Undead bloodline question

Treats formerly humanoid undead as humanoid for the purposes of spell effects. Since humanoids are alive, does this mean that a formly humanoid undead would qualify as a living creature for my spells?

Bloodline Arcana: Some undead are susceptible to your mind-affecting spells. Corporeal undead that were once humanoids are treated as humanoids for the purposes of determining which spells affect them.

I'd hazard to say yes, so long as it's a spell that is mind-affecting, since that's what that Bloodline Arcana is targeted at.

Treats formerly humanoid undead as humanoid for the purposes of spell effects. Since humanoids are alive, does this mean that a formly humanoid undead would qualify as a living creature for my spells?

They are still dead. Positive energy would still harm them for example.

What specific thing are you trying to accomplish?

Murdock Mudeater wrote:

Treats formerly humanoid undead as humanoid for the purposes of spell effects. Since humanoids are alive, does this mean that a formly humanoid undead would qualify as a living creature for my spells?

They are still dead. Positive energy would still harm them for example.

What specific thing are you trying to accomplish?

Pure curiosity.

Regarding channelled positive energy, yes, this doesn't affect channel. Because channel is not a spell.

But for spell like cure light wounds, it does create a very odd situation where the target is both Undead and a Living creature....Does the caster pick, or does the bloodline force the caster to treate all (formerly humanoid) undead as living creatures for spell purposes?

Mainly, and this is just curiosity, a cleric 1/sorcerer 1 with this bloodline, are they able to damage (formerly humanoid) undead with Cure Light Wounds?

Obviously, if they can't, then they could just use Inflict light wounds to deal damage to undead. So it doesn't really change anything, but it would defintiely be something the cleric would need to know in advance.

Cure light wounds isn't mind-affecting. The arcana specifically calls out mind-affecting spells. Thus, it shouldn't have any effect on cure light wounds, heal, etc.

Frankly, it'd take a seriously corner case mind-affecting spell that specifically calls out that the target must be a living, humanoid, creature for this to matter. And I can think of no such case.

Cure light wounds isn't mind-affecting. The arcana specifically calls out mind-affecting spells.

It does say that in a fluff capacity, but it doesn't actually give any spell rules to make that happen. The only rule it adds is that Corporeal, formerly humanoid, undead, are treated as humanoid for deterimining what spells affect them.

So while I love the idea of getting to use mind affecting spells on undead, that is something that also does not work with a RAW reading of this ability. Which mind-affecting spells are you thinking of that can affect which undead based on the wording of this ability?

Anonymous Warrior wrote:

Cure light wounds isn't mind-affecting. The arcana specifically calls out mind-affecting spells.

It does say that in a fluff capacity, but it doesn't actually give any spell rules to make that happen. The only rule it adds is that Corporeal, formerly humanoid, undead, are treated as humanoid for deterimining what spells affect them.

So while I love the idea of getting to use mind affecting spells on undead, that is something that also does not work with a RAW reading of this ability. Which mind-affecting spells are you thinking of that can affect which undead based on the wording of this ability?

It gets worse. the mindless quality is not an inherent part of the undead type (i.e. there are enough non-mindless undead that they are not unique exceptions), so one could read that treating them as humaoid does not make mindless undead vulnerable to mind-affecting spells.

On intelligent undead, charm/dominate person saves you a few spell levels over charm/dominate monster.

Firstly, mind-affecting is an awfully game-mechanic-specific term to be considered 'only fluff'. It seems to me that the two sentences should be taken as a single ability: some mind-affecting spells work on undead, and those are the one's that target humanoids when used against undead that once were humanoids. Remember, this is CRB, so it's likely that the author's were very careful with following the "Fluff, then the actual rules" guideline that's often applied to rules interpretations now.

Second, I'd say anything that specifically targets humanoids and not undead and is mind-affecting is fair game: Charm Person, Hold Person, and Daze come to mind.

Otherwise, you'd have to use Charm monster (3 spell levels higher for a wizard/sorcerer), Hold Monster (2 levels), and Daze Monster (2 levels).

As for when it'd matter that the undead was living or dead, my point would be that it's very unlikely to matter when it comes to Mind-Affecting spells.

I don't think it's just fluff. "Bloodline Arcana: Some undead are susceptible to your mind-affecting spells. Corporeal undead that were once humanoids are treated as humanoids for the purposes of determining which spells affect them." That's a complete description of the arcana. It establishes that it's talking about mind-affecting spells and then goes on to clarify the effect. So you'd be able to put a Human Skeleton to sleep, but you wouldn't be able to use Vampiric Touch on them to heal yourself or Cure Light Wounds to heal them.

I'll tack on that if the arcana only functions with mind-affecting spells vs. humanoid undead, it'd be fairly balanced with some of the other bloodline arcanas.

Fey: +2 DC w/ compulsion spells.
Infernal: +2 DC w/ with charm spells.
Elemental: switch your energy dealing spells to the type of your school.
Undead: your mind-affecting spells can effect humanoid undead.