D&D 5E A Flesh to Stone Creature is Not an Object?

[MonsterEnvy]

Suffocation rules. 78 rounds is the max # until death for a PC with a 20 Con per the suffocation rules.
So if the spell does exactly & only what it says, a petrified creature will die as they're tuned into inanimate stone.
Because niether the spell nor condition says anything about not needing to breathe. The key here being inanimate as that means your lungs don't move (if they did you wouldn't be inanimate....)

Do you REALLY think that this logical train of rules is what JC intends?
No. Because that's stupid. Thus he's spewing non-sense.

Would not 15 rounds be the max for a creature with 20 con. I thought they could hold their breath for one minute then had their conmod in rounds after. (And if you can't hold your breath you just have your con mod in rounds.)

Anyway if they are turned into inanimate stone they no longer need to breath as their lungs are stone as well. I assume the spell and condition say nothing about needing to breath cause being turned into stone kind of makes it obvious that you don't need to breath anymore. Cause you are made of stone.

You seem to be the one spewing Nonsense here.

 

[jasper]

Jeremy Crawford recently stated, "Neither the petrified condition nor the flesh to stone spell turns you into an object. You are a creature subjected to the petrified condition (PH, 291)." This is interesting and not intuitive. From D&D Beyond the final sentence for the flesh to stone spell is, "If you maintain your concentration on this spell for the entire possible duration, the creature is turned to stone until the effect is removed." I'm free to adjudicate as necessary in my game, but why would this spell not turn a creature into an object?

I checked a few spells. Fireball wouldn't harm a stone statue, but it will harm a stone creature. Disintegrate will remove HP from a stone creature, but will destroy a medium sized object. Thunderwave will damage a stone creature and push it, but it will only push an object. Carrying a creature reduces your speed, while carrying an object looks to encumbrance.

What am I missing that this is designed into the game? This once again emphasizes that a spell does nothing more or less than is written in the text.

Source: https://www.sageadvice.eu/2018/03/1...ture-an-object/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

ha. You fell for the oldest mistake in RPGs. You are confusing American English/ English English with game English. Some times the language used in the writing applies only to game logic not real world logic.

 

[jaelis]

ha. You fell for the oldest mistake in RPGs. You are confusing American English/ English English with game English. Some times the language used in the writing applies only to game logic not real world logic.

Well... in regular English I wouldn't say there isn't any definite distinction between being an object and being a creature. So if you are asking the question, you're probably already thinking in game terms.

 

[Satyrn]

Random question occurred to me as a I read this thread: can you use telepathy to communicate with a petrified person?

I'd allow it, although I'd probably wind up ruling that because time is essentially standing still for the statue (the creature's not aging), all that you'd get is the thoughts and emotion at the time of petrifaction.

It would be a cool way to investigate whether the party's about to face medusa or basilisk.

 

[Nevvur]

I'd say no. The creature is inanimate and unaware of its surroundings. That sounds the same as unconscious. Plus having it be conscious in that situation would be pretty torturous.

More severe than unconsciousness, but some of the same rules apply at my table. Anything that only affects conscious creatures won't affect a petrified creature. For instance, Mr. Statue won't be counted in the HP tally for a Sleep spell.

There are some metaphysical quirks in my homebrew setting that interacts with magic to produce interesting rulings, and petrification is a particularly unusual case. There's a strong emphasis on the interaction of body, mind, and soul in my cosmology, with the mind sort of feeding and sustaining the soul. The mind is a product of the brain, so if you turn the brain into a rock, there's nothing to connect with via telepathy, assuming telepathy is treated as linking minds. More urgently, the soul isn't getting any juice. Presumably, this would result in the wasting and possible dissolution of the soul after a certain period of time.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Not sure about others, but to go with my first post, having the petrified status and being physically turned to actual stone are not always the same thing. Petrified with fear, Hold Person, etc make a character statue-like but not an actual statue. Flesh to Stone, a Medusa's Gaze, etc make the character a real stone statue and technically dead. No brain activity, no breathing, etc. So how you want to DM a Petrification effect is up to you, but I use it literally in my game where it actually says the character is a stone statue and not just statue-like. As a side thought, how long would the soul of a character stay with their statue body? Would they be kicked out right away and go to whatever afterlife their deity has? Or would they linger around like a ghost, waiting for someone to return them to flesh?

 

[jaelis]

Not sure about others, but to go with my first post, having the petrified status and being physically turned to actual stone are not always the same thing. Petrified with fear, Hold Person, etc make a character statue-like but not an actual statue. Flesh to Stone, a Medusa's Gaze, etc make the character a real stone statue and technically dead. No brain activity, no breathing, etc. So how you want to DM a Petrification effect is up to you, but I use it literally in my game where it actually says the character is a stone statue and not just statue-like. As a side thought, how long would the soul of a character stay with their statue body? Would they be kicked out right away and go to whatever afterlife their deity has? Or would they linger around like a ghost, waiting for someone to return them to flesh?

Well... would you allow revivify, resurrection, and/or true resurrection to return a petrified creature to (non-stony) life?

I'd be inclined to say none would work, in part because I'm always kind of happy to make resurrection a little more or a challenge. (And also because in my mind a petrified creature isn't dead.)

 

[AmerginLiath]

Consider how a creature is differentiated from an object in the game (which is not necessarily the same as how they’re differentiated in other fictions or real life): the presence or absence of a soul or animating spirit. Hence why a dead body is considered an object but an animated suit of armor (powered by an elemental spirit) or a raised skeleton is considered a creature. Unless smashed/disintegrated/otherwise destroyed, a petrified body still contains or is linked to its soul in game terms (I suppose that the astral silver cord is involved), so it responds to game effects as an animate creature instead of as an object.

As always, in D&D, don’t try to look to physics or Harry Potter, check what Gygax wrote about the game’s metaphysics back in the 1970s, because that remains the core underpinnings of how these conditions operate at the table.

 

[jaelis]

Consider how a creature is differentiated from an object in the game (which is not necessarily the same as how they’re differentiated in other fictions or real life): the presence or absence of a soul or animating spirit. Hence why a dead body is considered an object but an animated suit of armor (powered by an elemental spirit) or a raised skeleton is considered a creature. Unless smashed/disintegrated/otherwise destroyed, a petrified body still contains or is linked to its soul in game terms (I suppose that the astral silver cord is involved), so it responds to game effects as an animate creature instead of as an object.

As always, in D&D, don’t try to look to physics or Harry Potter, check what Gygax wrote about the game’s metaphysics back in the 1970s, because that remains the core underpinnings of how these conditions operate at the table.

Heh so you could cast astral projection on a petrified creature, and its projection could go exploring the multiverse? I kind of like that idea

 

[Satyrn]

As always, in D&D, don’t try to look to physics or Harry Potter, check what Gygax wrote about the game’s metaphysics back in the 1970s, because that remains the core underpinnings of how these conditions operate at the table.

My table's physics bible was written by Sam Raimi. Xena: Warrior Princess, not Spiderman.


. . . well, not too much spiderman.