Immortal Characters in D&D

#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #ttrpg #dungeonmaster #rpg #tabletopgaming #wotc #criticalrole #5e #dnd5e #dndcharacter #homebrew

[@watch_omega]

I like the original idea, which basically just allows the character to be used in future games canonically lol

[@Happyfoam-lw3yt]

As a BBEG, maybe. I'd legit drop a game if the DM just allowed someone to keep their character on a new adventure (assuming their level isn't reset, at MINIMUM).

[@zacheryeckard3051]

​@@Happyfoam-lw3ytI'm kind of a grognard and this is even silly to me. You can always just draft up a character at any level. Why does the narrative continuity matter this much to you? Get over it, dude. People reuse characters all the time.

[@freelancerthe2561]

@@Happyfoam-lw3yt Thats oddly self flagellating just because of a franchise crossover. Unless you just hate the character..... or hate the players. Personally if a character got isekai'd between campaigns, as long as the character wasn't suffering from other power fantasy flaws, it could interesting. Especially if all the lore related skills are less valuable, since its information about a different universe.

[@TwilitbeingReboot]

​@@zacheryeckard3051 That hasn't always been the usual way to play D&D. Maybe this is just an older-school player.

[@zacheryeckard3051]

@@TwilitbeingReboot No, fam. Players reused characters even between campaigns all the way back to Blue Book times.

[@Cinnamon_Chayne]

The fun idea is to make the whole party immortal and come up with a cool consequence for death or something Edit: thanks for the responses y’all!

[@darokdeed]

"Rotgrind" series

[@Grabthar191]

Randomly missing body parts when they reconstitute. Missing a hand or leg or something. So they have disadvantage on certain tasks or using certain objects.. or penalties to movement..

[@tijnhollanders6932]

-1 constitution score

[@darokdeed]

@@tijnhollanders6932 no just no, unless you can reasonably get it back, punishing players like that us what a bad dm does.

[@gordonissalty6944]

@@darokdeedNot necessarily, different flavors for different people. If you’re inexperienced and don’t like challenge then yeah it’d be cruel. If you’re experienced and want a challenge, it’d certainly be a challenge. But I agree, it should be replenishable somehow.

[@pal1d1nl1ght]

I had a character idea that was something like this. He was a Paladin, locked in an endless war between good and evil, and every time he died, he'd eventually get back up to fight another powerful Evil. Big problem, he was not in charge of when he got up. It could be a month, it could be a year, it could be 1000 years. He never knew. That was my way of balancing him. In his backstory, he had actually been dormant for about 2000 years before waking up for the campaign!

[@freelancerthe2561]

Do you also seek out 3 other warriors, and revive their memories, so the battle against spooky evil guy can continue?

[@EternalTriadthePaladin]

Doom guy lol

[@Vote4Drizzt]

You can do a twist on this and have a character who helps form a resistance each time "his" BBEG shows up, and using a long sleep of some sort to await the next battle. Not necessarily immortal but a fun way to do it

[@ccggenius]

So... He's Link?

[@pal1d1nl1ght]

@@ccggenius well, he isn't reincarnating, his skeleton is just getting back up, but yeah basically he is like link. It's also not the same evil every time.

[@shogunz828]

This is the litteral plot of Planscape : Torment..

[@JakeTalksGamesYT]

Was about to say. I'd replicate the system in game and have multiple role lists, like questgivers in their own pool, friends in their own pool, lovers in their own pool

[@no.notfromRDR]

I got it. -Make a bladesinger wizard. -Reflavor their sword for a polearm. -Take polearm mastery warcaster and sentinel feat. -Stick your polearm into the ground and start dancing with it. And we got a pole dancer character.

[@Dangerous_DM]

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

[@theusernameicoodfind]

Idk why but your comment made it click for me why there’s a level cap of 20, you get feats every 4 levels and the ones you picked means you wouldn’t possibly get ability scores up to 20 (at least from my current experience in bg3 where the level cap is 12) so those extra 8 levels are where the ability score improvements would come in.

[@theusernameicoodfind]

@@austinjeffries5741 neither of the ones he mentioned do

[@theusernameicoodfind]

@@austinjeffries5741 well still that’s a caster stat then, that’s one caster stat when you generally want your best stat at 20 not 18. And for other builds that prefer strength or dex this doesn’t work. And I don’t think every build wants to pick up tavern brawler.

