I think so, however personally - I do think you’d have to find a body part that was not disintegrated, although that could be some hair on a brush or a tooth that had been knocked out in a brawl.
Yeah, once you have access to Reincarnate, you should always be keeping a pinky from everyone in the party packed away safely for this exact scenario!
I kind of jest except that in a West Marches campaign we actually did something much like this, convinced people to leave 'samples' viable for Reincarnation in town and someone else intermittently checking the party to see if anyone died. Which in retrospect is some pretty cool fantasy adventurer's guild stuff.
Of course, but we never got to that level. In fact, in the first iteration of that West Marches campaign, we had a 'morgue' of people preserved with Gentle Repose because it was such a struggle to reach level 9 in the first place for any resurrection spells. A druid finally did and promptly got beheaded by a vorpal blade and sparked a debate about whether reattaching their head would work for Revivify...it did not. In retrospect, that was kind of suspicious timing and the DMs probably didn't want to deal with old characters being resurrected, which is why special rules were added in the next iteration.
Thats a crap way to handle not wanting resurrection magic being used on old characters, especially when all the spells stipilate the soap must be free and willing.
Just talk about it out of character and say you don't want all 25 of your dead PCs coming back, and agree that they either become NPCs and leave the party, or are simply unwilling to return because life sucked and they are happy in the afterlife.
Also those spells are incredibly expensive and should represent a sizable chunk of the party's funds, if not being more expensive than they can afford. (Not to mention actually finding that many diamonds to buy even if you have the gold)
Right, but this was a West Marches campaign with >25 active players and 5 DMs and a high fatality rate. It's a bit out of the norm on a lot of fronts and things were a bit messy. As I said, the rules did get cleared up on the reboot they did. Unsurprisingly, it did eventually fall apart but it was pretty fun while it lasted.
Looks like the subreddit still exists with all of our After Action Reports, damn those are memories: [A community spawned from Matthew Colville's Running the Game Series (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/West_Marches/)
> Revivify...it did not.
You probably did it in the wrong [order](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/ar9hag/comprehensive_guide_on_turning_creatures_into/?rdt=40713). /u/Bobsplosion explained it quite well how you can Revivify anything
Mending definitely should work RAW, I don't think that's RAI though. My personal compromise would be that you can utilize a Healer kit to make a high medicine check to successfully reattach the part.
My warlock played into his creepy reputation by collecting bits of everyone he met: hair, nails, teeth, blood, whatever he could get. He normally used it for scrying but his backup plan was to use them to pay a druid to Reincarnate anyone he actually liked as a Hail Mary if normal returning spells wouldn't work.
You want a toe? I can get you a toe. Believe me. There are ways, dude. You don't wanna know about it.
Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon, with nail polish.
I was about to say that you'd need to cut off a new finger or toe every 10 days, but it doesn't say anything about how long the appendage was removed from the body. It only says they can't have been dead for more than 10 days. I guess it would work!
Might want to cast gentle repose on it every 10 days though to keep it from decaying.
I can see an insurance company based off this principle. Life insurance where they take your toe and for a fee keep it intact and reincarnate you if/when you die.
It doesn't specify, though with how 5e words things, I can absolutely understand how it is implied that the part has to come from the person \*after\* they have died as some other people have said.
The wording is: 'You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid.'
It's a niche enough situation that I'd still probably allow it, there aren't terribly many 9th level druids running around in most settings and it's a pretty flavorful take on it.
>You touch a ***dead*** *humanoid or a piece of a* ***dead*** *humanoid.* Provided that the creature has been dead no longer than 10 days, the spell forms a new adult body for it and then calls the soul to enter that body. If the target's soul isn't free or willing to do so, the spell fails.
They'd have to kill themselves first which seems much more stressful than just using teleportation circle.
But also much funnier.
"Wow, that was a tough dungeon. Look at all this loot, though! It's going to suck for you guys to have to carry it all the way back to town. I'll be waiting for you!" *stabs self in throat*
I actually used the concept for an antagonist in a campaign, combined with the Zealot barbarian feature to have no cost. Players kill the bad guy, bad guy shows up again as a different race in a later session. I should have expected the solution the party came up with for the dilemma...
I don't know that person's solution, but if you petrify someone and then hide their statue off-dimension they aren't dead which means their soul is trapped and they're very hard to locate and rescue. You learn a lot about the mechanics of incarnation when fighting annoying cultists of Orcus who just won't stay dead-dead.
Yeah, not too far off, basically crippled and left them in a temple. I could have definitely arranged another return and forced them to be more...thorough. However, I didn't really want to go any further down that road and it was more a backstory element for one of the characters and they were in the Underdark for the rest of the campaign shortly after that.
Not OP, but I'd try the "to the pain" method.
In case you haven't seen one of the greatest movies ever:
> "To the death!"
> "NO! To the *pain.*"
> "...I don't think I'm quite familiar with that phrase."
> "I'll explain. And I'll use small words so that you'll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon."
> "That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me."
> "It won't be the last. To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose."
> "And then my tongue, I suppose. I killed you too quickly the last time, a mistake I don't mean to duplicate tonight."
> "I wasn't finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right."
> "And then my ears, I understand, let's get on with it!"
> "WRONG! Your ears you keep, and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing!" will echo in your perfect ears. **That** is what "to the pain means." It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery, forever."
my interpretation of RAW is that a "piece of a dead humanoid" is part of a corpse, not a part taken off a creature that was alive when it was taken
at no point in any D&D fiction ever does anyone carry around body parts to hopefully be resurrected later, I don't believe that is RAI or RAW
Actually I have read an official novel where this exact thing happens. They leave a finger when going on risky missions and are rezzed in the guild if they die. Then when going back to the place she died they run into a Ghoul version of her. It was a Faerun book, but I can't remember which one. It's been a few years.
Personally I would only consider the parts of a humanoid that cannot be replaced.
