Are stoned characters dead?

[DragonLancer]

In my Pathfinder game last week one of the characters stumbled upon a Basilisk lair and was promptly turned to stone. Thankfully, the party had an oil of stone to flesh found in a prior adventure and the character was restored after the combat.

However, it made me ponder something that I hadn't though of in all my years DMing D&D. Is a petrified character actually dead? Does their soul depart the stone body and head off towards the afterlife or is it stuck inside the stone form?

 

[Blackbrrd]

A character turned to stone isn't dead, just as you and your players played it out.

 

[wingsandsword]

I'd treat them as being in a kind of stasis, the soul is still on the Material Plane, but it's tied to the petrified body.

When the petrified body becomes so damaged, by wear or trauma, that it would be fatal to restore them, I'd say the spirit moves on.

The first DM I played under had a different way of looking at petrification: that the victim was still fully conscious, and even able to still see and hear normally, just totally helpless as a consciousness trapped in an inanimate statue.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I'd treat them as being in a kind of stasis, the soul is still on the Material Plane, but it's tied to the petrified body.

When the petrified body becomes so damaged, by wear or trauma, that it would be fatal to restore them, I'd say the spirit moves on.

The first DM I played under had a different way of looking at petrification: that the victim was still fully conscious, and even able to still see and hear normally, just totally helpless as a consciousness trapped in an inanimate statue.

Not a good way to go.

 

[Aeolius]

The first DM I played under had a different way of looking at petrification: that the victim was still fully conscious, and even able to still see and hear normally, just totally helpless as a consciousness trapped in an inanimate statue.

I did that in my last play-by-post game, when the game switched from 1e to 3e. The PCs encountered the legendary hydrimera; part dire shark, part giant squid, and part feline sea lion, its ink clouds turn victims to stone.

The PCs spent twelve years as statues of stone, still conscious of their surroundings and sharing a communal dream each night. Over the course of the twelve years the statues had three protectors. The last protector was a child who spent years studying magic, in order to restore the party.

 

[Klaus]

In my Pathfinder game last week one of the characters stumbled upon a Basilisk lair and was promptly turned to stone. Thankfully, the party had an oil of stone to flesh found in a prior adventure and the character was restored after the combat.

However, it made me ponder something that I hadn't though of in all my years DMing D&D. Is a petrified character actually dead? Does their soul depart the stone body and head off towards the afterlife or is it stuck inside the stone form?

They are in stasis, and relatively safe from harm, needing neither air nor food and being as resistant to damage as a regular stone statue.

 

[Kzach]

Depends how potent the weed was...

...oh come on, that title was begging for it!

 

[Gentlegamer]

Famously, Gary Gygax had to retreat some of his characters in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure to obtain means to restore victims of the golem's whip of cockatrice feathers. I think Bigby or Yrag was stoned. Anyway, the victims were returned to flesh and continued.

 

[frankthedm]

Nope, they don't get to die when petrified. IIRC the rules don't even consider them dead if broken while still petrified.

IMG Angels of Death offer the souls of the petrified release once a century.

 

[Mark CMG]

Are stoned characters dead?

Deadheads!


I have always played as a sort of suspended animation or statis, as suggested above.