[@theusernameicoodfind]

@@austinjeffries5741 are they though? Not being able to hit a target feels pretty bad and that’s what a + stat feat does

[@kupothegreat4570]

This reminds me of The Night Angel Trilogy. Any time the protagonist "died" someone else died for him to come back. Spoiler: one of them was the love of his life

[@drakekalluna8150]

Yeah, the whole "he didn't know" either makes it so much worse

[@thomasjenkins5727]

Yeah... I still haven't forgiven Brent Weeks for that. MC: Okay, but what does this cost? Mysterious stranger who oversees his reincarnation: Nothing, you're good to go. Mysterious stranger who oversees his reincarnation: I'm mad at you for ignoring the cost. MC: What cost. Mysterious stranger who oversees his reincarnation: What, you didn't know? How is this possible? And now your love interest is going to die. How tragic.

[@ERR0R5O3]

In one of the first campaigns I ran the whole party was immortal but whenever they all die an area of the maps dies instead. the characters fates where linked so that if one of them dies they will all soon follow. The whole campaign was based around this mystery

[@stefanosormani8245]

Uh wow sounds interesting! What was the reason behind that?

[@dustgraystone9448]

Oooh, that sounds fun!

[@ERR0R5O3]

@@stefanosormani8245 there where 2 reasons the first reason was because long story short in the campaign the characters where a key part of a game set by the 4 "gods" (the 3 players and me the dm where the 4 gods this was gonna be the final plot twist of the campaign) the second reason was because I sucked at balancing encounters and didn't want a tpk every second session

[@koboldsage9112]

"One life in this character's immortal experience". Literally explains how white wolf's world of darkness Changelings and Mummies work.

[@maydayman9285]

One of my PCs was a noble wizard who found Immortality (in age, she can still die if hit hard enough), but her mind essentially does a reset every 100-ish years. She's been in 2 campaigns so far. One as a Wild Magic Barbarian. The other as weird witch lady

[@Ducaso]

I had a character that was a bronze dragon “cursed” by a soul rending 9th level spell to be bound in a human form and continuously reincarnated as penance for a rambunctious and primal tear through the countryside as a young adult dragon with unscrupulous peers. I carried this character backstory from campaign to campaign, making a new character in the cycle each time. I’d keep my true nature a secret IF I remembered or was made aware of past memories (depending on the situation in the game or the DM). It kinda started as a a one off, but I kept with it and enjoy the redemption journey this backstory put me on.

[@normalchannel2185]

What if they respawn in a hospital as a baby. So you essentially have a brand new character, which stays true to the rp

[@philipmeade7789]

I think dnd is actually really well-positioned for a PC to play a boss baby for a few sessions

[@normalchannel2185]

@philipmeade7789 oh yo that would be sick. Imagine if they die, they just split off into another adventure which is related to their main adventure, but play as a boss baby

[@freelancerthe2561]

The mind of a 587 year old elf trapped in the body of a toddler halfling.

[@IzDatDog]

Isekai type lol

[@boredniko2406]

I mean, it's not as if some weird curse immortality could effect someone given the setting, but you could spin it as like they slowly become more corrupted by a patron or something with each death or they gain some kind of semi permanent negative trait.

[@Ser_Swenfeld]

My thoughts are it's just a great way to have a character you can reuse in other campaigns, so they still die but you can bring em back for the next game that starts in a tavern 😂

[@Hevach]

This is a great idea - they die and wake up in a tavern, but have no idea where they are and nobody can help them get back to the party. They might as well be dead for this campaign, but they're just around and looking for something where the next one starts.

[@heavenlyderpfowl1180]

It would be really funny if it worked like that story where the dwarf's portrait is in every tavern in the multiverse so you could have the player roll to see if they even end up in the same universe or even get the same character back

[@dustgraystone9448]

What's that from? Sounds really cool.

[@Minox_]

I once made a character like this. Dragonborn sorcerer. Some magic event wiped out his village. Wakes up in the same spot every time he dies but doesn't have any memory of what happened to his village or in any of his previous "cycles". He eventually found out in a certain campaign he had already died hundreds of times. Eventually sacrificed himself by blowing up the bbeg and himself. We also pass the character around sometimes. The only rules to playing him are that he's a dragonborn sorcerer and that if you die, the body disappears.

