Loren Pechtel's page

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

The ring of Lifebleed looks to be the result of failing the spell craft roll on a ring of regeneration by 5 or more. If that is the case, I don’t think that the combinations listed would be valid.

Fail the roll creating the ring of lifebleed then add the regeneration to it by passing it same way you add a magic effect to any existing item?

It could exist but why in the world would someone want to make such an item? Cheaper to start over.

I could see it the other way around, though--they have a ring of regeneration and decide to add a regeneration to it, intending to have a ring that will heal 2hp/round. Oops.

I agree on the ring being unacceptable because it interferes with a lot of medical stuff. Other than that, lifebleed + regeneration is a clear benefit for almost everyone.

Let's look at the previously mentioned commoner with d6 hp. I'll go even farther and give him only 1 hp. Said commoner is knocked out by any injury that causes even 1 hp of damage. Ring triggers, he's now somewhere between -1 and -4. Same thing, he's down. However, in at most 30 seconds he's as good as new. For an ordinary Con 10 person the ring is only dangerous if they're reduced to -6 by a hit--and being reduced to -6 gets you an express ride to the nearest trauma center. Most people will never encounter this in their lives--but being able to walk away from any lesser trauma would be of great advantage.

And note that the description says d4 <b>additional</b> damage, implying a strike that actually caused damage in the first place. Even in a fistfight you typically do not take even 1 hp of non-lethal from a hit--the ring won't trigger.

I have always figured destructive force glows and stationary force is visible only in that it's optical properties are not that of air. Since nothing can affect it that means there are no chemical bonds, no static electricity etc--it's the ultimate teflon, nothing will stick. It can't get dirty.

It would be interesting if pit spells were true extra-dimension spaces as in they extended into the fourth dimension.

Going to higher dimensions produces some very nasty consequences. IIRC there's no workable universe for anything but 3 spatial and one temporal dimension. My memory is that with four spatial dimensions there is no such thing as a stable orbit. Not only does your planet freeze or fry, but every atom in your body has electrons orbiting it...

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Dungeon Master Zack wrote:

Big enough to contain a library with every book ever written.

Nah, too much work gathering such a library. Make a magical book that can be turned into any book you name.

Or make it self updating. You'd probably want to tie it to a specific plane/world or finding things would be tricky "No, No this is from the universe of bad fanfiction I want the copy of this book from universe 301 realities over from there."

I wasn't thinking of updating per se, rather an item that you can command to turn into any book you can name or uniquely identify. ("Change to the next book in this series". "Change to the next book written by this author." etc)

It seems amazing that some wizard hasn't come up with such an item to make it easier to search for knowledge. And how could a lich not make one??

Wouldn't include copies of artifacts or magically protected things. Probably not even magical things like a blessed book.

Blessed book, sure--but it would be ordinary writing, you would find out what spells were in the book but couldn't learn them.

Big enough to contain a library with every book ever written.

Nah, too much work gathering such a library. Make a magical book that can be turned into any book you name.

Having multiple planar layers to a demiplane would be a huge game changer, I think. Some would definitely be on the smaller side while others would still be sizeable but probably never on the level of continental or making my own world.

And there would definitely be some with hidden, semi-obtuse entry conditions that I'd make purely as puzzles or to reward exploration or just be a kooky old wizard.

It seems to me that an extra layer on a demiplane is pretty much the same thing as a demiplane in the first place and I would be inclined to allow the same means of creation.

@ Derklord

From the Pathfinder Wiki entry for Undead

“The state of undeath is considered a severe moral crime as it violates both a person's body and soul.”

The goddess of undeath (Urgathoa) is neutral evil. The stat blocks for undead in the Bestiary have undead as evil. If we are talking about Pathfinder undead and the process of creating them, they are clearly evil.

Objection: The whole point of this thread was that the soul isn't always involved. You are making a claim contrary to evidence.

Unbegreiflich wrote:

Senko wrote:

This was something I got to thinking about...

I wonder where my Cayden Cailean retroactive post copyright royalty checks are...

My virus software pitched a fit on that link.

It's got a bad certificate but it's not setting off any other alarms. I wouldn't put any sensitive information into it but it doesn't look scary to visit.

In general, no. The end of an AP leaves one in a position to defeat one as a party of four. Go through another one and your power has not gone up all that much, the challenges at the end will almost certainly be too much.

