell Infallible Servant. Despite the name, you can cast it on anyone. It has a one hour cast time and must be cast prior to death so you basically need to capture them alive first, but on the other hand, it's a low level spell accessible to any Wizard (that doesn't mind going to the deep end of the alignment pool).

Infallible Servant blocks all forms of resurrection, even True Resurrection and can only be removed by a Miracle spell. (Though anyone who can cast TR can also cast Miracle, most likely).