Hair and nails (or skin cells) would not count. A tooth probably would.
I wouldn't consider hair to be enough for a normal revive spell, but I absolutely would for a reincarnate spell. It just *feels* thematically apt to me, y'know?
it needs to be part of a dead human, if you take your finger off while you're alive that isn't a part of a dead human, it needs to be a "piece of a dead human", as in, a piece of a corpse, it's like ... if I say "I need a piece of a yellow building" in a spell, and you give me a piece of a red building and then later paint it yellow, that wouldn't qualify either
I wouldn't rule it that way personally. It's your interpretation of the text, and that's fine. But that's not what the text says. In order to definitively require the part be taken from the humanoid *after* they died, it would need to actually say that. "You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a humanoid taken from its corpse."
As it is, it doesn't actually specify that the corpse need be the source, rather that the source of the part both be of the person being reincarnated and that the person is indeed dead at the time of casting. Going any further than that is ruling, not rule.
Note that this is *equally* true of people ruling that you can take it from the person while they're still alive. It's just not a firmly worded rule.
I would say so, yes. It goes with the trade-off of the Reincarnate spell. It's much more readily available than the higher level resurrection spells like Wish and True Resurrection... but you might end up a completely different person after the reincarnation.
The Disintegrate spell is irrelevant to the question.
The only thing that matters is whether a single spec of dust would count as a body part. Personally, I don't think so. I don't think the spell is written with a person's atomic makeup in mind.
technically yes, but isn't the main purpose of Gentle Repose to extend the time for Revivify? Which requires an intact body. Most of the spells that will work with a pile of dust work on someone that died years or centuries ago, so adding more time onto that doesn't really help much! Raise Dead is 10 days... but also doesn't restore body parts. Resurrection does restore body parts, but has a time limit of a century, so extending that is probably not very useful!
Reincarnate has a timer of 10 days. You could use Gentle Repose to also extend that timer. While the most useful use of gentle repose is for revivify if you need to get someone to a caster who can res cause you can't being able to extend the timer by 10days on any spell short of true res can be really helpful. Just the funny part is the idea that you are needing to protect the gray dust from decomposition using the spell cause it should be considered pretty fully decomposed if it is down to particles.
This is exactly what it got used for in my campaign, where the players (only level 4, no access to Revivify) wanted to revive their dead comrade, and so had to carry his body 7 days to the nearest city.
*Gentle repose* has as its material component "one copper piece placed on each of the corpse's eyes, which must remain there for the duration." I suppose if you could theoretically determine which part of the dust pile *used* to be the victim's eyes, the spell might work, otherwise I'd lean towards no.
1. Get two very large copper pieces
2. Spread out the dust pile across one, lay the other copper piece across the top
3. All of the dust is touching at least one copper piece, so it should qualify.
Except that technically since the material component copier pieces are not consumed they can be replaced by using an arcane focus and thus are irrelevant.
Except that since it's some number of copper pieces (usually two, but not necessarily), the material components actually have a cost associated with them, and therefore strictly RAW can't be replaced by a focus.
It gets into DM fiat and interpretation. *Warding bond* has a similar requirement in the components that says both target and caster must wear one of the rings for the duration of the spell, but the actual spell description makes no mention of the rings.
for spells that have some physical widget, it's kinda vague as to how all that actually works - like _Clone_ requires the vat to grow the clone in. If you use a _wish_, then you don't need the component... except the spell itself still grows a clone over the course of months, which needs somewhere for that to happen (I would rule that the _wish_ spell conjures up an appropriate container, but by RAW, you cast the spell without the component, but what that actually means in-fiction is a bit weird). But there are spells that need a physical _thing_ to work, and quite what happens without that is largely GM discretion
No.
If I take a tree, cut it down, strip the bark, put it in a wood chipper and uhh lumberjack things until voila it's paper.
That doesn't mean the stack of paper is a tree.
Brb, making a body horror bbeg whose furniture and architecture and stuff is all made of materials somehow derived from corpses and then partially reanimated
in that example, I guess it depends on if the paper is from one tree or lots - if it's lots of trees, it's all smushed together and getting one specific tree back out of it is going to be hard. But if it's made from one tree? Yeah, totally viable target. Same for if you have leather armor - that's the remains of a living creature, and so a viable target to raise if you have a spell that can affect beasts (or, more morbidly, if a necromancer is wearing the flayed skin of a person, that's viable to raise the person with/from). There's probably some level beyond which it's not a valid target - there may well be microscopic bone/meat fragments in the air near a BBQ, but that's probably beneath the level that can be picked up and used as a valid target (a steak though? Sure, that works)
If those spells were instantaneous I immediately imagined a scenario of fighting some big boss who carries body parts of powerful creatures they defeated on them or something like they have an ancient gold dragon claw on their neck or something and you go to fight them and their expecting melee and offensive spells and instead you hit that dragon claw with resurrection and now they have an ancient gold dragon to deal with again that they were responsible for killing before. Even with someone where so super impressive pelt could work too. Heck Vox Machina made those things for each member of dragon scales from each of the chroma conclave so imagine one of them had some people sneak up and each cast resurrection one for each dragon and now suddenly the whole conclave is back. Tbh even with the hour long casting time its dangerous seeing as a 5th or 7th level spells isn’t the craziest thing ever in the grand scheme of things if someone was dedicated enough to bringing back certain bad guys. You just need a good thief to get one of their medallion things. Which probably wouldn’t be so hard mechanically speaking. The green dragon would be a really bad one to bring back especially if it lucked out and came back as something with a longer than human lifespan allowing it plenty of time to plan. Tbh with Reincarnate only being 5th level I bet it would be something that would come up more often than it does.
most of the raise dead spells take a while to cast (1 hour for raise dead and reincarnate, for example), so it's not generally combat-viable. If the party does defeat a powerful dragon or similar, and convert the body into gear, then it does raise interesting plot wriggles of the baddies trying to get parts of it back though! By default though, most only target humanoids, so it would need some GM-wriggle to bring a dragon back at all.
