Considering undead are explicitly immune to starvation, why do some undead (such as ghouls) need to eat? Is it more like a drug addiction than actual hunger.
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In a recent poll, it was discovered that most ghouls agree that humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings are delicious, especially with ketchup. Gnomes are still disgusting though.
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They have the hunger because they are deeply wrong. They are beings created with energy that should only destroy. They are powered by the void. The all-consuming emptiness. They consume because they must.
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Some undead do require living blood or flesh though, perhaps to help maintain their lifelike appearance because negative energy alone won't.
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Because it was the mythology for the creature before it was adapted to D&D or Pathfinder.
Because eating people despite the fact that they don’t really need to makes them more evil. If something needs to eat to survive that is not really evil. If you don’t need to eat and still eat sentient beings that is a lot more evil than doing so to survive.
If a vampire needs to feed on human blood or die you can at least have some sympathy for them. If they don’t need to feed on human blood, but do any ways that removes any sympathy for them.
Ghouls have it as a central concept of their undead nature. If you trust the background description of the demon lord Kabriri, then they are a form of undead that were created with the first act of cannibalism. And I would not find it unusual for the "last survivors" of a donner party to turn into ghouls when they die. Vampires likely have similar issues.
But in general? Like for mindless zombies? Then the simplest guess is the vestiges of their living instincts are mixing with their undead instincts.
As undead, there is an inborn hatred for the living, and as a result mindless undead attack the living. Additionally, their stomachs are empty, and normally, that would lead to a desire to eat- this would normally be something that could be ignored (like the desire for warmth)... but it can be conveniently combined with their "kill all living" instead, so they can transfer that instinct over and confuse the two.
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They have the hunger because they are deeply wrong. They are beings created with energy that should only destroy. They are powered by the void. The all-consuming emptiness. They consume because they must.
This is very accurate, let's drill into it more, thinking about the essences behind magic. One of the four essences that make up the multiverse in Pathfinder is called vital essence, or life. Constructs don't have it, but living creatures do, via positive energy. In the natural order, negative energy breaks things apart, the yin and yang of vital essence. But vital essence is not just alive or dead, it's the essence that presides over one more thing, faith and instinct, the part of you that isn't rational thought or normal emotional responses (governed by mental essence, which is the flipside to vital just like material and spiritual essences are to each other). So what happens when the energy of destruction is perverted into creation? Well it can work, creating an undead. But the instinct you're imbued with is different, which often leads to dark urges shifting your alignment even if you were good in life (or even giving instincts to kill and destroy life to even mindless undead). Depending on the form, however, the lack of vital essence can have other side effects for the undead form, especially one that attempts to hold onto all of mental, material, and spiritual essences, like a corporeal undead with a mind. Many of them have urges and cravings to consume some aspect from mortals to sustain themselves. Something like meat or blood with ties to vital and material essences for ghouls and vampires, energy drain tugging at the spiritual for others, especially incorporeal udnead.
But vital essence is not just alive or dead, it's the essence that presides over one more thing, faith and instinct, the part of you that isn't rational thought or normal emotional responses (governed by mental essence, which is the flipside to vital just like material and spiritual essences are to each other).
This made me ponder whether Vital magic is good match to Confusion ...or some other instinctive level magic (Heroism?)
A lot of these answers are fine, but one thing flies in the face of it all. I'm now looking at the PFRPG 1e Bestiary. (After all, this IS the "Pathfinder First Edition" subforum.) In particular, I'm looking at the "Undead" creature type description on page 310. Or for those of you who don't have the book handy at the moment, you can look at this page of the PF SRD. I quote: "Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep."
It doesn't say that the undead don't HAVE to eat to survive. No, they DO NOT EAT. Obviously, all that flavor text for ghouls, zombies, etc violate that description. There aren't even any special abilities or anything in the stats to override that generality. It seems to me that creature type description is wrong.
I know this is an old thread but it’s a slow day.
Undead do not eat in the traditional sense so the bestiary is correct. They don’t digest organic matter for nutrients to continue to live. The fact that what they do may mimic what other living creatures do when eating is beside the point.
Most of the undead that “Feed” also create other of their kind this way. A ghoul’s bite is how they transmit Ghoul Fever and create more of their kind. So, eating is actually part of the reproductive cycle, instead of being necessary to continue their existence.
