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Just a general thread since its a problem my players are currently dealing with.
The situation:
* The enemy is a mage.
* She personally is incapable of casting the spell (too low level), but thanks to being a minion, a higher up provides her with sustained clones that are kept in a variety of safe locales, ready for decanting.
* The party is concerned if they incarcerate her, she'll escape or be broken out (or alternately take her own life somehow so she'll blip off to one of her clones and her benefactor's waiting restorations.)
* The party (14th level) also exists in a political/moral atmosphere where things like trap the soul are illegal and unavailable.
* The party will have access to a means to prevent all raise dead/resurrection/become undead shennigans, but it happens at the next level for the cleric's prestige class and requires it be used on a dead body. Next level is a bit off.
* Although captured, she still has an unknown amount of spells memorized.
* The party does not know if she has still or silent spell as feats (she's never shown them before).
* They currently have the mage trussed up, fingers individually tied, gagged, with no gear.
* They have not located her spell-book or how she keeps regaining access to it. It was not on her.
Since I've created this situation for the players, I thought it'd be nice of me if I started a forum topic to see people's thoughts on the issue as well.
Also, it'll give me more information should they ask a more experienced adventurer what to do.
1: Keep killing her. Eventually, the BBEG is gonna get tired of her screwing up.
2: Incarcerate her. The worst that could happen is it doesn't work.
3: Smack the GM upside the head for coming up with this.
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Flesh to Stone
Baleful Polymorph
Just keep her in suspended animation. A Sepia Snake Sigil should do the trick.
Use commune to ask where her spellbook and remaining clones are.
Use legend lore.
Use other divinations.
Surround her current body in a thin layer of lead. That won't actually do anything useful but should block enemy divinations.
Hire a witch to put her in a perpetual slumber, I forget the name of the hex. Or another spellcaster who can cast the spell version of the same. Or to cast imprisonment.
Meanwhile, if evil or merely very annoyed, chop body parts off her to stop her spellcasting. See 'The Lies of Locke Lamora' novel for details and see the 3rd book of that series for some possible consequences for the PCs...
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Anti-Magic Field. Cast it, Coup De Grace. Recurring villain no more.
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So, to summarize:
Move woman into a lead lined room. Cast Flesh to Stone on her. Move statue into smaller lead lined vault. Kick the vault into another plane without leaving the room. Destroy the room.
Or another fun thing is to shrink the statue and carry it around with you.
Or combine all of this! Baleful polymorph to a cute rabbit. Shrink creature. Flesh to Stone. Shrink item. Put marble sized bunny figurine in your pocket.
Using divination spells to find out where the clones are and destroy them.
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The stone to flesh or polymorph options sound like their best (they have both available).
I doubt the paladin would be alright with anyone carting her around all the time, but it might serve them as a way to keep her contained until they get to the point they can lock her down.
I am curious, which divination spells in particular would be useful for finding clones? They aren't technically the person yet and can't be scryed on, and they aren't really a location. They are an object, but choosing what to look for with it is tricky, and they might be out of range.
The stone to flesh or polymorph options sound like their best (they have both available).
I doubt the paladin would be alright with anyone carting her around all the time, but it might serve them as a way to keep her contained until they get to the point they can lock her down.
I am curious, which divination spells in particular would be useful for finding clones? They aren't technically the person yet and can't be scryed on, and they aren't really a location. They are an object, but choosing what to look for with it is tricky, and they might be out of range.
If she's smart, the clones are warded against scrying or, even better, just buried beneath enough stone and metal to not care. No, the only real solution is to flesh to stone her and lock the statue up - or hope she's less competent than she looks.
It could be worse: she could be using Astral Projection. None of the proposed solutions would work then.
MAGIC!!!
There are lots of ways to make a creature effectively dead without actually killing it.
Flesh to stone, baleful polymorph, trap the soul, or just an old fashioned jail cell.
This isn't really any different than dealing with a foe who can have true resurrection cast.
Edit: Oh, and read the final line of the clone spell. Clones aren't a contingent raise dead. The spell only brings you back if the completion of the spell happens after death. If the spell finishes before death, it just produces a body double, handy for faking your death or similar shenanigans. Which means divinations in going after the higher-level caster would be more effective than divinations to track the supply to clones.
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It could be worse: she could be using Astral Projection. None of the proposed solutions would work then.
Even I'm not that evil of a DM. Especially since she couldn't cast it, only her boss.
And having a 14th level wizard and her boss show up, probably with a bunch of fiends, on a repeat basis where you get no gear would make my players lynch me. And be justified in doing so. The party does have a githyanki silver sword around somewhere, although that'd just be like double-irritating.
"She's astrally projecting! We killed her, and she reverted to a clone?!"
I'm kind of fond of the idea of charm monster followed by, "Would you please take us to your Secret Clone Laboratory?"