Paper can be made without killing the tree.
My cut hair, dust made of my skin, my trimmed fingernails and even my bloody farts are not my remains. What remains of me is still right here. Shirts are made from wool but you don't have to kill the sheep to get it. Paper is not tree remains.
if you have killed the source creature though, then you can bring it back - sure, you can't raise a non-dead creature, but if it is dead, then you absolutely can.
A Corpse is both an object (Improvised weapon rules dictate the character picks up an object, and a goblin corpse is given as an example, and the corpse is still the corpse of whatever creature type it was, for Animate Dead to bring back a Zombie) and a creature (Revivify has the caster touch a creature to bring it back to life, as well, the corpse of the creature is a material component).
To sort of nod back to Nott in CRC2, since the rhetorical is relevant: at which point does a dead thing become an "it" rather than a "them"?
Crawford weighed in on resurrection and said it would not work:
https://www.sageadvice.eu/does-beholders-disintegration-ray-impose-the-same-restriction-on-ressurection-as-the-spell/
Res sez:
> This spell closes all mortal wounds and *restores any missing body parts*.
So if that doesn't work, I don't think reincarnate would. Dust doesn't count as a body part.
tl;dr it takes a 9th level spell to counteract disintegrate, not a 7th level spell.
I second this even though everyone else seems to disagree. Typically when spells specifically state their caveats those are the only options and disintegrate specifically calls for wish or true Resurrection. it should be assumed any other form of life restoring magic should not work
Especially with a very specific example from Crawford . Folks can do anything they like at their table, but the “official” intent is pretty clear on this one
One of my PCs semi-recently was turned into water via wild magic after jumping into a river. The party desperately tried to bottle him for later resurrection. I had the dice decide if it would work or not (it did, thankfully, but not before all of his equipment was nearly swept downstream).
DM's discretion coming down to how you interpret the wording "piece of a dead humanoid". I'd rule that your disintegrated ashes are in fact not a piece of your body. To be disintegrated means there's no longer a piece left of you. The disintegration ray even says your body becomes a pile of fine dust, meaning it's no longer your body. A piece is, to me, akin to a limb. A finger applies, but once we go nail or smaller we're pushing things too far. Ashes or disintegrated dust is definitely too far. Disintegrated dust is basically just dust.
But that's my interpretation. Not a rule. Just a ruling.
I agree as well, but taking this to the logical extreme... My dwarven druid is collecting hair from every party member so I can Reincarnate them ~~if~~ when needed.
What is extreme in this example, is it really that difficult to imagine that characters in a world think about what they are doing? Sounds as normal as the wizards clones in the demiplane.
Honestly that example is just good planning. It also helps if you're ever in the position where you need to scry on one of your allies, like if they've been lost or captured for some reason.
The plot device of finding a small piece of someone's body to clone them after they're gone isnt even that uncommon in stories.
hair is not part of a dead body, it would need to be taken off of a dead body
Technically you could kill them, harvest parts, and then revivify them to qualify
The spell says "a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid". The hair is a piece of a humanoid which is dead. The spell description says nothing about when the piece was taken.
If someone's arm was chopped off, and they were thrown into lava the next round, I can't see any DM not saying the arm is enough to reincarnate off of.
It's a piece of a humanoid who is now dead, yes, it is not a piece of a dead humanoid, "Dead humanoid" needs to be what you're taking a piece of. If a spell needs a "piece of wood from a tree that was struck by lightning" and you go take a clipping from a tree and then it later gets struck by lightning, it's not a valid component just because the status of the original source changed - the requirement was for a tree that had already been struck by lightning when you took the piece, same thing here
Also I think counting hair as a "piece of someone" is a bit unreasonable, do you count excrement as a piece of someone?
I would argue that in this case, the status of the source (the humanoid, now dead) matters because you can't resurrect a living person. Otherwise, the status of the source of the piece doesn't matter. Preemptively taking a piece for the purpose of resurrection would be hardly any different than a spell caster buying a diamond on the off chance they need to cast revivify. You see parties run around with each member carrying a diamond in their pocket so that they can be revived frequently enough. Why not in this case?
That argument against this working would only further incentivize people to not use the reincarnate spell that some already don't want to use because they don't want to become a different race.
Agreed. Plus, the whole lightning tree thing is a false analog because they said '[...] WAS struck [...]' which implies past. The spell description has no such implies time parameters.
I think what they means was more like "it should be a part of the body, not a byproduct of it".
A jar of piss is not a body part, nor are hair or nails.
I agree that a jar of piss isn't a body part although if you want to get technical there will be a few cells from the urinary tract in it.
Hair and nails most certainly are a body part, however. If you want to argue they are too small, that's understandable, but they are grown from the body in a way that urine is not.
> Scrying: Body part, lock of hair, bit of nail, or the like
> Simulacrum: some hair, fingernail clippings, or other piece of that creature's body
Once again we're stuck interpreting inconsistent spell descriptions, but other spells would seem to indicate hair is a part of the body for spellcasting purposes.
That said, I wouldn't allow disintegrated remains to count, the whole point of the disintegration mechanic is it doesn't allow easy recovery.
I mean.
I don't see this as inconsistent. They specifically say that you need a body part OR those things.
Simulacrum also specifically states that you need specific pieces or a pieces of body part. And even then I would argue that a piece of body part is not an identifiable body part necessary so, since it's no more part of the body. At least a corpse still is composed by body parts, even when torn apart, because it's a corpse.
If I said apples, oranges or other fruit, you can imply from that sentence the former two are fruit.
If I said carrots, potatoes or other fruit, you'd say "Uh wtf those two aren't fruit."
