Story time. (Patreon)

I play d&d and some of the best stories can come from the accidents that randomness provides, combined with good reactions.

I was playing in an epic level d&d 3.5 game- epic level being levels 21+ where the normal rules stop functioning even as flawed as they could be before then.

Anyway, at our level of ~45, death was trivial. Up to and including someone being disintegrated, death was literally only a ten minute break in the action. My character could fix death three times per day for free instead of the nearly trivial 25,000 gold pieces it would have been otherwise.

That's where non-death stuff becomes more interesting.

Our party is fighting a giant black dragon. Our angel-viking fighter gets in a few rounds of attacks which is usually enough to blender something to pieces... but the dragon doesn't die. 

We realize it has some sort of magic preventing it from dying. So the bard, who took a special prestige class that unlocked more spells, casts disjunction.

Disjunction is the most powerful dispelling ability in the game. It automatically dispells every spell on someone, and also has a chance to permanently render nonfunctional every single magic item in the area (fortunately he could aim it to only hit the dragon).

It turns out the thing preventing the dragon from dying was an artifact, a special subset of magic items that require deific powers to create. It's okay, though, because disjunction can also destroy artifacts. That roll is successful. 

The bad news is after disjunction destroys an artifact the caster of the disjunction has to make a will save or permanently lose all spellcasting ability.

The good news is, the will save is a flat DC 25 and the bard has absurd bonuses probably around 70+.

The bad news was... he rolled a natural 1 on his roll, which always fails. 

The good news following that: It explicitly can't be fixed by mortal magic... but we were at the level where access to deities wasn't impossible. 

Of course, just because we could contact a deity didn't mean they would just help us. In fact, they couldn't just help us. There were rules of conduct... and with good and evil deities, just doing whatever they want to help mortals they like isn't appropriate. So we have to go on a quest...

But the story about killing the Necrodancer will have to wait for another time.