What would you fight through for the following bonus?

I want to setup a special type of encounter, that doesn't reward with gold or magic items (since the lady who gives the quest doesn't have any) but has the following reward.

It returns you to the beginning of your age category.

The quest is basically going to be "catch a special fish" (that is brutally deadly if prepared wrong) and go to a special tree and gather fruit (which is in the middle of a forest filled with fey, animals, and giant vermin).

After that the lady, or one of the PC's makes a DC 30 cooking check to prepare the meal.

When eaten the meal de-ages you back to the beginning of your current age category.

So what exactly is this worth to you? What kind of monster would you face to win this bonus? A few giant spiders? An adult blue dragon? The tarrasque?

Or is simply being eternally young not worth it?

Also due to the magic in the food, you do NOT die when your time is up, (although the LN Mechanus plane might be after you if you eat it for a long time).

This would only ever be worth it in a game that spanned decades and was designed around that. With 13.3 CR-appropriate encounters per level, and 4 CR-appropriate encounters per day, an average PC gains a level every four days. Even with only 4 CR-appropriate fights a week (for a campaign with tons of downtime), they're still jumping a level every month. Fighting a day's worth of encounters every season (a monster a month) still levels them up once a year. Within at most seven years they'd have access to Reincarnate, and then just be youthful forever that way.

I would recommend adjusting the difficulty of the encounters with the following justification: the universe keeps track of how old you are. The creatures you fight to get the fruit are attuned to nature, and the more you abuse its life-extending power, the more powerful monsters the forest will attract (or even manifest) to oppose you.

Does it bring ghosts back to life? :smallamused:

:smallbiggrin: Ambrosia, perhaps? (Death fish + life fruit)

It would be a fairly (immensely) valuable item to the right kind of people.

Wars would be fought over the recipe for this meal, let alone a perfectly prepared dish of it.

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Originally Posted by Eldonauran

Does it bring ghosts back to life? :smallamused:

:smallbiggrin: Ambrosia, perhaps? (Death fish + life fruit)

It would be a fairly (immensely) valuable item to the right kind of people.

Wars would be fought over the recipe for this meal, let alone a perfectly prepared dish of it.

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Well I can't call it ambrosia cause that already exists in the BOED.

Really it brings ghosts back to life? I didn't know that.

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Originally Posted by Morithias

Really it brings ghosts back to life? I didn't know that.

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No, he was asking whether or not it would. Since ghosts are undead creatures and have no age categories, RAW the fruit would do nothing for them even if they could eat it.

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Originally Posted by Flickerdart

No, he was asking whether or not it would. Since ghosts are undead creatures and have no age categories, RAW the fruit would do nothing for them even if they could eat it.

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It's a joke based on the fact that in The Sims 3, Ambrosia is a dish which brings ghosts back to life.

They could always sell the fish.

To your typical band of murder-hobos, that ain't worth much. If the party has an aging, ailing benefactor though.......

From a roleplay perspective, many of my characters would kill for eternal youth. Eternal youth is a big thing if you think about it. One of my characters actually destroyed the entire court of the Elves just for that.

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Originally Posted by kardar233

From a roleplay perspective, many of my characters would kill for eternal youth. Eternal youth is a big thing if you think about it. One of my characters actually destroyed the entire court of the Elves just for that.

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Yeah, but if you can get ahold of a way to cast an 8th level sorc/wiz necromancy spell once a year, you don't have to go through all that trouble.

Steal Life from BoVD. Used on a typical human on the night of the full moon, it turns back the hands of time for the caster by up to 63 weeks. That's a year and two fifths.

Remember kids: when running from death, a hobo a year keeps the reaper to your rear.

my merc captain would easily lead his men to the slaughter to obtain the recipe, so would my cleric of fate.

So, yea scaling level appropriate encounters would be worth it.

Unless you're a jerk, the D&D afterlives are pretty cool places to end up, so I don't really see the allure of immortality in-universe myself.

So I guess it's fitting that most of the ways to cheat death are south of neutral, since they would understandably want to put off that trip indefinitely.

The Giant (through Roy) hangs a bit of a lampshade on the whole thing.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

Unless you're a jerk, the D&D afterlives are pretty cool places to end up, so I don't really see the allure of immortality in-universe myself.