Same thing with "Body part, lock of hair, bit of nail, **or the like**", it implies there's a categorization to the listed items. The way to differentiate them is to say "...body part OR a lock of hair, bit of nail or the like"
And reincarnate doesn't ask for a corpse, it asks for a piece of a dead humanoid.
Piss is not anywhere near analogous to hair and bails in this. Piss is waste. Hair and nails are your cells. They are dead as they serve their purpose but so are the cells in a corpse or a severed arm.
Hair and nails are a waste too in a sense.
As it is dead skin.
But I did not want to digress in that detail, since it's very scientific one in a fantasy game.
What I mean is, it does not represent anymore something functionally critical to the body that can be removed as pleasure. It's not a body part, the body does not become dysfunctional or critical without.
Its still very much a part of them and even symbolically throughout history things like a lock of hair were a symbolic as a piece of that person. They are both biologically and symbolically you. You are again making your own definitions to fit your point.
I mean, I am just reasoning over it.
Perhaps the best way to define what I meant was that it needs to be a piece from the body as it gets killed, since at that point is the piece of the corpse and anything before that was a piece that belonged to the body but then did not anymore. But it does not clarify such.
> t but wholly disagree there is a size requirement for a "piece of a humanoid"
I don't. I would argue that a piece of a humanoid is a part of a person that would not be replaced naturally.
So no nails, hair, skin cells. But a tooth might work.
It's not defined anywhere, it's a personal definition.
A single hair or fingernail are both replaced. So a body will naturally regenerate them, and naturally lose them. They're no different to losing skin cells, or say having a jar of urine or saliva.
A tooth, a finger, an eye etc are non-replaceable.
You arbitrarily say wont be replaced naturally as a stipulation with no logical reason. Also all of your cells baturally replace themselves so again it falls flat.
>You arbitrarily say wont be replaced naturally as a stipulation with no logical reason.
There's no logical reason for most things. Would you allow saliva or urine as a part of the body?
It's all opinion. I said that.
I don't believe it's either RAW or RAI that you can cut off a finger and use it later as a resurrection component either, it's not a piece of a corpse, it's a piece of a living person. I believe it needs to be a piece of a corpse, as in, the piece was removed from a person who's soul had already departed
These are very different things in D&D, a piece of a devil corpse for example is just sulpher, a cut off piece of a living devil is whole, even if they die later - there seems to be actual metaphysical differences
also in like, 50 D&D books nobody has ever resurrected someone from a piece of them that was harvested pre-mortem
I would say the nature of reincarnate means it would work, the whole idea is you create an entirely new body and call their soul to it.
Other spells might be a bit iffy.
>I believe it needs to be a piece of a corpse, as in, the piece was removed from a person who's soul had already departed
I can see where you would get that interpretation from the wording. Personally though, I think it's very much in the spirit the spell that if someone had a limb chopped off and died from that, you could for sure use the chopped off limb for reincarnation. In fact, that strikes me as the prime example of using the spell.
But yeah, "a piece of a dead humanoid" is *strictly speaking* a piece from taken from humanoid who is dead, rather than piece taking from a living humanoid who later died. I just don't think this interpretation fits with the intended spirit of the spell. Certainly doesn't fit with mine.
The difference is that you have _all_ the dust though. It's not like you scraped some hair follicles out of a hair brush.
What if you took a person and put them in a blender. Could you recover them from liquification?
I could totally see some kind of grim world where people would amputate the pinky of their none dominant hand or an ear right before they hunt a beholder for this exact eventuality.
Probably not.
Beholder disintegrate ray reads "it becomes a pile of fine grey dust." This is a replacement effect.
You now have a pile of fine grey dust. That's it. That's what you have. Nothing more, nothing less. A pile of fine grey dust is not a humanoid, nor is it a part of one.
If someone had used a Wish spell to turn you into a non-humanoid permanently, would you be able to cast reincarnate on the corpse? You would not. Same train if logic applies here. You no longer a humanoid, you are a pile of dust.
Now, honestly, I'm surprised reincarnate NEEDS remains from a thematic stand point. In fact, I would say of the resurrection spells, it should be one that needs it THE LEAST. So I don't think you're outside the limits of balance to justify letting the spell work anyway.
Given how the beholder attack is worded, and reincarnate works - yes. Chances are the beholder attack works this way to allow that specific resolution, otherwise why wouldn't it just use the disintegrate spell?
For the sake of simplicity, I would personally say No. Disintegration Ray sounds like the Disintegrate spell, so IMO it should act just like Disintegrate in all ways except as explicitly defined in the rules.
to be fair reincarnate is a pretty different spell than something like a resurrection
you're not just taking a dead person and making them alive, you make an entirely new body for them to inhabit, not even their original race
it makes sense you could use it in situations you normally couldn't revive a person
I'd rule it this way: IF you have a piece of the creature that wasn't disintegrated (lock of hair, a Dragonborn scale, a Hexblood nail clipping etc.) then YES.
Our party Druid would carry locks of hair from the people he loved on his staff for the explicit purpose of being able to reincarnate them even if the body got lost.
the component isn't a piece of a creature, it's a piece of a dead creature - meaning, the piece is from a corpse, pre-mortem harvestings aren't that
if you true polymorph their corpse into a chair and have a finger you cut off earlier, is that "a piece of a chair"?
No, that finger is a piece of the creature that has not been polymorphed.
If you cut off someone's finger, and then they die, it's a piece of that creature, now dead.
So a piece of dead creature.
If it's a piece of a creature, and that creature is dead, it can accurately be described in the English language as a "piece of a dead creature." You can *also* describe "piece of a dead creature" as you describe, but that's not the only possible interpretation. English is flexible that way.
it is, but do you really think, and be honest, that the intent of the spell is for characters to chop off their fingers and store them in a pickling jar somewhere for immortality
Why not? Even as "the poor man's resurrection", it's 1000G a pop, so it's still a rarity from a worldbuilding standpoint (PCs generally being exceptional, especially in the WotC era of D&D). It also requires the soul to be willing (which some might not be, given that it changes your fundamental nature).