Because I've always wanted to say that line.
Not a horrible idea, but...wizard. And it'd probably still be affected by teleporting the group somewhere potentially dodgy.
Has he ever considered becoming a duck?
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Edit: Oh, and read the final line of the clone spell. Clones aren't a contingent raise dead. The spell only brings you back if the completion of the spell happens after death. If the spell finishes before death, it just produces a body double, handy for faking your death or similar shenanigans. Which means divinations in going after the higher-level caster would be more effective than divinations to track the supply to clones.
Temporal Stasis
Artanthos, I'm not sure what you're saying.
Temporal stasis will kill something without actually killing it. There are good number of those at high level because foes with access to resurrection magic start becoming common.
But the part of my post that you quote implies that it's a solution to cloning while the subject is still alive. It will keep the body from rotting, but so will gentle repose. Neither spell makes the clone a receptacle that will simply wake up when the subject dies.
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Also, the 'inert mass of flesh' thing was to avoid the drawback of clone back in 1e and 2e. Namely, it'd wake up while you were still alive, and your clone'd go insanely homicidal on you.
Manshoon from Forgotten Realms was a major baddie who made ridiculous use of contigency and clone spells in 2e, and it backfired spectacularly when magical shennigans resulted in all of his clones decanting simultaneously and filling the world with entities who all thought they were the 'real Manshoon,' and who all had access to his various 'start up caches.'
As a side note to this. If you can find a wizard's clone bay, you can probably get some good loot and usually a high level spellbook out of it.
I read the 'but the resulting body is merely a soulless bit of inert flesh which rots if not preserved' as 'the body finishes growing, and starts rotting if not attended to,' not 'congrats, you should commit suicide precisely on clone completion or you just paid 1,500gp for a corpse.' It is an eighth level spell after all.
The wizard drawback on the spell, aside from it giving the usual 'you died, enjoy negative levels' thing is that it emphasizes the wizard's 'problem,' a need for near paranoid preparation. You don't want to dedicate too much cash to your clone when you could use it yourself, but waking up naked in the middle of nowhere just to die again afterwards isn't a great idea.
Edit: I did think of a good way to deal with a cloner myself thanks to that though! Negative Levels! If you can put enough negative levels on someone, his clone wakes up dead (since it gets the ones living you gets + the 2 from being brought back).. But does it work with temporary negative levels like from enervate?
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Artanthos, I'm not sure what you're saying.
Temporal stasis will kill something without actually killing it. There are good number of those at high level because foes with access to resurrection magic start becoming common.
But the part of my post that you quote implies that it's a solution to cloning while the subject is still alive. It will keep the body from rotting, but so will gentle repose. Neither spell makes the clone a receptacle that will simply wake up when the subject dies.
Temporal Stasis will keep the clone spell from completing, allowing indefinite storage of a nearly finished clone.
The boss dismisses the Temporal Stasis if anything happens to his minion, and she's reborn a few hours later.
Feeblemind! Permanent int and cha of 1. Then lock her up. She'll even have a -4 to the save, and without those cloaks of resistance, wizards don't tend to have the will that clerics do. Wisdom is a typical dumpstat even if base will is high.
Target creature's Intelligence and Charisma scores each drop to 1. The affected creature is unable to use Intelligence- or Charisma-based skills, cast spells, understand language, or communicate coherently. Still, it knows who its friends are and can follow them and even protect them. The subject remains in this state until a heal, limited wish, miracle, or wish spell is used to cancel the effect of the feeblemind. A creature that can cast arcane spells, such as a sorcerer or a wizard, takes a –4 penalty on its saving throw.
School enchantment (compulsion) [mind-affecting]; Level sorcerer/wizard 5
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (a handful of clay, crystal, or glass spheres)
Range medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target one creature
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw Will negates; see text; Spell Resistance yes
If the situation becomes too frustrating to your players, give them the chance to get the drop on the clone resurrecting mage.
Give hints or a way to find out where her next clone is contained. In other words, a means to head her off at the pass. Perhaps numerous defeats would allow her to rethink her career choices and try fleeing the whole situation?
If you want to foreshadow her boss to the group, a simulacrum spell is perfect. It allows a powerful mage to send a less powerful (and more CR reasonable) copy of the head mage to conflict with the PC group directly, without suddenly losing the BBEG. The mage is likely to scry or somehow monitor the simulacrum and find out how the PC uses their tactics beforehand.
If I was a PC, I would just mind control the suicidal-clone mage to break the cycle. If the situation has been repeated two times or more, I would invest in any way to overcome a will save as much as possible.
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Well they have the clone in hand at the moment. They mostly want to deal with her without having her pop back up again, and they doubt their abilities to keep a resourceful immortal mage from breaking her out/recovering her so they don't want to risk imprisonment.
