Ramifications of an Unkillable Villain

[MysticalSkyWhal]

I'm currently DM'ing a homebrewed sequel campaign to Rise of the Runelords. Said adventure path ended in defeat when the party's warlock revealed himself as a traitor and spy for Karzoug and teamed up with Gamigin the Ice Devil in Xin-Shalast to assassinate the party before they actually got anywhere near Karzoug's tower. The premise of the current campaign is set four years after their defeat. Karzoug has risen to power and summoned an army of giants. The Norse gods took notice of this and resurrected the PCs (it is worth noting that one of the PCs was a high level cleric of Thor) and charged them mostly with ridding the world of the giants' dominance which of course involves killing Karzoug.

However, now that Karzoug is free to walk the world and has vast amounts of resources at his disposal, what's to stop him from making himself effectively unkillable by utilizing the Clone spell and what can the players do about a villain that could not simply be killed? The only ideas I've come up with so far are involving other Runelords (particularly Pride) or using Divine Intervention from the Norse gods...again.

Also on a somewhat unrelated note: The party has little to no protection against scrying magic except the characters' enormously high WIS saves thanks to the Paladin. What's to stop someone like Khalib or Karzoug from using "Scry and Die" tactics?



Alektra - CG Tiefling Wild Magic Sorcerer
Phosphora - CG Human Cleric of Thor
Rantharja - LG Aasimar Paladin of the Ancients (being roleplayed as a Valkyrie)

[FreddyNoNose]

I'm currently DM'ing a homebrewed sequel campaign to Rise of the Runelords. Said adventure path ended in defeat when the party's warlock revealed himself as a traitor and spy for Karzoug and teamed up with Gamigin the Ice Devil in Xin-Shalast to assassinate the party before they actually got anywhere near Karzoug's tower. The premise of the current campaign is set four years after their defeat. Karzoug has risen to power and summoned an army of giants. The Norse gods took notice of this and resurrected the PCs (it is worth noting that one of the PCs was a high level cleric of Thor) and charged them mostly with ridding the world of the giants' dominance which of course involves killing Karzoug.

However, now that Karzoug is free to walk the world and has vast amounts of resources at his disposal, what's to stop him from making himself effectively unkillable by utilizing the Clone spell and what can the players do about a villain that could not simply be killed? The only ideas I've come up with so far are involving other Runelords (particularly Pride) or using Divine Intervention from the Norse gods...again.

Also on a somewhat unrelated note: The party has little to no protection against scrying magic except the characters' enormously high WIS saves thanks to the Paladin. What's to stop someone like Khalib or Karzoug from using "Scry and Die" tactics?



Alektra - CG Tiefling Wild Magic Sorcerer
Phosphora - CG Human Cleric of Thor
Rantharja - LG Aasimar Paladin of the Ancients (being roleplayed as a Valkyrie)


Thus the problem with this type of setup....

[Anymage]

Arbitrarily powerful, arbitrarily competent villains tend to make for frustrating stories. Just like arbitrarily powerful, arbitrarily competent protagonists do. (Although in the later case, that's because they resolve the plot in less than fifteen minutes.)

5e blunts these tricks a little, since things like teleportation got a bit tougher. But ultimately, you either give the PCs their share of magic shinies and enjoy the high level power interactions, or else you ignore some of the trickier abilities in the name of letting the story happen.

[Anonymouswizard]

Ah, backup immortality. As I remember Clone has the problem of resetting you to the level you were when it was cast, so causing him to reset can be an important action.

The simple answer to backup immortality is that, well, there has to be a store. This actually makes it worse than somebody who just has a high level Cleric as an ally, the place the clone is stored is vulnerable to attack. Sure said clone will likely be at least as defended as the item that is the villain's one true weakness, but you can still take it out, allowing you to kill the person while they don't have a backup.

(This is actually a plot point in a science fiction book series I was reading earlier, a character is illegally resurrected and has a set of backup clones in a secret installation. The clones are destroyed, which causes the character to become more careful once she's informed.)

In game terms, Eclipse Phase has both cortical stacks (a chip in the brain that records your brain state, memories, and personality) and stored backups, so the setting changes to account for this. Notably, killing somebody can allow you to take them in for questioning, and getting rid of characters permanently is hard (you need to kill them, destroy their stack, delete their backup from their insurance company's database, and then delete any other backups they have). It has been done in setting, but it means a lot of effort. Destroying one clone is comparatively easy.

