Mortality and age..

[Andor]

One of the hardest things to get around in the long term in DnD is old age. Several class features will let you ignore age but you still die when your time is up. Some classes will let you transform your very being into a dragon or outsider. Still no joy.

To the best of my knowledge there are three ways to escape the clock in DnD.

1.) Have Druid friends who keep reincarnating you.

2.) Become undead.

3.) Use a soul gem to become a body hijacker, and it's arguably that this wouldn't work either.

So my question is: Why is it so difficult to gain immortality and what does it imply about DnD cosmology that your soul has a timer on it that continues to count down even if you transform your very nature?

 

[Crothian]

THere are 9th level spells that give Immortality, and there is an epic feat that increases one's life span

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

So my question is: Why is it so difficult to gain immortality and what does it imply about DnD cosmology that your soul has a timer on it that continues to count down even if you transform your very nature?

Because as a mortal, you are someone capable of changing the grand balance of the multi-verse. The immortal outsiders are too evenly matched, it is the choice of those empowered by a limited life that will decide the fate of existance.

Or some such nonsense...

Actually, the quest for immortallity is a good one for DMs to create. If the route to an immortal life was laid out in the PHB, every one would follow the steps.

Besides, remember that the spells in the PHB are the common spells used by adventurers. There's nothing to say that a whole legion of different, unknown spells, rituals, or magics exist.

If you want eternal life young mortal, there are multiple methods. They are however, for you to find yourself.

 

[Aidan mac Culloch]

Good points made above. IMHO, though, I think the heart of the matter is that D&D is a game that requires the threat of mortality to be exciting and fun. If certain progressions or spell combinations allowed one to be immortal, what is that player to do?

Also, the fact that time runs out on a person creates a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency can make heroes out of the most unlikely of folk. Cheesy I know, what I think it's true in the grand sense.

Further, from a different standpoint, some would argue that transformation of one's nature does not translate to the soul. But that is mostly beyond me and highly philosophical. I prefer the sense of urgency/creates a more interesting game angle.

 

[Falkus]

How about reintroducing the old potion of longevity?

 

[Henry]

If you do, be sure to re-introduce the potion's cumulative percentage chance that all de-aging is undone -- nothing quite like Suel Roulette in a bottle...

 

[Andor]

Good points made above. IMHO, though, I think the heart of the matter is that D&D is a game that requires the threat of mortality to be exciting and fun. If certain progressions or spell combinations allowed one to be immortal, what is that player to do?

Also, the fact that time runs out on a person creates a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency can make heroes out of the most unlikely of folk. Cheesy I know, what I think it's true in the grand sense.

Further, from a different standpoint, some would argue that transformation of one's nature does not translate to the soul. But that is mostly beyond me and highly philosophical. I prefer the sense of urgency/creates a more interesting game angle.

Yeah, but I'm not really talking about "I cannot be touched" immortality, just eternal youth. It's DnD, everything dies when you chop it to pieces.

And the time running out thing depends entirely on your race. An elf might have 20 times as much time to play with as a half-orc. And since both of them could become 20th level monks, and thus becomes outsiders immune to aging, it seems to be implied that some fundamental difference in their souls determines the 'times up' factor. But they both roll on the same reincarnation table...

 

[Sejs]

#1 on your list is probably the biggun. Old druids never go away. If you have a conclave of upper end druids, all capable of casting Reincarnate (and later, possessing things like Timeless Body and Thousand Faces), they can just round-robin each other. Your mind doesn't change and there's that nice benefit of always coming back in a fresh new young adult body. When you're getting on toward the end of your cycle, you throw a going away party, off yourself in the manner of your choice with your friend in attendance, then get brought back.

 

[sniffles]

IMHO, I think the rules don't do a good job of modeling agelessness/near agelessness. I like to play elves, and one of the things I like about them is their long lifespans. But I think age penalties are applied to them too soon. And how can you apply age penalties to people who are supposed to reach a certain level of physical maturity and then stop changing? Should there not be any age penalties for elves?

Also, what happens to a character who doesn't age as far as levels? Can they go on increasing in level indefinitely? How do you approximate the effects of aeons of life experience? I suspect this is the reason there aren't more things that grant agelessness/immortality; not just because it removes the threat of mortality, but because the rules system just can't handle it very well.

 

[genshou]

IMHO, I think the rules don't do a good job of modeling agelessness/near agelessness. I like to play elves, and one of the things I like about them is their long lifespans. But I think age penalties are applied to them too soon. And how can you apply age penalties to people who are supposed to reach a certain level of physical maturity and then stop changing? Should there not be any age penalties for elves?

Also, what happens to a character who doesn't age as far as levels? Can they go on increasing in level indefinitely? How do you approximate the effects of aeons of life experience? I suspect this is the reason there aren't more things that grant agelessness/immortality; not just because it removes the threat of mortality, but because the rules system just can't handle it very well.

That's the problem with the epic-level stuff I've seen myself, it gets to the point where you're just asking "Why am I still running around and killing stuff and collecting loot so I can kill stronger stuff?" If you look at a lot of fantasy, there are longer-lived characters whose age goes into the millennia, and they aren't exactly running around at the rate a non-epic PC would. I think that's why there are no clear rules for immortality in D&D; there's just not much point to it.

However, if you want some rules for eternal life, just let the character sacrifice 6,000 XP in a ritual to reduce their age to the earliest year on the Adulthood category (15 for humans, 110 for elves, etc.). That's effectively a combination of the XP costs for casting true reincarnate (Masters of the Wild) with wish to allow a reincarnation with the character's true form restored, without level or Con loss. That's the system for the human lover of an elf PC/NPC I use who is by elven subtype immortal, the excessively infamous Tharivol Ilthynos Meliamne. Who I just realized has never been mentioned on EN World before, despite how often I mention him in my other D&D conversations othere places.