Ageless... but not really.

[Nightchilde-2]

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.

There's also a feat that extends your lifespan in the ELH. I don't remember the specifics, but it's there....

 

[Thresher]

Extend Life Span from the ELH.

Add one half the maximum result of your race's maximum age modifier to your normal middle age, old and venerable age catorgories.

It dosnt lower your current age category but you can get it multiple times and it stacks. Theres a few people in our epic game considering getting it, we've gone through about 50 years game time in 10 or so years of playing and their getting kinda crusty and cranky... mostly at my elf who's aloof and generally bone lazy when it comes to doing anything quickly

 

[Voadam]

And where are the wizard spells to prolong your life? Every fantasy world has their centuries old wizards but aside from Wish there really isn't anything the character can do.

(other than Undead that is)

Relics and Rituals II has one that makes you age at half the normal rate.

 

[MarauderX]

What about Yoda? He's a good example of the 20th level Master giving up the ghost when it was time, and he knew it was coming for the most part too.

 

[Estlor]

Relics and Rituals II has one that makes you age at half the normal rate.

*Ding* Thank you! The gratuitous plug for one of my spells is appreciated

For whatever reason, the designers behind 3e took out all the spells and abilities that altered the course of aging. That means everyone progresses through the age brackets naturally and dies when their time is up (unless the DM allows for a use of wish to extend life). Considering the druid used to have an extend life class ability, they did the next best thing - let you "appear" to not age by keeping all your physical ability scores at the point they were when the ability was gained. You still die, but I'd hazard to say very few campaigns last long enough to approach that point. WotC just decided a lot of those things hardly ever came into play and replaced them with more pressing abilities that can be used more often.

Of course, there are always people like myself that enjoy having a little magic that mucks with a character's age. That's part of the reason why I wrote most of the age enhancing/reversing spells in Relics & Rituals I and II.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

What about Yoda? He's a good example of the 20th level Master giving up the ghost when it was time, and he knew it was coming for the most part too.

Or think of the various witches and wizards from the Discworld series. Many of them are spry and active well into very old age - but they usually know when Death comes calling, and prepare for it (witches by preparing their cottage for their successor, wizards by getting heavily into debt and emptying their wine cellars).

Sure, in our modern times we might believe that something like physical immortality could be in our grasp if we just throw enough research money at it.

But in many fantasy worlds, or even real-world religion, each and every human has only a limited amount of time he may spend in this world. Once he has used this up, he's dead - no matter what he might try...

It all depends on your campaign world.

 

[wolff96]

Eh, druids have it easy.

While Reincarnation will no longer bring someone back that died of old age, it STILL brings you back in a young body.

So one of the rituals for druids is probably to get murdered whenever they start to get near the age limits of their race. After all, they still come back with only a single level lost...

--------------------------

Better yet, team up with a wizard and create a "Contingency: Reincarnation" device that will reincarnate you if you die by your own hand (or something like that) and then kill yourself when you start feeling like your time will soon be up.

Druids are the easiest class to make functionally immortal... though they still die just as easily as anyone else to all the other problems of life.

 

[Delemental]

Eh, druids have it easy.

While Reincarnation will no longer bring someone back that died of old age, it STILL brings you back in a young body.

So one of the rituals for druids is probably to get murdered whenever they start to get near the age limits of their race. After all, they still come back with only a single level lost...

Or even better, use the 9th level druid spell "True Reincarnation" from Masters of the Wild, where you don't lose a level. Although you can't use the Contingency trick any more, if you're a druid that's powerful enough to cast 9th level spells, you can probably find a way to work around that.