Limited Wish and prolonging lifespan ( RAI )

[Conradine]

Altough there's nothing in the rules about that, in your opinion would it be reasonable for a Limited Wish to stall ( not revert ) ageing for some time?

A year?
A month?
A week?
A single day?

[sleepyphoenixx]

No. The only spell i know of which does that is Ensul's Soultheft (W:CoS) and it is both 9th level and comes with additional conditions instead of just making you live longer.
So it's way out of line with Limited Wish's power level which is about equivalent to a 5th-6th level spell.

Even setting that aside there's a reason immortality options like that tend to have significant costs and/or drawbacks.
They're not supposed to be freely available without significant costs and moral conflicts. And no, Limited Wish's minor XP cost doesn't count.
At least that's how i interpret the intent behind the options official content offers.

Even Reincarnate has the possibility of race change hanging over your head and that's by far the most benign option.

[Conradine]

Mmm...

and slow down the ageing, without stopping it?

[TheStranger]

Two answers for you:
1. Extending lifespan by a modest amount probably is not an overpowered use of Limited Wish.
2. It’s almost certainly not RAI.

I’m basing the latter mostly on how niche, convoluted, and/or evil the explicit “live forever” options are. Also, if you allow every 13th level wizard to stop aging, that has some setting-wide implications. But on the big list of ways a high level wizard can break D&D it barely registers.

[DeTess]

This is a case of 'ask your DM'. Limited wish does have an open clause of 'Produce any other effect whose power level is in line with the above effects, such as a single creature automatically hitting on its next attack or taking a -7 penalty on its next saving throw.', but the exact value of a prolonged lifespan is honestly pretty subjective.

In a highly narrative game that'll only take place over the period of about 1-5 years it is completely worthless, while in an incredibly long sandbox game where players are expected to regularly 'downgrade' to new characters because their old ones age out of usefulness it can be incredibly valuable. In a game that's supposed to be about passing the mantle to the next generation a couple of times, I wouldn't allow it. In a narrative game where the storyline is projected to take no longer than two years to complete, I'd totally allow the spellcaster to be semi-immortal in the epilogue through the use of this spell if they wanted to be.

[Zanos]

No. The only spell i know of which does that is Ensul's Soultheft (W:CoS) and it is both 9th level and comes with additional conditions instead of just making you live longer.
Steal Life is 8th level and makes you week younger if you cast it on a full moon for every point of ability score you drain. It's also [Evil] but technically has no requirement that you actually kill someone with it. You could drain 4 points of ability scores 1/month and never age, so long as the 'victim' has a way to recover the damage.

That's still a bit more convoluted than just increasing your lifespan, but it also has no XP or material costs.


So I would say limited wish should be able to increase your lifespan as long as it's worse than the above spells, being a level lower and very general, but burning XP. A few days up to a week, maybe? Certainly not something you can afford, XP wise, to make you immortal.

[Conradine]

Certainly not something you can afford, XP wise, to make you immortal.

Unless you get Limited Wish by sacrifices ( BoVD )...

[Zanos]

Unless you get Limited Wish by sacrifices ( BoVD )...
Sure, but I don't really see a thematic issue with sacrificing living people to dark powers to extend your life.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Steal Life is 8th level and makes you week younger if you cast it on a full moon for every point of ability score you drain. It's also [Evil] but technically has no requirement that you actually kill someone with it. You could drain 4 points of ability scores 1/month and never age, so long as the 'victim' has a way to recover the damage.

That's still a bit more convoluted than just increasing your lifespan, but it also has no XP or material costs.


So I would say limited wish should be able to increase your lifespan as long as it's worse than the above spells, being a level lower and very general, but burning XP. A few days up to a week, maybe? Certainly not something you can afford, XP wise, to make you immortal.

300xp is chump change at level 13 and above. And Limited Wish may be a 7th level spell, but its power level is explicitly limited to something in line with 6th level wizard spells or 5th level non-wizard spells.
Since what you're looking for isn't an actual spell effect the limit is at best 5th level, if that.

In light of that i'd maybe let it slow down aging (maybe half rate for a week or a month) but not stop it altogether.
Or maybe use the "on the night of a full moon" clause but only let it restore 1 week per use, so at best you can manage to slow aging to a quarter.

That's similar enough to using Living Zombies (LoD) - which iirc doesn't require any spells above 5th or 6th but needs you to zombify living things - that i'd consider it balanced.

[Zanos]

300xp is chump change at level 13 and above.
For something you cast for a tough fight once in a blue moon, sure. For a spell you need to recast every couple of days or weeks, even under conditions where the party isn't earning XP(crafting, downtime, resting), it adds up pretty quickly.

[TheStranger]

In light of Steal Life being 8th, I’ll revise my earlier answer to say that the effect is a bit overpowered for Limited Wish. Clearly not RAI in any case and I wouldn’t allow it as a DM.

[sleepyphoenixx]

For something you cast for a tough fight once in a blue moon, sure. For a spell you need to recast every couple of days or weeks, even under conditions where the party isn't earning XP(crafting, downtime, resting), it adds up pretty quickly.

A lone ECL 13 wizard gets 650xp for killing a CR 8 creature.
He could literally just port somewhere, kill a single enemy that is absolutely no threat to him and be covered for two castings. Doesn't even need to drag the party along.

He could use 300xp every day and as long as he goes to kill something halfway level appropriate once a week he'd be fine.
And a 13th level wizard generally has little trouble killing things at their CR and below.

He could probably just use scry and die tactics with summoned monster strike teams and never even leave his lab to do it.

[Zanos]

A lone ECL 13 wizard gets 650xp for killing a CR 8 creature.
He could literally just port somewhere, kill a single enemy that is absolutely no threat to him and be covered for two castings. Doesn't even need to drag the party along.

He could use 300xp every day and as long as he goes to kill something halfway level appropriate once a week he'd be fine.
And a 13th level wizard generally has little trouble killing things at their CR and below.

He could probably just use scry and die tactics with summoned monster strike teams and never even leave his lab to do it.
I guess, but I've never seen a game played once where the wizard just played out a solo session to farm up XP for crafting/wishes/limited wish or whatever.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I guess, but I've never seen a game played once where the wizard just played out a solo session to farm up XP for crafting/wishes/limited wish or whatever.