Similarly, there should be many options for magical spellbooks. (Boccob's) Blessed Book is a step in the right direction, but there should be spellbooks with a permanent Shrink Item on it that can be stored in a belt pouch when not in use, and then made to grow to full size when they need to read it (or kept at that size if they also have Eyes of Minute Seeing!), and (Leomund's) Secret Books that store their pages in an extradimensional space and appear to be two flat book covers pressed together when 'closed,' and permanent image spellbooks made from shadow and glamer that the illusionist can manipulate and read, but everybody else finds to be incorporeal and translucent. Just a ton of options. This spellbook is resistant to energy. That spellbook floats with permanent unseen servant type effect (that counts as attended, and follows regardless of speed, even if the wizard teleports), so that the wizard can be reading from it while walking, while it just floats along in front of him.

I don't think there's that much demand for such items--by the time they can afford that kind of stuff they will probably have extradimensional storage and it becomes pretty much moot.

If *I* was a cleric or a wizard, and could make magical items, I'd surely create something like a magical holy symbol or a magical spellbook, way before pumping out +1 swords or cloaks of elvenkind for my fighter and rogue buddies. :)

Sure you can enchant your holy symbol--but now it's in the necklace slot unless you pay the 2x. It grants no advantage over an ordinary item in the necklace slot but it's keyed to one deity only--why would anyone do it?

There's an entire archetype of item that I'm disappointed never made it into 1e, and looks like it won't make it into 2e either; Cursed Items that are exceptional in some way, but at a high cost. Soul Edge is cool as hell, can you imagine if it just turned Siegfried incompetent instead turning him into Nightmare? Because that's kind of all we've got in terms of cursed gear.

I'd be frothing at the mouth for a wisdom draining book that boosts necromancy spell DCs, or sacred armor that makes you nigh immune to evil magic at the cost of always receiving a bleed DoT at the start of combat. Stuff like that.

I never liked the idea of cursed items--there's almost no reason anyone would make one and many of the curse powers are completely unreasonable for failures to make the intended items.

I favor things like what you're talking about--items that have adverse effects but are not cursed. One I pulled long, long ago: intelligent +3 sword (when they didn't have anything that good), I think it had something beyond that but the important thing was that it's only interest was defeating level-draining creatures. If the possessor faced one it would force him into melee--and against level-drainers it didn't work right--it was -3 instead of +3. It surprised me when they kept it.

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Other than the ten-ring sword, hand of glory, and meridian belt that allow a character to wear and/or use more than two rings at a time, there is a straightforward 3.x/PF1 rules-legal way to be able to wear multiple rings: simply calculate the market price as a non-slot item (x2 normal).

They become custom magic items. So they require the GM approbation.

True, but why would a GM reject such a straightforward extension of standard items?

Let's see.

always-on resist energy, only half the normal resistance?
Well, resist energy is a 2nd-level spell, so lvl 2 x CL 3 x 2,000gp = 12,000gp But... we're looking at half the resistance, (5 instead of 10), so this should be maybe 6,000gp

I think 6,000gp is high--cost usually goes at the square of the bonus. Thus I would be more inclined towards 3,000gp here.

Dragon78 wrote:

Yeah, save DCs for magic items suck. Too bad you can't use your own or the item's, whichever is higher.

Staves?

There should be a cost for uses wielder's DC.

I am not a fan of the "magic mart" as I don't think that most merchants will buy and keep in stock for years extremely expensive magic items in the hopes of selling them.
One of two showpieces? Fine. Hundreds of items worth the equivalent of millions of $ each one? Improbable.

At the same time, there will be a market for that stuff, so it will be traded.

My solution is trade houses in the largest cities, willing to take the item and pay the seller when they are auctioned off (sometimes with a good extra payout on the standard price), or, alternatively, paying way less upfront.
The players could search for the interested buyer too. Finding him generally grants extra cash from the sale. That works even for mundane items.

Yup, that's how I see it, also--there are too many items for anything beyond consumables to be stocked in most places. The regional hubs will have minor stuff, beyond that it's more like Sotheby's. Also, local merchants can get stuff delivered from the big places. Order and wait for delivery, not on the shelves.

HP loss can be incurred by blood loss - actual loss of body mass - and normal healing gives that back, so CLW does regenerate some things. Closing wounds, repairing destroyed muscle and bones, torn tendons, etc. are all forms of regeneration.

CLW can restore any part of the body that is damaged. It can't replace a part which is entirely missing, you need some of the part still there. Replacing missing parts requires much more powerful magic.

