Polymorph and Souls

[gbprime]

Food for thought question here. Let's say someone uses Polymorph Any Object to turn an animal into a humanoid... permanently. Now aside from the issues of what that new person would know (Instincts and little else) and how they'd have to be educated (even to be useful as enforced servitude), would the act of transforming them impart them with a soul, or would they have just an animal's spirit inside them? And if they do have some sort of soul, what about dispelling the effect so they go back to being an animal?

I'm asking in advance of my PC's putting the screws to an amoral and very long lived archmage. Long story short, he made himself a pocket dimension, engineered a little self-sustaining utopia for himself, and stocked it with women (charmed of course) that he created out of various animals. Instant cult, plus a few generations of offspring. (Don't worry... he'll get what's coming to him. :smallbiggrin: )

[Gamer Girl]

I've run into this from my earliest days of gaming.

In the days of Yore it was common to 'take a bag of mice into the castle, and then polymorph them into dragons and have them destroy the place.' And even more mundane things like 'We polymorph the ants into horses', and yes even the classic 'we polymorph the dogs into humans to be farmers for out town'.

So I long ago had to come up with rules.

1.No mortal magic can create souls. (Note that not all living beings have souls. Animals and elves for example have spirits.) So should you turn a cat into a human, it will still have a spirit. (this has some game effects).

2.A polymorped creature does not gain any knowledge. A dog turned into a human does not get five ranks in farming. They are mostly blank slates, but can be taught things.

3.I always throw in the flavor that they still 'act' a lot like the former creature they were. A human/dog will still sniff people, for example.


In general, polymorped animal people make poor servants. But they have their uses. They can do manual labor just fine, for example. And they do make fine concubines, at least what is some men's dream.


If you want better servants, you just need to 'up' the creatures. For example, round up some goblins and make them human slaves. Or any number of intelligent creatures.

[Aotrs Commander]

Or use PAO in concert with Awaken Animal/Construct/Undead...

...

...

Y'know what? Strike that last one, and strike it hard with FIRE.

[Psyren]

Truenaming fluff seems to imply that a creature's shape (via Polymorph effect or similar) has no effect on its soul, because its Personal Truename stays the same. The same is true of Incarnum (you have access to the same chakras regardless of shape.)

[Kelb_Panthera]

From where comes the idea that creatures of animal intelligence have no souls? I really don't see how a lack of intelligence = lack of soul, especially since animals are still valid targets for trap the soul. If they have no souls, what the devil is that spell trapping?

[gbprime]

If you want better servants, you just need to 'up' the creatures. For example, round up some goblins and make them human slaves. Or any number of intelligent creatures.

The mage's history is one starting with "victimless" crimes, such as enslaving polymorphed animals, and gradually getting more wicked from there.


From where comes the idea that creatures of animal intelligence have no souls? I really don't see how a lack of intelligence = lack of soul, especially since animals are still valid targets for trap the soul. If they have no souls, what the devil is that spell trapping?

Interesting point.

But while the NAME of the spell is "trap the soul", the effect talks only about life force, which an animal has.

Trap the soul forces a creature’s life force (and its material body) into a gem. The gem holds the trapped entity indefinitely or until the gem is broken and the life force is released, which allows the material body to reform.

The implication could be seen that all living creatures have life force, but not all life forces are souls. Good outside the box idea though, and definitely food for thought.

[Psyren]

I'd say they have souls (anything with a Con score does, going by Incarnum and Construct fluff) but not very strong ones.

"Life force" is probably the only definition for "soul" we can reasonably discuss on these boards.

[JeenLeen]

I think Deities & Demigods and Complete Divine have some fluff on souls, as might other books. I'm not sure how much detail D&D goes into. I know Book of Vile Darkness talks about using souls as currency or spell components, so maybe it specifies in there whether or not animals have souls. Anyone recall from memory?

For PAO, I would rule that it gives no knowledge nor does it change the presence or lack of a soul. I think it would be any sentient creature (Int 3+ being the usual guideline, I believe) has a soul. So while magical beasts might, animals would not. Depending on how one rules it or what is stated, undead may or may not (for example, is the soul of a person made into undead moved on or corrupted into the animating force.)

But you could definitely rule, using things like Trap the Soul as precedent, that animals have souls. I think the players should be aware of those rules and it shouldn't be a surprise for him that he's been tormenting actual souls, but it's a fine ruling either way.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Actually, there was a thread on these boards a while ago. The subject was the nature of souls in D&D.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129500

I had something to say on the matter:
I've actually given this subject quite some thought. This is what I've come up with from the information found in various sources, including both Fiendish Codexes, the manual of the planes, both the book of vile darkness, and the book of exalted deeds, magic of incarnum, tome of magic, and a few others.

The soul is composed of three parts; the consciousness, which becomes a vestige if separated from the other two; the essentia, which binds the soul to the body and gives it form; and the spark of divinity, which arises from small portions of the parents souls, is nurtured by a lifetime of experience (xp,) and is the piece extracted by devils for their power.

