Type Change

[SylvrDragon]

Alright, so I"m GMing a campaign and a player wanted t apply a template that change him to undead with the augmented subtype. This brought up a couple of interesting debates and we couldn't come to a complete conclusion on any of them, as we good points for the arguments we had.

First, does the creature still count as it's old type for spells, since it still has it's old type as part of the augmented subtype. The subtype is augmented such and such, so it's technically not the same, but it is partially the same.

Secondly, what happens to subtypes? The applied template specifically says the type becomes undead with the augmented subtype. Now to me this suggests the old subtypes are lost, as it doesn't mention keeping them at all. But the players argument is that they are attached to the old type, so therefor are kept because of the augmented subtype.

Now I know I am GM so I can make a decision one way or the other on both and it goes. But I like to be fair to my players, so I want to try and make sure I'm running this right.

[Jeraa]

SylvrDragon wrote:

First, does the creature still count as it's old type for spells, since it still has it's old type as part of the augmented subtype. The subtype is augmented such and such, so it's technically not the same, but it is partially the same.

Nope. A human that becomes an Undead is no longer a Humanoid, and so can't be target with spells or effects that only target Humanoids. The augmented subtype actually has no mechanical use at all. As James Jacobs says, its just flavor.

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Secondly, what happens to subtypes? The applied template specifically says the type becomes undead with the augmented subtype. Now to me this suggests the old subtypes are lost, as it doesn't mention keeping them at all. But the players argument is that they are attached to the old type, so therefor are kept because of the augmented subtype.

Unless a template stats it looses its subtypes, it retains any subtypes it has. A template will state everything that it changes about the base creature. If subtypes are not mentioned, then they do not change.

For example, the Skeleton template specifically states you retain any subtype except an alignment subtype.

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Type: The creature's type changes to undead. It retains any subtype except for alignment subtypes (such as good) and subtypes that indicate kind (such as giant). It does not gain the augmented subtype. It uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.