Keeping powerful characters dead

[ruleslawyer]

OK, the combined solution looks like the best non-evil OGC option:

soul bind + bag of holding inside portable hole equals irretrievably lost gem without which resurrection is impossible. Ergo, no resurrection, unless there's a way to retrieve the irretrievable.

Note that if you're throwing SDAs (especially Alter Reality and Life and Death) into the mix, anything is arguably possible. I think that the moment you have a deity directly intervening to keep someone alive, the only way to permanently kill that someone is to remove the deity's interference entirely (which might mean killing the deity!).

 

[Janx]

I find the core assumption on why it's so hard to keep BBEG's dead to be faulty.

Let's say I'm the God of Evil (TM). And I have a favorite person, we'll call him Bob.

He's my favorite dude on the whole freaking planet. I probably have an Evilvision set tuned to his channel just so I can watch all the bad stuff he does. I probably hooked it up to TiVo even so I don't miss anything.

Now Bob's minding his own business torturing Eric's Grandma when y'all show up to kick his arse. You've got all your plans set. Special poisons, super-fast-dimensions, all that junk.

Right when you guys nail Bob with some sort of horrible thing that'll hose him for sure, my Readied action of "Wish Bob were here when Bob's in Trouble" fires, probably from my TiVo, because I'm Evil(TM) and can do that kinda thing. Poof, Bob's here. I cure him up, wipe his memory a bit, and send him back to someplace nice where he can feed your pet kittens to a blender in retaliation.

My point being, if Bob is so important to me, the God of Evil, I can zap him away before you get to implement the nastier parts of your plan to make Bob die (which usually occurs after you've killed him).

Since that seems awfully arbitrary from a DM's perspective to allow that to happen, from a DM's perspective, it seems there must be some ground-rules for fair play. Otherwise, I'll always be able to grab Bob back, or brain-prod my highest level followers to watch and grab Bob should anything too horrible start to happen.

There'd really be no stopping me, unless the good gods are playing the same game. In which case, all this would escalate until both sides wiped each other out pretty good or we backed off to reasonable "people are chess pieces" rules.

Just a few thoughts from your friendly neighborhood God of Evil

Janx

 

[nimisgod]

soul bind + bag o' devouring = soul gem lost forever. I suppose you could try to fortify it with a wish spell...

 

[Darkness]

Hi Janx.

Interesting points.

First of all, no, my core assumption is not faulty, thank you very much. I may have expressed it sloppily, though. To clarify, adding deities to the mix is just an escalation of the core problem; they won't be there every time. High-level mortal allies of the BBEG are quite sufficient in most cases.

Second... [Long and tangential to the thread's main topic.][sblock]Even if there is a deity who might get involved, deities don't sit around all day with a readied action, waiting for Bob to get in trouble. They have other things to do, too.
(Admittedly, an Intermediate or Greater deity might be able to spare an Avatar for this purpose. Yes, I'll have to figure out what to do about that. Apart from instakilling Bob, which is always an option at these levels. Hm. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it; my players rarely go around killing the favorites of Greater deities. )
'course, if you're taking Bob on after slaughtering your way through an entire temple, chances are the deity will know what you're up to.
Also... If, as is often the case, the PCs are fighting Bob while he's conducting a vile ritual that will blot out the sun or something, chances are the success of this plan is worth risking Bob's immediate survival.
You can also counter magic with magic of your own, so teleporting Bob out with miracle might not work. Dimensional anchor, a mere 4th-level spell, beats gate and teleportation circle (among other things), for example. I'm not sure if it would beat this specific application of miracle, but something more powerful just might.[/sblock]

 

[ruleslawyer]

I think that the point that Janx is making, Darkness, is that having deities around takes the cap off protective measures for your BBEG, which can be a problem pre-death as well as post. In any case, I don't see any way around the soul bind + bag/hole solution EXCEPT divine intervention, which tells me that divine intervention is measurably different from having high-level mortal allies around to begin with.

So, that's my approach. It does mean that keeping someone dead is a LOT more expensive than resurrecting him out of thin air, but I actually think the system might have gotten it right on this. In general, offense trumps defense too often in 3e for my tastes.