[@corruptedminds5679]

My mind immediately goes to Dimension 20's fairytale themed season "Neverafter" (spoilers ahead). In it, when a player died, they were brought back into a darker version of their story with changes that made thing harder and gave them different buff/debuffs.

[@vulkarma741]

Maybe the consequence could be they lose their memories or that... no deleveling a character would probably not be a good idea...

[@KeiyarlaDraga]

I was thinking of that, but have the memory loss gradual. All at once is too much for one death. The first few deaths and rebirths, not have the memory loss something insignificant, like where did I put my weapons, spellbook, anything really. After several deaths and rebirth, make the memory loss something significant, like why am I doing what I am doing, or have them forget that they're immortal, but not have them forget at all, that they had died but not how/why they are alive. That's what I was thinking. I had just noticed I basically would have gave said character Alzheimer's. This idea would need some working on though.

[@Grabthar191]

Random effect negative effect that occurs once per day. DM rolls every time they wake up and at an appointed hour for an hour they have some negative condition like blinded, confused, frightened or something. Or maybe they have to make a save at the first stressful situation per day, like combat, and if they fail they have the negative condition until the next short rest. You could even increase the DC every time they die or increase the number of times they have to roll per day.

[@poppers7317]

You mean like in Planescape Torment?

[@Grabthar191]

@@poppers7317 Dunno, I never had the opportunity to play that.

[@JDStone-jg8cg]

This sounds like the concept from a book series i read. Dude gets a supreme magical item and realizes he can't die while holding it. Finds out later that the reason he can't die is that people he is close to die in his place.

[@steel5315]

I think it'd be better if they just couldn't die of old age and maybe had some kind of poison and disease resilance. That way they're technically immortal as long as no one stabs them to death but like it's an adventure so someone is probably eventually gonna try to stab them to death(or more likely Fireball them to death)

[@T0NI_]

You would have to balance that somehow though as well, cause some of what you said is literally like capstone features for some classes (thinking Druid specifically for the near-immortality) and just general features for others (like monks being immune to poison) Like if you made a character like that I’d at the very least tell you that any starting feat you would have gotten is nulled

[@zenketski]

This would be a great backstory for a character that you just want to use for random One-Shots but you don't feel like coming up with a new character

[@thatrandomalt7883]

Each campaign is a different life of this character. One character, one life it dies, you roll for a new one

[@nobilisvaga5267]

Every time they die they wake up in the tavern only remembering leaving the tavern. Everyone in the world having completely forgotten about them.

[@ixelhaine]

Had a character with a similar thing but it still took a long time to be functional again. They never die, but it could be a few years before they manifest again without some considerable help.

[@albertofuzzi7200]

I played something really similar. It was a guy destined to embark into a great adventure to achieve an amazing feat, and at the same time cursed to fail and die at doing so. Therefore the character would be resurrected to try again, and fail again. Millennia went past, with him losing bits and bits about himself which each rebirth, turning him into a sarcastic and grim adventurer that really didn't give a shit about himself (or everyone else) that was really skilled and could "metagame" through the early levels of his "build" because he had to restart from level 1 each time and became really good at it. I played him multiple times, all in different campaigns.

[@asheronwindspear552]

Waking up with the same personality in a different body with different skills and abilities might be more interesting than, "I am Bruger, brother of Kruger here to join his party and scene his death!"

[@PanicBlade757]

I had a Grave Cleric that kept getting resurrected, which made him feel terrible since his patron was the Raven Queen who views death as a finality. I started playing him on his second life, and when he died again he became an NPC that we ran into later on. It turned out that his paranoid wife was so worried about him assisting adventurers with his healing magic that she made a deal with a hag to make her husband come back to life whenever he died in exchange for her next child. He had his memory erased every time he was resurrected, so he didn’t even remember the other PCs when they met him again.

[@IzDatDog]

I like thinking that a part of the character dies everytime gradually chipping away at their sanity. Over time revealing that their backstory is only the part of it which they can remember at this point and they've actually lost touch with who they were originally opening up an entirely new backstory they discover along the path of their adventure. Taking it a step beyond amnesia by adding planar shifts in their dreams as between their blinks as their consciousness is slowly being tugged away by a powerful being not on this plane who noticed their grasp slipping away. Adds alot of spice and variety to an OP background and allows other players to unravel the mystery as well subverting main character syndrome as the main pc may roll to clutch onto their memories while the rest of the party witnesses their descent into madness.

