Timeline for Is a dead creature's body considered an "object"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 15 at 22:39 | comment | added | Wyrmwood | I upvoted, but given the post contains five questions, it might be clearer if you disambiguate which question you are answering. | |
| Jul 26 at 21:16 | comment | added | TheFallen0ne | Is there any official (read: Non-tweet) text that supports the premise that a Dead Creature ceases to be a creature? Note that the Improvised Weapons text doesn't qualify, as it says you can use a dead goblin as as weapon; not that its statistic block type actually changes to weapon. Two things can be true at the same time; are there any rules printed anywhere in the entire game that support that a Dead Creature doesn't count as a creature? Dead itself is a game term that stops healing spells that restore hit points from working on a dead creature, but it's still a creature. | |
| Jun 13 at 19:19 | comment | added | ProphetZarquon | Actually, based on other 5e text, it should say "the remains"... (not corpse). Which would support your example of the remains (ashes, probably) of an incinerated chair. | |
| Jun 13 at 3:52 | comment | added | ProphetZarquon | @NobodytheHobgoblin Yes, in exactly the same way; it's a subclassification. Linguistically, "touch a dead creature that has been dead for no more than a century" is touching a specific type of creature (dead) and a specific type of object (dead creature). If the intent of what is written, is that a dead creature is an object but a dead creature is not a creature, then firstly, the spells should say "touch the corpse of a dead creature" aaaand secondly the rules should explicitly state state a cqorpse is an object & no longer a creature. | |
| Jun 12 at 22:40 | comment | added | Nobody the Hobgoblin | @ProphetZarquon A dead creature is a creature much in the same way a smashed and incinerated chair is a chair. | |
| Mar 10, 2021 at 19:02 | comment | added | RS Conley | I think it is sufficient to satisfy RAW by saying the object WAS a creature. | |
| Mar 7, 2021 at 10:14 | comment | added | ProphetZarquon | Crawford's ruling states that a "corpse isn't considered a creature", while True Resurrection and other such spells explicitly target "a creature that has been dead". A dead creature COULD be an object, but it MUST be a creature, or those spells do not work by Rules As Written. | |
| Dec 26, 2019 at 12:32 | comment | added | Slagmoth | @Spoo It would also be describing a specific object that can be targeted by the spell, It would be the same as Magic Weapon only being able to target, well a weapon. | |
| Feb 14, 2019 at 21:31 | comment | added | RS Conley | @Spoo a object can be a dead creature. All that required that at some point in the past it was a living creature. | |
| Feb 14, 2019 at 6:42 | comment | added | Spoo | This would be terrible ruling to rule a dead person as just a corpse and object and not also a creature. Being alive doesn't quantify creature. Merely existing does. It would basically make any raise dead spell obsolete as the wording for them all used the words dead creature and not dead object or dead corpse. | |
| May 15, 2018 at 0:53 | comment | added | Anthony | I would imagine that a reanimated skeleton (eg a creature) would retain some sense of the mechanics of how its bones fit around one another and how to walk and wave, etc. While a pile of bones could be animated (like chairs or rocks) and levitated to become a skeleton, but the caster of this spell would be manipulating them all at once but separately, which would require significantly more effort and knowledge of the bones and terrain, etc. Maybe a really cool necromancer puppet master type would spend years mastering this. | |
| May 14, 2018 at 16:43 | comment | added | T. Sar | It is worth to note that an animated corpse created by Animate Object is not undead - since things that damage undead creatures won't work on them. | |
| Feb 24, 2017 at 17:17 | comment | added | Derek Stucki | Objects and creatures being distinct, mutually exclusive categories is spelled out in PHB chapter 10 under Targets. | |
| Aug 17, 2016 at 20:49 | comment | added | Tim Grant | Crawford also offered this clarification about living bodies and corpses | |
| May 14, 2015 at 23:39 | comment | added | Miniman | Crawford agrees with you, BTW. | |
| Mar 3, 2015 at 5:17 | vote | accept | Purple Monkey | ||
| Jan 28, 2015 at 13:43 | history | edited | RS Conley | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 1050 characters in body
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| Jan 28, 2015 at 13:34 | history | answered | RS Conley | CC BY-SA 3.0 |