The Incredible Shrinking Mage

[spunky_mutters]

One of my players has a concept for a replacement character that we have been discussing, and I wanted to get a bit of feedback on it. His concept is to have a wizard who uses magic jar, and who has a permanent shrink item cast on his body to reduce it for carrying by his familiar while jarred. He also wants to be able to roam around as a 4" high caster by using the permanent shrink.

Now I know that shrink doesn't work on creatures, just items. The question is whether your body becomes an item while under the influence of the magic jar spell. As per the spell's description, you are 'as near as anyone can tell' dead. If you were dead, it would be considered an object (I believe, but can't actually find a cite for this). Under the definition for the dead condition, it lists the soul having left the body as a definition for dead. Magic jar meets this criteria, and so even if the person is described as being almost dead, I would still say that they meet other criteria to be considered for the condition. The second question would be the target criteria question, which seems to have been firmly decided in favour of targetting applying only at the time of casting, unless otherwise stated.

I'm sure that there are some holes in this besides these two, I just wanted to get a few opinions on this.

 

[youspoonybard]

Hmmm.

If a human is permanently Reduced via the Reduce Person spell, and then dies, does he grow back, or stay small?

 

[spunky_mutters]

I can find no reason why the spell would end when the target dies.

 

[youspoonybard]

Opp, sorry, I wasn't paying enough attention. My bad.

Hmm, that is an interesting question.

 

[Thanee]

The body is, of course, not an item, unless the character is dead. Then it could be considered as one. It's just kind of uninhabited in the moment, but certainly still alive (like comatose).

The body only appears to be dead, but it is not dead.

Bye
Thanee

 

[spunky_mutters]

That was my first reaction from the 'as near as anyone can tell' line from the spell description (damn you flavour text). But the description for the dead condition lists the soul leaving the body as one of the conditions for achieving it. There are also some other hints in the spell that the character may be considered dead. You can't dispel the spell at the caster's body, which seems to indicate that the soul has been moved and the body itself isn't under any kind of magic (movement of the souls presumably being the responsibility of the jar).

It doesn't say that the body is comatose, or anything like that. It stops just short of calling him dead. I just want to have a rules-based way to adjudicate what condition the caster's body is in. I suppose I could just say that it's under the effects of a spell, and so can't be considered a non-magical item even if it is dead. That would pretty much shut him down. I don't really want to shut him down, as he's going to be paying a pretty high price to make this work, and I don't think it's a great big benefit. I just want to get a good grasp on the fundamental rules issues involved in this.