Icy spell combo: What are your thoughts on this?

[CIDE]

Hello Playground,

I was skimming through Frostburn the other day and a spell caught my eye that I never really noticed before: Ice to Flesh. Two things immediately came to mind when I read the description. First and foremost was the abuse that could be done via necromancy since the spell specifies that a sculpture becomes a corpse unless otherwise animated. That brought me to the second thought for a strange but likely useless combo with Ice Assassin.

How do you all think the spells would interaction? RAW, RAI, how you'd houserule it or your own personal interpration? Any other strange things to be done with Ice to Flash?

[Silva Stormrage]

Hello Playground,

I was skimming through Frostburn the other day and a spell caught my eye that I never really noticed before: Ice to Flesh. Two things immediately came to mind when I read the description. First and foremost was the abuse that could be done via necromancy since the spell specifies that a sculpture becomes a corpse unless otherwise animated. That brought me to the second thought for a strange but likely useless combo with Ice Assassin.

How do you all think the spells would interaction? RAW, RAI, how you'd houserule it or your own personal interpration? Any other strange things to be done with Ice to Flash?

Stone to flesh has the same line and most people don't think you can use it to create corpses to animate. For several reasons. RAI) There is no life force to animate, it may look like a corpse but it doesn't have the internal structure of a corpse (You can't design the innards of a solid statue it would just be a hunk of meat in the shape of the corpse), when it mentions "Animating life force available" it is referring to golems or similar applicable spells such as the example in the next line where it talks about turning a stone golem into a flesh golem.

RAW) Strict RAW seems to be more generous but still I don't think it lets you animate a corpse from a specific creature.

How I would rule it) I wouldn't allow it in any situation. Necromancy is strong enough as is.

[Deadline]

1. Create an ice sculpture of a giant cow.
2. Cast Ice to Flesh.
3. Steaks for everyone!

[DrMotives]

1. Create an ice sculpture of a giant cow.
2. Cast Ice to Flesh.
3. Steaks for everyone!

It'd be boneless too, no matter what it was sculpted to look like. But then you'd get the annoying player comments "this beef tastes like chicken"

[The Viscount]

I would actually say that Ice to flesh has no effect on an Ice assassin because of targeting. It can target a mass of ice which is treated as an object, or it can target a single creature that was frozen. The ice assassin is a creature, but is not a normal creature that was frozen, so cannot be affected.

The debate about ice to flesh necromancy is the same about stone to flesh necromancy, and I don't think it's been satisfactorily resolved for either side.

Ice to flesh to make meat is notable because it may require a higher level but produces a much higher volume of food than create food and water, and doesn't become useless in 24 hours.

[Zanos]

Stone to flesh has the same line and most people don't think you can use it to create corpses to animate. For several reasons. RAI) There is no life force to animate, it may look like a corpse but it doesn't have the internal structure of a corpse
It specifically says that "a statute would become a corpse."

[ExLibrisMortis]

It specifically says that "a statute would become a corpse."
In addition to this, there are no rules for internal organs. I'm pretty sure there's a sidebar somewhere that tells you not to bother with that level of detail, considering that spells like polymorph are in the picture, but I can't find it at the moment.

Either way, a corpse is a legal target for animate dead, and produces a zombie or skeleton just fine, regardless of the nature or state of the corpse (as long as the DM is willing to call it a corpse, so a cooked ham might not count, but the spell is explicit).

[Silva Stormrage]

It specifically says that "a statute would become a corpse."

Sure sure it's a "Corpse" but if you make a dragon statue and turn it into a corpse it isn't a "Corpse of a dragon" it's a "Corpse of a dragon statue" it was never a dragon you don't suddenly get the stats of a great wrym prismatic dragon from the corpse of a block of ice.

If I was allowing this as a DM I would at most treat the statue's statistics as a flesh golem since a ice golem could be turned into a flesh golem with that spell.

[icefractal]

D&D metaphysics is sorely lacking. Questions like "What stays with the body after death and what goes to the afterlife?" or "What is the relationship between undead and the former living creature?" are not only unanswered, but have mutually exclusive implied answers from different spots.

So to extrapolate about something like animating a former statue, you pretty much have to go into home brew territory, whatever your answer is.