Honest question here, for any Loregays that can explain the working of DnD cosmology.
I was thinking of this specifically in the context of The Nameless One from Planescape:Torment, at the end of the game he's sent to the Blood War where he's presumably going to be fighting in it for some manner of eternity (possibly until Grace rescues him?).
But who's actually going to enforce that? By the end of the game he's at least at DemiGod status. I don't know exactly how powerful the Demon Lords or Princes or such are, but with the full limits of his self and knowledge I can't imagine he'd be easy prey even for the top-dogs of the Abyss/Hells/etc. So what actually stops him, or any high level Evil Wizard from just plane shifting out of his intended punishment? How do they actually keep the sinners in Hell and in the Blood War?
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>high level evil wizard
People are lately claiming the contrary but to the best of my current knowledge a dead person doesn't retain the class levels they had in life.
As for that guy, nothing much really. He'd have a limited number of places to go to but he'd definitely find something.
Just not the Material Plane or every two bit adventurer would zero in on his location.
>People are lately claiming the contrary but to the best of my current knowledge a dead person doesn't retain the class levels they had in life.
He's a Mage with knowledge of basically all spells though.
Class Levels are an abstraction of experience and skill, which you can't take away without removing his memories or something. Unless you're going to say he's just not powerful enough to cast those spells, but how does that work? What makes mage's level up then, if not just simply being more experienced with magic. The Nameless One danced spells with Lum the Mad, he knows magic.
I'm going to go with "or something". I don't think HOW it works is ever explained, but once you die and become petitioner (or what have you), you lose all your levels, class abilities and other powers.
>, which you can't take away without removing his memories or something.
Which is precisely what happens with a Petitioner. There's a reason Lichdom is so popular -- Dying strips you of your identity.
So he's lost his memories a second time? That's pretty sad to think about. He swore to Grace he'd remember her though, and he should know enough about the Planes and the Abyss to know how possible that was. She claimed he'd only forget as eternity ground everything from him (as it does everything else).
How powerful is INCREDIBLY in this context though?
At the end of PS:T The Nameless One is, I would say, *incredibly* powerful. But I don't really know the full scale. He's above level20 and probably has more than 20 in all stats.
>So he's lost his memories a second time?
Not necessarily, it seems he didn't become a proper petitioner, as the petitioners of Hades all start off as larvae. If he got to keep his body, he might very well have kept his memories too.
You're hyperfocusing and not reading. I'm saying a normal wizard wouldn't have this advantage. TNO would.
Fair enough
>Class Levels are an abstraction of experience and skill, which you can't take away without removing his memories or something
>what is level drain
>explain the working of DnD cosmology
It doesn't make sense. It never made sense. There's nothing stopping anyone sufficiently powerful from just waltzing out of Baator or the Abyss. You might be able to make the case of something like a cold war between the upper and lower planes, which is why no one is willing to head to the Prime Material (it would escalate to the apocalypse and no one wants that unless they're 100% sure they'd win). But that's flimsy at best. This is why you homebrew a better setting.
>There's nothing stopping anyone sufficiently powerful from just waltzing out of Baator or the Abyss.
You're a dumbass who doesn't know how petitioners work.
For the Nameless One (and around 80% of other player characters like the Knight-Captain from NWN2), Tiamat might be bothered to enforce it if they end up in Hell instead of the Abyss, but realistically no one (well Jergal, Null and other greater power death deities could, but for most its generally not in their best interest or would be interrupted by another that has more claim over the death of the creature); especially if the attempt to leave is as soon as it happens without time to prepare.
A dead creature retains everything it had till it accepted a deal by a petitioner or planar messenger to be transformed and even then most high level characters are outright immune or have too high saves to for the transformation to actually happen if unwilling.
It’s very hard for a dead soul to leave their final plane, they are effective made of the same matter as the plane and cannot leave without Plot Devices or difficult magic. Also most evil wizards find their new forms and tasks are not conductive to getting out. Particularly since it’s hard to get to the mortal world even for powerful beings without summonings.
>It’s very hard for a dead soul to leave their final plane, they are effective made of the same matter as the plane and cannot leave without Plot Devices or difficult magic.
That makes sense then, he's tied to the Plane by some actual force. I can buy that.
>Also most evil wizards find their new forms and tasks are not conductive to getting out.
Planescape includes stores of people being transformed into horrible forms and shapes after death, so I can see that, but in TNO's case he retains his human form. That could just be the ending simplifying things I guess, it doesn't nescessarily have to be canon.
