Becoming Incorporeal Undead via Ghost Syrup

[Omelite]

Ghost Syrup is a poison which turns you permanently incorporeal if it causes enough Str damage to drop your effective Str to 0.

Normally, Undead are immune to Ghost Syrup, because it's a poison, it requires a fort save and doesn't affect objects, and it inflicts ability damage to Str. Undead are immune to those effects due to the Undead Traits (Ex) ability.

However, there are various ways to use Ghost Syrup to become incorporeal while undead, or to become undead while already incorporeal, and I'm wondering if there's a clear cut answer on how these effects would overlap in such cases.

Case 1. A corporeal undead (doesn't matter what kind, but we'll say a Juju Zombie since that's a relatively easy template for a PC to get, via an Onyx Spear) polymorphs into a human using alter self. As a spell from the polymorph subschool, Alter Self causes the undead to lose all extraordinary and supernatural abilities that depend on [its] original form, which would include Undead Traits (Ex). While polymorphed, the undead creature is susceptible to poison, ability damage, and effects requiring fort saves. It drinks the Ghost Syrup, intentionally failing its saves until its effective Str is 0. It becomes incorporeal due to the Ghost Syrup's permanent effect. Later, Alter Self wears off, and the creature regains its Undead Traits (Ex) ability, including the immunity to poison.

There are two rulings I can see for this, and I don't know which is right (or if some other ruling is better).

Possible Ruling 1: When a creature has immunity to poison (such as from undead traits), it becomes immune to the permanent incorporeal effect from Ghost Syrup. This would also imply that for a non-undead character, Delay Poison would grant corporeality in addition to the listed spells like Wish (although the ability drain would still need to be dealt with separately).

Possible Ruling 2: The poison itself only has a duration of 6 rounds, and if the permanent incorporeality was a poison effect, it could be healed with Neutralize Poison instead of Remove Curse. The permanent effect of Ghost Syrup is not itself a poison and immunity to poison has no effect on it once the permanent effect is active. This ruling would allow a polymorphed undead to gain incorporeality via Ghost Syrup and keep it when returning to normal form.

Case 2: Very similar to case 1 as far as rulings, so see above for the possible rulings. A character who is already incorporeal due to Ghost Syrup could undergo the Eternal Apotheosis ritual to become a Lich (or any other method of gaining an undead template that isn't limited to corporeal creatures). After achieving Lichdom, would the incorporeal quality be lost due to Ruling 1, or would it be retained due to Ruling 2? I'm guessing most people would rule similarly for both cases.

Personally I think Ruling 2 is correct. Given that remove curse and not neutralize poison is listed as able to cure the incorporeality, I would rule that the permanent effect from Ghost Syrup is a curse effect and the poison effect is only the 6 rounds of poison.

[blahpers]

Nonstarter. Alter self doesn't alter your creature type, and your undead traits come from being the undead creature type, not your specific form. Still immune to ghost syrup.

[Avoron]

blahpers wrote:

Nonstarter. Alter self doesn't alter your creature type, and your undead traits come from being the undead creature type, not your specific form. Still immune to ghost syrup.

I'm not sure that follows. I mean, darkvision also comes from being the undead creature type, but it still gets lost when they polymorph, right? Because it's an extraordinary ability that depends on form.

[merpius]

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/creature-types/#TOC-Un dead lists all of the immunities as "traits" as opposed to extraordinary abilites. I believe you don't explicitly lose traits with polymorph; it is purely at GM's discretion. So, RAW is that this is GM dependent. I believe most GMs would not want undead to lose the immunities (in this case to a 2nd level spell) because those, largely, are what make undead different from not undead. Similarly, I think Vampires who polymorph don't lose their sunlight weakness.

I'm pretty sure there has been pretty extensive commentary on polymorphing undead, perhaps even a FAQ. But I'm terrible at finding FAQs.

Anyhow, that still leaves the second method.

A living creature with 0 Str in incapable of moving and unconcious, though an incorporeal creature has no Strength score, so I guess this poison would leave you incorporeal and only temporarily unconcious, or maybe not unconcious at all, or could be unconcious until someone does something about the ability drain? Not really sure; seems like they didn't totally think it through.

Anyhow, you're left with an incorporeal living creature; you could then, in theory turn it undead by any means of turnign something undead, so long as it works on incorporeal creatures; the result would not be a ghost, though (unless the method was to create a ghost) it would be an incorporeal version of whatever undead you created.

I'm pretty sure both the conversion of Str damage to Str drain and the incorporeality are instantaneous effects, not permanent. Meaning that things liek Delay Poison and Neutralize poison would not undo them. To fix the drain you need Restoration. To fix the incorporeality you need one of the listed spells. The latter could be ruled to be a curse, and, as such, certain other effects may be able to undo it, but that would be RAI, not strict RAW.

[VoodistMonk]

Anything involving polymorph is suspect, at best.

Method 2, being living corporeal, living incorpreal, incorpreal Lich... seems completely legit, though.

[Dave Justus]

I wouldn't expect a lich to be effected by Ghost Syrup anymore than any other poison, regardless of whether the creature was subject to it before the underwent the transformation. Becoming a lich includes a physical transformation, and a pretty complete one at that.

[merpius]

Quote:

"Lich" is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature), provided it can create the required phylactery. A lich retains all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

Any living creature; it doesn't exclude living incorporeal creature, and the word "any" certainly seems to include them.

Note that just because you are incorporeal doesn't mean you can't be physically transformed; it just means that you have no substance (or less substance) on the material plane.

Pretty sure, RAW, an incorporeal living creature could become a lich (if they meet the other requirements).

Do you have a rule that indicates that they cannot? I believe the above rule indicates that they can.

[Dave Justus]

I'm not saying they couldn't become a lich (assuming you get around the various challenges.) I'm saying a lich wouldn't be effected by a poison once they became a lich.

[merpius]

Oh, yeah, definitely agree. I'm pretty sure that the Unded Immunities trait, at least at most tables, would not go away under polymorph spells, and, likely, under any circumstances that didn't explicitly make it go away; thus they would be immune to poison.

So, then, since becoming a lich AFTER the had already become incorporeal doesn't involve them being affected by a poison (it's an instantaneous effect), they could become incorporeal, then turn into a lich, and be an incorporeal lich. Kinda like old school demi-liches... sorta. :)

[VoodistMonk]

If built right, as a PC, you could be an absolute murderhobo and become the BBEG for a campaign.

A fully leveled PC, say 17 levels of Cleric or Warpriest or Sorcerer or Wizard or whatever, focused on tactics that work against the playable PC races this game provides. So you build your PC to be an NPC bad guy from the beginning.

A Lich provides its own challenges, add in being incorpreal, and full class levels... you have yourself a good bad guy.