Destroying Dead Bodies

[Keneth]

If I recall correctly, a creature's body becomes an object once they're dead. Does anyone know how many hit points a dead body has? Or, if there's no RAW on the subject, would anyone care to speculate?

[Flickerdart]

If I recall correctly, a creature's body becomes an object once they're dead. Does anyone know how many hit points a dead body has? Or, if there's no RAW on the subject, would anyone care to speculate?
It would really depend on the body (obviously, a warforged body would have more HP than a human's).

Given that a body is not of uniform thickness, you'd need to run separate numbers for flesh (probably about 1hp to pierce and no hardness) and bone (quite a bit tougher, but more because of hardness rather than hp). Beating this hp wouldn't destroy a body, though - you'd just chop off a limb or something. To destroy it you'd need an AoE effect that hits everything at the same time.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Perhaps treat the corpse as an in-animate zombie in terms of hp? After which its been pulverized to the point that no animation is possible.

If your talking about preventing a resurrection, well you'd need lots of fire or acid to completely destroy the body then you'd need to scatter the ashes so they couldn't be used.

[Keneth]

Perhaps treat the corpse as an in-animate zombie in terms of hp?

Except zombie hp depends on HD, and objects have no HD.

I'm not looking for a way to prevent resurrection, but a house rule I am currently implementing requires that I ascertain how many hit points a body has before it is destroyed.

It should probably be a fairly base number for all similarly-sized creatures. With varying hardness values if we're talking non-fleshy bodies. Although it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for the body to retain any DR it had prior to death.

[herrhauptmann]

Except zombie hp depends on HD, and objects have no HD.

I'm not looking for a way to prevent resurrection, but a house rule I am currently implementing requires that I ascertain how many hit points a body has before it is destroyed.

It should probably be a fairly base number for all similarly-sized creatures. With varying hardness values if we're talking non-fleshy bodies. Although it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for the body to retain any DR it had prior to death.

How about as many as the person had before death, ignoring con.
So a dead level fighter would have 10 hitpoints on his body. A dead level 2 would be about 15 (10 for first level, average 5 for second).
Not perfect, but a good start. And it means that the body of a fighter would in general be tougher and take more effort to destroy than the body of an equal level wizard.

[Psyren]

I would treat it as an inert zombie with HP equal to what it would have if it were one (so d12 for each racial HD it had, likely average rolls, and no bonus or penalty from Con.) I wouldn't count class HP simply because a Human Fighter 20's corpse shouldn't really be 20x sturdier than that of a Human Fighter 1, however I would expect an Ogre's corpse to be harder to destroy/disintegrate than an Elf's.

[Keneth]

And it means that the body of a fighter would in general be tougher and take more effort to destroy than the body of an equal level wizard.

Yeah, but why would that be? Hit dice have little or nothing to do with the mass that remains.

While lvl20 fighters are certainly well built, the change isn't significant enough to warrant a large increase in hit points, and the body shouldn't be much more difficult to destroy than that of a wizard.

Hit points of animated/living creatures are an abstraction—they don't translate directly to injury—whereas hit points of objects quite literally reflect how much physical punishment the object can take.

I might translate natural armor into hardness (though not necessarily 1:1) and size into additional hit points to reflect why an ogre's body is harder to destroy than an elf's. I'll also keep any DR, as mentioned. But I'm stuck on base hit points for a medium-sized body.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Except zombie hp depends on HD, and objects have no HD.

A zombie is an animated corpse, the amount of HP it has before being destroyed is based off the racial HD of the creature. So what is the problem with treating a corpse as having as much hp it would have had if it was a zombie.

[Safety Sword]

So a dead level fighter would ...

So, every fighter. :smallamused:

[One Step Two]

Here's an ideas for HP of a dead body

Base Constitution score + 1 max HD.

Thus, your big burly fighter with a con of 16, has a 26 HP body.
Where a wizard might have a con of 12, has only 16 hp while corpsified.

This Represents physical training, and general robustness of the character to a small degree, but HP being an abstraction, means that actual fighting skill and fatigue aren't there when we're talking about actual flesh.

That said, Dungeonscape has the stats for Walls of Flesh (ew) which have a hardness of 2, and 5HP per inch of thickness.

[Captnq]

Is a dead warforged character’s body subject to sunder
attacks, since it is now just an object of wood and metal?
A dead body of any creature (warforged, human, dragon,
whatever) is treated as an object, and thus it can be damaged
using the rules for “Smashing an Object” (PH 165).
There are no rules for determining the hardness or hit
points of a corpse. Most dead bodies don’t have a hardness
score, but the creature’s DR (if any) should continue to apply
against attacks. Use Table 9–9: Substance Hardness and Hit
Points and Table 9–11: Object Hardness and Hit Points in the
Player’s Handbook to estimate hit point values for corpses
should such situations arise in your game.

Leather or hide 5 hp/inch of thickness
Paper or cloth 2 hp/inch of thickness

Lets say... 3hp/inch?

From the top down, a human 6' tall has 72 inches, or 216 hit points.

So, if you wish to turn a corpse into "disintegrated by hit point damage", you need to do 216 HP on average. Anything less and you still have a corpse of some sort.

[Captnq]

Missed the post about wall of flesh. And you know, bone has got to have some sort of higher HP value. What the heck 5 hp/inch.

360 Hit points.

[One Step Two]

Bone is listed in the same book, actually, Hardness 5, and 180HP per inch of thickness.

[Keneth]

From the top down, a human 6' tall has 72 inches, or 216 hit points.

Really? Why not front to back instead of top to bottom? We're talking about thickness after all, so it makes sense that you use the smallest of the three sizes (and the smallest of the three sizes too).

I'm thinking somewhere in the vicinity of 50 hp should be enough for a medium corpse.

[Clistenes]

Are we speaking of cutting it to pieces, or of completely incinerating/disintegrating it?

I don't think any medium-sized corpse should have more hp than a 1 HD medium-sized zombie or skeleton, no matter how many hit points it had while alive. A dead corpse isn't the same person, it's just a lump of flesh and bone and all of its hp come from it's mass and size.

Now, burning it to ashes should take some time. I don't know how to describe it in game terms, but burning a corpse should require quite a bit of fire damage, certainly more than necessary to kill any 1st level character (it takes a lot of energy to incinerate a corpse).

By the way...why the hell is Charnel Fire considered Evil? A spell that destroys undead and cremates bodies? Where is the evil in that?

[Spore]

I haven't heard of NPCs/PCs becoming objects before. I always thought "dead" is just a "status effect" like paralyzed, stunned or blinded. Therefore the dead body keeps it's HD (important for necromancers), and has no hitpoints left. The body is treated as object but doesn't become one. So a disintegration should get rid of it without any rolls, a simple barrel of acid (the damage and rate of "acid" in D&D most of those acids should be bases but I am not bringing down the science teachter now) or a very hot fire (if the body isn't quite dried out it has problems to catch completely on fire. it should need preparation.)

I would keep said things out of fights and thus rules-territory, only spells can prevent raising undead in fights.

[Keneth]

I always thought "dead" is just a "status effect" like paralyzed, stunned or blinded.

"Dead" is a condition, but once you are dead, your body is technically no longer part of your character, it's just an object.


a simple barrel of acid

A barrel of acid or base generally isn't enough to dissolve a body in any short amount of time, unless it's super powerful. Same thing with fire. Chemical reactions take time.

Anyway, like I said, I'm not looking to dissolve a body or prevent resurrection. You don't need to obliterate an object in order to destroy it.