[RazorChain]

Well let the players find out how they are going to dispose of the villain and his clone.

When they have defeated him it's a good thing there is no way for him coming back via resurrection or....wait....dangnabbit

[Lapak]

I can’t speak to the rest of the problem, but the traditional method of dealing with an unkillable opponent is not to kill them.

Imprison and/or disable them to keep them alive, and ensure that they cannot suicide, and clones are no longer an issue. You can also potentially apply permanent penalties to make them less of a threat if you can get even temporary control: level-drain them down to insignificance, for example.

[Metahuman1]

The ramification is that this had better be a straight up horror game that was advertised to the players as such, or a super hero game were in dead is not even close to necessary for a sound and through and satisfying defeat.



If not, you run a real risk of killing any motivation for the PC's to bother or give a damn about themselves, the world there in, or the plot, because they know the only option is to fail when this guy comes out of the woodwork.

[Fable Wright]

So what you have is a lich whose phylactery is his clone, who you need to prevent the resurrection of.

So it's definitely not a unique situation, but this is what Trap the Soul wad designed for. Get an absurdly valuable gem, cast Trap the Soul with touch completion, put Sympathy on it, spell it up so giants could not easily destroy it, infiltrate Kharzoug's coterie, and trick him into accepting the gift.

Defenses against Scry and Die include Delay Teleportation (Greater) from 3.5e, and of course, Mind Blank to completely no sell scrying. So... perhaps make step 1 in their quest to obtain an item that lets them cast mind blank without knowing or preparing it; step two be a quest to obtain the incredibly valuable adamantite gem to trap Kharzoug's soul in, step 3 to infiltrate his followers to find an opportunity to deliver it to him, and step 4/the climax is to escape with after he's trapped without letting it get smashed, and step 5/the aftermath is to build a defense for it that none of his followers can breach.

[Xuc Xac]

The traditional Norse gods style solution to this problem is "ask the dwarves to make an unbreakable chain then tie him up".

[ATHATH]

You could also say that the gods are poised to snatch up his soul and send it to Super Hell (TM) as soon as it leaves the BBEG's body. Then again, that kind of counts as "divine intervention".

I like Fable Wright's suggestions.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Just dig a veeeeery deep hole. Chain the poor soul down there a cover up the hole with dirt.

Maybe add five layers of cement just to make sure. Even build a statue of the heros on top of it just to be an ass.

A dark humid and lonely eternity for the guy.

[Anonymouswizard]

Just dig a veeeeery deep hole. Chain the poor soul down there a cover up the hole with dirt.

Maybe add five layers of cement just to make sure. Even build a statue of the heros on top of it just to be an ass.

A dark humid and lonely eternity for the guy.

Doesn't work with this type of immortality. They'd have died and be waking up as the clone before you've begun carving the statue.

[Firest Kathon]

Arbitrarily powerful, arbitrarily competent villains tend to make for frustrating stories. Just like arbitrarily powerful, arbitrarily competent protagonists do. (Although in the later case, that's because they resolve the plot in less than fifteen minutes.)

This. And Karzoug is fortunately not arbitratily competent - he is the Runelord of Greed, and as such inherently flawed. Take greed to the extreme, and you will find many reasons why he would not take such a route. Maybe he sees a clone not as himself, and as such does not want someone else (the clone) to have his empire and his wealth. He is also "Champion of the Rune Law", maybe there is some arcane rule in said law which prevents inheritance to cloning. I'm sure you will find a reason.

Remember, this is a human after all, so it is not a 100% logical being (no matter what the Int score says).

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, truly immortal characters or too easy resurrection magic make stories too hard, I should have replied to that bit. But that only comes if the characters have enough power that killing them is the only real way to control them.

Now in some games this isn't a problem. It kind of doesn't matter if characters come back to life after a week or a month if the entire game lasts a handful of days. But most games last in the region of several months to a year, so most immortal villains can adjust to having been stuck in a cave for a week or two.