So I guess it's fitting that most of the ways to cheat death are south of neutral, since they would understandably want to put off that trip indefinitely.

The Giant (through Roy) hangs a bit of a lampshade on the whole thing.

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I can see the in-universe reasons just fine.

Remeber that less than 1% of all the characters in a world get to interact with the outer planes with any regularity. Consequently the vast majority of people don't know any more about the afterlife than people IRL. That is: they know only what a few clergymen have told them. Whether they believe or understand it or not is still entirely subject to their degree of faith, the amount of trust they put in their church in general and their pastor/priest/etc. in particular, and simply their ability to conceptualize what's been described as well as their clergyman's ability to describe it.

Then you consider that most clergymen have only ever heard the afterlife described, not all clergymen are clerics or adepts, and you realize that the vast majority of people are hearing about it second or third hand, if that, and it's really no wonder people in-universe have basically the same thoughts and feelings about death and the afterlife as real people.

Compound this with the fact that it's not unreasonable to assume that deities and other good outsiders tend to neglect telling mortals that, after they die, their souls gradually erode and eventually join with the plane itself, and it's really no suprise at all that most people don't have the complete story.


All that out of the way, there are several other easier, if perhaps not so pleasant, ways to gain immortality: lichdom, the ritual of transmigration (Libris Mortis), petitioning the elan council (XPH), or becoming a Cloud-Anchorite (Frost Burn), Beloved of Valarian (BoED), Greenstar Adept (CAr) or (maybe, IIRC) a Renegade Mastermaker (Magic of Eberron); to name a few.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

Unless you're a jerk, the D&D afterlives are pretty cool places to end up, so I don't really see the allure of immortality in-universe myself.

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Ironically, I had a DM who managed to portray Elysium in such a way that our predominantly good-aligned party wanted to destroy the place. It doesn't take much - all you have to do is go from 'Elysium - a place where you'll be happy' to 'Elysium - a place where you will be happy'. With a scaling Will save to not be as a function of time spent there along with a deep and growing need to stay there.

The current lvl 15 Druid I play wouldn't be interested.

Going dragonborn means it takes forever for you to die. If you are an adventurer, you might reach epic levels, and fix aging by then. If not, use regular spells every so often to counter-act aging.

Now if you were a venerable PC and got to keep your ability score boosts from aging (very reasonable) and reverse your physical stat penalties at the same time....that would be worth quite a bit, even without throwing in genesis shennanigans and re-aging then de-aging yourself a few times for free ability score boosts...

This really doesn't need mechanical benefits to be enticing. Aside from characters philosophically opposed to it, characters who are suicidal or believe they will die to violence before they hit middle aged, or characters with their own paths to immortality, this should be tempting to pretty much anyone.

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Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

Remeber kids: when running from death, a hobo a year keeps the reaper to your rear.

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Mind if I sig? This is just too perfect.

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Originally Posted by The-Mage-King

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Mind if I sig? This is just too perfect.

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Go for it. I love getting sigged as long as the person asks first.

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Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

Go for it. I love getting sigged as long as the person asks first.

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Awesome. Just gonna do a slight edit to correct a misspelling... (Remember has two "m"s in it. :smalltongue:)

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Originally Posted by The-Mage-King

Awesome. Just gonna do a slight edit to correct a misspelling... (Remember has two "m"s in it. :smalltongue:)

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Ack. Damn typos. :smallannoyed:

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Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

Remeber that less than 1% of all the characters in a world get to interact with the outer planes with any regularity. Consequently the vast majority of people don't know any more about the afterlife than people IRL. That is: they know only what a few clergymen have told them. Whether they believe or understand it or not is still entirely subject to their degree of faith, the amount of trust they put in their church in general and their pastor/priest/etc. in particular, and simply their ability to conceptualize what's been described as well as their clergyman's ability to describe it.

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You're forgetting though, that D&D folks have objective reasons to believe their clergy - namely, divine power. For example, whether or not folks believe in Brightwater, it's impossible to deny that Sune exists, not when her clergy are healing people and answering their divinations with information they could not possibly know without deific assistance. And if she exists, so does her home, and it's not a huge leap from there to believing you could end up where she lives too.

