How to achieve immortality?

[Mrark]

Hi everyone. I am a quite high level (16) and very, very rich (like with millions of gold) character in a 3.5 campaign. Our group is becoming more and more important in the world, and we have some cool and intricated long-term plans. And here comes the problem. There can be no long-term plans with a short-term life. So I'm basically kinda looking for a way to avoid aging. Becoming a lich could technically be a solution, but none of us feels like it's plot-fitting. Our DM also pointed that his world is thousands years old, and none except liches has already achieved immortality (vampires do not exist), so no " multiple wishes to achieve immortality" tactics are allowed (unless it's a huge ton of very particular wishes, I guess, so in that case I could try ask our DM). Every book and every source is allowed generally. Surprise me

[Willie the Duck]

Get your race switched to an un-aging race, such as warforged or elan?

[Crichton]

So here's a question that might help you decide, at least in your game:

If a race has no published age categories, does it have a maximum age?

Most monster races never had age categories published, so if you can become one of them, do you still ever die of old age? (or gain the benefits/penalties of aging, since there's no age listed for each category)


I'm thinking races like the various angel types specifically, or outsiders, aberrations, etc, generally.


Does not having a maximum age count as immortality, in d&d-ville?

[ViperMagnum357]

Dragon #112, page 80. Elixir of Eternity, a minor Artifact that allows you to live forever, but saps your physical ability scores by 1 for each century that passes, to a minimum of 1. As a minor Artifact, it should be craftable by Epic Characters. Ugly loss of scores, but it is a permanent effect that cannot be suppressed or taken away, does not bind you to another entity/power, and does not need to be renewed/updated, ever.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Polymorph any object into an immortal race (such as elan).

Live until the advent of Old age. Have a druid cast contingent reincarnate on you. Off yourself and respawn.

Get one of these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?177889-Brainstorm-for-Psionic-Tricks-Tactics-and-Combos-Handbook/page11&p=23285432#post23285432) installed. So long as you never go back to your original form and regularly turn into a new Young Adult/Adult/Middle Aged form, your age should reset each time. Just make sure it's a device, from Ravenloft: Legacy of the Blood, so it can't be dispel'd, disjoin'd, or dead-magic-zone'd.

The kissed by the ages spell, from Dragon #354 (p54).

Periodically mind-swap into a younger body via mind switch, magic jar, etc.

Fusion/astral seed with an immortal or long-lived being.

Genesis to create a timeless demiplane with respect to aging. Keep your body there, while you astrally project out. Or carry around an acorn of far travel from a tree on said plane.

[flappeercraft]

May I present you with the Immortality Handbook (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1179.0)

[Crake]

Genesis to create a timeless demiplane with respect to aging. Keep your body there, while you astrally project out. Or carry around an acorn of far travel from a tree on said plane.

You can completely skip the timeless part (and the implications that come along with it, because, you know, the last thing you want is to be trapped in your own demiplane, because the second you step out you instantly age to dead, which would leave you completely vulnerable to a single wish spell pulling you out and instantly killing you) and just go straight to the astral projecting.

Astral projection puts your body in suspended animation, so you don't age at all. Make sure to have a contingent revivify on your body though, in case someone severs your astral cord.

[Faily]

Use BECMI's rules to achieve Immortality? :smallbiggrin:

[Goaty14]

You could...

-Become one of the non-lich undead (such as necropolitan, Libris Mortis)
-Retrain (PHB II) one of your 1st level feats into Wedded to History (Dragon Mag. #???)
-Get enuff Living Zombies (Monsters of Faerun) in your name. With enough of them, you age 1 second in 1,000,000.00 years.

[RoboEmperor]

Cast Steal Life once in a while during a full moon.

Or use Wish to turn yourself into a Warforged or Elan. Savage Species has the rules for this.

[sleepyphoenixx]

The easiest method is probably paying a Psion with both True Mind Switch and Soul Crystal to manifest the latter filled with the former for you. Then just pick a good target.
Everyone can use that one, regardless of build. Also unlike most methods that don't require you to die or be a specific race it's not evil.
Or you could just put a single skill point into Use Psionic Device, buy a Power Stone of TMS and use skill boosters to make the check. That way you can keep one in reserve for when you grow old again.

While you're at it do the same thing with Astral Seed for lichdom-lite.



-Get enuff Living Zombies (Monsters of Faerun) in your name. With enough of them, you age 1 second in 1,000,000.00 years.

Living Zombies are in Champions of Ruin. And you can't have more of them at a time than your spellcasting modifier.
Not that it's much of a hindrance since they stack multiplicatively so even relatively small numbers of them slow aging drastically, but the limitation is there.

[Grim Reader]

You could...
-Retrain (PHB II) one of your 1st level feats into Wedded to History (Dragon Mag. #???)


354. It lets you take an Ancient background, but it doesn't do anything for your lifespan. You could just as well be Sleeping Beauty having had a power nap.

[Vaern]

While not technically "immortality," casting a binding spell on yourself will prevent you from aging for as long as you are imprisoned and allow you to live indefinitely. The metamorphosis option of the binding spell turns you into a cloud of gas with a face and imprisons you in a jar, from which you can still see and speak with the outside world, though you do not need to eat, sleep, or breathe, and do not age.
The spell's duration has a (d) component, meaning you can dismiss it at will when your freedom becomes necessary to enact a new step of your plan, after which you can cast the spell again and pop back into your jar.

[Jack_Simth]

Living Zombies are in Champions of Ruin. And you can't have more of them at a time than your spellcasting modifier.
Not that it's much of a hindrance since they stack multiplicatively so even relatively small numbers of them slow aging drastically, but the limitation is there.

Mild correction:
You can't control more than your ability score modifier of them at once. However, you don't need to control them, you just need to have made them and have them be active. Invest in solid cages.

[BWR]

Use BECMI's rules to achieve Immortality? :smallbiggrin:

I second this.
Years worth of awesome adventures for your PCs (in game and IRL) before you become Immortal, Immunity to Mortal Magic as a base ability (If Mystryl had been Immortal instead of a god Netheril would never have fallen), you can learn how to create literal planes (not just demiplanes) and you can eventually become an Old One (basically an overpower like AO or the High God).

[King of Nowhere]

I am his DM and I willl clarify a bit, because the OP is a bit misleading.

I said that the world has existed for thousands of years, and every generation had at least a few casters with 9th level spells, and I'm not aware of any immortal except liches. So, you can't achieve immortality in cheap ways. if you could, the world would be filled with thousands of immortals.
And I'm not completely against the concept (in fact, I suggested myself a couple ways for it; it involved becoming a demigod, since the pcs already became - accidentally - messianic figures for the orc population. But godhood has limitations, so the players do not like much the idea). But I feel immortality should have an important cost.
I have liches in the setting because they have strong costs and limitations (everything I say here that contradicts RAW is a houserule): Becoming one is very risky. You can't be resurrected if your philactery is destroyed. Being one warps your mind. And it paints a shining bullseye on your back for every adventurer around. I can totally justify having liches around without the world being swarmed by them.
There are no common ageless races, but there are some magical ageless races; feys and fiends among them. None of them can be resurrected in case of death, though. Also, their populations do not follow normal dynamics, because they are magical. New ones spawn if the specific fields that empower them become to many.
Ghosts can be considered ageless, since they never get older and they can affect the physical realm. In fact, I intoduced pretty early in the campaign a 1000-years old benevolent ghost. However, being a ghost requires a strong motivation. One can become a ghost if he has unfinished business that he really cares about. Staying ghosts for long is extremely unlikely.

So, long story short
- you can't achieve immortality by casting some elaborate spell combo. I'd houserule it to not work.
- it may be possible to do it through something very evil, like draining life from other people in ways that cannot be fixed. It would give every good-aligned power plenty of reasons to stop you. And no, that life drain spell from bovd does not count: you can just cast restoration on the victim to undo all the damage, and then you could pay someone to volunteer. Even if it's painful, many people would prefer it to a regular job. You'd be immortal by casting a few mid-level spells per week and spending some money.
- it may be possible to do it through changing race, but it needs to have some serious drawback, in particular making you much more difficult to raise. And I play a campaign where people are expected to die a lot, on all sides. I do not consider it a meatgrinder because resurrections are easily available. None of the common ageless races are available.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

So, you want ways to become immortal, but you're houseruling them all ineffective?

Why should we bother posting, then?

[RoboEmperor]

So, you want ways to become immortal, but you're houseruling them all ineffective?

Why should we bother posting, then?

Agreed.

So cast Steal Life on summoned creatures and when the DM bans that or ruins it with house rules call it a day and be done with it.

[flappeercraft]

By the houserules given by the DM, it seems that your options are

1) Become a Lich
2) Become a Deity
3) GTFO
4) Play another game
5) Remain Mortal

I would probably go for the lich, its the easiest one for immortality that you will get away with apparently. While there are the other races the no resurrection does kinda suck.

[Anymage]

To bring this back to OP, what sort of drawback are you willing to accept in order to avoid having a maximum age? Keeping in mind that trivial drawbacks will be shot down.

