Wishing for Immortality (Unaging actually)?

[gamerprinter]

Its a 9th level spell, sure that means 17th level, and expensive to cast. If it were that easy, why spend experience points to achieve 10 levels of a prestige class, just wish it into place... that's too powerful.

I think the real concern is that extending one's life is a far more powerful condition than one might be considering. It normally takes all kinds of extreme means to extend one's life. If you were an 18th level Wizard with Wish spell why cast anything else - since wish seems to be able to do anything.

In my experience a Wish can raise at stat score by 1 place (ie: Str 17 to Str 18) or undo a day's worth of adventuring in order to avoid some terrible incident that occurred. I never grant one or more full levels of experience with a wish. And I don't allow one to become ageless with a Wish - that's way too powerful.

YMMV, but really shouldn't.

GP

 

[Ryujin]

But what GAME advantage does one derive from not aging? IMHO, minimal or none, which means there's no real compelling reason to not allow it.

If it's counter to the fluff in your campaign, well that is then a completely different issue.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

For all the reasons described, I don't think Wish is powerful enough to make one ageless. Consider those PrC where agelessness is a one of its features. Are you saying a Wish is equal to qualifying for a prestige class, as well as taking 5 to 10 levels of a prestig class - that's more like 10 wishes.

Also many undead were once living people who sought a means to become ageless. Why go through the trouble, lethal danger, and get all the world's hatred to become undead to achieve this, if a simple wish could get you there. A lich is supposed to put himself at great risk devising the poison, rituals and phylactery to do this - a wish is too easy an out to get around all that.

All of this proves that Wish is too weak a spell to grant even limited immortality. Otherwise nobody would be going through extreme means to become immortal - it would only take a wish.

GP

Well, for what it's worth, the path to lichdom may represent a shortcut (although the method isn't defined in Pathfinder, IIRC in previous editions you could become a lich several levels earlier than you could cast Wish). Also, there is a big difference between the types of immortality we're talking about here. What was mentioned with the Wish spell in this thread was a kind of permanent or simply long-lasting agelessness. With such an unaging condition, you still have most of the normal mortal frailties aside from this- still having to eat, drink, and go about other normal bodily functions. Even poison and disease can still strike you down.

With the lich, you are removed from pretty much all of the normal mortal frailties (i.e., most effects requiring a Fort save). You're even afforded a limited amount of protection from violent death- coming back from your soul in the phylactery. The lich process also gives you a number of undead abilities (the paralyzing touch, for example).

With a prestige class, I don't know of too many characters that enlisted in it just for an unaging condition. Usually that's a perk of studying that particular path, not the sole major benefit.

Again, I'd handle it with occasionally giving the user of the Wish various complications that they would have to do to maintain and ensure their longevity, and maybe deconstruct the nature of such a condition and incorporate it into the story. Really, for any of these options you would have different trade-offs, such that hard choices would have to be made all around.

That being said, there could always, from a story and flavor perspective, be several different “paths” to immortality and its different degrees (unaging, undying, etc). Not all of them have to be equal, and some may very well be "false" paths.

 

[gamerprinter]

If you're the GM then allow it. The request sounds so innocent to you guys. Back in 2e days, casting certaining spells automatically aged the caster, like haste, wish and reincarnation. In 3e they dropped that, so for all intents in purposes over a campaign long story issues of aging never really come up. There must be a reason the player in question making the request did not choose to be an elf or other "more or less ageless" race to be chosen. There must also be a reason (beyond fluff) to want to be ageless. As a DM, I see red flags when someone requests this. They may act all innocent in the request, but there must be a mechanical reason for asking - even if they spend the next 10 levels with their mouth shut about it. Eventually the game breaking aspect to requesting the ageless condition will rear its head - and you'll say as DM, why did I ever allow him to get that.

If it works for you, go for it, but I have a feeling someone is going to regret granting the ageless quality to the requester. Too many red flags with that.

One of the design goals for Pathfinder is to make it less broken then 3e, if you allow something like this, you're breaking the game all over again - why would you want to allow that?

GP

PS: I can think of a dozen broken reasons as to why someone would want to be ageless - there in fact is many mechanical reasons for desiring that condition. And they are the same reasons a lich or vampire wants to be ageless, involving power spells and rituals.

 

[Ryujin]

Perhaps because, as I stated earlier, there is no material benefit to being "ageless"?

 

[IronWolf]

There must also be a reason (beyond fluff) to want to be ageless. As a DM, I see red flags when someone requests this. They may act all innocent in the request, but there must be a mechanical reason for asking - even if they spend the next 10 levels with their mouth shut about it.

