Magic Jar question

[Lord Zardoz]

Can you magic Jar a non corporeal undead creature?

First paragraph of the spell from the SRD:
By casting magic jar, you place your soul in a gem or large crystal (known as the magic jar), leaving your body lifeless. Then you can attempt to take control of a nearby body, forcing its soul into the magic jar. You may move back to the jar (thereby returning the trapped soul to its body) and attempt to possess another body. The spell ends when you send your soul back to your own body, leaving the receptacle empty.

And 3rd paragraph:
While in the magic jar, you can sense and attack any life force within 10 feet per caster level (and on the same plane of existence). You do need line of effect from the jar to the creatures. You cannot determine the exact creature types or positions of these creatures. In a group of life forces, you can sense a difference of 4 or more Hit Dice between one creature and another and can determine whether a life force is powered by positive or negative energy. (Undead creatures are powered by negative energy. Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.)

So, the first paragraph implies that a potential victim requires a body. But the 3rd paragraph indicates that non corporeal undead are souls, and this spell says you can force a soul into the magic jar.

So for the purposes of this spell, do non corporeal undead have bodies? And can this spell interact with them at all?

END COMMUNICATION

 

[lukelightning]

Good question...

The problem is that D&D has no good definition of a soul. What is a bodiless soul? Is it a ghost? Some other undead? Some "positive energy" ghost?

Since an incorporeal undead is a soul without any kind of body, forcing it into a jar gives you nothing to possess. So then your soul is out there...but then how come you are not some incorporeal being in that case?

Personally I'd say that a soul is even more "refined" than an incorporeal or ethereal state, and an incorporeal creature does, in fact, have a body, albeit a non-physical one. This would explain the different forms of incorporeal undead; shadows, wraiths, specters, ghosts, et. al.

 

[pallandrome]

Ahh, but you can only force a soul into the jar by possessing it's body. As an incorporial undead does not have a body, it is immune to the effects of the Magic Jar.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Right. So do you use the literal definition of body, or a more mechanical version of the same.

For that matter, what about an air or fire elemental?

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[moritheil]

Right. So do you use the literal definition of body, or a more mechanical version of the same.

For that matter, what about an air or fire elemental?

END COMMUNICATION

Air and fire elementals are solid, despite that being rather counterintuitive.