I see where KoN is coming from, and agree that immortality at the cost of just a few simple spell tricks sounds off. For a few narrative ideas, binding with a fey place of power might work. (Which then either only staves off aging for as long as you stay within the specific area, or only for as long as you keep the king of the faeries pleased which brings its own set of obligations.) Maybe you accept divinity, although again with limitations and obligations. Maybe you live off-plane, with the acknowledgement that time spent on the prime does count against your lifespan as normal. You might get on good terms with a druidic circle who will occasionally cast Reincarnate on you (either killing you immediately before or casting a version that euthanizes a willing target when cast. (Which requires regularly getting used to the new body, plus keeping the druids happy.) You might create a phoenix-like ritual that de-ages you, at the cost of some levels and memories.

All just thematic immortalities-with-costs off the top of my head, no deep rules delves required.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Clone resurrects you in the body you had when it was cast (thereby making you younger, if it was cast some time ago), but you have to deal with level-loss.

A thought bottle negates any and all downsides of the above, however.

[Covenant12]

Agreed.

So cast Steal Life on summoned creatures and when the DM bans that or ruins it with house rules call it a day and be done with it.If the DM doesn't like it on summoned creatures or considers it bothersomely evil, cast it on yourself. With millions of gold multiple restorations every few months is trivial. At that point its as evil as summoning balors to fight red dragons. Meaning if you aren't exalted good/paladin, not evil enough to mention.

Abusing (true) mindswitch or becoming necropolitan are tried and true, but if vampires don't exist by fiat/campaign logic neither of them may. If the DM bars becoming an elan (savage species) just accept that immortality is a rousing game of mother-may-I? and roll with it.

Honestly waiting until you get 9th level spells and go lich isn't terrible, if you have an excess of gold. Delays epic progression painfully, but you get a casting stat boost and are much tankier. (probably)

[Mordaedil]

So, you want ways to become immortal, but you're houseruling them all ineffective?

Why should we bother posting, then?
Is there something wrong with wanting a cost associated with immortality? It sounds reasonable to me from a DMing perspective.

I think your best choices for continuous life would be to constantly swap your body with younger people, using something like magic jar. Not only is it not risk-free, it can be an interesting consequence that the DM can work with and around.

[RoboEmperor]

Is there something wrong with wanting a cost associated with immortality? It sounds reasonable to me from a DMing perspective.

I think your best choices for continuous life would be to constantly swap your body with younger people, using something like magic jar. Not only is it not risk-free, it can be an interesting consequence that the DM can work with and around.

No, but if you're house ruling everything to not work then what is the point of using d&d books at all? Just house rule a method that you like and tell it to the player.

[Mordaedil]

Be fair here, he's house-ruling the cheap and easy methods to immortality to not work, because they are given cheap and easily, and maybe this allows some less popular immortality methods to come to the forefront.

Like, say becoming a mummy.

[RoboEmperor]

Be fair here, he's house-ruling the cheap and easy methods to immortality to not work, because they are given cheap and easily, and maybe this allows some less popular immortality methods to come to the forefront.

Like, say becoming a mummy.

Literally the only way to achieve immortality (i made multiple threads on the subject matter) is:
1. Wedded to history (not allowed)
2. Steal Life (probably gonna house rule it so not even restoration can heal it at which point you have to murder something at which point a greater power will kill you)
3. Reincarnate (need a druid's endless assistance)
4. Race Change (either banned, can't be raised which he said is guaranteed to lead to character retirement, or comes with a crazy LA).

I think spending 5,000xp to gain something that has absolutely no mechanical benefit is more than fair, but in his setting where casting wish is "too easy", I really don't see any other way than becoming some form of undead with high LA like lich. Mummy is illegal I think because it is LA:-.

If he's banning all known methods except the super specific ones he likes, then it's better to ask him directly which methods are allowed than consulting d&d books because he'll be banning most if not all of them. Because Race Change is really the only way one can achieve true immortality be it achieved by wish or astral seed + mind switch.

[Anymage]

I think spending 5,000xp to gain something that has absolutely no mechanical benefit is more than fair, but in his setting where casting wish is "too easy", I really don't see any other way than becoming some form of undead with high LA like lich. Mummy is illegal I think because it is LA:-.

If he's banning all known methods except the super specific ones he likes, then it's better to ask him directly which methods are allowed than consulting d&d books because he'll be banning most if not all of them. Because Race Change is really the only way one can achieve true immortality be it achieved by wish or astral seed + mind switch.

On the other hand, living forever is pretty sweet. If I could dispense with aging and the prospect of dying of old age for 5k XP, that'd be pretty tempting. However, in any campaign world with a decent amount of history, that means that other characters would have wished for immortality too. You'd have epic characters walking around and mucking about in things, just because nothing short of an epic conflict can remove them once they've become established.

I have a feeling that something thematically appropriate would go over much better than trying to find RAW tricks to shield you. The goal is to have some reason why you're not running around Elminstering the setting. Making a deal with a fiend that will stave off age, as long as you regularly commit sacrifices in its name. (Which is a huge neon sign for every hero in the area.) Having a stronghold where the feng shui can stave off age. (Which limits you to a tiny corner of the campaign world.) Basically, if someone could do this before and it allowed them to be an epic influencer in perpetuity, they would have. Explain why that wouldn't happen with your preferred path.

[Mordaedil]

Literally the only way to achieve immortality (i made multiple threads on the subject matter) is:
1. Wedded to history (not allowed)
2. Steal Life (probably gonna house rule it so not even restoration can heal it at which point you have to murder something at which point a greater power will kill you)
3. Reincarnate (need a druid's endless assistance)
4. Race Change (either banned, can't be raised which he said is guaranteed to lead to character retirement, or comes with a crazy LA).

I think spending 5,000xp to gain something that has absolutely no mechanical benefit is more than fair, but in his setting where casting wish is "too easy", I really don't see any other way than becoming some form of undead with high LA like lich. Mummy is illegal I think because it is LA:-.

If he's banning all known methods except the super specific ones he likes, then it's better to ask him directly which methods are allowed than consulting d&d books because he'll be banning most if not all of them. Because Race Change is really the only way one can achieve true immortality be it achieved by wish or astral seed + mind switch.

Epic feat - extended life span. I think there's also attaining divine rank 0 can do it. Which shouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility for a level 15 character.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Isn't there a Dragon Magazine with an artifact The Picture of Dorian Gray in it? You own the painting, it takes the aging penalties for you and visibly ages instead of you. Since it's an artifact, it can't be duplicated (easily), and there's only one of it, so only one owner at a time.

Edit: It's in Champions of Ruin. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Gray_portrait

[King of Nowhere]

No, but if you're house ruling everything to not work then what is the point of using d&d books at all? Just house rule a method that you like and tell it to the player.

When we started playing, years ago, I only knew the core books, and not even that well. I made some assumptions based on what I knew, and made a world on those assumptions.

If new material would make those assumptions moot, I ban or change it to preserve the consistency of the campaign world. I mean, after I established that everyone does X because it's what works in my world, and then I discover Y from a splatbook that makes X pointless, I have 3 choices
1) make it canon that everyone in the world was an idiot
2) retcon years of established setting
3) ban Y

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather play in a world with some logical consistency. If I have to restrict most of the published material on a case-by-case basis to keep that consistency, so be it.
Furthermore, I don't like the kitchen sink feeling that playing with all the sourcebooks creates. I prefer to establish a smaller set of principles and settings, and explore their interactions in deeper details, rather than keep introducing new stuff that will only be skimmed superficially. And while I have nothing against powerful characters, if they can just do whatever, where is the drama? Why bother? A good story is about overcoming obstacles, and those obstacles need to be there in the first place. A good campaign needs something that cannot be done trivially.
Writer Brandon Sanderson wrote some good essays on what you gain by working on those principles. What I just wrote falls under his second and third laws of magic ("limitations are more interesting than powers (https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/)", and "explore in depth what you have before introducing new stuff (https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/)")

Last but not least, the OP is the only player in the group to have any real amount of system mastery. The rest of the players can barely keep track of their saving throws or to-hit bonuses. I can't increase the complexity by bringing in new material when three of my players don't understand much even of the material that is already there.


On the other hand, living forever is pretty sweet. If I could dispense with aging and the prospect of dying of old age for 5k XP, that'd be pretty tempting. However, in any campaign world with a decent amount of history, that means that other characters would have wished for immortality too. You'd have epic characters walking around and mucking about in things, just because nothing short of an epic conflict can remove them once they've become established.

I have a feeling that something thematically appropriate would go over much better than trying to find RAW tricks to shield you. The goal is to have some reason why you're not running around Elminstering the setting.
Basically, if someone could do this before and it allowed them to be an epic influencer in perpetuity, they would have. Explain why that wouldn't happen with your preferred path.
Yes, it's good to see that someone understands my line of reasoning.

So when my player asked for immortality I told him "Give me an idea that 1) is thematically appropriate, and 2) that explains why there aren't already hundreds of immortals who did the same, and I'll consider it. Some trick with spells won't work, because if it did, there would be thousands of immortals around using it".

It's a case of "help me help you". I don't want to randomly shut down proposals, I have nothing against my players achieving agelessness, and in fact I already proposed a couple of ways that could happen in the campaign. If my players can propose me something that thematically fits with the campaign and is logically consistent with it, I'll have no problem incorporating it.
I'm just shutting down something that would come out of nowhere (we never talked about this immortal civilization, but it's totally there, and it always has been!) and/or would break consistency of the setting (yes, you can totally avoid aging by casting a 4th level druid spell one per lifetime. And there are several thousands of 7th level druids in the world. but there aren't a bajillion immortals using that trick in my world, because - look behind you, a three-headed monkey!)

