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View Full Version : Is life supernatural? [D&D any edition]



Seppo87
2015-02-08, 02:45 AM
In D&D sentient beings have a soul; this soul exists, it's real - just like the Ethereal Plane and Gods.

Apparently, (one could assume by how the spells function) it is located inside the body (can be targeted by targeting the body), and slowly leaves when the body is dead.

Apparently, the soul is where memories and identity are stored. Magic Jar is a good example I believe to prove this point.

But is it supernatural? I'm pretty serious here.

If it's supernatural, is all life supernatural? Can it be dispelled? Do people become zombie-like mindless meatsacks inside of an amf?

If it's not supernatural (aka it's a natural phenomena), why are ghosts supernatural? Why is KI supernatural?

Mastikator
2015-02-08, 02:49 AM
Perhaps a ghost is more than a soul, it's a supernatural ethereal body that a soul acquires or creates?

I mean, very few dead actually become ghosts.

jedipotter
2015-02-08, 02:54 AM
But is it supernatural? I'm pretty serious here.



I'd say it's both and neither.

Even in the 21st century we don't know if souls exist and we can't prove they do. So to use, they are ''supernatural'': beyond the normal nature we know. But that is just what we know. Souls could exist, and we might just not know how to detect them.

For example, set the Way Back Machine to 1400. No one at that time knew radio waves existed, but they did and Earth was covered with them(from space). The same is true with radiation or electricity. But just a Joe Guy in 1400 could not prove radio waves existed, did not make radio waves not exist. They were simply 'supernatural' for that time.

So that leaves us with ''no one yet understands what a soul is, or even if it exists yet'', so it's supernatural.

goto124
2015-02-08, 03:01 AM
I thought the entire world was supernatural :P

What does supernatural even mean anyway?

Mastikator
2015-02-08, 03:04 AM
I thought the entire world was supernatural :P

What does supernatural even mean anyway?

Beyond the natural world. Sort of like a separate world with separate rules. Also, can't exist within a dead magic zone. A ghost can't go into a dead magic zone, a person's soul doesn't go away. Clearly the soul is not supernatural. But it can be affected by supernatural shenanigans, like ghosts and magic jars.

saeval
2015-02-08, 03:26 AM
Freaking out here man, can't handle this, its getting too Real, gonna go play existential crisis and dragons now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=137Ei0C3Vdg

(It's a bit of both, but really, if the spell doesn't say its ripping souls out/making zombie people, it isn't... but in your campaign if you want a magic jar to store someones memories and make zombie-dude that is your call.)

Frozen_Feet
2015-02-08, 07:05 AM
It can be either natural or supernatural, depending on species. Humans and animals are part of the natural world, having bodies of material existence. As long as the body functions according to principles of the Prime Material plane, the soul is part of the natural world too.

Where it gets murky is in case of creatures which seem to break known physical laws but still exist just fine on the Prime Material. Prime example would be flying dragons. Material sciences and the square-cube-law might have something to say about big bulky creatures flying on small wings, yet the body of a dragon works just fine in dead magic zones. Ditto for stuff like dryads and elves. They are obviously supernatural in origin, they without doubt have magic... but losing magic for a while is not a problem for them.

Morty
2015-02-08, 07:12 AM
I thought the entire world was supernatural :P

What does supernatural even mean anyway?

That's a good question. I don't think the word 'supernatural' means much, by itself. From our perspective, a high-fantasy world like most D&D settings is supernatural in its entirety.

From an in-setting perspective, I would say souls and life are natural, very much so. It depends on the details, but the general assumption is that a living being has a soul, which provides life and departs its body after death. It takes fairly powerful magic to subvert the laws governing the functioning and passage of souls - you need to be an accomplished cleric to return a recently deceased person, and it gets more complicated from there. So it's one of the fundamental natural laws of your usual D&D-verse.

SirKazum
2015-02-08, 08:47 AM
It seems to me that the OP's question revolves around "supernatural" not as a philosophical concept, but as a D&D concept, as explicitly defined in 3.x and possibly later editions (don't know those that well). As such, "supernatural" is generally something that applies to special abilities, something that you do - and, at first, simply existing with a soul doesn't seem to fit the bill. Even if you extend the concept to passive abilities like "having a soul", I still don't think it applies. Supernatural is a very specific concept, which applies only to creatures that have special (i.e. not ordinary) abilities. Even in a broader concept of supernatural "things", I'd say those should be in some way magical (the "Supernatural" entry under Special Abilities says Su abilities are "magical"), so if there's no magical principles at work, there's nothing supernatural there. And existing with a soul doesn't require magic - just a male and female of the appropriate species that love each other very much, or at any rate, are horny enough (or whatever form of reproduction a given species has). You could argue - and that would be more in the world-building, cosmological field - that granting life and/or souls to mortal beings is a Supernatural ability of the gods or whoever else is responsible for that in a given cosmology, but even then, I'd peg the Supernatural part of it as being an immediate effect rather than something with a duration (to use D&D terms), so it's not like it could be dispelled or affected by dead magic or anything. Once you exist with life and a soul, those are natural parts of who you are. Of course, as pointed out, doing weird things to lives and souls requires magical or equivalent abilities, and has a high chance of being supernatural. But lives and souls themselves are not.

As a side point, I wouldn't count dragons and such as supernatural because they break the rules of real-world physics. D&D is not the real world, and does not operate according to the same rules. Dragons may be a poor example because they have magical abilities, but giants, say, may make no sense according to real-world biology, but in D&D are perfectly natural and have nothing magical or supernatural about them. Their origin may or may not be magical (again, depending on your cosmology), but they themselves are not, at all. They are perfectly normal according to the natural rules of D&D worlds, even if not by those of our own.

dps
2015-02-08, 11:25 PM
Clearly the soul is not supernatural. But it can be affected by supernatural shenanigans, like ghosts and magic jars.

Yes, just like most physical bodies in DnD--they're not supernatural themselves, but can be affected by supernatural beings and events.

Bulldog Psion
2015-02-08, 11:33 PM
It's really intriguing how the word "supernatural" is actually a totally pointless one, referring to something so impossible that one actually can't conceive of it.

Everything that exists is natural. If there are souls, they are natural; if a god, angel, or demon exists, it's also natural.

It's rare that you see a word that is an impossible contradiction and only exists because billions of people looked at it over the course of history and were incapable of perceiving how useless and meaningless it is. :smalleek:

Seppo87
2015-02-09, 02:14 AM
It seems to me that the OP's question revolves around "supernatural" not as a philosophical concept, but as a D&D concept, as explicitly defined in 3.x and possibly later editions
That's right. I should have specified