Understanding spiritualists and phantoms


Rules Questions

Grand Lodge

I'm working on building a spiritualist, and I'm having trouble with some of the details. For example, I was considering taking Ghoul Touch as a known spell to be delivered by my phantom, but the wording of the spell raised some questions:

Quote:

Ghoul Touch

Range: touch
Target: living humanoid touched
Duration: 1d6+2 rounds
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates; Spell Resistance yes

DESCRIPTION
Imbuing you with negative energy, this spell allows you to paralyze a single living humanoid for the duration of the spell with a successful melee touch attack.

A paralyzed subject exudes a carrion stench that causes all living creatures (except you) in a 10-foot-radius spread to become sickened (Fortitude negates). A neutralize poison spell removes the effect from a sickened creature, and creatures immune to poison are unaffected by the stench. This is a poison effect.

If I deliver this spell through an ectoplasmic phantom, does it have to make saves to avoid being sickened? Or does it count as "me" for the purposes of being exempt?

Alternatively, is it protected because it isn't a "living creature"? I mean, they're specifically described as being the spirits of the dead. I know that phantoms have the outsider type, and I would normally call outsiders living creatures, but that's true of negative energy elementals as well and I'm hesitant to say they're "alive".


From antilife shell

"You bring into being a mobile, hemispherical energy field that prevents the entrance of most types of living creatures.

The effect hedges out animals, aberrations, dragons, fey, giants, humanoids, magical beasts, monstrous humanoids, oozes, plants, and vermin, but not constructs, elementals, outsiders, or undead."

So this could be a place for deciding what to allow or not.

Grand Lodge

Interesting - I'd never looked at Antilife Shell closely before. I have to admit that I'd be reluctant to declare all outsiders as non-living, since that would make them immune to a lot of things. For example, I don't think I'd expect a demon to be immune to Touch of Idiocy or Phantasmal Killer.

I notice that phantoms have a subtype "phantom", but I haven't been able to find a description of what that subtype means. Does anyone know if a description like that exists?

Sovereign Court

Outsiders are generally considered to be alive. Phantoms are, surprisingly, alive. They're not immune to disease, poison, negative energy and whatnot. I think this is a serious error in design. The phantom subtype would have been an excellent place to rule that they are in fact dead. Maybe even undead, just like how Inevitables are construct-like.

The only creature types that are by default not alive are undead and constructs.


Phantoms are very intentionally not undead, because by default undead are assumed to be virtually always evil. Somebody asked about this recently.


Pathfinder has a default rule to see if you are living. Do you have a constitution score? If so, you are living to some degree. If you do not, you are not living. the description of antilife shell says, "You bring into being a mobile, hemispherical energy field that prevents the entrance of most types of living creatures." Emphasis mine. It then clarifies with a list.

Barring taking a template that changes it, your phantom is indeed living.

Back to ghoul touch. I would say that even though you are the caster, you can designate the phantom to be the one not affected.


andygal wrote:
Phantoms are very intentionally not undead, because by default undead are assumed to be virtually always evil. Somebody asked about this recently.

Which is odd since fluffwise the phantoms are pretty much ghosts (every spiritualist player I've seen referred to their phantom as their "ghost buddy" or similar) and ghosts are the one kind of undead that are explicitly allowed to be whatever alignment.


I think undead immunities (e.g. mind affecting) and vulnerabilities (hard to heal) have more to do with it than alignment.

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