Soul magic

Souls and corpses are not really given much thought in the rules. Do undead have souls? Do celestials or fiends? Do they leave corpses behind? How do they interact with animate dead, magic jar, raise dead, speak with dead, etc?



Spells such as raise dead, resurrection, revivify, and true resurrection may return the dead back to life, subject to certain restrictions. Revivification is slightly complicated by the existence of undead, leading to any number of strange arguments I will be ignoring. The rules for revivification in this situation remain simple:

• Any given body may exist in one of three separate and mutually exclusive states: living, dead (i.e. a corpse), and undead. The living and the undead are creatures, while corpses are objects or terrain. The revivification spells exclusively target corpses (objects) and not undead (creatures).
• The spells may revive a corpse as its living counterpart but not as its undead counterpart (where applicable). If your necromancer wants to revive a previously undead corpse, then they will need a specialized spell like revive undead.
• The spells specifically do not affect undead, but other monster types are irrelevant. Aberrations, celestials, constructs, elementals, fey, fiends, etc may be revived assuming they meet the requirements. They do not necessarily require specialized spells like revive elemental or repair construct.
• The past revival or animation of the corpse is irrelevant and its technical existence is whatever convenient. If a party member is killed, animated as undead and then re-killed by the party, the cleric may revive said party member with raise dead (or revivify if all this happened in under a minute). If the undead is ignored, the cleric may instead revive said party member with true resurrection to create a new body (or resurrection if they amputate a piece of the undead).

The soul complicates things far more. While PCs' souls will be willing, NPCs' souls may not. Souls may also be imprisoned or, in the case of mean-spirited GMs, suffer damage and possibly destruction. The nature and anatomy of souls, including those of immortals and undead, is not explained in the rules.

Mortals consist of a minimum three parts of spiritual significance: the body, the soul, and an "animating spirit" (mentioned by speak with dead). When a mortal dies, their body becomes a corpse and their soul travels the astral plane. The animating spirit remains somewhere near or within the body, and temporarily becomes active when subjects to spells such as speak with dead. The section on the ethereal plane in Classic Play: The Book of the Planes suggests that these animating spirits may give rise to weak ghosts that cause harmless haunting.

Undead may be subject to magic jar, suggesting they have souls, but the rules do not explain whether this is the same soul they had while alive or a wholly new soul (perhaps re-purposed from the animating spirit). Creating new souls open plot hooks relating to evil twins created with creative application of resurrection or true resurrection. Celestials and fiends may also be subject to magic jar, implying that they too have souls.

In conclusion, the nature of the soul must be determined for monsters on a case-by-case basis. I will outline the details of my own cosmology in future posts.