Undead who do not reproduce through eating have other reasons for doing so. The most common is as a form of torture. Being eaten alive most creatures will find terrifying. That may be enough reason for something like a zombie to devour its victims. In the case of a mindless undead like zombies this something built into the undead by the nature of its existence. Undead did not evolve, they are created. So whatever dark powers originally created them did so with certain behaviors built into them.
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It seems to me that creature type description is wrong.
Can a creature with teeth and a jaw bite? Yes.
Can a creature with jaw muscles chew? Yes.Can a creature with throat muscles swallow? Yes.
Is that eating? It depends. You can build a mechanical automaton and it can perform those tasks and it's technically not eating. But if such an android starts masticating bits of you, you're going to complain to the manufacturer that it tried to eat you. The manufacturer will calmly explain that robots do not eat, so it never happened.
My point is that it's easy to be pedantic and wrong at the same time, by trying to point out "mistakes".
But wait... there's more. You can always have exceptions to a general rule. That's how Pathfinder works. Undead do not eat... unless the specific creature entry says they do, in which case those ones do.
It's usually more productive to seek ways of interpreting the rules such that they remain intact, instead of seeking gotcha wording flaws.
THREAD HAS BEEN NECRO'D - for those who missed it.
I quote: "Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep."
It doesn't say that the undead don't HAVE to eat to survive. No, they DO NOT EAT.
Paizo also has a "Specific Trumps General" clause. This means that "Undead do not eat" is superceded by "Ghouls do eat" or "Vampires do eat" or anything else that is more specific than "all undead".
As to the general question: Very few of the undead beasties are fully original Paizo products, most of them pull from real-world myths and lore. The reason Vampires drink blood is because Vampires that don't drink blood aren't recognisable as vampires. The same goes for Ghouls eating human(oid) flesh, etc.
I liked the essence idea... the negative energies that animate/create/drive the Undead are energies of consumption/decay/entropy.
I have always just assumed the basic ones that have eaten in other media also ate in PF1 for the sake of tradition... simply being recognizable as what it is supposed to be. I had actually never even found the description in their type to be counter to those traditions until reading this thread. It had literally never crossed my mind.
If this was in the rules arena, I would say specific trumps general. Not all Undead are known to feast on flesh or brains or blood or whatever, so it's safer to say they don't unless otherwise driven to do so by traditions outside Paizo's control. Lol.
Those are good answers. Thank you.
(Maybe my conclusion "that creature type description is wrong" was hasty. I was just trying to think of an answer to someone who recently said to me "I thought undead don't eat.")
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most people eat because they are hungry (or think they are). not because of their need for nourishment.
I think the undead in question can be thought of as 'most people'.
Considering undead are explicitly immune to starvation, why do some undead (such as ghouls) need to eat? Is it more like a drug addiction than actual hunger.
In my opinion, the undead are not "immune to starvation" as much as "do not consume human food." IMO, all undead need to consume something of mortals to continue their existence. Ghouls and zombies consume flesh. Vampires drink blood. Liches and similarly powerful undead consume the souls of the living.
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THREAD HAS BEEN NECRO'D - for those who missed it.
I quote: "Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep."
It doesn't say that the undead don't HAVE to eat to survive. No, they DO NOT EAT.
Paizo also has a "Specific Trumps General" clause. This means that "Undead do not eat" is superceded by "Ghouls do eat" or "Vampires do eat" or anything else that is more specific than "all undead".
As to the general question: Very few of the undead beasties are fully original Paizo products, most of them pull from real-world myths and lore. The reason Vampires drink blood is because Vampires that don't drink blood aren't recognisable as vampires. The same goes for Ghouls eating human(oid) flesh, etc.
I think the "ability to eat" can be separate from "trying to eat".
A normal, unbuffed level 1 human "can't" sit and meditate while sitting on a fire. Only some creatures like tieflings might have some luck there, since they might have fire resistance that lets to get around it. But humans can "try" to stay in a fire.... with obvious results.
Vampires and ghouls are the only ones with something resembling a functional digestive system. They eat and it goes somewhere. But a zombie can shove hunks of "things" down its mouth hole.
Of course, from there, it is just clutter that eventually damages its nonfunctional organs and contribute to its decay and spilling guts everywhere. Basically, think of it like pica, where someone swallows quarters, and might have to go to the hospital for it.