Dead Characters, AoEs, and Item Damage

[The Black Bard]

As the title says, what happens to a dead character that is exposed to an area of effect? Specifically, the character's gear?

Do dead characters still "attend" objects? Are all objects subject to the AoE? Is it treated like a natural 1?

Lots of questions, few answers that I am aware of. I would love to hear what others have to say.

[bob_the_monster]

In my opinion, this encroaches on a per-DM basis.

SRD:

"An item attended by a character (being grasped, touched, or worn) makes saving throws as the character (that is, using the character's saving throw bonus)."

Never mentions that it must be worn by a living character. A dead character is still a character, and can be targeted by abilities such as Breath of Life or Rebuke Death. Therefore a dead character can still have his items make a save, at least RAW.

I would say RAI, they don't get a save. That said magic items are pretty hard to destroy since they get extra HP and hardness. This is one of those areas where the creators of the game mechanics really didn't think "hey can a dead PC attend his equipment?".

By hardness rules, I think that the player's corpse would be battered and burnt long before the magic items were destroyed. Because, ya'know, corpses aren't so magical. Unless we are talking necromancers ;-P

[leo1925]

I think that they use their own save, keep in mind that a lot of DMs (including me) let their players get away with it and simply have the items survive undamaged.

[Set]

I'd go with 'attended' just to be generous (or just ignore them entirely, as we sometimes do with fallen enemies, who, in theory, should probably remain on the board and count as difficult terrain, but are so often just plucked off the map and ignored once they fall), in a 'let's not kick them while they're down / adding insult to injury' sort of way.