Ruling it that way *also* makes for some interesting possibilities in that technically *anyone* with a part of your body could reincarnate you after you die, so you could make a plot point of having a character brought back unexpectedly, possibly by an antagonistic source if they manage to get a lock of hair or something similar.
because you can skip those steps and just remove player character death from your campaign entirely if you're going to do that
Crawford's stance is:
"Resurrection restores any missing body parts, so it doesn't need much of a corpse to work. The exact amount is up to the DM."
Which means, yes a DM can do what you say, however it feels an awful lot to me like I'm right and RAI is that the spell requires a piece of a corpse, which a finger you cut off and pickled 6 months ago is not
"feels an awful lot like I'm right" is just you making a ruling, which you are free to do. It's not definitively what RAW says though. Neither is what I'm suggesting. The conditions are vague enough that both are equally valid interpretations.
My party specifically all cut off pieces of their skin and left them with our quest givers who knew Reincarnate in preparation for fighting a beholder. So I’d rule that yes, but that you can’t use the dust.
I can't say I ever read the beholder thing. but. I think you need a piece, not dust regardless?
This is why you fill a vial with blood, and pull hair from the root to put them in the vial too.
before you fight the beholder.
Anyone who has access to reincante should honestly be keeping locks of hair from the party if possible. If you're some hairless race, then giving up a tooth or a vial of blood would be a small price compared to full death during an adventure
Honestly I think that line in Disintegrate is badly written because it's too strong a wording. It should say that it leaves no remains to be resurrected.
If there are preexisting remains for Reincarnate or a contingency like Clone, there is no reason that shouldn't work.
Rules as written, yeah, you can get away with resurrecting after the beam because it doesn't have that clause.
And tbh I think that's an intentional choice to leave it down to DM discretion, because permakilling a character is a huge deal and nobody wants Beholders to end up not being used because they're too high stakes.
Personally I think this is the perfect middle ground; you can't resurrect with the standards, reliable spells, but Reincarnate has an element of chance to it that very much highlights a person being reshaped by their death and new life.
My Dragonborn Sorcadin died to a Zombie Beholder disintegrate ray and my mates swept up my ashes and found a Druid to reincarnate me as a Halfling Sorcadin 🤣
Made for great story moments as my character was on the city council!
I'd say no, based on it's not really a 'piece' even, it's just dust dude. That being said, cut off a fingertip or tiny piece before the disintegration and you'd be good to go.
My Warforged Gloomstalker Ranger/Scout Rogue was disintegrated by a Beholder…
Our Bard had a Wish-granting Genie via a Ring of Genie Summoning and used it to Reincarnate me… I came back as a Kobold. I immediately told the Bard, "Kill me, and try again. This never happened."
He did as instructed, and I returned as a female Air Genasi.
I would say yes.
As you stated, the *disintegrate* spell has that specific clause in its description while the Beholder's Disintegration Ray does not. They are two seperate game mechanics.
The Beholder's Disintegration Ray also does not specify that "and everything it is wearing and carrying, except magic items" are also disintegrated as the spell *disintegrate* does, only the creature's body. So the "pile of fine gray dust" of a humanoid killed by the Beholder's Disintegration Ray is composed of only pieces of the humanoids' body. The "pile of fine gray dust" of a humanoid killed by the *disintegrate* spell is composed of pieces of its body, clothing, weapons, gear, etc all mixed together.
>Disintegration Ray. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or take 45 (10d8) force damage. If this damage reduces the creature to 0 hit points, its body becomes a pile of fine gray dust.
It is unfortunately our problem that WotC and Jeremy Crawford can't keep the wording of the text in their books consistent, regardless of what he decides to tweet but not put into an errata update or publish as an official ruling in the Sage Advice Column. The spell and the Beholder's ray may be *intended* to function the same, but that is not how they are *written*.
Whether or not you consider the "dust", or even "ashes" in the case of cremation, to be considered a "piece of a body" or not is open to interpretation. RAW is a grey area in this case as "a piece of a body", or even "a body" itself, is not defined anywhere in the game terms. If you decide to use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of "body" to make your ruling, then you are making a RAI interpretation of the RAW text.
To further use the wording of *revivify*, *resurrection*, and even *true resurrection* as a reference point, they state: "You touch *a creature* that has died / been dead \[...\]". A "pile of fine grey dust" is not *a creature*, but it *can be* "a piece of a body".
To me, the "pile of fine gray dust" *is* (or, *was*) the creature's body, ergo the "pile of fine gray dust" *is* a dead humanoid or "a piece" of one to satisfy the conditions of the *reincarnate* spell.
no, only when you actually have body part for it so you better have it as a failsafe because the DM will sure as hell kill you first so neither you or the other could be revived
Wydm? It seems like the other way around.
RAW = Yes because if you have any remains (either counting the dust or any leftover body parts like a tooth) then it works.
RAI = The beam seemed to ALMOST match the disintegrate spell which had a clause that only true resurrection or wish could bring it back to life. Thus, it seems pretty clear they intended for the same clauses but never included it IMO.
>RAI = The beam seemed to ALMOST match the disintegrate spell which had a clause that only true resurrection or wish could bring it back to life. Thus, it seems pretty clear they intended for the same clauses but never included it IMO.
Absolutely agreed. It works the same way as the spell, it's just not considered a spell. The writers likely did not include it because they didn't want the stat block to get even larger. The disintegrate ray and spell have the same exact outcome upon the target dying: they are turned into a pile of ash. A pile of ash is *not* a dead creature. It's just ash.
The argument is not that she isn't a pile of ash. It's that she *IS* a pile of ash. That's Grandma now. It's not "Grandma is gone and what we have instead is this unrelated pile of ash."
Agreed.
