Handbook for not dying?

[Sheogoroth]

So, this may be a bit presumptuous, but I know this community is very rambunctious about theorycrafting so I thought I’d ask.
Has anyone made a handbook for the best ways to avoid death?

[zlefin]

I'm not aware of one on that topic specifically, as a sizeable amount of all optimization focuses on the defenses to render you very hard to kill. It'd be a very large topic for a handbook given all the different things one could potentially put into it, and the very many different ways that exist in the game to kill a being, especially when pseudokills are included.

But I don't know all the handbooks.

There are some specific resistant to dying builds I know of, but no general handbook.

[Sheogoroth]

I’ll take it!
Do you have links for some builds?

[Gruftzwerg]

Not a handbook, but a full optimized lvl 20 build. Sole downside here is that the immortality comes at lvl 20.

Gaara of the Desert a.k.a. Mummra - the Everliving

The key ability here is from Walker in the Waste. The capstone ability turns you into an undead that returns when it gets killed somehow. You just need to place your organs into a safe place (explained in the build). Whatever happens, you will come back. There is no real way to prevent this. Even capturing and imprisonment doesn't help. He could just suicide and come back. You would need to put him into some kind of infinite stasis field that steals all actions to stop him.

[zlefin]

I’ll take it!
Do you have links for some builds?

the Emerald Legion is the most notable death resistant build I know of.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?101587

[Biggus]

Not actually a handbook, but I did start a thread about it last year: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ng-no-to-death

[PoeticallyPsyco]

If builds are fine, here's a remarkably resilient one:

Dread Blossom Swarm has Regen (fire and cold), swarm immunities, and plant immunities.

Thanks to the Plant type and tiny size, it is also a valid guest for the Symbiotic Creature template with a Medium humanoid as the host. Giving you all these fantastic traits for just +1 LA. (By strictest RAW, this also overwrites the LA of the host creature as well, giving you a total LA of +1 regardless of how much LA your base race started with, but even ignoring that insanity this is really, really good.) You are now basically a plant-based T-1000, a shifting and reforming mass of vampiric roses.

If you can get immunity to fire and cold damage (Blazing Berserker and Frozen Berserker are the classic choices for this), all damage you take is now nonlethal. Because swarms disperse when knocked unconscious only to reform later, this means you're basically unkillable as long as you're raging when the 'lethal' blow comes down.

One step further is gaining immunity to nonlethal damage; now you can only be damaged by fire and cold normally, and can't be damaged at all while raging (assuming the Berserker feats). Ghehed (basically half-undead) is a +1 LA Dragon Magazine template that's probably the best for this, but you could also take 4 levels of Bone Knight.

Best sources of rage for this:

• Barbarian 1 (ECL 1, very limited uses, activated on your turn)
• Half-Orc Paragon 2 (ECL 2, very limited uses, activated on your turn)
• Anthropomorphic Wolverine + Human Heritage (ECL 4, 1 feat, activates automatically when you take damage, no usage limits, must attack mindlessly while raging)*
• Geomancer 7 w/ rage as your Stage 4 Drift (ECL at least 10, probably no usage limits, activates automatically when you take damage, can't have other classes that give Rage as a class feature or it's not nearly as good)

*actually, only ECL 2 by strictest RAW since the LA gets overwritten by Symbiotic Creature, but that's kind of insane

[Jay R]

"Win."

Padding.

[Kitsuneymg]

If playing with pathfinder and third party materials, the combination of berserker and guardian makes for an incredibly resilient character. Another berserker talents doubles the death threshold and lets you keep acting, and guardian can eventually shove all sorts of debuffs into their delayed damage pool. Including the dead condition. Sure, next round you’ll be toast, but maybe someone (or you) can heal you above death in that time.

It’s not as resilient as the other builds here, but it’s also much less investment.

[icefractal]

Also in Pathfinder, Troth of the Forgotten Pharoah is great for anyone who doesn't die when they're killed (ghosts, liches, astral projection, etc) because it lets you self-destruct as an immediate action to avoid anything nasty that would prevent you from escaping. Obviously Foresight is a good addition here, to make sure you're able to take that immediate action.

Also, it hurts people around you, but by a disappointingly small amount. I think the origin was the Mummy's Mask adventure path, which featured the most annoying enemies I've seen (they were the opposite of glass cannons - tough, but very little threat. They were also too fanatic to convince of anything, and they self-destructed if you tried to mind control them or anything like that. And there were lots of them. Why Paizo, why?)

[Anthrowhale]

You may find the Planar Soldiers of Mystra interesting. With the right planar traits you can't be affected let alone killed.

[Telonius]

The Immortality Handbook has a bunch of ways to avoid death from old age.

[RexDart]

It's pretty short.

"Adventuring? My character wouldn't do that."

The End

[pabelfly]

It's pretty short.

"Adventuring? My character wouldn't do that."

The End

A level one Commoner has nothing to fear in the various hellworld settings of DnD. Nope, nothing.

[RexDart]

A level one Commoner has nothing to fear in the various hellworld settings of DnD. Nope, nothing.

Yeah, yeah, how many of them are named and "on screen" when that stuff happens?

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
- (Attributed to) Josef Stalin

[icefractal]

That was the origin of a character I played. He was perfectly happy being a turnip farmer ... then bandits razed his farm. So he rebuilt, learned some basic fighting skills, got a crossbow ... and then could do nothing more than run from the Trolls that showed up. So he rebuilt again, found out what Trolls could be hurt by, prepared ... and the next time it was demons.

Now he's one of the most power-hungry people in the world, venturing into risky and ethically dubious methods of personal improvement, with ultimately one purpose - to become strong enough that nobody, not even the ****ing gods themselves, can disrupt his (future) peaceful lifestyle. Which is going to involve a turnip farm on the material plane, because at this point it's become a matter of principle, even if he doesn't really need food or silver any more.