I'm working out ways to foil bringing back an assassinated VIP. So far it looks like the Clone spell is economic and powerful. All it requires is to keep a 1" cube of flesh preserved and hidden somewhere.
If the subject that was assassinated is turned into an undead, will this prevent a clone from being created?
I noticed that all types of Raise, Resurrection...even Wish and Miracle can't bring back someone turned into undead. But I don't see this prohibition for Clone.
Is it just a general rule that the undead status blocks all attempts to revive a dead person - or is Clone really the sneaky back door that is more powerful than all other spells?
Would appreciate any insight into this. Thanks!
True resurrection can do it actually, it says in the spell. Imo Miracle will do it, if you pay the component and its inline for your deity. Wish can do it too I believe, but takes 2 IIRC.
Clone is still a good spell tho.
Just trap them.
Unintelligent undead doesn't use the soul of the deceased so it wouldn't stop them from being resurrected with reincarnate or true (or anything else that will recreate the body). Intelligent undead just means now you've made the VIP undead, but they still have their intelligence and personalty, etc. So they're going to resist you anyways, which results in imprisoning or killing neither of which really get you what you want.
True resurrection can not bring back someone who is undead. It can only bring them back somone "who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed."
If they still exist as undead, True Resurrection will not work.
Wish has the same restrictions. You can bring back someone who's body has been destroyed with 2 wishes. But if they are undead (and not destroyed) it is also blocked.
Just trap them.
I know Soul Bind and Trap the Soul will work.
But I'm trying to figure out if Clone is somehow a special exception to the rule about undead.
It's pretty easy to kill someone and then bring them back as a Zombie. Takes a much lower level caster.
Being turned into an undead should stop clone as well. But don't quote me on it.
I tend to agree with you Jack.
But I need to be able to quote a rule somewhere to say it is so.
Seems strange that a cheap (1000 gp) 8th level spell bypasses what even a Wish or Miracle can't.
I have a question because I just noticed the verbiage in how a lot of resurrection style spells are written. They say somethign about how a creature that has been turned into an Undead cannot be resurrected using this spell. However, I take that to mean if the soul of deceased has been incorporated into an undead then it can't be reincarnated, resurrected, etc unless that body containing the soul is destroyed. Is that how it works? Or is it more general, in that if someone dies and you raise their body (even into a zombie which doesn't contain the soul) would you be able to resurrect them provided you had a part of the body at the time of death or whatever was required by the spell?
The later doesn't really seem to make sense to me and I would like clarification if anyone can provide any.
As far as the monster descriptions go, I don't think any undead is specified as having a soul. Some may be smarter than others, but undead is just undead.
If they are any kind of undead at all (vampire, zombie, skeleton, etc.) then they can't be brought back.
I've got some plans for an assassin to eliminate the local King. But they don't have super high level magic available. However, it would be easy for them to simply kill this guy, raise it as a zombie, and then leave with it.
Resurrection and true resurrection can affect undead creatures. These spells turn undead creatures back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.
But, per the spell descriptions, you must first destroy the undead creature before you can use these spells to bring the person back.
Sad to say, but it is looking like Clone is the special exception to the "undead rule". Doesn't make me happy but I can't think of any RAW that prevents it.
Well, in this case the assassination is a given. As stated in the OP "I'm working out ways to foil bringing back an assassinated VIP."
It's a lead-in for an adventure where the party must travel deep within the evil empire to a prison where assassinated enemies are kept as undead to prevent being raised.
The PCs will then have to contend with a fortress assault/rescue where not only the guards but the prisoners themselves are incredibly dangerous.
The Clone spell looks to be the one fly in my ointment. As I can't find a way to prevent this spell from bringing back the bad guy without too much DM fiat.
Yeah, clone definitely seems to skirt around that problem.
I can't say I ever noticed this bit about general undead before, I always thought it was only if the soul of the person was in the undead body (so intelligent undead), but that doesn't seem to be the case.
And that seems really stupid to me, at least for true resurrection.
Agreed. The implication seems to be that creating an undead somehow taints the soul - even though it is off somewhere in the afterlife.
Maybe it corrupts the "return pathway" from the outer plains such that a soul can't travel along it until the corruption is removed?
*sigh*
Other than finding and destroying the "bit o flesh" used for cloning can anyone think of a way to stop Clone short of an 8th level spell?
I mean, it shouldn't be easy to keep a soul from returning to life somehow. Especially when in this case it uses an 8th level spell to return. It'd be crappy if you could easily just block it.