[MaxiDuRaritry]

There are lots of ways to legitimately hide a civilization such that you can only find them if they want you to, or you just happen to stumble on the info in a million-to-one chance (which amounts to DM fiat, basically). Perhaps the immortal mortals are hiding from one or more gods, who really, really don't like mortals living forever.

Deities tend to be unreasonably nasty about stuff like that. They wouldn't like it so much if they were being forced to die, so why should anyone else?

[sleepyphoenixx]

When we started playing, years ago, I only knew the core books, and not even that well. I made some assumptions based on what I knew, and made a world on those assumptions.

If new material would make those assumptions moot, I ban or change it to preserve the consistency of the campaign world. I mean, after I established that everyone does X because it's what works in my world, and then I discover Y from a splatbook that makes X pointless, I have 3 choices
1) make it canon that everyone in the world was an idiot
2) retcon years of established setting
3) ban Y

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather play in a world with some logical consistency. If I have to restrict most of the published material on a case-by-case basis to keep that consistency, so be it.
Your argument assumes that every NPC in your world has read all the sourcebooks. That makes no sense.
Most people in the game world have never even heard of most of the things we - the players - are aware of, let alone how they're done.
You get to decide what's common knowledge in the campaign - regardless of the sourcebooks allowed - and what people have to painstakingly research, find in ancient ruins or steal from/be taught by someone who already knows it.
You can introduce new options easily enough by having it be lost or secret knowledge found in a dangerous ruin or only known to a specific organization, or even a specific NPC.

It's not people being idiots if no-one knows something is possible until someone thinks of it, researches it and succeeds (because failure is definitely an option).
And then makes it common knowledge - which most wouldn't, because why would you make the secret to your immortality common knowledge?

I can respect your other arguments, but this line of reasoning just doesn't make sense unless your entire world is meta-aware.

[RegalKain]

Your argument assumes that every NPC in your world has read all the sourcebooks. That makes no sense.
Most people in the game world have never even heard of most of the things we - the players - are aware of, let alone how they're done.
You get to decide what's common knowledge in the campaign - regardless of the sourcebooks allowed - and what people have to painstakingly research, find in ancient ruins or steal from/be taught by someone who already knows it.
You can introduce new options easily enough by having it be lost or secret knowledge found in a dangerous ruin or only known to a specific organization, or even a specific NPC.

It's not people being idiots if no-one knows something is possible until someone thinks of it, researches it and succeeds (because failure is definitely an option).
And then makes it common knowledge - which most wouldn't, because why would you make the secret to your immortality common knowledge?

I can respect your other arguments, but this line of reasoning just doesn't make sense unless your entire world is meta-aware.


Different strokes for different folks first of all. (To King of Nowere) I'm not going to try to make you change your ways as far as the immortality shtick goes but I am curious.

What Sleepy says here makes a lot of sense, and I'd like to follow that up, is gunpowder a thing in your campaign world? Or were the base reagents banned? Is electricity a thing, steam power a thing? These aren't even things in splat books, these are things we as humans (With no magic at all, and with no one in our world ever hitting a 30+int like many DnD characters can and do.) have achieved, it's not out of the realm of possibility for someone to literally stumble into something. It's always bothered me just a bit when DMs say the players "can't" create or come up with something, cause someone else would have, when that doesn't even happen in the real world. Think of it this way, 200 years ago, we didn't have electricity. We now have entire computers that can access a literal world of knowledge, sitting in our pockets on any given day. 120 years ago humans only dreamed of being able to fly with the birds, now we have aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier. While I understand to some extent why you want to keep your world preserved, change happens rapidly and it's a snowball effect. We have no evidence of a world other then through sheer "DM Fiat" or Writer Fiat that stays static and the same for thousands of years on end, even our ancestors went from rocks and sticks to bronze, to iron, went from running on foot to taming animals, to having those animals pull carriages.

Why do I rant? I don't know anything about your world except what we've been told,nor do I know anything about OP's character, but I'll set it up how I'd do so in one of my campaign worlds (With the exception that immortals are common place in my worlds, so nix that and nix all immortal races.) OP comes to you the DM OOC and says "Hey I was thinking of trying to achieve immortality, my character thinks it's a good idea to stick around and see how the world ages etc" you inform them of the limitations of the world, and the mechanical limitations they might face. Everyone is agreed. OP goes to the drawing board (Or comes here for RAW ideas, which OP isn't a good idea. GITP will argue RAW until the sun burns out, but it seems your DM is looking for something a little more creative, which is fine.) in game, they do this by researching long-lived things. They study turtles, they study jelly fish, they trap and study celestials and infernals, they look into constructs (Remember this is a near epic character with literally millions of gold at their disposal) Then they start experimenting, they find people who have been struck by a plague, or are marked for death in some way, and enter a pact, these people are completely hopeless anyway, and OP is a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak world. (Maybe these people can't afford a restoration spell, or a remove disease spell or a break curse etc) OP agrees to pay for whatever is ailing them, but he'd like to try a few things to see how it works.

So OP starts learning to graft, tries to switch out parts or "gene splice" (Basically more grafting in game terms.) to make people live longer, or reverse aging in some way, desperate people will do crazy and desperate **** to stay alive. So basically in-game terms the character spends the next few levels "experimenting" on immortality, I'd ask them for a few profession/craft rolls based on what they were doing, a ton of knowledge checks or assisted knowledge checks, and when all is said and done, if successful either make a blanket LA 1 immortal template. (Since immortality has almost ni mechanical benefit it's almost purely fluff based.) Or simply fluff them with immortality. "Ok OP, your character has finally achieved their dreams, you've figured out which body parts you need to replace with what animal to stop the aging process completely, your heart is some mechanical pump akin to a construct's, most of your blood has been replaced by some odd creation of your own insanity from jelly fish that works with the pump to slow the physical aging of your body, you've cast several spells and tinkered with your brain to stop the very real problem of insanity setting in because of your age. You're officially immortal."

Now for drawbacks, OP and DM sit down and get creative with each other, remember you're playing to have fun, not against each other. Let's say because you have a mechanical pump in your chest, that you have to do maintenance to it every so often, say every month or two, you have to sit down open yourself up and make sure the machine is working properly, takes 8 hours of work, if you fail you simply have to spend another 8 hours maintaining it. Maybe make it so that you're treated as having the Aquatic subtype whenever it is non-beneficial for you. (For instance if a spell for some reason only targets aquatic creatures, you count if it's a harmful effect.) These are some mechanical draw backs, now your mind is all jumbled up and crazy from the work, you can make sense of it but others can't. Let's give it some minor mechanical benefits as well. You have a +5 to all saving throws against mind-affecting abilities. Your mind isn't normal anymore and it's simply harder to deal with it. You no longer take aging penalties or bonuses, and can no longer be magically aged.

Fluff time! Because of the X time (I dunno how quickly you guys level.) you spent experimenting, (Always talk an alignment change over first) maybe you lost some of your empathy, maybe you stopped caring about your subjects and started caring to much about your goal, shift your alignment towards chaotic, or neutral. (Evil if you wanna go the mad scientist route.) Maybe a few of those people you tested on, had horrible, horrible side effects, and they've spread rumours about you, saying you're some monster who prays on the weak and experiments on them, tormenting them forever. (Let's face it, it won't matter if you saved them, people are ****ty and quick to forget kindness as a general rule.) So maybe now you've pissed off some paladins or do-gooders. Maybe some of your experiments worked a little to well, and these people are gathering up a group or people of their own to come and "take" the rest of your research.


I guess the tl;dr here, is your DM doesn't want it to be fast and easy. Great 10/10 what I posted above isn't fast, nor is it easy, and it can also have down sides. Get creative, work with each other. It doesn't have to be RAW, the whole point of playing (In my opinion) a table top RPG, is that the rules are guidelines, break the darn things. Get creative, get wild with it! Work together to make a good story, work together to make the other players go "ooooh that's cool, but why are there angry paladins again? " create a story together. Hope this helped.

Edit: Also, to clarify why no one has done this before...maybe they have, maybe it worked out just as well, then the paladins or the liches (Who traded life and other wonderful things that come with not being a skeleton) got angry or jealous of your immortality, just because you can't age, doesn't mean you can't die. (Distinction of course between immortal and ageless to be fair, in my campaign we call it functionally immortal.) Maybe they trapped the person's soul, or trapped the person's body, maybe they killed that person, maybe they banished that person to another realm or plane of existence. Or maybe that person just travels the world going from kingdom to kingdom spreading small miracles. Maybe they are some high level druid who just walks around fixing farm lands and making sure people have a bountiful crop. They don't get involved with all this adventuring business because they spent so many years on the "grind" and so many years fighting and waking up every day wondering if that day was going to be the one they bit the dust, they decided to just do what they love, the reason they became a druid, commune with nature. "But sir we really need your help against X" "Look, once you get to my age, you'll understand, I can give you advice, but I'm just not cut out of the adventuring life anymore, best of luck young blood." there don't have to be thousands of them because not everyone is going to be able to shirk their morals like that, or have the funds to do it. Or risk it failing and killing them or others.

[Jack_Simth]

When we started playing, years ago, I only knew the core books, and not even that well. I made some assumptions based on what I knew, and made a world on those assumptions.

