Shut up yer trap!

[EldritchWeaver]

I need a method to prevent that a certain piece information is spread around by a certain individual. This needs to be done in a way that no one else can get access to that information easily after that sealing. It needs to hold up a few decades and at least resist someone else poking around because they are curious, assuming they can find the individual. If this work even on demi-gods, the better. There is Paizo + SoP + PoW available, although I won't mind to grab an effect from another subsystem, if necessary.

[Geddy2112]

You could cast lost legacy and make the creature indirectly exiled. Imprisonment would banish the creature so it could not tell anyone. Feebleminding the creature would make it unable to speak and even express the thing it knows, but could be reversed. Baleful polymorph would do the same. You could cast modify memory to erase the knowledge, then cast it again to get it back.

I think wish or miracle would be more than able to do this, as not only could they mimic these spells but they could also just say "this person cannot speak of this event, even under torture etc"

[Sagetim]

If you're not afraid of being evil, then soul trap them and use their soul to craft a magic spell scroll, then cast the spell off the scroll. Then laugh maniacally and twirl your moustache.

[Ellrin]

There are some psychic and mesmerist spells—possibly other occult classes as well, though I'm not as familiar with their spell lists—that affect memories. The mesmerist's capstone is essentially a permanent dominate monster—except it's (Su), so it can't be dispelled.

I'm sure there's some ways to do something along these lines through psionics, too, though I haven't looked at DSP's conversion yet.

[ATHATH]

3.0/3.5 has the Forbidden Speech spell, although you'd need to cast it twice- once for whatever you're planning, and a second time so that they can't tell anyone else that they've been cursed.

Alternatively, wouldn't a Geas spell (or a variant of it) work?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Surgery, remove the memory center.






Then track down every high level cleric in the world that can heal the damage (or resurrect a cleric that can) and kill them.

[EisenKreutzer]

Surgery, remove the memory center.






Then track down every high level cleric in the world that can heal the damage (or resurrect a cleric that can) and kill them.

Thats very specific medical knowledge for a character in a fantasy setting to have.
If we go by medieval medical knowledge, won't most people think the mind resides in the heart?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Thats very specific medical knowledge for a character in a fantasy setting to have.
If we go by medieval medical knowledge, won't most people think the mind resides in the heart?

In fact, it's very specific knowledge to have today. I think we can create people that don't make any new memories, because we did that on accident ones, but erasing old ones?

I was going to suggest killing him but then I remembered this was D&D, so nuh-uh, and decided just to go for a weird option.

[Korahir]

In fact, it's very specific knowledge to have today. I think we can create people that don't make any new memories, because we did that on accident ones, but erasing old ones?

I was going to suggest killing him but then I remembered this was D&D, so nuh-uh, and decided just to go for a weird option.

OT: It's close to impossible to erase old memories by surgery or any other mean I can think of. I am not a neuroscientist but I feel like a I have a solid grasp of the brain functions we decoded so far and I am not aware of any method that altered memories reliably.


On topic: Mindrape?

[Sagetim]

OT: It's close to impossible to erase old memories by surgery or any other mean I can think of. I am not a neuroscientist but I feel like a I have a solid grasp of the brain functions we decoded so far and I am not aware of any method that altered memories reliably.


On topic: Mindrape?


I mean, we've been giving a lot of high level spell suggestions (also Mind Rape, the vile spell from Book of Vile Darkness would probably do just fine for this), so to break from this line of thought: How about alcohol? Like, pretend to be their friend and beguile them with a little charm magic while they are drunk and just keep the booze and party flowing (from their perspective). Eventually they will forget, because eventually they will have so much brain (and liver) damage that they won't be able to remember. Then, then you kill them. That way when someone interrogates their corpse with speak with the dead, they get the answers of a drunken sot, or summons their ghost for interrogation they get a man who went to the booze afterlife of booze and shows up as a drunken ghost who rambles on about how nice squirrels are or how soft cats are or something.