[@zhornlegacy7936]

For our current campaign; part of the backstory for the warlock involved a lot of uses of the Clone spell, their character having technically died and come back many time in the past. BUT there was also the addition of at the start of the adventure an event has already happened that disabled that mechanic from still being in effect. The character as they existed in play was no longer covered by backup clone bodies and was just as mortal as all other players. Sometimes cool backstory can exists just in backstory and needn't bleed over into OP in-game mechanics.

[@SanguinaryGuard]

Did this, but basically my character re-awakens at another point years/decades/centuries later. All tied to the service of his god. Basically "I'll return when the world needs me most." type.

[@rustycalloway1814]

This reminds me of a cool random table I saw once that every time the character dies it changes race, class, etc.

[@firelinksshrine1695]

You could easily twist it so that character is actually waking up way into the future in a tavern and they actually are just reborn every time

[@HelmLord5792]

I like the idea that they have to find you. Like give them a temp and a few sessions later, they find her.

[@braddalrymple8615]

The way you talk about one life in this characters body. I switched characters early in the rime of the frost maiden campaign, he carried sephiks dagger and when I was done with him my dm said its not problem at all, the dm let me choose to fail the saving throw.... 2 years later he's still a BBEG hunting our party. It's amazing

[@Birdthefeatheredone]

They have a curse, magic device, or some other contrivance. Whenever they would die the magic saves them by randomly shifting to another realm, world, plane, or dimension. Like a planeswalker spark thing that triggers on death.

[@IcorthwasTaken]

A few other approaches I could imagine: - The Character seemingly, at random, (or at Roll), is resurrectated in the Body of a NPC. The only problem, sometimes the NPC regains control. - You could make it so that the area where the PC revives, suddenly begins suffering a gradually escalating curse or decay. Each time the PC, rumors begin to spread of a prosperous town sudden becoming a ghost town, or suffering an unknown Illness. - Another is having the character revive into the body of the closet relative. This could gradually create a gap between ages, skills, etc.

[@Waterbaer97]

I've used this before with a consequence of significant memory loss to the character and turning them into an NPC later for the player. This made sure that there was still some comparative permanence for the player's death that the others had, gave good breathing room to add story hooks with NPC that recognize the character but that are not known to the player, and puts a fun arrow in the quiver for later hooks if that characters does die.

[@rougedogo152]

I had my immortal player be unable to heal this century, so at one point he was a head, one arm and a pair of prosthetic legs from taste's cauldron of everything. Lasted till he picked a fight 1v1 with a warlord at lvl 3 and got his head caved in. Legend has it he's still conscious under his boot even today

[@rohankishibe6433]

All of you are missing the best idea: The character gets reset back to level 1 with no items except for starting equipment, (maybe armor), and stats. You could even allow the character to change their class and reroll their stats when they start again. This mimics starting a new character from scratch, but you still have the same character's backstory. Then, you could potentially weave it into the character's lore as well. Maybe they're like a phoenix being reborn from the astral plane, or maybe they feel like every time they die they have started a new life and feel a tug to go in a different direction, much like in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Ultimately Being able to always come back probably comes from a feeling of emotional attachment to a character or to the work they put into leveling up. While you should have consequences such as loss of levels as a discussion from death and motive for your cleric actually healing you, there's no reason that you necessarily *have to* give up the character that you put so much creative effort and emotional attachment into.

[@jimmyshousevideos]

I played a Revenant once. The concession for being able to respawn after death is that I would die after reaching 0 hp, no death saves, and the Regeneration was limited to 1 hp per round and could only bring me to half my max. When I died, I would roll on the reincarnation table and come back as that race, which could affect my stats negatively.

[@jeffwren7815]

This... is the plot of the Nightbringer Trilogy by Brent Weeks

[@sl0thgames324]

You've got it almost correct, it was the night angel trilogy, you seem to have mashed that together with the lightbringer series that he also wrote

[@yungo1rst]

The monkeys paw crooks closed, and you are reincarnated with the d1000 table inside a tavern sized for your new form.

