Immortality: A Guide to Eternal Life discussion

[taltamir]

Proper minmaxing? That is quite presumptuous of you. Can further elaborate what is proper minmaxing for you?

Proper minmaxing is being actually competent about your minmax attempt, its making the best choices rather then the worst choices.
You are trying to defend a suicidal plan with "we are min maxers". Minmaxing is not about committing suicide.
Vaz gave an in depth explanation on what is wrong with your plan. Leviathan and I gave a less in depth criticism of said plan. Are you going to answer anyone's issues with the actual plan?

[The_Laughing_Man]

Someone wanting to extend their life will not waste their time risking it against a 17th level Wizard with 31 Intelligence, and that's even before they're put on an even keel considering how many goodies such a monster will have.

If you want to talk Intelligence, why not get a Steel Dragon Great Wyrm? It casts as a 21st level Sorcerer. However, again, you run into the problem that it is more dangerous than you. And yes, it does have Mantle of the Icy Soul ready for your Shivering Touch, because it's actually played at its intelligence and not WotC's "duh, uh ok I take Weapon Focus for all of my feats" standard feat idea.

Your attitude doesn't help. "because we're min-max" - it might be "what we do^tm" but at the same time, we try to do so intelligently - and at the least, telling a Wizard seeking immortality to locate a creature that's more powerful than he is, and ask that he be allowed to give him a pat on the back while you drain his intelligence (provided, of course, he's not already immune to said drain - and he will be, he's paranoid-wizard.com/go-away)

If you're going to do that, get yourself a Neraph with access to Metamorphic Transfer and some ability to change into a Visilight. Use that to bluff and diplomance the target into being your friend, removing his Mind Blank, and then being Diplomanced into Fanaticism. That. Or just be an Ardent using the Epic StP Erudite to get the spell as a Power (doesn't need to be actively involved, just present), and then putting it on a Mantle using the Substitute Power ACF.

That's Min/max and kinda cheesy (requires Spell to Power Erudites to reach Epic levels), but dead easy to do.

Maybe you missed the smiley in my post. Nuances don't come across easily with written text. I wasn't suppose to come off with an attitude. It was more of a tongue-in-cheek sort of comment.

There is no disagreement that the Black Ethergaunt is really dangerous. For some players it would a walk in the park and for others a suicide. And this is not even factoring in the rest of the party or the Dungeon Master or the house rules. The handbook author can put in the Lammasu example if he so wishes. I'm cool with that.

Thank you for taking the time write this down. The BE example was from the top of my head when I was thinking how to get as much as extension as possible from the spell. There are apparently downsides in to choosing BBEBE

Proper minmaxing? That is quite presumptuous of you. Can further elaborate what is proper minmaxing for you?

Proper minmaxing is being actually competent about your minmax attempt, its making the best choices rather then the worst choices.
You are trying to defend a suicidal plan with "we are min maxers". Minmaxing is not about committing suicide.
Vaz gave an in depth explanation on what is wrong with your plan. Leviathan and I gave a less in depth criticism of said plan. Are you going to answer anyone's issues with the actual plan?

I do not wish a quarrel here I think the discussion about competence and the philosofy of minmaxing should really go somewhere else, please

I can accept the criticism that many would not take on the black ethergaunt. OTOH, some would and even win. It really depends on a lot of variables. So I think it is not a hard-and-fast rule to not choose a seemingly hard opponent. I think some players jump on the chance to kill some ethergaunts.

And about the plan. Hmmm.. maybe it is not the best idea to spend two + x spells (gate and ensul, and all the spells to win) for a dangerous foe when a simple animal (int 2) would give you a life extension for two days without any danger. And that you could cast again the day after that. I think the extensions do not stack with each other so the caster needs to cast every now and then. If the caster needs a longer extension for some reason then a bigger foe is needed all the way up to dragons and black ethergaunts.


If we take step back and think what would be useful advice for the handbook regarding the Ensul's soultheft. What would you suggest, vaz, taltamir or leviathan?