It's supposed to have some cost to it. Compared to the other options mentioned in this thread "not sitting on your ass for months or years" is pretty mild.

[Biggus]

A lone ECL 13 wizard gets 650xp for killing a CR 8 creature.
He could literally just port somewhere, kill a single enemy that is absolutely no threat to him and be covered for two castings. Doesn't even need to drag the party along.


If it's absolutely no threat to him, he shouldn't get any XP at all for it. In the DMG (p.39) it says to adjust the XP award to allow for circumstances which make an encounter easier. If the Wizard arranges the combat so that his enemy has no possible way to hurt him, it should be reduced to zero.

If there is even a tiny degree of threat, having to do that 26 times a year, year after year, will eventually result in the enemy rolling multiple critical hits in the first round and killing the Wizard.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

In light of Steal Life being 8th, I’ll revise my earlier answer to say that the effect is a bit overpowered for Limited Wish.

For reference, steal life used against a generic commoner with ability scores of 10s across the board lets you de-age yourself by 60 weeks per casting if you end up killing the commoner, or 59 weeks if you leave them alive with 1 point of Con. If you have a cleric buddy (which you probably do, to cast the desecrate or unhallow needed as a prerequisite for steal life), each restoration they cast on the commoner to restore the Con drain nets you 9 more weeks of reverse aging, which for a fairly standard 15th-level evil cleric can work out to 17*9=153 more weeks.

All told, that's a minimum of 1.1 and a maximum of [4 * number of high level clerics you know] years' worth of de-aging for a single 8th-level casting with no XP cost and a measly 50 gp material component cost. Compared to that, spending 300 XP and a 7th level slot for a few months to a year of de-aging seems plenty reasonable.

[sreservoir]

For reference, steal life used against a generic commoner with ability scores of 10s across the board lets you de-age yourself by 60 weeks per casting if you end up killing the commoner, or 59 weeks if you leave them alive with 1 point of Con. If you have a cleric buddy (which you probably do, to cast the desecrate or unhallow needed as a prerequisite for steal life), each restoration they cast on the commoner to restore the Con drain nets you 9 more weeks of reverse aging, which for a fairly standard 15th-level evil cleric can work out to 17*9=153 more weeks.

If you're interested in doing this long-term, invest in a bed of restoration (SBG 71). (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618701-Immortality-through-staying-awake-in-bed-all-night-and-incidentally-being-evil)


All told, that's a minimum of 1.1 and a maximum of [4 * number of high level clerics you know] years' worth of de-aging for a single 8th-level casting with no XP cost and a measly 50 gp material component cost. Compared to that, spending 300 XP and a 7th level slot for a few months to a year of de-aging seems plenty reasonable.

This is pretty sketchy reasoning though.

First of all, characterizing steal life as "a single 8th-level casting with no XP cost and a measly 50 gp material component cost" ignores, well, that everything about the spell implies that the intended use is as part of an encounter where you're trying to stop a villain who's concentrating on the spell before the victim dies (thus immediately restoring the victim). It's supposed to have not only the mechanically required costs, but also a social cost: it makes you an Evil necromancer who drains the life out of people to death to restore your own youth, and you should expect encounters accordingly. That the spell's mechanics don't actually support this unless you play the caster far more stupid than someone who can cast 8th-level spells has any right, and that you can in fact pretty much bypass the costly part implies about as much about expectations of an 8th-level spell as a dweomerkeeper ignoring XP costs implies that those spells are appropriate for their level without the XP cost.

Second, this is a spell effect whose impact (which is pretty much entirely plot-driving) is pretty much independent of how much de-aging it causes. It doesn't really matter that much whether you get a year or a month of de-aging from steal life; the important part is just that it provides enough de-aging to reliably counteract natural aging. It's like deciding that, since reincarnate is a 4th-level spell that brings someone back from the dead with a 1000 gp material component, then it's reasonable to have a 3rd-level spell that reproduces a reincarnate effect if you cast it three times with a total 3000 gp of material components.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

If you're interested in doing this long-term, invest in a bed of restoration (SBG 71). (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618701-Immortality-through-staying-awake-in-bed-all-night-and-incidentally-being-evil)

That's a much more efficient method, certainly. One benefit to using a cleric buddy, though, is that you can go to the commoner instead of bringing the commoner to you, therefore avoiding leading any meddling adventurers to your base of operations. Support small villainy, plot locally! :smallamused:


First of all, characterizing steal life as "a single 8th-level casting with no XP cost and a measly 50 gp material component cost" ignores, well, that everything about the spell implies that the intended use is as part of an encounter where you're trying to stop a villain who's concentrating on the spell before the victim dies (thus immediately restoring the victim). It's supposed to have not only the mechanically required costs, but also a social cost: it makes you an Evil necromancer who drains the life out of people to death to restore your own youth, and you should expect encounters accordingly. That the spell's mechanics don't actually support this unless you play the caster far more stupid than someone who can cast 8th-level spells has any right, and that you can in fact pretty much bypass the costly part implies about as much about expectations of an 8th-level spell as a dweomerkeeper ignoring XP costs implies that those spells are appropriate for their level without the XP cost.

Firstly, I ignored any social costs because the most important comparison was that steal life is repeatable indefinitely in a way that limited wish isn't. As mentioned upthread, it isn't necessarily sustainable for a high-level character to keep the XP rolling in, whereas commoners and gold pieces are much more easily obtained, so even in a direct comparison of "cast one limited wish per month" vs. "cast one steal life per month" limited wish isn't at all duplicating an 8th-level-equivalent effect.

Secondly, the Dweomerkeeper comparison is flawed because it's applying a PrC ability to any spell to judge any spell's balance and Dweomerkeeper itself doesn't have the kinds of social costs you're talking about. A better comparison would be animate dead, which also costs a token amount of gold per casting and can be fueled by (ex-)commoners at the cost of being a social pariah and a target for adventurers.