But either way, we see the kinds of Demons that he can thoughtlessly slaughter just hanging around Sigil taking breaks from the Blood War, so obviously they can leave to some extent. I can believe that he couldn't go the Prime Material Plane as easily, I believe there's some restrictions there, but otherwise I'm not sure. And obviously all the Demons and Devils plan to (at some impossible point) go attack the Heavens, so they must have some ability to leave their planes.
>but in TNO's case he retains his human form
That may be because he was doomed to fight in the Blood War rather than become a proper Hades petitioner, although I could be misremembering
>Why can't evil characters just leave hell?
>why can't prisoners just leave prisons.
The lords of hell are INCREDIBLY powerful, I'd even suggest they'd give a full level party member a run for their money. Besides, most evil characters wind up working for devils, so it's not hard to assume that they'd continue serving their will as enforcers or soldiers in the pits of hell.
They don't want to.
This is the IRL reason too.
One of the things I like about the setting of Glorantha is that people powerful enough can do just that. The demigod ruler of the biggest badest empire had to create a special place in Hell just so that his enemy not!Genghis Khan could not simply walk out of there after beating the shit out of all the demons trying to stop him.
In the generic D&D cosmology? Because soul larva aren't the most mobile or self-motivating things in the world, and tend to get eaten or turned into lemures. People don't pop up in the Nine Hells like a ghost version of their living selves with intact memories and abilities.
Soul Larvae only happen after the soul already accepted the deal with a lower planes messenger or another petitioner of that plane and the deal it took was shit to get munched up. Souls in the waiting line retain everything till they accept a deal (or are picked up by someone they already had a deal with or a greater death deity or overgod is bored enough to bother with them). Refusal of every offer before even getting to the waiting line is how some 60%+ of incorporeal undead happen.
Why do people assume that The Nameless One is some normal dude and not a one in a quintillion specimen? The normal rules don't apply to him.
The game literally ends with the rules applying to him though. The whole thing was that he dedicated his life to trying to escape the rules and finally accepted that he had to recieve his punishment.
The entire ending to the story requires him to fight in the Blood War. Which is why it's kind'a weird to think about how that would possibly even be enforced
>The game literally ends with the rules applying to him though.
Nothing in the rules says you fight in the Blood War if you're evil and you die.
>Nothing in the rules says you fight in the Blood War if you're evil and you die.
Is that not so? That's pretty explicitly how PS:T positioned it (keep in mind this is 2E rules), and the ending cutscene shows him walking off to join the Blood War.
The Blood War is an artificial contrivance. It's not a metaphysical law.
It doesn't, it ends with him fulfilling the contract he had with a devil that was (both directly and indirectly) causing a lot of frickery.
If the rules were applied, he wouldn't be teleported to finish the contract, but die, have to pick (or be picked up by, depending on deals done prior) a messenger or another petitioner and then go through planar promotion hierarchy (or float around mind-raped into pure bored goodness for some of the higher planes).
For the most part, the structure they're already held in (be it Lawful or Chaotic), a lack of opportunities to escape, and an overwhelming hatred for the opposite evil alignment.
If your soul even makes it to petitioner status on the abyss, depending on the layer its very likely that a lesser devil might just attack and try to kill you. Sooner or later you might decide to try to kill them first. That's the blood war.
>Nameless One
>in Blood War
He was reunited with his mortality, he wasnt that demigod anymore. Also he went there willingly, that's the crux of it, he went there to "serve his time" no matter how long it were to be.
>So what actually stops him, or any high level Evil Wizard from just plane shifting out of his intended punishment? How do they actually keep the sinners in Hell and in the Blood War?
The whole plot was exactly he searching for immortality to avoid punishment, that is being dragged to the lower planes.
Even at his most powerful he was still inferior to the top dogs of the planes. You need to be at Lady of Pain levels of juice to tangle with gods like that, or go to the Vecna/Bane route and go after godhood
DnD afterlife is not well thought up. It's apparently an eternity in someone's plane of existence doing...whatever because no one thought beyond that. Or they become a brick in a shitty spirit wall until a demon eats them and they stop existing.
Aren't all human souls reduced to basic matter and they start all over again learning how to shit and stand up, walk, talk etc in the Hells/Abyss as basically as brand new being with no memory of their past lives in the mortal world?
By the time a human soul manages to survive being a petitioner and makes it through all the larval and other shit stages of Baator life to the point of having decent intelligence and the capacity to cast spells of any usefulness, they have been there for hundreds of thousands of years and have no memory or connection to the mortal plane at all and hardly have any interest in it outside of the random amusement of fricking with some mortal for an afternoon or getting a warlock minion or two.
They just don't give a shit in the slightest. and the mortal world is to them just some worthless spot of short lived mortal meatbags that are useless and weak anyway. Hardly worth wasting one's time.