If possible, get them to die of old age as well, so that they can't be raised, ressurected, etc. And to make things harder (or impossible) cremate the body and use it to fertilize your garden, then have wild animals eat the garden and wander off.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If possible, get them to die of old age as well

Quick aging potion. Someone really needs to invent that.

[ATHATH]

Quick aging potion. Someone really needs to invent that.
Can't Bestow Curse do that? I seem to remember an alternate option for it that would let you age your victims.

[ATHATH]

There's a handbook on how to permanently kill people, IIRC.

[Sagetim]

Shackled to a wall with no tongue, ears, eyes, a ring of sustenance and an amulet of health (because dying prematurely of disease is a nono) possibly combo'd with a necklace of adaptation so you can bury them in a coffin and leave them to literally just die of old age while buried in an unmarked grave. Sure, it's expensive on magic items, but it's doable for people who aren't full casters and still need someone to take their secrets beyond the grave.


Oh, right, and back on the high level spell bandwagon: Unname. From the Tome of Magic comes one of the most powerful arcane spells in the game, where you erase someone from existence by speaking their true name and then hitting the delete button. Requires ranks in Truenaming, but as a wizard it's not a terrible investment (a feat to make it a class skill, and enough ranks to craft a buffing item to catapult you up to being able to speak your target truenames consistently).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Shackled to a wall with no tongue, ears, eyes, a ring of sustenance and an amulet of health (because dying prematurely of disease is a nono) possibly combo'd with a necklace of adaptation so you can bury them in a coffin and leave them to literally just die of old age while buried in an unmarked grave. Sure, it's expensive on magic items, but it's doable for people who aren't full casters and still need someone to take their secrets beyond the grave.

Might need some anti scrying additions if anyone is looking for them, but otherwise this should probably work. There are some more side notes, like how they need to stay tied up well enough over all these years that they can't get the ring off. But those come with solutions like stitching their fingers together after putting the ring on (and hoping the amulet doesn't heal body modifications like that).

Kind of really evil though, of course...

[Sagetim]

Might need some anti scrying additions if anyone is looking for them, but otherwise this should probably work. There are some more side notes, like how they need to stay tied up well enough over all these years that they can't get the ring off. But those come with solutions like stitching their fingers together after putting the ring on (and hoping the amulet doesn't heal body modifications like that).

Kind of really evil though, of course...

I mean, you can solve that problem by packing them in a coffin full of dirt. If they can't move, they can't get the ring off. Alternatively, install the ring on their rib and heal the wound over so that the bone is fused back into place. The point isn't to leave them in comfort, it's to keep them form conveying secrets, even by chance or interrogation.

Oh, if you have a truenamer available, you could also potentially have the truenamer transform your weapon into a special material that traps the soul of anyone killed by it, then when the weapon ceases to be that material because the truenaming effect ended, you may well have caused that person's soul to cease existing due to a null error. After all, you have to break the item to free the soul, use the soul in some way (including raising it) or kill something else with the weapon, in which case that target's soul boots the old one out to get a soul out of one of those weapons.

That requires your DM to rule that it works that way though, since I imagine some would say 'no, the soul is freed because.' But yeah, if the person you are burying isn't the protagonist of kill bill, you can bury them in a dirt filled coffin with some magic items on your mage's sanctum'd land to prevent anyone from scrying out the location. Why, you could even bury them under your floor, paving over the area where the hole was dug with a foundation and brick work. You Might have an angry ghost to deal with, eventually, by going this route, but they'll not be dying of pretty much anything down there as long as they can breathe, their nutrition is met, and they are immmune to disease. It will probably drive them pretty crazy too, so that makes the information you're trying to keep safe rather suspect if they even manage to articulate it.

For bonus points, try to combine the effects of a ring of sustenance with an everfull mug, so that the person wearing the ring is always buzzed/drunk.

Edit: this may qualify the ring to count as a cursed variant of a ring of sustenance, so that's just extra bonus points for you, since the person in question now literally cannot remove the ring, since they lack the ability to still and silent remove curse the ring from their person.

