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

[Enevhar Aldarion]

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.)

If I were running somewhere like Adventurer's League, where it has to be by the book and no houserules, I would allow all the methods listed in the PHB. But for my home game, I would not allow revival magic to work. Dispel Magic would not work either, as your character's body is now a non-magical stone statue. So Stone To Flesh and Restoration magic are about it, unless there is some other spell I do not remember that says it does the same thing. And like I said before, a fun aspect of this is deciding in your world what happens to the character's soul can make a difference in what can be done with the statues of the characters. I have gone with the idea that for a character, being turned to stone is like a personal Time Stop. It does not matter how long the character is a statue before being returned to flesh, to them only the time to blink an eye has passed, assuming your version changes them to stone in an instant. So if someone is petrified mid-charge, when they are returned to flesh, they will continue that charge as if nothing had happened. I can imagine a squad of elite, dedicated soldiers volunteering to be turned to stone, to be returned to flesh in an extreme emergency.

 

[jaelis]

If I were running somewhere like Adventurer's League, where it has to be by the book and no houserules, I would allow all the methods listed in the PHB.

Is there such a list in the PHB?

 

[SkidAce]

...I can imagine a squad of elite, dedicated soldiers volunteering to be turned to stone, to be returned to flesh in an extreme emergency.

 

[MechaPilot]

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.

Do petrified adventurers dream? I'm sure there's a Phillip K. Dick joke in there somewhere.

 

[the Jester]

First of all, let me just say that fireballs do indeed damage objects. Being a creature just lets you save for half damage. The spell isn't specific about this, but does not that it lights stuff on fire.

Anyway, an interesting case for this discussion is *regenerate.* Let's look at the classic trope of "petrified creature's arm is broken off"- until now, it had never occurred to me that *regenerate* would work on the creature while it is petrified, but it appears it would.

 

[Harzel]

An interesting related question is, if the petrified creature is broken, can Mending knit the parts back together? The spell's description specifies an object, but then at the end says that it works on constructs, and constructs are creatures.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Is there such a list in the PHB?

Not an overall list as such. It would have to be pieced together from spell descriptions and the condition description and maybe from other parts of the rules too.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

View attachment 95198

Yep, I was thinking about them when I posted that. Except in D&D, the statues would be real soldiers instead of sculptures made to look like the soldiers who were their models.

 

[CapnZapp]

I know how I would rule, I was asking others.

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

It was not clear to me you were asking about personal opinions.

I thought you asked about RAW, and my reply should be read "there is no RAW on this, the individual DM's ruling is decisive".

Formally, of course, there *is* RAW on this. A petrified victim is not a statue and not an object, merely a flesh-and-blood creature afflicted by the Petrified condition. And so the answer is clearly "yes" since nothing says the petrified creature cease to be a valid target for telepathy, and nothing says the petrified creature cease to be conscious and able to respond mentally.

But to many players this is clearly (and outrageously) unreasonable. Not only are most petrified victims described as statues - if they really remained creatures, it would be trivial to find out whether a statue really is a creature using wholly unwelcome meta tactics - simply cast any spell that targets only creatures, not objects, at the statue.

Besides the horror aspect would be a hundred times worse. Common sense says that any victim of petrification would be utterly insane if her mind was trapped inside the stone shell - it is a popular trope to find victims of a Medusa's gaze, and going by RAW here would be a hard no for gamers reading about "N.N. was petrified a hundred years ago".

The rules say petrification turns you into a "solid inanimate substance". Reasoning you can still think while your brain is made out of stone is not a given conclusion.

The rules say a petrified creature can't take actions or reactions, and can’t move or speak. While that's good enough from a combat perspective - it's very close to functionally identical to being unconscious - it is not good enough for many gamers. Just because you can't take actions and can't speak doesn't mean your mind isn't in anguish.

It is far better, this line of reasoning goes, to simply say the victim is both creature (for purposes of un-petrification) and object (for pretty much everything else).


Regards

PS. Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to rule it the other way too. "Maybe the magic fortifies the petrified creature's mind so it isn't so damn sensitive; maybe making it think like an earth elemental or something". After all it's magic - and the Flesh to Stone spell doesn't say "the victim slowly goes insane if left in the petrified state for long".

 

[Seramus]

I couldn’t imagine a petrified creature suffocating. All the organs and processes that would be damaged by suffocating are likewise petrified. So ‘suffocating’ a statue wouldn’t do anything. Far nastier to get trapped in ice.