PDA

View Full Version : Permanent Deaths?



Phased Weasel
2008-02-18, 05:43 PM
Beyond various "trap the soul" magics, what effects / spells kill a character such that only a true resurrection or wish / miracle / resurrection combo brings them back? All I've found so far is death by old age and destruction. Non-SRD material is fine if you identify the source.

Emperor Tippy
2008-02-18, 05:46 PM
Unnaming from Tome of Magic does it.

A couple of spells in the spell compendium do it as well. Blackfire for one.

Making the body cease to exist stops everything except True Res.

Collin152
2008-02-18, 05:49 PM
Death+Thaunian+ one of the various means of soul destruction found in the Book of Vile Darkness= Irrevocable demise!

AslanCross
2008-02-18, 05:49 PM
The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the Frost Dragon's breath from the Bestiary of Krynn (Dragonlance Campaign Setting). Its breath deals 1 point of Cha damage for each age category of the dragon on a failed Fort save. If the creature's Cha drops to 0 in this way, he's erased from existence completely. No wish, no true resurrection, because the entire world forgets he existed. I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them right now. They're mostly monster abilities and not spells.

Jade_Tarem
2008-02-18, 05:52 PM
Sphere of Annihilation does the job so well that only deific magic can bring the character back. If you don't want to bring in artifacts, you can use voidstones from the negative energy plane, which are essentially just raw, uncontrollable spheres of annihilation.

mostlyharmful
2008-02-18, 06:43 PM
Flesh to stone + Stone to mud + throw mud into sea. If you never actually died you cant be brought back short of a miracle.

Barghest consume ability

Undeadify them, shove the resulting skelton into a big lead ball. Sequester permenantly. Throw into the negative energy plane.

Kill them and raise them over and over with different dominated good clerics till they loose all their levels. Then stop worrying about the level 1 wizard with 2 Con. Either they are still interested in getting raised in which case you can pummel them back down again or they're too paranoid that you're trying to sucker them into coming back and refuse all resus attempts.:smallbiggrin:

The_Snark
2008-02-18, 06:47 PM
Harvester of Souls (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20071203a&page=3) is the non-spellcaster's way to do it. Works a lot like the barghest's Feed ability, in that even Wish/Miracle/True Resurrection may not work.

Douglas
2008-02-18, 06:50 PM
There's a Reaping Spell metamagic feat that does the job in Champions of Ruin. Even True Resurrection has only a 50% chance of working with that one.

Prometheus
2008-02-18, 06:50 PM
If you draw the Void in th Deck of Many things, or are killed by Death than that does the trick pretty well.

I had a high powered prison which locked people up rather than kill them so that they couldn't be resurrected. Something like it the Oots comic.

Willing not to return to the world of the living is a good one for NPCs that you really want to be dead and not temporarily out of the game.

Collin152
2008-02-18, 07:27 PM
Cast imprisonment in a temporary location like a portable hole or a rope trick.
They'll never have a chance of being freed, but are still technically alive.

FlyMolo
2008-02-18, 07:35 PM
Oooh. That's sneaky. Then destroy the portable hole.

That's very sneaky. In fact, traveling to the moon or some other object, then casting imprisonment would work, assuming you exploded the moon afterwards.

"That's no moon!"

Collin152
2008-02-18, 07:53 PM
Oooh. That's sneaky. Then destroy the portable hole.

That's very sneaky. In fact, traveling to the moon or some other object, then casting imprisonment would work, assuming you exploded the moon afterwards.

"That's no moon!"

If detroying hte moon is no problem for you, why is it such a concern for them to not come back to life? You may as well just hold their soul in one of your many pockets.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-02-18, 08:30 PM
True Mindswitch them with a Shadow Conjuration or Simulacrum then dismiss the illusion. Their body does not die-but their soul fades along with the illusion. Since the illusion body was never alive, when it fades it can't be ressurected.

Rutee
2008-02-18, 08:32 PM
Flesh to stone + Stone to mud + throw mud into sea. If you never actually died you cant be brought back short of a miracle.
You died. True Res can bring you back, same as normal.

Jack_Simth
2008-02-18, 08:44 PM
You died. True Res can bring you back, same as normal.

Flesh to Stone does not actually kill you. Stone to Flesh can (if you fail the DC 15 Fort save) but Flesh to Stone leaves you alive.

Transmute Rock to Mud also does not kill, nor does it deal damage to its subject.

He's not dead at this stage.

Purify Water also does not kill the subject - but now it's not Mud, it's water.

Technically, he's never actually killed... he's just transmuted and scattered all to gone.

