Wishing for Immortality (Unaging actually)?

[Banshee16]

All of this proves that Wish is too weak a spell to grant even limited immortality. Otherwise nobody would be going through extreme means to become immortal - it would only take a wish.

GP

It doesn't prove anything IMO.......all it proves is that the designers didn't decide to spend a lot of time figuring out non-combat uses for a 9th lvl Wish spell. They figure out the most common effects that most players are likely going to want to use the spell for, and then figure out that anything further is pretty much up to the DM. Which is pretty much what the spell states.

Liches are one way to do it. As others have said becoming an Outsider is another option. Though whether Outsiders are actually ageless is a matter of debate. I tend to go with "yes", but it's not actually officially written anymore.

Same thing with how many books (Faeries, Complete Guide to Fey, Sidhe Book of Nightmares) talk about Fey being immortal (ie. ageless)....but it's not explicitly said one way or another in the core rules. But, according to those other sources, there are spells (undetailed) that would allow a PC to become immortal by becoming a Fey.......some would probably rather be a dryad or satyr than a mouldy bag of bones. Some of these same sources mention however, that there are downsides....the Complete Guide to Fey basically establishes that Fey are a soul in fleshly form. Kill the Fey and it's gone....no resurrection, nothing. And it's subject to a bunch of rules as to what it can or can't do.

The spells that do this aren't really detailed, though Faeries has the spell Feyform (7th lvl) that gives a PC the Fey-Born template, and Permanency can be applied to it. According to that book, since Fey are immortal, and the Fey-Born template grants the Fey Type, the PC becomes defacto ageless. And, as it's 7th lvl, Wish would be able to duplicate it.

What it comes down to is that the designers of 3E didn't want to spent time worrying about or considering particular issues within the context of the game. If you look outside the core rules, there are lots of choices.

In Savage Species there are rituals which let a PC change their race. If Wish lets you duplicate the effects of one of these rituals (again, probably within the spirit of the rules, though not the letter), one could become a Sidhelien from Birthright.....basically, the elves of that setting, who are ageless. You could live 100,000 years as one of them.

I think the posters in the thread have established that, by the letter, Wish doesn't do what you want. But that doesn't mean it *shouldn't*, if your DM is willing to let you use it in such a manner.

Banshee

 

[gamerprinter]

So I was wrong!

Well that dozen doesn't exist - my head was lost in an edition twist. The only effects in Pathfinder I can find is standard Aging Effects from Middle Age to Venerable where your Str/Dex/Con go down, and Int/Wis/Chr go up. I suppose if your a martial class you don't ever want to be middle aged or older, but if you're a caster, I doubt if you'd want to be ageless in the first place.

The only other thing it affects is the Curse of Ages curse - age a year, I guess I question how awful that is, if becoming ageless is easily done, age becomes almost meaningless.

Next question is, is ageless, meant you no longer have a maximum lifespan, as per aging rules, or do you appear ageless and die at your normal maximum age, like a high level monk or many other classes.

So I was wrong, not the first time.

GP

 

[Banshee16]

Well that dozen doesn't exist - my head was lost in an edition twist. The only effects in Pathfinder I can find is standard Aging Effects from Middle Age to Venerable where your Str/Dex/Con go down, and Int/Wis/Chr go up. I suppose if your a martial class you don't ever want to be middle aged or older, but if you're a caster, I doubt if you'd want to be ageless in the first place.

The only other thing it affects is the Curse of Ages curse - age a year, I guess I question how awful that is, if becoming ageless is easily done, age becomes almost meaningless.

Next question is, is ageless, meant you no longer have a maximum lifespan, as per aging rules, or do you appear ageless and die at your normal maximum age, like a high level monk or many other classes.

So I was wrong, not the first time.

GP

I think the standard ageless thing that is tied to many PrC's states that you stop aging from a physical perspective.....with respect to losing points off your ability scores. But you still "die when your time is up" and it doesn't say anything about appearing young.

I don't think it's really intended to be that 105 year old Conan the lvl 20 human monk appears to be 28 years old, which is the level he was at when he got that ageless quality. Even though he appears 28, on January 1 of the following year, he just spontaneously dies of old age.

I think it's more that you're like Mr. Miyagi. You look old(ish), but you've got exceptional physical conditioning for a 105 year old.....such that, though you still look aged, you can beat the young whippersnappers into shape, and show them to treat their elders with some respect.

There are one or two PrC's where it actually defines that you are actually ageless....as in, you cease to age, and have no maximum lifepsan. I think the Cloud Anchorite from Frostburn is one of them.

Another official way to become ageless (and pretty resilient) is to undergo the ceremony to become an Elan. According to the errata, they have no maximum age, IIRC. Of course, you're still not as resilient as a lich, who has a phylactery that allows him to come back from death to....well...undeath.

Of course, given the choice between still being somewhat killable, yet still warm and breathing, and having mice making nests in my skull cavity, and spiders spinning webs in my eye sockets or rib cage, I think the Elan route is a little less messy.

Banshee

 

[gerroditus]

The thing though is, how many of you have ever had aging effects in 3.+ editions come in to play? Honestly, I've asked this question before on the WotC Boards and in dozens of responses I had two answer in the affirmative. Going deeper with those two people I found that out of better than twenty PCs they had between them in 3.+ editions they had each had ONE PC where aging had any effect. Personally, I run a generations long campaign. The present game started in 3.0 and was hundreds of sessions long there and has been almost twice as long since, with better than thirty PCs in these games I've had four where it mattered and only one of those who actually had the effects of two aging categories (middle aged and old) while the other three just hit middle aged. We had many other PCs in game years long enough, the where the downtime between scenarios and the like accounted for many years but being elves, dwarves or in one case a gnome, meant that they didn't get to their aging thresholds.