[taltamir]

And about the plan. Hmmm.. maybe it is not the best idea to spend two + x spells (gate and ensul, and all the spells to win) for a dangerous foe when a simple animal (int 2) would give you a life extension for two days without any danger. And that you could cast again the day after that. I think the extensions do not stack with each other so the caster needs to cast every now and then. If the caster needs a longer extension for some reason then a bigger foe is needed all the way up to dragons and black ethergaunts.

If the extension doesn't stack than it is not a method of immortality. You take on an ethergaunt and get +81 days of lifespan, a rather meaningless extension, then you have to find something tougher to get any more extensions.
The only way for this spell to not be worthless is if the life extension does stack

I do not have the book in question, but searching it online I found it here
http://dndtools.eu/spells/city-of-splendors-waterdeep--16/ensuls-soultheft--349/

When you slay a victim in this manner, you do not age for a number of days equal to the number of points of Intelligence drained. If the victim was a spellcaster, the gain in lifespan is increased by the sum of the spell levels prepared by or available to the victim at the time of death. If the victim was a psion, the gain in lifespan is increased by a number of days equal to the victim's power point reserve.

If I am reading this correctly, it works by halting your aging in a life extending manner (unlike most age halting mechanisms which leave you to die when your time is up). It is plausible for the effects not to stack (so, if you cast it on two int 10 victims during the same day, you only get 10 more days, if you cast it on an int 10 victim the next day, you only get 1 more day, since the age freeze buff is overlapping instead of stacking)

Nothing is stopping you from consuming animals in such a manner, or really anything you want dead. The advantage of animal consumption is that nobody cares, you are still immortal, it doesn't put up a fight, and unlike gate, you do not need to burn XP to cast it. Anything that needs to be gated in is too expensive to drain.

[vaz]

Wrong wrong wrong, ignore me.

Basically, just create a 10:1 time plane and load it up with chickens. Each casting provides you 2 days of extended life in exchance for 1 9th level spell slot every 2 days.

[magic9mushroom]

Templates

These are templates that grant some form of respite from aging. Templates with unplayable level adjustments (vampires, etc.) will not be included.

Lich should probably be included. Yes, yes, I know, +4 LA is bad (though not Vampire-level bad) - until Epic. Then it's not so big a deal. Also, if you're going deep into Epic, it opens up the legitimately-good Demilich.

Classes and Prestige Classes

Most immortal character will probably become such because of class choices. For some classes it's impossible to avoid; taking the class to completion grants some form of immortality. Here are all the ones that grant any type of immortality.

Athasian Dragon is missing. Epic PrC, Dragon #339 p.22, grants immortality at level 3. The PrC also has the only means I'm aware of to offload backlash damage from epic spells (to anyone within Close range, and it's blazefire).

1. Unnamed Ring/Amulet/etc. (Dragon 354)
This is the piece of jewelry used in the Kissed By the Ages spell. Any piece of jewelry works, as long as it costs at least 4,000gp and takes-up an item slot. You become completely ageless as long as you wear it and suffer penalties if you lose it. The real advantage to it comes if you combine it with the Item Familiar feat. The ring/necklace/whatever is impossible to destroy without deific intervention and you always know where it is, practically guaranteeing you'll never lose your item familiar and anything you invested in it.

Whether you can make it an Item Familiar is rather dubious, since the spell "forever eliminates any of the item's existing magical properties". You might be able to re-enchant it (and then make it an Item Familiar), but I wouldn't count on it.

Also, note that Kissed by the Ages targets a person; stealing someone else's KbtA trinket won't grant you immortality.

5. Ioulaum's Longevity (LEF, contributed by pinewoodpine)
This is an epic spell with a Spellcraft DC of 152. It's basically Disintegrate in a 120 ft. radius but your current age category is extended by one year for every living creature it kills. Unlike Thief of Life it doesn't have HD requirements on the target, so (if you don't mind being evil) go raid the nearest village and disintegrate everyone to extend your life. If your morality can't handle that, I'm sure you could get the same results from kobolds (or whatever passes for the "always evil" creature in your campaign). The only difficulties with this are the Spellcraft DC and the fact that you need Epic Spellcasting to cast it. If your DM will let you, drop the Spellcraft DC down to almost nothing by building a crippling XP expenditure into the spell and then using a Thought Bottle (CA) to get it all back. Note that this trick is most definitely not RAI so ask your DM before you try it.

