Petrification plots

[Gwaednerth]

I was mucking about with basilisks, and I realised that petrification could make for some pretty fantastic plot-points. Barring something coming along and shattering them, a petrified character is totally preserved until they are restored. That means they could be held in stasis for years, or even centuries, preserving all manner of things from the past. What sort of plots can you see built around restoring a petrified NPC?

Some that I've come up with:
The petrified person, far from being an innocent victim, intentionally allowed themself to be petrified in the hopes that they would outlive some issue

The petrified person carried a disease which, though common in the past, is unknown to modern medicine and peculiarly difficult to cure

The heroes are sent to rescue an NPC's petrified loved one, but when they finally restore the victim enough time has passed that things have become decidedly awkward for the two NPCs (a child being older than a parent, a married couple now being vastly divergent ages, etc)

The petrified person comes from an ancient civilisation and speaks a dead language nobody can understand. He's clearly afraid of something, but nobody knows if it's an ancient threat long passed, an impending doom that has persisted through the ages, or merely terror at how the world has changed.

[DeTess]

These sound interesting, though do remember that the second point could be fixed by any mid-level cleric, and the first step of the fourth one can be solved by any low-level wizard.

Another option is to have the petrified guy as the end-point. Maybe there's this massive civil war going and the PC's hear rumors that a legendary king from the past had himself preserved so that he could aid his people once more in their hour of need.

Or maybe the PC's are in a besieged city and are tasked with finding a mysterious weapon that the cities founders had left behind. When they finally find it it is a simple spell scroll that casts restoration around the entire city, causing all the statues of old heroes to reawaken.

[MesiDoomstalker]

I'm fond of a statue of [insert important person here] is them petrified and had contingencies (usually well beyond the actual spells limitations) to bring themselves back. Nothing like a giant statue coming to life to fight a threat to the city (of course the dude was also a Giant).

[Avigor]

Another (eviler) idea: the PC's get zapped, then wake up years later, and a child they met once who demonstrated magical or psionic talent is now an adult and is asking for their help.

[Vaern]

Temporal Stasis would have effectively the same effect as petrification as far as freezing yourself in time to outlive a crisis, minus the risk of erosion or being shattered. The subject can't be damaged while frozen, so there's no need to worry about being hunted and assassinated.

Suppose the villain is seeking a certain evil artifact. He might decide to make it easier for himself by spreading false lore saying that, should this artifact ever surface, it must be brought immediately to some site called something like "The Vault of the Protector" or something to that effect, where a sleeping hero from some forgotten era may make sure the artifact may do no harm.
A contingency may be placed at his resting place to cast a Dispel or Disjunction to unfreeze him should an artifact pass through the door, at which point he may claim the artifact and dispose of the adventurers that brought it to him and resume his plot for world domination or whatever.

[the_david]

A lycanthrope has petrified himself so he can't do any more harm.

The party finds a petrified man in the lair of a medusa. When they bring him back to life they find out he is the legal heir to the throne who disappeared 50 years ago.

[Bohandas]

*flesh to stone + stone shape + stone flesh = cosmetic surgery

*petrification could potentially take someone out of the picture more reliably than killing them

[Vaern]

*flesh to stone + stone shape + stone flesh = cosmetic surgery

*petrification could potentially take someone out of the picture more reliably than killing them

Killing them, animating them as a zombie, and killing them again does a pretty good job of preventing resurrections.

[Crake]

I'm fond of a statue of [insert important person here] is them petrified and had contingencies (usually well beyond the actual spells limitations) to bring themselves back. Nothing like a giant statue coming to life to fight a threat to the city (of course the dude was also a Giant).

That can easily be solved with craft contingent spell. It's got infinite duration, and even gives examples of contingencies that have sat around unnoticed for ages before being triggered, sounds like it fits the bill pretty well.

[Fizban]

I think it's Dragon Quest 5 that has petrification as part of its main plot (obvious spoilering): you start out playing as a kid, you have a timeskip to adulthood, then another skip when you're petrified by the BBEG- playing as your kid trying to find something to un-petrify you.


The biggest problem with petrification to me, is the way it's normally used. A monster that can petrify things has a bunch of petrified people laying around. Who are they, what can they do? Uh. . . . meh. More precise use of Flesh to Stone is a very simple way of putting people on ice at a far lower level than Temporal Stasis, so you can at least use it only for certain persons. Not that it ever makes sense for someone to go for a petrify rather than a kill unless they specifically want the person alive, so any Flesh to Stone'd plot is actually part of an older plot that failed to complete.

