Vaalingrade
Legend
Note: I am not allowed to use time travel due to that time I manipulated a player into actions that resulted in her character becoming her own god and inspiration that saved her life in her backstory.
Huh. Seems like you should be encouraged to use time travel!Note: I am not allowed to use time travel due to that time I manipulated a player into actions that resulted in her character becoming her own god and inspiration that saved her life in her backstory.
She was SO mad when she realized how it all fell into place and I got a plush Kirby upside the head.Huh. Seems like you should be encouraged to use time travel!
I mean, it was only a plush Kirby. Imagine if it had been a Snorlax, you'd still be out cold!She was SO mad when she realized how it all fell into place and I got a plush Kirby upside the head.
She's not the one that banned me though; that was another player who went crosseyed at the explanation of how it happened... and the fact that I came prepared that night with a flow chart.
6 month run-up that all depended on my knowing the player's tendency to be supportive of every sad sack she met, keep hold of every useless item she finds and be completely defiant when the threat the party presented to causality was explain to the group.
Wraith:
Create Specter. The wraith targets a humanoid within 10 feet
of it that has been dead for no longer than 1 minute and died
violently. The target's spirit rises as a specter in the space of
its corpse or in the nearest unoccupied space. The specter is
under the wraith's control. The wraith can have no more than
seven specters under its control at one time.
Night Walker:
Life Eater. A creature reduced to 0 hit points from damage
d ealt by the nightwalker d ies and can't be revived by any means
short of a wish spell .
Son of Kyuss
Burrowing Worm. A worm launches from the spawn of Kyuss
at one humanoid that the spawn can see within 10 feet of it.
The worm latches onto the target's skin unless the target succeeds
on a DC 11 Dexterity saving throw. The worm is a Tiny
undead with AC 6, 1 hit point, a 2 (-4) in every ability score,
and a speed of l foot. While on the target's skin, the worm can
be killed by normal means or scraped off using an action (the
spawn can use this action to launch a scraped-off worm at a
humanoid it can see within 10 feet of the worm). Otherwise,
the worm burrows under the target's skin at the end of the
target's next turn, dealing 1 piercing damage to it. At the end
of each of its turns thereafter, the target takes 7 (2d6) necrotic
damage per worm infesting it (maximum of 10d6). A worm-infested
target dies if it drops to O hit points, then rises 10 minutes
later as a spawn of Kyuss. If a worm-infested creature is
targeted by an effect that cures disease or removes a curse, all
the worms infesting it wither away.
Yes, creating undead can be long, or short. But it does not change the fact that a character can be animated as an undead. Incinerated, put into acid and what not. And this is assuming the group fled or was killed. What if your healer does not have a revivify spell available in the allotted time?
And Orcus can cast Animate dead as an action.
You conveniently ignored the Nabassu that if it kills a humanoid, that humanoid immediately rises as ghoul. Or the Devourer, Corpse flower. When I am near my books I can be much more precise. The intent is simply to say that if you get to be animated as an undead, no matter how. You're character is toast. That much is obvious per RAW and RAI. You picked the weak examples I gave because it was easy to debunk but you failed to prove that it could not be done.
And check the Vecna our dear friends at WoTC provided us with. Animate dead at will... So yep it can be done and if you go the 3PP, you'll get even more of these and these are sanctioned by WoTC as they are on DMSGuild and are used by a lot of tables.
Finally, the goal is not to say that you can not save a character from death but that there are occasions where said death is irrevocable.
Which, for those playing a game remote from reality and where character and person are kept separate, is all you really need.If that is the actual thing being aimed for, well...all I can say is, I think that's a bad definition of permanence with regard to consequences. It trivializes the fact that change requires time (which, unfortunately, we as gamers only have finite amounts of!), but more importantly, it creates an incentive to never care about anything at all, unless it involves your own death. It numbs. The value of a life well-lived, of familiar places and beloved possessions and loved ones is lost, crushed beneath the insistence that, unless you can die, nothing matters.
It was pointless if there's a TPK, most likely; but not pointless if some but not all of the PCs survived and finished.Ultimately, it's equivalent to saying that the game never actually matters, because very few games consistently end with a TPK. Eventually, someone rides off into the sunset--which, by this uncompromising metric, by definition means the adventure was pointless.
Indeed, if one is trying to elevate (or sink?) one's game to the level of high literature.Some of the greatest tragedies in legend, literature, and actual history have been not the death of flesh, but the death of hope, the death of dreams. And there are things in this world which have no survival value, but rather which give value to survival, the loss of which would absolutely be a fate worse than death--for without them, there would be no difference in value between life and death.
And again I ask you. Is it possible? Is it possible? Your only answer is Yes, under the normal rules.Already discussed this. Kill the specter, revivify the target.
Yep, CR 21 entities are very nasty. Good thing a party of 17th level characters likely has access to Wish, or knows a way to get it. But, sure, that is one way of permanent death.
So... what happens if you cast Revify on the dead target BEFORE 10 minutes pass. Oh, right, they come back to life. Now, it doesn't remove disease or remove curse, so a DM could just keep killing the target. But, if the party has no way to deal with the worms, then you've really killed every party member, because the worms will kill them.
Of course, a lesser Restoration cures any disease, and if you can cast revivify you can cast lesser restoration, but this is a scary thing to face.