Checking the PF version of Clone, I can't see any limit on there being more than one clone prepared at a time, so our friendly BBEG effectively has an arbitary number of new bodies that can be replenished as required. If we don't want to run the risk of hi coming back as a clone then we either need to destroy both the BBEG and the clones in suspension without leaving a single clone behind, or we need to trap the BBEG somewhere that he won't suffocate, starve, die of thirst, die of disease, or kill himself (old age can't be overcome by Clone).

Now if Karzoug abuses cloning (he doesn't have to) and the campaign is about taking him down, then him abusing the Clone spell becomes a plot point, and taking him down includes either somehow getting him to die of old age or getting rid of the clones as well.


As a side note, the 5e version of the Clone spell is even better. Both it and Raise Dead are missing the 'cannot have died from old age' clause in my copy, and Clone can specifically make a younger body. Live until you hit old age and then commit suicide and wake up as a young clone (note: side effects may include you dying and the creation of a being that mistakenly believes it is you, depending on your world's metaphysics). Immortal god wizards are back baby.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Doesn't work with this type of immortality. They'd have died and be waking up as the clone before you've begun carving the statue.

But... But I solve all my problems by dig deep holes and burying the problems away, from psychological issues to radioactive waste D:

Trsut me there is a way to solve this big dgging a hole, that's how I have been takign care of Unkillable foes since forever.

[noob]

Nuke the planet with epic spells turning it in an horrid radioactive magical wasteland.
Then build a new planet and resurrect all the good people on the new planet.
As a bonus now you can adventure in an horrid radioactive magical wasteland and fight horrible radioactive magical mutants.

[MysticalSkyWhal]

Karzoug is fortunately not arbitratily competent - he is the Runelord of Greed, and as such inherently flawed. Take greed to the extreme, and you will find many reasons why he would not take such a route.

Remember, this is a human after all, so it is not a 100% logical being (no matter what the Int score says).

That is an excellent idea! I'll definitely be looking into ways to twist his most prominent character features against him and I'm sure my players will too.


Now if Karzoug abuses cloning (he doesn't have to) and the campaign is about taking him down, then him abusing the Clone spell becomes a plot point, and taking him down includes either somehow getting him to die of old age or getting rid of the clones as well.

And this is also incredibly intriguing. I do wonder how my players would handle such a thing seeing as they are (sometimes deservedly) overconfident. I can only imagine the look on their face as they turn from celebrating the death of Karzoug, leave Xin-Shalast and see him the next day taunting them.


The traditional Norse gods style solution to this problem is "ask the dwarves to make an unbreakable chain then tie him up".

This is made all the more hilarious by the current situation revolving around helping the dwarves of Janderhoff.

[LibraryOgre]

In Dark Sun, after the Cleansing Wars, the sorcerer-kings wanted to be rid of Rajaat (because he was even more genocidal than they were). Since they couldn't kill him, they created a pocket dimension, the Hollow, where he could be indefinitely imprisoned.

[PandaPhobia]

I'm currently DM'ing a homebrewed sequel campaign to Rise of the Runelords. Said adventure path ended in defeat when the party's warlock revealed himself as a traitor and spy for Karzoug and teamed up with Gamigin the Ice Devil in Xin-Shalast to assassinate the party before they actually got anywhere near Karzoug's tower. The premise of the current campaign is set four years after their defeat. Karzoug has risen to power and summoned an army of giants. The Norse gods took notice of this and resurrected the PCs (it is worth noting that one of the PCs was a high level cleric of Thor) and charged them mostly with ridding the world of the giants' dominance which of course involves killing Karzoug.

However, now that Karzoug is free to walk the world and has vast amounts of resources at his disposal, what's to stop him from making himself effectively unkillable by utilizing the Clone spell and what can the players do about a villain that could not simply be killed? The only ideas I've come up with so far are involving other Runelords (particularly Pride) or using Divine Intervention from the Norse gods...again.

Also on a somewhat unrelated note: The party has little to no protection against scrying magic except the characters' enormously high WIS saves thanks to the Paladin. What's to stop someone like Khalib or Karzoug from using "Scry and Die" tactics?



Alektra - CG Tiefling Wild Magic Sorcerer
Phosphora - CG Human Cleric of Thor
Rantharja - LG Aasimar Paladin of the Ancients (being roleplayed as a Valkyrie)



Give the PC's a difficult quest or series of quests to systematically destroy all of the clones, or, indeed make a magic item to stop him from making more