Petrification: what happens to the soul?

[TalksAlone]

Basically as the title asks. In terms of afterlife, resurection and all that: what happens when a creature is permanently petrified and the rock that is left of it (presumably still containing the soul) is turned to dust and blown away with the wind?

[Potato_Priest]

Basically as the title asks. In terms of afterlife, resurection and all that: what happens when a creature is permanently petrified and the rock that is left of it (presumably still containing the soul) is turned to dust and blown away with the wind?

Well, once the statue is destroyed, I imagine that the soul moves on to the afterlife as normal, since the character is pretty clearly dead and gone.

A more interesting question might be whether the soul remains with a petrified body that hasn't been broken yet, or whether it proceeds to the afterlife and is recalled by the ending of the effect in a similar manner to a resurrection.

[Sigreid]

Well, once the statue is destroyed, I imagine that the soul moves on to the afterlife as normal, since the character is pretty clearly dead and gone.

A more interesting question might be whether the soul remains with a petrified body that hasn't been broken yet, or whether it proceeds to the afterlife and is recalled by the ending of the effect in a similar manner to a resurrection.

I think it stays trapped in the stone body, which is not dead while intact. If you want to add horror, it could be trapped in there, aware of the passage of time. Immortal, immobile, always aware...

[Kane0]

While petrified you dont become an object, it's actually a condition. You have resistance to all damage but can otherwise be reduced to 0 HP and thus killed normally, at which point your soul leaves.
If the statue is reduced to rubble, gravel or dust one would assume you have reached 0 HP at some point :smallamused:

[lebefrei]

Yes, as a condition you must assume that, while the petrified body is whole, the person remains. They are "unaware of their surroundings" as per the description, though, so as more time passed the only real outcome is madness. People don't handle isolation very well, and that is pure and total isolation.

The passage of time, and erosion to the "statue," may eventually see its death. Although, if the damage resistance is a part of the spell and not just an assumption from being turned into stone, that may be enough to severely reduce any significant damage from wind and/or water. The person may be trapped for many millennia.

Whenever death does finally come (or even a removal of the condition when someone detects magic on it and gets curious), the person that was inside, based on the passage of time, is likely to be changed and dehumanized to a terrible degree. Considering that we largely seem to go into the afterlife in D&D worlds as the person we were when we died, this is probably a very bad thing. I can't imagine much except torment for that person for a very long time. Hopefully they were a good enough person to end up in an afterlife that can manage years of PTSD counseling and reintroduction to awareness.

And if the spell is ended after months, or even years? As a DM I'd definitely be perusing the Madness section of the DMG for the consequences.

[lperkins2]

That depends a bit on how petrification works in your setting. Presumably if the brain is also petrified, the character ceases to think until the spell ends. To it, no time has passed. The spell description simply says they are unaware of their surroundings as that is what has mechanical impact and must be true in all settings that allow the spell, the effects on the psyche of the victim, and their perception of time, is left to the DM to decide.

[90sMusic]

I'd say the soul remains within the statue until enough damage is done to it to warrant the creature's death, at which point it moves on like any other death.

Petrified folks shouldn't remember anything that happened from the point they were petrified until cured though. Otherwise virtually everyone that was ever petrified would go nuts or at the very least have an extreme case of PTSD because being conscious and aware of that condition for even a few minutes would be horrifying. If you were claustrophobic it would break your mind just about instantly.

