[3.5] Stone to Flesh / Lifeless Body

[Palanan]

Glad to see I sparked some ideas.

Originally Posted by Thurbane
I guess you could Animate Dead - the result would be a Human Zombie, I suppose?

What happens if you cast Raise Dead on it? Anything?

I would rule that neither of these spells has any effect, since the "corpse" was never alive. It's fairly clear-cut for the second spell, since the statue never had a soul, and thus there is no soul to return to the artificial corpse. By the text, the spell would fail.

For the first one, I would argue that the artificial corpse was never alive, thus doesn't qualify for animation. But in this case I simply flat-out disagree with the spell text. As you quoted, the text directly states that a statue would become a corpse, but a body has complex internal structures (organs, skeleton, etc.) which simply wouldn't be present in a typical statue, which is still whatever stone the sculptor's block was quarried from.

So in this case, I would argue that the "corpse" is simply an undifferentiated mass of flesh, which has the same shape as the statue but none of the internal structures required to make a body. This could possibly be animated, but without muscles or skeleton it wouldn't be able to do much. Again, I recognize this contradicts the spell text, but in this case I don't think that line was very well-thought-out.

As for adding a soul, presumably Trap the Soul would be the first step, perhaps in conjunction with Reincarnate.

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