I am not sure there must be a reason beyond fluff for a character to want this. I know of a case in a game I am playing in that a certain human girlfriend of an elf has some desire to slow aging to a significant degree. It's more for story and such than some mechanical reason, as likely the campaign will be over before it even comes to play in-game unless the DM does a massive time advance as part of the campaign arc.

Now if it was a request for immortality, then I could see some more red flags, but unaging? You'd still be susceptible to death by any number of other means.

 

[Crothian]

PS: I can think of a dozen broken reasons as to why someone would want to be ageless - there in fact is many mechanical reasons for desiring that condition. And they are the same reasons a lich or vampire wants to be ageless, involving power spells and rituals.

I want to see those dozen.

 

[Alzrius]

Perhaps because, as I stated earlier, there is no material benefit to being "ageless"?

Well, there is...but it's pretty technical. Specifically, that you get to collect on the bonuses to your mental ability scores as you go up through the age categories, without collecting the corresponding penalties to your physical scores.

But yeah, I doubt that'd ever come up in-game.

 

[Banshee16]

Wish is nice and specific on what it can do with a full on warning about exceeding those bounds.

Wish
[sblock] * Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools.
* Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 7th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools.
* Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 7th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools.
* Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 6th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools.
* Undo the harmful effects of many other spells, such as geas/quest or insanity.
* Grant a creature a +1 inherent bonus to an ability score. Two to five wish spells cast in immediate succession can grant a creature a +2 to +5 inherent bonus to an ability score (two wishes for a +2 inherent bonus, three wishes for a +3 inherent bonus, and so on). Inherent bonuses are instantaneous, so they cannot be dispelled. Note: An inherent bonus may not exceed +5 for a single ability score, and inherent bonuses to a particular ability score do not stack, so only the best one applies.
* Remove injuries and afflictions. A single wish can aid one creature per caster level, and all subjects are cured of the same kind of affliction. For example, you could heal all the damage you and your companions have taken, or remove all poison effects from everyone in the party, but not do both with the same wish.
* Revive the dead. A wish can bring a dead creature back to life by duplicating a resurrection spell. A wish can revive a dead creature whose body has been destroyed, but the task takes two wishes: one to recreate the body and another to infuse the body with life again. A wish cannot prevent a character who was brought back to life from gaining a permanent negative level.
* Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
* Undo misfortune. A wish can undo a single recent event. The wish forces a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish could undo an opponent's successful save, a foe's successful critical hit (either the attack roll or the critical roll), a friend's failed save, and so on. The reroll, however, may be as bad as or worse than the original roll. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.[/sblock]
You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment, at the GM's discretion.)

There are several ways to stop aging within the power of a wish spell. Chances are you won't want any of them.

The problem is that 3E (and by extension Pathfinder) doesn't really deal with aging or youth magic anymore, unlike previous editions. The effects which are available that can cause premature aging have been eliminated (the attack of a ghost, the side effect of Haste spells, etc.). So, they determined to remove effects which could reduce age (potion of longevity, philter of youth).

The Complete Book of Necromancers (from 2nd Ed.) stated that you could use a Wish spell to reduce your physical age by 5 years, or (I think), increase your life span by a factor of x10. It was a good, end of campaign kind of thing that the party wizard could do. Afterall, lots of fantasy literature has ancient wizards that are far older than the mundane populace, sustained by powerful magic. It's a staple of the genre.

In the end, it's the DM's choice.

There are lots of 3E spells from non-WotC sources that can do what you want....Scarred Lands has several, as does the Dragonlance campaign setting.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

PS: I can think of a dozen broken reasons as to why someone would want to be ageless - there in fact is many mechanical reasons for desiring that condition. And they are the same reasons a lich or vampire wants to be ageless, involving power spells and rituals.

I'd like to see those dozen reasons...

If you're thinking of this from the perspective that you want to be ageless, because to be ageless, you have to become a vampire, and thus you get all the powers of a vampire......well then, yes, that's a power gamer rationale.

But if you want to be ageless because you want to have the "Highlander" style fighter who's been walking the campaign setting for 400 years, and has forgotten why he has lived so long well....that could make for an interesting story....but it doesn't necessarily make your fighter any more powerful than anyone else's in the game.......*unless* you're going to try and convince the DM that you should get a bunch of special abilities because you've been around.

But it doesn't have to be like that.

Maybe you want to have a wizard who was around 100 years ago, and knew the great grandparents of the other party members personally.....and you don't want to do it by having a venerable age character who has a bunch of ability penalties, and has a chance every year of spontaneously dying of old age.

It's a campaign thing. Not everything is about gaining phenomenal cosmic power.

Banshee