Souls and the Undead

[johndaw16]

Just a general sort of rules question, not entirely sure if this is in the right place. Here goes...

While pondering the tactics of Orcus for an upcoming campaign, the use of souls and the nature of undead creatures came into question. The main issue I'm having is whether or not unintelligent undead like skeletons or zombies retain the souls they once had in life. If not would it be possible to kill a creature, use their soul to fuel a spell, item creation, etc., and to subsequently reanimate the slain creatures body as an unintelligent undead. I'm leaning towards this scenario as being plausible but I'd appreciate any opinions or ideas on this, or even better a clear cut explanation in the rules.

Thanks. Later

 

[Bottled Imp Games]

The main issue I'm having is whether or not unintelligent undead like skeletons or zombies retain the souls they once had in life.

I think this all depends on your game, personally I think there are plenty of ways to reanimate the dead, but I see two main methods.

The most common form of reanimated undead (say, zombie) is that of a shard of necromantic energy bound to living flesh. That gives the semblance of life, but is nothing more than that. These zombies are slow, wholly mindless and the weakest of the undead types.

Then you have undead where the original spirit is bound to the flesh. In this case, a creature is reanimated with its original spirit.

Without going into any more detail, I think the opportunities for gaming here are considerable - (especially from a DMs perspective). Certainly, one form of reanimation is far more evil than the other (one's a purely natural force, the other involves the binding of spirits - nasty stuff!) There's always the option that if you are destroying bound spirits (by turning), you could be forever destroying their (potentially innocent) souls...

Imp

 

[frankthedm]

Manual of the planes 3E lists intelligent undead as souls that never got to their eternal reward.

1E listed specters as souls that were first sent to the lower planes, became larva and then were transformed into their undead state.

I have noticed some squeamish people disliking the possibility of having souls destroyed, I personally LOVE the idea as it gives good reason for those who have died well [or at least made it to the afterlife ] to NOT want to get Raised from death. It also fits well into the fantasy fiction D&D has strong roots in.

Raise dead and reincarnate [and resurrection in previous editions IIR ] have a blanket statement preventing all who became undead [and later destroyed] or died from death magic, from benefiting from it. On this I would assume even having a body transformed into an unintelligent undead creature robs the body [at the very least] of some vital quality to house the soul or to be used as a focus to create a new body. Also note that heroic feats are retained in unintelligent undead in 3.5.

 

[Darklone]

Raise dead and reincarnate [and resurrection in previous editions IIR ] have a blanket statement preventing all who became undead [and later destroyed] or died from death magic, from benefiting from it. On this I would assume even having a body transformed into an unintelligent undead creature robs the body [at the very least] of some vital quality to house the soul or to be used as a focus to create a new body. Also note that heroic feats are retained in unintelligent undead in 3.5.

Isn't this in "Bringing back the dead" in 3.0 and 3.5 as well?