Edit 2: plot twist, the person you do this has all the time in the world to pray to caydien, pathfinder god of drunken orgies and adventuring, and through fevered devotion and literally having nothing else to do while stuck in the box, manages to get enough cleric levels to pray up a teleport effect* to escape the box (along with regeneration along the way to get their sensory organs back). Now you have a pissed off, high level cleric who knows your secret and may be a little Too fervently devoted to the god of alcohol and good times gunning for you.

*or lacking teleport, enough damage spells to dig themselves out of the hole by blowing up the ground above them until they can climb out.

[EldritchWeaver]

Sorry for taking so long to answer, I simply didn't manage earlier. To clear up some misunderstandings: I am the GM, so I can decide myself what goes and what doesn't. Also I did have a session with my group, so I do know at least that they won't be interested in an evil option.


You could cast lost legacy and make the creature indirectly exiled. Imprisonment would banish the creature so it could not tell anyone. Feebleminding the creature would make it unable to speak and even express the thing it knows, but could be reversed. Baleful polymorph would do the same. You could cast modify memory to erase the knowledge, then cast it again to get it back.

I think wish or miracle would be more than able to do this, as not only could they mimic these spells but they could also just say "this person cannot speak of this event, even under torture etc"

Lost legacy is too weak to prevent interaction. Imprisonment is nice, but not completely foolproof, considering discern location and wish can provide some hints. But it is on the list Feebleminding is better, except that you need to take care of the person (like feeding). And knowing your friends and enemies is another problem in this case. Baleful polymorph is more interesting. SoP has a variant, which is highly resistant to dispelling. Also it can be applied to a number of shapes, not merely animals. The big question would be, which shape would be appropriate, considering the party might carry the victim around on a flying ship. Modifying the memory crossed my mind, but could be detected. But if you'd combine it with the shapechange, it would be less suspicious.


If you're not afraid of being evil, then soul trap them and use their soul to craft a magic spell scroll, then cast the spell off the scroll. Then laugh maniacally and twirl your moustache.

Where is that rule that you can use souls for magic item creation? Also, I doubt the party would go for this.


There are some psychic and mesmerist spells—possibly other occult classes as well, though I'm not as familiar with their spell lists—that affect memories. The mesmerist's capstone is essentially a permanent dominate monster—except it's (Su), so it can't be dispelled.

Dominate monster isn't good enough.


3.0/3.5 has the Forbidden Speech spell, although you'd need to cast it twice- once for whatever you're planning, and a second time so that they can't tell anyone else that they've been cursed.

Alternatively, wouldn't a Geas spell (or a variant of it) work?

Forbidden Speech might work, but Geas isn't hardened against telepathy.


Surgery, remove the memory center.

Then track down every high level cleric in the world that can heal the damage (or resurrect a cleric that can) and kill them.

Surgery isn't an option, although ironically killing all high level clerics would be. :D


I was going to suggest killing him but then I remembered this was D&D, so nuh-uh, and decided just to go for a weird option.

Resurrection is a bit of a problem.


On topic: Mindrape?

Using that one might be made palatable to the group.


I mean, we've been giving a lot of high level spell suggestions (also Mind Rape, the vile spell from Book of Vile Darkness would probably do just fine for this), so to break from this line of thought: How about alcohol? Like, pretend to be their friend and beguile them with a little charm magic while they are drunk and just keep the booze and party flowing (from their perspective). Eventually they will forget, because eventually they will have so much brain (and liver) damage that they won't be able to remember. Then, then you kill them. That way when someone interrogates their corpse with speak with the dead, they get the answers of a drunken sot, or summons their ghost for interrogation they get a man who went to the booze afterlife of booze and shows up as a drunken ghost who rambles on about how nice squirrels are or how soft cats are or something.

If possible, get them to die of old age as well, so that they can't be raised, ressurected, etc. And to make things harder (or impossible) cremate the body and use it to fertilize your garden, then have wild animals eat the garden and wander off.