In the case of both steal life and animate dead, though, while one certainly could be a cackling villain using it as part of a "foil the mastermind's evil scheme" plot, one could also be, say, one of a handful of cultists hiding in the sewers picking off one commoner at a time as the antagonist of an "investigate the mysterious disappearances" plot. You can't just assume the worst-case most-stereotypical-villain scenario and declare that that's obviously part of the spell's intended balance, unless you assume that baleful polymorph carries a heavy social cost as well because it's exclusively used by witches turning people into newts. :smallwink:


Second, this is a spell effect whose impact (which is pretty much entirely plot-driving) is pretty much independent of how much de-aging it causes. It doesn't really matter that much whether you get a year or a month of de-aging from steal life; the important part is just that it provides enough de-aging to reliably counteract natural aging. It's like deciding that, since reincarnate is a 4th-level spell that brings someone back from the dead with a 1000 gp material component, then it's reasonable to have a 3rd-level spell that reproduces a reincarnate effect if you cast it three times with a total 3000 gp of material components.

Again, that's a hyperbolic example. Firstly, it actually would be somewhat reasonable to have a 3rd-level lesser reincarnate that temporarily reincarnates someone for 500 gp and one casting or permanently reincarnates them for 1,000 gp and two castings, 'cause burning two 3rds to cast reincarnate is literally something a Spirit Shaman can do with Versatile Spellcaster and at that point it's just a question of whether the baseline effect of temporary reincarnation is fair at 3rd level (which, considering revenance is temporary raise dead at 4th level and does that for 1 minute/level with no XP or material component, one might decide in fact is fair).

Secondly, TheStranger was saying that because steal life could de-age the caster at all as an 8th-level effect he felt it was too much for a 7th-level effect, and I was pointing out that the amount of de-aging involved leaves a lot of space for a 7th-level de-aging effect. If a 9th-level spell can grant immortality with one casting (kissed by the ages), an 8th-level spell can grant eternal youth with one casting every few months (steal life), and a 4th-level spell can grant periodic age resets with one casting every few decades (reincarnate), then there's got to be some level of de-aging that's acceptable as a 7th-level spell, right? At that point we're just quibbling over just how many weeks is worth it for how much XP, but the bottom line is that it's not the case that the best example of an effect being an 8th-level spell means that a diminished effect isn't appropriate for a 7th-level spell.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If you have access to a place with the Timeless trait with regards to aging and magic (such as an unusual planar anomaly on the Material Plane, a demiplane, or the Astral Plane), limited wish can get you an acorn of far travel spell. So long as you have the acorn on your person (such as embedded in a necklace or as the "gemstone" of a ring), you'll be immortal, and the timeless-with-regards-to-magic trait will keep the acorn of far travel spell going (along with any and all buffs you have on your person). Just make sure there's an oak tree planted in the right spot. (A bonsai oak would be perfect for this; easier to hide that way.)

[sleepyphoenixx]

If it's absolutely no threat to him, he shouldn't get any XP at all for it. In the DMG (p.39) it says to adjust the XP award to allow for circumstances which make an encounter easier. If the Wizard arranges the combat so that his enemy has no possible way to hurt him, it should be reduced to zero.
But he doesn't need to make the encounter easier.
He's a T1 caster, he's plenty capable of killing an equal-CR threat in a fair fight. With practically zero chance of even getting scratched if he has good spell selection.
And unless you regularly punish casters for smart spell selection by reducing their XP there is no reason to do it here either.


If there is even a tiny degree of threat, having to do that 26 times a year, year after year, will eventually result in the enemy rolling multiple critical hits in the first round and killing the Wizard.
You're reaching hard with this one. Even if it was a serious danger getting crit immunity is as easy as casting the Heart of X spells, and that's assuming your enemy ever even gets to attack you.

A level 13+ wizard could just cast Invisibility and Fly, teleport to a bunch of monsters he has scouted (either with spells or his familiar) and then use summoning spells until they're all dead.
It's a legitimate combat tactic so i don't see why he shouldn't get xp for it and as long as he chooses his targets intelligently he's in no real danger.

[Lapak]

Rather than de-aging, I'd probably let casting of Limited Wish extend the caster's maximum natural age gradually out to the theoretical maximum for the race. Probably in increments of 1 year per 300-xp casting. So if a human wizard invested in casting it 40 times, they could guarantee themselves the 110 year human maximum, but they would still be venerable in that stretch.

Reversing aging (or pushing past the natural 'cap') would need something with more punch.

[Doctor Despair]

Well, Bestow Curse can arguably increase someone's age as a 4th level wizard spell, and Limited Wish can do up to 6th level wizard spells. As folks have said, steal life is an 8th level spell that de-ages the caster, but that also harms a target, so it has greater effects than just "reduce the caster's age." When considering the "balance" of these, I think those factors are worth considering.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Well, Bestow Curse can arguably increase someone's age as a 4th level wizard spell, and Limited Wish can do up to 6th level wizard spells. As folks have said, steal life is an 8th level spell that de-ages the caster, but that also harms a target, so it has greater effects than just "reduce the caster's age." When considering the "balance" of these, I think those factors are worth considering.

I wouldn't count Steal Life's harming the target as a greater effect but as a limitation on its use.
You can't just prolong your life, you need to find a target to steal lifespan from. As an attack spell it kind of sucks, especially considering the spell level.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, Bestow Curse can arguably increase someone's age as a 4th level wizard spellAccording to the expanded list of things allowed for bestow curse and its greater counterpart in supplements outside Core, it can be used to age someone, as you said. Both spells say, "You may also invent your own curse, but it should be no more powerful than those described above." So aging someone is considered to be in-line with the other effects of (greater) bestow curse, and de-aging is the exact same, but backwards. Some characters would find being de-aged to be a penalty (such as any character that cares about mental stats but doesn't much care about physical ones) as much as others would find being aged to be a penalty. (Although not all uses of the two spells are negative, such as changing the physical sex of anyone with gender dysmorphia.)

So (greater) bestow curse should be able to de-age you just fine, so long as you never hit Venerable (which is when the check for max life-span comes in at).

[Doctor Despair]

I wouldn't count Steal Life's harming the target as a greater effect but as a limitation on its use.
You can't just prolong your life, you need to find a target to steal lifespan from. As an attack spell it kind of sucks, especially considering the spell level.

How about Time Hop? Folks move forward in time without aging for 1 round/level, disappearing and then reappearing when the power is over; a level 5 version (psionic-magic transparency) might be able to move you forward without causing you to disappear, sort of like a Temporal Slide from point A to point B, freezing your chronological age but not otherwise limiting your actions.