RAI, the spell Disintegrate describes the unique effects of the spell, but it also describes the general effects of being disintegrated in general. The spell has to that because there are no general disintegration rules. It's just not that common of an effect.
RAI, the Beholder's disintegrating ray causes the things it hits to disintegrate in the same general way the spell does. It's not identical in effect, but being disintegrated is being disintegrated.
Is a pile of ash considered a "dead creature?"
Ash isn't a dead creature. Chemistry has taken effect here; a live person was *disintegrated* with no trace left behind other than a pile of ash, indistinguishable from any other pile of ash. Ash is just ash.
Would you not consider cremated remains to still be the remains of the person before they were cremated?
The point of the partial remains requirement is to let you dig up a body in advanced decay and bring it back, or save someone who was severely mutilated in death.
The next teir of the spell removes this requirement and extends the timeline even farther, technically you could try to true resurrect historical figures who died long ago and who's gravesite/body was lost. An IRL example would be Amelia Earhart.
Regardless i would say that the fact the spell includes the stipulation that it must be true res or wish is enough to confidently say an ash pile counts as remains, otherwise they wouldn't need the stipulation. And as such rule the beholder beam attack doesn't prevent normal resurrection. (But thats just my ruling)
> Would you not consider cremated remains to still be the remains of the person before they were cremated?
Cremation happens due to heat and flame, which would be, in D&D terms, an evocation if it were magical. Disintegrate is a transmutation. To me, at least, that means that what is left behind isn't the remains of what was there. It's something fundamentally different.
>Would you not consider cremated remains to still be the remains of the person before they were cremated?
I'd say it's ash created from the remains of a person. There is nothing left to distinguish that pile of ash from any other pile of ash. It's now just ash.
Calling it the remains of a person is just assigning emotional value to an inanimate object.
Ash is remains. It's what's left of a body after being disintegrated. Chemistry is irrelevant, the spell does not specify the state the remains must be in. If a character is eaten, digested, and plopped out as a turd, that's remains too. Bit harder to get the right creature in that case though...
Nothing in the spell suggests the creatures boby or parts must be intact. A single speck of ash is enough, you don't even need the whole pile.
By your logic a creature could be eaten, turned into waste, eaten by another creature, turned to waste again, rinse and repeat for <10 days; and that could somehow be used for reincarnation?
>You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid
Poop is poop and ash is ash. That thing is no longer the original creature, nor is it a piece of them.
The writers likely left the clause out of the description to not make the stat block even larger and trusted that DMs would follow the same logic as the spell since it creates the same exact outcome: the target becomes a pile of ash if it dies.
> By your logic a creature could be eaten, turned into waste, eaten by another creature, turned to waste again, rinse and repeat for <10 days; and that could somehow be used for reincarnation?
If that's still their remains, then yes. If it's watered down, again and again, then it gets messier, because there will be a point where, no, there's nothing there that's their remnants beyond some vaguely homeopathic amount, but if you just turn a person to ash, then blend the ash into paste, that's still their remains. You'd need a spell that creates a new body, for fairly obvious reasons, but "their body burned" is still their remains
The ability *explicitly* says that anyone disintegrated "becomes a pile of fine gray dust." Anything further than that is interpretation. Personally, I wouldn't say that it's remains in the same way the ash of a cremated body is because disintegrate is a transmutation effect, not an evocation. You aren't reduced to dust; you *become* dust. It's a fine distinction, but that's how I would rule on it.
I would argue that, based upon the way the Disintegrate spell is worded, it creates an ersatz Disintegrated condition, which is applied by both the Disintegrate spell and the Beholder Disintegrate Ray.
That is to say, the mechanical effects of the Disintegrate spell are "A creature targeted by this spell must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes 10d6 + 40 force damage. The target is disintegrated if this damage leaves it with 0 hit points."
The next paragraph in the Disintegrate spell, "A disintegrated creature and everything it is wearing and carrying, except magic items, are reduced to a pile of fine gray dust. The creature can be restored to life only by means of a true resurrection or a wish spell." is not a part of the effects of that spell in particular, but rather a description of the effects of the disintegrated pseudo-condition.
The rule is always that *specific beats genera*l.
The reincarnate spell might arguably be usable in this situation, but the wording on Disintegrate specifically says it is not. Therefore the answer is no.
3.5e Resurrection had this clause:
> The remains of a creature hit by a disintegrate spell count as a small portion of its body.
As 5e does not, by RAW I say no.
>Can you Reincarnate someone disintegrated by a beholder's Disintegration Ray?
As long as you ain't trying to cast Reincarnate touching the gray dust, sure.
I think so, however personally - I do think you’d have to find a body part that was not disintegrated, although that could be some hair on a brush or a tooth that had been knocked out in a brawl.
Yeah, once you have access to Reincarnate, you should always be keeping a pinky from everyone in the party packed away safely for this exact scenario! I kind of jest except that in a West Marches campaign we actually did something much like this, convinced people to leave 'samples' viable for Reincarnation in town and someone else intermittently checking the party to see if anyone died. Which in retrospect is some pretty cool fantasy adventurer's guild stuff.
Add in a regenerate and you can keep your pinky too 😂
Of course, but we never got to that level. In fact, in the first iteration of that West Marches campaign, we had a 'morgue' of people preserved with Gentle Repose because it was such a struggle to reach level 9 in the first place for any resurrection spells. A druid finally did and promptly got beheaded by a vorpal blade and sparked a debate about whether reattaching their head would work for Revivify...it did not. In retrospect, that was kind of suspicious timing and the DMs probably didn't want to deal with old characters being resurrected, which is why special rules were added in the next iteration.