Bauglir
2008-02-18, 08:46 PM
Barghest's Feast from the Spell Compendium has a 50% chance of destroying the soul of any corpse it's cast on, and even if it doesn't it destroys the body utterly, requiring a True Resurrection.

DementedFellow
2008-02-18, 09:27 PM
Hopefully I won't be ninja'd, but Necrotic Termination from the Libris Mortis makes it so that Raise Dead, Resurrection, True Resurrection, Wish and Miracle cannot bring them back.

Pretty powerful spell, I must say.

Collin152
2008-02-18, 09:30 PM
You could keep the body. In a jar.
Or does True Resurrectoin circumvent that requirement? I forget.
But put the jar in an Antimagic field.

Parvum
2008-02-18, 10:00 PM
Barghest consume ability

There's a +1 LA goblin planetouched with this, too. Eating a body normally would also prevent normal ressurection, but not true (whereas the ability feed has a 50% chance).

A great way of killing your enemies: be a warforged, killoren, or other no-age limit race. Hide. Your enemies died of old age.

DementedFellow
2008-02-18, 10:13 PM
There's a +1 LA goblin planetouched with this, too. Eating a body normally would also prevent normal ressurection, but not true (whereas the ability feed has a 50% chance).

A great way of killing your enemies: be a warforged, killoren, or other no-age limit race. Hide. Your enemies died of old age.

Bravest of the Brave, Brave Sir Robin.

Collin152
2008-02-18, 10:20 PM
Hey, waiting patiently is a valid tactic.
It's the only way I'll ever win a game of chess.
De fault. The two greatest words in the English language.

Infinity_Biscuit
2008-02-18, 10:21 PM
Flesh to Stone does not actually kill you. Stone to Flesh can (if you fail the DC 15 Fort save) but Flesh to Stone leaves you alive.

Transmute Rock to Mud also does not kill, nor does it deal damage to its subject.

He's not dead at this stage.

Purify Water also does not kill the subject - but now it's not Mud, it's water.

Technically, he's never actually killed... he's just transmuted and scattered all to gone.
You could also then travel to the Elemental Plane of Plants (if there is one; I'm not familiar with D&D cosmology) and scatter the water everywhere to make it harder to gather up the water that used to be the character, since you aren't allowed to do stuff like teleport parts of creatures out and the water would now be part of random plants scattered through an infinite plane.

Rutee
2008-02-18, 10:29 PM
Flesh to Stone does not actually kill you. Stone to Flesh can (if you fail the DC 15 Fort save) but Flesh to Stone leaves you alive.

Transmute Rock to Mud also does not kill, nor does it deal damage to its subject.

He's not dead at this stage.

Purify Water also does not kill the subject - but now it's not Mud, it's water.

Technically, he's never actually killed... he's just transmuted and scattered all to gone.
He's never subjected to ability or HP damage; He has been rent and torn in half. He's quite dead, RAW be damned. I know the combo, you don't need to explain it to me.

If you drink the water, he is subjected to damage from your stomach acid, as a note, and will die normally.

Tengu
2008-02-18, 11:12 PM
On the FtS+StM combo:
Yeah, this is another element where some people need to have everything stated clearly in the RAW or else they do not believe that you cannot perform actions when you're dead or that you don't lose all the benefits of Dragon Disciple when reaching the tenth level in the class.

I wonder does the fandom of other RPG games face this problem too, by the way.

The_Snark
2008-02-18, 11:28 PM
On the Flesh to Stone thing: You can interpret any damage done to the stone as killing them, yes, but... why?

This seems to fall into a different category than obvious rules nitpicks like not being able to take actions while dead. I've always seen petrification as somewhere between life and death; you don't age, and nothing permanently harms you until the spell is reversed.

When the spell is broken, of course, you'd die if not in a state capable of supporting life. If you were a shattered statue, you could be pieced back together with magic, and then un-petrified, and remain alive.

Not that it has to be interpreted that way, of course, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to rule that that's the way it works, and comparing it to obvious rules flaws like being unable to act while dead really isn't fair.

Have you ever read a myth or story in which a transmuted person is shattered or otherwise scattered, then re-collected, reshaped and returned to life only once that had been done? I know I have.

Collin152
2008-02-18, 11:34 PM
On the Flesh to Stone thing: You can interpret any damage done to the stone as killing them, yes, but... why?


If they aren't dead, you can't ressurect them.
If their body is alive, but irrevocably scattered, you'll never worry about them again.

