valadil
2010-03-22, 11:59 AM
Hey folks. I'm running a 4th ed game. An NPC did some weird shenanigans with Raise Dead and after the fact I realized they might not be RAW. I have no problem deploying GM fiat for plot in this way, but I can't even figure out if what I did was fiat or not. So I'm looking for your opinions. No, it won't change anything in the game at this point. I'm simply curious.
The Raise Dead ritual says the following, with emphasis by me:
You must have a part of the corpse of a creature that died no more than 30 days ago.
So if somebody loses an appendage and then is killed, does that appendage count as part of the corpse? The appendage is certainly part of the person's body and the appendage is dead, but it was never part of the person when they were a corpse.
Of course, corpse comes from the latin corpus which means body. It was part of the body, but I think going for corpus is a bit of a stretch.
Certainly an arm that was severed after death would be part of the corpse. Does that have any functional difference from an arm that was detached beforehand?
And just for the sake of argument, what about an appendage that was removed at the moment of death? If I put a PC through a guillotine and the party finds the head, nobody at the table would question that the head is a part of the corpse and thus sufficient for raise dead. And yet there's some evidence (and I leave googling this evidence as an exercise for the reader) that a head remains conscious for some seconds after severance, indicating that the head was never part of the corpse.
The Raise Dead ritual says the following, with emphasis by me:
You must have a part of the corpse of a creature that died no more than 30 days ago.
So if somebody loses an appendage and then is killed, does that appendage count as part of the corpse? The appendage is certainly part of the person's body and the appendage is dead, but it was never part of the person when they were a corpse.
Of course, corpse comes from the latin corpus which means body. It was part of the body, but I think going for corpus is a bit of a stretch.
Certainly an arm that was severed after death would be part of the corpse. Does that have any functional difference from an arm that was detached beforehand?
And just for the sake of argument, what about an appendage that was removed at the moment of death? If I put a PC through a guillotine and the party finds the head, nobody at the table would question that the head is a part of the corpse and thus sufficient for raise dead. And yet there's some evidence (and I leave googling this evidence as an exercise for the reader) that a head remains conscious for some seconds after severance, indicating that the head was never part of the corpse.