Request For Collaboration: Metaphysics of True Polymorph (and beyond)

[meta-dnd]

There are many metaphysical questions raised by the True Polymorph spell, but the "object to creature" variant in particular begs a whole flock of questions. When polymorphing a large boulder into a Young Silver Dragon or a Fire Giant or a Treant (etc.), where does the "soul" (the animating spark that identifies a unique personality) for this new creature come from? When polymorphing a creature to a creature, there is already a soul that can be transmorgified. When polymoprhing a creature into an object, this is similar (albeit more extreme?) to suspended animation (c.f. Sequester), so the creature's "soul" can be thought of as "on pause". But when polymorphing an object into a creature, there is the question of where the soul comes from.

There are many possible paths forward here.



We could suppose panpsychism (everything, including inanimate objects, have some level of consciousness). This, however, begs the question of what consciousness is, and what it means for entities to have differing levels of consciousness and how a spell can affect this (an interesting metaphysical question on its own, but not the topic of this thread).


We could assume that a new soul is spontaneously created as part of the polymorph.


We could assume that such polymorphed creatures are soulless facsimiles of a "real" creature, but that doesn't seem in keeping with the intention of the spell (is it incapable of learning, healing, etc?)


... I will add other possibilities here as they are proposed ...



In pondering this issue, I noticed something for the first time; although there is some discussion in D&D literature about the existence of souls and what happens to souls after one dies, I do not remember reading anything about how souls are created and inserted into a new life-form. Do they pre-exist in the outer planes and enter the newly created life form ala reincarnation? Or are they spontaneously created as part of new life? Does this happen at conception, at birth, or sometime in between? D&D doesn't like to limit the imagination of participants or impinge on the real-world religious beliefs of said participants, so I wouldn't be surprised if it explicitly supports multiple ways for souls to enter new life ... but I haven't seen any discussion about this. Does anyone know of RAW material?

How souls come to enter new life forms is obviously relevant to the question of object-to-creature polymorphing, as we could presumably use the same mechanism (if we so chose) for both new-life-via-conception and new-life-via-polymorph. But even then, there is a difference between new life entering a pre-born dragon fetus, and life entering a 10 year old silver dragon. What are the memories of this dragon? Since personality and knowledge and skills are profoundly impacted by one's memories, a lack of memories seems problematic ... but if there are memories, where do they come from?

Having an underlying theory for how this works would go a long way to allowing us to answer innumerable questions in an internally consistent way.




Suppose the boulder-turned-dragon is 10 years old when created. Later, Dispel Magic is successfully cast on the dragon. What happens to the soul?


In above example, if True Polymorph is cast on the same boulder again, does the same soul come back, or is it a completely new soul?


How would it affect the psychology of nominally quite powerful creatures to know that their very existence is just a DispelMagic away from being completely eradicated? Is there anything they can do to protect against this vulnerability (such creatures are much much more vulnerable than "normal" creatures, but maybe that is "the way it should be")


What exactly happens when the Awaken is cast (what does it mean for the creature to gain an Intelligence of 10, and presumably self-awareness)? Is a soul created? Did the creature already have a soul that just got "upgraded"? If a creature can be raised from Int 2 to Int 10, what is stopping us from creating Greater Awaken to take Int 10 to Int 20? (obviously from a meta-game perspective this is needed for game balance, but it would be nice for our metaphysics to explain why this cannot happen with spells of level 9 or less).


When an Unseen Servant spell is cast, what is happening? The spell has contradictory text, as it says "This spell creates an invisible, mindless, shapeless force that ..." and then later says "The servant can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food, and pouring wine.". Those tasks are not actually something a mindless entity can do (some kind of intelligence is necessary to understand commands, how to mend or fold clothes, etc. Is "intelligence" a separate concept?


Intelligent magical weapons ... where does this intelligence come from. Do these weapons have souls? If their intelligence is separate from their soul, what exactly is the difference between between a non-intelligent magical weapon and an intelligent one?


The Speak With Dead spell states "You grant the semblance of life and intelligence to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer the questions you pose" and "This spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can't learn new information, doesn't comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can't speculate about future events.". From this, something can have the semblance of intelligence (is there a difference between the semblance of intelligence and intelligence? Classic Turing Test!) without a soul. But maybe intelligence is related to an "animating spirit". Sadly, there is no further reference to "animating spirit" anywhere else in the PHB, DMG, MM, EE, XGTE, VGTM, SCAG, or TCOE.


A golem (Flesh, Clay, Stone, Iron), Shield Golem and various other constructs can be created, and some level of intelligence is added to the construct (Int 3 for Clay/Stone/Iron, Int 6 for Flesh, Int 7 for Shield Guardians, ...). Is this intelligence a "captured spirit"?


The Find Familiar spell mentions "You gain the service of a familiar, a spirit that takes an animal form you choose" and "the familiar has the statistics of the chosen form, though it is a celestial, fey, or fiend (your choice) instead of a beast." and "Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands" and "you can see through your familiar's eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has". So this "spirit" has intelligence, and some means of experiencing senses.


The Skeleton entry in the MM says the following: "Whatever sinister force awakens a skeleton infuses its bones with a dark vitality, adhering joint to joint and reassembling dismantled limbs. This energy motivates a skeleton to move and think in a rudimentary fashion, though only as a pale imitation of the way it behaved in life. An animated skeleton retains no connection to its past, although resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it.". This makes reference to "undead spirits". I'm liking this trend of "spirits" being the basis for sentience, and being distinct from souls.


... I will add questions here as we identify them ...



So, this is admittedly a rather high-level, abstract thread that won't appeal to everyone. But I'd love to engage in a collaboration with other DMs who enjoy this kind of metaphysics. I'd also be interested in any existing literature on this topic, either official or contributed.

Some possible ways to advance this thread:

New ideas for how souls work in object-to-creature polymorphs
Exploring ramifications and knock-on effects of a specific "way souls work"
Additional questions related to object-to-creature polymorphs (hopefully an internally consistent metaphysics would help answer such questions, but having a list of such questions up-front may also help drive the metaphysics itself).

[krugaan]

dunno about RAW, but i was thinking about this in regards to another spell ... awaken.

Do animals have souls? I say no.

How about awakened animals?... little harder.

For that matter, what is a soul? It's not defined in canon as far as i know, so i'll put forth that a soul is the spiritual component of any living being with an alignment.

After all, the main purpose of a soul is to go somewhere after it dies, almost always one of the outer planes: that's how their populated. Obviously, every humanoid has an alignment, even if it's neutral... that's still an alignment.

So, what doesn't have an alignment? apparently, every unintelligent beast that's not a cranium rat. Cranium rats are a strange outlier... pretty unintelligent, but chaotic evil. How does that happen? Well, there's a pretty interesting difference between cranium rats and every other unintelligent being i could find: they have telepathy. Moreso, they create gestalt minds who ARE intelligent.

Good and evil are social constructs. You can't have good and evil without a society, and even the concept of good and evil is impossible to convey without a language. Interestingly, there IS one unaligned creature with int>4 ... the ape, and it's giant cousin. However, it speaks no languages. It can't comprehend what is good and evil because it can't talk about what good and evil is, and thus is unaligned.

So, i posit a soul has the potential to grow when all the following conditions are met:

* it is alive, or was at some point
* it has sentience
* it can speak a language

lets see what this excludes:

* simulacrums - has sentience, can speak a language, but not alive
* mindless undead - not sentient, not alive, can't speak a language in most cases
* ghosts - they are souls already
* extraplanar entities - they ARE souls that have died and gone to their respective planes
* animals - soulless ... but have the potential to grow one organically, the same way babies might not really have a soul when born.

so, where do souls come from? who knows, but I have my own origin story that i like:


In the beginning, universe was mostly formless chaos, the positive energy plane, and the negative energy plane. Ouruburos, the great world serpent, embodiment of law, chased his own tail and swam in circles so much that a whirlpool was created in the cosmos, creating a channel between the positive and negative energy planes (i have a slide for this!). Energy flowed from the positive to the negative, and in the center of this great river of power, the Prime Material formed, and with it, life, and eventually, souls. Souls loved things and feared things, and the first gods were created, and all the planes they inhabit.

the Prime Material is like a river of power, where things live, grow, and die. Mortals can exist in this river, like fish. Gods are like people who live on the banks of this river: they catch fish for food, use the flow of the river to power waterwheels, maybe even live on the river in boats. But never IN the river. Gods may derive their power from the river but have a hard time actually existing there.

In my campaign, this is why gods almost never exist on the prime material, why souls only come from the prime material, why gods want anything to do with mortals at all, etc.

I thought about all this because i'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden with a bunch of extra stuff, and it bugged me why Auril would be on the prime material at all.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally, I'm conflicted about TP in that use, for just that reason. Due requests from my players, I'm planning to answer it thusly:

TP does not create a true soul, by default. No spell can. It awakens the kami (the nature spirits that exist in all things), giving it temporary access to the "waking" world and a facsimile of a "real person" soul. When it ends, the kami returns to its normal state as an entity that exists outside of human ken.

However, there might (haven't decided the details) be a way to find a real soul for it. That would result in the effect being permanent and no longer dispelable. But it no longer would be obedient to you--it's its own being now. But that would be the result of an epic quest.

I've also considered saying the same thing about True Resurrection, at least if they've been dead more that 100 years or died to demons (who eat souls in my cosmology). You get a copycat soul, wearing a reconstruction of the body. Might have side effects.

[Mellack]

To answer the question would require coming up with the whole cosmology of what souls are, where do they come from normally, where do they go, etc. If you can't explain where a dwarf gets a soul, then you can't start to figure out where a TP creature might get one. Then you also have to determine if elves have souls, elementals, plants, etc. It would be a massive amount of work, and be specific to that setting. Far easier to just deal with the end result, a sentient creature.

