D&D General Spirits and Souls in D&D. What the Heck is the Difference?

[Minigiant]

A soul is a being's unsignatatured "mana" or life energy.
A spirit is the mana or life energy that is tagged with the being's self in some way. It is contains some on the being's mind, element, and alignment.

When a being is alive, the soul and spirit fuse as the soul copies the spirit and partly becomes tethered to the body and spirit.
When a being dies, the soul loses the spirit's signature and dissapates. The spirit then goes through the afterlife process.

Sorcerers and innately magical beings have spirits with signatures that they can manipulate the copying soul to do arcane magic.

Unintelligent corporal undead are mindless because they both have no spirit and lack a working brain.
Intelligent undead have no soul. Their hunger or obsession is the body's conversion of flesh or energy into soul energy to keep animated.

Dead Body+Soul = Zombie. Skeleton
Dead Body+Spirit= Vampire, Ghoul, Lich, Mummy, Revenent
Spirit+Soul= Ghost or Spectre
Part of Spirit + Soul = Wrath
Elemental Body + Spirit= Elementals, Fey, Outsiders
Elemental Body + False Spirit= Constructs

 

[Shiroiken]

Self aware, intelligent creatures have souls. Beasts and mindless monsters have spirits. Spirits are reincarnated by the world, while souls move on to the outer planes for the afterlife. The practical difference between them is almost negligible, except in AD&D where spirits can't be raised from the dead.

 

[Thunder Brother]

For my own homebrew setting a spirit is broadly defined as a being that normally lives within the spiritual plane; so nymphs, elementals, ghosts, gods big and small, etc. All beings (material or spiritual) have souls, but really only with material beings (plants, animals, mortals, etc.) do you get any real concept of separation (the body dies but the soul lives on).

More or less. I try to keep it intentionally vague.

 

[Charlaquin]

For me, a spirit is the animus of an animal, object, place, or abstract concept. They inhabit the ethereal plane and while they usually have material counterparts, they exist independently of those counterparts. A soul is the vital essence of a sapient being. It’s the seat of the “self” and the component of a being that goes to the afterlife when the body dies. Curiously, beings with souls don’t have spirits. Some speculate that souls are the spirits of sapient beings, but they behave quite differently than one another, so that’s probably not the case.

Ghosts and other ethereal undead are souls that refused to go with the Raven Queen to the afterlife and instead clung to the world, but were unable to be reunited with their bodies (which requires resurrection magic). Corporeal undead are created by shoving a spirit into a corpse where a soul should go.

 

[Fanaelialae]

IMC, everything has a spirit. It's usually what you talk to when you cast a spell that lets you talk to a rock or plant or dead body. Spirits are generally pure, in that they are what they are. A rock doesn't question its rockiness, or wish it were something like a bird instead. It exists as a rock and "behaves" as a rock. To put it simply, it exists without self-conflict.

The soul is more complex, and not everything has a soul. It grants a being the capacity to evolve beyond the nature dictated by its spirit. It's free will.

Only certain beings innately have souls. However, a soul is like a flame that constantly throws off sparks. Occasionally, those sparks will catch and ignite in something that doesn't have a soul, which is frequently traumatic for the newly enkindled being. A fire elemental might have burned indescriminately for centuries, only to possibly begin questioning the morality of burning people alive, after becoming enkindled. However, for such enkindled creatures, their soul is impermanent and might flicker out at any time. The only real protection is to remain in the presence of other's with souls.

As a result, spiritual creatures such as fey and elementals will often avoid the presence of beings with souls. Being enkindled is both personally unappealing, and usually results in for banishment from their people (lest the "contagion" spread).

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

A soul is a being's unsignatatured "mana" or life energy.
A spirit is the mana or life energy that is tagged with the being's self in some way. It is contains some on the being's mind, element, and alignment.

When a being is alive, the soul and spirit fuse as the soul copies the spirit and partly becomes tethered to the body and spirit.
When a being dies, the soul loses the spirit's signature and dissapates. The spirit then goes through the afterlife process.

Sorcerers and innately magical beings have spirits with signatures that they can manipulate the copying soul to do arcane magic.

Unintelligent corporal undead are mindless because they both have no spirit and lack a working brain.
Intelligent undead have no soul. Their hunger or obsession is the body's conversion of flesh or energy into soul energy to keep animated.

Dead Body+Soul = Zombie. Skeleton
Dead Body+Spirit= Vampire, Ghoul, Lich, Mummy, Revenent
Spirit+Soul= Ghost or Spectre
Part of Spirit + Soul = Wrath
Elemental Body + Spirit= Elementals, Fey, Outsiders
Elemental Body + False Spirit= Constructs

This, but the other way around. The soul contains most of the "self" and is what passes to the afterlife, while the spirit is the force that animates the body, it dissipates after death unless it becomes undead through magic or other curses. Spells like Raise Dead always talk about calling the "soul" back from the dead, while Speak with Dead explicitly doesn't summon the soul, only the lingering spirit.

 

[Flamestrike]

Pretty sure there is a distinction between the two.

In that you can have spirits like ghosts and wraiths who lack souls.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

There is also the idea that a living being is a soul, with a material body and an immaterial spirit. A soul perishes when the connection between the body and the spirit is severed.

 

[Tonguez]

Interesting @Tonguez, because I would nuance it differently, but my own perspective tends to be influenced by biblical theological anthropology. In the Tanakh/Old Testament, it's ruach (spirit/wind/breath) that serves as the animating life essence of a person rather than the "soul." The "spirit" is the vital life-breath that empowers life in a creature. It is only when the body is imparted with a ruach that it becomes a living being/soul (cf. Adam in Genesis 2:7), and its absence in a creature is synonymous with death. Nephesh (soul/person/throat) is the living person/creature and the total essence of a person's being, self, and life. The spirit and soul of a person are distinct, but interconnected with blurred lines.

I think my use of Spirit for the Immortal 'Personality' is due to the wider use of the term for elemental and other Spirit Beings that operate beyond the existence of a physical body

We invoke Wolf Spirits or the Spirits of Ancestors rather than their Ancestral souls etc

 

[glass]

In my homebrew campaign setting, I have decided that that all mortal, sapient creatures have a multi-partite soul. What I had not decided is whether a spirit is another word for that soul, or one of the parts of it. Or indeed how many parts/what they are. Spirit can of course also refer to things that have nothing to do with a mortal creature's soul (primal spirits, frex), so they are different in that sense.

What I don't do is the old-school "humans and dwarves have souls, elves have spirits" thing. Except I kinda do, because elves are a bit weird in my setting (and so are their souls): They are an amalgam of flesh-&-blood creatures and fey/nature spirits. And also plants.

In the end, I voted "I have not decided".

_
glass.