Parvum
2008-02-18, 11:37 PM
You could also then travel to the Elemental Plane of Plants (if there is one; I'm not familiar with D&D cosmology)

There is a plane for everything. Everything. There is a plane for magma, for oozes (oozes, for crying out loud!), itching powder...

There is probably a plane of things that complain about an arbitrary amount of planes.

...I'm going to make a template of that now.

Collin152
2008-02-18, 11:43 PM
Is there a Plain Plane Plane, plain empty of everything but Plain Planes?

Tengu
2008-02-18, 11:50 PM
Have you ever read a myth or story in which a transmuted person is shattered or otherwise scattered, then re-collected, reshaped and returned to life only once that had been done? I know I have.

Have they been turned to mud in any of those? Because it's here where the spell combo gets fuzzy.

Suzuro
2008-02-18, 11:52 PM
There is probably a plane of things that complain about an arbitrary amount of planes.



Best. Plane. Ever.




-Suzuro

Mewtarthio
2008-02-18, 11:56 PM
I reccomend the diplomatic approach. You could just cast mind rape (which, I believe, has an instantaneous duration, and so could potentially send the soul to another afterlife), but diplomacy's more fun and a lot safer rules-wise. Besides, every truly vile villain uses More Than Mind Control. Isolate the subject from the outside world completely.

I recommend locking him away in a demiplane where time flows more slowly (ideally, it would be like the Far Realms of Madness so that an eternity in equals zero time out, but that may not be feasible, so do the best you can). According to the BoED, you can use Diplomacy checks to change a creature's alignment. If you can fundamentally change a person's world view like that, who's to say you can't also change a few more things about them? Basically, the idea is to convince them that they are worthless failures, their very existence is harming everything they love, the world would be better off without them, etc. Done properly, this will cause victim will commit suicide and refuse all attempts at resurrection.

Note, however, that there is still the possibility, however faint, that their friends will hunt down their soul in an epic, plane-spanning journey and use the Power of Friendship to undo all your work, bringing them back to the mortal coil with a stronger resolve than ever. I recommend finding some way to ensure that they go to Hell when they die, so that all their memories of their past lives are erased as they become mindless lemures. Try infecting them with a Lawful Evil strain of lycanthropy, or (if you are LE yourself) using the diplomatic alignment shift rules to convert them. The Grey Wastes are also nice in that the only emotions people feel there are despair and resignation, but sometimes the Power of Friendship is just that sappy.

Collin152
2008-02-19, 12:01 AM
Or, hunt down their soul yourself and planeshift them to their new final reward.

The_Snark
2008-02-19, 12:08 AM
Have they been turned to mud in any of those? Because it's here where the spell combo gets fuzzy.

They were turned to dirt in one that I remember, which was accidentally scattered on the wind. The other that I remember off the top of my head was the more conventional shattered statue scenario. But I do see your point about the fuzziness of using other spells to alter the transmuted subject, like Disintegrate.

Kompera
2008-02-19, 12:57 AM
A great way of killing your enemies: be a warforged, killoren, or other no-age limit race. Hide. Your enemies died of old age.But.....but....but what about all your enemies who are warforged, killoren, or other no-age limit races?

LotharBot
2008-02-19, 01:24 AM
If you dislike the current system wherein you have to go to great lengths to keep someone dead, consider the alternate death and resurrection mechanic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72467) my wife and I designed a few days ago.

puppyavenger
2008-02-19, 06:12 PM
PAO them into something with a bioligy that can only support them for a few minutes/seconds, so they technicly died of nauturel causes and can't be ressurected?

puppyavenger
2008-02-19, 06:23 PM
PAO them into something with a bioligy that can only support them for a few minutes/seconds, so they technicly died of nauturel causes and can't be ressurected?

The Glyphstone
2008-02-19, 07:54 PM
Resurrection can bring you back from natural causes. It's specifically old age that it can't restore you from.

Kurald Galain
2008-02-19, 08:19 PM
Resurrection can bring you back from natural causes. It's specifically old age that it can't restore you from.

Okay, so polymorph them into a mayfly.

Collin152
2008-02-19, 09:49 PM
Okay, so polymorph them into a mayfly.

Mayfly's don't have age catagories.
Just planeshift them to some place where time moves a mile a millisecond.

Parvum
2008-02-19, 10:35 PM
But.....but....but what about all your enemies who are warforged, killoren, or other no-age limit races?

Don't make enemies with them.

That, or be good. Then it is unlikely that you have other good enemies, and your evil villain rivals are doomed to be taken down by protagonists (eventually; this is where your agelessness comes in again).