Petrification - A painful observation

So, apparently it’s been a LONG time since I dealt with petrification in old school play.

My wife had her Elf Courtier pecked by a cockatrice on Thanksgiving Day.

While I was researching her options I noted that having a Flesh to Stone spell cast costs 4,500gp! Wow! A PC would be better off dead for sure! A friendly cleric Restore Life & Limb by comparison is a “paltry” 500gp. (Though with side effects.) Those greedy mages always sticking it to “the man”.

Am I missing something obvious that makes recovering her character from this less painful than it seems? Are there other routes I’m overlooking or a divine equivalent I’ve forgotten? Is this just the price of petrification?

Well, one “advantage” of petrification is that there’s no time-penalty (Restore Life and Limb gets a -1 penalty per day since death, and eventually auto-fails as a result).

You might also allow some versions of petrification to count as “curses” and thus be subject to Remove Curse.

Petrification is simply dreadful… It’s very expensive and difficult to recover from. The only benefit is that you don’t have to roll on the horrific Tampering with Mortality table.

Tee hee hee. My group has also learned this lesson the hard way. I love it :wink:

Another advantage is that Mages are contractors, divine casters are spreaders of the faith.

“its 500gp, and of course it goes without saying that the risen man will dedicate himself to the worship, defense, and upkeep (MMMmmmm Tithes) of Ooobeldeegooogles temple!”

Nice.

Although I would imagine the genius mages won’t hesitate to take advantage of the victim in their own way. “I took all your money, and restored you to flesh. I also took the opportunity to lay a geas upon you. You see there is a widget I’m after, and I could probably just go get it, but it’s way more fun to see if you can get it for me while I pop down to pick up the post from town.”

Souldn’t it be 1000gp as the character isn’t usually of the same faith as the temple? I thought I read something in the core book that Clerics usually charge double for people with a different faith.

That sounds like a good rule. As for petrification, if every monster was like the medusa in The Keep on the Borderlands, they would come with their own potion of stone to flesh.