[@rando_webb8704]

That makes me think about the Dragon Rot from Sekiro. But instead of someone else dying in his stead, a member of the party becomes deathly ill, and the party has to go on a side quest to aquire the cure.

[@net_spider]

I would have this be a blanket rule. All player characters are "immortal," but there are consequences. Maybe they reincarnate everytime as a different person, maybe they lose a level, maybe they give up something important to them. Heck, we could go video gamey with it and say they lose all of their progress toward their next level or that when they die, they are stripped of all of their stuff and teleported to a safe space. There are so many things you can do besides death just isn't a consequence anymore.

[@Shovel________________]

i would do it as the character wakes up in a different tavern but with a new identity. the backstory on paper changes, but always with the stats, core personality traits, and the most important backstory details remaining the same, but everything else changed (including class). eventually, the other players draw some kind of connection to all these strangely similar characters and it leads to some big plot reveal. this could lead to some interesting worldbuilding where npcs regard legends of strangely familiar people or people from their backstory recognizing them as a different name and person but them not knowing them back

[@lucastetrault3568]

This is a literal aspect of a Brian Weeks series...

[@Fastdragonstar]

That is basically the backstory of Durzo Blint from the Night Angel trilogy. He is a human that is over 700 years old who just wants to die, but whenever he does so he is revived, a person that he has a strong connection with dies instead.

[@ChosenTripster01]

everytime she dies she keeps all memories and experiences but losses any abilities they gained since the last long rest

[@Luciffrit]

Wake up in a tavern with vague memories like it was all a drunken blur until that point and they are back at level one... or whatever is appropriate for the campaign. So they see the party and are compelled to chase them, and introduce themselves... then when they are there they forget why they know them. "Well while you're here, we're down a person... care to join?"

[@DamnDaimen]

I had the same idea, but instead of a random tavern, they wake up naked in the same field outside the same village with their memories gone. It's gotten to the point where the village has a man check the field everyday to see if he's shown up. The backstory is that in his original life he was a wizard with an incurable congenital disease. So he built a crystal to store his soul and consciousness. It makes clones that are supposed to have his memories downloaded in them. Kinda like skinjobs in battle star galactica. The research and materials were sabotaged preconstuction and my man wasn't a very good wizard. So instead, it makes clones with varied amount of intelligence and memories.

[@dayanson6920]

I have a character who's immortal. He's basically the TV camera for the gods. And each life is a new series/season. When he dies hes reborn and it's in a different place. I play him as when he dies dies he's gone. If he dies there's like a 1 to 2 day time to res him before his soul just passes on to it's new life. He remembers pieces of past life but has chosen to just go on after experiencing this like 30 times.

[@DoubtlessCar0]

I like how D20 did it with Gertrude in Dungeon and Drag Queens. She was immortal and couldn’t die, but she was being hunted by someone who wanted to use that to make her burn alive for eternity. It could also be as simple as losing your equipment…

[@tranquility1991]

I had a shadar-kai who was functionally immortal (sorta). Each time she died, her soul returned to the Raven Queen (this part is supported by lore). But because she hadn't completed her task, she would be reformed and sent back in to get the job done. The consequence was mostly self-imposed, but I essentially played each iteration like an increasingly fractured portion of the original character's personality. No memory of friends or enemies, only a hastily-scribbled note in a millennia-old ratty journal like "hey I'm you, here's the job, fucking get it done this time."

[@rubeniscool]

Every time that character dies, they're transported to the nearest tavern, and their items given a "factory reset" ie everything bar necessities are gone. Taken as payment maybe by some eldritch being.

[@thedrunkengreybeareddwarf8431]

I think a way to do is that they get put into a tavern in another universe or so far away that it just isnt feasible to make it back to the party so they need a new character Alternatively it could be a massive leap forward in time to the point pf where everything has concluded

[@jonathantunnell3993]

I had a tiefling that was aligned with some demon where whenever I would "die" I wouldn't die, but be teleported somewhere else on the current plane of existence, but in return, he would take something from me. As part of my backstory, I had already died once, so he took one of my eyes and gave me a fake cursed eye. It was powerful but it also hurt a lot when I used it. Unfortunately that campaign disbanded before I could die again.

[@Shadowangel09]

They reset to level 1 and wake up wearing whatever generic outfit they had when they gained immortality. Basically a reset but they keep their memeories

[@100and10noobs]

That second part is genius actually

[@kluang1]

You die. Wake up in a tavern. Naked. Roll a die. Even number you're in a new class. Odd number you're a new race.