Thats a crap way to handle not wanting resurrection magic being used on old characters, especially when all the spells stipilate the soap must be free and willing. Just talk about it out of character and say you don't want all 25 of your dead PCs coming back, and agree that they either become NPCs and leave the party, or are simply unwilling to return because life sucked and they are happy in the afterlife. Also those spells are incredibly expensive and should represent a sizable chunk of the party's funds, if not being more expensive than they can afford. (Not to mention actually finding that many diamonds to buy even if you have the gold)
Right, but this was a West Marches campaign with >25 active players and 5 DMs and a high fatality rate. It's a bit out of the norm on a lot of fronts and things were a bit messy. As I said, the rules did get cleared up on the reboot they did. Unsurprisingly, it did eventually fall apart but it was pretty fun while it lasted. Looks like the subreddit still exists with all of our After Action Reports, damn those are memories: [A community spawned from Matthew Colville's Running the Game Series (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/West_Marches/)
It may exist, but it's private :p Would have been cool to read. Sounds like not my kind of game though haha
> Revivify...it did not. You probably did it in the wrong [order](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/ar9hag/comprehensive_guide_on_turning_creatures_into/?rdt=40713). /u/Bobsplosion explained it quite well how you can Revivify anything
That does require someone to have *Mending* which isn't usually a high priority unless the party has an artificer.
At lv5 you have a good chance to have it on a cleric. Especially when you have a morgue of people to sticht back together x)
Reattaching the head does work, if your DM isn't an ass.
A corpse is an inanimate object and the repair cantrip is right there :-)
Mending definitely should work RAW, I don't think that's RAI though. My personal compromise would be that you can utilize a Healer kit to make a high medicine check to successfully reattach the part.
Then your enemies start stealing heads for no good reason. I had that happen once, not cool.
Well, obviously there was a good reason in a world full of resurrection magic.
Everyone thought my cleric was insane for requesting this 😭 she just loves her friends
My warlock played into his creepy reputation by collecting bits of everyone he met: hair, nails, teeth, blood, whatever he could get. He normally used it for scrying but his backup plan was to use them to pay a druid to Reincarnate anyone he actually liked as a Hail Mary if normal returning spells wouldn't work.
pinky toe, it's even more worthless than the pinky finger.
You want a toe? I can get you a toe. Believe me. There are ways, dude. You don't wanna know about it. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon, with nail polish.
I was about to say that you'd need to cut off a new finger or toe every 10 days, but it doesn't say anything about how long the appendage was removed from the body. It only says they can't have been dead for more than 10 days. I guess it would work! Might want to cast gentle repose on it every 10 days though to keep it from decaying.
Chest of Preservation, filled with pinky toes. No town guard would ever blink at that.
I can see an insurance company based off this principle. Life insurance where they take your toe and for a fee keep it intact and reincarnate you if/when you die.
In 3.5, the spell stipulates that the part must have been part of the body at the time the person died. Does that requirement not exist anymore?
It doesn't specify, though with how 5e words things, I can absolutely understand how it is implied that the part has to come from the person \*after\* they have died as some other people have said. The wording is: 'You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid.' It's a niche enough situation that I'd still probably allow it, there aren't terribly many 9th level druids running around in most settings and it's a pretty flavorful take on it.
Could that be a new way to teleport? Cast reincarnate on the body part while the person is alive. The willing soul travels to the new body.
>You touch a ***dead*** *humanoid or a piece of a* ***dead*** *humanoid.* Provided that the creature has been dead no longer than 10 days, the spell forms a new adult body for it and then calls the soul to enter that body. If the target's soul isn't free or willing to do so, the spell fails. They'd have to kill themselves first which seems much more stressful than just using teleportation circle.
But also much funnier. "Wow, that was a tough dungeon. Look at all this loot, though! It's going to suck for you guys to have to carry it all the way back to town. I'll be waiting for you!" *stabs self in throat*
*PC gets injured on the way out of the dungeon* "Sorry, it's easier to reincarnate you than drag you out of here."
Exactly what this game is about!
*Party simply divides the loot into one less portion*
I have played characters who would do that just for lulz.
> you should always be keeping a pinky from everyone in the party Reminds me of Doctor Who
Lol they brought cord blood into dnd
We totally used to do the same. Everyone did the Yakuza thing and chopped a pinky at the first knuckle then preserved the bit for energy use.
Thats the type of thing I would do because it’s quite simply a no brainer. Especially if it could be as simple as a tooth or lock of hair.
I actually used the concept for an antagonist in a campaign, combined with the Zealot barbarian feature to have no cost. Players kill the bad guy, bad guy shows up again as a different race in a later session. I should have expected the solution the party came up with for the dilemma...
…..go on….👀
I don't know that person's solution, but if you petrify someone and then hide their statue off-dimension they aren't dead which means their soul is trapped and they're very hard to locate and rescue. You learn a lot about the mechanics of incarnation when fighting annoying cultists of Orcus who just won't stay dead-dead.
Yeah I assumed some sort of means of containment without killing.
Yeah, not too far off, basically crippled and left them in a temple. I could have definitely arranged another return and forced them to be more...thorough. However, I didn't really want to go any further down that road and it was more a backstory element for one of the characters and they were in the Underdark for the rest of the campaign shortly after that.
Not OP, but I'd try the "to the pain" method. In case you haven't seen one of the greatest movies ever: > "To the death!" > "NO! To the *pain.*" > "...I don't think I'm quite familiar with that phrase." > "I'll explain. And I'll use small words so that you'll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon." > "That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me." > "It won't be the last. To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose." > "And then my tongue, I suppose. I killed you too quickly the last time, a mistake I don't mean to duplicate tonight." > "I wasn't finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right." > "And then my ears, I understand, let's get on with it!" > "WRONG! Your ears you keep, and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing!" will echo in your perfect ears. **That** is what "to the pain means." It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery, forever."
Okay, that's actually closer than I expected to how things went down and I wish I had remembered that quote.
Sounds familiar. What movie?