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Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

Compound this with the fact that it's not unreasonable to assume that deities and other good outsiders tend to neglect telling mortals that, after they die, their souls gradually erode and eventually join with the plane itself, and it's really no suprise at all that most people don't have the complete story.

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Well, for one, such "erosion" is not the only possible fate of a soul - and again, mortals have objective proof of this. And for two, it's not a bad thing either. In the good afterlives, it's the next big adventure once you're tired of endless battles or endless wenching etc and want to achieve true enlightenment. In the evil ones, it's an end to eons of suffering and torture, even if it means waking up as a brand new dretch and beginning the long road to promotion.

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Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera

Compound this with the fact that it's not unreasonable to assume that deities and other good outsiders tend to neglect telling mortals that, after they die, their souls gradually erode and eventually join with the plane itself, and it's really no suprise at all that most people don't have the complete story.

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Would not neglecting to share this help them gain followers? It doesn't sound like the kind of thing that it would be hopeful to know.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

You're forgetting though, that D&D folks have objective reasons to believe their clergy - namely, divine power. For example, whether or not folks believe in Brightwater, it's impossible to deny that Sune exists, not when her clergy are healing people and answering their divinations with information they could not possibly know without deific assistance. And if she exists, so does her home, and it's not a huge leap from there to believing you could end up where she lives too.

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None of those exactly follow. There are many ways of faking divine power, the most obvious of which is arcane power. I doubt there is any knowledge divine casters can acquire that wizards cannot. And bards can heal.
Also, from the existence of Sune does not follow the existence of her realm; or more accurately, that she/her clergy is not lying about the whole ordeal. cf. The Burning Hate.

That's a good point: in a world where magic is everywhere magic is no longer a special form of evidence. Many settings even have clerics that don't have a deity.

That leaves dying and seeing it yourself which less than 0.01% of people do. It's much more common among adventurers because they are the rare top 0.01% in wealth and power. Them and a few noblemen. So most people have to rely on the word of adventurers and other legendary people. And how much do you trust those murdering hobos and rich elite anyway? With the possibility of epic magical deception even adventurers might not be certain, though they have a pretty good reason.

This could make an interesting premise for some popular views in a campaign world.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

You're forgetting though, that D&D folks have objective reasons to believe their clergy - namely, divine power. For example, whether or not folks believe in Brightwater, it's impossible to deny that Sune exists, not when her clergy are healing people and answering their divinations with information they could not possibly know without deific assistance. And if she exists, so does her home, and it's not a huge leap from there to believing you could end up where she lives too.

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Even ignoring for a moment that there are arcane casters that can do the same thing, and the bevy of conflicting religions telling the people things that don't necessarily match, if a surgeon undoes whatever ailment you have and tells you it was magic from his god, does that necessarily mean there's a god? Even if you believe that there's a god granting him power, does that necessarily mean you believe that he's personally met this god or journeyed to some realm beyond the world itself, or even that there is such a realm?

Magic is only objective proof that magic exists. Where the magic comes from has to be taken on faith.

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Well, for one, such "erosion" is not the only possible fate of a soul - and again, mortals have objective proof of this. And for two, it's not a bad thing either. In the good afterlives, it's the next big adventure once you're tired of endless battles or endless wenching etc and want to achieve true enlightenment. In the evil ones, it's an end to eons of suffering and torture, even if it means waking up as a brand new dretch and beginning the long road to promotion.

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Again, they have no objective proof, only faith; and while "erosion" isn't the only possibility for a soul, it is the most likely by far. Only exceptional souls are elevated to celestial creatures.

Then there's the fact that regardless of whether you believed your soul would erode or become a celestial, its a clear loss of identity. You stop being you somewhere along the way. That's a terrifying thought for most people, and this is most likely the biggest reason that it's such a little know fact. Some people, if they knew, would see it as you described, but many, many others would not.

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Originally Posted by NichG

It doesn't take much - all you have to do is go from 'Elysium - a place where you'll be happy' to 'Elysium - a place where you will be happy'.

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Can I sig this?

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Originally Posted by Qwertystop

Can I sig this?

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Sure, that's fine.