commune with nature: "unnatural creature"

[Thomas Hand]

The spell commune with nature gives you "presence of powerful unnatural creatures" within a radius of a couple miles. The question is: What are unnatural creatures? Following suggestions come to mind:

1) Only aberrations, constructs, most outsiders (no elementals) and undead are unnatural. These are just weird things; they don't eat, most of them don't breath etc.

2) Everything what the knowledge nature skill can not identify is unnatural. Thus, everything besides animals, fey, (monstrous) humanoids, plants, vermin is unnatural. A dragon in this case would be unnatural because you need knowledge arcana to figure out what it is.

3) Everything an animal wouldn't attack is unnatural. The attack trick from the handle animal skill works only on "humanoids, monstrous humanoids, giants, or other animals". An animal would consider everything besides this as unnatural. This would mean that e.g. fey and dragons are unnatural.

Any more suggestions? Is it written in the rules somewhere?

[mplindustries]

I don't know if it's written anywhere, but I would consider it any creature animated purely by magic, or "not from here."

That would mean:

Aberrations, Constructs, non-native Outsiders (including Elementals), and Undead.

[CEFS]

Good question! I think it would also depend on the context. Some creatures might be natural to one environment while unnatural in the other. This might especially be true for other planes.

I would go for a case to case call and ask the question if the creature has an ecological niche or role in the ecosystem. Although I admit this could get tricky, and perhaps some standard ruling would be easier.

Would a rust monster living in an abandoned mine be unnatural because it is an aberration? (I would say no)

Keep in mind that the spell detect the presence of a "powerful" unnatural creature. So a skeletal rat might no be detected, unless you would interpret the skeletal rat as being powerful in its 'unnaturalness'...hehe the plot thickens...