This is more limited in scope than Steal Life, of course, which actively makes you younger, as this Temporal Slide only stops you from aging. If the duration was 1 hour/level, that would mean that two uses of the level 5 power (or level 7 spell) would give you functional immunity to aging. 1 day/level makes it even more cost-efficient, and still not entirely out of line for normal spell durations.

[sleepyphoenixx]

How about Time Hop? Folks move forward in time without aging for 1 round/level, disappearing and then reappearing when the power is over; a level 5 version (psionic-magic transparency) might be able to move you forward without causing you to disappear, sort of like a Temporal Slide from point A to point B, freezing your chronological age but not otherwise limiting your actions.

This is more limited in scope than Steal Life, of course, which actively makes you younger, as this Temporal Slide only stops you from aging. If the duration was 1 hour/level, that would mean that two uses of the level 5 power (or level 7 spell) would give you functional immunity to aging.
That's basically what Temporal Stasis does, only it's 8th level, has an expensive material component and places you in suspended animation. So still way too powerful for a 5th level spell.

My entire point is that it's not supposed to be that cheap or easy.
If all you needed for functional immortality was the ability to cast 5th level spells no one would bother with lichdom, Steal Life or similar options.

For reference, the spell closest to what you want is Kissed By the Ages (Dr#354).
Which is a 9th level spell, has both a material component and XP cost and gives you a weakness in the form of the item you're tying yourself to.
And it's still considered one of the better options for immortality.

That's the powerlevel we're talking about here and why i wouldn't allow Limited Wish to completely halt aging.
Slowing it down, that's in line with the given powerlevel. I already mentioned Living Zombies (LoD).
The exact factor is something to be argued, but i think somewhere between half and a quarter is the most i'd feel comfortable allowing, depending on how often you have to recast it.

[Doctor Despair]

That's basically what Temporal Stasis does, only it's 8th level, has an expensive material component and places you in suspended animation. So still way too powerful for a 5th level spell.


Temporal Stasis works on other creatures (giving it offensive or utility capabilities that a personal effect wouldn't have), protects from all harmful effects while it is active (greatly enhancing its defensive capabilities), and is permanent rather than lasting for 1 hour or 1 day/level. It has a lot of different rider effects that can affect its spell level. An effect that is personal, doesn't protect from all harmful effects, and has a fixed duration rather than permanent might be more in line with a lower-level effect, even if it didn't limit actions during its duration.

[D+1]

Altough there's nothing in the rules about that, in your opinion would it be reasonable for a Limited Wish to stall ( not revert ) ageing for some time?

A year?
A month?
A week?
A single day?
"Stall" is a bit vague in relating what you might want the effect to actually do. The PH pretty much defines LW by, A) listing the levels of other spells that it can duplicate, B) describing ANY other effect it might achieve as needing to be equivalent to what might be achieved by those levels of spells.

I'll say this: If a player wanted to use limited wish to prevent magical aging I'd suggest that a full day of such protection is WAY better than a 6th level spell effect. Maybe... one HOUR would be sufficient for a limited wish effect (which while being a 7th level spell only provides 6th level spell equivalents - at best). Unless they wanted to approach it by wishing that the next... 3 (?) aging attacks against their PC would have no effect as long as they took place within the next 24 hours. Something like that would be acceptable to me, but obviously having some idea of what the player intended to DO by having that protection would color my thinking. If they were looking at entering an area with 10 monsters, each of which having an attack to age a victim one year, I'd be more generous with number of attacks it would protect against, but less generous with prevention of... 15 full years of aging, or 4 hours of absolute aging protection. On the other hand, if they were looking at facing monsters that would age a victim TEN years each, I'd be having different considerations.

See, when a player is asking for an effect that ISN'T an existing spell, the DM pretty much has to assign a level, on the spot, to the effect they ARE asking for. That's not easy and it certainly can't be reliably done by saying, "I want to stall aging for... some amount of time."

Ultimately, with wishes/limited wishes, I've mostly come at it as DM with the attitude that as long as the player isn't asking for the sun, moon, and stars, but is actually just asking for THINGS THAT ARE REASONABLE, I'll let them have it. Heck, I'll let them wish for money and magic items. That is, they can do that ONCE, if the amount of money or value of the item is (again) reasonable for their level, not going to put them wildly out of scale with the campaign in general or other PC's, etc. I LIKE letting the PC's get to have and do fun things. But when they try to ABUSE the usefulness of the a la carte utility of a spell like wish/limited wish, I'm naturally going to balk and actually be MORE restrictive than I otherwise would need to be. If they ask me, "Will this work?" I'll gladly TELL them if it will or not, and WHY. If they want to use the spell to push boundaries and take risks - then there CAN be consequences for deliberately overreaching or it might just flat out fail and be completely wasted. In fact, I would use aging itself as the first possible consequence for overreaching with wish/limited wish, which would kind of make wishing for way too much aging protection self-defeating.

[NichG]

I'd allow one casting to halt aging for one day, or to allow a character to act as if in a different age category for one day.

At a meta level though, I don't allow offscreen XP farming for PCs, so even if by theorycraft this could be sustainable through farming, it wouldn't work in practice. Even for NPCs, they could only keep it up by actively engaging in things that involve personal growth and change, not just risk or difficulty.

With Wish, I'd allow de-aging, but with (mostly cosmetic) risks or tradeoffs if pushing for more than 10 years per cast. Maybe you go the reincarnation route and get the right species and gender but find that your appearance has changed or your physical stats have been redistributed. If you ask to be 20 years old, maybe you also get to share that body with the mental echo of your 20 year old self for a year until you reintegrate (or until your 20 year old self defeats you mentally and takes control). If you say 'I wish to be 30 years younger' maybe memories formed in the last 30 years become dreamlike or spotty.

[FrogInATopHat]

But he doesn't need to make the encounter easier.
He's a T1 caster, he's plenty capable of killing an equal-CR threat in a fair fight. With practically zero chance of even getting scratched if he has good spell selection.
And unless you regularly punish casters for smart spell selection by reducing their XP there is no reason to do it here either.


You're reaching hard with this one. Even if it was a serious danger getting crit immunity is as easy as casting the Heart of X spells, and that's assuming your enemy ever even gets to attack you.

A level 13+ wizard could just cast Invisibility and Fly, teleport to a bunch of monsters he has scouted (either with spells or his familiar) and then use summoning spells until they're all dead.
It's a legitimate combat tactic so i don't see why he shouldn't get xp for it and as long as he chooses his targets intelligently he's in no real danger.