[False God]

I have always run that "souls" are just the spiritual side of a creature (or object). They are naturally forming, souls "grow" as a creature develops and like the creature, it grows based on what it's fed. Objects can have souls but its harder because they can't act on their own and lack the capacity to think. They need to be subjected to experiences. This is why a sword used in a murder may have an evil aura on it, or a sword used for a genocide may have a whole entire personality.

So if you turned a fox into a dragon (for example) it still has a "fox soul" for a while, but as it grows as learns and experiences new things, that soul changes into something new, maybe it goes full dragon, maybe it goes somewhere in between.

As an aside, I do have a rather complex cosmology related to this, and the soul/body unit works both ways. A "big" soul from a powerful being can physically alter a smaller or more malleable body. A "small" soul, by contract, may have trouble even making a larger body move. If the power difference is too great, it typically results in death.

It doesn't really take a god to create a soul. Powerful beings CAN do so. While it may seem to the lay person an incredible feat, the reality is (in my games) that souls exist in everything. They're just either powerful enough to exert a presence, or not.

[meta-dnd]

Personally, I'm conflicted about TP in that use, for just that reason. Due requests from my players, I'm planning to answer it thusly:

I have contemplated removing the "Object to Creature" variant of TP, given how different it is from the other options. But it is fun to see if we can come up with an internally consistent way for it to work.


TP does not create a true soul, by default. No spell can. It awakens the kami (the nature spirits that exist in all things), giving it temporary access to the "waking" world and a facsimile of a "real person" soul. When it ends, the kami returns to its normal state as an entity that exists outside of human ken.

The more examples I explore (see the ever growing list in my OP), the more I'm seeing an intentional distinction in the D&D 5e literature between "spirit" and "soul" (without the designers really formalizing either term anywhere that I know of). This suggests at least three components to an entity:


a body(which represents Strength, Dexterity and Constitution scores and can receive sensory input and act on the world)
a spirit (which provides Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma scores)
a soul (which represents the portion of an entity that (usually) transitions from the Material Plane to some other plane upon death).


Lots of open questions though:


I'm not clear on what distinguishes a spirit from a soul
whether a soul is a spirit plus something else (can a soul exist without a spirit?)
what a spirit experiences/looks-like when it isn't in a body (and whether this changes depending on whether the spirit is on the Material Plane or some other plane)
whether a soul can exist independent of a body on the Material Plane (a spirit obviously can, but can a soul?)
...


As I identify more examples, I think I'll be able to come up with something interesting around these questions.

I like the idea of a spirit being able to "grow into" a soul. I'll consider how that might be incorporated into my metaphysics.


However, there might (haven't decided the details) be a way to find a real soul for it. That would result in the effect being permanent and no longer dispelable. But it no longer would be obedient to you--it's its own being now. But that would be the result of an epic quest.

Hmmm, I like the idea of one of the distinctions between a spirit and a soul being "independence". Some spirits are independent, but maybe the metaphysics of the multiverse makes it easy to "bind" or "compel" spirits (and much more difficult to bind/compel souls).

Since TP only gives the caster control over the created entity for the hour (once it becomes permanent this control is lost), are you envisaging that every permanent TP gains a soul (and this is what explains their independence)? Or do both a temporary and permanent TP represent a spirit, and the TP needs to go on a quest to acquire a soul? I like both possibilities. Very Alice-in-Wonderland, having the TPs on a quest for their souls...


I've also considered saying the same thing about True Resurrection, at least if they've been dead more that 100 years or died to demons (who eat souls in my cosmology). You get a copycat soul, wearing a reconstruction of the body. Might have side effects.

Interesting possibility. I think in my cosmology, I will simply make some corpses unresurrectable (any creature whose soul was consumed at death). I agree with you though that True Resurrection (and Resurrection) add complexities that need to be accounted for in our respective cosmologies. At this moment, I'm envisaging a soul being whatever portion of an entity "lives on" in the outer planes after an experience in the Material (or other) Planes in a corporal body. I'm contemplating having those souls not need a physical form (but able to "project" a sensory representation of themselves if they so choose so that others can interact with them). I'm still not clear whether a soul contains a spirit, or if they are two separate concepts that can reside independently (if they are independent, then souls would also need to have Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma scores). This could explain why some entities get augmented ... maybe all trees have spirits, and the Awaken spell gives them a soul. But just as plausible, trees do not have spirits, and Awaken gives them a spirit. All fun stuff to contemplate and tweak...

[krugaan]

I'm not yet clear on what distinguishes a spirit from a soul

one word: alignment.

[meta-dnd]

one word: alignment.

Alignment is certainly one option for distinguishing between spirit and soul, but I'm not sure it can be of the simplistic "spirit doesn't have alignment, soul does have alignnment" variety unless we want sentient magic items to have souls. In particular, if a "spirit" gives something Intelligence, Wisdom and/or Charisma, we could explain sentient magic items as being imbued with a spirit. But if spirits cannot have alignments (and souls do), then a sentient magic item would also need a soul. For some reason it feels cleaner to me for sentient magic items to *not* have souls, but maybe I need to reconsider that. Because I do indeed like the simplicity involved in alignment being tied to souls, not spirits.

[krugaan]

Alignment is certainly one option for distinguishing between spirit and soul, but I'm not sure it can be of the simplistic "spirit doesn't have alignment, soul does have alignnment" variety unless we want sentient magic items to have souls.

i don't think that's necessarily true. my "one word" answer was a little too simplistic, i think. Simulacrums can have alignments (Rime has one, for example) but are definitely soul-less. Undead are also aligned (skeletons are lawful evil), and intelligent (int 6) but noone is suggesting they have a soul.


In particular, if a "spirit" gives something Intelligence, Wisdom and/or Charisma, we could explain sentient magic items as being imbued with a spirit.

that works, i guess. Spirits can "act" a certain way, but they can't "change" I think. They're like a snapshot of a soul at a certain point in time. Spirits are more ... elemental, i guess, is a way of describing it. Souls are more living, in that they can change by experiencing, remembering, living.


But if spirits cannot have alignments (and souls do), then a sentient magic item would also need a soul. For some reason it feels cleaner to me for sentient magic items to *not* have souls, but maybe I need to reconsider that. Because I do indeed like the simplicity involved in alignment being tied to souls, not spirits.

make learning a requirement, perhaps. growth, another characteristic of being alive. do sentient items learn and grow? not that i can recall. They are usually imprinted with a purpose that never changes.

[meta-dnd]

i don't think that's necessarily true. my "one word" answer was a little too simplistic, i think. Simulacrums can have alignments (Rime has one, for example) but are definitely soul-less. Undead are also aligned (skeletons are lawful evil), and intelligent (int 6) but noone is suggesting they have a soul.

Excellent point. So we can conclude that the "spirits do not have alignments, souls do have alignments" option is not consistent with published canon ... always useful to narrow down our options in the quest for an internally consistent metaphysics ;-)

This means that spirits must have alignments. And souls do too, since it is the alignment of the soul that dictates what plane they end up on after death. It is still an open question whether the alignment of a soul is "inherited" from a spirit (if a soul is a spirit plus more) or is a different thing entirely (if souls and spirits are independent concepts, or if souls are "spirits plus more" and the "plus more" can include an alignment). Can a spirit and a soul with differing alignments reside in the same body?

Which takes us back to the question of what distinguishes spirits from souls, and whether spirits and souls are two independent concepts (or whether a soul is a spirit plus something more). Can a soul exist without a spirit? (I'm leaning toward "no", until I find canon that poses problems for this assumption).


that works, i guess. Spirits can "act" a certain way, but they can't "change" I think. They're like a snapshot of a soul at a certain point in time. Spirits are more ... elemental, i guess, is a way of describing it. Souls are more living, in that they can change by experiencing, remembering, living.

This is an interesting possibility. Spirits cannot learn (or have limited abilities in that direction), or are more "static" in nature. Sounds like a promising path.


make learning a requirement, perhaps. growth, another characteristic of being alive. do sentient items learn and grow? not that i can recall. They are usually imprinted with a purpose that never changes.

Yeah, it fits so far.

I'd also like to add something to the metaphysics to explain why it is possible to raise Int 2 to Int 10 with a 6th level Awaken spell, but why it isn't possible to raise Int 10 to Int 18. And why it is possible to raise Int 3 to Int 10, but not Int 4 to Int 10.

I was contemplating putting a cap on the ability scores provided by a spirit (maybe they can be at most Int/Wis/Cha 10 or even 8) and higher scores imply a soul. But if it is true that no creature with type 'undead' has a soul, this limitation doesn't fit (Demiliches have Int/Wis/Cha scores of 20/17/20, SkullLords have 16/15/21, Vampires have 17/15/18, Flameskulls have 16/10/11, Will'o Wisps have 13/14/11. So I don't think we can limit ability scores on spirits... or intelligent undead do have a soul. I'm ok with dismissing this idea of limiting spirit ability scores ... chalk it up to a possibility I was considering that doesn't fit the canon.

As for why we can go from Int 3 to Int 10 but not Int 4 to Int 10, maybe we need to make a distinction between "animalistic" spirits (Int < 4) and "sapient" spirits (int >= 4). The mages of the multiverse have discovered a way to upgrade animalistic spirits to sapient spirits, but not how to upgrade an already sapient spirit.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I have contemplated removing the "Object to Creature" variant of TP, given how different it is from the other options. But it is fun to see if we can come up with an internally consistent way for it to work.

