[3.5e] What's the best way to gain immortality?

[_Zoot_]

I always play the parties caster and I seem to always end up trying to become immortal. This has always involved becoming a lich. Are there other ways for a caster to become immortal?

On an unrelated topic, does anyone know if a Worm That Walks are immortal?

[Kurald Galain]

The easiest way is casting Reincarnate on yourself every couple decades, although this has the disadvantage of randomizing your race.

In earlier editions, Magic Jar used to be permanent; that would also work.

Even easier is being a druid; upon reaching level 15, you're immune to aging. And some races are immortal by default.

[Ealstan]

Play a warforged or Killoren (Eberron and Masters of the Wild, respectively). Neither of them has a maximum age, they both live forever. Built in 1st level immortality.

*edit* Ninja'd!

[crazedloon]

Elan best race in the game no dieing from old age and you can never be starved to death. So have fun with living forever

[Signmaker]

Vow of Poverty Killorens must have it good, they don't need to eat, sleep, breathe, or age.

[kamikasei]

Even easier is being a druid; upon reaching level 15, you're immune to aging. And some races are immortal by default.

Druids become immune to aging penalties, but they still die of old age.

And while you can try starting as a race with no maximum age, do note that the tempting-looking candidate, elans, are not a "change into one halfway through your career" option. You start out as a whole new person when you make the change.

If you were happy enough with lichdom and just want a change, try necropolitan, from Libris Morts. +0 LA become-an-undead template with a simple ritual costing some gold and XP and available at low levels.

[The Demented One]

Doo doo doo...

[hamishspence]

the Green Star Adept is reputed as the worst option, powerwise.

Done right, psions can skip very long periods without being truly immortal.

Dragons have the option of becoming a Dragon Ascendant.

[Leewei]

Polymorph any object can make you into any number of different critters that age slowly or not at all.

[Lapak]

Doing a little multiclassing and (with a nod from your DM) bouncing into Jade Phoenix Mage gives you a sort of immortality. Probably not the kind you're looking for, though.

[Crazy Scot]

To my knowledge, there are only a few choices here.

1. choose a naturally immortal race - warforged (or other construct), elan, undead
2. get a template - lich, or other undead
3. choose a specific prestige class - Dragon Ascendant ("True" dragons only from Draconomicon), Cloud Anchorite (from Frostburn), Green Star Adept

These are the only options that I know of, but there might be others. Of these, the one that has the least restricitons on it is Cloud Anchorite, but the problem with it is that you need 10 levels in the prestige class to get immortality and you don't get many other good abilities unless you are playing in mountainous terrain on a regular basis.

Does anyone else have any other ideas?

[Vavaara]

A Wish spell?

[Talya]

A Wish spell?

Muahahahahahahahaha.

Phrase your wish very carefully.

[mikeejimbo]

Be Good and worship a deity who will grant you an eternal afterlife.

It's kinda like immortality anyway

Alternatively, come back as a ghost - who will be vengeful and retain all your spellcasting powers.

[Jade_Tarem]

Muahahahahahahahaha.

Phrase your wish very carefully.

Check it out. The process I used (successfully) one game requires four very specific wishes, referencing specific things in order to minimize warping. And a major ritual from the Savage Species Guide. Before everyone jumps on me for being a raging powergamer, the idea of the game this character was made for was just a fun dungeon crawl where we built the most powerful character we could and took on things in the epic level handbook. I think someone else, while not technically immortal, was immune to everything. We fought a god at the end and won.

Wish 1: The ritual. Technically, someone else casts it. You use it to turn yourself into a half-celestial Phoelarch (MM1 and MM3). Be sure to find someone with a caster level high enough to actually pull this off with no chance of failure. If your DM is intelligent, he'll just say that there aren't any wizards with that level of power available anywhere, at which point all you have to do is reach epic levels to gain immortality, since you can make yourself immune to trivial things like age and non-epic damage and magic, and there are no epic wizards because the DM just said so.

Wish 2: Wish that your Phoelarch's ability to be reborn as a Phoera would instead cause you to be reborn as another Phoelarch.

Wish 3: Wish that your Phoelarch's ability to be reborn as a Phoelarch would instead cause you to be reborn as your Phoelarch, in the precise status that he was in just prior to death, in the location that he died.

Wish 4: Wish that your Phoelarch's ability to be reborn as your Phoelarch in the place you died exactly as you were X time before you died was triggered instantaneously, rather than 24 hours or a week or whatever it is later.

So you just burned some serious gold/xp, but now every time you die, you come back to life right away, and all you've lost is 5 minutes worth of memory. As a side benefit, you're this giant firey angel thing with lots of cool features. This was a character that could (and did) spam Phoenix Fire and Armageddon in combat without side effects. It was awesome.

[Chronos]

The easiest way is casting Reincarnate on yourself every couple decades, although this has the disadvantage of randomizing your race.

That's a feature, not a bug. Personally, I'm just upset that they took animals off the table, because that was just friggin' cool.

Repeated Reincarnation has another strong point going for it: The body you come back in is young adult, but your mind remains unchanged, so you can keep on accumulating aging bonuses to Int, Wis, and Cha, without accumulating penalties to Str, Dex, and Con (even if you're not a druid yourself, they'll never be any worse than -6).

