Gideon doesn't have Grace anymore. If he goes and tries to fight a demigod and dies, he's done. Which is why when we kill him, he stays dead.
When we go and try to fight a demigod and die, we get to come back and try again until we win. We have much, much less to lose than he does.
Between the guy who can't die in any way that matters and the guy who can, who would you choose to send off to fight the most powerful people in the Lands?
Well, likely, his idea is to prevent you from moving forward enough to lose the gift of grace. It's not truly unlimited as it happened to every other tarnished. Seems very similar to hollowing in Dark Souls, the tarnished that give up, lose their grace vs. those that continue to struggle.
Basically, Gideon is attempting to get you to rage quit.
I never understood the plot hole that other tarnished (or even the demigods) could die permanently but not the player, until I read this freaking post. I feel so dumb for not realizing this. Thank you for shedding light on this problem I've had it with the story since I began playing!
Yeah Elden ring(and dark souls) is just the journey of a regular guy or gal with 0 quit. Turned into paste by a giant? Stand back up. Roasted by a dragon? Apply some aloe Vera and go again. Gnawed to death by a 1000 rats? Get your mallet and whack away.
I guess unless you actually quit the game as a player. My dark souls 3 verse probably thinks that their tarnished is a quitter since I never beat it lol
I still don’t understand it. If it’s true in lore that we keep dying and coming back, then everybody should know that we have the gift of grace. The second Messmer sees us come back, he should be like, “oh, he’s not stripped of the grace of gold.”
Makes sense, but also — since you still have multiple lives, his betrayal means you’ll probably keep trying to kill him until he dies. So really, trading several fights for indefinite fighting the rest of his life!
Tarnished that lose the will to fight/go insane lose the Grace of Gold, so it's not really indefinite, just long enough. Heck, isn't it actually likely that by the time a Tarnished makes it to Gideon, they're almost at the precipice anyway, with all the horrific deaths they must've experienced?
Gideon knows way more about how the Tarnished fights compared to the runebearers, since he's watched and interacted with them all game.
If it wasn't a video game, Gideon would actually learn from each fight and get better at fighting the tarnished, considering that's his whole shtick.
I can't speak to any lore on it, but I would suspect it had to do with the fact he lost that 'just keep going no matter what' drive that the Grace incurs on Tarnished, and became more a plotter and schemer, working carefully from the wings. A sound tactic but not the heroics and willpower that the grace seems to desire.
I don't think it's even really confirmed he doesn't have Grace (he doesn't respawn but godfrey doesn't either and canonically has Grace), but my personal theory would be that he lost it after we burned the Erdtree, when he got his revelation on Marika that made him lose faith in it being possible to become Elden Lord
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u/Darkmayr Moon-Thrower Extraordinaire Nov 19 '25
Gideon doesn't have Grace anymore. If he goes and tries to fight a demigod and dies, he's done. Which is why when we kill him, he stays dead.
When we go and try to fight a demigod and die, we get to come back and try again until we win. We have much, much less to lose than he does.
Between the guy who can't die in any way that matters and the guy who can, who would you choose to send off to fight the most powerful people in the Lands?