There's also the fact that unlike Disintegrate which kills the person without touching even their clothes, Flesh to Stone also entombs every item they were carrying, magical or otherwise. While there are a couple provisions for finding someone who's been petrified, there aren't any for finding an item that's been petrified with them- or even worse, an item that was in a Bag of Holding that was petrified with them. Even if you can't destroy a major artifact you can hide it in an extradimensional space that can never be accessed again because there are no provisions for removing an item from a petrified person, or that their gear is destroyed by damage incurred while petrified (aside from DM common sens). So even if turning the statue to mud and scattering it makes them count as dead, the Bag isn't destroyed, but the space is cut off. The typical response after that is to Wish for it, but if your enemy has Wishes there's really only one thing that will stop them anyway.

[Bohandas]

I think it's Dragon Quest 5 that has petrification as part of its main plot (obvious spoilering): you start out playing as a kid, you have a timeskip to adulthood, then another skip when you're petrified by the BBEG- playing as your kid trying to find something to un-petrify you.


The biggest problem with petrification to me, is the way it's normally used. A monster that can petrify things has a bunch of petrified people laying around. Who are they, what can they do? Uh. . . . meh. More precise use of Flesh to Stone is a very simple way of putting people on ice at a far lower level than Temporal Stasis, so you can at least use it only for certain persons. Not that it ever makes sense for someone to go for a petrify rather than a kill unless they specifically want the person alive, so any Flesh to Stone'd plot is actually part of an older plot that failed to complete.

There's also the fact that unlike Disintegrate which kills the person without touching even their clothes, Flesh to Stone also entombs every item they were carrying, magical or otherwise. While there are a couple provisions for finding someone who's been petrified, there aren't any for finding an item that's been petrified with them- or even worse, an item that was in a Bag of Holding that was petrified with them. Even if you can't destroy a major artifact you can hide it in an extradimensional space that can never be accessed again because there are no provisions for removing an item from a petrified person, or that their gear is destroyed by damage incurred while petrified (aside from DM common sens). So even if turning the statue to mud and scattering it makes them count as dead, the Bag isn't destroyed, but the space is cut off. The typical response after that is to Wish for it, but if your enemy has Wishes there's really only one thing that will stop them anyway.

Couldn't they chip off the part holding the item and cast stone to flesh on it

[lunaticfringe]

Oh I thought of this I was kicking around a Sandboxy Rage/Fallout meets Niko & the Sword of Light Campaign.

[daremetoidareyo]

It's a pretty clever way to smuggle exotic animal meat as stone...

"Why are these rocks labelled unicorn liver?"
"Because I'm a wizard smuggling unicorn parts?"
*Guard stares intently
"Bwahahahaha! Good one."

[Gwaednerth]

It's a pretty clever way to smuggle exotic animal meat as stone...

"Why are these rocks labelled unicorn liver?"
"Because I'm a wizard smuggling unicorn parts?"
*Guard stares intently
"Bwahahahaha! Good one."

Hahahaha I think you win this thread.

[Rerednaw]

LOL. I read the thread title and thought..."Real estate deals involving statuary parks?" I need a vacation... :)

[daremetoidareyo]

How about a Medusa that charges the uber wealthy and the extra sick to be immortalized in Statue form, until one day when a cure for old age or illness is found. Model it after how people will get their heads Frozen after they die

[Darrin]

I designed my last campaign around a quirk in the flesh to stone rules: a petrified creature no longer registers as "alive" or "dead". This makes divination spells more problematic. If the spell you are casting attempts to target a living creature or the remains of a creature, the spell "fizzles" because that creature/corpse doesn't currently exist in the world. Magic items and equipment carried by the petrified creature are also in an indeterminate "grey area". If you target an object (a statue), you have to either had some sort of contact with the object or have some general idea of what the statue looks like.

The PCs were up against cultists with access to high-level divination spells, including discern location. All the super-important macguffins that the cultists could use to destroy the world were hidden on creatures that were polymorphed into mindless vermin, petrified, and then hidden inside prismatic spheres. So any attempt to find the artifact itself fizzled, and any attempt to find the last person who held the artifact also fizzled. The cultists could try to track down the statue they knew what to look for, but the cultists didn't have that information, and their patron deity wasn't capable of communicating in terms other than "consume 1d3 cultists per round".

[Bohandas]

Was looking back over this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?485471-Buying-Furniture/page2) and came across a relevant old suggestion of mine:

"Moulded ground beef + Flesh to Stone = fancy marble statue"

It's hard to shape stone, but it's easy to shape ground beef. This could make statue-making much easier and faster if you have Flesh To Stone avvailable.