The alcohol solution won't work in this case. Getting the victim dead in that way will not been seen acceptable.


Quick aging potion. Someone really needs to invent that.


Can't Bestow Curse do that? I seem to remember an alternate option for it that would let you age your victims.

See above.


There's a handbook on how to permanently kill people, IIRC.

Tried to find it, but to no avail.


Shackled to a wall with no tongue, ears, eyes, a ring of sustenance and an amulet of health (because dying prematurely of disease is a nono) possibly combo'd with a necklace of adaptation so you can bury them in a coffin and leave them to literally just die of old age while buried in an unmarked grave. Sure, it's expensive on magic items, but it's doable for people who aren't full casters and still need someone to take their secrets beyond the grave.

Yikes, that's heavy. Won't be accepted though as solution.


Oh, right, and back on the high level spell bandwagon: Unname. From the Tome of Magic comes one of the most powerful arcane spells in the game, where you erase someone from existence by speaking their true name and then hitting the delete button. Requires ranks in Truenaming, but as a wizard it's not a terrible investment (a feat to make it a class skill, and enough ranks to craft a buffing item to catapult you up to being able to speak your target truenames consistently).

Not sure, if I want introduce trunaming in my setting.


Oh, if you have a truenamer available, you could also potentially have the truenamer transform your weapon into a special material that traps the soul of anyone killed by it, then when the weapon ceases to be that material because the truenaming effect ended, you may well have caused that person's soul to cease existing due to a null error. After all, you have to break the item to free the soul, use the soul in some way (including raising it) or kill something else with the weapon, in which case that target's soul boots the old one out to get a soul out of one of those weapons.

That requires your DM to rule that it works that way though, since I imagine some would say 'no, the soul is freed because.' But yeah, if the person you are burying isn't the protagonist of kill bill, you can bury them in a dirt filled coffin with some magic items on your mage's sanctum'd land to prevent anyone from scrying out the location. Why, you could even bury them under your floor, paving over the area where the hole was dug with a foundation and brick work. You Might have an angry ghost to deal with, eventually, by going this route, but they'll not be dying of pretty much anything down there as long as they can breathe, their nutrition is met, and they are immmune to disease. It will probably drive them pretty crazy too, so that makes the information you're trying to keep safe rather suspect if they even manage to articulate it.

For bonus points, try to combine the effects of a ring of sustenance with an everfull mug, so that the person wearing the ring is always buzzed/drunk.

Edit: this may qualify the ring to count as a cursed variant of a ring of sustenance, so that's just extra bonus points for you, since the person in question now literally cannot remove the ring, since they lack the ability to still and silent remove curse the ring from their person.

Edit 2: plot twist, the person you do this has all the time in the world to pray to caydien, pathfinder god of drunken orgies and adventuring, and through fevered devotion and literally having nothing else to do while stuck in the box, manages to get enough cleric levels to pray up a teleport effect* to escape the box (along with regeneration along the way to get their sensory organs back). Now you have a pissed off, high level cleric who knows your secret and may be a little Too fervently devoted to the god of alcohol and good times gunning for you.

*or lacking teleport, enough damage spells to dig themselves out of the hole by blowing up the ground above them until they can climb out.

Interesting ideas, but those complicate the matter too much. Also a bit too evil for the group. Let's see what option wil be ok for them.

[Ellrin]

Dominate monster isn't good enough.

You don't think that having your victim be a permanently "willing" participant in his own confinement and/or mental mutilation would make things easier?

[unseenmage]

The Programmed Amnesia spell might be exactly what you're looking for.

[Sagetim]

I'm pretty sure there was a 3.5 rule for using souls as an xp component for crafting magic items in the Book of Vile Darkness. I'm not sure if that rule ever made any kind of transition to Pathfinder.

And yeah, most of the ideas I presented are not ethical. Like, at all.