It should be noted that the essentia used by meldshapers is not their own. It is the essentia they've learned to draw into themselves from the world around them. Because of the nature of essentia it does not leave the body once it is drawn in, until the body dies. The amount of essentia that meldshapers gain from levels in the class represents those characters ability to force more essentia into their bodies than is necessary to maintain the link between body and soul.

When a character dies the essentia dissipates leaving the mind and divine spark to travel to the outer planes, barring the direct influence of negative energy or some extreme emotional force arising from the consciousness itself.

In the event that negative energy binds to the soul, usually from the actions of some kind of undead or magical anomaly, essentia is recollected and either forms an incorporeal undead, or binds the soul to its own dead flesh. Since the essentia gathered isn't composed solely of the creature's own, original essentia an undead creature is only a twisted mockery of its former self. This is also why the minds of undead don't seem to function in the same way as living creatures'.

In some rare instances, the mind is able, in the throes of tremendous emotional upheaval, to unwittingly force the essentia of its soul to remain after death. This corrupts some of the essentia and does not prevent the body from dying, the result is that a small planar tear opens between the soul and the negative energy plane, and an undead is formed.

If the remainder of a creature's soul is free to move on however, it is drawn through the astral plain by some unknown force exerted by the planes themselves to a plane that matches its own alignment(I'm still working on deciphering that one.) If the creature was a devout worshiper of a deity, but doesn't match his deity's alignment, the deity's agents draw it from the ever-flowing stream of the recently deceased flowing into the appropriate neighboring plane. If the creature was only a professed worshiper of a deity, but his alignment is in some way opposed to that deity, the soul will not be bound for a plane close enough to his deity's for the deity's agents to find it.

Those souls bound for the lower planes find themselves in tremendous danger. Depending on which plane they fall upon, the soul may be driven mad by the nature of the plane, devoured by demons; which separates the mind from the divine spark, leaving the mind as a vestige, and the demon slightly stronger for the divine energy it gained by devouring the soul. They could be tortured by devils until the souls new body, composed of the elements of the plane itself, is corrupted utterly and its divine spark drained away for infernal use, resulting in a new devil. The most fortunate of these damned souls will simply go unnoticed by the fiendish denizens of their plane until they become a petitioner, and eventually merge with the plane itself.

Those souls bound for the celestial planes are treated with the kindness and fairness of their celestial host, in whatever form that treatment takes, until they forget their mortal lives and become petitioners. Celestial petitioners either petition their celestial host to be elevated to celestial denizens themselves or simply merge with the plane itself.

Those who find themselves in the planes that are neither good nor evil, simply continue to "live" out their afterlives in the fashion which suits them best until, again they forget their mortal lives and eventually merge with the plane itself.

This is, as far as I can tell, how souls work in D&D.

[hamishspence]

That does seem to go well with the many existing sources.

[gbprime]

Cool compilation there. I'm bookmarking that. Thanks.

[hamishspence]

Complete Divine does say that most souls in the afterlife are just "souls" not petitioners- but that can be incorporated.

So souls might simply "merge with the plane" and never become petitioners, or stronger-willed ones might become petitioners, then denizens.

[Psyren]

I think Kelb's post was pretty comprehensive, but it doesn't address the concept of Truenames. I feel Truenames are relevant to this discussion because they are a soul's unique identifier. Here is the relevant excerpt from ToM:



The Universe Keeps Track Of You

When you deliver an utterance, you're dealing with the cosmos itself and reshaping reality. If a target changes its creature type with a spell such as polymorph, its personal truename doesn't change, though the truename you would use in a less-specific utterance might.

The quote goes on to apply this same concept to wildshape, shapechange, disguise, resurrection and even reincarnation. None of those change the soul; none change the truename.

If we use Kelb's component theory, however - which component of the soul does the truename map to?

[hamishspence]

The divine spark- which is why it becomes harder to say, as the being becomes more powerful and gains more XP.

[Psyren]

The divine spark- which is why it becomes harder to say, as the being becomes more powerful and gains more XP.

That's what I thought, but it's nice to have independent backup. :smallsmile:

It also explains why its hard to research the PTs of low-level creatures - the more obscure their deeds are, the weaker their spark will be. (This is represented by their low level in most, but not all, instances.)

[Gamer Girl]

From where comes the idea that creatures of animal intelligence have no souls? I really don't see how a lack of intelligence = lack of soul, especially since animals are still valid targets for trap the soul. If they have no souls, what the devil is that spell trapping?

The idea goes back to 1E, somewhere.

The simple idea is everyone is not alike. Animals have spirits. Dragons have souls. Dwarfs and humans have souls, elves and gnomes have spirits. Along with lots of role-playing and mechanical differences.

In the more modern day, people like everything to be bland and the same, so they just say 'everyone has souls' and gets back to the endless combat.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The divine spark- which is why it becomes harder to say, as the being becomes more powerful and gains more XP.

I agree with this. I'm also slightly embarrassed that I missed it. :smallredface: