Undead: is the person's soul trapped?

[Ripzerai]

According to Libris Mortis, the souls of those raised as undead, even unintelligent undead, are indeed trapped in the undead shells.

Do you have a page number for this? Your claim seems to contradict what I'm reading in the book.

From page 7:

"Evil acts can resonate in multiple dimensions, opening cracks in reality and letting the blight creep in. A sufficiently heinous act may attract the attention of malicious spirits, bodiless and seeking to house themselves in flesh, especially recently vacated vessels. Such spirits are often little more than nodes of unquenchable hunger, wishing only to feed. These comprise many of the mindless undead. Sometimes these evil influences also manage to reinvigorate the decaying memories of the body’s former host. Thus, some semblance of the original personality and memories remain, though the newly awakened being is invariably twisted by the inhabiting spirit, resulting in an evil, twisted, and intelligent creature. However, this being is not truly inhabited by the spirit of the original creature, which has left to seek its ultimate destiny in the Outer Planes. This amalgamation is something entirely new."

The emphases were added by me; it's saying specifically that for many of the mindless undead, the animated spirit is not, and has nothing to do with, the original soul. It goes on to say that in some cases, souls can be trapped within their corpses by evil spirits - but this isn't the rule.

The only unifying definition of undead is that they were once alive and they're empowered by negative energy. Many undead specifically do not have their original souls.

Unless there's some other note in the book that I'm missing, I'm guessing you're simply mistaken on this one. If I did miss something - and I may well have - it seems there's a contradiction in the text.

 

[Mercule]

IMC, yes, the soul is bound. Why? Because I want undead to be creepy-icky. The end.

In theory you could find the corpse of the mortal who later became a larvae, then a dretch, and ultimately became Orcus. If you animate the corpse into a skeleton it's not going to rip Orcus screaming from his throne in Thanatos to be bound against his will to a mindless skeleton. The spell simply isn't that powerful, nor is the soul involved when we're talking about animated puppets and nothing really more.

You could, but you might not like the results.

Actually, this makes me think that it shouldn't bind the entire soul, but it should start to tear at the soul or cause the dead some pain in the afterlife. Maybe even create a small conduit (so it's an extra bad idea to undeadify someone in Hell).

GM: Okay, you animate Orcus' mortal corpse as a skeleton. You hear, "Oh, that was foolish," and the world explodes into white hot pain. Such is your state for the next 10,000 years.

 

[alan]

That's a really cool idea. Have you put it into practice at all? How did it go?

Isn't this the premise of Hollowfaust - City of Necromancers?

Alan

 

[thedungeondelver]

His soul is absolutely trapped, destroyed, or consumed in the process of turning him undead.

Well wait now. When joe magic user finds a handy skeleton that's been lying around for a few years and says "Aha! I could use a hand keeping the ol' lair under guard. Ka-ZOT!", then that person's (elf, dwarf, kobold, whatever) soul or spirit is (despite having spent the last decade or however long in the happy hunting grounds) yanked back?

Not nit picking, I just want to make sure I've got you correctly.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It seems odd to me that a third level spell can capture or destroy a soul, when the other spell that does the same thing is a ninth level spell.

Well, the Dark Side has always been the easier path to walk. And when a fourth-level spell can repair a soul and a fifth-level spell can heal a body and call back a soul, that a third-level spell can splinter, corrupt, mutate, and sublimate a helpless soul really isn't all that extreme.

Well wait now. When joe magic user finds a handy skeleton that's been lying around for a few years and says "Aha! I could use a hand keeping the ol' lair under guard. Ka-ZOT!", then that person's (elf, dwarf, kobold, whatever) soul or spirit is (despite having spent the last decade or however long in the happy hunting grounds) yanked back?

If they can be yanked back by resurrection magic, they can be yanked back by the dark, consuming energies of death. Sure.

t's therefore absolutely broken to allow Animate Dead to do the same thing. Trap the Soul is eighth level for a reason.

Absolutely broken? Right. It's eighth level because it enables you to capture a living soul that is constantly struggling. Animate Dead can be much lower level because effectively, the soul is helpless -- the spell treats it like an object.

Animate Dead shouldn't affect the soul at all, and shouldn't affect any spells that contact or manipulate the soul.

Because....why? Just because you don't like that particular bit of fluffy flavor? Well, thankfully, you don't write the flavor for my games.

There's no reason why Animate Dead should be evil. If the caster of the spell has the permission of the deceased or their family, the spell is neutral. Without such permission, it really depends on the context - parading someone's dead loved ones in front of them is cruel, but without such displays I don't see any inherent reason it should damn those who cast the spell.

Even if the spell doesn't destroy, consume, or erode the original soul, it calls a being of pure hungry death to wreak nothing but pain and suffering on the world. Unless you need it to not be evil for flavor reasons, it works just fine as evil.

And, in fact, it's integral for several game settings, including Hollowfaust in the Scarred Lands, the Charonti in Jakondor, and the Dustmen in Planescape, that Animate Dead be a morally neutral spell. Gruesome, yes, but certainly not evil.

