Malediction
Mark a living creature; if it dies within 1 minute, its soul is damned to Hell and cannot be resurrected normally.
- School
- Necromancy
- Casting Time
- 1 standard action
- Range
- Touch
- Target
- 1 creature touched
- Duration
- 1 minute and instantaneous (see text)
- Saving Throw
- Will negates
- Spell Resistance
- Yes
- Components
- V S
Channeling the blasphemy of the Pit into your hand, you mark your target with a brief but fundamental corruption, causing its soul to be irretrievably damned to Hell should it die within the next minute. Those killed while under the effect of this spell cannot be resurrected by normal means. Only a worshiper of Asmodeus (or of your deity, if you are not a worshiper of the Prince of Darkness) can return a soul damned by malediction to life. Spells like raise dead or resurrection cast by the worshipers of other deities automatically fail, though they do reveal that the target soul has met a perhaps undeserved torment in Hell. The spells miracle or wish return the victim of a malediction to life, regardless of the caster's deity.
A soul may also be freed by the efforts of someone bodily going to Hell, locating the affected soul, and leading it out of the plane, which allows it to go to its intended destination in the afterlife and be raised normally. You can end the effects of your own malediction by casting the spell again and concentrating on a past target. Doing so frees the past target to its rightful place in death; it does not return the target to life.
Spells such as break enchantment, dispel magic, and remove curse negate this spell if successfully cast before the target dies.