The more examples I explore (see the ever growing list in my OP), the more I'm seeing an intentional distinction in the D&D 5e literature between "spirit" and "soul" (without really formalizing either term anywhere that I know of). This suggests at least three components to an entity:


a body(which represents Strength, Dexterity and Constitution scores and can receive sensory input and act on the world)
a spirit (which provides Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma scores)
a soul (which represents the portion of an entity that (usually) transitions from the Material Plane to some other plane upon death).


Lots of open questions though:


I'm not clear on what distinguishes a spirit from a soul
whether a soul is a spirit plus something else (can a soul exist without a spirit?)
what a spirit experiences/looks-like when it isn't in a body (and whether this changes depending on whether the spirit is on the Material Plane or some other plane)
whether a soul can exist independent of a body on the Material Plane (a spirit obviously can, but can a soul?)
...


As I identify more examples, I think I'll be able to come up with something interesting around these questions.

I like the idea of a spirit being able to "grow into" a soul. I'll consider how that might be incorporated into my metaphysics.

Hmmm, I like the idea of one of the distinctions between a spirit and a soul being "independence". Some spirits are independent, but maybe the metaphysics of the multiverse makes it easy to "bind" or "compel" spirits (and much more difficult to bind/compel souls).

Since TP only gives the caster control over the created entity for the hour (once it becomes permanent this control is lost), are you envisaging that every permanent TP gains a soul (and this is what explains their independence)? Or do both a temporary and permanent TP represent a spirit, and the TP needs to go on a quest to acquire a soul? I like both possibilities. Very Alice-in-Wonderland, having the TPs on a quest for their souls...

Interesting possibility. I think in my cosmology, I will simply make some corpses unresurrectable (any creature whose soul was consumed at death). I agree with you though that True Resurrection (and Resurrection) add complexities that need to be accounted for in our respective cosmologies. At this moment, I'm envisaging a soul being whatever portion of an entity "lives on" in the outer planes after an experience in the Material (or other) Planes in a corporal body. I'm contemplating having those souls not need a physical form (but able to "project" a sensory representation of themselves if they so choose so that others can interact with them). I'm still not clear whether a soul contains a spirit, or if they are two separate concepts that can reside independently (if they are independent, then souls would also need to have Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma scores). This could explain why some entities get augmented ... maybe all trees have spirits, and the Awaken spell gives them a soul. But just as plausible, trees do not have spirits, and Awaken gives them a spirit. All fun stuff to contemplate and tweak...

My setting departs strongly from the canon lore.

I postulate that living beings have three parts:
Body : Meatstuff, condensed matter that can interact with other condensed matter. Incorporeal beings and pure spirits (ie kami, most outsiders) don't have these by default. Summoning spells that interact with spirit entities provide a temporary shell for the entity to inhabit and control. Mortal beings store some amount of (mostly redundant) memory and personality here. Incorporeal creatures can materialize a partial shell for interacting with matter, but that requires effort and it's not permanent.

Nimbus : Diffuse spirit-stuff that provides the interface with the immaterial and connects body and spark. Your magical capabilities, sensitivities, etc all reside here. Spirit entities use their nimbus as their body unless materialized with a shell-body.

Spark : The self, the source of identity, will, etc. The "soul". Ineffable. Comes from ????, goes to ???? (questions I refuse to give any clear answer for in-universe). Produces all other energy in the universe via its interactions and growth/change. Considered to be a fragment of the Dreamer who created the universe. Destroying these is something only a jotnar (basically an anti-spark) can do. And is the hands-down most destructive, most evil action possible. It's why demons (who have fused with jotnar) and undead (who are jotnar puppeting corpses) are nearly-universally considered hostis humani generis and summoning them is kill-on-sight for most civilized areas.

Nimbus + spark == spirit. Constructs lack spirits--they only have an (artificial) nimbus and body. Undead replace the spark with a jotnar. Demons are mortals who have, through rituals, trapped a jotnar inside of them and feed it other souls in exchange for power. Non-demon outsiders generally are spirit entities.

All things in nature have kami, animistic entities that are effectively spirits associated with non-living things (including concepts and inanimate objects). They have individual identity, but aren't nearly the same as human identities. In fact, they blend and join (and split from) each other nearly at will, trading memories, experiences, and thoughts. These are not human in thought patterns. They mostly exist and observe...such as you can call it that. They are, generally, very curious about what it's like to be "physical". Druids and rangers, as well as anyone calling a "fey spirit" deal with them. Not by explicit bargains, but by intuiting their "desires" and allowing them to flow through you. For instance, wildshape is a druid spending personal energy to form a shell for an animal kami and temporarily dissolving his body into it. The kami pilots and gets to experience physicality, the druid gets a new shape and a buffer on his own physical body (and doesn't have to learn how to walk on four legs.

Note: the fey are the result of many small kami all becoming obsessed with something about mortal society, culture, behaviors, etc. They band together and form a pseudo-real body out of ambient energy, which they use to interact. They're not malicious, generally, but their idea of what it means to be mortal is...well...odd and incomplete. Killing a fey just causes the agglomeration to collapse. They generally don't take this poorly--one thing kami really don't understand is the concept of individual death. They do absolutely hate the jotnar, which are basically anti-kami.

So True Polymorph (object -> creature) would go like this.
1. Spell creates a temporary body out of ambient energy. Effectively "hard light".
2. Spell calls/coerces/summons a kami into that body.
3. If the spell fails before the 1hr mark, the kami still isn't fully adapted and the spell ends entirely. Otherwise, the kami has stabilized and can draw on its usual sources of energy, allowing the caster to stop concentrating (ie feeding it energy little by little).
4. If dispelled, the body/kami connection is broken and the hard-light body falls apart.

It would always have a kind of soul, but it would be kami-typed, not "normal". Getting them a "real" soul, stabilizing their body into something permanent that can't be dispelled and giving them the possibility of an afterlife and the ability to grow (something kami don't really have, being eternal and unchanging...mostly) would require an epic quest. Sort of Pinocchio style. "Dispelling" a TP creature doesn't hurt the kami, it just returns to nature.

If you created a Young dragon using TP and made it "permanent", it would never age. It would never grow or develop, physically or mentally. It simply would exist.

Simulacra are simply constructs, an artificial nimbus in an artificial body. They have no will of their own. They cannot use anything that involves souls--they have none. They're fancy golems.

----------

As for resurrection and why TR is so problematic, death happens when the body and the spirit separate. The spirit goes into Shadow (basically the combination of Shadowfell, Feywild, the Hells, and pathfinder's Boneyard/afterlife), where the nimbus slowly separates from the spark. Basically, that afterlife (which usually lasts no more than 100 years) is a time for the spark to wind down all its unfinished business with its life. The spark then passes beyond the Gates of Infinity (a metaphorical construct) and...no one knows what happens after that. Not even the gods. And due to demon incursions into Shadow, some spirits just get eaten by demons (or transformed into demons).

So normal resurrection just yoinks the spirit out of Shadow, possibly rebuilding the body, and shoves it back inside. Easy peasy (for a god). True Resurrection runs into the issue that the spirit may have already fallen apart and the spark departed Beyond (or been eaten by a demon). Which then runs into cosmological issues. I may just say that that "100 year" mark is a generic average and that TR doesn't work some times, because the soul no longer exists.

[krugaan]

I was contemplating putting a cap on the ability scores provided by a spirit (maybe they can be at most Int/Wis/Cha 10 or even 8) and higher scores imply a soul. But if it is true that no creature with type 'undead' has a soul, this limitation doesn't fit (Demiliches have Int/Wis/Cha scores of 20/17/20, SkullLords have 16/15/21, Vampires have 17/15/18, Flameskulls have 16/10/11, Will'o Wisps have 13/14/11. So I don't think we can limit ability scores on spirits... or intelligent undead do have a soul. Not a big deal, just a possibility I was considering that doesn't fit the canon.

well ... liches have phylacteries, which house their souls, right? "A lich is created by an arcane ritual that traps the wizard's soul within a phylactery. Doing so binds the soul to the mortal world, preventing it from traveling to the Outer Planes after death."

so they have souls, just ... not in their body. a lot of the undead are problematic, but i feel comfortable in saying that undead in general have no souls because a) they're dead and b) generally don't change, or can't in a plot-related way. Redeeming intelligent undead almost invariably result in them being destroyed, or radically changing in some manner. Strangely enough, there are lich gods (Vecna, cough) but no vampire gods that i can think of? Might be something there.

regardless, i think intelligence is a prerequisite to having a soul but not necessarily a indicator of one.


As for why we can go from Int 3 to Int 10 but not Int 4 to Into 10, maybe we need to make a distinction between "animalistic" spirits (Int < 4) and "sapient" spirits (int >= 4). The mages of the multiverse have discovered a way to upgrade animalistic spirits to sapient spirits, but not how to upgrade an already sapient spirit.

yeah, possibly. Maybe spirit is more like a "will" that one can imbue in something (like inanimate objects) and the soul is a personality, something that can make self-deteminate choices ... a free will.

int 4 seems to be the cutoff for things. detect thoughts explicitly fails to work on beings with int<4, so i think we can say that int 4 is the threshold for sapience. I think your animalistic / sapient spirit thing works out

edit: one thing i noticed is the description for water weird:


Like most elementals, a
water weird has no concept of good or evil. However,
a water weird bound to a sacred or befouled source of
water begins to take on the nature of that site, becoming
neutral good or neutral evil.
A neutral good water weird tries to frighten away
interlopers rather than kill them, while a neutral evil
water weird kills its victims for pleasure and might
turn against its summoner. A water weird loses its evil
alignment if its waters are cleansed with a purify food
and drink spell.

so, i can dig it has an animating spirit, and an alignment, but it doesn't learn so much as it takes on the qualities of it's environment, which is a very animalistic / reactionary sort of intelligence. it hasn't "eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil", so to speak, which gets back to my original point that good and evil are critical points to having a soul.

