Celebrim
Legend
In D&D, assassination of a Prince is extremely complex and probably beyond the abilities of your average 3rd level party. In order to succeed, they Drow leader is going to have to give them considerable help.
Killing someone powerful in D&D is complicated by the fact that they don't want to stay dead. Anyone with access to a 9th level priest and having a reason for living is likely to come back to life - Raise Dead is a fairly accessible ability. Any would be assassin of royalty that thinks that they can just shoot one with a crossbow bolt is likely to find that the Prince walking around the next day no matter how dead he was after the crossbow bolt hit him.
Therefore, assassination of someone in D&D at high levels generally involves the following:
a) Polymorph - One of the most accessible ways to rid yourself of a person in D&D is a baneful polymorph of some sort. You don't kill the Prince, because that's a problem that's too easily dealt with. Instead, you keep the Prince alive and hide him somewhere he can't be found. So long as the body is alive and undiscoverable, the Prince is as good as dead and no high level spellcaster can do anything about it until the Prince's current form and location are ascertained. Ideally, you put the Prince in a form he can't escape from and put him somewhere he will be safe until such time no one cares whether he comes back.
b) Trap the Soul - It requires higher level magic, but the absolute most secure way to kill someone in D&D is to trap their soul somewhere so that even if the body is discovered, 'Raise Dead' or even 'Speak with the Dead' offer no help. The serious players in world politics will be using methods like this to assassinate their enemies (probably in combination with several others on the list). Likewise, even wish is of minimal utility here. Not much can be done if you do it right until you find the object or place the Prince's soul is trapped in.
c) Lose the Body - It's not fool proof, because a dead body is an object and thus relatively easily found, but most resurrections require at least a portion of the body to be present before they will succeed. This makes for a 'low tech' solution to problem of high magic, in that if you dispose of the body well enough you may put the person beyond aid. The lowest tech form of this is simply have something eat the body that does a really good job of elimenating it - slimes are good at that, but it can involve burning the body (lava pits are good) or simply just hiding it someplace really inaccessible (depths of the ocean). There are of course some 'high tech' versions of this for those with access to magic. Disentigrate is an obvious choice. Less obvious but perhaps even more effective is hiding the remains on another plane of existence.
d) Foil Raise Dead - Raise dead can be thwarted by using an undead creature to commit the assasination or by using death magic, as can merely successfully hiding the body for a few weeks. However, such methods can be defeated with higher level versions of the spell like resurrection. Raise dead is no good if the Prince dies immediately on being brought back to life. Magical diseases like lycanthropy persist after ressurection and some resist being cured by readily available magic like cure disease. While nothing in the cannon directly does this, it wouldn't be hard to imagine a magical poison which resisted attempts to neutralize it. Until the poison is nuetralized from the body, it's no good ressurrecting the Prince to life. While such poisons ought to be rare and have an epic origin, they fit well with fantasy literature. For example, the poison used in Stephen King's 'Eyes of the Dragon' seems to have been chosen precisely because it was this sort of uncurable poison. For that matter, the entire fantasy cannon from Faerie Tales to Harry Potter becomes easier to explain if the deaths of important persons have to be done in special ways to prevent the person from coming back or being brought back to life. Why are there so many Princes in animal forms out there? Because someone recognized that for all the problems with the approach, it was harder to deal with being cursed and polymorphed than it is to deal with someone merely being dead.
One last note to add. Your Drow King wouldn't be worth the title of villain if he actually intended to provide the antidote when the PC's return.
Killing someone powerful in D&D is complicated by the fact that they don't want to stay dead. Anyone with access to a 9th level priest and having a reason for living is likely to come back to life - Raise Dead is a fairly accessible ability. Any would be assassin of royalty that thinks that they can just shoot one with a crossbow bolt is likely to find that the Prince walking around the next day no matter how dead he was after the crossbow bolt hit him.
Therefore, assassination of someone in D&D at high levels generally involves the following:
a) Polymorph - One of the most accessible ways to rid yourself of a person in D&D is a baneful polymorph of some sort. You don't kill the Prince, because that's a problem that's too easily dealt with. Instead, you keep the Prince alive and hide him somewhere he can't be found. So long as the body is alive and undiscoverable, the Prince is as good as dead and no high level spellcaster can do anything about it until the Prince's current form and location are ascertained. Ideally, you put the Prince in a form he can't escape from and put him somewhere he will be safe until such time no one cares whether he comes back.
b) Trap the Soul - It requires higher level magic, but the absolute most secure way to kill someone in D&D is to trap their soul somewhere so that even if the body is discovered, 'Raise Dead' or even 'Speak with the Dead' offer no help. The serious players in world politics will be using methods like this to assassinate their enemies (probably in combination with several others on the list). Likewise, even wish is of minimal utility here. Not much can be done if you do it right until you find the object or place the Prince's soul is trapped in.
c) Lose the Body - It's not fool proof, because a dead body is an object and thus relatively easily found, but most resurrections require at least a portion of the body to be present before they will succeed. This makes for a 'low tech' solution to problem of high magic, in that if you dispose of the body well enough you may put the person beyond aid. The lowest tech form of this is simply have something eat the body that does a really good job of elimenating it - slimes are good at that, but it can involve burning the body (lava pits are good) or simply just hiding it someplace really inaccessible (depths of the ocean). There are of course some 'high tech' versions of this for those with access to magic. Disentigrate is an obvious choice. Less obvious but perhaps even more effective is hiding the remains on another plane of existence.
d) Foil Raise Dead - Raise dead can be thwarted by using an undead creature to commit the assasination or by using death magic, as can merely successfully hiding the body for a few weeks. However, such methods can be defeated with higher level versions of the spell like resurrection. Raise dead is no good if the Prince dies immediately on being brought back to life. Magical diseases like lycanthropy persist after ressurection and some resist being cured by readily available magic like cure disease. While nothing in the cannon directly does this, it wouldn't be hard to imagine a magical poison which resisted attempts to neutralize it. Until the poison is nuetralized from the body, it's no good ressurrecting the Prince to life. While such poisons ought to be rare and have an epic origin, they fit well with fantasy literature. For example, the poison used in Stephen King's 'Eyes of the Dragon' seems to have been chosen precisely because it was this sort of uncurable poison. For that matter, the entire fantasy cannon from Faerie Tales to Harry Potter becomes easier to explain if the deaths of important persons have to be done in special ways to prevent the person from coming back or being brought back to life. Why are there so many Princes in animal forms out there? Because someone recognized that for all the problems with the approach, it was harder to deal with being cursed and polymorphed than it is to deal with someone merely being dead.
One last note to add. Your Drow King wouldn't be worth the title of villain if he actually intended to provide the antidote when the PC's return.
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