If new material would make those assumptions moot, I ban or change it to preserve the consistency of the campaign world. I mean, after I established that everyone does X because it's what works in my world, and then I discover Y from a splatbook that makes X pointless, I have 3 choices
1) make it canon that everyone in the world was an idiot
2) retcon years of established setting
3) ban Y

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather play in a world with some logical consistency. If I have to restrict most of the published material on a case-by-case basis to keep that consistency, so be it. Not really.

Physics isn't thought to have changed in the 14th century in such a way as to make all of our modern tech possible. Yet we didn't have passenger airliners in the 4th century. The sudden growth in science and tech that started in the 14th century (and is still ongoing) came about because folks changed how they thought about things. It's not that folks were significantly more stupid than folks are today (there was a lot of that then, and there's a lot of that now). All that changed was some mindsets. Things went from what amounts to "I have this new thing I thought up, and it makes things easier for me, so I'll keep it a secret because if everyone else in the business does this, I won't have such a sweet advantage anymore" to "I have this new thing I thought up, and it makes things easier for me, so I'll share it with others so that things will be easier for everyone..." (neither of these are anywhere close to precise, mind). Society changed. When a blacksmith figures out a better way to work iron that produces an equal-or-better result faster, and shares it with all the other blacksmiths, then there's more and better worked iron all around... which (among other things) means all the farmers have better ploughs. In turn, that means more food, which means more folks doing things other than basic subsistence farming. Which means more craftsmen. If everyone has the same basic idea of "share knowledge", this means more folks thinking up good things. It's a cycle that feeds on itself.

Yet it didn't kick off until about the 14th century. And now we've got Space Tourism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism) now that it's the 21st century. Does the fact that the cycle didn't kick off until about the 14th century, despite humanity existing for quite some time before that, mean that everyone prior to the 14th century were idiots?

Not really. There were plenty of bright folks. They were just missing a mindset that works very, very well.

[Boggartbae]

Oh my goodness.

Some ideas that don't try to get around the parameters provided:

Maybe you could pledge yourself to a good-aligned god and become a deathless/positive energy spirit thing. You could write up some deal where they can tell you what to do whenever they want, and if you refuse they revoke your immortality and you are destroyed. That's a deal that only a very small number of people would ever take, but if your DM is reasonable/sparing with the tasks assigned, then it wouldn't be too restricting to your other goals.

Or you could bind your soul to a construct and live out eternity devoid of emotion and feeling. Maybe everyone who does this goes mad (takes a big hit to wisdom) and most of them self destruct or recluse themselves in their private magical library, doing the same monotonous tasks and reading the same books over and over again for eternity, with only a few having the willpower to keep leading a relatively normal existence.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Baelnorns are explicitly Good-aligned liches, and they keep their minds intact after (un)death.

[RoboEmperor]

On the other hand, living forever is pretty sweet. If I could dispense with aging and the prospect of dying of old age for 5k XP, that'd be pretty tempting. However, in any campaign world with a decent amount of history, that means that other characters would have wished for immortality too. You'd have epic characters walking around and mucking about in things, just because nothing short of an epic conflict can remove them once they've become established.

I have a feeling that something thematically appropriate would go over much better than trying to find RAW tricks to shield you. The goal is to have some reason why you're not running around Elminstering the setting. Making a deal with a fiend that will stave off age, as long as you regularly commit sacrifices in its name. (Which is a huge neon sign for every hero in the area.) Having a stronghold where the feng shui can stave off age. (Which limits you to a tiny corner of the campaign world.) Basically, if someone could do this before and it allowed them to be an epic influencer in perpetuity, they would have. Explain why that wouldn't happen with your preferred path.

Because 17+ level spellcasters are super rare...? And wedded to history, race change, and steal life aren't RAW tricks. They are RAI tricks since the intent of those spells and feats are to turn you immortal.


Epic feat - extended life span. I think there's also attaining divine rank 0 can do it. Which shouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility for a level 15 character.

Epic Spells with the Transmutation Seed too.

[Bronk]

Maybe you could set up a pact between a PC and an outsider. There's the Disciple of Ashardalon prestige class from the Draconomicon... Now, that's dragon only, but in the Dragonrage novels they played fast and loose with it, showing at least one other variation (instead of replacing his heart with a demon heart, some dragon replaced his heart with an entire chasme demon, and it could fly around and stuff). I bring that up, because in the Last Mythal novel series, the main character -an elf, not a dragon - pulled off a good aligned version of this, swapping his heart out with an eladrin or something.

So there are other options, even in the extended lore.

[King of Nowhere]

Your argument assumes that every NPC in your world has read all the sourcebooks. That makes no sense.

I can respect your other arguments, but this line of reasoning just doesn't make sense unless your entire world is meta-aware.

Not really, but I assume that the handful of very high level people in my camapign world know enough stuff. In fact, given that they have mental stats that would make einstein look retarded by comparison, and access to all kind of divinations, I'd assume that they should be very knowledgeable.
So, I treat high level people as meta-aware, for in-world reasons.

My campaign world had high level spellcasting for at least two millennia. Every generation had at least some casters with 9th level spells. Currently there are around one hundred, as the world has been through a time of peace and prosperity that allowed a lot of resources to train spellcasters. It may seem a lot, but consider it's in the whole world, on a population of some 500 million.

Anyway, the point is, I figure that over the amount of people and time, if there was a simple way, they'd discovered it already.

Incidentally, since somebody asked, yes, they discovered gunpowder some 50 years before the current time, and cannons have some niche uses in high level warfare (mostly they strapped them to iron golems, to get an iron golem with a powerful once-per-fight attack). They have some theoretical knowledge of the steam engine, although it is very inefficient, so they'd rather use undead or construct labor. Similarly, magic is slowly advancing, although there is the occasional unrivaled genius that managed to do stuff that nobody replicated. There is some slow scientific progress, but it's not relevant on the time scale of the campaign.
And while "somebody just ddiscovered this new spell" would actually be an in-world consistent way to achieve immortality, it would also be the most anticlimatic achievement ever.

EDIT: I'm not saying that other people's playstiles are worse. But I think the way I'm handling it is more appropriate for the tone of my world and my campaign

[RegalKain]

Not really, but I assume that the handful of very high level people in my camapign world know enough stuff. In fact, given that they have mental stats that would make einstein look retarded by comparison, and access to all kind of divinations, I'd assume that they should be very knowledgeable.
So, I treat high level people as meta-aware, for in-world reasons.

My campaign world had high level spellcasting for at least two millennia. Every generation had at least some casters with 9th level spells. Currently there are around one hundred, as the world has been through a time of peace and prosperity that allowed a lot of resources to train spellcasters. It may seem a lot, but consider it's in the whole world, on a population of some 500 million.

Anyway, the point is, I figure that over the amount of people and time, if there was a simple way, they'd discovered it already.

Incidentally, since somebody asked, yes, they discovered gunpowder some 50 years before the current time, and cannons have some niche uses in high level warfare (mostly they strapped them to iron golems, to get an iron golem with a powerful once-per-fight attack). They have some theoretical knowledge of the steam engine, although it is very inefficient, so they'd rather use undead or construct labor. Similarly, magic is slowly advancing, although there is the occasional unrivaled genius that managed to do stuff that nobody replicated. There is some slow scientific progress, but it's not relevant on the time scale of the campaign.
And while "somebody just ddiscovered this new spell" would actually be an in-world consistent way to achieve immortality, it would also be the most anticlimatic achievement ever.

EDIT: I'm not saying that other people's playstiles are worse. But I think the way I'm handling it is more appropriate for the tone of my world and my campaign

So you read my post that much is evident based on your comment about gun powder and the steam engine, did you read the rest of it? Would that approach be acceptable or not? Can you give the forum more information about your world? Or about OP's character? It's difficult to help when all we can go on is RAW, which you've stated you'd like to avoid for in-world reasons.

[Vaern]

Availability of resources isn't the only factor to consider. It's not entirely unreasonable for immortality to be achievable by mixing some really accessible magical effects.
But then you also need to consider the consequences of seeking immortality. There are things like the Marut whose sole purpose is to track down and exterminate those who cheat death.
It's entirely possible that cheap tricks like repetitive reincarnation or body hopping could extend your lifespan, but your NPCs are smart enough to know that they're going to be attracting cosmic forces against them by doing so.

[Crake]

You say immortal races can't be resurrected. Is that because of the line under outsiders/elementals which says "this creature can't be resurrected except by limited wish/wish/miracle/true resurrection"? If so, do those spells still actually work? Can you limited wish immortal creatures back to life?

Also, in a setting where, presumably, there are potentially an infinite number of outsiders, what's wrong with sprinkling a few immortals in the world? Epic characters need to exist to counter the epic foes, after all, in a setting where demon lords and archangels exist, it's the epic adventurers who stop the war between heaven and hell from spilling over onto the material plane and killing off all of mankind. If you remove epic adventurers from your setting, then you realistically need to also remove all epic enemies.

Also, for the wedded to history feat, the feat literally just makes you immortal as a pure happenstance of nature, so you can't really use the argument of "why doesn't everyone take this feat?", because from an in game perspective, it's not an OPTION someone gets to just pick.

As for the companion spell that literally makes you immortal, it has to be cast by an existing immortal ON YOU, so it's more like giving the gift of immortality to someone close and dear to you. It's also a 9th level spell, so I would hardly call it commonplace.