Would you, genuinely, accept this as an XP farm tactic if you were GM?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Would you, genuinely, accept this as an XP farm tactic if you were GM?

No, but i also don't have my PC's sitting around for weeks or months on end. So i don't need to.
If i did and one of them wanted to farm XP for crafting or spellcasting purposes i would at least consider it, at least if the party rejected a group adventure first.

But in my experience the average party faces at least one level-appropriate encounter every 2-3 days. Most face a lot more.
A 4-man ECL 13 party defeating a CR 13 monster gets 975xp each. If one of those characters is ECL 12 he instead gets 1350xp.

The point of my argument is that 300xp a day is cheap at level 13+ if you do any adventuring at all.
And that it is in fact cheap enough that you could easily farm it solo if you had to, because i doubt anyone is going to argue that a level 13 wizard can't defeat a CR 8 enemy.
A monster summoned with a 7th level spell can defeat a CR 8 enemy, usually without too much trouble.

Being that cheap also means that you'll probably never be more than one fight behind the rest of the party in leveling up. You may even come out ahead.
You may lag behind a level sometimes but if you do chances are you'll actually jump ahead in XP after the next battle unless you're fighting lots of low CR enemies.

[Conradine]

To be explicit, I talked about Limited Wish because it's the most powerful repeatable effect that can be achieved by Sacrifice rules of BoVD.

The true question is: should immortality through sacrifices be achievable by a non-spellcaster?

[DeTess]

To be explicit, I talked about Limited Wish because it's the most powerful repeatable effect that can be achieved by Sacrifice rules of BoVD.

The true question is: should immortality through sacrifices be achievable by a non-spellcaster?

Sure. If the sacrifice is big enough I'm sure there's a demon, devil, fiend or dark god willing to turn you into an outsider, and those are generally immortal iirc.

[TheStranger]

To be explicit, I talked about Limited Wish because it's the most powerful repeatable effect that can be achieved by Sacrifice rules of BoVD.

The true question is: should immortality through sacrifices be achievable by a non-spellcaster?

Short answer: yes, but I don’t know a strict RAW way to do it. Steal Life as an 8th level spell is a pretty clear benchmark for the appropriate power level for a “live forever by sacrificing people” effect, so I wouldn’t allow it to be duplicated by a lower-level spell.

The reason I say yes, though, is that a 15th-level wizard can cast this spell regularly and live forever. And there’s no particular reason to make that yet another nice thing that non-casters can’t have.

The easiest approach might be to just directly exchange service and sacrifices to a patron entity for extended life via DM fiat, on the theory that a high-level character is a useful tool.

[sleepyphoenixx]

To be explicit, I talked about Limited Wish because it's the most powerful repeatable effect that can be achieved by Sacrifice rules of BoVD.

The true question is: should immortality through sacrifices be achievable by a non-spellcaster?
I think FC1 or 2 already has rules for dealing with fiends that anyone can use. You could probably adapt those if extended life isn't already on offer.

Otherwise i'd model it after the various ritual feats like Fell Conspiracy,
A certain amount of knowledge: the planes, religion or nature (depending on what you want to make a deal with) would of course be required, so i'm afraid the party fighter is still out of luck.
But that's the fate you choose when you decide to be the meatshield.

I'm not against giving mundanes nice things but i'm not going to entirely disregard setting consistency for it.
If you want something clearly magical or supernatural either learn it yourself or learn enough to find someone who can do it for you.
Neither is accomplished by hitting it with a sharp stick so unless you have at least some non-combat ability you better hope your party helps you out.
To do otherwise would just be a slap in the face for any skillmonkeys.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I'll say this: If a player wanted to use limited wish to prevent magical aging I'd suggest that a full day of such protection is WAY better than a 6th level spell effect.

Is it really, though? Death ward gets you total immunity to all negative energy effects including instant death and negative levels for 1 minute/level as a 4th level spell. There's a pretty good argument to be made that that should cover magical aging as well: magical aging is basically a vitality-targeting effect like energy drain, the only magical aging effect in 3e (expanded bestow curse and its variants) is a Necromancy effect, and in AD&D magical aging attacks (as opposed to magical aging as a side effect of casting powerful spells) were strongly associated with the undead). The only reason for the spell description not to call out magical aging as a thing it protects against is that there are literally zero aging effects in core 3e and the Timeless Body verbiage is largely copied from 2e class descriptions.

So if you can get that kind of blanket immunity as a 4th-level spell, I'd say it would be completely reasonable for dramatically narrowing the spell effect and then bumping it up by 2 levels to give you at least 24 hours' worth of protection.

The fear about preventing aging (magical or otherwise) seems to me to be the same as fear of at-will spell effects. Yes, the warlock can shoot 14,400 eldritch blasts in one day if he does nothing else and that looks scary compared to limited spell slots for scorching ray or the like, but (A) that's never going to come up ever and (B) if it does come up the actual effect he can get with that isn't really that impressive. Anti-magic is the same: when magical aging basically isn't a thing in 3e and Timeless Body is handed out like candy to druid-like and monk-like classes and no one really cares, if one ever does run into a situation where aging is meaningful then letting someone shave a couple weeks to months off their effective age with a high-level spell slot is nothing a DM needs to worry about.


Short answer: yes, but I don’t know a strict RAW way to do it. Steal Life as an 8th level spell is a pretty clear benchmark for the appropriate power level for a “live forever by sacrificing people” effect, so I wouldn’t allow it to be duplicated by a lower-level spell.

The reason I say yes, though, is that a 15th-level wizard can cast this spell regularly and live forever. And there’s no particular reason to make that yet another nice thing that non-casters can’t have.

On the other hand, the lichification ritual lets you unlive forever with a one-time sacrifice of some number of people and lets you come back from later deaths as many times as you want so long as your phylactery is intact and comes with a bunch of perks on top of that, and that's available starting at level 11. Yes the Lich template comes with LA and yes there are social consequences to being undead (that any competent lich can get around with illusions and proxies and so forth, but still), but the point is that treating steal life as the one true benchmark for staving off your eventual death by old age is pretty ridiculous when by 15th level you've been able to undo much worse up to and including reversing death by complete and utter disintegration for several levels.

