[3e] Protecting Your Soul

[MaxiDuRaritry]

There are lots of ways to protect your mind and body in D&D, from energy resistance to mind blank, but I only know of one way to actually protect your soul, and that's the lich's phylactery -- its soul-hidey-place-thingy. You actually remove your soul and place it in a container, which can then be buffed up and hidden. There have been threads upon threads on how to protect one's phylactery, which a quick Google search turns up pretty well.

This thread isn't about the phylactery, however.

This thread is about how to prevent your soul from being removed, corrupted, devoured, or destroyed. What resources are available for that? I honestly have no idea.

[Âmesang]

Play a soulless creature. :smalltongue: You can't destroy what doesn't exist.

[sleepyphoenixx]

In PF there's the Iron Circlet of Guarded Souls, which protects not only your soul but also blocks divinations (as Nondetection, only with no check). It's quite the useful item for 30,000gp.

There may be something similar in 3.5, but if so i don't recall it.
Not that that means anything. My knowledge of 3.5 items may be pretty good, but it's hardly complete.
And attacks that target the soul are both rare and in quite a few cases explicitly blocked by Death Ward (but not all of them).

[Telonius]

Away from the books right now, but I believe there was an item in the Fiend Folio (under the Shadar Kai entry) called the Gal-Ralan that helped keep Shadar Kai's souls attached to their bodies. I can't remember if it offers similar soul protection to non-Shadar Kai.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Hmm. Most outsiders' and elementals' souls are their bodies. I imagine that anything that protects their bodies protects their souls. However, it still doesn't help with things like trap the soul and the like.


Play a soulless creature. :smalltongue: You can't destroy what doesn't exist.This could work if I was playing as myself, but...


In PF there's the Iron Circlet of Guarded Souls, which protects not only your soul but also blocks divinations (as Nondetection, only with no check). It's quite the useful item for 30,000gp.

There may be something similar in 3.5, but if so i don't recall it.
Not that that means anything. My knowledge of 3.5 items may be pretty good, but it's hardly complete.

And attacks that target the soul are both rare and in quite a few cases explicitly blocked by Death Ward (but not all of them).This is pretty much perfect, except for the Pathfinder part. I'll see what I can do about that.


Away from the books right now, but I believe there was an item in the Fiend Folio (under the Shadar Kai entry) called the Gal-Ralan that helped keep Shadar Kai's souls attached to their bodies. I can't remember if it offers similar soul protection to non-Shadar Kai.Ooh. Ouch. Shadar kai have it rough.

[Telonius]

Ooh. Ouch. Shadar kai have it rough.

Yeah, they do - It deals Con damage to wear it.

(Just in case you were wondering, I don't actually have the Fiend Folio memorized. I sent a few Shadar Kai after my players a couple sessions ago, so it's kind of fresh in my mind :smallbiggrin:).

[Zaq]

There's the Pure Soul feat in Heroes of Horror. It protects you specifically from taint rather than generally from soul-attacking effects, but it still seems like a good starting point.

Part of the problem is that there are relatively few things that specifically go after the soul, and therefore there are relatively few things that specifically protect against those effects. I mean, if you come up with a specific list of effects you want to protect against (e.g., thinaun weapons, Trap The Soul, demiliches, etc.), we might be able to find individual counters for most or all of them, but I don't know of anything that provides general-purpose soul protection.

I mean, you might take one of those feats that pledges your soul to some fiend or another, so if someone who isn't that fiend tries to do bad things to your soul, that fiend might decide to defend what is "rightfully theirs," but that seems like a fluff solution to a crunch problem. (Plus, then you still owe your soul to that fiend, which may or may not actually be the best thing for you.)

[Werephilosopher]

Not very practical to get, but deities of divine rank 6+ are immune to "effects that imprison or banish them," including soul bind and trap the soul.

[Jowgen]

I feel like the line between soul-affecting and mind-affecting is rather annoyingly blurry, especially where fluff and crunch collide.

For example, look at the Mindvault item in MIC. It's got magic jar as a pre-requ and everything about its functions screams "soul-hidey thing"; yet as written it only works against mind-affecting effects.

On the other hand, a lot of effects that are specifically meant to corrup the soul are actually mind-affecting, in that they usually result in things like permanent eternal confusion/insanity/feeblemind/amnesia.

Then, according to EttDWP; Lolth's Demonweb is surrounded by a soul-sucking fog... which, as written, does in no way bother intelligent undead due to allowing a fort-save. Don't get me started on what it's supposed to do to things lacking a dual nature.

Soul-affecting is almost as much of a rule-wise trainwreck as alignment-affecting.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

In PF there's the Iron Circlet of Guarded Souls, which protects not only your soul but also blocks divinations (as Nondetection, only with no check). It's quite the useful item for 30,000gp....You know, since most non-native outsiders' souls are also their bodies, the iron circlet should make them invulnerable to physical harm.

[Occasional Sage]

In PF there's the Iron Circlet of Guarded Souls, which protects not only your soul but also blocks divinations (as Nondetection, only with no check). It's quite the useful item for 30,000gp.


Source splat please?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Source splat please?http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/h-l/iron-circlet-of-guarded-souls

[Occasional Sage]

Thanks! Shoulda thought to look at the srd footnotes.

[atemu1234]

I feel like the line between soul-affecting and mind-affecting is rather annoyingly blurry, especially where fluff and crunch collide.

For example, look at the Mindvault item in MIC. It's got magic jar as a pre-requ and everything about its functions screams "soul-hidey thing"; yet as written it only works against mind-affecting effects.

On the other hand, a lot of effects that are specifically meant to corrup the soul are actually mind-affecting, in that they usually result in things like permanent eternal confusion/insanity/feeblemind/amnesia.

Then, according to EttDWP; Lolth's Demonweb is surrounded by a soul-sucking fog... which, as written, does in no way bother intelligent undead due to allowing a fort-save. Don't get me started on what it's supposed to do to things lacking a dual nature.

Soul-affecting is almost as much of a rule-wise trainwreck as alignment-affecting.

Things lacking a Dual nature have a soul, still, but it's simply not separate from the body.