Right, that's okay for some settings, but not for others. If I want my necromancers to be dark wizards who practice forbidden arts, I'm going to do more than make their daily dabblings in the dead a little bit creepy -- I'm going to make their basic functions diabolically evil. It's sometimes as fun to have clear moral battle lines drawn over the undead as it is to have undead be effectively negative energy golems.

 

[thedungeondelver]

If they can be yanked back by resurrection magic, they can be yanked back by the dark, consuming energies of death. Sure.

That's certainly an interesting point of view. Myself, I'd always viewed it as more of a "Hey, I need to make a construct, the body is the parts, and the 'battery' is an infusion of good ol' Negative Material Plane energy."

(Aside, I've let slide a couple of uses of animate dead in my games before - that is, no alignment violation - one was to create a defensive cordon of undead orcs while the party got some slaves out in A1 SLAVE PITS OF THE UNDERCITY and the other was to help transport a couple of fallen comrades and their gear out of the dungeon in G1 STEADING OF THE HILL GIANT CHIEF so they could get raised later...)

 

[Ripzerai]

It's eighth level because it enables you to capture a living soul that is constantly struggling. Animate Dead can be much lower level because effectively, the soul is helpless -- the spell treats it like an object.

Why would a petitioner on the Outer Planes be helpless? Logically, it would be much harder to drag a soul kicking and screaming across several planes of existence than to capture a soul that's only 25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels away.

Just because you don't like that particular bit of fluffy flavor?

No. Didn't you read the post you were ostensibly responding to? I said I liked the flavor. The flavor's fine. It's the "turning a third-level spell into an eighth-level spell" part that I don't like.

Create a higher-level version of Animate Dead, and you get the fluffy flavor plus a reasonable approach to game balance. Everything's great.

Even if the spell doesn't destroy, consume, or erode the original soul, it calls a being of pure hungry death to wreak nothing but pain and suffering on the world.

Zombies and skeletons aren't hungry anythings, not without massively changing their stats. They just make the air a little colder. You seem to have confused them with ghouls or wights.

If I want my necromancers to be dark wizards who practice forbidden arts, I'm going to do more than make their daily dabblings in the dead a little bit creepy

Sure, but there's plenty of ways of doing that. For example, Mercule suggested that perhaps that creating a zombie is painful for the petitioner. That makes the spell horrific without being unreasonable.

 

[Toben the Many]

Of course, undead and the trapping of souls will depend on the setting. In a Diablo-esque setting where it's perfectly legit to play a necromancer, probably not.

However, if you go by the strict origins of zombies...vodoo...then yes. In fact, in vodoo, a zombie is exactly that: someone who's soul has been trapped.

Here's the thing. Zombies and skeletons aren't 100 percent mindless. After all, they can take orders and follow commands. So that means they are able to interpret things told to them.

 

[Shemeska]

Here's the thing. Zombies and skeletons aren't 100 percent mindless. After all, they can take orders and follow commands. So that means they are able to interpret things told to them.

And robots can take orders and follow commands too, but it doesn't make them aware or have any sort of mind. Baseline D&D zombies and skeletons are still negative energy puppets unless you change something.

And all the talk about negative and positive energy being used to manipulate skeletons, corpses, etc... maybe it's too late and I've had too much caffeine, but I have the image in my head of Pee-Wee Herman having had a very touchy-feely Ravid let loose in his house... talking furniture, animated objects...

 

[derelictjay]

Here's my thoughts on this subject. First off each undead type should be treated differently on whether the souls still in them or not. I have always had a problem that a LG paladin will rise as a ghoul with his soul stuck in the corpse, I mean come on how could a soul of such radiant goodness be trapped in something so evil as a ghoul?

Mindless guys, zombies and skeletons, they're just animated things, what separates them from constructs is that they are animated with negative energy. No soul in them.

Now most of your spawners, ghouls, shadows and such, when something is killed by these the corpse rises up, well the soul still leaves the body, and a negative image of it is made to inhabit the corpse. However they're exceptions to this; guys that were "cursed" into these form, such as a cannibal who turns into a ghoul, he's still got his original soul, and the vampire (see below).

Then you got your guys who choose to become undead, liches; or whose sorrow, guilt or hatred keeps them on the material plane, ie ghosts. These guys still have there souls, and their souls have been merged, or transformed into the negative energy that powers them.

Finally, you have the made, example mummies, these guys are created through a process. These guys usually have the soul trapped inside them, powering the undead creature, though the negative energy is still animating them. (Now these guys are perfectly fine to have a paladin's soul trapped in them).

Now, the vampire (and the few creatures like them maybe the wrath), these guys are special, I say that some are the negative copies of the soul while others are the actual soul. At the moment of death by a vampire, a soul can decide to stay with the body or leave (most good souls leave), then if the soul leaves a negative copy is put in the body, these guys rarely go beyond the basic rank of vampire spawn.