So, what does a human character (or a half orc or another short lived race) really get from the use of the wish in this way? They get the throwaway aging effect of a elf, dwarf or gnome in almost every case.

As an aside: How does getting a ninth level spell cast for you, or casting it yourself, meaning you are powerful enough to do so, count as " ... becoming ageless is easily done"?


Isshia

 

[Ryujin]

Well, there is...but it's pretty technical. Specifically, that you get to collect on the bonuses to your mental ability scores as you go up through the age categories, without collecting the corresponding penalties to your physical scores.

But yeah, I doubt that'd ever come up in-game.

I consider that to be a benefit of the ageing process, and so wouldn't give it to an 'ageless' character.

 

[Crothian]

The thing though is, how many of you have ever had aging effects in 3.+ editions come in to play?

Once in a solo campaign that covered lots of time because the character would take years off between adventures. That was it.

 

[roguerouge]

By the time a wish comes into play in my campaigns, the campaign's almost done. I'd make the acquisition of the wish difficult and memorable, but I wouldn't have a problem with a character wishing to stop aging. It's the druid's 15th level ability with a 25K cost. It also fits closely with the remove afflictions part of the spell.

Of course, if I'm playing in Golarion, I'd say no, because there's a nation BUILT on selling something that halts aging for a year and very powerful people spend a great deal of money on it, which they wouldn't if wishes worked this way.

 

[Banshee16]

The thing though is, how many of you have ever had aging effects in 3.+ editions come in to play? Honestly, I've asked this question before on the WotC Boards and in dozens of responses I had two answer in the affirmative. Going deeper with those two people I found that out of better than twenty PCs they had between them in 3.+ editions they had each had ONE PC where aging had any effect. Personally, I run a generations long campaign. The present game started in 3.0 and was hundreds of sessions long there and has been almost twice as long since, with better than thirty PCs in these games I've had four where it mattered and only one of those who actually had the effects of two aging categories (middle aged and old) while the other three just hit middle aged. We had many other PCs in game years long enough, the where the downtime between scenarios and the like accounted for many years but being elves, dwarves or in one case a gnome, meant that they didn't get to their aging thresholds.

So, what does a human character (or a half orc or another short lived race) really get from the use of the wish in this way? They get the throwaway aging effect of a elf, dwarf or gnome in almost every case.

As an aside: How does getting a ninth level spell cast for you, or casting it yourself, meaning you are powerful enough to do so, count as " ... becoming ageless is easily done"?


Isshia

I'm not sure......I've never run or played in a game where Wish was easy to come by. The XP hit in itself is significant.....but it's just one of those things I don't see happen very often. *If anything*, Wishes in my campaign have usually come about as a result of genie rings or genie lamps or whatever. That's just always seemed more interesting than "I cast the Wish spell".

As to the age thing....it *is* a throwaway bonus. It doesn't make you more powerful or anything like that. You don't become harder to kill. It's a roleplaying benefit, pure and simple. In the grand scheme of a campaign, it's still cool, IMO, but it doesn't actually *do* anything.

Of course, the fact that it's a throwaway benefit has been one of the reasons (I think) that WotC and TSR have been steadily decreasing racial lifespans since 1st Ed. Elves in 1st Ed. could live 1200-2000 years, depending on breed. Now we're talking 354-750 years. Half-elves and dwarves have also had their lifespans shortened though not by such a great degree. It does create oddities. You've now got a race that can conceivably spend *sixty percent* of its entire lifespan as a venerable senior citizen, and a staggering 77% of its lifespan as middle aged or older.

Again, most campaigns don't really factor this in. I've always thought it would be cool to run an episodic campaign taking place over millenia, and paralleling the rise and fall of an empire, for instance. You could have one or two of the characters who are of long-lived races. Others could play shorter-lived ones, but come in as experienced members of their race...descendants of PCs from previous episodes, with the long-lived PC providing some kind of narrative continuity. So, they all begin as lvl 1, and if the episode ends at lvl 5, the humans are retired, you jump the campaign 200 years into the future, and the long-lived PC comes back to organize the descendants of the other PCs to help fight off the returning villain from the first episode, etc. Maybe they're all lvl 10 now....the ancient PC has been doing his thing, and the youngsters are crack veterans of a war that recently took place.

Fantasy fiction has done this kind of thing before.........whether it's Goblin and One-Eye from the Black Company books, Gandalf, Elminster, Pug/Milamber from Raymond Feist's Riftwar novels, Anomander Rake and the Tiste Andii of the Malazan Books of the Fallen, or others...

Banshee

 

[gamerprinter]

My last 3e campaign everyone was multiclass and everyone was at least a combined 65 levels between two or more classes - not usual for you certainly, but at least 40 years game time occurred over the course of 4 years of play. Those of us who could cast Wish, could so quite a while ago. The Aging Effects had affected all the characters in the party, except the Deva, but then he was a Deva - my character was undead, so he could careless about aging, but most of the others were human.

Is it an issue from everyone, certainly not, but its an issue for some.

GP

 

[pawsplay]

By the time a wish comes into play in my campaigns, the campaign's almost done. I'd make the acquisition of the wish difficult and memorable, but I wouldn't have a problem with a character wishing to stop aging. It's the druid's 15th level ability with a 25K cost. It also fits closely with the remove afflictions part of the spell.

Of course, if I'm playing in Golarion, I'd say no, because there's a nation BUILT on selling something that halts aging for a year and very powerful people spend a great deal of money on it, which they wouldn't if wishes worked this way.

How expensive is it? Wishes ain't cheap.