Phylactery + Bag of Holding + Piercing Weapon = ?

[Jack Haggerty]

Page 89 of PHB

The first six alignments from LG to CN are the standard alignments for player characters. The three evil alignments are for monsters and villians.

Sounds pretty straight forward to me. A player character cannot be evil from a purely rules lawyer point of view.

Huh... Never realized.
Not that stops them anyway.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Sure it does. You merely have to force them to be a rules lawyer about ALL rules instead of just select rules.

Or you can do what I do. I generally tell muchkin rules lawyers to find another DM and get lost. Generally they are a$$holes and not really worth the effort.

Huh... Never realized.
Not that stops them anyway.

 

[Jack Haggerty]

Or you can do what I do. I generally tell muchkin rules lawyers to find another DM and get lost. Generally they are a$$holes and not really worth the effort.

Yup... That's my usual solution in the end.

 

[Omegium]

After rereading the text of the lich, I thought of something even better:

To kill the lich, the phylactery needs to be located and destroyed. Since the phylactery is lost forever, it cannot be located by definition, and thus whatever happens to phylactery doesn't matter. Ok, you need to take the rules very strictly for this, and any sane dm would say that destroying is enough, but it is funny

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Nothing can be lost forever without being destroyed. Otherwise given enough time someone somewhere will find it thus contradicting the forever part.

So a lich that loses its soul gem this way would die.

After rereading the text of the lich, I thought of something even better:

To kill the lich, the phylactery needs to be located and destroyed. Since the phylactery is lost forever, it cannot be located by definition, and thus whatever happens to phylactery doesn't matter. Ok, you need to take the rules very strictly for this, and any sane dm would say that destroying is enough, but it is funny

 

[tarsque]

Although that seems to be the case that is simply not true. Just because something can happen does not mean that it eventually will. If we on earth take a rocket and shoot it off into space it is by no means certain that after infinite time it will be found. It is possible that humans will never leave our solar system and that aliens don't exist at all. Given those two simple condiditions the rocket would never be found. There are many many such conditions that would lead to it never being found.

Really it's even possible for me to go bury a box in my back yard and for it to never be found. It could sit there for 100years then fall deeper into the earth after an earthquake and just plain never be found for example.

The same would certainly hold true in the multiverse of D&D.

Nothing can be lost forever without being destroyed. Otherwise given enough time someone somewhere will find it thus contradicting the forever part.

So a lich that loses its soul gem this way would die.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Given the infinite nature of the universe it will eventually happen IF the item in question survives that long. Your box buried in the yard will be destroyed pretty quickly in the great theme of things and as such no longer applies to the situation in question.

Although that seems to be the case that is simply not true. Just because something can happen does not mean that it eventually will. If we on earth take a rocket and shoot it off into space it is by no means certain that after infinite time it will be found. It is possible that humans will never leave our solar system and that aliens don't exist at all. Given those two simple condiditions the rocket would never be found. There are many many such conditions that would lead to it never being found.

Really it's even possible for me to go bury a box in my back yard and for it to never be found. It could sit there for 100years then fall deeper into the earth after an earthquake and just plain never be found for example.

The same would certainly hold true in the multiverse of D&D.

 

[Tiberius]

Page 89 of PHB

The first six alignments from LG to CN are the standard alignments for player characters. The three evil alignments are for monsters and villians.

Sounds pretty straight forward to me. A player character cannot be evil from a purely rules lawyer point of view.

Not quite the case. Since we're being rules-lawyery, please point out to me the passage of the PH or DMG that states that PCs may not be villians and/or monsters. While PCs are not commonly engaged in villiany, no rule I am aware of forbids such behavior.

-Tiberius

[EDIT: There's no "u" in behavior on this side of the Atlantic]

 

[BlindKobold]

Doesn't the destroyed bag tear a rift to the astral plain? Or was that 2nd edition?

If it dumps it somewhere on the astral plane... just remember all the REALLY, REALLY fun creatures that roam the astral plane. Nothing like having the object containing your life force falling into the hands of ... oh.... maybe a race of psionic monks?! =)

 

[tarsque]

The universe is believed to be finite but that's another matter.

If we're talking about an infinite space for something to get lost in then there is really no argument about it's ablility to be lost forever. The chance of finding an object in an infinite space in infinite time would be on the order of infinity/infinity which is undefined and could thus be almost anything and certainly not a given 100%.

In the case of a finite space it is still not certain that it will be found. The phylacery might simply be on a plane that no creature can reach. A plane that it is IMPOSSIBLE for any creature to reach. It would then remain "lost forever." Once again this is only an example. Another example is that all creatures in the D&D universe could die out...all life,unlife, and dieties. This would also rule out the phylacery being found. Again there are other examples but there really only needs to be one for it to not be certain.

Given the infinite nature of the universe it will eventually happen IF the item in question survives that long. Your box buried in the yard will be destroyed pretty quickly in the great theme of things and as such no longer applies to the situation in question.