How to dispose of a dead body.

[Barna13]

So I'm currently in an evil party in Sharn(in eberron). And I was wondering if there's any way(magical or mundane) short of disintegrate to complete dispose of a body. Messiness is okay, prestidigitation is a lovely spell.

[DrMotives]

Summon Monster with anything big enough to eat the body? Fiendish sharks would probably do fine.

[MisterKaws]

Flesh to Salt is a level earlier and gives you the corpse's weight in gp basically.

[Thurbane]

There are some spell options: Barghests’s Feast does the job...

[Piggy Knowles]

What's the party level/makeup and what resources do you have? There are a ton of ways to get rid of bodies but it'll depend heavily on what you have access to.

[Vizzerdrix]

A sausage grinder. Pig farm. Crab/lobster traps. Blacksand (if it kills them. Bake into a pastry and feed the target).

Oooh! Here is one that has been around for a while. Flesh to stone. Stone to mud. Purify food and drink. Turn yer target into clean, potable water.

[False God]

Have you considered burying it?

I'm always a fan of "use bodies as treats for befriending monsters".

[Mike Miller]

Bag of devouring. Read it. There is no substitute.

[Particle_Man]

Animate dead and tell it to walk to the bottom of an ocean and stay there.

[tiercel]

Oooh! Here is one that has been around for a while. Flesh to stone. Stone to mud. Purify food and drink. Turn yer target into clean, potable water.

My favorite variant of this, used by one of my BBEGs:

Flesh to Stone. Stone Shape (to reshape the statue forms into paving slabs).

The tasty schadenfreude of not only walking upon the permanently trapped souls of defeated enemies when popping out the front gate to check one’s mail post, but literally “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

[Jay R]

A sausage grinder.

A sausage grinder doesn't dispose of anything; it just changes its composition. You still have 200 pounds of meat.

[MisterKaws]

A sausage grinder doesn't dispose of anything; it just changes its composition. You still have 200 pounds of dog ration.

Fixed that for you.

[Venger]

So I'm currently in an evil party in Sharn(in eberron). And I was wondering if there's any way(magical or mundane) short of disintegrate to complete dispose of a body. Messiness is okay, prestidigitation is a lovely spell.

Do you need to prevent his friends from rezing him or not?

If so, most of the normal methods have been delineated: eat it yourself or feed it to a monster, purify water trick, barghest's feast, pao, turn it into an undead

Aside from that, if you care about him coming back, you could feed it to an actual barghest, or find a life eater (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/pg20020911b) and deliver them a tasty treat. In the meantime, chuck it in a bag of holding. It's a vacuum, so meat won't spoil in there.

[rel]

You can survive for up to 10 minutes within the bag before suffocating so vacuum doesn't seem right

[Venger]

You can survive for up to 10 minutes within the bag before suffocating so vacuum doesn't seem right

Right, but once that air's consumed, it's a vacuum. Light a candle in there or whatever to kill the air and you can keep your snacks and/or corpses in there.

[AnimeTheCat]

Why not just incinerate the corpse and then mix the ashes with water, then mix that into the dirt/mud of a well traveled road. When questioned, have the best liar claim they're the ashes of his/her father who was a devout follower of fahrlanaglanaglarular (however the heck you spell his weird AF name) and his final wish was to add to the roads as a show of final faith. Very quickly, the ashes will be consumed by the microorganisms or spread around the country/continent.

[Jowgen]

A dollop of Green Slime. Eats the whole thing, and you end up with more slime than you started with. Touch of Jubilex a rat or something for a starter culture.

[Elkad]

Animate dead and tell it to walk to the bottom of an ocean and stay there.

Or if there isn't an ocean nearby, make it dig its own grave. Of course if you are evil, you could save the onyx and just dominate it to dig it's own grave while still alive.

[magic9mushroom]

It's a vacuum, so meat won't spoil in there.