 

[Darkness]

This thread is not about deities. It's about keeping bad guys dead. Deities are only tangential to the topic at hand, as they only enter the picture rarely. We can still talk about deities, of course, but let's put that kind of thing in sblocks to not hijack the thread too much.

Like so:

ruleslawyer - [sblock]

I think that the point that Janx is making, Darkness, is that having deities around takes the cap off protective measures for your BBEG, which can be a problem pre-death as well as post.

I know what his point is, but you seem to have missed mine. Namely, even deities can't do everything, much less within a few rounds, at planar range and without having to worry about resistance.

In any case, I don't see any way around the soul bind + bag/hole solution EXCEPT divine intervention, which tells me that divine intervention is measurably different from having high-level mortal allies around to begin with.

Obviously it's different. I don't know an SDA that would undo this particular tactic after it's been used, though. Well, just one, in a way: Divine Creation. It's limited to Greater Deities, though, and as I mentioned previously, that's a power level I don't have to concern myself with just yet.[/sblock]

 

[Janx]

My point was, once you bring in ressurection spell,s you're bringing in deities. And I believe this thread started off with the BBEG being the favorite dude of the Evil God.

So when you kill Bob, he'll need raising. Assuming I don't get directly involved as a deified NPC, you're premise is that my followers will raise Bob when given the chance.

This has always been the problem of healing and raising spells. It's hard to keep people dead or hurt for a significant time.

As a DM, you've got to figure what when the gods will grant a ressurection spell and pretty much stick to that. That then gets translated to when I the God of Evil(TM) get to directly or indirectly meddle in the affairs of you pesky PCs who keep trying to kill Bob.

And that's where I put the core assumption being faulty. Basically, you need to keep dead people dead, more often than not. The gods can't be allowed to whimsically bring people back via their clerics or directly. Otherwise, I'd be bringing back every freaking orc and kobold y'all kill, just to harass you. Of course, then you'd get the XP twice, so maybe that's the real reason I don't bring back all my little helpers.

Perhaps that's the core, evil guys tend to be survival of the fittest types, so if Bob got killed by you losers, he must be weak, and not worth my favor anymore. I think I'll go put his soul on the barbeque now, excuse me..

Janx

 

[mythusmage]

It could be worse. The deity could let the bbeg stay dead, and work on recruiting the people who killed him.

 

[Darkness]

Janx... You call my core assumption faulty and then go and use a slippery slope argument to back up your point? Now that's comedy.

Tell me: Why aren't nations overrun by rapidly spawning undead such as wights, shadows, bodaks, etc.? I kind of doubt they're going to play fair no matter how nicely you ask them.
Also: Slaadi, though they're slower.

Yes, I'm making a point here, and it may or may not be a surprising one.

 

[ruleslawyer]

This thread is not about deities. It's about keeping bad guys dead. Deities are only tangential to the topic at hand, as they only enter the picture rarely. We can still talk about deities, of course, but let's put that kind of thing in sblocks to not hijack the thread too much.

Like so:

ruleslawyer - [sblock]I know what his point is, but you seem to have missed mine. Namely, even deities can't do everything, much less within a few rounds, at planar range and without having to worry about resistance. Obviously it's different. I don't know an SDA that would undo this particular tactic after it's been used, though. Well, just one, in a way: Divine Creation. It's limited to Greater Deities, though, and as I mentioned previously, that's a power level I don't have to concern myself with just yet.[/sblock]

Darkness -
[sblock]I don't think I missed your point; I was simply countering that there IS a qualitative difference between having deities in play and "merely" having mortal allies in play. SDAs are a royal pain to deal with on all sorts of levels, simply because they don't really have hard limits, unless you cleave very carefully to the interpretation that "functions just like [x spell]" means that the SDA also suffers all limitations of that spell.[/sblock]

In any case, I think that we're back to soul bind + bag of holding + portable hole. This tactic costs a grand total of 22,500 gp + 1,000 gp per level of dead BBEG; not too high a cost for inflicting permanent death.