Sculpting a petrified creature.

[Keiger]

So, I had a thought today. What happens if you use contingency to use Fabricate to sculpt yourself after you turn yourself to stone (like putting on wings, cosmetic changes, turn yourself into a dragon, etc), then have a follower or something use Stone to Flesh to un-petrify you?

Edit: Just realized that contingency requires casting the secondary spell, so fabricating yourself wouldn't work. You can still have the follower do it though.

[Scavion]

Er, because after you become stone, any kind of sculpting is very likely to flat out kill you if you were then to be Stone to Fleshed.

A gory end to be sure.

Blood spouting from where limbs used to be attached, blood no longer reaching areas that were previously aligned with veins, and no longer attached nervous systems...

[Keiger]

Scavion wrote:

Er, because after you become stone, any kind of sculpting is very likely to flat out kill you if you were then to be Stone to Fleshed.

A gory end to be sure.

Blood spouting from where limbs used to be attached, blood no longer reaching areas that were previously aligned with veins, and no longer attached nervous systems...

Maybe?

Flesh to stone states:
"The subject, along with all its carried gear, turns into a mindless, inert statue. If the statue resulting from this spell is broken or damaged, the subject (if ever returned to its original state) has similar damage or deformities. The creature is not dead, but it does not seem to be alive either when viewed with spells such as deathwatch."

A resculpted statue is a whole and intact object.

Then there is Stone to flesh:
"This spell restores a petrified creature to its normal state, restoring life and goods. The creature must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to survive the process. Any petrified creature, regardless of size, can be restored. The spell also can convert a mass of stone into a fleshy substance. Such flesh is inert and lacking a vital life force unless a life force or magical energy is available. For example, this spell would turn an animated stone statue into an animated flesh statue, but an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue. You can affect an object that fits within a cylinder from 1 foot to 3 feet in diameter and up to 10 feet long or a cylinder of up to those dimensions in a larger mass of stone."

So.. there is a creature with a life force within the sculpture to prevent the newly shaped, whole and intact sculpture from becoming an inert lump of flesh. How would people go about resolving this?

[Doomed Hero]

The rules are unclear on the actual results, but it's a super interesting thing to think about for story-purposes.

I once ran a game where a secret society of grey dwarves used Pertrification and Shape Stone to change their appearance so they could infiltrate surface dwarf society.

They'd also use the same trick to create unnatural monsters (I used Eidolon evolutions and applied them to Duergar).

One of their favored methods of torture was to petrify their victims, smooth over their eyes, or remove their limbs and then un-petrify them.

The society elders had learned to project their consciousnesses outward while they were stone, using abilities like Magic Jar or Project Image, and then petrify their own bodies to change them or keep them from aging. One even made a stone golem out of his own petrified body.

The Living Monolith prestige class and the old Green Star Adept class both got reflavored for their use.

A lot of the influence came Tzimisce fleshcrafting (from Vampire: the Masquerade).

[Le Petite Mort]

If it were my campaign, I'd absolutely allow for cosmetic changes. If, for example, your statues were made to look elven, people would treat you as an elf upon your re-corporation. However, you would not suddenly become proficient in elven weapons, have a +2 racial bonus to INT and Dex, etc.

Any change made in this manner would be cosmetic. If you were given angel wings, they would look real upon re-corporation, and you might even be able to move them slightly. However, they won't give you so much as a damage reduction when falling unless you do something more to magic them up.

Mechanically speaking, I think this solution allows for creative players to get some limited mileage out of the technique (basically, a pseudo alter self with no duration limit) without becoming unbalanced.

In terms of flavor, you can think of flesh to stone as instant fossilization. The cells of the body have the same shape, all the veins are hooked up, the muscles still meet in all the same ways...just made of stone instead of living material. When stone to flesh reverts this process, all the pieces work together still.

Using something like stone shape to add wings onto a creature-cum-statue could make visually elegant features, but upon reversion the wings would have no vasculature, no muscles, no vitality. They may look like wings, but without internal anatomy they would be useless.

If players REALLY wanted to pursue this, I would regard it as 'invention' within the world as well as meta-game. For example, if a wizard really wanted to be able to alter creatures' anatomies in this manner, he might need to put a lot of ranks into Heal, Knowledge (nature), Knowledge (arcana), and Craft (stonecutter). Once he had, say, 6 ranks in each I might make a feat that allows them to permanently give things analogous to some eidolon evolutions to other creatures. It would be a crafting feat, and work along similar restrictions.

It's basically about letting players get creative without overbalancing everything.

[Pizza Lord]

Obviously the form would have any changes, but they would likely be mostly non-functional and painful. As painful as having your fingers filed into claws or your shoulder-blades and back flesh stretched out across an 8-foot wingspan.

Obviously certain changes may be more or less painful than others. For example, filing the teeth of a petrified person into points might not hurt as much adding demon horns, but it won't give you a bite attack. Also, depending on the sculptor's skill (and dental skill) you might end up with exposed nerves or cavities.

Those wings you made may be masterfully sculpted and look like feathers when stone, but they turn into lumpy masses of flesh and bone when converted back.

Even trying to make bat-like wings of flesh, you'd still have to have some way of differentiating stone 'flesh' from stone 'bone' to make sure you got the right parts in the right place... and once you've gone below 'skin-deep'... that's probably about impossible... and not many creatures have enough spare flesh on their whole body to make wings of the size most winged creatures have.

[Cevah]

If you mean sculpt as in a chisel carving away undesired stone leaving the perfect image of something else, then I would say depetrifying would likely kill the creature since they would take all that chiseling damage.

If you mean sculpt as in magic flowing of stone (a ls stone shape), then I would say the depetrifying might have a fort save, but very possibly be no damage.

However, if you can gain the services of a Mute Hag, they have Shaping Touch to do the same.

/cevah

[fearcypher]

If they want to use it for something cosmatic akin to plastic surgery then I'd say it would be fine with no damage if it was minor. If it was a significant change then maybe a CON penalty or just a max hp reduction. If they're trying to use it to get flight or a bite attack or some mechanical advantage out of it just have them make a really high fort save or die. Or don't even give a save.