Mortal Coil: Questions on the Undead

[Derek Vande Brake]

Part 1: Gaze Attacks and the Undead
1. What happens when a Bodak and a Medusa look into each other's eyes? Does the Bodak get petrified? Does the Medusa get turned into a Bodak? Both? Or do the gaze attacks cancel each other out?
2. Does a petrified Bodak still have a gaze attack? IE, if you looked into the statue's eyes, would you risk becoming a Bodak yourself?
3. Does a Medusa lose her normal gaze attack on becoming a Bodak? And if not, are the effects independent of each other, or tied together? IE, are you either safe or a petrified Bodak, or is there the chance of being a petrified non-Bodak or a non-petrified Bodak?

Part 2: Hunger and the Undead
4. Ghouls have an insatiable hunger for the flesh of corpses, preferably rotten but they'll take it fresh. But undead don't *need* to eat. If you trap a ghoul in a tomb for 10,000 years, it would simply go insane with hunger, but not waste away. This implies that even if the origin is magical, the hunger is a psychological condition rather than a physiological one. So where does the food go? Undead have no biology - so wouldn't it eventually just collect in the ghoul's undead stomach until it burst?
5. Does illusionary flesh work? If the ghoul *thinks* it is eating, would that prevent the hunger becoming all-consuming?

Part 3: Spells and the Undead
6. The Raise Dead spell (and the like) specifically call out undead creatures - which would indicate that undead can be targeted as corpses, normally. Does this also work with the Restore Corpse and Clean Skeleton spells?
7. If you target a zombie with Clean Skeleton, does it become a skeleton?
8. If you target a skeleton with Restore Corpse, does it become a zombie?
9. If you target a normally fleshy undead, like a vampire, with Clean Skeleton, does it remove all the flesh? Is this painful to the vampire, and would that count as hp damage? Since skeletons do not have hearts, would this render the vampire immune to being staked?
10. If you target an injured undead with Restore Corpse, does it heal it? Does it restore hp, or at least hp lost due to slashing or piercing attacks?
11. The Restore Corpse spell specifically says the meat is rotten and not fit for consumption. Is this true even if the Purify Food and Drink spell is used? Is the unsuitability for consumption a result of it being rotten, or an effect in addition to it being rotten?
12. Looking back at part 2, would a ghoul be able to eat the flesh created by a Restore Corpse spell?

[Bob Bob Bob]

1. Medusa has to save repeatedly or get negative levels. Bodak is immune to the Medusa's gaze (Fort save that does not affect objects and is not harmless).
2. I believe the Bodak gaze continues to function, though the reasoning is somewhat messy (oh, and good luck finding a way to petrify the Bodak in the first place). This is because petrified says:

Petrified wrote:

A petrified character has been turned to stone and is considered unconscious. If a petrified character cracks or breaks, but the broken pieces are joined with the body as he returns to flesh, he is unharmed. If the character's petrified body is incomplete when it returns to flesh, the body is likewise incomplete and there is some amount of permanent hit point loss and/or debilitation.

Since closing your eyes while unconscious is not required (to the best of my knowledge) the Bodak's eyes would still be open and the gaze would still function.

3. Medusa doesn't become a Bodak. It's a monstrous humanoid, not a humanoid.

4. Yes, only fluff requires that they eat. Only fluff covers normal digestion and excretion as well. Do you need rules on how characters and monsters poop?
5. Now we're in the realm of pure fluff but it depends on how you treat the need for flesh. If it's psychological, illusionary flesh would work. If it's spiritual (eating lingering portions of the soul or whatever) then it would not. That's a campaign fluff thing though.

6. If by Clean Skeleton you mean Decompose Corse, yes, because "Target one corpse or corporeal undead". As for Restore Corpse, no, because "Target corpse touched" and the other spell has established that a corporeal undead is not a corpse (it's a creature).
7. No, because it doesn't say it does (it penalizes rolls and AC and CMD).
8. No, because it's not a valid target.
9. No, because 7.
10. No, because 8 and it doesn't say it does.
11. Purify food and drink makes it suitable for eating. "This spell makes spoiled, rotten, diseased, poisonous, or otherwise contaminated food and water pure and suitable for eating and drinking." So it doesn't matter what's wrong with it to make it unsuitable for eating, purify food and drink fixes that.
12. Absolutely.