[TalksAlone]

Well, this is much more of a consensus than I expected. I mean, I knew it was a statues condition (tee-hee), but something about the description of Flesh to Stone sprung in my mind that once permanent, you were effectively stone.
I was tripping about this for a while and a tought that came back again and again was that a stone doesn't actually die. A 'statue' is not really a thing, it is our brains that make a pile of rocks that resemble the form the statue 'represents' (only, again, to one that interprets it as being, in fact, a statue). Phylosophic thoughts aside, if you become stone permanently, not only you are not dead, you are effectively imortal: no matter how many of your 'whole' is still connected, stone does not die when split, broken or powdered.
Assuming this interpretation for a moment, say someone turns you to a pile of rubble then throw you away. Someone finds and grabs a piece of you and casts Greater Restoration: only then you become capable of dying (and probably does so immediatly). I assume here that all of your little pieces turn to flesh at once, but I could be wrong about this.
Am I reading too much into this? Would this make for an interesting plot point in your opinion? If so, how much of the whole would you say is needed present in the caster's presence in order to perform the 'Stone to Flesh' spell? This is obviously a very freaking Evil with a capital "E" thing to do, but is it similar to the Barghest's Soul Consumption 'only divine intervention may bring back' in degree? I am reaching a bit here, but if you powder the statue and throw the resulting dirt into various places of no note whatsoever (like in a dirt road I've never been before, the ocean and beneath a random rock) wouldn't you be condemning the soul to never go to the afterlife by any means short of a Wish or epic quest?

Anyways, thanks for the replies.

[90sMusic]

5e is weird about the use of the word "permanent".

All permanent means in 5th edition is the spell effect has no duration and lasts effectively forever. It can still be dispelled and removed though.

Things that are for really really permanent are instead said to be Instantaneous. These effects can't be removed or dispelled or whatever because they simply happen, change something, and no magic is continuing to act on it to keep it that way, it simply changed and that's it.

All "permanent" effects can be dispelled or ended in other ways. Instantaneous effects cannot be.

For instance, Resurrection spells are Instantaneous, you can't dispel resurrection from someone. Creating Undead is instantaneous because you can't just dispel undead to destroy them. Making some pretty, pretty flowers with druidcraft is instantaneous, you can't dispel those flowers because they aren't magical, they were just created or modified by magic, now they already exist as mundane things.

Flesh to Stone can be dispelled. True Polymorph can be dispelled or broken when reduced to 0 hitpoints. Modify Memory can "permanently erase memories" but the effect can be cured with restoration. So on and so forth.

Permanent isn't really permanent, just means it has no duration.

[Potato_Priest]

Phylosophic thoughts aside, if you become stone permanently, not only you are not dead, you are effectively imortal: no matter how many of your 'whole' is still connected, stone does not die when split, broken or powdered.


Stone is just as immortal as human flesh. You can shred it into little bits, but it won't disappear. However, if you do that to a living human, their flesh may remain, but they are very much dead. It is the same for a person made of stone.

If you did live on forever after your statue's destruction, your "death" would be very similar to that experienced by your average elemental. You would slowly fade back into the essence (matter) of the material plane, similarly to how they dissolve back into the plane of their home element.

[TalksAlone]

Stone is just as immortal as human flesh. You can shred it into little bits, but it won't disappear. However, if you do that to a living human, their flesh may remain, but they are very much dead. It is the same for a person made of stone.

If you did live on forever after your statue's destruction, your "death" would be very similar to that experienced by your average elemental. You would slowly fade back into the essence (matter) of the material plane, similarly to how they dissolve back into the plane of their home element.

Couldn't disagree more on the first part, since the organs, whose failiure would cause death to a human, simply wouldn't be damaged in the same way until they became flesh again, even if made powder of. But that's not the reason for the quotation.

The paralel you speak of how elementals die is very interesting. But becoming one with the material plane is a perversion of how a mortal soul on the material plane should die. In fact I would argue that it would be impossible for this soul to die for this very reason: it goes against the core definition of what dying means in D&D. Going to the afterlife AWAY from the Material Plane.

Back to your first point: maybe at some point the rock actually would in some alien, strange way 'die' thus liberating the soul it serves as body to. But at what point? I fail to believe it would happen by brute force: maybe when it's atoms simply change into something else entirely, maybe the soul itself isn't eternal and dies still inside the stone, maybe it would only die when the world ends, I don't know. The point being: it would take a long time. Longer than the caster will live, longer than his children and grandchildren will.