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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bayushi Seikuro" data-source="post: 3657761" data-attributes="member: 23328">I agree that the Helm is a dangerous, risky choice for many reasons.  Cost, no guarantee of success, the fact that you are essentially killing the person they are.  Well, worse than that - you are killing the spirit of the individual, whereas if you were to actually slay them, they could be revived.I do see situations where the Helm would be a worthwhile choice; you also have to remember, even most Good kingdoms in fantasy aren't as Modern with civil rights as we might be.I do see a campaign, run properly and with players who are interested, where it takes on a whole 1984 approach.On a side note, the old show Babylon 5 had an episode similar.  Earthgov had developed a mindwiping process, that also implanted a new personality.  They used it to make murderers a part of society, and then they placed them in a monastic order, free, happy, with their new lives and inability to remember the past.What happened was a family member of a murder victim managed to find the new 'monk' responsible for the murder and killed him out of revenge.  At the end, he was too shown this 'mercy' and wiped, being placed into the monastic order with no memory of any of it.There are all kinds of directions to go with it.  Now, using the Helm vs the death-penalty, that'd be up to the flavor of your campaign and the crunch of it.  If you execute a rebel, or a villain, there is always the chance, at some point, someone will resurrect them or free them.  I played in a game where, the way my character was introduced to the party was: I had once been a dread bandit lord; I was captured, fell in love with the queen, managed to get her to show mercy on me.  For punishment, I allowed myself to be locked away in stoneform as a statue, to be freed when the country needed me.  Since I was 20th level, it was good for the country, and good for me; far better than death, and all I'd owe them would be this one favor.  Well, by the time I was freed, this empire had collapsed into ruin; it was just sheer luck I was found and was intact.Which raises another good question: Instead of the Helm - although that could be an option for punishment - how about statueform as imprisonment?  No feeding, no real space requirements - stack 'em like cordwood.  Should be cheaper than the Helm for mass use.Evil. I know. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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