[Doctor Despair]

I was reflecting on it, and I could see a compelling argument for Bestow Curse (or the Greater version) Benjamin Button-ing a character. As we said, making someone younger could be seen as a penalty, but reversing someone's aging process (especially when they're not halfway through their lifespan) would almost universally be a negative thing (providing they can't get the curse lifted).

[TheStranger]

On the other hand, the lichification ritual lets you unlive forever with a one-time sacrifice of some number of people and lets you come back from later deaths as many times as you want so long as your phylactery is intact and comes with a bunch of perks on top of that, and that's available starting at level 11. Yes the Lich template comes with LA and yes there are social consequences to being undead (that any competent lich can get around with illusions and proxies and so forth, but still), but the point is that treating steal life as the one true benchmark for staving off your eventual death by old age is pretty ridiculous when by 15th level you've been able to undo much worse up to and including reversing death by complete and utter disintegration for several levels.
Yes, there are other ways to avoid death at lower levels. However, Steal Life is the closest analogue to what the OP wants, and it's 8th level. So I wouldn't let a player achieve basically the same thing with a lower-level spell. There's no need to eyeball the power level if there's already a published spell that does basically the same thing.

In my initial response, I *did* just eyeball the power level because I forgot about Steal Life, and I agreed hat it was reasonable for a 7th level spell based on very similar analysis. But I don't want to just say, "Oh yeah, Steal Life exists, but you can do the same thing with a lower level spell."

[NichG]

The fear about preventing aging (magical or otherwise) seems to me to be the same as fear of at-will spell effects. Yes, the warlock can shoot 14,400 eldritch blasts in one day if he does nothing else and that looks scary compared to limited spell slots for scorching ray or the like, but (A) that's never going to come up ever and (B) if it does come up the actual effect he can get with that isn't really that impressive. Anti-magic is the same: when magical aging basically isn't a thing in 3e and Timeless Body is handed out like candy to druid-like and monk-like classes and no one really cares, if one ever does run into a situation where aging is meaningful then letting someone shave a couple weeks to months off their effective age with a high-level spell slot is nothing a DM needs to worry about.


The issue is more what this does to NPC motivations than anything having to do with the PCs. In a world where immortality is difficult to achieve (around a certain level band) but still possible with tradeoffs, then it makes sense for NPCs in that level band to make tradeoffs with morality, safety, etc to try to achieve that. 'I have to kill a village each week to remain unaging' or 'I need to stay king so I can legally leech off of the life-force of condemned criminals' or 'I'm going to take a flat 40% chance of dying outright and commit horrible atrocities in order to live forever without maintenance' could all be reasonable motivations without the NPC being outright foolish or stupid. Maybe from a metagame perspective a player might think 'why not just gain another 3-5 levels and take advantage of some of the easier routes?' but you could at least argue that in most settings an NPC wouldn't be able to 'just go and gain some levels' as any kind of in-character plan.

That said, it would make sense to make immortality effects with really bad side-effects come in at lower levels so that the band of levels in which 'I want to become immortal' is an interesting motivation would be wider.

[FrogInATopHat]

The point of my argument is that 300xp a day is cheap at level 13+ if you do any adventuring at all.
And that it is in fact cheap enough that you could easily farm it solo if you had to, because i doubt anyone is going to argue that a level 13 wizard can't defeat a CR 8 enemy.

And this comes back to the advice that GMs take the triviality of an encounter into consideration when assigning XP.

That's the actual method I was asking if you would allow.

What is your cut-off for a wizard using summons or scry and fry to beat encounters that are already trivial for their level.

Lvl 20 Wizard > CR1 enemy?
Lvl 15 Wizard > CR1 enemy?
Level 15 Wizard > CR8 enemy?

Where do you, personally draw the line?

[EDIT 1]Going further, the GM advice doesn't only say that relative CR should be taken into account when determining xp awards, it talks about factors that trivialise encounters in a more general sense.

There is a vast difference between waking up one day and saying 'hmmm, today I need to kill something for xp purposes and it needs to be in (x-y) CR range. My spells that I have chosen so far over the last 12 levels mean that this list of creatures should be manageable" and prepping for a scenario that has arisen organically in a story where your character [possibly including the rest of the party] need to fight creatures x, y, and z (for starters, the organic scenario doesn't necessarily let you pick a foe that's already easier to deal with in line with unrelated decisions you've made up until that point).

I might be misunderstanding you, but your position seems to be that these other factors are irrelevant once the CR differential is met. Would that be your actual position as DM and, if so, why?

[EDIT 2] And if you don't have weeks of downtime in your campaigns, then using this for age-prevention purposes is irrelevant because those problems will (almost) never arise. But xp farming can be used for other things too, where different totals apply. I dount (I could be wrong) that you run games where there aren't at least some days of downtime. Let's say 10% for argument's sake. Are you happy for a wizard in your games to xp farm in this way in your games, regardless of the reason they want the exp, eve if it's just being 10% more advanced than the rest of the party?

[sleepyphoenixx]

And this comes back to the advice that GMs take the triviality of an encounter into consideration when assigning XP.

That's the actual method I was asking if you would allow.

What is your cut-off for a wizard using summons or scry and fry to beat encounters that are already trivial for their level.

Lvl 20 Wizard > CR1 enemy?
Lvl 15 Wizard > CR1 enemy?
Level 15 Wizard > CR8 enemy?

Where do you, personally draw the line?

Going further, the GM advice doesn't only say that relative CR should be taken into account when determining xp awards, it talks about factors that trivialise encounters in a more general sense.

There is a vast difference between waking up one day and saying 'hmmm, today I need to kill something for xp purposes and it needs to be in (x-y) CR range. My spells that I have chosen so far over the last 12 levels mean that this list of creatures should be manageable" and prepping for a scenario that has arisen organically in a story where your character [possibly including the rest of the party] need to fight creatures x, y, and z (for starters, the organic scenario doesn't necessarily let you pick a foe that's already easier to deal with in line with unrelated decisions you've made up until that point).

I might be misunderstanding you, but your position seems to be that these other factors are irrelevant once the CR differential is met. Would that be your actual position as DM and, if so, why?
I generally reward XP by the book unless a monster is obviously misrated. Mostly because i can just plug the numbers in the encounter calculator instead of worrying about it myself.
A bit lazy perhaps but it has worked well enough for me.