[meta-dnd]

My setting departs strongly from the canon lore.

Thanks for the details PhoenixPhyre. Your cosmology has similarities and differences to my own. We both have bodies, animalistic spirits (nimbus) and souls (spark). You have merged nimbus + spark (animalistic spirit + soul) into some new kind of mega-spirit, yes? I'm also exploring having two (or more) levels of spirits (in my terminology, animalistic spirits and sapient spirits), but in my cosmology a soul is a spirit plus more (TBD), whereas in yours, an animalistic spirit plus a soul gives something bigger. Interesting idea.



All things in nature have kami, animistic entities that are effectively spirits associated with non-living things (including concepts and inanimate objects). They have individual identity, but aren't nearly the same as human identities. In fact, they blend and join (and split from) each other nearly at will, trading memories, experiences, and thoughts. These are not human in thought patterns. They mostly exist and observe...such as you can call it that.

I can definitely see the benefit to assigning everything in nature some degree of "spirit" (kami) ... this is panpsychism at its core. Doing so would allow us to explain differing levels of conscious experience by how much self-awareness the spirit has.

I'm still deciding how sensory input works for a spirit. It makes sense that a body is what provides the ability to hear, taste, feel, smell, see (normal, darkvision), have a sense of balance, a sense of time, a tremorsense, etc. (and that a spirit cannot experience these without being tied into a body, or, alternatively, has a much less intense experience of these senses). This could explain why spirits might willing agree to be bound into physical forms (via spells like Find Familiar, Animal Shapes, class abilities like Druid's Wild Shape, sentient magic items, etc).

However, the fact that sentient magic items can have hearing, normal vision, and darkvision requires some addendum to the "spirits don't have senses, or have limited senses". We can still argue that a sentient magic item has a body (the item), and that the magic that imbued the item with sentience also provides a way to map physical phenomenon "experienced" by the item into something the spirit can feel.

For now, I'm going to operate under the assumption that spirits that aren't attached to a body have a very limited sensory experience ... we'll see if this fits with canon as this metaphysics is explored more fully. But maybe this "limited sensory experience" only applies when the spirit is on the Material Plane, and that they can have a more fulfilling experience in the Feywild, Shadowfell, OuterPlanes, etc.

[Pandamonium]

My setting departs strongly from the canon lore.

I postulate that living beings have three parts:
Body
Nimbus
Spark

First, super exiting thread!

Pheonixphyre and I have some similarities between our lores :)

In my lore everything is made up of an energy simply called essence, essence is raw chaos with unlimited potential.
In the Material plane influence from the elemental realms have harnessed essence into matter.
All life has a shell (body) that is fueled by essence (Nimbus/Life force) with a soul at the center, the soul being a shard of essence given somewhat permanence.

Different creatures have different setup and sometimes lack one of the three.
Ghosts are all soul, spirits are all Essence and constructs are all body. Some niche cases exist of course, for example undead who are body fueled by a "fake soul" by magic.

Everything that exists nature and object wise has a god.
From mighty gods of war down to gods for each grain of grass. However the later are called "Least gods" and are basically barely conscious instincts that answer to my lores Celestial Hierarchy.

So in my case the magical energies briefly transforms the shell of a boulder to a body and promotes a least god to a defacto soul for the period of the spell.

This also explains a lot of niche things as Sentient magic items, it is the "god" of the item being given more essence to "beef up" and become able to express itself.

"A golem (Flesh, Clay, Stone, Iron), Shield Golem and various other constructs can be created, and some level of intelligence is added to the construct (Int 3 for Clay/Stone/Iron, Int 6 for Flesh, Int 7 for Shield Guardians, ...). Is this intelligence a "captured spirit"?"
I would say that somewhere in the creation of a golem yes there should be either imparted or inserted a spirit.

[meta-dnd]

First, super exiting thread!

Pheonixphyre and I have some similarities between our lores :)

In my lore everything is made up of an energy simply called essence, essence is raw chaos with unlimited potential.
In the Material plane influence from the elemental realms have harnessed essence into matter.
All life has a shell (body) that is fueled by essence (Nimbus/Life force) with a soul at the center, the soul being a shard of essence given somewhat permanence.

Different creatures have different setup and sometimes lack one of the three.
Ghosts are all soul, spirits are all Essence and constructs are all body. Some niche cases exist of course, for example undead who are body fueled by a "fake soul" by magic.

Everything that exists nature and object wise has a god.
From mighty gods of war down to gods for each grain of grass. However the later are called "Least gods" and are basically barely conscious instincts that answer to my lores Celestial Hierarchy.

So in my case the magical energies briefly transforms the shell of a boulder to a body and promotes a least god to a defacto soul for the period of the spell.

This also explains a lot of niche things as Sentient magic items, it is the "god" of the item being given more essence to "beef up" and become able to express itself.

"A golem (Flesh, Clay, Stone, Iron), Shield Golem and various other constructs can be created, and some level of intelligence is added to the construct (Int 3 for Clay/Stone/Iron, Int 6 for Flesh, Int 7 for Shield Guardians, ...). Is this intelligence a "captured spirit"?"
I would say that somewhere in the creation of a golem yes there should be either imparted or inserted a spirit.

Thanks for sharing, Pandamonium! I can certainly see how the ideas of "everything has a god" and "leasts gods" can offer a great deal of explanatory power. This isn't quite the direction I want to take my metaphysics, but I appreciate hearing about yours.

The division of body/spirit/soul does seem like a winning combination (and one that fits with established canon). I have been on the fence about whether a soul is a spirit plus more, or whether spirits and souls represent different things, but as I explore more on this topic (I've been reading up on undead to see what they can offer in the way of evidence for an internally consistent metaphysics ... more on them in upcoming posts) the more I'm thinking that spirits and souls are independent and that the spirit does not (usually) go to the same place the soul does, after death. While the soul usually makes its way to the outer planes, I'm thinking the spirit goes to the plane dictated by race type (a fey creature's spirit goes to the Feywild, an undead creature's spirit goes to the Shadowfell, a beast/dragon/giant/humanoid/monstrosity/plant spirit usually stays on the Material Plane, a celestial spirit goes to the upper planes, a fiend spirit goes to the lower planes, an aberration's spirit goes to the Far Realm (or Material Plane), elemental spirits go to the Inner planes, etc. But regardless of where the spirit "goes", there is a connection between the spirit and the body (or bodies) it resided in.

More on this when I summarize some results from my analysis of undead.

[meta-dnd]

well ... liches have phylacteries, which house their souls, right? "A lich is created by an arcane ritual that traps the wizard's soul within a phylactery. Doing so binds the soul to the mortal world, preventing it from traveling to the Outer Planes after death."

so they have souls, just ... not in their body. a lot of the undead are problematic, but i feel comfortable in saying that undead in general have no souls because a) they're dead and b) generally don't change, or can't in a plot-related way. Redeeming intelligent undead almost invariably result in them being destroyed, or radically changing in some manner. Strangely enough, there are lich gods (Vecna, cough) but no vampire gods that i can think of? Might be something there.


This got me thinking about how a detailed analysis of the published undead and how they are created/destroyed might help in our quest for an internally consistent metaphysics. So far I've looked at the following: Zombie, Skeleton, Shadow, Ghoul, Specter, Ghast, Mummy, Wight, Banshee, Ghost, Revenant, Wraith, Vampire, MummyLord, DeathKnight, and Lich.

While looking at how the various undead are created, I noticed two distinct camps:


those undead that do *not* involve the spirit or soul associated with a body (bones/corpse/etc).

those undead that *do* involve a pre-existing spirit or soul.



As far as I've discovered so far, there are only a few published spells that create undead:

Animate Dead (PHB-212): Creates 2*SL-5 Skeletons (if cast on bones) or Zombies (if cast on corpses)
Create Undead (PHB-229): Creates ghouls, ghasts, wights, or mummies from corposes
Finger of Death (PHB-241): Causes necrotic damage, and if this damage kills, creates a Zombie
Negative Energy Flood (XGTE-163): Causes necrotic damage, and if this damage kills, creates a Zombie

(Note that Danse Macabre (XGTE-153) also animates corpses as skeletons or zombies, but it is temporary ... once the spell ends they deanimate)

From the above, the list of spell-creatable undead appears to be limited to Skeleton, Zombie, Ghoul, Ghast, Mummy, and Wight. All of them are created from bones or corpses (long dead or recently killed) and none of the spells make any reference to the spirit or soul associated with the bones/corpses. From this, I formed the hypothesis that the spells pull a spirit from the Shadowfell and bind it into the bones/corpse to act as the animating force, and that the spirit/soul that was in the bones/corpse (back when it was living) is not involved in any way.

I wanted to see if my hypothesis stood up to the canon as described in the stats blocks for the above undead. This is where I start seeing some inconsistencies:



Skeletons and Zombies definitely don't involve the pre-existing spirit/soul.


The inception story for Ghouls and Ghasts (Doresain, elf worshipper of Orcus, feasts on humanoid flesh and is "rewarded" by being turned into the first ghoul by Orcus) doesn't really align with the ability to create them via spell (which can happen long after death, having nothing to do with the behavior of the person before death). There is of course nothing stopping us from having multiple ways to create them, but I'd like for the underpinning to be consistent. Do Ghouls/Ghasts involve the pre-existing spirit/soul, or not? I'm leaning towards "no" (with room for "sometimes").


