Immortality by 12th Level?!?!?!

Hello Everyone,

Did anyone else's jaw drop when reading the incantifier prestige class in the latest Dragon magazine (the one with Planescape's Lady of Pain on the cover)? One of the first-level abilities of that class results in the character no longer suffering from the negative effects of aging and no longer having a maximum age.

Unless I'm missing something, that's virtual immortality!

There are other benefits, too, like no longer needing to eat, sleep, or breathe. No, you are not undead. The only drawback is that you no longer heal naturally and do not benefit from healing magic; you heal damage whenever a spell cast on you fails to penetrate your spell resistance (oh, and you get spell resistance at first level, too).

A small price to pay for immortality, in my opinion.

One of the reasons this caught my attention is because I've always been interested in how characters can achieve immortality in-game. Like, there is the cloud anchorite prestige class from Frostburn, but that grants immortality at 10th class level (15th character level at the earliest, I believe). And even then, my reading of the cloud anchorite is that you still accrue the negative effects of aging.

So, does anyone else out there seem to think that the immortality granted by the incantifier prestige class seems broken?

Thanks,

Atavar

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"The deepest rivers flow with the least sound." - Quintus Curtius Rufus

There's a metric ton of D&D stuff that is perfectly balanced for small unit combat, but would completly break a society. Teleport and raise dead come to mind.

But I know what you mean. There's no reason there would not be a line to qualify for this PrC and then the guy could sell off whatever gear he had and buy a necklace of sustiance or whatever the name is of that item that means you don't have to eat or drink.

All that would be left for our immortal is, um, you know. That stuff that you need "companionship" for. However, since the SRD is online, playing D&D would still be cheap for our immortal.

I don't know how immortality could ever be "broken". It doesn't have any real game effect. In terms of power, it is slightly more useful than an ability that allows the character to turn bright blue for 1 hour each day as a standard action, and somewhat less useful than a +1 bonus to Decipher Script checks.

3d6 said:

it is slightly more useful than an ability that allows the character to turn bright blue for 1 hour each day as a standard action

Click to expand...

Hey now! That can be a very useful ability if chaotic evil smurfs are running amuck in your game world!

Immortality has no real game effect save to make you immune to aging effects and those are so rare there's no reason for it not to be cheap. I'd make it a Feat, save that would be a waste of a Feat.

"Immortality= never ages" is nothing special. It's just flavor text, really. Elans (XPH) get it for free.

Now "Immortality=can't be killed" is a whole nother sack of ferrets.

If the character has a friendly sorcerer, one could get easy healing via having your pal cast all his 1st and 0th level spells at you at minimum caster level.

Of course, I despise the aging rules. They make no sense. Old people are not smarter, wiser, or more charismatic than younger people. If anything they should have penalties to intelligence and wisdom from deterioration of mental faculties. If old people were wiser they wouldn't be such easy prey for con artists. Sure, old folks might have more knowledge and experience...but that would be a factor of level, not age.

I understand that the immortality described for this prestige class seems to have little to no game mechanic impact. So, I supposed in the sense that "broken" is usually used, it is not broken.

I guess there's just something about a PC being able to live forever simply by reaching 12th level and making a certain set of career path choices that just...bugs me. Even if it isn't "broken" it still seems wrong to me somehow. Maybe it is broken in the fluff sense rather than the crunch sense?

I've never considered "broken fluff" before. If there is such a thing, though, I'd say that this is it.

I think a good analogy would be the idea of a longsword-type of weapon that cost 1 GP, did 1d20 damage, and had a natural threat range of 17-20. This proposed weapon would obviously be broken--every character in the game would learn to use it because no other weapon could compare. A sure sign of broken-ness...everyone wants one.

Similarly, every character aware of the incantifier prestige class would want to take it to become immortal. A sure sign of broken-ness...everyone would want to become one.

Later,

Atavar,

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"I before E, except after C, or when it goes 'A' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh,' on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, you'll always be wrong to matter what you say!" - Brian Reagan

Two vaguely related observations (on "broken fluff"):

1) I noticed that until recently, WotC was always careful to make classes that got immunity to aging still had a maximum lifespan. They seem to have lost interest in this, and immortality is popping up here and there.

2) This seems to me to be part of a larger trend of granting abilities that are balanced in play, but either would have a huge unbalancing effect on the world at large (e.g. immortality, warlock unlimited spell lobbing) or have little or no in-game-world rational (e.g. Scouts skirmish ability, otherwise non-magical classes getting odd magical abilities).

On one hand, it is good that they put out so much stuff, so we DMs have a lot to pick and choose from when creating campaigns. On the other hand, throwing out so much this-works-as-long-as-you-don't-think-about-it stuff encourages short-lived, hack-n-slash or superhero campaigns at the expense of longer running ones with more developed characters. Both types can be fun, but I don't think making new classes with a though toward game-world consistancy is so much more work that flagrantly disregarding it.