Fortify-based life extension overlaps, rather than stacking (ELH). Ioulaum's Longevity is a bit unusual but the same rules probably apply (it mentions that the age extension is permanent, not instantaneous). This means there's a limit on how much you can get, although the limit is rather large (blasting 5 bat swarms, such as from a vampire rolling high, will give you 25,000 years, and given the 120ft burst area you could fit a lot more in if you tried).

7. Living Zombie Cocktail (CoR)
No, it's not actually called that. Creating a living zombie takes Command Undead, Dominate [type], False Life, Feeblemind, and 1,000gp. You can have one living zombie at a time for every modifier from your primary spellcasting stat (Intelligence for wizards, etc.) which is good because you want as many as you can get. Every one you have makes you age half as quickly as you usually would. This effect is cumulative if you have multiple living zombies, so create as many as you can to greatly increase your lifespan. The only problem is they still age as they usually would so you'll have to replace them every 100 years or so (less if they're elves).

It's fairly hard to crank ability modifiers past +12-15 unless you go deep into epic, so this'll only get you a million years or so.

3. Divine Rank 0+
Almost certainly requiring DM fiat or a seriously high level campaign, somehow obtaining at least divine rank 0 grants the basics of the ideal state of immortality. Note that it is possible to steal enough of whatever the stuff/power is that constitutes divine rank in order to gain 1 or more divine ranks (see Greyhawk sources, the most recent of which is "Expedition to Castle Greyhawk" for details on how this was/can be accomplished. Alternatively, see Forgotten Realms sources regarding "The Time of Troubles".)

Dragon Ascendant gives DvR 0 mechanically, but it's a 12-level PrC, and to get in you have to be a True Dragon of BAB +30 and eat your hoard (which presumably translates to your entire WBL at the time of entry).

The Lich-Queen's Beloved adventure (Dungeon 100) states that Vlaakith's divine ascension method (cast thousands upon thousands of Wishes on the corpse of a deity) will eventually work, but the exact number is unknown. An epic ring of at-will Wish should cost 2,775,400 gp by DMG/ELH rules (crafting it would require 137,700 gp, 512,754 XP and 276 days) and should allow 4,800 Wishes per 8-hour day of spamcasting in the Astral Plane.

[jeminizero]

Regarding Alienist, while it is true that they get Timeless Body which isn't true immortality, they ALSO get Alien Transcendence at 10th which transforms them into Outsiders.

[Afghanistan]

The Timeless Fountain from Secrets of Xen'drik page 143. If you visit it annually, you essentially age 1 day every year essentially multiplying your lifespan by 365 if done so. It cost 5,000gp in terms of ability value. Combined with your hypothetical elf Ruathar/Dragon Prophet, after donning the Tasmia's Heart, you have a lifespan of 3,212,000 years, costing about 16,060,000gp to maintain that lifestyle making this the single most expensive way to NOT achieve immortality possible.

[Nanashi]

It should be noted Warforged are only theoretically immortal going by the wording on ECS30.

Any chance of PF immortality methods? Wizard, Alchemist, Monk of the Four Winds, Solar/Heavens/Time Oracle, Leshykineticist, Blood Kineticist, and Imperious Sorcerer* have it as a capstone (*Imperious Sorcerer can actually get it at 16 via Robes of Arcane Heritage). Reincarnated Druid gets it at level 6. Living Monolith (prestige class) gets it at level 10. Witch gets Forced Reincarnation near capstone and can use it on themselves. A decent number of PF's new races are naturally immortal. Major Mind Swap lets you steal young bodies. Numerian Fluids are a cheapish magic item that has a 1/1000 chance of giving immortality and 1/100 chance of lowering age, but also a good chance of instant unavoidable death.

[Power]

Thanks for the handbook.
I came across (an EXTREMELY awful) option for immortality that is pathfinder only
https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/soulbound-shell

Pros:
1. construct traits (except immunity to mind affecting)

Drawbacks:
1. While anyone with CL12+ qualifies, Only clerics, wizards, and witches may still cast spells afterwads
2. You lose the ability to change your spells known and spells prepared. As written, this also means that leveling up prevents you from getting access to higher level spells.