She admittedly probably would rethink her career, but she's a bit of a sick puppy, and a masochist, and her clone-immortality is predicated on her service to the very not nice person who gives her orders that put her in conflict with the party. She actually enjoys the dying part of the equation so long as someone's waiting to pick her up with restorations.
Every time she's done the clone thing so far, she gets more effective against the party as well so there's that little carrot too. The mage has noticed her using his tricks on his comrades and really, really, wants to put an end to her.
The party mage does have dominate available.
I'd give details on what precisely she does with her spellbook and her clone's situation, but given that I made this thread hoping my players could read it and get ideas (and be less inclined to string me up from trees) I'd rather not give too much away. :)
Oh, and read the final line of the clone spell. Clones aren't a contingent raise dead. The spell only brings you back if the completion of the spell happens after death. If the spell finishes before death, it just produces a body double, handy for faking your death or similar shenanigans. Which means divinations in going after the higher-level caster would be more effective than divinations to track the supply to clones.
Seeing as you can't cast spells after you're dead, that clearly isn't the intent of the spell.
'congrats, you should commit suicide precisely on clone completion or you just paid 1,500gp for a corpse.' It is an eighth level spell after all.
Seeing as you can't cast spells after you're dead, that clearly isn't the intent of the spell.
'Inert' is a strong word, and the spell makes no mention of what happens if you die after the clone is complete.
Also, you can't cast raise dead when you're dead either. That doesn't violate intent of the spell. You can cast it for an ally.
The 2d4 months it takes to grow a clone is a feature, not a drawback. You cast clone, and if you die in the next 2d4 months, you get to come back to life (though some patience might be required). If you don't die, you start a new clone. You can cast clone TEN times before it becomes more expensive than resurrection. That keeps you in the backup body business for four years, or so (average of 50 months). If you need to come back more often (which it sounds like the current villain is doing), then you need multiple clones growing at the same time, which can take some juggling since the maturation time is variable, and gets expensive quickly.
This spell makes an inert duplicate of a creature. If the original individual has been slain, its soul immediately transfers to the clone, creating a replacement (provided that the soul is free and willing to return). The original's physical remains, should they still exist, become inert and cannot thereafter be restored to life. If the original creature has reached the end of its natural life span (that is, it has died of natural causes), any cloning attempt fails.
To create the duplicate, you must have a piece of flesh (not hair, nails, scales, or the like) with a volume of at least 1 cubic inch that was taken from the original creature's living body. The piece of flesh need not be fresh, but it must be kept from rotting. Once the spell is cast, the duplicate must be grown in a laboratory for 2d4 months.
When the clone is completed, the original's soul enters it immediately, if that creature is already dead. The clone is physically identical to the original and possesses the same personality and memories as the original. In other respects, treat the clone as if it were the original character raised from the dead, including its gaining of two permanent negative levels, just as if it had been hit by an energy-draining creature. If the subject is 1st level, it takes 2 points of Constitution drain instead (if this would reduce its Con to 0 or less, it can't be cloned). If the original creature gained permanent negative levels since the flesh sample was taken, the clone gains these negative levels as well.
The spell duplicates only the original's body and mind, not its equipment. A duplicate can be grown while the original still lives, or when the original soul is unavailable, but the resulting body is merely a soulless bit of inert flesh which rots if not preserved.
Emphasis mine. If a clone could be activated after maturation, by the subject's death, the first bolded section should read 'is' slain, rather than 'has been', or the second would contain instructions for what happens the other way around, or the third would provide guidelines for how long a clone is viable without preservative magic.
To clarify, I had forgotten the 2d4 month 'waiting period' when I commented about the line in the spell, but the point might still stand. Going after the clone bays doesn't stop the higher-level patron from making more clones. Their adversary could still come back in 2-8 months (more likely closer to two, since the patron is clearly willing to cast clone more than once.)
If they're trying to remove cloning as an option, rather than just somehow trapping the target's soul, then they need to get rid of the source of the clones. Eight months is a long time to wait, but getting rid of the patron and waiting eight months will ensure no more waiting clone bodies.
well.. if your players are evil , or just tired of her bugging them... warp her mind.. show her things that permanently mess her up.. ( aka mind rape/ Osyluths/ etc )
If they have the means.. could mess her up so when she wakes up from the clone she attacks her benefactor
If the party has a witch, Ice tomb and then store her somewhere cold.
Ice Tomb (Su)
Effect: A storm of ice and freezing wind envelops the target, which takes 3d8 points of cold damage (Fortitude half). If the target fails its save, it is paralyzed and unconscious but does not need to eat or breathe while the ice lasts. The ice has 20 hit points; destroying the ice frees the creature, which is staggered for 1d4 rounds after being released. Whether or not the target’s saving throw is successful, it cannot be the target of this hex again for 1 day.