As far as the monster descriptions go, I don't think any undead is specified as having a soul. Some may be smarter than others, but undead is just undead.
If they are any kind of undead at all (vampire, zombie, skeleton, etc.) then they can't be brought back.
I've got some plans for an assassin to eliminate the local King. But they don't have super high level magic available. However, it would be easy for them to simply kill this guy, raise it as a zombie, and then leave with it.
Intelligent Undead DO have souls. It's in the description for the Magic Jar Spell, where it states: "Only intelligent Undead have, or are, souls!"
I mean, it shouldn't be easy to keep a soul from returning to life somehow. Especially when in this case it uses an 8th level spell to return. It'd be crappy if you could easily just block it.
True. But with a simple Animate Dead spell you are already blocking other 8th and 9th level spells, including Wish.
I suppose it's fair that if you keep a 1" hunk of King flesh constantly fresh then you have paid a fair price to do a "no matter what" resurrection.
I believe in 3.5, a greater barghest that consumed a person's fresh corpse had a 60% chance of destroying their soul. That would certainly be a good method for a professional assassin to ensure job completion. Given that they have a high intelligence themselves, your assassin could even BE the greater barghest.
Otherwise, killing the target, turning them into a zombie, stuffing them into some extradimensional object (bag of holding, portable hole, etc) and flinging them deep into some hostile plane would suffice for most purposes. The resources necessary to find and liberate the target would be prohibitive for almost any group. It also sets up an interesting adventure if the PCs should be hired to retrieve the VIP's corpse.
A cheaper alternative is a petrification effect. The target's not dead but not alive, can't be resurrected, arguably can't be scried on, and generally are just difficult to pin down. The resulting statue can then be given to a powerful outsides, mired in the Elemental Plane of Earth, or just hidden in plain sight. This works even better if the target already has a statue of themselves somewhere. Just swap the petrified body for the statue and walk away.
Being turned into an undead should stop clone as well. But don't quote me on it.
Too late. QQ
Raise Dead:
"In addition, the subject's soul must be free and willing to return. If the subject's soul is not willing to return ..."
Resurrection and True Resurrection say they work the same.
Reincarnation:
"provided that ... the subject's soul is free and willing to return. If the subject's soul is not willing to return, ..."
All of these spells have text that specifically says you're directly affecting the soul of the deceased target, by putting it back into his body or into a new body created for him (Reincarnation: "The magic of the spell creates an entirely new young adult body for the soul to inhabit from the natural elements at hand").
Clone:
"When the clone is completed, the original's soul enters it immediately ... provided that the soul is free and willing to return"
Clone works the same way and has the same text that specifically says you're directly affecting the soul of the deceased target, by putting it into a new body created for him.
The wording is identical, although the details about how long he's been dead and how the body is created/prepared vary.
Because the wording is identical, putting a soul into a body but only if the soul is willing to return, it's extremely obvious that the RAI is for it to work the same way, especially since Clone is lower level than True Resurrection, which makes it a very unlikely candidate for doing something that the higher level spell cannot do, double especially since the material component cost of Clone is lower than all the other spells in this discussion.
It's clear what the RAI is.
RAW specifically has no wording to support this RAI, so purely by RAW, Clone works on a person who has been animated as undead, but I am about 99.5% certain that this was an accidental oversight and RAI should be followed.
As far as the monster descriptions go, I don't think any undead is specified as having a soul. Some may be smarter than others, but undead is just undead.
If they are any kind of undead at all (vampire, zombie, skeleton, etc.) then they can't be brought back.
I've got some plans for an assassin to eliminate the local King. But they don't have super high level magic available. However, it would be easy for them to simply kill this guy, raise it as a zombie, and then leave with it.
Skeletons and Zombies are mindless undead = created with the Animate Undead spell (3rd). Unless they keep there Int/Wis score somehow, i would say that your "Animating" their bodies throw magic, and do not have their "Soul"
Create Undead (6th)& Greater Create Undead (8th) spell = They all come with Int/Wis, score, and so, would say your also have drawn back there souls.
How i look at it anyway.
The soul would already move to the clone before you could make it undead. EDIT: If the body was already prepped, if you are still growing flesh, what Blake said.
I am a little on the fence about this line of the spell:
To create the duplicate, you must have a piece of flesh (not hair, nails, scales, or the like) with a volume of at least 1 cubic inch that was taken from the original creature's living body.