That rule (imo obviously) refers to outside factors trivializing encounters, not on making intelligent use of your class abilities.
I don't punish spellcasters for preparing fire spells against a white dragon or troll any more than i'd reduce a fighters XP gain from killing a mage because he took the Mage Slayer feat or got a Spell-Storing weapon with Dispel Magic in it. A cleric with the Sun domain gets the same XP for killing a group of undead as one who only uses TU for DMM.
Things like NPC allies, a terrain advantage on the PC's part or a disadvantage for their enemies, those warrant reducing XP rewards. Using the most efficient tool for the job does not.

And if you have enough downtime to worry about not earning enough XP to keep up with your spending you definitely have enough downtime to research foes you can deal with.
The world doesn't stand still when the PCs aren't present.
If you don't want your players to find their own stuff to do don't give them that kind of downtime in the first place, or at least that's how i see it.
Otherwise if a character with high level information gathering abilities wants to go looking for trolls he's going to find some unless they don't exist in the world.

Edit: In short, yes. If a player wanted to spend a day of downtime killing monsters to harvest their lifeforce for spellcasting or item creation (or however you fluff XP in character) i'd allow it.

[noob]

By casting limited wish(bestow curse) then wish you could turn someone in a curst which lives forever.

[King of Nowhere]

To be explicit, I talked about Limited Wish because it's the most powerful repeatable effect that can be achieved by Sacrifice rules of BoVD.

The true question is: should immortality through sacrifices be achievable by a non-spellcaster?

if you want a villain to be doing this on a regular base, you certainly have enough of an argument to justify it

[noob]

To be explicit, I talked about Limited Wish because it's the most powerful repeatable effect that can be achieved by Sacrifice rules of BoVD.

The true question is: should immortality through sacrifices be achievable by a non-spellcaster?

It is not the most powerful effect: you can also summon an outsider then ask the outsider to grant you a wish.
Then the outsider probably barters for slaves, souls and so on and probably grants you the wish if you provide something worth it(ex: 10^4000 souls).


35 Evil outsider appears and serves celebrant for 1 hour per HD
of the victim, serving as described in the greater planar ally
spell.

[FrogInATopHat]

I generally reward XP by the book unless a monster is obviously misrated. Mostly because i can just plug the numbers in the encounter calculator instead of worrying about it myself.
A bit lazy perhaps but it has worked well enough for me.

That rule (imo obviously) refers to outside factors trivializing encounters, not on making intelligent use of your class abilities.

I don't punish spellcasters for preparing fire spells against a white dragon or troll any more than i'd reduce a fighters XP gain from killing a mage because he took the Mage Slayer feat or got a Spell-Storing weapon with Dispel Magic in it. A cleric with the Sun domain gets the same XP for killing a group of undead as one who only uses TU for DMM.
Things like NPC allies, a terrain advantage on the PC's part or a disadvantage for their enemies, those warrant reducing XP rewards. Using the most efficient tool for the job does not.

So... a wizard 18 can use Summon Monster [insert spell level] here, into a specially prepared room where they have a zero chance of damage, let alone losing, and still get the xp for the encounter?

And XP is used for some of the cooler spells and also to fuel item crafting in the edition we're generally discussing?

Cool cool cool.

Crafting definitely needs the boost.


If you don't want your players to find their own stuff to do don't give them that kind of downtime in the first place, or at least that's how i see it.

So, use of modules that have certain downtime built in to them is... lazy? bad? wrong? And a day a week(ish) downtime is unrealistic in some way, even in a homebrew? Even when taking into account that travel can count as downtime?

That day a week is a ~15% increase in XP for the wizard over the rest of the party.

I play PF1, where there are no spells or crafting with XP components, and I use milestone leveling anyway, so this is purely academic for me, but it doesn't seem like the most well thought out attitude, in general.


Otherwise if a character with high level information gathering abilities wants to go looking for trolls he's going to find some unless they don't exist in the world.

Yep, and at sufficiently high levels, all that wizard is going to get are some troll-specific components, not any XP for what is basically work at a slaughter-house. Otherwise, every butcher and farmer in your game would be epic level.


Edit: In short, yes. If a player wanted to spend a day of downtime killing monsters to harvest their lifeforce for spellcasting or item creation (or however you fluff XP in character) i'd allow it.

Are you looking for any players? Because even in a fast paced campaign, by the time Summon Monster I is at hand (you know, the first session), my wizard would start to race ahead of the party on XP gains.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Yes, there are other ways to avoid death at lower levels. However, Steal Life is the closest analogue to what the OP wants, and it's 8th level. So I wouldn't let a player achieve basically the same thing with a lower-level spell. There's no need to eyeball the power level if there's already a published spell that does basically the same thing.

In my initial response, I *did* just eyeball the power level because I forgot about Steal Life, and I agreed hat it was reasonable for a 7th level spell based on very similar analysis. But I don't want to just say, "Oh yeah, Steal Life exists, but you can do the same thing with a lower level spell."

It may be the closest published analog, but the general category of "live forever by sacrificing people" effects, as you put it, is definitely broader than just steal life, so when asking what limited wish can do it makes sense to compare to other effects available at levels that limited wish can definitely work with and extrapolate.

To use a different example, let's say a player wanted to be able to launch a bunch of fireballs at once with a limited wish when enemies were too spread out for a single fireball to do the job. The closest published analog is meteor swarm, so one might think that "shoot a bunch of fireballs" is definitely a 9th-level effect and limited wish is too weak to duplicate that. But firebrand (5th) and fire seeds (6th) are both spells that create a bunch of mini-explosions in one casting, so there's obviously somewhere a DM can eyeball a multiple-fireballs-at-once spell on the continuum between fireball at 3rd and meteors swarm at 9th, it's just a question of what restrictions and limitations one might apply to get there.

Same thing with the lifespan effect. If you can get immortality for a one-time really expensive social-pariah-inducing sacrifice at CL 11 (i.e. a 6th-level spell) and immortality for an ongoing basically-free keep-your-living-body sacrifice as an 8th-level spell, then limited wish being able to do something in between makes plenty of sense. Maybe that means you can only get 1 week per casting instead of [as many as you want] weeks per casting as with steal life, maybe it means making a major permanent sacrifice as with lichification, but at that point it's just details.


