Prak wrote:What would you make Dorian Gray's portrait in D&D? Is it minor enough to be a feat, if its treated right? Should it be a class feature? Does it need to be a template with a level equivalence?
I guess the original novel version of the painting, where it just hides Dorian's age, and can be used as a proxy for violence against him (he dies when he tries to slash the painting and winds up stabbed in the heart), would be fine as a feat. Or honestly a Pathfinder Trait/Tome Background, possibly.
The adaptational version, where the painting also takes on damage that would be dealt to him, and makes him effectively immortal and invulnerable, is the bigger question here.
For reference, a version somewhere between those two shows up in Champions of Ruin (the
gray portrait on page 43) as an artifact that prevents aging and absorbs all negative energy effects. Useful for converting the flavor of the portrait to D&D, if nothing else.
Immortality varies highly in cost in 3e. In Dragon #354, there are two different means of immortality: one is the 9th-level
kissed by the ages spell that makes you immortal at the cost of 5,000XP and having to wear the special focus item at all times, while the other is the Wedded to History feat which gives one of several benefits for being very long-lived and grants immortality if your backstory supports it and the DM approves. An expensive minimum-17th-level option and a cheap 1st-level option, right next to each other on the same page.
Several races get immortality for free (elans, killoren, and warforged being the primary examples) and no one particularly cares except for adding "...and 10,000 years later, I'm still here!" to their backstories. So, personally, I'd say the only-non-aging version of the portrait can simply be flavor if you want and should at
most be a feat.
The immortal-and-invulnerable version is basically getting a phylactery without going through the lichification ritual, as DDMW said, so paying a moderate one-time gold and/or XP cost is probably fine; making it a template with LA would be paying too much, as even most LA +1 races with actual mechanical benefits aren't worth the level cost.