D&D 5E The horror of petrification in D&D

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: turning to stone: wouldn’t it be cool if Medusas (or spellcasters) could choose what kind of rock to transform their victims into? That would be a plot driver, especially for the snakeheads.

Via intermediaries, victims turned into precious metal ores or gemstone then broken up could be sold to finance a variety of things. Deep dwarves or Derro allied with a Medusa could fund all kinds of stuff.

Good way to set up a salt merchant, too...

 

[TheSword]

My understandng is that it is intended for all petrification. Not just temporary.

What in particular concerns you?

 

[jayoungr]

By the way, what the heck is "ISTM"? never seen that acronym before.

"It seems to me," I'm guessing?

 

[Zakumei]

Souls in D&D can be annihilated in a variety of ways, or condemned to torment in the Lower Planes. It's a universe in which really awful stuff happens to a lot of people. I don't see why being a rock, unaware and unfeeling, is so bad. If you're evil, it's about the best fate you could hope for.

Anyway, nothing is forever. Eventually your statue will be destroyed, by geological forces if nothing else. If it takes a million years, you won't care; all that time will pass in an eyeblink* for you.

[SIZE=-2]*Unless the DM rules that you still experience the passage of time despite being "unaware of your surroundings." In that case, petrification is indeed a horrific fate; but that's on the DM, not the rules.[/SIZE]

You just made me think of something absolutely bonkers. Imagine that as a petrified person erodes, soul permanently trapped as stone, forever halted of aging and un-ressurectable. Consider; how long until fragments of a soul are irretrievable by Greater restoration? Imagine if one could say, find souls, or could sense a separated soul. They could potentially see how eroded the statue was, down to individual pieces, grains of sand, atoms of new molecules. At what point do the infinitesimally small fragments of soul-coupled matter become involved in the eco system. forever lost and scattered as they're absorbed into the environment. stone to sand to dust to atoms in new life, new structure.

On a meta level, I feel like an extremely hardhead DM or one trying to forcibly remove a character from play could potentially say

"oh well you took too long, and now not all of them is left; and ressurect or revivals only work if someone died, they're not dead, they're just petrified, in limbo, but too little of them is left in front of you for Greater restoration to unpetrify them!"

As utterly silly as that scenario is, I've heard some horror stories of bad DM's doing weird rules-lawyer stuff like this.
I think a much more forgiving and easier to play version is the simple solution that a greater restoration basically save-states them to their last point of well being. To play devils advocate though, I think some would criticize this as trying to cop out using "all powerful godly magics" to write off the complication and consequences of what a Greater Restoration can and cannot accomplish, which can create a slippery slope of Greater Restoration wearing many hats as a cure-all for anything that ails the party in any way.

I suppose what I'm asking is how might one mitigate sliding too far toward one extreme of these scenarios or another, both as a DM or a player? How do each of you run petrification in your games?

 

[Steampunkette]

Petrification is horrifying in the time it takes to happen. A form of body horror built up around the human understanding of paralysis taken to a whole new height. To lose control and access to your faculties across those three rounds before you're stuck, potentially forever, in mute horror. Unable to live, to die, to experience anything.

And then comes the restoration. Seconds may have passed. Days. Weeks. Millennia. Suddenly you're into Rip Van Winkle territory where those you loved are dead and gone, and those you barely knew for their young age are become peers... or elders.

The disorientation of being thrust into a new society, new world, depending on how long you were trapped within that stony prison. And the potential horror of losing component parts along the way.

The Venus de Milo -had- arms, after all.

Is it worse, though, to come back with gushing blood and panic, or smoothly healed over flesh because stone is stone and it held no organs or blood vessels?

I love petrification. I feel like some of what is in this thread trivializes it.

And no. Petrification doesn't activate a Clone any more than Polymorph into Object does. You're still "Alive". You're just not "You" anymore.

 

[jgsugden]

I'm surprised I missed this back in 2019 ....

When you are petrified, your perceptions cease until you're no longer petrified. Your hp total does not change. You are, from your perspective, frozen in time. You can't be raised from the dead because you are not dead.

However, if your petrified form is damaged, that goes against your current hp total. If that reduces you to 0 hp, you die and your spirit is free to be raised as of the moment you hit 0 hp. You have no body, effectively, until it is unpetrified.

I have general rules for assigning damage due to time passing. They deal 1d8 damage per period, and the length of period depends upon your environment. A well preserved crypt would deal 1d8 per 1000 years. Something buried in non-corrosive soil would deal 1d8 per 200 years. Something pertified in a flowing river would take 1d8 per year. Something petrified in a place frequented by sandstorms might take 1d8 per week.

 

[Steampunkette]

I have general rules for assigning damage due to time passing. They deal 1d8 damage per period, and the length of period depends upon your environment. A well preserved crypt would deal 1d8 per 1000 years. Something buried in non-corrosive soil would deal 1d8 per 200 years. Something pertified in a flowing river would take 1d8 per year. Something petrified in a place frequented by sandstorms might take 1d8 per week.

I love this.

This? This is -cool-.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Has anyone else thought through Petrification in D&D? ISTM that most people play it that someone who has been petrified comes back to life when de-petrified, be it one round or a thousand years. But think about the implications: the creature's soul is forever denied the afterlife until their statue is de-petrified. Which may never happen.

ISTM that what should happen is that a petrified PC dies. It is the equivalent of a 6th level spell, after all. If the party want her back they can cast Stone to Flesh, Greater Restoration, or similar, followed by Raise Dead or just cast greater magics like Resurrection or True Resurrection. Just casting Stone to Flesh results in a dead body - which can then be the target of further magic.

How say you?

I like the idea that the person is essentially trapped in a statue of their body until the process is reversed or the statue is no longer intact. It's horrifying, but turning to stone should be IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have had victims of petrification upon returning to flesh suffer from carbonaceous sickness.

I'm sure their eyesight returned in time.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Turn to Stone was scarier when it was one save and not 3.