Undead and Reincarnate.

[VenomTongue]

So I am a DM (very new to it).
Well the party has no Cleric, which I strongly advised against, but my players assured me that it would be okay. They have a Paladin and a Druid after all.
As was inevitable, the Paladin bought it, but the party got away. Under orders from the Druid, the Rogue removed a finger before they fled for their lives from the insane cultists.

The Druid has made plain his intention to reincarnate the Paladin using the finger next game session. Here is my concern/ idea. Would it be possible for the cultists to turn the Paladin into some kind of intelligent undead (sans finger) and the druid to be able to reincarnate him into another body?

My plan is to have the party fight the undead paladin later in the game in a sort of 'ghosts of your past' kind of thing.

[DrMotives]

It's possible, depending on the undead in question. If the druid reincarnates the paladin, the paladin's soul now has a new body. Some undead involve using an old body with a new undead animating spirit that isn't the original soul, most notably skeletons & zombies. Other possible undead would be ghouls, ghasts, wights. You can most corporeal undead, but ones that would be using the original soul (and therefor wouldn't work for your plan) are things like ghosts, spectres, wraiths, vampires, liches, heucuvas. Pick an undead with a physical body that isn't a template, and you should be fine.

[Segev]

If it is an intelligent undead, it probably has his soul trapped in it, possibly corrupted by the magics used to bind it to his body or his body's new urges. Reincarnate will work as well as it would if you tried to use it after somebody true resurrected him. i.e., not at all. They'll have to destroy the undead first.

That said, this is no different than if they had a cleric planning to cast raise dead. So this isn't "the party lacked a cleric" causing this issue. (Unless you mean the fact they didn't have in-combat healing. In which case, if they're high enough level for reincarnate to be a valid thing, very few healer-builds are effective enough to make that big of a difference during combat.)

[DrMotives]

Segev, what I think the OP was asking, and please correct me if I'm wrong, was for the reincarnate to happen using the finger as a source, and the nine-fingered corpse to later become undead, which would work. In this case the body's original soul is now living in a new body, which restricts what types of undead the corpse can become, but animate dead specifically will work on it. Others are a little less cut & dry, but certainly possible.

[Segev]

Ah, okay. Then yes, animate dead would definitely work. Whether create undead would or not...well, the DM has to answer questions such as "what is giving it its own will and mind?"

[Bronk]

Well, as the DM, you can present another problem to your players, because if the bad guys turn the corpse into an undead before the PCs can cast reincarnate, the spell will fail.

You can even run a little mini adventure where they flee the baddies until they find a place where they can spend 10 uninterrupted minutes casting the spell, and if they fail to do it in time, they have to go back and destroy the new undead first before trying again.

[Aldrakan]

Ah, okay. Then yes, animate dead would definitely work. Whether create undead would or not...well, the DM has to answer questions such as "what is giving it its own will and mind?"

My take for this scenario would be "Does it retain the memories, skills, class levels etc. of the original?" If so then the soul is bound/warped/being tapped in some fashion and couldn't be done after reincarnation, if not it's a separate undead spirit that's simply taken up residence in the body.
This also gives you more flexibility in tailoring the build to the ideal dark mirror, as they'd be able to take new class levels or copy the original as you prefer.

[Coidzor]

Reincarnate works as long as you reincarnate before the undead is created. Once there's an undead, it's no good.

If you reincarnate, an undead is made out of their previous corpse, and then they die again, I suppose technically the undead made from their last corpse might block reincarnate or raise dead or what have you, but that would just be dysfunctional rules from a rules oversight/the designers assuming you'd common sense through it.

What sorts of undead are actually possible with the soul back in a living body is entirely up to the DM and how necromancing works in the particular setting.

If the original soul has nothing to do with the undead then it would work to make an undead but then it also would mean that, hey, making the body into an undead creature doesn't do jack to Reincarnate or Resurrection or True Resurrection.

[digiman619]

Rules As Written? Probably not. Do it anyway. It's an idea that could make sense in-universe and (assuming you keep your players from finding out) is an AMAZING storytelling device. Unless one of your players is such a rules lawyer that he or she will filibuster the game over how it isn't RAW and they shouldn't be fighting it, and generally bitching about the idea, then they will think it's an awesome story, and months later when they finally look up the rules and realize that shouldn't work, it'll be to late and they can look back and realize how awesome a story it was.

[VenomTongue]

Dr. Motives was right, that was what I was asking.
Cool thanks guys. I am thinking maybe a Death Knight.