[Chronos]

Wish 3: Wish that your Phoelarch's ability to be reborn as a Phoelarch would instead cause you to be reborn as your Phoelarch, in the precise status that he was in just prior to death, in the location that he died.

Whoa, there... So every time you come back, you're mortally wounded with some sword through your gut, or in the bottom of a deathtrap with spikes that haven't quite ground you to paste yet, or deep in a pit of acid with most of your skin burned off, or...

Remember, you asked for it. I'm not even trying to pervert that wish; that's just the most straightforward interpretation.

[Gorbash]

Research an epic spell that will let you acquire elemental template (the same thing as Elemental Savant)...

[hamishspence]

Well, Faerun has an Elemental Archon prestige class for element-focussed clerics that does that. It doesn't explicitly say anything about aging.

But, if the base rule for Elementals is no aging, it would work.

[Zeta Kai]

Since you mentioned wanting to be an immortal caster, you could take some levels in Bio-Mage. The homebrew thread (by yours truly) has a method for achieving effective immortality, although you need to be either epic or nearly so.

[Vavaara]

Going back to my wish idea:

1. Wish to die of old age
2. Wish to never age
3. Redundancy of wishes causes minor planar disturbance
4. ????
5. IMMORTALITY!!!

[mostlyharmful]

Going back to my wish idea:

1. Wish to die of old age
2. Wish to never age

You'll leave one perfectly preserved corpse.

If the OP isn't unaverse to loseing two caster levels over the course of ten I quite like Elemental Savant, the templates got a lot going for it, you eventually pick up an elemental immunity and a new movement type and it's relitively easy to get into.

Failing that you could try working out a new spell to make you immortal, that sounds like a fun plothook to me. Get your DM to come up with a reagents list, put together a reasonable template and go on the road to put together your jury-rigged MacGuffin.

[Silence]

If you were happy enough with lichdom and just want a change, try necropolitan, from Libris Morts. +0 LA become-an-undead template with a simple ritual costing some gold and XP and available at low levels.

Seconded.

Fantastic choice.

Basically, you have to do a simple ritual. Basic stuff.

You have to be crucified, and a weird chant has to be repeated. Call upon the evil god(s) of death, and you're undead.

Good stuff.

Exactly what you want.

[Jade_Tarem]

Whoa, there... So every time you come back, you're mortally wounded with some sword through your gut, or in the bottom of a deathtrap with spikes that haven't quite ground you to paste yet, or deep in a pit of acid with most of your skin burned off, or...

Remember, you asked for it. I'm not even trying to pervert that wish; that's just the most straightforward interpretation.

No. Five minutes, man. At that level (25 gestalt) combats sometimes don't last five microseconds, let alone fifty rounds. I didn't put the wish list here that I presented to the DM, which was several pages long and written in something like legalese to avoid this kind of thing. Really, this character was about par compared to a couple of the others in the party, so the DM didn't bother with Chaos Theory, temporal displacement, infinite timelines and a bunch of other stuff you can use to warp even a perfectly worded wish.

Remember that on top of this little chain, he was a Level 25 gestalt.

Sorcerer/IIOTSFV/Archmage
Paladin/Kensai/Anointed Knight

And maybe some other stuff. Finding a way to hurt him through his gear and epic spell defenses was a challenge in and of itself - this was more like icing on the cake. I posted it here because, frankly, I thought it was kind of cool, forgetting for a moment that when you use the word "wish" on these boards people practically pee themselves trying to find a way to pervert it. Done right, it really is a pretty good wish chain. I just summarized a little here.

[AKA_Bait]

So you just burned some serious gold/xp, but now every time you die, you come back to life right away, and all you've lost is 5 minutes worth of memory. As a side benefit, you're this giant firey angel thing with lots of cool features. This was a character that could (and did) spam Phoenix Fire and Armageddon in combat without side effects. It was awesome.

This would tempt me, as a DM, mightly to chain your PC to a rock and have their liver pecked out daily.

[Jade_Tarem]

This would tempt me, as a DM, mightly to chain your PC to a rock and have their liver pecked out daily.

Heh, I'll say it again: He was not the most powerful guy in the party - just the flashiest.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Making it hard to become immortal (in the sense of just not dying of old age) is silly anyway. No power-gaming option I've ever heard of relied on being immortal, nor have I ever heard of a game in which dying of old age was a real threat.

If a player wants to play a character who has immortality in that sense as a goal, it's more an interesting story pursuit than anything like a power-gaming one. Why not encourage it and develop a story around his or her pursuit of that goal?

Noooos, teh DM must be againts teh players must KILL teh players die players die!!1!

Geesh.

[Collin152]

This would tempt me, as a DM, mightly to chain your PC to a rock and have their liver pecked out daily.

So that the Hulking Hurler/Frenzied Berzerker can come by later and break the chains?
I think not.

[Glawackus]

In terms of combat, my first thought is to get a high DR with your weakness being something in short supply, and then go around making sure that the item in question is very, very scarce.

[_Zoot_]

Wow... I didn't think that this many people would post... thanks

An Elemental Savnt looks fun, and it would be a nice change from being undead... on the other hand Necropolitans seem to be a good way to have the feel of a lich with out the LA...