Permanent Deaths?

[Phased Weasel]

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]

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]

Death+Thaunian+ one of the various means of soul destruction found in the Book of Vile Darkness= Irrevocable demise!

[AslanCross]

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]

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]

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.

[The_Snark]

Harvester of Souls 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Is there a Plain Plane Plane, plain empty of everything but Plain Planes?

[Tengu]

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]

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

Best. Plane. Ever.




-Suzuro