Cheat Death + undead = ???

[Flickerdart]

There's a nifty class called the body leech (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040925a). Its capstone ability lets you swap your soul into a captive living creature's body. The relevant text to my question is below:

Cheat Death (Su): ... This is treated as true mind switch ... The body leech also must have a living creature trapped in a stasis cocoon ... the life force and soul of the victim trapped in the cocoon goes into the body leech's dead or dying body and the body leech's life force and soul goes into the trapped body.

Now, the question: What happens if you are, say, a wight with class levels, and you use this? Do you stop being an undead creature? Can you now be resurrected if you are ever killed again? Can the body's former owner (who is now in an undead body) be resurrected?

[Psyren]

Cheat Death works like True Mind Switch, which inherits from Mind Switch, which states you get the type of your assumed body. So yes, you would stop being undead if you jumped into a living victim.

[noob]

"a wight with class levels"
do you have wight class levels too.
if yes then you will be the creature but with the powers of your classes(and so be a wight too thanks to the wight class)
if no then you will mostly loose all your wight powers and gain the type of the creature and even worse you will keep the LA and RHD of a wight while having no wight power.

[Flickerdart]

Cheat Death works like True Mind Switch, which inherits from Mind Switch, which states you get the type of your assumed body. So yes, you would stop being undead if you jumped into a living victim.

Interesting...So one could conceivably take a vampire, have it swap bodies with a mortal, then kill the vampire (with the mortal soul) and then raise the vampire's original body and have two souls of what is more or less the same creature.

Or have a lich body leech skip out of lichdom and place another person's soul inside his phylactery.

[BowStreetRunner]

Note however that "If your natural body dies while the subject is in it, you immediately lose one level..." Well, your natural body is already dead...er...undead.

[Necroticplague]

Note however that "If your natural body dies while the subject is in it, you immediately lose one level..." Well, your natural body is already dead...er...undead.

Which means that it can't die, if its not alive to begin with (under the normal definition of the word). Not being alive doesn't mean you're dead.

Undead also can't die in the DnD meaning of the word, since their hit points can't go below zero (in dnd, dead means you have -10 or less hit points. Undead are destroyed at zero).

[Flickerdart]

Note however that "If your natural body dies while the subject is in it, you immediately lose one level..." Well, your natural body is already dead...er...undead.
Undead never die; they are destroyed. As far as I'm aware, the rules never actually explain what destroyed means.

[Psyren]

Undead never die; they are destroyed. As far as I'm aware, the rules never actually explain what destroyed means.

Or suffocate, or drown, or wind for that matter. At some point we do have to step outside the rules.

[TheifofZ]

The general rules on any variation of cessation of existence are actually horribly non-descriptive.
The rules for death are just as open ended as the rules for destruction.
It amuses me no end about that.

[noob]

Well the developers through at that time that everybody knew what it meant to be dead and not that people would think "Now that I am dead I can stand up and walk around and cast spells while I could not do right before because I was unconscious"

[Necroticplague]

It's kinda egregious to overlook it for being destroyed though, because we don't really have a real-life analogue to undead dying to compare it to. Does a zombie leave a corpse? I've seen some who ruled that all undead dusted or dispersed on death, because that's what 'destroyed' meant to them. Of course, it is rather fitting the game's version of dead is vague, given how the line isn't exactly clear cut in real life, either.

[Segev]

I, personally, view it as a consequence of what "destroying" an undead creature entails: as animate corpses, they lack vital organs and functions, so simply ruining the innards won't do anything to stop them. You have to break the body up into useless bits. Sever limbs, smash joints, and crush the torso until bit can't link to bit.

That's "destruction" of a corporeal undead creature.

No, there's no re-animating that; it's not a corpse anymore so much as a pile of ground meat and shattered bone.

[noob]

And if you use repair on the remains now that is is an object.
It rebuild the zombie back?

[Necroticplague]

And if you use repair on the remains now that is is an object.
It rebuild the zombie back?

No, the animating spirit left when it was destroyed.

[noob]

No, the animating spirit left when it was destroyed.
Where is it written in the rules?

[Necroticplague]

Where is it written in the rules?

Oh, I thought we were asking logic, not rules.

[noob]

I have seen movies with undead that no matter how fragmented they were could still act.

[Segev]

I have seen movies with undead that no matter how fragmented they were could still act.

Sounds like it would be a new monster or template entirely, with a higher CR. I'd love to animate me a few of them as minions, though!

[Necroticplague]

Sounds like it would be a new monster or template entirely, with a higher CR. I'd love to animate me a few of them as minions, though!

Actually, there is a template for that. Curst can only be kept down permanently by either getting rid of the curse keeping them animated, or completely destroying their body(disintegrate, acid immersion, ect.).everything else, they'll get back up after a few days.