The issue is more what this does to NPC motivations than anything having to do with the PCs. In a world where immortality is difficult to achieve (around a certain level band) but still possible with tradeoffs, then it makes sense for NPCs in that level band to make tradeoffs with morality, safety, etc to try to achieve that. 'I have to kill a village each week to remain unaging' or 'I need to stay king so I can legally leech off of the life-force of condemned criminals' or 'I'm going to take a flat 40% chance of dying outright and commit horrible atrocities in order to live forever without maintenance' could all be reasonable motivations without the NPC being outright foolish or stupid. Maybe from a metagame perspective a player might think 'why not just gain another 3-5 levels and take advantage of some of the easier routes?' but you could at least argue that in most settings an NPC wouldn't be able to 'just go and gain some levels' as any kind of in-character plan.

But again, this is more a theoretical fear than a practical one. What, exactly, does it change if every 13th-level wizard in the world (and every 14th-level sorcerer and so on) can become immortal at the cost of spending oodles of XP as upkeep?

I doubt it changes much. At that level you're already in the "I don't want to spend XP on spells or crafting because it's hard to find relevant-CR encounters to restore that XP" level range (discussions about farming low-CR critters aside), so not everyone's going to jump on the chance. Anyone who wanted immortality because they fear death is probably not going to blink at becoming a lich or vampire because those come with insurance against violent death as well and so could have achieved immortality several levels previously. Anyone who wants immortality to give them more time to achieve Phenomenal Cosmic Power is going to find any kind of ongoing drain on their power (whether XP, gold, items, whatever) to be unacceptable and so would probably cast (or get an item of) steal life instead because spell slots and commoners are cheap. Anyone who wanted immortality because they wanted to be an eternal champion of Goodness and Light can do things like devote themselves to a celestial paragon or church of a Good god or whatever for a casting of kissed by the ages. And so forth.

It would certainly be a very different scenario if limited wish didn't have a cost so becoming immortal was an easy no-brainer, but then the same is true of magic item creation and resurrection and other invest-power/resources-to-get-power/resources abilities.

[NichG]

But again, this is more a theoretical fear than a practical one. What, exactly, does it change if every 13th-level wizard in the world (and every 14th-level sorcerer and so on) can become immortal at the cost of spending oodles of XP as upkeep?

It means that any story about someone committing atrocities or great sacrifices to become a lich in that setting is automatically a story about an idiot. Though that was already somewhat the case in 3.5 due to things like the Reincarnate trick, Savage Species race-change ritual to Elan for a one-time cost, Necropolitan, etc. Violent death is already a non-issue at those levels anyhow due to Raise Dead/Reincarnate, and becoming undead actually makes such things harder to take advantage of rather than easier.

I don't think it's a theoretical fear though. In a setting with easy immortality, I'm just not going to make NPCs whose motivation is to get immortality - it's basically off the table at the start, not 'well, I should try, and maybe it will be okay' - because those motivations wouldn't make sense to me as GM, never mind the players.

[TotallyNotEvil]

Well, it's powerful enough to mimic Reincarnate.

I'd say losing a level and potentially becoming a goblin isn't really tolerable to most BBEGs, but fairly balanced overall and something people who really don't want to meet their gods would do.

In a world where you can visit the afterlife for fun, I suspect dying isn't as big of a deal as it is to us unless you are bound to some place downstairs.

At which point a reasonable person talks with an angel of their prospective afterlife patron and sees about atoning for their sins.

Of course, the kind of person to just hunt peasants for sacrifice in search of eternal life isn't about to do that.

If the end, killing CR-appropriate monsters every day for a year or two taking you to demigod level is kind of an artifact of the XP tables and game design. IC, I doubt getting Big Boy spells like Limited Wish would be remotely that simple, so it's not a big deal if most wizards of that caliber can de-age themselves in one manner or another. If you can cast 7th level spells then you are in the Big Leagues, so something is going to get you at some point.

[Doctor Despair]

Well, it's powerful enough to mimic Reincarnate.

I'd say losing a level and potentially becoming a goblin isn't really tolerable to most BBEGs, but fairly balanced overall and something people who really don't want to meet their gods would do.


Technically, it can do level 5 Druid spells, so it should be slightly better than Reincarnate. Maybe letting you choose the race would be a decent upgrade, or letting you "reincarnate" before death (avoiding the negative level).

[TotallyNotEvil]

Technically, it can do level 5 Druid spells, so it should be slightly better than Reincarnate. Maybe letting you choose the race would be a decent upgrade, or letting you "reincarnate" before death (avoiding the negative level).
I'd say the lost level is the most fair bit about it, as one could get by with alter self and polymorph and things like that, but the tangible and permanent loss of power would be a decent downside.

But yeah, a bit better control over it sounds fine. PF has Cyclic Reincarnation at Druid 6, which not only lets you keep your race but you look very physically similar to your old self. Which helps not only socially but should also be a tremendous asset in preventing serious body dysmorphia.

Anyway, yeah a Lesser Cyclic Reincarnate keeping just the race doesn't sound unreasonable for a fifth level Druid spell, even if a tad niche/artificial, but that's a bonus if we are just mimicking the effect with wizardry.

[Doctor Despair]

I'd say the lost level is the most fair bit about it, as one could get by with alter self and polymorph and things like that, but the tangible and permanent loss of power would be a decent downside.

But yeah, a bit better control over it sounds fine. PF has Cyclic Reincarnation at Druid 6, which not only lets you keep your race but you look very physically similar to your old self. Which helps not only socially but should also be a tremendous asset in preventing serious body dysmorphia.

Anyway, yeah a Lesser Cyclic Reincarnate keeping just the race doesn't sound unreasonable for a fifth level Druid spell, even if a tad niche/artificial, but that's a bonus if we are just mimicking the effect with wizardry.

To be fair, if Reincarnate resets your longevity, then they'd have decades to earn back the lost level and "break even," so it's not prohibitively expensive, either. Just toss on a "Craft Contingent Spell" copy of the Lesser Cyclic Reincarnate that triggers upon the moment of death

[sreservoir]

I'd say the lost level is the most fair bit about it, as one could get by with alter self and polymorph and things like that, but the tangible and permanent loss of power would be a decent downside.

The lost level can be avoided by emulating last breath (SpC 130) instead.