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We had an interesting discussion over on my local PFS lodge's discord and thought I would bring it up to a wider audience.
A number of spells and effects target a living creature. The basic question is do the rules make an unseen servant be a living creature?
We had an incident where a GM ruled that a haunt did not trigger for a US but did for someone's familiar, and it it ended up killing said familiar; the basis for this was the idea of the haunt triggering on a living creature. While we're generally fine with the ruling in the moment, there has been much discussion on the subject, and we're in 3 camps.
1. Because it is classified as a creature and does not have any trait that says otherwise, it is living.
2. Because it is classified as a creature but otherwise does not have a trait that indicates it is living, that it is not a living creature.
3. The fringe that says it has a creature stat block just because it is a conjuration spell and can be damaged, but otherwise it should probably not be considered a creature and instead just a targetable mobile blob of force energy.
Thoughts and perspectives are welcome.
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It states that it is a being made of force, is mindless, has immunities akin to a construct, and it only exists while the caster concentrates. It doesn't have any of the features that would suggest it is a living being rather than a force projection (basically a bigger Mage Hand), at least that is the way I would rule it if it came up in my games
It does not have the construct tag and does not share the same immunity set. It is not immune to (by order a construct immunity is listed in the construct trait) bleed, death effects, healing, necromancy, nonlethal attacks, doomed, drained, fatigued, and sickened.
Summoned creatures in general only last so long as you concentrate on them.
There just isn't any feature/rule that would make them *not* a living creature.
We had an interesting discussion over on my local PFS lodge's discord and thought I would bring it up to a wider audience.
A number of spells and effects target a living creature. The basic question is do the rules make an unseen servant be a living creature?
We had an incident where a GM ruled that a haunt did not trigger for a US but did for someone's familiar, and it it ended up killing said familiar; the basis for this was the idea of the haunt triggering on a living creature. While we're generally fine with the ruling in the moment, there has been much discussion on the subject, and we're in 3 camps.
1. Because it is classified as a creature and does not have any trait that says otherwise, it is living.
2. Because it is classified as a creature but otherwise does not have a trait that indicates it is living, that it is not a living creature.
3. The fringe that says it has a creature stat block just because it is a conjuration spell and can be damaged, but otherwise it should probably not be considered a creature and instead just a targetable mobile blob of force energy.
Thoughts and perspectives are welcome.
It's definitely a thought-provoking topic. I'd like to say that it's not living though. For starters, it doesn't need to eat or breathe or sleep like other living creatures do, as its body is entirely made of force, and not organs or other physical matter. It's an entity of pure force and magic, nothing more, and it's commanded by a spellcaster, not unlike a construct.
Another big tell is that it has similar resistances equivalent to that of ghosts and other incorporeal creatures, which are resistant to anything besides force effects, ghost touch attacks (or positive damage in the way of incorporeal undead). However, it's not undead, since it's not created through necromancy or other life-bending energies. It's a conjuration effect, so it rules the concept of undead ghost out.
Lastly, it does have mindless trait and is immune to a lot of stuff, but this is stuff that constructs and even certain oozes are also immune to, so I don't see how it wouldn't be more like them than say, undead.
Basically, it's an incorporeal construct.
Yeah, a 1st level spell that could literally create life is incongruous.
The unseen servant spell doesn't create anything; the servant is summoned.
I got curious and looked further
There is no definition or trait of 'Living' (players being not dead notwithstanding), nor one for 'non-Living', but there is one for 'Undead'
This in mind, it comes down to GM ruling, and common sense, if something is alive or not
In this case, it floats like an incorporeal construct, acts like an incorporeal construct, fails to eat, sleep, or breathe like an incorporeal construct, and so is probably an incorporeal construct that would fall under the 'non-Living' classification
Familiars are generally physical creatures that are living (and often qere before becoming a familiar), haunts are not living. Familars don't die because their casters disappear and exist before their masters make the contract.
It is a GM judgement call dependant on their world.
In golarion I would certainly say unseen servant wouldn't be living though.
It has a force body, it is mindless and is summoned. But even then it is up to the GM to decide.
It would be a straight detriment to consider unseen servant living though.