Astral projection, likewise a 9th level spell, and not REALLY true immortality, it's more that you put your body in suspended animation and project your soul out to live in your stead. How would you houserule that? Do you age while projecting your soul? What if you were to cast astral projection, and then sequester on your body? Sequester stops you from aging but puts you in a comatose state. Since your body has no consciousness in it though, that doesn't really matter?

Again, clone, restores your body to a previous state, reincarnate can be cast with limited wish, so a 13th level wizard could do that on himself with a contingent spell. Mind switch into a young body also works.

Take note that many of these aren't REALLY achieving immortality, but simply pausing or resetting your lifespan in some way. If you need an explanation as to why your world isn't littered with immortal people after X generations of 9th level spellcasters well, simply put: Not everyone will get these spells. Not every wizard will research clone, not every psion will get mind switch. And frankly, not everyone wants to live forever. Those that do, will also kill each other off in competition, and in those kinds of competitions, people will take pains to make sure when they kill someone, they STAY dead, so end result is that there's only a handful of immortal people in your setting, and really, is that SUCH a bad thing? After all, immortal elementals/demons/angels/fey all exist, some with great, world changing power as part of their INNATE powers, yet your world survives just fine.

Edit: Honestly, I really just want to hear what your houserule would be to stop clone/reincarnate/mindswitch casting every few decades? I think you might just need to accept that immortality is well within the realms of high level casters (after all, everything I listed above isn't a "RAW trick" or anything like that, it's literally exactly how the abilities are intended to function, and at least half of them are within core books), but that immortality doesn't mean invulnerability, and that high level spellcasters all eventually die greusome deaths at the hands of their rivals at some point.

[Mordaedil]

Anyway, the point is, I figure that over the amount of people and time, if there was a simple way, they'd discovered it already.

Incidentally, since somebody asked, yes, they discovered gunpowder some 50 years before the current time, and cannons have some niche uses in high level warfare (mostly they strapped them to iron golems, to get an iron golem with a powerful once-per-fight attack). They have some theoretical knowledge of the steam engine, although it is very inefficient, so they'd rather use undead or construct labor. Similarly, magic is slowly advancing, although there is the occasional unrivaled genius that managed to do stuff that nobody replicated. There is some slow scientific progress, but it's not relevant on the time scale of the campaign.
And while "somebody just ddiscovered this new spell" would actually be an in-world consistent way to achieve immortality, it would also be the most anticlimatic achievement ever.

It makes perfect sense to me. What you could do, is to have it be a big puzzle of a side-quest. Players coming across previous wizards attempting a ritual at immortality in some way, but always missing pieces or lacking the proper rites, always something off or missing that is kept secret, hidden. The Gods themselves conspire to keep the secret from mortals and thus any given spellcaster can only glance so much from their own efforts and there's been several of these casters throughout the ages, but always have they been short, only attaining lichdom at best, and in some cases becoming allips or similar mad spirits as a result of their failed rituals.

Make it a tough one where if the player fails by some margin they also become a similarily lost spirit or half-undead with no will of their own. (Maybe some of the previous wizards were deceived and the rituals contain a passage that binds ones will to the god of (un)death or similar.)

[Calthropstu]

To bring this back to OP, what sort of drawback are you willing to accept in order to avoid having a maximum age? Keeping in mind that trivial drawbacks will be shot down.

I see where KoN is coming from, and agree that immortality at the cost of just a few simple spell tricks sounds off. For a few narrative ideas, binding with a fey place of power might work. (Which then either only staves off aging for as long as you stay within the specific area, or only for as long as you keep the king of the faeries pleased which brings its own set of obligations.) Maybe you accept divinity, although again with limitations and obligations. Maybe you live off-plane, with the acknowledgement that time spent on the prime does count against your lifespan as normal. You might get on good terms with a druidic circle who will occasionally cast Reincarnate on you (either killing you immediately before or casting a version that euthanizes a willing target when cast. (Which requires regularly getting used to the new body, plus keeping the druids happy.) You might create a phoenix-like ritual that de-ages you, at the cost of some levels and memories.

All just thematic immortalities-with-costs off the top of my head, no deep rules delves required.

Hmmm, I actually like the place bonding thing.
Maybe a "must be buried in x spot" to be ressurected at the same age as when he was bondef to the spot. Or having to maintain a life of servitude to a greater power.

Also maybe a Dorian Grey thing.

I actually approve of the gm's call on this.

[Particle_Man]

The OP specifically wanted "long-term plans" and there are ways to do that without immortality. What about one-way time travel into the future? What about suspended animation with a contingency to awaken when your long term plans have come to fruition (something as simple as flesh to stone and a contingency stone to flesh)?

That way you don't have immortality but you can "skip ahead" if you want to see long-term plans that you initiated bear fruit (see the power of compound interest over a century! Mwahahahaha!).

[Crake]

The OP specifically wanted "long-term plans" and there are ways to do that without immortality. What about one-way time travel into the future? What about suspended animation with a contingency to awaken when your long term plans have come to fruition (something as simple as flesh to stone and a contingency stone to flesh)?

That way you don't have immortality but you can "skip ahead" if you want to see long-term plans that you initiated bear fruit (see the power of compound interest over a century! Mwahahahaha!).

Sequester and a contingent dispel magic would be better than stone to flesh, since it doesn't come with a fort save or die effect

[Grim Reader]

King of Nowhere, I absolutely understand your wish to keep immortality a rare commodity in-game. After all, the search for immortality is such a powerful trope in fantasy. You could have some fantastic quests based on that.

I am not sure I follow the reasoning that immortality would mean that there are lots of immortals running around. It could be something you have to wrest from the previous possessor. And top-flight wizards are not what you'd call a trusting lot. They may want to keep the potential competition away. In which case, easy ways to immortality may not be available because already immortal wizards may have taken Steps to prevent it. With prejudice. Maybe every easy road to immortality has been taken by someone whose first act as an immortal is to make sure no-one else can follow the path he took.

Anyway, in our world we have a lot of immortality legends. Fountain of Youth, philosophers stone, ambrosia, divine intercession, apples of Iduna, tree of life, etc. If you are going to block all the known D&D methods, maybe your world should have similar legends that could be investigated.


Because 17+ level spellcasters are super rare...? And wedded to history, race change, and steal life aren't RAW tricks. They are RAI tricks since the intent of those spells and feats are to turn you immortal.

I really, really think that if the intention behind Wedded to History was to make you immortal, the feat would have mentioned it. I mean, getting to roll Will saves instead of Reflex or Fortitude isn't at all bad. Immunity to effects targeting your creature type can be ok too. If the feat was intended to have an additional bonus effect of actually making you immortal it would probably have said so.

[ShurikVch]

Grim Psion (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20030628b) turns into Undead (thus, technically, immortal) at the very 1st level

Incantifier PrC (Dragon #339):
An incantifier does not heal naturally, nor can he be healed through normal magical means. Only through draining magic using his spell eater or spell leech ability can an incantifier replenish his physical health. However, an incantifier no longer has any need to eat, drink, or sleep and does not take penalties from neglecting these need. In addition, an incantifier no longer takes any negative effects from aging and has no maximum age.Note: minimal ECL entry is 11 - because of requirements (6th-level arcane spells and 14 ranks in skill); also, it costs 120000 gp and 4800 XP

[King of Nowhere]

So you read my post that much is evident based on your comment about gun powder and the steam engine, did you read the rest of it? Would that approach be acceptable or not? Can you give the forum more information about your world? Or about OP's character? It's difficult to help when all we can go on is RAW, which you've stated you'd like to avoid for in-world reasons.

Well, the rest of your suggestion is potentially ok. As long as it is complicated enough, and the players have to work hard for it, it can justify beeing a new thing that nobody managed before.
OP and me have done a bit of brainstorming, but not much so far. And this forum will discuss RAW to death, but it's still a good place for brainstorming material. OP is currently under university exams, but he'll come back reand and find some useful ideas here.

Indicentally, since someone mentioned suspended animation, there is a way for that. The church of nerull has a very powerful fighter (23rd level, in a non-epic world) who agreed to be killed, to be raised in case of need. Occasionally they raise him, to unleash him at a target or just to reset the expiration date of true resurrection, and kill him again. While dead, he does not age, and his spirit has fun in the afterlife of nerull. He still ages in the time he's alive, but he never stay alive for long. Other churches may have similar pacts with similarly powered ancient champions, haven't decided yet.
I proposed a similar pact to the pcs, but they refused.

Now, more information about my world... that's complicated. I could go on for hours, and nobody would read all that. It's certainly an heavily modded world, where many common assumptions do not work. Let's see what I can sum up that is particularly relevant here.
I still wrote quite a lot, spoilered for brevity. I have no idea if anyone will read all that stuff. Two-thirds down the end are some useful notes on a couple ways that were already discussed with the op to reach immortality.