Very few ways to incenerate a character without the DM specifically going out of their way to do so. Same with dumping the bodies in Acid.
Of course, of the entire party dies, that's different, or if they don't have the tools available, but that wasn't the scenario. Which I'll get back to in a second.
So, let's summarize. You started with the assertion of "unavoidable" death by having a necromancer's skeleton double tapping a PC, then raising the PC as an undead. Which is impossible to do mid-combat. You've also accused me of picking on your "weak" examples, when... I've addressed all your examples? Seems like a rather strange claim that I only picked on the ones easy to disprove, which was all the ones you pointed out.
Our current "action animates" are Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead, Vecna the Lich god, and a Nabassu which is a CR 15 fiend which can only cause a ghoul if the PC fails a save, which then reduces its hp maximum to zero. Which, considering this is their only hp reduction ability, and is only 2d12 damage... I'm going to generously call unlikely. My 5th level characters wouldn't be turned into ghouls like this, let alone my 15th level characters. But hey, it is possible. The Corpse flower by the way need to kill a party member, devour the corpse, then choose to animate that corpse instead of another corpse in it, which is a lot of steps. Possible, but again, that is a lot of steps for a mindless flower.
But all of this completely ignores a... rather obvious thing. If you kill a zombie, it is a corpse, not an undead. So if the enemy zombifies you, and the party kills your zombie corpse... then they can revive you.
So, we've gone from 5th level characters facing a necromancer and his skeletons, to facing Orcus or Vecna, and as long as the players have the tools their is only one creature that you have listed which is actual, permanent death. And that's the Nightwalker. Who flat says you can't be revived.
So, really, if you have the tools, there is basically no way that death cannot be reversed. Except for a single creature, known to permanently kill people. Unless you have gone out of your way as the DM to either homebrew or destroy a corpse.
No they're not, they're being a player.If your style of gameplay is exploitative, yes.
Do you think that a player being exploitative is an innocent and benign thing? That is absolutely NOT true. An exploitative player is being a jerk.
I don't treat the DM as a thing to be used but I do treat the game that way; and those are two very different things. The game is there for us all to use for whatever purpose we see fit, provided we all agree to play it; and in that is no different from Monopoly or Catan or ice hockey.If you are genuine and enthusiastic and communicate with me, acting as a team player and not a selfish jerk, I will support whatever you want to do to the ends of the Earth. I have gladly reworked classes, dug up third party materials, rewritten mechanics, and wholesale invented new subsystems purely to support the things my players find fun. I consider this part of my duty to them. Their joy is dependent on my willingness to help them, so I must do my best to support that joy.
If you exploit that effort—if you treat me as a thing to be used rather than a person to talk to and work with—then yes, I feel absolutely justified letting you hoist yourself on your own petard.
Where I love players like that!So, if you want to play someone reckless, awesome, I support that, though be forewarned that recklessness tends to lead to upset or frustrated players in the group, so it's best used in moderation. (This actually did come up in game: a player had put the party in legitimate danger multiple times because he chose to skip any talking phase and immediately draw his axes and start murderizing. We had an entirely respectful talk, he and I, and he agreed to tone it down a little.)
Then don't say you won't kill my character. If you put no-character-death on the table you're explicitly asking for just this response, and have no-one to blame but yourself when that response comes rolling in.But if you specifically throw yourself into lethal danger, taking objectively stupid risks solely because "well you said you wouldn't kill my character!" That's exploiting me. Don't do that.
Which also puts you in a tough spot, because you in fact will kill a character if you feel it's warranted; meaning at that point your bluff has been called and exposed as a bluff. Bang goes some trust around the table, I think.You will be warned, once. After that? The actual consequences of your actions will be what they will be. If you get your character killed because you believed you could obviate any and all lethal risks due to me not killing characters, that's exploitative, no less than if someone tried to exploit rules that allowed a character to do infinite damage in a single hit.
And with this, I agree.I obviously can't change that, but again, it isn't like the world of DnD doesn't have MASSIVE amounts of resources for "not dying". It doesn't break verismilitude for me that the Chosen of God X is rescued from death by God X. It doesn't break Verismilitude that an archdevil reaches out to make a deal to a desperate soul. It doesn't break verismilitude that the dragon wants magically bound slaves instead of six corpses of unseasoned meat.
To the bolded, I can only say sometimes.And, add to that, if you keep playing the game as normal this comes up like... twice a campaign if you have a long-running campaign. So, to me, it doesn't feel like "infinite plot armor" it feels like... you got lucky, but you can't count on that happening again. Death is rare enough as long as no one starts trying to suicide their character, that it isn't like every session a miracle happens.
Yep! Been there, done that, done that, done that..."Rebuild" (if possible) does imply permanent change, and time travel just allows for the possibility of screwing things up even worse.
In that case, if they're at my table they're probably in the wrong place. I mean hell, it says right in the introduction that bad things not only can happen but will happen to your character(s). Can't get much clearer than that.Sure. Though some people may strongly dislike having their avatar in the world maimed.
TPKs are usually pretty permanent, in that most of the time whatever story that party was following dies out with them.The only thing that's fully permanent is the end of the game, or campaign, or whatever term you want. Nothing else is. Sometimes that's PC death, sometimes that's PC failure, sometimes it's Real Life Getting in the Way.