What do these things have to do with each other? Oxygen is not required for spoilage, as most of the bacteria and fungi involved are either facultative or obligate anaerobes. The only actual help you'd get from a vacuum is eventual desiccation, and that could take quite a while.

[tiercel]

Right, but once that air's consumed, it's a vacuum. Light a candle in there or whatever to kill the air and you can keep your snacks and/or corpses in there.

With apologies to the catgirl about to pay the price for this, but that’s not how actual combustion works: changing oxygen into carbon dioxide and water doesn’t “destroy air” or remove all air pressure (though what’s left may be unbreathable for creatures that require oxygen).

Of course, if that’s how fire works in your campaign because alchemy, magic, etc. fair enough, but watch out when nascent or actual engineer players look to exploit their newfound vacuum-creating powers to drive thaumodynamic engines of destruction....

[Venger]

What do these things have to do with each other? Oxygen is not required for spoilage, as most of the bacteria and fungi involved are either facultative or obligate anaerobes. The only actual help you'd get from a vacuum is eventual desiccation, and that could take quite a while.
Bacteria don't exist in dnd.


With apologies to the catgirl about to pay the price for this, but that’s not how actual combustion works: changing oxygen into carbon dioxide and water doesn’t “destroy air” or remove all air pressure (though what’s left may be unbreathable for creatures that require oxygen).

Of course, if that’s how fire works in your campaign because alchemy, magic, etc. fair enough, but watch out when nascent or actual engineer players look to exploit their newfound vacuum-creating powers to drive thaumodynamic engines of destruction....

Again, while oxygen is alluded to a handful of times in the rules, it's used synonymously with "air." Once the air's breathed (or consumed by fire) that's it. carbon dioxide isn't a substance in dnd. Without air, there's nothing there, qed vacuum. If you hurled a corpse into space, it wouldn't spoil, flies wouldn't lay eggs in it, etc. same with bag of holding. If your gm gives you grief, go with gentle repose, a spell invented for just this purpose

[Heliomance]

Oooh! Here is one that has been around for a while. Flesh to stone. Stone to mud. Purify food and drink. Turn yer target into clean, potable water.

For bonus points, do this while they're still alive. Deals with them permanently, but they're technically not dead, so can't be resurrected!

[Yora]

Disintegrate.
Gust of Wind.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/smilies/oots/vaarsuvius.gif

[magic9mushroom]

Bacteria don't exist in dnd.

Alright, if we're going from first principles:

1) Corpses are known to decay and meat to spoil in D&D.
2) Therefore, to prove that corpses do not decay and meat does not spoil in a vacuum in D&D, you must either provide a citation from a rulebook indicating that specific case, or provide some reasoning as to why a vacuum should be relevant here.

I assumed you were providing reasoning based on RL. However, IRL a vacuum does not prevent meat from spoiling (with the exception that if there are no bacteria in the vacuum and all bacteria were removed from the meat, but a sterile room would have the same effect). Hence my counterargument.

If you are not making an argument based on RL mechanisms of spoilage, you must provide a citation from a D&D sourcebook that says meat doesn't spoil in a vacuum. I'll be waiting.

[tiercel]

Bacteria don't exist in dnd.

Actually, in point of fact, they do by RAW: fiendish bacteria, no less, on the sixth level of Hell at least:


The Frother is a pool that produces no useful poison. When a creature comes into contact with its waters, however, its placid surface turns to a seething whirlwind of bubbles and spray. Thousands of fiendish bacteria, each no bigger than the head of a pin, set about devouring the hapless victim.




Once the air's breathed (or consumed by fire) that's it.
By this logic, it would seem quite difficult to play a wind instrument, with nothing to exhale (to say nothing of speech....)

[Venger]

Alright, if we're going from first principles:

1) Corpses are known to decay and meat to spoil in D&D.
They do in theory, based entirely on an implication in gentle repose, but again, there are no rules for this. The body's too rotten to be raised after a day/cl, but there are no rules for when it disappears and becomes grass for antelope to eat.