In "The Phoenix and the Mirror" by Avram Davidson (great book) Virgil needed the wax coming from the Caucasus mountains and made by bees with flowers born from Prometheus blood. Getting that while living in Naples during the 1st century BC was costly and required almost a year of waiting.

That kind of detail when making magic items can be fascinating, but hardly playable in most campaigns.

I've wondered if it would be possible to create a practical system for crafting using extremely specialized items in lieu of expensive components. The time cost would make it pretty much out of the question for PCs but I can see crafters hiring the PCs to get said components and I'm picturing an ancient wizard (perhaps drifting into inadvertent lichdom) working away in some lab on something that requires 1,000 tulip pedals from blooms that opened during an eclipse and have never touched anything from the animal kingdom.

Every PC you see of a "traditionally evil race" is non-evil, because you virtually never have evil PCs. And you can't interact much with evil NPCs beyond fighting them, especially not with ones not being able to blend in, so all the named NPCs you see are non-evil, too.

Just because an NPC is evil doesn't mean you can't have a peaceful interaction with them. I've even used an evil questgiver once--evil doesn't inherently align with other evil. He was powerful enough they wouldn't just turn on him and they didn't even know what evils he did--and he was pointing the PCs at legitimate targets. (While he didn't care about the people per se he did care about his way of life and rampaging evil was a threat to that.)

Matthew Downie wrote:

Related: Does 'Delay Poison' make you temporarily immune to the effects of alcohol?

RAW, no, because alcohol, for Pathfinder, is a drug and not a poison.

In actual play, it depends on your GM's opinion on how drugs and poisons work in the game. For me most if not all drugs are poisons, so "Delay Poison" would make someone temporarily immune to the effects of alcohol.

Yeah, I would class all recreational drugs as poisons, just not normally consumed in lethal amounts. I would say anything that blocks poison would block all recreational drugs, also, as well as any non-recreational things (if you're in a more modern world to have such things) which have detrimental effects (say, anesthesia) would likewise be blocked.

I like the idea above of it pinging if a lethal quantity is present and a check to detect lesser quantities.

Sense of direction??

I never trust my sense of direction in the wilderness in the first place. I look at the sun. I look at the horizon and compare it with my memory of what's where.

What's going on here is that people are using what it would cost to hire a caster for a purpose as an estimate of what people can make doing it--in practice there are many spells that generally would have no customers at standard casting rates.

Kevida wrote:

ErichAD wrote:

Fastidiousness's recurring cleanliness is the best, shame it's self only. I could see a character making large statues as command word magic items of fastidiousness to improve local health.

That's an interesting. Perhaps an entrepreneurial PC or NPC could create various magic items to create a business like a bath house or laundromat that that has the implements of cleanliness cast that spell.

As for making a business...

1. be a class that can spam Prestidigitation all day; check w/your GM to see if multiple castings will allow you to clean an entire person, a Large sized creature like a horse, etc.

2. if you've got GM's buy-in... get a stool

3. Park yourself on a stool near an entrance to the settlement. As travelers enter, covered in road dust, dirt smatters and so on, offer to clean them for 5 GP

Spellcasting services in the Core book state that a PC can hire an NPC to cast a L1 spell for 10 GP. By that logic, an NPC can be hired to cast a 0-Level spell for 5 GP. Normally under the Downtime rules, a PC earns a daily wage by making a Skill check and dividing the result by 10 for the number of GP you earn. If a PC uses Craft +5 and takes 10, they earn 1.5 GP in a day.

Well, if just ONE person hires you to cast Prestidigitation from your stool, 5 GP in one day is the equivalent of a 50 on the skill check

I think you would make more if you charged considerably less.

It's obvious--anything that does poison damage. But is it obvious? Poison is a matter of dose.

For hazmat labeling anything with an oral LD50 lower than 300mg/kg is considered toxic aka poison. (50 mg/kg for highly toxic, 5 mg/kg for extremely toxic.)

Note that this includes many substances not intended to cause harm. I can think of multiple things I have around that would be considered toxic--despite being meant for human consumption! I'm not going to take the time to look up all the data but I'm pretty sure a couple would class as highly toxic.

Does detect poison ping on things like that--stuff that small exposures could easily kill but which aren't meant for killing? And what about the borderline cases--say, heroin?

(Or, for the ultimate case--the drug Wayfarin <b>is</b> rat poison.)

So, as Flame Strike is Fire damage, one of the effects of Flame Strike would be lighting flammable objects on fire right? Only, you seem to be suggesting that Flame Strike wouldn't light flammable objects on fire. I'm seriously confused; are you advocating for "collateral damage" outside the realm of the normal rules or not DR?

