Juggernaut..resurrected?

[Piratecat]

In order to avoid resentment, it would be great if we could keep the conversation from becoming sarcastic.

Thanks!

 

[Egres]

@Primitive Screwhead: sorry about that "MyPOV": i didn't know what it meant.

BTW,i did reply to your points!

I simply didn't reply to your POV cause i'm more interested to RAW here.

This doesn't mean that i wasn't interested at all about your POV,but i simply ignored it cause it can't help here.

Thank you anyway.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Cant help who?

Why would not a discussion of how I am interpreting the RAW not help?

The POV I wrote is based on the RAW. I added how I would define the change from 'dead creature' to 'object', and added clarification on what a 'soul' is.

This is one of those cases where an interpretation of the RAW must be made since the exact wording itself is not clear.

So.. if you disagree with my interpretation, please offer your reasons and we can work on a mutually acceptable interpretation.
Or, ignore me and I will go away since my involvement in this thread is for improving my understandings of the rules.

 

[RigaMortus]

Physical manifestations, such as a dragon disciples new wings, remain on the corpse but aura's and such are encapsuled within the soul.

Where did you get that from? Is this actually stated somewhere in the RAW? Or is this your own interpretation? If it is your own interpretation, that is great for your campaign, but I think the OP was looking for facts backed up by the Core Rules.

 

[Egres]

Ok,let's see.

Creature: a living or active being capable of independant choice.

I can't see from where you took the "capable of independant choice" part.

Dead Creature: A previously living or active being whose soul can be returned from its journey to the outer planes. Also called a Corpse and can be targeted with some spells that affect objects. CON is reduced to zero. Subject to natural decay and rot.

This doesn't help about the "do dead creatures retain their class features?" problem.

In fact you are saying that they are no more creatures.

And:

Remains: a previously living or active being whose soul cannot be returned from its journey to the outer planes. 'Remains' are Objects, also called a Corpse. Subject to natural decay and rot.

Dead Creature: A previously living or active being whose soul can be returned from its journey to the outer planes. Also called a Corpse and can be targeted with some spells that affect objects. CON is reduced to zero. Subject to natural decay and rot.

How can you call two different things in the same way and pretend to be clear?

Soul: The soul carries all the aspects of the character, so when attempting to raise a non-willing character, you must beat any SR and/or save of that character. A soul is *not* of any type found in the PHB or DMG. It cannot affect anything on any plane of existance outside of a manifestation it inhabits. The manifestation is has a Type. So a soul can be brought back as Undead or raised as Humanoid or reincarnated as whatever.Souls can only be affected by ceratain spells cast on the Dead Creature they last inhabited. These spells are listed as targeting either 'Dead Creature' or 'Corpse'

But is the soul the dead creature?

 

[RigaMortus]

Choosing to be a willing target is not an action, and can be done on someone else's turn.

Lowering SR is a standard action, and can only be performed on your turn.

So at the instant the Raise Dead spell goes off, their SR is still up, since they didn't lower it on their turn. (If anything, it's the surprise round.) And by the time their turn comes around, the spell has already either beaten their SR and succeeded, or it's failed... so lowering their SR at that point is futile.

-Hyp.

How can you be "willing" if you are dead? You have no Widsom, you have no "will".

How can you take actions if you are dead? Who is the one taking the action? An inanimate corpse on the ground, or your "soul"?

This may have been argued already, but...

If a dead creature is considered an object, then it can't be subject to Rez spells, right? If a dead creature is still considered a creature, then it would still retain it's class features, right? It just couldn't "use" features which require you to use an Action to activate/use them...

Here's an example:

A person has, as a class feature, Power Attack and Spell Resistance. A Mage casts Hold Person on them (and beats their SR, succeeding). The player still has Power Attack and Spell Resistance, they aren't lost. However, he can not use Power Attack because it requires an action to do so, and Hold Person is preventing him from taking that aciton. However, if the mage casts a spell on him again, he still benefits from Spell Resistance as it doesn't require an action to use.

The same would hold true if this character was asleep or even dead.

This is the same way I envision the class features of the Juggernaught working if he was dead. Why would it be any different?

Few misc. questions...