2) Therefore, to prove that corpses do not decay and meat does not spoil in a vacuum in D&D, you must either provide a citation from a rulebook indicating that specific case, or provide some reasoning as to why a vacuum should be relevant here.
proving the negative. try again.

Show me the stats for bacteria, then. You can't, because they don't exist.



I assumed you were providing reasoning based on RL. However, IRL a vacuum does not prevent meat from spoiling (with the exception that if there are no bacteria in the vacuum and all bacteria were removed from the meat, but a sterile room would have the same effect). Hence my counterargument.
Again, yes it does. if you put meat out in space, there are no bacteria already on it, it will not spoil, because there is nothing there to make it biodegrade.

you're the one making baseless assertions, so you are the one who needs to provide proof, which you can't


Actually, in point of fact, they do by RAW: fiendish bacteria, no less, on the sixth level of Hell at least:
that is undoubtedly, completely hilarious, but they don't have a statblock an aren't creatures, and as you said, don't exist outside of this part of baator. I guess you can't cart corpses around there, but on the prime material you're safe from enormous fiendish bacteria.

[tiercel]

that is undoubtedly, completely hilarious, but they don't have a statblock an aren't creatures, and as you said, don't exist outside of this part of baator. I guess you can't cart corpses around there, but on the prime material you're safe from enormous fiendish bacteria.

There is quite a difference between “they are only mentioned in one place” and “they therefore only exist in that one place.”

While they don’t get a full statblock, they do have a game mechanical effect (15d6 damage per round to any immersed creature), so similar to, for instance, green slime and brown mold.

And if we are going to get technical, “fiendish” is a defined template which applies to a base creature, which would imply that the base creature “bacteria” is, in fact, a creature, even if its description is more in line with dungeon hazards such as slimes and molds.

[magic9mushroom]

They do in theory, based entirely on an implication in gentle repose, but again, there are no rules for this. The body's too rotten to be raised after a day/cl, but there are no rules for when it disappears and becomes grass for antelope to eat.


proving the negative. try again.

Show me the stats for bacteria, then. You can't, because they don't exist.

How does any of this mean that meat doesn't spoil in a vacuum?

I mean, you might construct some kind of head-in-the-sand argument that meat doesn't spoil at all because "no rules for it, therefore it doesn't happen amirite", but we got onto this topic because you suggested using a vacuum to store meat, which implied you believed a vacuum to help prevent meat spoilage.

[DrMotives]

Why does meat spoiling matter? The original question was how to get rid of the remains, not how to make delicious mummy jerky from them. Although that's also doable.

[Vizzerdrix]

Why does meat spoiling matter? The original question was how to get rid of the remains, not how to make delicious mummy jerky from them. Although that's also doable.

Mmmm with tangy chipotle wrappings om nomnomnom...

Reanimation has been discussed, but what about processing the body first to get as many undead as possible? I'm positive we could get several critters from a single corpse, then they could all run off in different directions.

[Segev]

The cheapest solutions are cremation (if you can build a hot enough pyre) or a small herd of pigs (reasonably inexpensive animals, and you can either have Handle Animal, yourself, or a hireling who takes care of them for you).

Animating them as skeletons causes the flesh to slough off, so it's unlikely they'd be recognized.

[Venger]

Mmmm with tangy chipotle wrappings om nomnomnom...

Reanimation has been discussed, but what about processing the body first to get as many undead as possible? I'm positive we could get several critters from a single corpse, then they could all run off in different directions.

top of my head, you could cast create crawling claw to sever the left hand, then animate as a zombie/skeleton and use create undead or greater for something incorporeal

[Vizzerdrix]

top of my head, you could cast create crawling claw to sever the left hand, then animate as a zombie/skeleton and use create undead or greater for something incorporeal

Slap a stump knife on that skelly and make its skin into a skin kite. Add in brain in a jar.