[@eclairdawnlight8470]

Knew a dude that played a revenant. Every time their character died they lost a part of their memory.. a part of what made them them... & because their character wanted to live & didn't want to lose memories with the person they loved it was quite the incentive to not die unless it was protecting said loved one

[@davidcohen7992]

Brent Weeks made a book series about this exact idea called the Night Angel series. It's a really good read.

[@skar-oh5347]

they wake up in a tavern as a new PC who thinks they are the character who died

[@Grinner864]

Every time they die, they get amnesia and the level gets reset to one, but they keep the stats and equipment

[@abj6920]

I did make my first group immortal where they "bonded" to a tree that would resurrect them should they die. This was a lie, though, the eventual twist was that they were magical organic constructs *created* by the tree itself. It a road trip sort of campaign, so dying meant going back to square one and trying to get back to the rest of the party before things change too much

[@digitaljanus]

Nice! Really like the twist.

[@freddyaxebear7547]

One time a player in my campaigns I dm for did get a limited form of immortality. The rules were that when they died if they stayed dead for one hour they would come back to life, but each time this happened a curse encroached upon their soul. If they resurrected automatically three times the curse would destroy their soul, and their body would be taken over by an eldritch abomination and become an NPC. The NPC would also retain this immortality and was very likely to be hostile to the party. So yes the whole party was a bit scared of the party member who was a ticking time bomb of a boss fight, everyone loved it.

[@truesnakegod]

A few ways I would maybe consider adding drawbacks is that the character loses a few or so levels, the character loses random body parts each time, or the character starts to look more undead with each death. If you go with the undead drawback, then perhaps after a certain number of deaths, the character will go full undead and become an evil npc. From there, it could begin to hunt down people and creatures that it knew in its past lives. Of course, at that point, the character would become an evil npc that could potentially act like a recurring boss. Each time you kill the character, they could become stronger and gain abilities of different undead creatures alongside the abilities they had as a player character.

[@charlescannon2469]

Provided the character cares about other people dying in their place and the rest of players are cool with rolling up new characters. That sounds rather intriguing, have an immortal or few and the rest of the party are a rotating cast of hirlings.

[@ghoulgunner177]

Perhaps semi-permenant curses. Things you can work towards removing but cannot be dispelled with Remove Curse. Make a task thatll give the the ability to remove that specific curse whenever, but only that one effect. Each new curse effect is a new side quest.

[@waluigiisgod938]

I think just having the character become an npc after they die is a lot better than sacrificing another character, and then they can be in different campaigns, just normally in taverns

[@ShenMerrick]

In Pathfinder 1.0 there is a race for this. They literally just die, and are reborn shortly thereafter nearby. If memory serves they change classes or something...having only partial memory of the life before. Still technically the same person, just dispersed and reintegrated.

[@dmatthews9835]

They come back as a lvl1 character/npc that has to level up again. The stronger they get the more they remember of their former life and past party members. Could have it be that they eventually start looking for their former party members only to possibly find them a bit older or finding their remains at around the monster's layer that they died at. And it's just an endless cycle of finding a new party making friends and dieing and repeating the process over again.

[@aethertoast4320]

There is literally a book series I am reading with this premis, but with an assassin.

[@Luke-mf6tg]

I have a wizard with an artifact inside them. When they die the artifact teleports into the womb of a random mother in any universe and the wizard gets reborn as if cloned with the mother's dna. It usually takes them at least a decade to discover their innate powers and their memories in the artifact. Useful for replaying the character, not so much for cheating death.

[@DeisFortuna]

Yeah, benching them as an active party member is probably the best way to deal with this kind of immortality. Like, have the tavern be super far away, or in a different setting... And have the character just be so detached from everything due to the endless cycle of "dying" and waking up somewhere new (potentially including planeswalking) that they don't really care about rejoining the party from their previous life b/c they've never been able to find a previous party again. Opens up several possibilities, like bringing them back as an NPC later in the campagin (potentially after *another* offscreen "death") or letting the player play the exact same character again in a future campaign, under the understanding that this is their next life after the ones seen in the initial campaign.

[@orivalx]

Every time they die the amount of people who die in result doubles. Easy fix. Great plot hook.

