Undead Drain

[kirerellim]

Ok, all undead are immune to poison, disease, and ability drain. Is there any way to reduce an undead's ability score other than those?

[ArcturusV]

RAI would probably include Ravages and Afflictions, as their whole point is to "poison" and "Disease" undead and outsiders.

[Erik Vale]

Ok, all undead are immune to poison, disease, and ability drain. Is there any way to reduce an undead's ability score other than those?

Assuming you've listed them all, that leaves things that do ability damage, and with no natural healing that is about as good as ability drain.

[kirerellim]

Hmm... it doesn't say immune to ability damage. Thats separate from ability drain?

[JoshuaZ]

Libris Mortis has Positoxins which are specific poisons which harm undead and only undead.

[Curmudgeon]

Hmm... it doesn't say immune to ability damage. Thats separate from ability drain?

Immune to damage to its physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), as well as to fatigue and exhaustion effects.
Undead have half immunity (3 out of 6 ability scores). So you need to damage INT, WIS, or CHA.

[Story]

The tricky thing is doing mental ability damage without it being mind effecting. IIRC there are a few ways, but they're pretty obscure.

[tyckspoon]

Undead have half immunity (3 out of 6 ability scores). So you need to damage INT, WIS, or CHA.

Curiousity question - do you believe, then, that the statements in the Undead type over-ride the general immunity to ability damage provided by having no Constitution score?

@ ways to reduce Undeads' ability scores: they are not immune to penalties, such as those caused by Ray of Enfeeblement/Ray of Clumsiness or the Entangled condition. They are also technically not immune to Negative Levels, although it is rather difficult to find a source of Negative Levels that doesn't come from something else Undead are immune to already - the only one I can think of off-hand is getting them to hold a Holy or similar item that has a backlash on a wrong-aligned user.

[Curmudgeon]

The tricky thing is doing mental ability damage without it being mind effecting. IIRC there are a few ways, but they're pretty obscure.
The Maiming Strike feat (Exemplars of Evil, page 25) lets you trade some sneak attack for CHA damage.

Bestow Curse (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/bestowCurse.htm) can drop any ability score by 6 points.

[Story]

Curiousity question - do you believe, then, that the statements in the Undead type over-ride the general immunity to ability damage provided by having no Constitution score?


I think that was already discussed in the dysfunctional rules thread. By RAW, they're probably immune to all ability damage, but it's pretty clearly not RAI. I think the note in the con score nonability was just a mistake when updating from 3.0.

[Curmudgeon]

Curiousity question - do you believe, then, that the statements in the Undead type over-ride the general immunity to ability damage provided by having no Constitution score?
That does seem to be the likely conclusion when they state the Undead type abilities in the order they do:

No Constitution score.Constitution

Any living creature has at least 1 point of Constitution. A creature with no Constitution has no body or no metabolism. It is immune to any effect that requires a Fortitude save unless the effect works on objects or is harmless. The creature is also immune to ability damage, ability drain, and energy drain, and automatically fails Constitution checks. A creature with no Constitution cannot tire and thus can run indefinitely without tiring (unless the creature’s description says it cannot run).
Not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain, or energy drain. Immune to damage to its physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), as well as to fatigue and exhaustion effects.
It reads like a general rule, followed by specific exceptions.

[TuggyNE]

It reads like a general rule, followed by specific exceptions.

Not quite; it reads, rather, like a general rule followed by specific reinforcement and restatement. No exceptions are involved at any point.

Edit: Unless you were referring to the immunity in Undead type being the general rule, which seems odd.

[Saintheart]

Since the question is whether it's possible to reduce an undead's ability score, well, any spell or effect that gives you an Entangle effect technically does it: -4 to DEX.

[Curmudgeon]

Not quite; it reads, rather, like a general rule followed by specific reinforcement and restatement. No exceptions are involved at any point.
So you think stating that Undead as no CON creatures are immune to all ability damage, followed by stating that Undead are immune to physical ability damage, is reinforcement? So what does that mean for mental ability damage: that those just aren't going to come up?
:confused:

[TuggyNE]

So you think stating that Undead as no CON creatures are immune to all ability damage, followed by stating that Undead are immune to physical ability damage, is reinforcement?

That would be the meaning of reinforcement, yes. Restating part of the general rule, or restating the general rule for certain cases where it might not obviously apply, or the like.

Mind you, this is a stupid choice of rules to reinforce, but that doesn't change the basic nature of it.


So what does that mean for mental ability damage: that those just aren't going to come up?
:confused:

That they were not properly considering the implications and proper meaning. (See also: Atropal regeneration, missing Tarrasque ability drain immunity, missing undead to negative levels from Holy weapons, etc etc etc.)

[ArcturusV]

Either that or whoever was writing it at the time just figured "Pssh, mental damage, that's mind effecting right? They're already immune!" and wasn't really thinking about it.

... which is the sort of error I think they're likely to make in general.

[The Viscount]

Psychic assassin's mind cripple can be used to deal Int damage to those undead that have Int scores.

If you regard the FAQ for BOVD as RAW, corrupt spells (and by extension sanctified spells) bypass an undead's immunity to physical ability damage. As mentioned, penalties can still apply depending on the source

As for our side discussion, Story is right in that the change from 3.0 is where undead's entry changed "immunity to ability damage" to "immunity to physical ability damage."

As for the atropal's regeneration, it was allowed to have it in 3.0, when a Con score was not a prerequisite. The only weird bit is that there is a number there, as it doesn't do anything.

[Chronos]

Nothing in the rules states that undead are vulnerable to mental ability score damage. If they're immune to all ability score damage, then the statement "undead are immune to damage to their Strength and Dex" is a true statement. No contradiction, so therefore we don't need to worry about which takes precedence.

That said, stating the undead trait in that way suggests that this is not the way that they were intended to work. Unfortunately, it does not make clear what the intent was: Either they were intended to be immune to all, and the person who wrote the undead type entry didn't get the memo, or they were intended to be immune to just the physical, and the person who wrote the Con -- entry didn't get the memo.

[Story]

I'm inclined to say they aren't immune because a change is more likely to be deliberate then the absence of a change (just look at how many copy-paste errors there are in the books). But you could definitely argue it either way.