Oh, but there is one solution that would totally be counted as ethical by the alignments standard. From 3.5's Book of Exalted Deeds, there's a Sanctified Spell that redeems villains. So as long as the target is of evil alignment (or was good and had a helm of opposite alignment shoved on their head) you could use that spell to trap the target in an expensive diamond. After a year, they are 'redeemed' including having inherent evil swapped out for inherent good (so you can get a redeemed succubus, a redeemed half fiend, redeemed red dragon, etc). However, you don't need to break the gem after a year's duration. Alternatively, with psionics involved, you could put it in some quintessence a day before the duration completes, then when you're ready to free the person, you take it out of the quintessence, wait the day, then free them from the gem.

Even if they would normally age during their captivity in the gem, being submerged in Quintessence would cease their personal time. Which might actually be another ethical way to preserve the person in a way that their information couldn't be accessed. You would need quite a lot to submerge them though, and some way to get the quintessence off them in a timely manner when you're ready to pull them out (as it can do some wicked deadly damage to those who are only partially covered in it).

Do remember that being stuck outside of time for 50 years or so would probably result in a lot of the person's friends and relatives dying of old age in the interim. But I don't know if that's really a big problem for your group of players, since they're looking to secure the information for some number of decades anyway. If the person volunteers, well, then they have only themselves to blame when their ghost wife comes to haunt them in a few decades and their grand daughter is married to a drow (I dunno, I assume dnd characters might be a little racist about some things).

[Gildedragon]

Knock them out, cover them in quintessence, put them inside a bag of holding, go into a Rope trick, put that BoH into a lead-lined pouch sewn into the inside of an (inactive) BoH.
Done. Out of commission for a good long time

[EldritchWeaver]

You don't think that having your victim be a permanently "willing" participant in his own confinement and/or mental mutilation would make things easier?

It would, but it is a puzzle piece, not the complete set. Telepathy would still work.


The Programmed Amnesia spell might be exactly what you're looking for.

Interesting. Similar to Mindrape, but not [evil].


I'm pretty sure there was a 3.5 rule for using souls as an xp component for crafting magic items in the Book of Vile Darkness. I'm not sure if that rule ever made any kind of transition to Pathfinder.

Using that is a bit too far reaching in consequences for my taste.


And yeah, most of the ideas I presented are not ethical. Like, at all.

Oh, but there is one solution that would totally be counted as ethical by the alignments standard. From 3.5's Book of Exalted Deeds, there's a Sanctified Spell that redeems villains. So as long as the target is of evil alignment (or was good and had a helm of opposite alignment shoved on their head) you could use that spell to trap the target in an expensive diamond. After a year, they are 'redeemed' including having inherent evil swapped out for inherent good (so you can get a redeemed succubus, a redeemed half fiend, redeemed red dragon, etc). However, you don't need to break the gem after a year's duration. Alternatively, with psionics involved, you could put it in some quintessence a day before the duration completes, then when you're ready to free the person, you take it out of the quintessence, wait the day, then free them from the gem.

Even if they would normally age during their captivity in the gem, being submerged in Quintessence would cease their personal time. Which might actually be another ethical way to preserve the person in a way that their information couldn't be accessed. You would need quite a lot to submerge them though, and some way to get the quintessence off them in a timely manner when you're ready to pull them out (as it can do some wicked deadly damage to those who are only partially covered in it).

Do remember that being stuck outside of time for 50 years or so would probably result in a lot of the person's friends and relatives dying of old age in the interim. But I don't know if that's really a big problem for your group of players, since they're looking to secure the information for some number of decades anyway. If the person volunteers, well, then they have only themselves to blame when their ghost wife comes to haunt them in a few decades and their grand daughter is married to a drow (I dunno, I assume dnd characters might be a little racist about some things).

I'm not sure if I like the forced alignment approach as [good] in general, but in this case it is a neutral character, so it doesn't work anyway.


Knock them out, cover them in quintessence, put them inside a bag of holding, go into a Rope trick, put that BoH into a lead-lined pouch sewn into the inside of an (inactive) BoH.
Done. Out of commission for a good long time

Quintessence on the other hand might be a solution. The players expressed concerns about aging the victim after all.