In the past couple centuries, high level people have congregated to form alliances to be more effective against their equally high-leveled foes. Nations have been employing every ploy to get their loyalty. Churches have been trying to recruit. As a result, the world has become a jumbled mess of alliances, roughly split along the good/evil axe, with every nation bringing a handful of high level loyal adventurers, a score of mid and mid-high level guys, a large tresaury to hire freelancers/pay for resurrections, and a golem army.
The two sides are roughly balanced. Note that not everyone within an alliance block likes everyone else, but they stay together out of pressure from the common enemy.
There are some unaligned powers, like the dragons (despite their individualism, many of them felt they had to coalesce a bit to avoid being crushed by growing humanoid power; they are divided in several factions as to how they should approach humanoids), or the merchants (have a monopoly on magic trade and banking due to being the only ones with a truly unrobbable bunker. Incredibly rich, with a very powerful golem army, but they are avoiding politics because their power and prosperity comes from being threatening enough that nobody would want to mess with them, but non-threatening enough that everyone would make business with them. May drop their nonintervention policy if enough mess happens in the world).
The result resembles the cold war: two huge power blocks that strongly dislike each other, but who don't dare to fight directly. Espionage and sabotage performed by adventuring groups are the main avenues of fighting, and the main plot hooks for the campaign.

One thing of note is that ways to prevent resurrection have been banned by common consent. The reason for this is that high level adventurers go to their missions safe in the knowledge that, should they fall, their side has a bunch of high leve clerics with true resurrection. The threat to face eternity trapped in a gem would ruin their game, and so high level people on both sides (the ones who would use soul binds, and the ones against whom they would be used) agreed to never use them. that's not to say that those spells are unknown; in fact, every side keeps some scroll of soul bind to retaliate just in case.
This caveat means that it's even more difficult for me to justify the lack of immortals: I can't say "they were defeated in ways that prevented resurrection" because that would elicit retaliation (although special exceptions for specially loathsome individuals has been made). It's also a safety net for the pcs: even if I were to accidentally tpk, nodoby would touch their souls, and they would be raised by their allies shortly thereafter, having lost only their loot.

The pcs have sided with the side of good and have been trying to break the stalemate and cause a war on their condition. Their work has brought into the good alliance the goblins (which have their own nation with high level people and are decently powerful), some smaller dragon faction, and the orcs.
The orcs deserve more consideration. They have been powerless and neglected for centuries because their lack of casters and organization made them a laughable threat. They live in a siberia-like steppe to the north, once per generation they launch a great horde of grunts to conquer, they are intercepted by some high-level adventuring groups and utterly trounced. After a few decades, the memory fades enough that the new generations want to try it again. Recently, though, an orc leader who barely survived the latest massacre decided to try a new approach. He realized orcs need magic to face the other races on equal footing, and for magic they need schools, libraries, a large population to sustain all this apparatus; in short, they need a civilization. And he started to build it, using a few peaceful orc tribes who escaped fom the others as the core.
The OP is an orc barbarian (albeit one with higher-than-average mental stats) coming from one of those tribes. He's become the greater supporter of this leader, and helped him set a good groundwork to establish the orc nation. The wild orcs considered those peaceful orcs as traitors, but were obviously defeated by the pcs with the help of magic. Seeing a fellow orc wield the power of combined arms to such effect was so awe-inspiring that the orc population came to regard the op as a messiah, came to show them a new way of life. Even those who do not see him in religious life would still follow him anywhere. And weak may the orcs be as a race, but give spellcasting support to their barbarians, and they are a valuable ally.

Now, the first option for immortality I proposed was this: faith has power. The faith of the orcs in the OP and the party may well raise them to demigodhood. However, gods are limited in how they can influence the mortal realm (not sure about demigods, because I never figured out what they would exactly be), and the OP didn't like that.

Lichdom would be doable if the OP was a caster. He's on the shallow end of the evil alignment, and I ruled that there is nothing specifically bad in the ritual to lichdom, just that the negative energy will drive you crazy if you are not evil. I also introduced a neutral lich (well, he still pings as evil because of negative energy, but he's neutral behavior-wise) who managed to stave that off. He never managed to replicate the experiment, though. The OP gave him 50k gp to research ways to make him into a lich (I think?), so becoming a barbarian lich, with all the benefits and limitations, may actually be on the table.
There have been other liches with non-evil objectives, those just accepted that they had to be evil and went on a killing spree every decade or two to make sure to stay evil (notice that if you went on a killing spree in the middle of a major nation, you'd get a high level adventuring party scry-and-die on your ass in no time. But there are places without a stong government that lack high level resources and protection, and if you wipe out an isolated village, nobody important would even notice).

As for epic level threats and adventurers, my world doesn't have any. Level 20 is about the cap; the highest leveled people in history reached 25, and there is no epic spellcasting. There are demon lords and very ancient dragons, but nothing a sufficiently prepared level 20 party (or two parties) could not take.

Owing to the peace and prosperity and focus on getting as many high level people as possible, there are about 500 people above level 17. Of those, there are about 30 clerics, 50 wizards/sorcerors, and 20/30 druids. Maybe I'll tweak the figures a bit because 100 casters on 500 total is a bit low. Anyway, those are more than enough to take care of any extraplanar threat, because as much as they doo not like each other, they would ally in front of a threat to the whole plane. There are some extraplanar powers who would want to invade the prime material, but they would face too much opposition. I'm planning to unleash one such invasion if the pcs get carried out of hand with their war and wipe out most of the world high level population.

Oh, and there are 100 to 200 liches around, but only a handful of those have 9th levell spells. The mot noteworth is the high cleric of vecna, probably the most powerful humanoid around, who's been studying to become a deity for 700 years. I have big plans for him and his church (he brought the cult of vecna into the open by cutting down on the evilness, focusing on the usefulness of knowledge and power. He's now seen as the most reasonable an pragmatic voice in the evil faction, and his congregation became much more powerful than it could have been as a subterranean cult), but they are big spoilers, since the OP may be reading this.

[Anymage]

What does the player want from immortality? If they want to lead the orcish nation after the campaign ends, they can probably swing divine ascension after the main campaign plot has been wrapped up, to serve as a fittingly epic retirement. Alternately, they willingly submit to a spell similar to Trap the Soul or Temporal Stasis, that allows them to give advice while in a radically altered form (that prohibits physical activity or movement, never mind adventuring), while allowing them to be released for short periods when their people need to reactivate their hero.

As long as the PC has years of life left, they can remain active in the mortal plane instead of having to make agelessness their top immediate priority. Your setting's attitudes towards resurrections just further the idea that an errant sword or spell won't deprive his people of a great leader. Once the campaign is over, having his adventuring potential curtailed in the epilogue isn't that bad a thing.

In fact, that makes me think of a decent compromise. As long as he doesn't do anything really stupid to blow his rep as a racial hero, he can count on the power of belief and the good will of allied gods to boost him to godhood once his mortal body wears out. Still gets to continue adventuring without drawbacks, still gets to do epic and memorable stuff over the course of the campaign, gets a kickass sendoff in the epilogue, and helps explain why people who found themselves in a similar position aren't hanging around and cluttering up the campaign world.

[Bronk]

Indicentally, since someone mentioned suspended animation, there is a way for that. The church of nerull has a very powerful fighter (23rd level, in a non-epic world) who agreed to be killed, to be raised in case of need. Occasionally they raise him, to unleash him at a target or just to reset the expiration date of true resurrection, and kill him again. While dead, he does not age, and his spirit has fun in the afterlife of nerull. He still ages in the time he's alive, but he never stay alive for long.


Nifty... have you perhaps read the Star Trek novel, The Final Reflection?

[Calthropstu]

Have a kid. Let your kid live to the age of 40 when he has kids of his own.
Mindswap into him.

Repeat each generation. Keep living as the person you swap into.

No one knows it's you. No one knows you're immortal. And you know enough about the person to pretend to be him.

[Crake]

I really, really think that if the intention behind Wedded to History was to make you immortal, the feat would have mentioned it. I mean, getting to roll Will saves instead of Reflex or Fortitude isn't at all bad. Immunity to effects targeting your creature type can be ok too. If the feat was intended to have an additional bonus effect of actually making you immortal it would probably have said so.

Have you read the ancient PCs dragon magazine article?

[Julio]

Tons of great ideas, may I suggest something which I think has not been mentioned?

An artifact that gives you immortality. Like the lich's thing I forgot the name, but well, it works in a way that makes you immortal but you don't have to turn into a frigging undead.

You can make its mechanics any way you want, I will post some options here with various degrees of complexity:

-a specific place they need to sleep on to maintain their youth - like a magical coccoon - the amount of time they spend sleeping in there could be the amount of time they won't age. So, for example, the PC could spend 24 hours in it, then he could spend a whole day doing stuff and not aging. Like a 24-hour credit lol But then, after that time, he resumes ageing. So it will be their job to manage how much time they spend preserving their youth and doing whatnot - if he intends to really never age again, he would be active only every other day, for example, and would have to always come back to that specific spot to sleep (bringing the constant need for teleportation scrolls/items/services). During particularly demanding moments he would simply age naturally during that time, for example, if he was restrained or somehow stopped from sleeping there, or chose to stay active for a longer period of time to take care of important things which can't be delayed. Or he might as well spend a 100 years resting, and then be active for a 100 years! Like a Tarrasque who wakens only every now and then but wreak havoc when they do so lol! You could also decide on a limit for this "time credit".

-a piece of jewerly the PC has to wear, while they wear it they simply don't age - you determine what happens if it's removed - will he age everything they didn't in a short time and die, or will he simply resume aging as when he stopped? This could lead to an epic quest if said object was stolen from the PC by an antagonist.