Pathfinder tries to limit ways to obtain immortality more.

While this wouldn't exactly count as immortality, the easiest way to stick around forever is to chain Reincarnate as you get old. And on that note, the Reincarnated Druid auto-reincarnates when killed from level 5 onwards. You can also attain immortality with 10 levels of Thuvian Alchemist PrC (10/10 arcane spellcaster advancement PrC) and Deific Obedience (Groetus) gives you immortality at level 20 (18 with Diverse Obedience, 14 with Exalted PrC).

[KellKheraptis]

7. Living Zombie Cocktail (CoR)
No, it's not actually called that. Creating a living zombie takes Command Undead, Dominate [type], False Life, Feeblemind, and 1,000gp. You can have one living zombie at a time for every modifier from your primary spellcasting stat (Intelligence for wizards, etc.) which is good because you want as many as you can get. Every one you have makes you age half as quickly as you usually would. This effect is cumulative if you have multiple living zombies, so create as many as you can to greatly increase your lifespan. The only problem is they still age as they usually would so you'll have to replace them every 100 years or so (less if they're elves).

If this is based on the creature turned into a living zombie, imprison an Elan zombie and call it done?  No max age, never age again?

Sorry, not familiar with the spell, but I play a lot of REALLY OLD characters (mainly Elans).

[magic9mushroom]

7. Living Zombie Cocktail (CoR)
No, it's not actually called that. Creating a living zombie takes Command Undead, Dominate [type], False Life, Feeblemind, and 1,000gp. You can have one living zombie at a time for every modifier from your primary spellcasting stat (Intelligence for wizards, etc.) which is good because you want as many as you can get. Every one you have makes you age half as quickly as you usually would. This effect is cumulative if you have multiple living zombies, so create as many as you can to greatly increase your lifespan. The only problem is they still age as they usually would so you'll have to replace them every 100 years or so (less if they're elves).

If this is based on the creature turned into a living zombie, imprison an Elan zombie and call it done?  No max age, never age again?

Sorry, not familiar with the spell, but I play a lot of REALLY OLD characters (mainly Elans).

Don't need to imprison; living zombies can't disobey their creator, so you could just keep them as maids or whatever.

And no, it wouldn't let you live forever; the benefit for the creator is strictly "aging halved (multiplicatively) per living zombie in existence" (max = primary spellcasting ability modifier). The only relevance of the living zombies' lifespan is that the zombies aren't immune to aging themselves, so making them out of mortals would mean you'd need to replace them when they died. Using Elans would remove the need to replace them (since Elans are immortal and the template does work on aberrations), but you still need a ton of them and you still will age (just, y'know, really really slowly).

[taltamir]

7. Living Zombie Cocktail (CoR)
No, it's not actually called that. Creating a living zombie takes Command Undead, Dominate [type], False Life, Feeblemind, and 1,000gp. You can have one living zombie at a time for every modifier from your primary spellcasting stat (Intelligence for wizards, etc.) which is good because you want as many as you can get. Every one you have makes you age half as quickly as you usually would. This effect is cumulative if you have multiple living zombies, so create as many as you can to greatly increase your lifespan. The only problem is they still age as they usually would so you'll have to replace them every 100 years or so (less if they're elves).

If this is based on the creature turned into a living zombie, imprison an Elan zombie and call it done?  No max age, never age again?

Sorry, not familiar with the spell, but I play a lot of REALLY OLD characters (mainly Elans).

Don't need to imprison; living zombies can't disobey their creator, so you could just keep them as maids or whatever.

And no, it wouldn't let you live forever; the benefit for the creator is strictly "aging halved (multiplicatively) per living zombie in existence" (max = primary spellcasting ability modifier). The only relevance of the living zombies' lifespan is that the zombies aren't immune to aging themselves, so making them out of mortals would mean you'd need to replace them when they died. Using Elans would remove the need to replace them (since Elans are immortal and the template does work on aberrations), but you still need a ton of them and you still will age (just, y'know, really really slowly).

