|
| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
The text reads:
With a clammy caress and a word to the powers lurking beyond death, you can reshape a dead body look like another creature or even a specific person so long as you have firsthand knowledge of how that creature or person actually looks.
You can make the corpse one size larger or smaller and change anything else about it including its apparent type, gender, or age. Creatures with a reason to suspect deception may make a Will Saving Throw to realize that the corpse was altered. If you chose to make the corpse look like a specific individual anyone who knows that individual can make a Will save to realize that the corpse is not actually that person. However, if a creature fails its Will save by 5 or less they believe the corpse is that of someone who closely resembled the person they knew rather than a deliberate fake. This spell merely changes the appearance of the corpse. Any spell or effect that targets the corpse (such as speak with dead or raise dead) treats it as if it still had its original appearance.
How does the work with Animate Dead and Lesser Animate Dead? Can you make a large creature medium to target it with Lesser Animate Dead? How will that change it's stats? Can you add claws, raise it and change a zombie's slam into a claw attack, essentially allowing it to do slashing damage? Could you add wings and let your new zombie fly?
This just came up in our last game. The necromancer raised a giant weasel with Lesser Animate Dead by first using Sculpt Corpse to make it medium. I'm the GM and I ruled on the fly that I'd allow it this time and apply the young template to the resulting zombie to adjust it's stats for its new size. But I'm not sure I should allow it again because of that last line, "Any spell or effect that targets the corpse (such as speak with dead or raise dead) treats it as if it still had its original appearance."
This can be interesting...
In our game, a friend of us is going to be beheaded in the guillotine. We want to save him, but breaking him out of prison is out of the question. So... could we
ah) Steal a corpse from the graveyard,
bee) Raise it as a zombie,
say) Sculpt the corpse with the spell, so he would look as our friend,
dee) Using invisibility, sneak into the prison, getting our friend and leaving the animated corpse instead
eh) Finally, let the mob lynch the zombie.
|
I think you're right about the last sentence in that it should animate as the original form, because animate dead would be a spell that targets the corpse.
As a note, it doesn't say that the creature would animate as it's original form, only that it would be treated as it's original form for the purposes of the spell. As I read it, if you make a large creature medium with sculpt corpse, and you animate it, it's still medium. However, if you make a large creature medium and attempt to use lesser animate dead, the spell will fail because the creature is still treated as large for the purposes of spells that target it.
Also, while you're free to interpret and implement rules as you see fit, I don't see sculpt corpse as being able to add wings, claws, etc. as it is written, I read it as simply affecting size/appearance.
|
|
Also, while you're free to interpret and implement rules as you see fit, I don't see sculpt corpse as being able to add wings, claws, etc. as it is written, I read it as simply affecting size/appearance.
As a clarification, you could add those things, but there's nothing to indicate that they would actually work (e.g. You could make a human look like a harpy, but that doesn't mean it would be able to fly or have claw attacks if you animated it as a zombie).