The inception story for Mummies says "An undead mummy is created when the priest of a death god or other dark deity ritually imbues a prepared corpse with necromantic magic" and later "Once deceased, an individual has no say in whether or not its body is made into a mummy". This sounds like the pre-existing spirit/soul isn't involved. But at the same time, the write-up also says "Some mummies were powerful individuals who displeased a high priest or pharaoh, or who committed crimes of treason, adultery, or murder. As punishment, they were cursed with eternal undeath, embalmed, mummified, and sealed away." This seems to imply that the spirit of the individual *is* involved (otherwise it isn't a punishment to them).


The inception story of Wights is the most problematic of all, as they are supposedly created when " mortals driven by dark desire and great vanity ... when death stills such a creature's heart and snuffs its living breath, its spirit cries out to the demon lord Orcus or some vile god of the underworld for a reprieve: undeath in return for eternal war on the living." and later "Wights possess the memories and drives of their formerly living selves.". This description clearly implies that the spirit that used to reside in the living body (before it was a corpse) is involved in making a Wight. But this is not consistent with the ability to create a Wight using Create Undead (which has nothing to do with the desires of the corpse, only the desires of the caster). I think we need to allow for two different kinds of spirits to be used here; either the pre-existing spirit (as in the inception story above), or a separate spirit summoned by the spell to animate the Wight. Alternatively, Create Undead (when used to create a Wight) always involves binding the spirit that was associated with the corpse (before death). This feels like too much power to give to a spell though.


This leaves us with a fairly flexible path forward (for the undead that can be created by the simple casting of a spell):



The remains of a previously alive entity are required (bones or corpse).

The soul of the previously alive entity is *not* involved.

The spirit of the previously alive entity is not involved when such undead are created via Create Undead, even if a particular undead can be created in other ways that do involve said spirit.

[HPisBS]

-snip- undead origins breakdown -snip-

It doesn't have to be that inconsistent.

Remember, 5e treats spells of 6th lvl and up as being so significant that various class features like Font of Magic and Arcane Recovery don't work with them. And to create a Wight, you'd need to cast at least an 8th tier spell. At that point, we're talking about some of the most powerful spellcasting in the world, so I'd say imitating a little of what Orcus did should be appropriate. (The spell could even be Orcus's own formulation, distributed to incite mortals to do his work for him.)

These undead normally seek out undeath on their own, but the spell, with its 1-minute casting time, can either serve to search for some other, more appropriate spirit that's willing to take it on (serving your will instead of Orcus's usual terms), or to provoke enough resentment in the corpse's own former spirit to make it willing to take the pact on itself.

[KorvinStarmast]

Personally, I'm conflicted about TP in that use, for just that reason. Due requests from my players, I'm planning to answer it thusly:

TP does not create a true soul, by default. No spell can. It awakens the kami (the nature spirits that exist in all things), giving it temporary access to the "waking" world and a facsimile of a "real person" soul. When it ends, the kami returns to its normal state as an entity that exists outside of human ken. If the spell caster concentrates on it, the effect is permanent (until dispelled) after an hour's worth of concentration.

If I am following your line of thought here: the "you didn't go and find a soul first" problem means that "after an hour, if you don't have a soul for it the creature reverts to the original object, or, "it becomes an object shaped like the creature you transformed it into?"

(heh, so that's where all of those statues in the old ruins come from? :smallbiggrin: )

Part of why I am asking is due to how Robin Hobb treated 'dragons made from magical stone' in the original (first three) Farseer books: Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest.

My other idea is that if there's enough 'nurture' going on with the new creature/object we'd possibly get the Pinnochio effect:

"I've become a real {boy/fire giant/young silver dragon/what have you}"

So, let's see: get a Circle of Stars druid and wish upon a star? :smalleek:

EDIT: Whoops, didn't see your second post, looks like our pinnochio fu aligned perfectly.

[meta-dnd]

It doesn't have to be that inconsistent.

Remember, 5e treats spells of 6th lvl and up as being so significant that various class features like Font of Magic and Arcane Recovery don't work with them. And to create a Wight, you'd need to cast at least an 8th tier spell. At that point, we're talking about some of the most powerful spellcasting in the world, so I'd say imitating a little of what Orcus did should be appropriate. (The spell could even be Orcus's own formulation, distributed to incite mortals to do his work for him.)

These undead normally seek out undeath on their own, but the spell, with its 1-minute casting time, can either serve to search for some other, more appropriate spirit that's willing to take it on (serving your will instead of Orcus's usual terms), or to provoke enough resentment in the corpse's own former spirit to make it willing to take the pact on itself.

I was thinking along exactly these lines. But then I noticed that Create Undead creates Wights when cast as 8th or 9th level, but requires 9th level to create a Mummy (which does *not* have the same implications of requiring the pre-existing soul, unless I'm misreading the intention behind Mummies). Since Mummies are apparently considered more powerful than Wights (needs 9th level Create Undead vs 8th level), I'm left with some inconsistencies here.

But yes, I agree that 8th and 9th level spells can be assumed to do some pretty crazy stuff...

[meta-dnd]

If the spell caster concentrates on it, the effect is permanent (until dispelled) after an hour's worth of concentration.

If I am following your line of thought here: the "you didn't go and find a soul first" problem means that "after an hour, if you don't have a soul for it the creature reverts to the original object, or, "it becomes an object shaped like the creature you transformed it into?"

I don't think PhoenixPhyre was implying that the permanent TP reverts (that contradicts the semantics of permanent) but rather that there are all sorts of unanswered questions raised by this permanence.

For me, the big problem with Object-to-Creature TP is in explaining where the memories and personality and skills of the new creature come from. If it is a Creature-to-Creature TP, we have the spirit/soul (and associated personality/alignment/memories) of the previous entity to work with (and all sorts of fun roleplaying opportunities about how a human learns to be a dragon, etc). But with Object-to-Creature TP, I'm left having to assume the new entity (e.g. Young Silver Dragon) has complete amnesia about its past. Which begs the question of how much of a dragon's abilities are innate (nature) and how many are learned skills (nurture) ... I'm assuming someone with amnesia has ready access to innate abilities, but their access to learned skills is ... problematic.

In fact, a TPed rock has something much stronger than just amnesia. For a human with amnesia, they can still do "automatic" things like walking, speaking, etc (things that involve some kind of "muscle memory") even though they are nurture things, not genetically hardwired. But this works for the amnesiac human because their bodies remember certain things even if the human does not have conscious access to those things. On the other hand, a rock-TPed-into-Dragon does not have any past history at all. So I'm left with an unsettling contradiction between the stated power of the spell (the creature is exactly like a YoungSilverDragon) and the practicalities of *how* they are exactly like a YoungSilverDragon without any memories/personality/etc.

We could of course hypothesize that the TP spell creates such personalities, but I'm hoping that a deeper metaphysics around bodies/spirits/souls will give a more internally consistent answer (and one that allows us to answer all sorts of related questions). One possibility is that a "suitably shaped spirit" is summoned to animate the TPed dragon, where by "suitably shaped" I mean the spirit that used to be associated with some dragon from the past (if and only if spirits stay around after death, and only souls move on).

[meta-dnd]

In the hopes that a deeper analysis of canon literature about undead can shed some light on body/spirit/soul metaphysics (and also to act as examples of what our metaphysics need to explain), here are some notes about additional undead (ones that are NOT create-able by published spells, and all of which appear to involve the spirit and/or soul of a pre-existing once-living entity).

I'm leaning toward ruling that these kinds of undead (the ones that cannot be created simply by casting a spell on bones/corpses) always involve the spirit/soul of a pre-existing entity.

Shadow

created by

a pre-existing Shadow killing a victim by dropping it's Strength to 0

notes

undead that resemble dark exaggerations of humanoid shadows, feeding off of living creatures vitality
has the Amorphous trait, but does not have Incorporeality

metaphysics

apparently has some physical aspect (body), albeit an amorphous one (i.e. does not have the incorporeal trait)
no explicit mention of a spirit or soul, but having the animating force be a Shadowfell spirit is one possibility
another alternative is that a shadow is something other than body, spirit, or soul ... it is a shadow, unrelated to these other things.



Specter

created by

"dark magic"
the "Create Specter" ability of a Wraith (targets humanoid dead less than a minute ago that died violently)
the "Summon Specters" ability of Cadaver Collectors (MTOF-122)
the "Accursed Specter" ability of Hexblade Warlocks (XGTE-55). This specter only serves until end of long rest before vanishing into afterlife (so it may not be a real specter, just specter-like).

notes

angry, unfettered spirit of a humanoid that has been prevented from passing to the afterlife.
no longer possess connections to who or what they were, yet are condemned to walk the world forever.
some are spawned when dark magic or the touch of a wraith rips a soul from a living body.
doomed to the Material Plane, its only end the oblivion that comes with the destruction of its soul

metaphysics

if a sentient living being requires a body + spirit + soul, a specter is the spirit+soul (without body).
presumably there are other entities that can be created from the spirit+soul of a deceased entity, so we need to explain what makes Specters distinct from those other kinds of spirit+soul.
we should also consider the possibility that the designers of these undead are unreliable narrators (or just made a mistake) and that maybe a Specter is just the spirit (not the soul).



Banshee

created by

divine wrath (they are the undead remnants of female elves who, blessed with great beauty, failed to use their gift to bring joy to the world, instead using their beauty to corrupt and control others).

notes:

a spiteful creature formed from the spirit of a female elf.

metaphysics:

the actual spirit of the female elf is what becomes the Banshee
is the soul of the elf tied to the spirit (and thus also bound), or is it free to go to Arvandor (and be reincarnated as discussed in MTOF)? Currently, I'm assuming both spirit and soul are bound.