The issue with making them into maids. is that someone might kill them.
Adventurers raid your manor and kill all your maids. and suddenly you are aging normally again.
It takes a lot of effort to acquire those Elan to make living zombies out of

Teleport somewhere suitably far away from anywhere else and cast an imprison on them. And suddenly it is a lot more expensive to damage your life extension device.

[magic9mushroom]

The issue with making them into maids. is that someone might kill them.
Adventurers raid your manor and kill all your maids. and suddenly you are aging normally again.
It takes a lot of effort to acquire those Elan to make living zombies out of

Teleport somewhere suitably far away from anywhere else and cast an imprison on them. And suddenly it is a lot more expensive to damage your life extension device.

The issue there is that Living Zombies don't protect you against murder in any way. It's not like a phylactery where killing you won't work unless the phylactery's also destroyed. So the benefit of having the zombies be super-extra-unfindable is not all that large - enemies out to kill you can just directly kill you and ignore the zombies, and then they're useless. Living zombies only help if you have few enough people trying to kill you that you're actually expecting to die of old age.

[Nanshork]

The immortality guide is specifically about protecting yourself from dying of old age though.

[magic9mushroom]

The immortality guide is specifically about protecting yourself from dying of old age though.

I'm not seeing how this is in contradiction with what I'm saying. I'm saying that something that (only) prevents you from dying of old age isn't the sort of thing that warrants KK/Taltamir's suggested extreme security measures.

If you don't have anyone trying to kill you, keeping the LZs in your manor is safe enough.

If someone is trying to kill you, there don't seem to be any plausible scenarios in which super-hiding the LZs helps very much. If you're stronger than them, then when they break in and your various "hey, somebody's breaking into my manor" alerts go off, you can just teleport back (LZs require 5th-level spells to create) and deal with them. If they're stronger than you, then they can just assassinate you without bothering with attacking your manor (or finding the super-hidden LZs if you did that), since the LZs don't stop you being killed and killing the LZs won't kill you in any sort of useful timeframe.

That last one (someone trying to kill you who's stronger than you) is the reason that super-hiding a phylactery is actually worthwhile, because the phylactery does stop you from being killed.

[Nanshork]

The immortality guide is specifically about protecting yourself from dying of old age though.

I'm not seeing how this is in contradiction with what I'm saying. I'm saying that something that (only) prevents you from dying of old age isn't the sort of thing that warrants KK/Taltamir's suggested extreme security measures.

If you don't have anyone trying to kill you, keeping the LZs in your manor is safe enough.

If someone is trying to kill you, there don't seem to be any plausible scenarios in which super-hiding the LZs helps very much. If you're stronger than them, then when they break in and your various "hey, somebody's breaking into my manor" alerts go off, you can just teleport back (LZs require 5th-level spells to create) and deal with them. If they're stronger than you, then they can just assassinate you without bothering with attacking your manor (or finding the super-hidden LZs if you did that), since the LZs don't stop you being killed and killing the LZs won't kill you in any sort of useful timeframe.

That last one (someone trying to kill you who's stronger than you) is the reason that super-hiding a phylactery is actually worthwhile, because the phylactery does stop you from being killed.

Every game is different so what is/isn't worth extreme security measures is entirely in the eye of the beholder, especially when he's talking about raids by adventurers so appeared to be discussing it from an NPC perspective and not a PC perspective.

[taltamir]

The issue with making them into maids. is that someone might kill them.
Adventurers raid your manor and kill all your maids. and suddenly you are aging normally again.
It takes a lot of effort to acquire those Elan to make living zombies out of

Teleport somewhere suitably far away from anywhere else and cast an imprison on them. And suddenly it is a lot more expensive to damage your life extension device.

The issue there is that Living Zombies don't protect you against murder in any way. It's not like a phylactery where killing you won't work unless the phylactery's also destroyed. So the benefit of having the zombies be super-extra-unfindable is not all that large - enemies out to kill you can just directly kill you and ignore the zombies, and then they're useless. Living zombies only help if you have few enough people trying to kill you that you're actually expecting to die of old age.

The issue is incidental damage. Even a level 1 party of noobs will kill off your zombie maids. You then crush them. But oops your zombies are gone.

Also imprison is not that expensive. Actually it also solves the zombie aging issue. And I think more cheaply than elan