Can you separate a flesh golem and make two separate people?

Question

I'm running Descent into Avernus and two characters died at one point. They were morphed together as a flesh golem by an NPC.

The players wanted to stay in the game with their (flesh golem-ified) characters, and it's hell. They could roll up new characters, they'd just prefer not to. We had our laughs about it and everyone thought it was funny when they had a giant weird flesh golem thing on our team.

But after about a week, which brings us to now, they want their characters back to normal and I said sure. Then I stopped dead in my tracks as I realized that I don't think separating a flesh golem is an actual thing.

Main question: Can you separate parts of a flesh golem to make two separate people? If so, how?

The characters are about level 7. It's not an issue if this isn't a thing, I'll figure out a way around it, I was just curious because I couldn't find this on the internet.

Answer 1

Well, you slightly created a rod for your own back here, but strange things happen in D&D!

There is no specific rule for turning a flesh golem back into separate people (funnily enough). But the characters are dead and their body parts make up the golem. Killing the golem would allow someone to separate out the body parts (I recommend a good axe).

Then a cleric could cast Resurrection on the appropriate parts. This spell doesn't seem to say how much of a body is required, but it does say it closes all mortal wounds and restores lost body parts. So I think allowing it to work on half a body would be acceptable (failing that, True Resurrection doesn't even require a body, so that would certainly work).

(Resurrection would be too high level for the party to access cast themselves, but a DM that really wants to provide the characters with an 'out' could always allow an NPC cleric to be sought out. Of course, such services don't come cheap, and the cleric may want a service in return...)

Answer 2

Flesh Golems are described as:

... a grisly assortment of humanoid body parts stitched and bolted together into a muscled brute imbued with formidable strength. Powerful enchantments protect it, deflecting spells and all but the most potent weapons.

So they're not made from whole corpses, but rather parts. While it's possible to take a Flesh Golem apart (although it might let you do it) you'll end up with a bunch of random parts that belonged to your original party members. There's likely no way to reassemble the original bodies (or even figure out which parts belonged to which person) and probably the bodies won't be complete either.

But you will have enough pieces to cast Resurrection, which will "restore any missing body parts", even though that's most of them. So if you have powerful enough magic, you might be able to get them back.

Answer 3

I think PJRZ gave the best possible answer, but this is D&D and there's more than one way to do things. There is another (definitely worse) answer.

The Manual of Golems is a magic item that allows you to make flesh golems. If you divide up the parts and make 2 new flesh golems, your players have their characters back, though not quite as they were.

Disadvantages:

• This requires 2 Manuals of Flesh Golems (very rare magic items), 100,000 gp, and at least 60 days of downtime. (120 days if you don't have 2 casters who can work in parallel)
• Doesn't really return the original characters back to life, creates new creatures that have most of the same parts. It would be a matter of DM fiat for these creatures to have personality or memories at all. Let alone having the same personality of their primary organ donor.
• The characters are CR5 constructs, not really PC characters. Some house ruling would have to go on to allow flesh golems to have class levels and racial bonuses and whatnot.

Advantages:

• Can be done by a 10th level caster of any class. Resurrection is only available to Bards and Clerics at 13th level.
• Does not prevent resurrection from being performed later.

If you really want to separate a flesh golem, but all you have are 10th level wizards, warlocks, or sorcerers, there is an option. A weird, expensive, and grizzly option.