Ghost

created by

not fully explained, but occurs when death leaves "unfinished business" that the soul of a once-living creature years to complete.

metaphysics

a ghost is a spirit+soul bound to a specific location (until some unresolved task is resolved).



Revenant

created by

a cruel and undeserving death fuels a soul to seek revenge against those who wronged it.

metaphysics

spirit+soul that has 1 year to exact revenge before moving on to its afterlife.



Wraith

created by

a mortal humanoid who leads a debased life or enters into a fiendish pact and whose soul becomes so suffused with negative energy that it collapses in on itself and ceases to exist the instant before it would move to its afterlife (the spirit becomes a soulless wraith).

notes

"A wraith is malice incarnate, concentrated into an incorporeal form that seeks to quench all life"
"A wraith might retain a few memories of its mortal life as shadowy echoes. However, even the strongest events and emotions become little more than faint impressions". This implies that the pre-existing spirit is involved.

metaphysics

the spirit (but specifically *not* the soul, which is destroyed) of a mortal humanoid.



Vampire

created by

a vampire who creates a vampire spawn then allows that spawn to draw blood from its body (the vampire spawn becomes a free-willed vampire).

notes

"Whether or not a vampire retains any memories from its former life, its emotional attachments wither as once-pure feelings become twisted by undeath. Love turns into hungry obsession, while friendship becomes bitter jealousy."

metaphysics

because a vampire retains memories of its mortal life, it involves at least the spirit, and presumably also the soul.
if a vampire is destroyed, its soul does not just "move on to the afterlife" ... the soul is destroyed, yes?



MummyLord

created by

a priest of a death god or other dark deity ritually imbues a prepared corpse with necromantic magic, increasing it in potency to create a Mummy Lord instead of a Mummy

notes

"The mummy lord that rises from such a ritual retains the memories and personality of its former life, and is gifted with supernatural resilience."

metaphysics

the heart of a MummyLord seems similar to a Lich's phylactery. This, combined with it retaining its memories and personalities, indicates that a MummyLord involves the spirit+soul of a once-living creature.



DeathKnight

created by

"dark powers" that transform a paladin that falls from grace without seeking atonement.

notes

retains ability to cast divine spells
Lord Soth definitely remembers his mortal life

metaphysics

involves spirit+soul of once-living creature



Lich

created by

great wizards who embrace undeath as a means of preserving themselves.

notes

A lich is created by an arcane ritual that traps the wizard's soul within a phylactery. Doing so binds the soul to the mortal world, preventing it from traveling to the Outer Planes after death.

metaphysics

involves spirit+soul of once-living creature

[HPisBS]

I was thinking along exactly these lines. But then I noticed that Create Undead creates Wights when cast as 8th or 9th level, but requires 9th level to create a Mummy (which does *not* have the same implications of requiring the pre-existing soul, unless I'm misreading the intention behind Mummies). Since Mummies are apparently considered more powerful than Wights (needs 9th level Create Undead vs 8th level), I'm left with some inconsistencies here...

IMO, the whole "punishment" angle heavily implies some kind of spiritual connection. We can take that and combine it with the idea of Orcus formulating and disseminating the Create Undead spell to say that Orcus is inviting the users of the most powerful magic in the world to spread undeath by letting them quickly (with 1 minute instead of a whole obscure ritual) force a particular spirit / soul into their service. And incentivizing the repeated use of that most powerful magic by making it so that the created undead will be released from their service after just one day if it isn't re-cast first.


Back to True Polymorph:


For me, the big problem with Object-to-Creature TP is in explaining where the memories and personality and skills of the new creature come from.... [W]ith Object-to-Creature TP, I'm left having to assume the new entity (e.g. Young Silver Dragon) has complete amnesia about its past. Which begs the question of how much of a dragon's abilities are innate (nature) and how many are learned skills (nurture) ... I'm assuming someone with amnesia has ready access to innate abilities, but their access to learned skills is ... problematic.
...

There's actually an easy explanation. This 9th level spell is creating / mimicking a whole body. We typically think of skills, etc as memory / experience -based, and therefore mental, which we tend to think of as an indistinct, almost psychic kind of thing.

But the fact is that all memory - including "muscle memory" - is actually physical. Anything that becomes habitual or an ingrained skill, like riding a bike, is simply a set of synaptic connections that have been made, re-made, and further reinforced until their use becomes relatively effortless. The thing is that we don't understand how our synaptic connections translate into memories and thoughts yet.

So, we can just say that this ultimate, 9th level spell mimics the synaptic connections that comprise the skills and languages which are common to members of a given species.


Edit:
(Neo's "I know kung-fu" moment is just a bit of code that comes with the whole Matrix-freedom-fighter package.)

[krugaan]

exhaustive list

i note that a lot those involve


the twisting of emotions
some retention of memories, personality, goals, etc
destruction, containment, or corruption of soul


maybe the conversion to undeath destroys/consumes/releases some portion of the soul and leaves a unwhole remnant which represents the undead we see.

"lingering" undead are usually cursed to live out whatever particular sin they embodied... you can say that whatever power created them extracted whatever good they possessed, leaving only the evil part, a sort of fractional soul?

[PhantomSoul]

i note that a lot those involve


the twisting of emotions
some retention of memories, personality, goals, etc
destruction, containment, or corruption of soul


maybe the conversion to undeath destroys/consumes/releases some portion of the soul and leaves a unwhole remnant which represents the undead we see.

"lingering" undead are usually cursed to live out whatever particular sin they embodied... you can say that whatever power created them extracted whatever good they possessed, leaving only the evil part, a sort of fractional soul?


Undead typology + spells (including the "animating spirit" of Speak with Dead, for example) + other worldbuilding led me to a similar place as many here, but with one extra piece. I ended up with a three-part soul. A Psyche (Intelligence-y), a Shade (Wisdom-y) and an Anima (more bare-bones [haha] Charisma-y, where planar connections are Charisma in my setting), with the Anima "connecting" the soul components and therefore having an "imprint" of each. On death (technically a minute later), the Psyche and the Shade go to the afterlife, using energy from the Anima, but a part of the Anima remains. That Anima is how the Psyche and Shade can be found for resurrection (there's still some connection/identifiability), what is being used for things like Speak with Dead, and what can be the foundation for (fully non-sentient) undead. Psyche undead tend to have goals, novel memories and rationality; Shade undead tend to have strong emotions or connections (and may need to resolve them to release to the afterlife). Not perfect, but it fits with other lore (e.g. my planes and my setting's physics), fits with some trends in monster stats (e.g. correlations between ability scores, fluff/lore surrounding some monsters), and gives a good starting point for off-the-cuff rulings/adaptations. (No parts are explicitly and inherently evil in a sense for my setting; the lore description of evil is largely from the perspective of the main societies/cultures, who've perceived undead as evil because of who normally uses them, how they're normally used, and their own moral judgments about the world. You can also get necromancer-free undead, usually with some special circumstances like the Weave not being in its typical state in an area, and for my world Weavestuff ~ soul stuff ~ Astral&Ethereal stuff, so death actually helps repair the Weave, especially when a soul can't pass, giving some reasonable foundation for corrective sacrificial practices [and for things like fuelling magic with lives].)

[krugaan]

Undead typology + spells (including the "animating spirit" of Speak with Dead, for example) + other worldbuilding led me to a similar place as many here, but with one extra piece. I ended up with a three-part soul. A Psyche (Intelligence-y), a Shade (Wisdom-y) and an Anima (more bare-bones [haha] Charisma-y, where planar connections are Charisma in my setting), with the Anima "connecting" the soul components and therefore having an "imprint" of each. On death (technically a minute later), the Psyche and the Shade go to the afterlife, using energy from the Anima, but a part of the Anima remains. That Anima is how the Psyche and Shade can be found for resurrection (there's still some connection/identifiability), what is being used for things like Speak with Dead, and what can be the foundation for (fully non-sentient) undead. Psyche undead tend to have goals, novel memories and rationality; Shade undead tend to have strong emotions or connections (and may need to resolve them to release to the afterlife). Not perfect, but it fits with other lore (e.g. my planes and my setting's physics), fits with some trends in monster stats (e.g. correlations between ability scores, fluff/lore surrounding some monsters), and gives a good starting point for off-the-cuff rulings/adaptations. (No parts are explicitly and inherently evil in a sense for my setting; the lore description of evil is largely from the perspective of the main societies/cultures, who've perceived undead as evil because of who normally uses them, how they're normally used, and their own moral judgments about the world. You can also get necromancer-free undead, usually with some special circumstances like the Weave not being in its typical state in an area, and for my world Weavestuff ~ soul stuff ~ Astral&Ethereal stuff, so death actually helps repair the Weave, especially when a soul can't pass, giving some reasonable foundation for corrective sacrificial practices [and for things like fuelling magic with lives].)

that seems ... complex to me. i don't think i necessarily see the psyche/shade/anima = int/wis/cha relationship, although i understand the division.

If we're dividing up a soul, we could have

* motivation
* emotion
* personality
* intellect

like wraiths / spectres are pure emotion, revenant is pure motivation, a lich is pure intellect, a vampire could be personality (or motivation, hunger?). By pure i mean lacking most or all of the other things that make up a soul

this is a pretty imperfect division though

[HPisBS]

Undead typology + spells (including the "animating spirit" of Speak with Dead, for example) + other worldbuilding led me to a similar place as many here, but with one extra piece. I ended up with a three-part soul. A Psyche (Intelligence-y), a Shade (Wisdom-y) and an Anima (more bare-bones [haha] Charisma-y, where planar connections are Charisma in my setting), with the Anima "connecting" the soul components and therefore having an "imprint" of each. ...