If an Intelligent Sword is "killed", can it be Rezzed? Can it be the target of Speak w/ Dead? Can you cast other spells which effect "souls" on an Intelligent weapon?

More of a morals question, but... Do animals really have souls? If they don't, then I assume they can't be rezzed, right? If they do, then wouldn't killing them (for food or sport) be considered an evil act?

If I cast Greater Scry on a person who is, unbeknownst to me, dead... Would the spell go off? Would I be detecting their corpse or their soul or something else?

 

[Iku Rex]

If a dead creature is considered an object, then it can't be subject to Rez spells, right?

What? Why?

 

[RigaMortus]

What? Why?

Because an "object" is not a valid target for Raise Dead?

Can you cast Raise Dead on a table, chair or sword?

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Clarity..

Where I got:
Capable of independant choice. If you limit it to capable of physical action, then one who is paralyzed can be considered not a creature. By stating it as capable of independant choice you avoid this trap. A soul has the independant choice of returning when a raise dead spell is cast, but cannot do anything else. Unless you count traveling to the Outer Planes


Is the soul the dead creature? ... The dead creature is split into dual existance, one part is the Corpse and the other the soul. Split along the physical/meat and spiritual/mind. The soul can be pulled back into the Corpse via certain spells and can be contact by certain spells, but otherwise has no impact on the world. The soul holds all the character features, memories, and spiritual existance. The Dead Creature is an empty husk.
Specific expections to this are the creatures who do not have a dual nature or were never alive to begin with. Those creatures, specifically Constructs, Outsiders, and Elementals, do not have souls released upon thier death.

Rereading the 'Dead' condition, "Dead: The character’s hit points are reduced to –10, his Constitution drops to 0, or he is killed outright by a spell or effect." .. I was in error. There is no CON adjustment, or any other stat adjustment when you are dead. The sentence refers to how you gain the condition.

I also reread the raise, ressurect, and reincarnate spells. The wording of those spells bring me to revise my POV.
Instead of having 2 types of Corpses, there is only one.
The Corpse is an empty husk, a close relative to an inanimate object. Useful mainly as a material focus for the raise spells. It maintains the physical aspects, like wings, claws, and racial stat modifiers. It gains a hardness and hitpoints based on its material make-up as an object and possibly retains all or part of racial resistances to elements. Touching the Corpse provides a spiritual link to the Dead Creature, allowing the casting of the various Raise spells.
The Dead Character is the soul, which carries the; class, stats, SR, etc...
This is 'proven' by reading the Reincarnate spell. With that spell a soul is brought back into a new body. The new body modifies the characters physical stats but you dont re-roll them. If you were a weakling Elf and reincarnated as a Bug Bear, you will still be a weakling.

RigaMortis...
Animals are not listed as not having souls, so by RAW, they have them. As do Plants.
Intelligent Weapons do not have souls, by RAW. ALtho it would be an interesting house rule. I had a cmapaign once where Intelligent items were made by forcing a soul into them, which led to some interesting moral issues.
Greater Scry would have to be a judgement call by the DM.

 

[Methos of Aundair]

Quoted from the SRD under Magic Jar

By casting magic jar, you place your soul in a gem or large crystal (known as the magic jar), leaving your body lifeless.

If you are successful, your life force occupies the host body, and the host’s life force is imprisoned in the magic jar. You keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, level, class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, alignment, and mental abilities. The body retains its Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, hit points, natural abilities, and automatic abilities. A body with extra limbs does not allow you to make more attacks (or more advantageous two-weapon attacks) than normal. You can’t choose to activate the body’s extraordinary or supernatural abilities. The creature’s spells and spell-like abilities do not stay with the body.

It has been brought up in the WizCo thread on the relevance of this spell to the question at hand, but I’ll bring it up here anyway. Another point, throughout the magic jar spell description the words soul and life force are interchanged.

According to this spell description the soul/life force maintains Int, Wis, Cha, class levels and mental abilities. The departed body keeps Str, Dex, Con, hp’s, natural and automatic abilities. This is similar to that of reincarnate. Granted, I understand not wanting to base rules of spell descriptors, but this is about the only place in the RAW that comes close to explaining where your class features go upon death.

By these two spells, since class features go with the soul/life force than the healing immunity stays with the soul/life force, since it is a class feature.