[@danielwols]

A solution might be that a minor diety had taken mortal form but every time they die they have to wait for the party to perform a ritual to make them have a mortal form again

[@irithyllVT]

this reminds me of "immortality" in Sekiro, where each time you respawn, you infect the NPCs with Dragon Rot maybe instead of NPCs being infected, you could have it affect the PC or taint the land wherever they died

[@alexlevesconte7216]

Character wakes up in a tavern with amnesia still has to roll a new character lol

[@GOLD4DJ]

We had a guy had the cursed with immortality not youth and was 1001 years old he had 8 con and was not allowed to level up or were armor. and disadvantage on all dice rolling. He took a short rest to come back to life. We mostly just killed him put him in a sack when we needed to make a long journey (his idea) . It was fun

[@paxthehedgehog7760]

So this is how I did it with my old bard with immortality, she was an ex god from a world that died and sadly one of the only ways she could permanently die was to by being stab by anything dipped in the primordial ooze of her world, but each time she died and came back she slowly lost her mind bit by bit becoming more and more mentally unhinged. She wasn't able to died permanently until she feel in love with a Nasfrauto and became one herself other riding what was left of her divinity. Although her death did almost cause a tpk do to the fact that the Nasfrauto was pssied at the party for letting her die and leaving him as a single father of the five children they had together.

[@CrimsonKamina]

I feel like a few potential good ways to handle it would be 1. They loose memories (loose experience/levels go down, or they loose proficiency in a skill, training or language) 2. physical or mental trauma (random attribute going down by 1 or 2 points) 3. They can’t die but wounds don’t heal (reduced max HP) 4. All money and items they were carrying were lost. 5. Reckless behavior (disadvantage on all checks and saves)

[@crab264]

A way to make this mechanic work: Something that could be interesting is that this immortal person was cursed by a necromancer or warlock. And every time they die they posses a new body that looks similar regardless of race to the appearance they once had, but the person they now are is completely different. If they were a level 3 Ranger, now they’re a level 2 Bard or a level 1 Paladin and the memories they had of their party, friends, relationships, and who they are have become foggy an unclear, making them have to roll disadvantage for a while. This allows immortality, but still punishes death as they will lose the character they had and are forced to adapt to a new way of life in their campaign. Every time. The relationships they forge become damaged and inconsistent, are they truly the person they once knew? How have they returned? Who’s life did they take over? Are they a lich? It gives them the ability to come back, but it’s not pleasant for anyone as the implications of what they have done to come back are sinister at best. I think the best way to implement this is to roll a new character, but everything about them is random. They will look similar regardless of race and they can only match your level or be below it, but everything else is randomized and finer details are balanced by the DM: Your stats? completely random. Could have 2 Dex, could have 9 Dex. Class? Dice roll it. Could be Rogue, could be Cleric. Your inventory? Completely random, depending on how high you roll decides the quality and amount of items you have. DM decides what goes in after the rolls. Quality of gear? Same as the inventory rule. Your race? Up to a dice roll baby. You get the idea. I think it allows some fun ways to implement something like immortality and still punish players who’re just using it to keep their characters. And another cool thing to implement is that they could actually have been cursed to become a form of lich that when they die their soul simply searches for a new body, and a quest could be a search for their soul, and when they retrieve it the player becomes somewhat mortal again and gives them the power to morph into any body they possessed during the campaign as a form of soft disguise, but the appearance is no illusion, but they’re stuck with with class from this life. And instead of the immortality mechanic, they can once per long rest self revive as a bonus action upon successful death save.

[@anthonyrowlodge5357]

You can make it where every time they die during an encounter, not only go back to the tavern, but lose exp equal to double the exp that would have been gained in that encounter.

[@ArgzeroYT]

This kind of effect is something you'd expect to find as a punishment for exploring a higher level area too early. Like a curse of binding two peoples' lives together but immortality doesn't work with that. Transferring injury could be funny but only if the reverse effect also occurs.

[@alexanderbeardsley5465]

just start having them lose wisdom each time they die. dying is a traumatic experience and it doesnt matter how immortal you are, going through that repeatedly while knowing that you can never die and truly make an emotional attachment to mortals that live on this plane of existence while knowing that one day they will be gone and you will stay will cause some serious emotional damage to the character

[@KieraAAG]

Decrease level by one just to make each death painful

[@pavelterekhov102]

Agreed that pcs should not die for him, but favored npc could. He also could find himself in a really remote tavern...