Basically my plan would vary depending on the party makeup. (In my defense I have not played in any high level games so if this is dumb forgive me...) But under Ideal conditions I would go to a freezing cold location, set a bunch of traps (poison and spell traps that would lower saves and dispel protections), go encounter the offending BBEG and freeze her, teleport her to the center of the traps and then arm them, wait for the BIGGER BBEG to show up and set off all the traps and hope it weakened him enough to freeze him so that he could join her in her icy prison.
1. Flesh to Stone
2. Shrink Object
3. Divination prevention spells (obscure object, magical aura, nondetection, etc.)
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While all the "power" solutions proposed above are nice, how about some alternative solutions?
I suggest a good old tried and true method, forget about killing her, break her. Torture her until it doesn't matter anymore, once she's broken the only thing I can imagine restoring her is a wish spell, or actual time in heaven.... but then she's minion to BBEG. Also, can't you only have one clone at a time?
A few different viewpoints:
First, and most obviously, a clone means nothing so long as the original (or last clone) is still alive. Keeping her around is priority one in not meeting her again, whatever method you use to that end.
Second, while you are at it, why focus on destroying her? Be nice to her. BBEGs aren't usually known for their human resources policies. Offer her friendship and, eventually, loyalty. Show her why you hang out with one another. Use the rules for redeeming people in Champions of Purity if you want to. As a bonus, once this sticks, if she is killed, any remaining clones will also be redeemed.
Third, find out where the clones are via any of a dozen divination spells. After all, you have something that is very much connected to them.
Fourth, if you can't beat them, join them. The GM obviously likes clones, so get cracking on a few yourselves.
I suggest letting the morals of the PC decide this. Yes she Will property kill her self if you put her in a anti magic prison. But you wont have corruptet your self by doing bad stuff to a helpless prisoner. And that is important. You Can always take her Down again. Use diplomacy and talk to her. Make sure you are ready to scry, followin and fry when she escapes, dead or alive.
Could be worse.
Any 10th level alchemist can pull off some crazy "returning villain" shenanigans. With some preparation, the party could even end up fighting/killing the "same" NPC multiple times in the same day(!).
Doppelganger Simulacrum (Su): The alchemist learns how to create a simulacrum, a soulless duplicate, into which he can project his consciousness. As a full-round action, he may shift his consciousness from his current body to any one of his available doppelganger simulacra, which must be on the same plane as the alchemist. If killed in a simulacrum, he transfers to his own body automatically; if killed in his own body, he is dead. Unused simulacra (including his abandoned original body) appear to be lifeless corpses, though they do not decay. Creating a duplicate costs 1,000 gp in alchemical materials and requires 1 week to grow. An alchemist must be at least 10th level and must have the alchemical simulacrum discovery before selecting this discovery. The created simulacrum is a creature, not a supernatural effect.
If the alchemist also has the clone master archetype, things get really nuts.
Rebirth: At 8th level, a clone master can prepare a clone of himself that awakens if he is slain. Creating the clone costs 5,000 gp, takes 1 week of work, and requires 3 additional weeks for the clone to grow to maturity. If he dies, the clone awakens as if the alchemist had used the clone spell on himself. He can have one inert of himself at a time. Unused clones created by a clone master do not rot. This ability replaces poison resistance +6 and poison immunity.
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If you can get access to a scroll of greater planar binding you can assign a Marut to hunt the recurring villain. Repeated clonings fall under their mandate of cheating death.
If you only have planar binding you can get some Zelekuts, but cheating death isn't their mandate, so you might need to sweeten the deal to get them to agree.
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It's a GM call but kill her on an evil plane that will hold her soul in place? Summon/call a pyschopomp to hold her soul in one of their staves? Send her to the negative energy plane and her body and soul are withered to nothing automatically? Sounds like she has cheated death enough that some outsiders would start to have noticed.
I use Great Wheel cosmology, and the idea of getting a planar binding to get someone to drag her ass to Carceri (the prison plane), has been suggested.
The party did consider attempting to contact a Marut, but a Marut's HD is outside the planar binding/ally spells they have easily available. They liked the marut option because of the 'compounding inevitables' situation they themselves had to deal with (they destroyed a zelekhut which was dispatched to recover them after they escaped from a prison ship in the LE country, then they had zelekhuts that were being dispatched against them for the crime of destroying zelekhuts.)
The party's current plans are to attempt to geas her (mark of justice would pop when the body did), or alternatively to 'someone else's problem' here by using a scroll of imprison or just handing her off to some high level mages with an explanation of how her shenanigans work.
The source of the party's concern is that given her BBEG boss is in tight with the Diabolical Master of Stygia (Ole Frozen Levistus), he's got some level of clout on the bad guy side. They mostly just want to make whatever containment method they use too costly for him to just spring her.