By RAW, whether they're oily rags or kindling or wooden logs or an alcohol-soaked wooden bar, etc, a Flame Strike spell deals DAMAGE, nothing else, to the environment and objects in it. It is an instantaneous amount of Fire damage and you have to factor in hardness and use the rules around energy damage potentially dealing half damage and such.

We don't think Flame Strike would set things on fire because the damage would put out any fire it managed to start.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

One thing to remember is that the fire spells tend to do way more damage than your average little campfire or even bonfire, so things that do not normally catch on fire because you stick them in a small fire for a few seconds might very well catch on fire if exposed to a Fireball.

True. Fireball description says that it can start fires. The discussion was mostly about other spells without that notation (like Flame Strike) or other secondary effects of other spells that aren't in the spell description.

In an old AD&D manual, Wilderness Survival, if I recall correctly, Flame Strike was an example of how NOT to start a fire, as casting it on an unlit campfire will reduce the wood to unlit splinters thrown around the area instead of starting a nice fire.

Yeah, Flame Strike would be about the worst Fire spell in the book for fire-starting because of the other damage it does. Your target ends up destroyed, not on fire.

Safety Cat wrote:

Gasoline is both easy to ignite and explosive. Don’t play with gasoline, kids.

Gasoline vapor is easy to ignite. And it can detonate if it is in an enclosed space.

Throw a lit match in a can of gasoline (from a safe distance) on a cold day; there is a good chance it will be snuffed out.

Not something on which I would bet my life and limbs to be honest, but what catch fire easily are the vapors.

Agreed, although I would consider gasoline to be something that an instantaneous spell can light it.

If the flammable items on a character can catch on fire, the flammable items in the room can catch on fire.
Spells with an instantaneous duration normally only inflict energy damage and don't start fires but there are published exceptions to that too. There are at least a couple of adventures published by Paizo where using a fire or lightning spell in a room would cause a dust explosion and a raging inferno fire.

My rule of thumb is if a match can quickly light it then any fire damage can also. Otherwise, only spells noted for lighting fires matter. A quick sheet of flame will not light solid wooden objects! Most solids are basically incapable of combustion--what actually is happening is that the heat of the fire heats the surface to the point that some material is vaporized and that vapor is what's actually burning. Even once you supply sufficient heat you have the problem of the environment cooling it--see how far you get with a one-log campfire. Typical "combustible" materials will burn no better than one log on your campfire.

Ok, I'm fine with all of that b/c that's RAW. What I'm disagreeing with is the OP's implication of adding EXTRA, collateral damage not called out by the spell. PC breathes fire with this Dragon's Breath spell, they're not expecting the oil-soaked rags in the corner to catch fire so that the building the PCs are fighting in has the chance of becoming a raging inferno.

While the oil-soaked rags will catch fire it causes no extra damage in the round where the spell goes off. Next round you could have a fire in the corner but that's not going to inflict a lot of damage even if you're in the corner, it's not going to inflict any if you're not in that corner. Non-magical fire simply doesn't inflict that much damage in D&D terms.

In general, this seems more of an issue with differing expectations by the GM and the players. A GM that puts some effort into presenting the appearance of a "living, breathing" campaign world will definitely take "collateral damage" or secondary effects/NPC reactions into account. A group of players more used to "kick in the door"/combat-centric activities may get "pissed off" when using "big gun" AoEs in a crowded inn (appropriately) results in damage to bystanders/property; as a real-world analogy, there are very good reasons why bouncers/security guards don't use flamethrowers and grenades to deal with problems.

I think part of the problem is video games almost never consider collateral damage. Being at ground zero of friendly spells isn't an issue.

Enviromental effects such as raising water level (initially nothing, then difficult terrain, then you are actually in water), fighting in a heavily webbed up area (where the quite intelligent spidery adversaries have deposited "hostage cocoons" to stop the party from just burning it down) or in an area with several reverse gravity fields are fun, if used occassionally.

Rolling saves for every piece of equipment just seems like a lot of bookkeeping.

Yeah, I only expect unattended objects to be damaged. Checking equipment is simply prohibitive.

I would figure anything that does AOE damage also damages objects in that AOE to the extent that the destructive method of the spell harms objects of that type. It's no longer RAW but it's something I think they got wrong in removing.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

{some statements}

it is a pun...

I appreciate the technical response even though it seems off.

If you had left off the Geiger counter bit I would have left it as a pun.

the Paladin should give her a nice diamond and check her for "spirits" using a geiger counter. Then he'll be carbon dating an ancient dragon which also answers the thread title.