I believe we have another man of culture here. Log Horizon is great, isn't it? :smallsmile:

[PhoenixPhyre]

The whole "what's up with the undead being so nasty" thing is what led me to define the jotnar. Lesser undead (ie skeletons and zombies, mostly) are what happens when a jotnar is summoned into/enters into a dead body. Not much of the imprint of the self is left, so what you get is a lurching, almost mindless (but filled with hunger and hate for everything living) body.

Middle-weight undead (from ghouls to wights on up) are what happens when a jotnar enters while the person was still alive-but-dying, but the person failed to expel/contain it[1]. The jotnar eats the Spark that was there and wears its nimbus and body as a puppet. So it gets most of what the person was, but is fundamentally unable to progress further. And since jotnar are the essence of hatred for existence, these are all nasty critters.

Jotnar are attracted to people with bad attitudes (ok, a bit more than that), so that kind of exceptional bad will for everything around them raises the chances of getting "eaten".

Incorporeal undead are the result of a jotnar eating a disembodied spirit (nimbus + spark), with the exception of ghosts (who are just "stuck" imprints).

Greater undead (liches & vampires) are the result of a conscious ritual to accept and contain a jotnar. The process is fatal, because jotnar and life don't coexist easily (and because the developer of those rituals intentionally passed down sabotaged versions[2]), and the new undead must feed on new souls to prevent the jotnar from eating them as well.

Basically, Dragon Age's undead idea (ie possessed corpses) blended with some D&D-isms.

[1] demons are the result of the living soul gaining mastery over the jotnar and hybridizing with it. The universe doesn't like them, so they get ejected to the Abyss unless summoned or unless the veil gets really thin (due to massive amounts of jotnar influence in an area).

[2] he's a demon prince now, the equivalent of Orcus (but really Vecna). Except much more personable and reasonable. Almost a nice guy. For a soul-eating demon, that is. Technically he didn't invent vampirism, but he made sure that no copies of the real Nightlord ritual made it down to later generations. Which is good, those guys were scary. And he was the first lich, but his lich ritual and the modern one are night and day. On purpose, because he felt that one of him was enough for any universe.

[meta-dnd]

IMO, the whole "punishment" angle heavily implies some kind of spiritual connection. We can take that and combine it with the idea of Orcus formulating and disseminating the Create Undead spell to say that Orcus is inviting the users of the most powerful magic in the world to spread undeath by letting them quickly (with 1 minute instead of a whole obscure ritual) force a particular spirit / soul into their service. And incentivizing the repeated use of that most powerful magic by making it so that the created undead will be released from their service after just one day if it isn't re-cast first.

The above approach certainly works in theory, and I'd like to hear how it works out for you in practice.

For my own worlds, I'm leaning in a different direction: Animate Undead and Create Undead (and all other spells of 9th level or lower) never involve the spirit/soul of the living creature associated with the bones/corpse. Instead, the spell binds a spirit from the Shadowfell into the corpse/bones to act as the animating force. Wights created in this way have the memories associated with that spirit (if any), *not* the memories of the corpse back when it was alive.

I'm also leaning towards spirits and souls being "similar" to one another (they both represent Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, both contain personality, alignment, memories, etc) but differ in where they come from, how they enter a body, how they depart that body upon its death, and how capable they are. I'm thinking spirits are pretty static (cannot learn new things, or do so painfully slowly), while souls are much more flexible and able to grow and evolve. I'm still working on how all of this works though.


There's actually an easy explanation. This 9th level spell is creating / mimicking a whole body. We typically think of skills, etc as memory / experience -based, and therefore mental, which we tend to think of as an indistinct, almost psychic kind of thing.

But the fact is that all memory - including "muscle memory" - is actually physical. Anything that becomes habitual or an ingrained skill, like riding a bike, is simply a set of synaptic connections that have been made, re-made, and further reinforced until their use becomes relatively effortless. The thing is that we don't understand how our synaptic connections translate into memories and thoughts yet.

So, we can just say that this ultimate, 9th level spell mimics the synaptic connections that comprise the skills and languages which are common to members of a given species.

I have two concerns with this approach. First, I try to avoid bringing real world physics into the argument when the D&D canon clearly isn't using it. It seems more consistent to me, in exploring existing D&D canon, to treat the "body" as being Strength/Dexterity/Constitution, and there being something else (spirit/soul/etc.) that represents Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma. Yes, we can of course argue that Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma can come from multiple sources (body, spirit, and/or soul), but I'm not really seeing a need for adding body into this equation (I'm content with Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma being the purview of spirit/soul, not body).

More problematic, the above approach needs us to read something into the TP spell (for object-to-creature TPs) that isn't specified in the spell. Not only is the caster responsible for saying "Make this rock a Young Silver Dragon", but also "and here is the complete set of memories that dragon has". Alternatively, the spell just makes up a random set of memories (which doesn't solve anything, because I'm left wondering *how* the spell manages to do this ... what is the metaphysics that explains it?). It seems more internally consistent (to me) to have a pre-existing spirit fill the newly created entity, complete with (some) memories from the past.



Edit:
(Neo's "I know kung-fu" moment is just a bit of code that comes with the whole Matrix-freedom-fighter package.)

I love the Matrix, and explorations of the Simulation Hypothesis. But canon from one fantasy world (The Matrix) does not (for me) add any weight to how the made-up metaphysics of a completely different fantasy world (D&D) should proceed ;-)

[PhoenixPhyre]

More problematic, the above approach needs us to read something into the TP spell (for object-to-creature TPs) that isn't specified in the spell. Not only is the caster responsible for saying "Make this rock a Young Silver Dragon", but also "and here is the complete set of memories that dragon has". Alternatively, the spell just makes up a random set of memories (which doesn't solve anything, because I'm left wondering *how* the spell manages to do this ... what is the metaphysics that explains it?). It seems more internally consistent (to me) to have a pre-existing spirit fill the newly created entity, complete with (some) memories from the past.

I love the Matrix, and explorations of the Simulation Hypothesis. But canon from one fantasy world (The Matrix) does not (for me) add any weight to how the made-up metaphysics of a completely different fantasy world (D&D) should proceed ;-)

My position is that body shapes spirit and vice versa. So when you're polymorphed into a frog, the shape itself carries enough information to let you act like that. In fact, your soul is "filtered" through the mind of the frog. You can't think any way that a frog can't.

Same for TP: creating a body of the appropriate shape (which is the really really hard part) is enough for a spirit (kami-type in my setting) to "jump in and start moving". If you TP a frog into something that can talk, the soul of the frog "expands" and is now capable of talking. The difference is made up (temporarily) by the spell itself.

Note: this has implications for interbreeding. A dragon in human form is both a dragon and a human. So when it fathers[1] children on a human woman, the resulting babies have some bit of "dragon-ness". In fact, that's how the ancient elves made a lot of new races--extensive use of polymorph-spells over generations. Polymorph bird into person, have it mate with people. Take the resulting slightly bird children and repeat the process, successively breeding in more and more "bird" nature. Eventually, aarocokra and kenku. I'm not Darwinian in my setting--Lysenko is much closer to the truth.

[1] For some reason it's almost always male dragons, or dragons shifted into male shapes. The reverse is...rare. Because shifting while pregnant is fraught with all sorts of issues.

[meta-dnd]

i note that a lot those involve


the twisting of emotions
some retention of memories, personality, goals, etc
destruction, containment, or corruption of soul


maybe the conversion to undeath destroys/consumes/releases some portion of the soul and leaves a unwhole remnant which represents the undead we see.

"lingering" undead are usually cursed to live out whatever particular sin they embodied... you can say that whatever power created them extracted whatever good they possessed, leaving only the evil part, a sort of fractional soul?

I'm still struggling with how spirits and souls interact, how they are the same, and how they are similar. Having a spirit be a "fractional" soul may help resolve some of these issues (I'll need to ponder this more ... it is an interesting idea). However, a spell like Speak With Dead can be applied to any not-undead corpse that still has a mouth, and interacts with the spirit (so if spirits are fractional souls, they need to remain with the body, or be somehow summonable to the body, at a moments notice). Maybe spirits are "echos" of souls? A soul can pass on to an afterlife while also birthing a "spirit" that is a (maybe imperfect) limited copy of itself that stays with the body (at least for awhile, before wandering off to become part of the "cloud" of spirits pervading the plane it is on).

[krugaan]

I'm still struggling with how spirits and souls interact, how they are the same, and how they are similar. Having a spirit be a "fractional" soul may help resolve some of these issues (I'll need to ponder this more ... it is an interesting idea). However, a spell like Speak With Dead can be applied to any not-undead corpse that still has a mouth, and interacts with the spirit (so if spirits are fractional souls, they need to remain with the body, or be somehow summonable to the body, at a moments notice).

I think there are many flavors of spirits:

* elemental spirits
* "restless" spirits
* animal / nature spirits
* undead "spirits"

i suppose the only thing they have in common is that they all enable some kind of animation or intellect, without necessarily having a personality, ability to learn and chance, knowledge of right and wrong, and the like. Speak with dead is explicitly another spirit reanimating their corpse, but i'm prepared to say that other speak with spells are more akin to psychometry, where the caster's spirit manifests and inhabits whatever plant, animal, or mineral they want to talk to. I say psychometry because, lets face it ... ain't no one use those spells for conversation: they're pretty much information gathering only.


Maybe spirits are "echos" of souls? A soul can pass on to an afterlife while also birthing a "spirit" that is a (maybe imperfect) limited copy of itself that stays with the body (at least for awhile, before wandering off to become part of the "cloud" of spirits pervading the plane it is on).