Depending on your reading, you might conclude that you cannot clone a clone.
I agree with Blake in principle. This is a simple matter of RAW missing out on a bit of RAI. It's such a close thing that I'm guessing there won't be a mutiny of the players or anything if I make a ruling like that.
Also liked Karelzarath's petrification idea. That could make for some fun situations later in the campaign.
Lots of good stuff in here. Thanks everyone for your participation and civil discourse!
Raise Dead:
"In addition, the subject's soul must be free and willing to return. If the subject's soul is not willing to return ..."Resurrection and True Resurrection say they work the same.
Reincarnation:
"provided that ... the subject's soul is free and willing to return. If the subject's soul is not willing to return, ..."All of these spells have text that specifically says you're directly affecting the soul of the deceased target, by putting it back into his body or into a new body created for him (Reincarnation: "The magic of the spell creates an entirely new young adult body for the soul to inhabit from the natural elements at hand").
Clone:
"When the clone is completed, the original's soul enters it immediately ... provided that the soul is free and willing to return"Clone works the same way and has the same text that specifically says you're directly affecting the soul of the deceased target, by putting it into a new body created for him.
The wording is identical, although the details about how long he's been dead and how the body is created/prepared vary.
Because the wording is identical, putting a soul into a body but only if the soul is willing to return, it's extremely obvious that the RAI is for it to work the same way, especially since Clone is lower level than True Resurrection, which makes it a very unlikely candidate for doing something that the higher level spell cannot do, double especially since the material component cost of Clone is lower than all the other spells in this discussion.
It's clear what the RAI is.
RAW specifically has no wording to support this RAI, so purely by RAW, Clone works on a person who has been animated as undead, but I am about 99.5% certain that this was an accidental oversight and RAI should be followed.
Do you by chance have an explaination or a reasoning for why using a creatures dead body to reanimate a mindless undead would stop them from being resurrected though? Intelligent undead have some strange entanglement with their soul, and that makes sense to me. It makes less since that what is really just an object when used to create an unintelligent undead should prevent your soul from being placed into a new body.
Do you by chance have an explaination or a reasoning for why using a creatures dead body to reanimate a mindless undead would stop them from being resurrected though? Intelligent undead have...
I proposed one possible explanation earlier in this very thread.
Perhaps turning someone's corpse into an undead corrupts the pathway between this plane and their soul, rendering it unusable until the path is cleared by destroying the undead.
There is obviously some connection between the corpse and the soul, because you need a piece of the corpse even for Reincarnation (which creates a whole new body).
Coming up with fluff to explain the effect is easy enough, and fun. Just depends on how you want your world to operate.
Do you by chance have an explaination or a reasoning for why using a creatures dead body to reanimate a mindless undead would stop them from being resurrected though? Intelligent undead have some strange entanglement with their soul, and that makes sense to me. It makes less since that what is really just an object when used to create an unintelligent undead should prevent your soul from being placed into a new body.
Magical laws, even from real-earth history (though the skeptic in me accepts those as superstition) include many principles. Similarity, Contagion, Correspondence, and some others.
Contagion is the one you're looking for. It has nothing to do with disease. The simplest definition is "things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed." This is why, for example, making a "voodoo doll" requires hair or nail clippings or blood, etc., from the victim - the sympathetic principle of Contagion means that those discarded bits of the victim still retain a connection to the victim, so magic used on the voodoo doll affects the victim due to Contagion.
Likewise, perhaps, with the body and soul. They were once in contact but now are separated in death. Restoring life means returning the soul to the flesh (or to new flesh, in some cases), but casting any of these Pathfinder spells requires some part of the original body (corpse) - a perfect example of the principle of Contagion in Pathfinder.
Undeath sort of re-configures the Contagion, corrupting it and perverting it into undead. While it's not explicitly stated, this apparently interferes with the true connection somehow, preventing the reviving spell (whatever it is) from finding that connection between original body (corpse) and soul.
Think of undeath as a null-magic zone of some kind, breaking the sympathetic Contagion between body and soul.
Or at least, that's my fluff for why it works this way in Pathfinder.
Though Intelligent undead still had there souls, as they still have Int/Wisdom score. Since they are Un-Dead instead of dead, this ment there soul were still trapped inside there bodies.
For that matter, living creatures, have there souls trapped inside there bodies as well. Which is why, True Resurrection, will not work, if the creature is still alive, walking around inside there current body.