-A fountain of youth-type. Every hundred years you must drink from it to maintain your age, but after say 1000 years (or whatever time you decide, could be even 0), whenever you drink from the fountain, you must pass a test - like a fortitude or will test, or whatever you feel appropriate. If you fail, you could either age a bit, or go a bit mad (for instance, change randomly your allignment), or take on an otherworldy look somehow which clearly indicated you were a supernatural creature (you decide which features might show up, from animal parts, colorful auras, elemental traits, infernal/celestial traits etc.). After the defined time step, the test's difficulty could increase each time you drink from the fountain.

-A mysterious deck of cards. You must shuffle the cards every time step (e.g. a month or the DM's desired time step) and pick a card. This card you pick will indicate a quest you must perform in order to stay immortal. If you complete the quest, you remain immortal for the chosen relevant time period. The card quests from the deck could vary immensely in nature, from "go kill that monster" to "obtain the Tome of Arvandor, hidden in the Forests of Cormanthor" to "I need a strain of hair from a live person with more than 90 years old", "sacrifice me a virgin" or "make the Orc King apologize to you". Also, the amount of time you spend immortal after completing the quest could also be determined in a totally random way after you finish it, or it could be tied to the quest's difficulty. If you complete the quest, the card is shuffled back into the deck. If you fail the quest, that card is lost and you will have to draw a new card and complete a new quest - and have to watch out failing too many times and so, dangerously narrowing your quest choices.

Just throwing a few suggestions! Good luck!

[King of Nowhere]

Nifty... have you perhaps read the Star Trek novel, The Final Reflection?

Nope. And I know very little of the star trek universe in general.

It's just that I've always been fascinated with the resurrection spell and how it would change the world. What would happen if assassinating the king was pointless because he'd just be brought back? If every nation had a few superpowered persons of mass destruction, and those guys could afford to treat death as a minor inconvenience, how would that shape warfare and the relations between nations?
Using death as a mean of suspended animation is one of the uses I conceived.

[ShurikVch]

-a piece of jewerly the PC has to wear, while they wear it they simply don't age - you determine what happens if it's removed - will he age everything they didn't in a short time and die, or will he simply resume aging as when he stopped? This could lead to an epic quest if said object was stolen from the PC by an antagonist.AFAIK, there are two fitting possibilities: Gray Portrait - major artifact from the Champions of Ruin: after a week of attuning, it protects owner from aging, negative levels, and ability drain; but, if it will be destroyed, all those pent up bad things would happen at once (probably, killing the ex-owner)
Kissed by the Ages - 9th-level Wizard/Sorcerer spell (Dragon #354): it binds target creature to a trinket (spell's focus, magic item which costs at least 4000 gp); the creature wouldn't age as long as wearing the trinket; if the trinket is removed, creature starts to age as usual (and gets some save penalties); creature also get something like "innate compass" which points to a general location of the trinket; the spell's focus is near indestructible as long as the target creature is alive - only something extreme (like artifact, or a direct divine intervention) may destroy it

One thing of note is that ways to prevent resurrection have been banned by common consent. The reason for this is that high level adventurers go to their missions safe in the knowledge that, should they fall, their side has a bunch of high leve clerics with true resurrection. The threat to face eternity trapped in a gem would ruin their game, and so high level people on both sides (the ones who would use soul binds, and the ones against whom they would be used) agreed to never use them. that's not to say that those spells are unknown; in fact, every side keeps some scroll of soul bind to retaliate just in case.
This caveat means that it's even more difficult for me to justify the lack of immortals: I can't say "they were defeated in ways that prevented resurrection" because that would elicit retaliation (although special exceptions for specially loathsome individuals has been made). It's also a safety net for the pcs: even if I were to accidentally tpk, nodoby would touch their souls, and they would be raised by their allies shortly thereafter, having lost only their loot.Are you aware - trapping the soul is far from the only way to keep dead people dead?

[Crake]

Nope. And I know very little of the star trek universe in general.

It's just that I've always been fascinated with the resurrection spell and how it would change the world. What would happen if assassinating the king was pointless because he'd just be brought back? If every nation had a few superpowered persons of mass destruction, and those guys could afford to treat death as a minor inconvenience, how would that shape warfare and the relations between nations?
Using death as a mean of suspended animation is one of the uses I conceived.

This only becomes a thing if a) spellcasters of high level are sufficiently common and b) the nation is subservient to the religion. Without a), only a few kings would have access to resurrection around the world, and without b) clerics could easily refuse to resurrect kings that do not follow their religion's ethos.

[Jack_Simth]

This only becomes a thing if a) spellcasters of high level are sufficiently common and b) the nation is subservient to the religion. Without a), only a few kings would have access to resurrection around the world, and without b) clerics could easily refuse to resurrect kings that do not follow their religion's ethos.
In D&D, it's not "the" religion - it's "a" religion. There's a rather lot to choose from. Most folks could probably find one that lines up with what they were planning to do anyway well enough.

[Malphegor]

Realistically, any party is probably going to have some measure of immortality by level 20, because you're kinda broken at that point, and become heroes of Epic legend (cough cough emphasis on Epic), you can probably assume that if there's still stories to be told, they're alive, somehow. Whether they get the spark of a god in them or they just don't die when it's their time because of some BBEG, plot convenience will keep them going.

Personally though, my plan with my wizard character is to Polymorph Object himself into his body as he was in the start of the game (effectively resetting my ageing, but just to be sure:), getting a feat to permit a necromancy thing to keep running (I prohibited necromancy on making my character, but I need like 3 spells tops to be fairly safely immortal, I reckon, and there's a feat that lets you learn 3 spells from a prohibited school), and hopefully tying my soul to a object via kissed by the ages...

[King of Nowhere]

Are you aware - trapping the soul is far from the only way to keep dead people dead?

But as I said, this ban on keeping people dead was agreed upon by high level people, who are the ones who would have most to lose, and are also the ones enforcing it. So the ban comprises basically any way of keeping people out of an afterlife or give them a variation of the "fate worse than death" trope. It's like using weapons of mass destruction in our world really: even your allies will be scared of what you may do.
Of course, just like real world nations use wmd when the situation gets dire enough, so will high level adventuring parties.



This only becomes a thing if a) spellcasters of high level are sufficiently common and b) the nation is subservient to the religion. Without a), only a few kings would have access to resurrection around the world, and without b) clerics could easily refuse to resurrect kings that do not follow their religion's ethos.

Well, as was specified in the long spoilered part that few people probably read entirely, there are about 30 clerics with 9th level spells in my world, which makes them still super rare, but makes them easily available to powerful people. High level adventurers doing high level fighting and requiring resurrection on a regular base are a few thousands at most, and they don't adventure daily. Anyway, if clerics with 9th level spells are super rare, raise dead is a 5th level spell, and it's good enough for most practical applications. And there are clerics with 5th level spells in any decent-sized city.
Diamond supplies are a greater concern: the pcs created a casus belli resulting in open war between two nations, and I made it a plot point that both nations were digging through their diamond stockpiles frighteningly fast - and good thing none of the nations had easy access to a 9th level arcane caster, or disjunction would have raised the bill with destroyed gear. The politicians pulled a stop to it because it was becoming too expensive.

As for nations being subservient to religions, it's a thing. Religions are more powerful than nations. Every religion has the guaranteed loialty of a large number of clerics, some of very high level. And a god with his cause is a much greater motivator than patriotism. Nations have to try hard to raise adventurers whose loialty goes beyond the money, churches barely have to try. Plus, they have a near monopoly on healing magic, making them as rich as large pharmaceutical corporations. In the puzzle of alliances, nations do well to ally themselves to a big religion. Some churches even have their own fiefdoms, like the church had through the middle ages and renaissance. In those cases the distinction between nation and religion becomes moot.
Even discounting that, there are many religions, so someboddy looking for resurrection simply has to pick. If the high priest of pelor won't raise a wanted criminal, the high priest of nerull probably will be happy to comply, while the high priest of olidammara may simply take the money and ask no questions. If you can afford the bill for true resurrection, adding a teleport to reach the appropriate city is a small matter

[ShurikVch]

But as I said, this ban on keeping people dead was agreed upon by high level people, who are the ones who would have most to lose, and are also the ones enforcing it. So the ban comprises basically any way of keeping people out of an afterlife or give them a variation of the "fate worse than death" trope. It's like using weapons of mass destruction in our world really: even your allies will be scared of what you may do.
Of course, just like real world nations use wmd when the situation gets dire enough, so will high level adventuring parties.Do you know - it's impossible to resurrect somebody who was turned into Undead?
So, all those monsters with the Create Spawn (or Negative Energy Aura) SA; spells like Bodak's Glare, or like Greater Seed of Undeath; diseases like Ghoul Fever or Bonefire (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20020817a); nasty snacks from the cult of Orcus...
Sure, it wouldn't be that much of a problem, if just one or three of the party were affected. But what's if it was TPK?

And Putrefaction spell kills by aging to death; it's victims aren't subject to resurrection or reincarnation by definition

Those from the dead who turned into Petitioners aren't subject to resurrection too; thus, bite from Molydeus, or more-or-less prolonged dwelling at the Gray Wastes of Hades may make resurrection impossible

Vile damage can't be restored outside of consecrated ground; missing that tiny fact may cause wasting of valuable components at the very least, but - unless they get the reason fast enough - may also completely prevent the resurrection

Things like Disintegration, Black Sand, or Mummy Rot are turning corpses into dust/sand.
While it isn't enough to prevent the True Resurrection - how much people could allow to acquire such services?

