Can you Really kill someone?

[Ricimer]

I've been thinking, and I can't find a way to permanently and irrevocably kill a high level character (who has friends) in D&D using official rules alone. Now, I can construct plenty of in game plot reasons, like the churches are bowing to certain factions, or internal politics for example. But actual, official, rules don't seem to do it.

Scenario:

Someone wants to assassinate a very influential and beloved king, and keep them from being ressurected by any force, mundane, arcane, divine, diefic etc.

There must be no way to locate the soul, wish it back, use miracle...

I MUST be missing something somewhere......

And preferably I'd like to find a way that does not require artifacts. So that the "average" highpower individual needs very unique circumstance to do so. But, if it must be so....

 

[jgbrowning]

capture him

capture him and transport him to a plane where time moves very very slowly in relation to the plane he is from. make sure he cant communicate with his friends, keep him fed and watered and watched by some non-aging demons/devils/elementals and just let him die of old age in the few minutes it will take for his friends to figure out what happened.

joe b.

 

[fba827]

a properly-worded wish / miracle spell?

 

[Caliban]

Kill them, animate the body, and then march it into a dead-magic area (if your campaign has these).

Turn him to stone and then put an amulet of non-detection on him and store him in a portable hole (so that he's in an extradimensional space and thus harder to locate.)

 

[Ricimer]

jgbrowning: I assume you mean a plane that has time go faster..thus he ages faster. But the druids reincarnation foils that, old age isn't proof against it. The spell creates a new young body for the soul.

Fba...maybe...very carefully worded. but so can the other "counter" wish.

Caliban: Hmm..stone and non-detect does make things fun. Not impossible, but fun. I'll definetely pull that on my players with someone that isn't supposed to die dead, real dead. Especially since the portable hole stops teleportation and can be safeguarded by the assasin.

As for killing, animating then sticking them in dead magic area. It makes things fun, but you can still use magic to detect things in a dead magic area (according to official rules) if I remember correctly. At the very least the divining spell should point to the nearest possible spot and they can search by hand from there.

I'm doing this out of curiosity btw, not an attempt to be a RBDM (at the moment anyway). Besides, my PC's tend to be very thurough.

 

[Staffan]

I think Spheres of Annihilation are pretty much resurrection-proof.

 

[hong]

Throw the body into a sphere of annihilation.

 

[Kraedin]

Deities can bring 'em back, though.

Tough to kill someone if they've got a god helping them.

 

[spunky_mutters]

Access to True Resurrection makes it pretty hard. The ideas where he's not dead, but unobtainable are pretty good, unless you want him actually dead, not just disappeared. Trap the Soul is good, as it could happen in a public place for high drama. The miscreant could flee with the soul gem, and then it's just a matter of blocking the scrying.

 

[Xarlen]

Well, Sure, Reincarnation works. But let's see the king rule as a badger.