Quote from: RPGPundit;521906That's what assassination attempts are for.

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Because a king would not keep 5 priests with access to Raise Dead in the court, who are daily fed a poison that only the king has the cure - probably a milk from a specific cat.

Quote from: RPGPundit;521592Interestingly, you could see just that in some of the magic-powerful places of Mystara; and one of the details that made it even more interesting was when monarchs could get overturned not because they didn't have raise dead, but because their heirs didn't want them raised.

I had a civil war in one campaign between an heir who inherited the title to a principality and his resurrected father.

Quote from: jibbajibba;521612. . . (always though D&D was odd in that there was no 6th/7th level spell to reduce your age by 10 years but there are spells that can kills with a touch ... odd as I would have thought magic users would we workign hard on that kind of shit especially when they hit 50 or so) . . .

1e AD&D had potions of longevity, but the cumulative effect of taking them was an increasing chance of reversal, leading to catastrophic rapid aging.

Between that and system shock rolls, immortality was the domain of liches.

Which is, in my humble opinion, how it should be.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;521967I had a civil war in one campaign between an heir who inherited the title to a principality and his resurrected father.


1e AD&D had potions of longevity, but the cumulative effect of taking them was an increasing chance of reversal, leading to catastrophic rapid aging.

Between that and system shock rolls, immortality was the domain of liches.

Which is, in my humble opinion, how it should be.

I agree or it least should have serious downsides, I don't go as far as Lich only territory but close enough.  

Interestingly Pathfinder has group of spells that negates aging penalties all the way through venerable (7th level spell) but not actual added lifespan.  Lots of cool situations or stories could come from that.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;5219671e AD&D had potions of longevity, but the cumulative effect of taking them was an increasing chance of reversal, leading to catastrophic rapid aging.

Between that and system shock rolls, immortality was the domain of liches.

Which is, in my humble opinion, how it should be.

Yeah I know there isn;t a lot of Anti-aging stuff in AD&D or other editions I think. One of the reasons why Ghosts are a real bitch no matter what level you are.

But its odd isn't it. In the real world one of the main drives of wizards and alchemists is the search for the elixier of life and in a lot of fantasy books powerful wizards have massively elongaged lifespans.
You would have thought that any world that had real wizards and where magic, divine, arcane or whatnot, worked that wizards would be spending a lot of time working on ways to extend their age and keep themselves young.
I guess it was another rather crude effort at game balance. Put an aging cost on some of the really tough spells, and Haste (actually for more logical reasons ~:) ), then aging acts as a hard cap.

Well, it also makes it a delightful McGuffin or Faustian bargain to dangle in front of your players, sorta like a Wish. But just like oregano, a little goes a long way.

Quote from: jibbajibba;521996You would have thought that any world that had real wizards and where magic, divine, arcane or whatnot, worked that wizards would be spending a lot of time working on ways to extend their age and keep themselves young.

I think there are several reasons why you do not see much of this in most fantasy game worlds. First, there are usually at least one powerful deity of death who would likely be highly annoyed at some easy way to cheat death for a long period of time. Second, power is often adventuring based and the personality type ready to repeated risk death for gain as adventurers do is probably much less likely to be concerned about living forever. Once they get rich, old, and powerful, they might begin to, but by then it is often too late except for.... Third, in many fantasy game worlds there is a way to remain active and functioning in the world -- become an intelligent undead.