For those whose corpses became a meal of Barghest (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/barghest.htm) - there are 50% chance to not being resurrected

Corpses which were ruined by enemies, scavengers, fire, natural decomposition, and so on...
While it shouldn't prevent even a "regular" Resurrection - Raise Dead would be out of question

If the dead was infected by some magical disease - whoever raises him better be aware, and be ready to remove it - or all that raising would be waste of time, diamonds, and dead person's level(s)

Outsiders and Undead are required 6th-level spells, and Elementals couldn't be restored by anything less than True Resurrection

There are no known ways to restore a non-Living Construct, or Warforged Juggernaut

[unseenmage]

...

There are no known ways to restore a non-Living Construct, or Warforged Juggernaut
The Memory of Function spell from Pathfinder restores destroyed Constructs to full functionality.

[King of Nowhere]

Do you know - it's impossible to resurrect somebody who was turned into Undead?
So, all those monsters with the Create Spawn (or Negative Energy Aura) SA; spells like Bodak's Glare, or like Greater Seed of Undeath; diseases like Ghoul Fever or Bonefire (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20020817a); nasty snacks from the cult of Orcus...
Sure, it wouldn't be that much of a problem, if just one or three of the party were affected. But what's if it was TPK?
[snip]

Actually, I don't know most of that stuff. My knowledge of obscure sourcebooks is sketchy at best.
The part about resurrecting somebody turned into an undead, I always took it to mean you can't raise someone turned into an intelligent undead, whose soul is still trapped in the body, or directing the body. You can't resurrect a lich, for example, but you can't be turned into a lich against your will. To the best of my knowledge, turning people into undead can't stop them from being resurrected unless they cooperate. Or unless you are just turning them into free-willed beings that retain most of their powers and that you still have to deal with in some way.
Incidentally, I ruled that the ritual to become lich makes you die of old age, so you can't be resurrected later if your philactery is destroyed. I did it to keep liches in check, because in the established setting, with the relative ease to get resurrected, and with a strong church of vecna acting out in the open and being lich-friendly, I figured becoming liches would be just too convenient.

Yes, if I had known some of that stuff, I may have included it in the worldbuilding. As it is, we've been playing years under the assumption that you can't stop someone from being raised unless you do nasty things to his soul. So I have to rule that all that stuff doesn't exist in my world, to avoid retconning.
On the plus side, they have nifty antimagic prisons that are capable of containing high level characters, and that's how they deal with people who would be resurrected.

[Jack_Simth]

Actually, I don't know most of that stuff. My knowledge of obscure sourcebooks is sketchy at best.
The part about resurrecting somebody turned into an undead, I always took it to mean you can't raise someone turned into an intelligent undead, whose soul is still trapped in the body, or directing the body.Obscure sourcebooks aren't needed. OK, maybe most of the spells to do it directly to a living subject are hard to come by outside Core, but the Vampire, Shadow, Wight, Spectre, Wraith, and Mohrg all come with Create Spawn. The Ghoul and Ghast will also infect folks to turn them into undead. The Shadow, Wraith, and Spectre are available from Greater Create Undead; a Ghoul, Ghast, or Mhorg can be made via Create Undead. A wight can theoretically be made via Enervation.

[Crake]

You can't raise dead people who were turned into undead, but you can resurrect them, as long as the undead that they became has been destroyed.


On the plus side, they have nifty antimagic prisons that are capable of containing high level characters, and that's how they deal with people who would be resurrected.

how do they deal with the mages capable of casting 9th level spells who cast invoke magic and then dimension door out said prisons?

[Anymage]

Obscure sourcebooks aren't needed. OK, maybe most of the spells to do it directly to a living subject are hard to come by outside Core, but the Vampire, Shadow, Wight, Spectre, Wraith, and Mohrg all come with Create Spawn. The Ghoul and Ghast will also infect folks to turn them into undead. The Shadow, Wraith, and Spectre are available from Greater Create Undead; a Ghoul, Ghast, or Mhorg can be made via Create Undead. A wight can theoretically be made via Enervation.

Spells that make resurrection difficult or impossible would be treated as a similar class to spells that bind souls. Using them means you're going above and beyond just killing the other guy, and that'll piss everybody off.

Monsters that make resurrection difficult or impossible will be treated as exceptionally dangerous beasties. Rendered extinct or endangered if possible, given a wide berth if not, and destroyed on sight if their spawning habits make it impossible to render them extinct. They're dangerous and fearsome, but things that scare high level characters enough to have a bunch of them band together tend to be taken out.

Places that can warp you will be treated like radioactive waste dumps. You know that going there unprotected will do very bad things to you, so you don't go in unless you're swaddled with protections. Places with such high stakes are not cosmologically forbidden from existing. It's just that people who expect that they might be resurrected tend to avoid things and places that might mess with that.

(Note: I don't know KoN, nor am I part of his game. These are just reasonable assumptions as to how, while things that can throw off resurrections might exist, your average high level adventurer can still confidently expect to be resurrected if something bad happens.)


how do they deal with the mages capable of casting 9th level spells who cast invoke magic and then dimension door out said prisons?

Possibly just by not allowing that one spell to exist.

Otherwise, if somebody shows that just locking them in an antimagic prison is not enough to stop them from continuing to make problems, that's when killing them and binding their soul starts to become an option. It's the nuclear option. But when someone shows that prisons won't hold them, you don't really have other options.

[unseenmage]

...


Possibly just by not allowing that one spell to exist.

Otherwise, if somebody shows that just locking them in an antimagic prison is not enough to stop them from continuing to make problems, that's when killing them and binding their soul starts to become an option. It's the nuclear option. But when someone shows that prisons won't hold them, you don't really have other options.
Thinaun Steel is a special material which immediately captures the soul of the villain when they are slain.

Iron Flasks, Mirrors of Entrapment, the Smoky Confinement spell, etc also make decent mage prisons in their own right.

Though Thinaun Steel as a non-magic-item special material wouldn't get Disjoined or cease functioning in an antimagic field.

Your Antimagic prison could use a few Thinaun throwing needles used to hold only the most awful baddies.

[MagnusAdder]

Place your self in suspended animation. Use astral projection, domenate will, clones elimenals as surrogate bodies.

[MagnusAdder]

Copy your make an intelligent item with a copy of your own mind, or transfer your soul to an item. Which ever make sure the resulting item has at will spells, magic jar, and is its own container.

[King of Nowhere]

how do they deal with the mages capable of casting 9th level spells who cast invoke magic and then dimension door out said prisons?

There is no invoke magic or other tricks to cast inside antimagic.
I wrote a page ago that I subscribe to the school of thought that limitations are more interesting than powers, and so I decided there were a few things casters would not be able to do, no matter what. Casting in antimagic was one of those.

Even if it was possible to cast in antimagic, bunkers use miracle/wish liberally to stop anything that cannot be stopped otherwise. Of course they are super expensive, most nations cannot afford even one; those who can, use it as both high level prison and tresaury, and residence for important people during times of danger. I figured in a world where there are people who can do the kind of stuff high level people do, and a third of them worship evil deities or may be hired by your enemies for the right amount, building a place that was relatively safe from them would be a top priority, and well worth any expence.




(Note: I don't know KoN, nor am I part of his game. These are just reasonable assumptions as to how, while things that can throw off resurrections might exist, your average high level adventurer can still confidently expect to be resurrected if something bad happens.)



Possibly just by not allowing that one spell to exist.

Otherwise, if somebody shows that just locking them in an antimagic prison is not enough to stop them from continuing to make problems, that's when killing them and binding their soul starts to become an option. It's the nuclear option. But when someone shows that prisons won't hold them, you don't really have other options.

Your assumptions mostly are spot on.
Only minor errata, it's not the "prevent resurrection" part that's scary, it's the "prevent from going to afterlife" part. If there was a spell that killed by aging, that would actually be fine to use, because the victim would still get to enjoy eternity where they belong. Even evil high level people tend to be happy in their afterlives, as they keep most of their powers after death and demons that would torment lesser souls give them a wide berth. They do not fear staying dead; they fear being denied their (almost) eternal reward.
Although before taking the nuclear option, they have one more trick, that is keeping the prisoner unconscious. Either by using sleep drugs in overwhelming doses, or by non-lethal damage. There are a few mid-low level monks who are hired specifically for the task, using a rotation. It may be needed because there are a few high level druids and monks who learned to willingly stop their heart, and they are also immune to poisons. Nations with less moral scruples could take the harsher route of chopping someone's hands and tongue and applying a sleep deprivation regime to keep someone from casting or recovering spells.

It's almost never needed, though. Most high level people are smart enough to avoid messing with the more powerful nations, and those who do on behalf of another nation can generally count on being freed by prisoner exchange eventually. This all follows with the general principle that all powerful people/organizations of my world are unwilling to unleash their full power because they fear what would happen if everyone did so. Even with most non-core material, and some core, not existing in the setting, there are still plenty of truly horrible things that can be done in a no-holdouts conflict, and very few people are willing to push their brinksmanship to the point that their enemies may feel they have to use those last-resort tactics.
For example, when somebody manages to evade, standard policy is to not hunt them too hard as long as they stay away from you or your allies. "We could put a 20 million gp bounty on your disembodies soul, and it would only be a matter of time before a couple dozen high level casters decided it's worth the effort even when split. But we'd rather keep the money, if you don't force our hand" "As long as I don't give any more trouble, I won't be worth the effort of catching me again".