I like my "snapshot of a soul" idea because it reinforces the concept that spirits are like souls, but lacking something. Spirits are etheral, but souls are essential. I can't figure out how to convey what i'm trying to say here.

that cloud idea is kinda interesting though ... like the lifestream or something.

[HPisBS]

...I have two concerns with this approach. First, I try to avoid bringing real world physics into the argument when the D&D canon clearly isn't using it. It seems more consistent to me, in exploring existing D&D canon, to treat the "body" as being Strength/Dexterity/Constitution, and there being something else (spirit/soul/etc.) that represents Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma. Yes, we can of course argue that Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma can come from multiple sources (body, spirit, and/or soul), but I'm not really seeing a need for adding body into this equation (I'm content with Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma being the purview of spirit/soul, not body).


Soooo... what? Do you prefer for DnD characters to not have neurons and synapses? Are DnD viruses not microscopic parasites that replicate by invading and destroying cells? Does improperly cooked chicken not have a chance of infecting people with salmonella? Is a pulley or lever not a mundane way to lift large loads?

Physics, biology, and other sciences just tell us how things work, and how things work happens to be the essence of this thread you started. When science provides a clear answer for how something fantastical could work, we may as well lean on it.


More problematic, the above approach needs us to read something into the TP spell (for object-to-creature TPs) that isn't specified in the spell.

You mean like the whole premise of this thread? lol


Not only is the caster responsible for saying "Make this rock a Young Silver Dragon", but also "and here is the complete set of memories that dragon has". Alternatively, the spell just makes up a random set of memories (which doesn't solve anything, because I'm left wondering *how* the spell manages to do this ... what is the metaphysics that explains it?). It seems more internally consistent (to me) to have a pre-existing spirit fill the newly created entity, complete with (some) memories from the past.

Like I said, it doesn't need to involve actual memories - actual experiences, if you prefer - if it's just an incidental biological component. If it's just the synaptic connections that comprise certain skill, or even language, proficiencies. It'd be the equivalent of an internet browser being hardwired into your computer instead of having to install it as software yourself.

Edit:
Or, if you prefer, like how various animals are born knowing how to do things. The spell could just treat the proficiencies as being effectively instinctual.

[PhantomSoul]

I'm still struggling with how spirits and souls interact, how they are the same, and how they are similar. Having a spirit be a "fractional" soul may help resolve some of these issues (I'll need to ponder this more ... it is an interesting idea). However, a spell like Speak With Dead can be applied to any not-undead corpse that still has a mouth, and interacts with the spirit (so if spirits are fractional souls, they need to remain with the body, or be somehow summonable to the body, at a moments notice). Maybe spirits are "echos" of souls? A soul can pass on to an afterlife while also birthing a "spirit" that is a (maybe imperfect) limited copy of itself that stays with the body (at least for awhile, before wandering off to become part of the "cloud" of spirits pervading the plane it is on).

Mhm, the idea of a spirit as an imprint or an echo (wherever or whatever that is) seems handy, and leaves the "content" (and the ability to change and therefore update the imprint/echo) to some other part of the soul. (It also lines up well with the idea of a spirit as less malleable.)


My position is that body shapes spirit and vice versa. So when you're polymorphed into a frog, the shape itself carries enough information to let you act like that. In fact, your soul is "filtered" through the mind of the frog. You can't think any way that a frog can't.

(...)

I like it; a physical component basically serves as an interface (like how for me the spirit is partly an interface between the body and the main soul components in "canonical" circumstances).



For my own worlds, I'm leaning in a different direction: Animate Undead and Create Undead (and all other spells of 9th level or lower) never involve the spirit/soul of the living creature associated with the bones/corpse. Instead, the spell binds a spirit from the Shadowfell into the corpse/bones to act as the animating force. Wights created in this way have the memories associated with that spirit (if any), *not* the memories of the corpse back when it was alive.

Entirely agreed that spells/undead where the caster matters (e.g. to determine communication) should be distinct, and that there might be a divide not properly reflected in standard stat blocks. (In line with the above about physical interfaces vs. soul interfaces, Animate Dead as written has you communicate with the resulting undead independent of language and makes no exception to the undead understanding the languages it knew in life, like its synapses still have the wiring for languages it knew.)






I have two concerns with this approach. First, I try to avoid bringing real world physics into the argument when the D&D canon clearly isn't using it. It seems more consistent to me, in exploring existing D&D canon, to treat the "body" as being Strength/Dexterity/Constitution, and there being something else (spirit/soul/etc.) that represents Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma. Yes, we can of course argue that Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma can come from multiple sources (body, spirit, and/or soul), but I'm not really seeing a need for adding body into this equation (I'm content with Intelligence/Wisdom/Charisma being the purview of spirit/soul, not body).

I'd imagine that the stats (and things like languages and memories) can be in multiple places at once, yes, but I agree that it seems like that can be a relatively negligible (or in D&D potentially non-existent factor) that can be swept under the rug for simplicity (or if that's the lore!). The mental-physical split seems quite fundamental and it works pretty well to keep them separate even when you look at stat correlations in monsters!


I believe we have another man of culture here. Log Horizon is great, isn't it? :smallsmile:

To be honest, I only saw it after the base lore was (very non-finally) drafted; I had the benefit of being a nerd with a nerd player playing a necromancer! :) The splits seem to shake out pretty well, but there were some cross-edition inspirations despite that I'd never played other editions outside of video games, plus things like http://www.viewpure.com/cUSYVef1fkg?start=0&end=0.


that seems ... complex to me. i don't think i necessarily see the psyche/shade/anima = int/wis/cha relationship, although i understand the division.

If we're dividing up a soul, we could have

* motivation
* emotion
* personality
* intellect

like wraiths / spectres are pure emotion, revenant is pure motivation, a lich is pure intellect, a vampire could be personality (or motivation, hunger?). By pure i mean lacking most or all of the other things that make up a soul

this is a pretty imperfect division though

Yeah, the stat association (and not full association, more like a main affiliation) is partly based on the undead typology and partly based on other lore (e.g. conception of the planes).

Revenant's motivation could reasonably be collapsed into another category it seems, e.g. revenge is emotion or incomplete task could be personality or intellect or emotion (depending on the task).


I think there are many flavors of spirits:

* elemental spirits
* "restless" spirits
* animal / nature spirits
* undead "spirits"



Do you think those are actually different spirits, or more about what the spirit is part of / connected to? (So spirit + elemental = elemental spirit, for example.)

[krugaan]

Revenant's motivation could reasonably be collapsed into another category it seems, e.g. revenge is emotion or incomplete task could be personality or intellect or emotion (depending on the task).

could be, my categories are imperfect. I think revenants are solely revenge oriented though, and single minded in that aspect. Revenants are pretty focused on killing whoever killed them, and i haven't seen any that have more complex goals than that. I don't call revenge an emotion, although it could certainly be tied to hate, which is


Do you think those are actually different spirits, or more about what the spirit is part of / connected to? (So spirit + elemental = elemental spirit, for example.)

shrug, could be? i think this whole thread is trying to find internally consistent definitions of "spirit" and "soul" using statblocks from dnd 5e, which i doubt were written with internally consistent definitions of "spirit" and "soul" in mind, lol

an elemental spirit could certainly be a "spirit with an elemental point of view" ... ie, one that has no experience with life and death and emotion from a mortals point of view

same with a nature/animal spirit, they could really care less about morality for the most part. The spirits that come from sentient beings that lived and died (like undead) vary depending on the circumstances of their life, death, and creation, i suppose

[PhantomSoul]

could be, my categories are imperfect. I think revenants are solely revenge oriented though, and single minded in that aspect. Revenants are pretty focused on killing whoever killed them, and i haven't seen any that have more complex goals than that. I don't call revenge an emotion, although it could certainly be tied to hate, which is

Mhm, hate and anger and jealousy are the main emotions that come to mind (though ultimately, I could imagine love also being behind one of those of course).


shrug, could be? i think this whole thread is trying to find internally consistent definitions of "spirit" and "soul" using statblocks from dnd 5e, which i doubt were written with internally consistent definitions of "spirit" and "soul" in mind, lol


I would go beyond doubt... I'm not convinced they're internally consistent with the mechanical descriptions... the lore and fluff? I have no belief they even might be before even considering changing and differing lore!

[krugaan]

Mhm, hate and anger and jealousy are the main emotions that come to mind (though ultimately, I could imagine love also being behind one of those of course).


like, the revenant has intellect, motivation, although it having a personality is somewhat murky. The fact that it only feels hatred and anger and jealousy, in my mind, makes them deficient from a "soul" standpoint. It makes them inflexible... they exist only for revenge. They might feel gratitude to whoever helps them in the fleeting moments before they fade into wherever they go after death.


I would go beyond doubt... I'm not convinced they're internally consistent with the mechanical descriptions... the lore and fluff? I have no belief they even might be before even considering changing and differing lore!

lulz, probably. I don't know if there's a singular lore guru who everyone has to run their ideas across, i kinda doubt it. It would be a lot of work. Changing lore is super easy though, they done it tons of times!

"The cosmos is a tree!"

"no wait, it's a wheel!"

"A circle?"

"nah, a wheel!"

[PhantomSoul]

like, the revenant has intellect, motivation, although it having a personality is somewhat murky. The fact that it only feels hatred and anger and jealousy, in my mind, makes them deficient from a "soul" standpoint. It makes them inflexible... they exist only for revenge. They might feel gratitude to whoever helps them in the fleeting moments before they fade into wherever they go after death.


Agreed (In my setting, a canonical revenant lacks Psyche, so it's got echoes/imprints of memories but has unresolved issues in their Shade that prevented the Shade from passing on to the afterworld too... so it's quite literally soul-deficient!)