| 9 people marked this as FAQ candidate. Answered in the FAQ. |
Not metaphysically - when you are dead, are you still considered a creature, or are you an object? Do spells cast on you before life which require a target of "creature" persist or end?
Most important in terms of "Breath of Life", where you actually die and come back to life while in combat - we know what happen to prepared/spontaneous spells, but what happens to effects cast on you?
Notes to smooth discussion:
* there is no clear-cut definition of "object", "corpse", "dead creature", etc. beyond common usage
* there are no rules to cover what happens when the target of an existing spell becomes a non-valid target after the spell is in effect
Press FAQ before you discuss, please!
Here's some important text scattered around the book:
When a living creature dies, its soul departs its body, leaves the Material Plane, travels through the Astral Plane, and goes to abide on the plane where the creature's deity resides. If the creature did not worship a deity, its soul departs to the plane corresponding to its alignment. Bringing someone back from the dead involves magically retrieving his soul and returning it to his body.
Astral Plane: A silvery void that connects the Material and Inner Planes to the Outer Planes, the astral plane is the medium through which the souls of the departed travel to the afterlife.
Outer Planes: Beyond the realm of the mortal world, beyond the building blocks of reality, lie the Outer Planes. Vast beyond imagining, it is to these realms that the souls of the dead travel, and it is upon these realms in which the gods themselves hold court. Each of the Outer Planes has an alignment, representing a particular moral or ethical outlook, and the natives of each plane tend to behave in agreement with that plane's alignment. The Outer Planes are also the final resting place of souls from the Material Plane, whether that final rest takes the form of calm introspection or eternal damnation.
You draw the soul from a newly dead body and imprison it in a black sapphire gem. The subject must have been dead no more than 1 round per caster level. The soul, once trapped in the gem, cannot be returned through clone, raise dead, reincarnation, resurrection, true resurrection, or even a miracle or a wish. Only by destroying the gem or dispelling the spell on the gem can one free the soul (which is then still dead).
Dead: The character's hit points are reduced to a negative amount equal to his Constitution score, his Constitution drops to 0, or he is killed outright by a spell or effect. The character's soul leaves his body. Dead characters cannot benefit from normal or magical healing, but they can be restored to life via magic. A dead body decays normally unless magically preserved, but magic that restores a dead character to life also restores the body either to full health or to its condition at the time of death (depending on the spell or device). Either way, resurrected characters need not worry about rigor mortis, decomposition, and other conditions that affect dead bodies.
Judging from the soul bind text and the text above, it's apparent that when a character dies, the soul and the corpse are separated. (Soul Bind only targets a corpse). The soul is apparently fairly close to the body for soul bind to get the soul for 1/round per level (albeit a 9th level spell).
So it appears there is a discrepancy in the rules between soul bind (unaltered 3.X text) and breath of life (a new PF-specific spell). Apparently breath of life either would never work (according to the way soul bind is worded) or there has to be a loose interpretation of what a creature with the dead status is.
Given the ambiguity, I would follow soul bind and breath of life's example and keep any effects on a creature with the dead status for a reasonably short amount of time (within 1 round at least). If you don't do that, then breath of life would never work (it doesn't target a corpse, it targets a creature). I would also allow spells to target a dead creature for at least one round after death.
It's an interesting problem. I think the wording of breath of life is to blame. If the wording for the target would be "Target creature or corpse touched", then things would be clearer.
I notice that there's nothing in there that states that you lose your memory from being dead. This is a great opportunity for the DM to give the party some insight on his world while a player is dead, maybe a divine perspective as it were. (And the God of the Underworld looks to you and says "Stop Metagaming in-character or this will happen again!")
I think that's a lot better than death just ending up as an expensive setback once you dig up the diamonds necessary to bring your friend back.
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You kinda answered the questions yourself: there are no rules governing this. We're all in opinion or extrapolation territory here.
If I were the GM, I would say that the buffs are still in effect. Our group has had instances in which a character with invisibility has died, we've ruled that we couldn't find the corpse until the duration wore off.
Our group has had instances in which a character with invisibility has died, we've ruled that we couldn't find the corpse until the duration wore off.
Invisibility can target objects (like corpses), so that's a completely by the book.
In v3.5, it was made clear that a dead body was considered an object. I see no reason for this to have changed in Pathfinder.
Whether or not spells continue functioning between states is unclear, and probably up to the GM.
Well no use speculating, apparently the question was asked a while back, and it was, "Answered in the FAQ".
I didn't find it when I looked, but someone else may have better searching skills then I do.
Can I just say, the current system for answering FAQs kinda sucks?
I'm not even talking about the many questions that get ignored. That's a gray area. I just wish whoever answers the question could post the answer, or at least a link to the answer, on the thread.
I have no idea where the answer is, unless it's the somewhat off-topic "Energy drain: Does this count as a death effect?", which seems more preoccupied with backing up energy drain and death effect as not being cross-compatible for immunity purposes than clarifying what breath of life is capable of.
Well no use speculating, apparently the question was asked a while back, and it was, "Answered in the FAQ".
I didn't find it when I looked, but someone else may have better searching skills then I do.
Can I just say, the current system for answering FAQs kinda sucks?
I'm not even talking about the many questions that get ignored. That's a gray area. I just wish whoever answers the question could post the answer, or at least a link to the answer, on the thread.
I have no idea where the answer is, unless it's the somewhat off-topic "Energy drain: Does this count as a death effect?", which seems more preoccupied with backing up energy drain and death effect as not being cross-compatible for immunity purposes than clarifying what breath of life is capable of.
I agree. I couldn't find the answer either. This has happened to me several times.