1) A Geiger counter won't give you any information because you need to know how much total carbon to figure out how much of it is C-14.

2) The dragon is walking around--the date is going to come back as current. Under normal conditions you don't do a carbon date on something that's alive--once in a while you see scientists dating living objects when they are actually trying to measure their environment. Date something you found in a cave and what you're really measuring is how often the air exchanges between that location and the outside world.

It is not so much that modern equipment is not designed to last as it is that we treat our equipment like crap. People in those days took care of their equipment including cleaning and maintaining it. Most modern equipment no one bother to do that. A lot of time it is because the material often does not require as much care, but more often than not we treat completely ignore any maintenance.

While this is an issue there's also the issue of durability is a cost. Look at ultralight backpacking gear--one of the things you give up is some durability. The modern gear is a lot better than the old stuff--but often not as tough.

Also, compare backpacking gear vs apparently similar camping gear. The backpacker gear is a lot more expensive for the same capabilities--becuase it's a lot lighter.

I would say any intelligent item that has a purpose which is accomplished goes into torpor until it's purpose is no longer accomplished--which probably means forever.

He gets his first boon again--which does nothing because he already has it.

Observation: Hanging stuff off your pack is generally a form of bad packing and if so (and I would consider many of your examples are) it makes the pack noticeably harder to carry.

I have some light items dangling off my pack that are not an issue, but one day I hung a box of about 6 pounds off my pack. My slinging turned out to be less than ideal and the box rode lower on my pack than intended--and I would say that it was something like twice as hard to carry as it's weight would suggest.

Reskinning something almost never matters. Items, monsters, whatever.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

However, I do agree with the drop-it idea. If you have load problems put the heavy but non-critical items in a separate container tied on with a quick release knot. Even if you lose your bedroll, ratios and the like it's not going to be a catastrophe.

This is why we don't use encumbrance, it really only matters in combat, and we assume you can drop your pack as a free action when combat starts. Combined with whatever way you want to carry heavy gear, bags of holding, etc. it really makes the game more of a chore to track it all than it's worth .

If you have to run away you lose whatever you dropped.

What gear do you consider essential? A rogue's kit contains a backpack, a bedroll, a belt pouch, caltrops, chalk (10), a flint and steel, a grappling hook, an iron pot, a mess kit, a mirror, pitons (10), rope, soap, thieves’ tools, torches (10), trail rations (5 days), and a waterskin. That's 37 lbs worth of gear and you'll need to refill your waterskin at least once a day or risk dehydration. It also costs 50 GP.

How often do 1st level PCs go on 5 day adventures? I've seen plenty of 1st level adventures where none of the housekeeping gear was needed. And you don't need every PC in the party to have all of the gear, either. What rogue will be out of touch from the party long enough to use 10 torches?

One big reason I would never make people track cheap ammunition: "Don’t bother to keep track of material components with negligible cost. Assume you have all you need as long as you have your spell component pouch." CRB pg. 213

If casters don't have to track the contents of and refill their supply poach, and it always weights the same, why should martials be worse off? It's not as if a SCP was a magical item. I'm not adverse to tracking ammunition spendage during a fight (at least for characters carrying a low amount of ammunition), but I'd handwave the refilling.
Not counting costly ammunition, which is alike to casters having to track costly material components.

Exactly how I see it. You need to account for carrying them but under normal conditions you don't need to account for their use.

Remove the bedroll, replace it with a winter blanket. Remove the iron pot. Carry only 3 pitons. Get a silk rope instead. Carry only 3 torches. I’d probably cut the grappling hook too. I’m too lazy to do the math, but if you are still overloaded, you can remove the caltrops, and a couple days rations, and carry as few as one torch.
If doing a long trek where you need rations, you’d carry the extra rations/water in a sack, so you could drop it if needed.

If you need pitons 3 probably isn't enough.

However, I do agree with the drop-it idea. If you have load problems put the heavy but non-critical items in a separate container tied on with a quick release knot. Even if you lose your bedroll, ratios and the like it's not going to be a catastrophe.

What's the problem? "up to" certainly allows you to use less than the max!

I'm really wracking my brain trying to remember when running out of ammo actually happened in any of my games when I was tracking this stuff. I can remember a couple notable 2e D&D games, but since 3rd ed and later PF1 I don't think its ever happened.

I've never had anybody run out, either--because I paid attention. The point is not to track every copper, but avoid people carrying far more than they actually can. Prepare properly, it's a non-issue.

