Hide from undead spell and Haunts foxglove manor

[justaguide]

Hey!

running this tomorrow. I know my cleric is going to have this spell, Hide from undead, going for the full 5o min on all the group (4 people and the wolf for a ranger). I am guessing that this makes them invisible to all the haunts. So they would go through the mansion and not see the haunts and they wouldn't trigger because the haunts can't see them. However, in the spell says it ends if they touch an undead creature. Is the whole house considered undead because of Vorel's spirit? Or if they touch a trigger, like piano or something would that cause the spell to end?

Thanks!

[mplindustries]

Even though it makes no sense, Haunts are not undead, they're not actually creatures at all--they're closer to traps than anything else.

Hide from Undead hides from the creature type: Undead. Something needs to be a creature to have a creature type. Hence, yeah, it does nothing. Which is silly and makes no sense, but that's the rule.

[James Risner]

Haunt isn't a creature so Hide from Undead is a no-op.

[justaguide]

Under the haunt description:

"some haunts can be tricked by effects like hide from undead or invisibility."

Earlier the rules say "Detect undead or detect alignment spells of the appropriate type allow an observer a chance to notice a haunt even before it manifests"

if you go under detect undead it states: "You can detect the aura that surrounds undead creatures"

so if it says that it can be found under the rules, why can't the ones at Foxglove manor be found?

I just need more justification when I have to tell this to my players and they will point out the same things...

I'm sure this has come up before in a thread... can anyone point me to it?

[justaguide]

So I read a thread on haunts by James Jacob. Seems there is a category weakness in the stat block of a haunt. If it isn't in this (or if there is no weakness) then detect undead won't work...