[@LonelyStoner]

They come back as a different race and class that the dm gets to decide

[@KittMonsta]

Better idea: it works like a game save so every time the immortal dies they get resetted to a spot in the timeline but the spot is decided by the dice between the last and the first long rest. So the character wakes up anywhere on the journey, naked, with the knowledge from the point of death but the skills from the point in the timeline. That could lead to even worse situations the group doesn't have a clue where you are and if you plop up naked Infront of the throne you won't leave prison soon 😂

[@lilthreegame7991]

Someone either has or has not watched critical role's 2nd campaign which has a situation pretty similar to this. They went with the option of when they died the player was no longer in control because essentially its a whole new person with no memories

[@LouiSwagula]

One of my players is a hippy lore bard from a vaguely Hindu monastery who reincarnates and has past lives. Except when he’s reborn he comes back as a baby, so it’s basically the “comes back as an npc” idea except it has a timeframe to it for when he will be able to use this character again.

[@mudpie6927]

You could do it like the person that you killed has a chance to possess you and that there's always a chance that you could die permanently

[@benjamincrowe6215]

Back in a campaign that sadly never finished I made a vengeance Paladin who unbeknownst to him was a special kind of revenant brought back and given pseudo immortality whilst attempting to stop demonic ritual meant for someone else, instead thinking he either survived or was brought back by his god. Whilst he couldn't permanently die (or age for that matter), every time he received a mortal wound he would become more and more demonic and unhinged as time went on- slowly becoming the very thing he has sworn to destroy. The only way he could truly be at peace was if he killed the demon responsible for the resurrection and reclaim his soul before there was nothing left. Unfortunately we never even reached that story line because the group fell apart... cool.

[@jacobburns2145]

I have a warforged ranger in a long running game of mine who has sort of a similar mechanic. They have a livewood seed at their core, and when he dies the seed can be planted. Given a year of grow time he comes back but with none of his memories.

[@RealMiniLink]

I thought about this idea once and the way I would pitch it to my DM is that for all intents and purposes they would be dead but the characters consciousness would essentially hop to a different version of them in an alternate reality/timeline. I feel like this could have interesting ramifications since the world I'd be playing in might not line up exactly with what my character knew from their past life, maybe a character I think is a friend who will help the party out of a jam is actually a person this body wronged and now the party's in ANOTHER jam

[@wolfflamekindl9339]

Fully agree. I've made immortal characters before, but most of them just take forever to heal and self resurrect or he gets planeshifted before reviving. Either way, they can access information they've had from previous campaigns that character has played in, and make remarks on how theyve seen all this before, but death is still death.

[@firetobstertheultimate2732]

I think it would be cool to have a character with many lifes but each time they die they notice a grim reaper like characters following them around getting closer with each death

[@Grey_Shard]

I had a player who killed his characters off four times in one game session, but usually only once or twice. Causing everything to stop while he worked out/rolled a new character (that usually wasn't played differently from the last). I eventually gave him a cursed Phoenix Ring, making that character immortal. Except everything on him at that time was consumed by magical flames so all equipment was lost.

[@jeremybarnes2604]

Did a play of curse of strand that had all the players as killable and when they died they were brought back by a lich that hates strand and was using the characters to fuck with strand. Everything they died they came back but no equipment and they show up out of the mists confused and with a new scar or disfigurement they described, they could avoid this if they had enough money to pay the lich for their own clone.

[@chriswooten6186]

Had a Grave Cleric whose whole thing was he was cursed with immortality by his deity until his quest was complete. He just wanted to die for good. Every time he died he slowly and painfully was brought back where he died after 8 hours (long rest).

[@xen1313]

The cost of immortality is the loss of all gold and magic items on the character and they teleport to random Tavern to "sleep" it off.

[@Vexx263]

Idea: if the immortal dies, they turn undead, and the party needs to go on a quest to fix them. The side effect of the undead state is that you will have to make a Wis save once a session, (DM decides when, if at all that session) if they fail, they go beserk, see berserker axe. The Wis DC starts at a certain number, DM decides, and the number increases with each death until three deaths later, if they fail, it's perminate beserk mode.