I take an in-between approach here:

I check encumbrance, I expect to see reasonable (for what they are doing) levels of consumables but so long as they have them I don't track them unless they are cut off from civilization for an extended period. Low level parties typically don't go very long without resupply.

Returning to Horn of Pursuit, it is a thematic spell more than an adventurer spell.

The manuals are full of spells that are for adventurers killing monsters and thin of spells that will be developed in a society full of magic users. Horn of Pursuit is one of the rare exceptions.

Plant growth is a 3rd level spell and a cleric gets it only if he has the right domain, while a wizard or witch never gets it.
It seems strange that no one has developed a low level "fertilize" or "turn waste to fertilizer" spell.
There are plenty of these kinds of holes in the spell lists if you want to play at world building.

Yeah, there are a lot of spells that your average non-adventuring caster would want that aren't in the books anywhere because they have little use for an adventurer. However, I think some of them should have been given a bit of fleshing out--it makes no sense that the spellbook of a lich contains basically nothing of use in his quest for knowledge!

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Mightypion wrote:

12000 meter would actually be hard.

Yeah, that's impossible without oxygen.

You would need pressurized Oxygen specifically, or not be a human, the latter being more likely to be a thing in pathfinder :).

Did you know that there is an Aasimar random table ability that give immunity to height sickness?

3K meters is notably thinner, 4K meters You start thinking that some Oxygen is a great idea, havent been higher, and dont have much intention for that.

I definitely can't exert myself as much at 3k but otherwise I don't notice it at all. I've never been to 4k without acclimatization, but the one time I've been that high I only noticed it when exerting myself. Walking across flat terrain with light daypacks at about 4,500m we didn't even notice it--but we sure noticed when it became not quite flat!

As for Aasimar, they can be immune to altitude sickness but that's not the same thing as being able to function in an area without adequate oxygen. Altitude sickness happens when your body doesn't cope well with being near it's limits, I would still rule an Aasimar dies if taken to 12km. You have 22kPa of air pressure, of which 6kPa will be water vapor from your lungs. That leaves 16kPa of air, giving 3.3kPa of oxygen and a huge amount of cooling. Time of useful consciousness is 15-20 seconds.

12000 meter would actually be hard.

Yeah, that's impossible without oxygen.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

How are you breathing at an altitude of 11,000 feet?

Breathing a little harder than normal but unless you're very sensitive this isn't a problem. A local peak just squeaks in over that, I've been up there several times. I've been above 12k without acclimatization once, and just under it two more times. With three days of acclimatization I've been to 18k--this is too fast and not advised, most of our group had to turn back. I'm not a mountaineer, just a hiker who likes mountains and other than that one trip to 18k (supposed to be 19k but we got stopped by conditions) every such venture into high altitude started from a normal US suburban location.

Ha! My username is the highest mountain in Ireland.

Just under 3,500 feet

I'm just over 2,500 feet just sitting in my computer room. We have trails around here with more than 3,500' of climb to them. When the trail is steep I really notice the altitude, but it simply slows me down, it doesn't stop me.

How are you breathing at an altitude of 11,000 feet?

Breathing a little harder than normal but unless you're very sensitive this isn't a problem. A local peak just squeaks in over that, I've been up there several times. I've been above 12k without acclimatization once, and just under it two more times. With three days of acclimatization I've been to 18k--this is too fast and not advised, most of our group had to turn back. I'm not a mountaineer, just a hiker who likes mountains and other than that one trip to 18k (supposed to be 19k but we got stopped by conditions) every such venture into high altitude started from a normal US suburban location.

Immortality by itself will not make you wealthy. Simply working hard and saving what you can is not a way to grow wealthy. Unless you are making substantially more then you spend on your lifestyle you can never save enough to become wealthy. Inflation will reduce the value of any money you are saving faster than it accumulates. The real purpose of saving money is so that an unexpected event does not cause you to lose even more. Unless your investments are protected from inflation the relative value of your investment will actually go down. In 1901 Andrew Carnegie sold his company for 480 million dollars in 1901, Today that would be work 13.3 billion dollars. So, in the 121 years the value of the company grew by 2770.83%. 2.1% is considered a high interest rate for long term bond. After 121 years that will give you a growth of 1288.74%. Just to keep the relative value of the investment you are going to need at least a 3% return.

Disagree--invest in a S&P 500 index fund and you can cover inflation, taxes and a little bit left over. Invest enough and you can live on it forever.