Ageless... but not really.
- Thread starter Xavim
- Start date
Khorod
First Post
Crothian said:
True, but the principle of the thing is a little odd. The old man that doesn't show his age much is all well and good- but that's what the awesome veteran fighter is supposed to do. The Druid and Monk are supposed to live for several centuries, scaring generations of students.
But in the way D&D works, granting actual agelessness would be too 'powerful' somehow.
Kahuna Burger
First Post
Xavim said:
Yeah, I had a thread on that a while back. the worst of it is that this imaginary "time is up" point is apparently based on the longevity of the different races, though I've never seen any evidence that lifespan is "balanced" by any other factor... So a 20th level human druid needs to die of old age when an elf is barely adult because? What? No reason, really.
That little line is rule zeroed as far as I'm concerned.
Kahuna burger
I dislike the idea of being perfectly fit and going "HURK!" with no apparent condition beyond being 86. At least, being sick for a few months or developing some problem would allow a little preparation period- but old, powerful druids must either be really enlightened about their time to die or they're all completely nuts.
I like the idea of achieving a kind of physical immortality through following a particular spiritual path; there are lots of analogues of such individuals in various myth systems. It's just unfortunate that the only real application of such rules is in developing NPCs; most campaigns span 5 years at most of game time.
Xavim said:
This was a change they brought in with 3e, which causes problems with preexisting campaign worlds. IMC though all the centuries or millenia-old wizards seem to have access to Wish anyway, fortunately. I don't think it would ruin the game to bring back potions of longevity & elixirs of youth.
Silverglass
Registered User
The 3.0 Epic level handbook allowed one of the seeds (Life I think) to be used to modify the age brackets, now by taking a lot of penalties which you can afford to do as the spell isn't going to be cast very often or in combat you can easily apply some big modifiers to the age brackets, and is a nice solution because it doesn't benefit the long lived races any more than the short lived ones.
It also means that the person does still age and die, it just takes much longer for each age bracket to come into effect.
e.g. A 40 year old Wizard casts the spell (or has it cast through some means) and then very slowly ages to reach Old Age at say 153 and probably dies at around 200, unless he gets another casting with a higher effect which would probably prolong his time in the Old bracket.
It also means that the person does still age and die, it just takes much longer for each age bracket to come into effect.
e.g. A 40 year old Wizard casts the spell (or has it cast through some means) and then very slowly ages to reach Old Age at say 153 and probably dies at around 200, unless he gets another casting with a higher effect which would probably prolong his time in the Old bracket.
jasper
Rotten DM
Not me. If a player have trouble I give him the option of continue aging. Also I had uncles in their 80's who look like they were in their 40's when they drop dead of heart attacks or cancer.Xavim said:
Stop whining and drop dead already
Is your campaign world so fast that you burn through decades per real life game year?Similar Threads