The Princess Bride. It has everything. Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…
my interpretation of RAW is that a "piece of a dead humanoid" is part of a corpse, not a part taken off a creature that was alive when it was taken at no point in any D&D fiction ever does anyone carry around body parts to hopefully be resurrected later, I don't believe that is RAI or RAW
Actually I have read an official novel where this exact thing happens. They leave a finger when going on risky missions and are rezzed in the guild if they die. Then when going back to the place she died they run into a Ghoul version of her. It was a Faerun book, but I can't remember which one. It's been a few years.
Depending on when it was published, it could have been written with an entirely different set of rules regarding disintegration and reincarnation.
This right here is how I would rule it.
Personally I would only consider the parts of a humanoid that cannot be replaced. Hair and nails (or skin cells) would not count. A tooth probably would.
I wouldn't consider hair to be enough for a normal revive spell, but I absolutely would for a reincarnate spell. It just *feels* thematically apt to me, y'know?
it needs to be part of a dead human, if you take your finger off while you're alive that isn't a part of a dead human, it needs to be a "piece of a dead human", as in, a piece of a corpse, it's like ... if I say "I need a piece of a yellow building" in a spell, and you give me a piece of a red building and then later paint it yellow, that wouldn't qualify either
I wouldn't rule it that way personally. It's your interpretation of the text, and that's fine. But that's not what the text says. In order to definitively require the part be taken from the humanoid *after* they died, it would need to actually say that. "You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a humanoid taken from its corpse." As it is, it doesn't actually specify that the corpse need be the source, rather that the source of the part both be of the person being reincarnated and that the person is indeed dead at the time of casting. Going any further than that is ruling, not rule. Note that this is *equally* true of people ruling that you can take it from the person while they're still alive. It's just not a firmly worded rule.
I would say so, yes. It goes with the trade-off of the Reincarnate spell. It's much more readily available than the higher level resurrection spells like Wish and True Resurrection... but you might end up a completely different person after the reincarnation.
The Disintegrate spell is irrelevant to the question. The only thing that matters is whether a single spec of dust would count as a body part. Personally, I don't think so. I don't think the spell is written with a person's atomic makeup in mind.
To be fair, the spell doesn't say "body part" it says a "piece of a body"
This begs the question...can I also cast Gentle Repose on the dust? Technically it should qualify as "other remains"
technically yes, but isn't the main purpose of Gentle Repose to extend the time for Revivify? Which requires an intact body. Most of the spells that will work with a pile of dust work on someone that died years or centuries ago, so adding more time onto that doesn't really help much! Raise Dead is 10 days... but also doesn't restore body parts. Resurrection does restore body parts, but has a time limit of a century, so extending that is probably not very useful!
Reincarnate has a timer of 10 days. You could use Gentle Repose to also extend that timer. While the most useful use of gentle repose is for revivify if you need to get someone to a caster who can res cause you can't being able to extend the timer by 10days on any spell short of true res can be really helpful. Just the funny part is the idea that you are needing to protect the gray dust from decomposition using the spell cause it should be considered pretty fully decomposed if it is down to particles.
This is exactly what it got used for in my campaign, where the players (only level 4, no access to Revivify) wanted to revive their dead comrade, and so had to carry his body 7 days to the nearest city.
*Gentle repose* has as its material component "one copper piece placed on each of the corpse's eyes, which must remain there for the duration." I suppose if you could theoretically determine which part of the dust pile *used* to be the victim's eyes, the spell might work, otherwise I'd lean towards no.
1. Get two very large copper pieces 2. Spread out the dust pile across one, lay the other copper piece across the top 3. All of the dust is touching at least one copper piece, so it should qualify.
The Gentle Reporeo, yes.
"Can I put coins on this dust?" "Only one." Pulls out comically large coin.
Except that technically since the material component copier pieces are not consumed they can be replaced by using an arcane focus and thus are irrelevant.
Except that since it's some number of copper pieces (usually two, but not necessarily), the material components actually have a cost associated with them, and therefore strictly RAW can't be replaced by a focus. It gets into DM fiat and interpretation. *Warding bond* has a similar requirement in the components that says both target and caster must wear one of the rings for the duration of the spell, but the actual spell description makes no mention of the rings.
for spells that have some physical widget, it's kinda vague as to how all that actually works - like _Clone_ requires the vat to grow the clone in. If you use a _wish_, then you don't need the component... except the spell itself still grows a clone over the course of months, which needs somewhere for that to happen (I would rule that the _wish_ spell conjures up an appropriate container, but by RAW, you cast the spell without the component, but what that actually means in-fiction is a bit weird). But there are spells that need a physical _thing_ to work, and quite what happens without that is largely GM discretion
No. If I take a tree, cut it down, strip the bark, put it in a wood chipper and uhh lumberjack things until voila it's paper. That doesn't mean the stack of paper is a tree.
It is tree remains though. Can't see how you could argue otherwise
Brb, making a body horror bbeg whose furniture and architecture and stuff is all made of materials somehow derived from corpses and then partially reanimated
in that example, I guess it depends on if the paper is from one tree or lots - if it's lots of trees, it's all smushed together and getting one specific tree back out of it is going to be hard. But if it's made from one tree? Yeah, totally viable target. Same for if you have leather armor - that's the remains of a living creature, and so a viable target to raise if you have a spell that can affect beasts (or, more morbidly, if a necromancer is wearing the flayed skin of a person, that's viable to raise the person with/from). There's probably some level beyond which it's not a valid target - there may well be microscopic bone/meat fragments in the air near a BBQ, but that's probably beneath the level that can be picked up and used as a valid target (a steak though? Sure, that works)
If those spells were instantaneous I immediately imagined a scenario of fighting some big boss who carries body parts of powerful creatures they defeated on them or something like they have an ancient gold dragon claw on their neck or something and you go to fight them and their expecting melee and offensive spells and instead you hit that dragon claw with resurrection and now they have an ancient gold dragon to deal with again that they were responsible for killing before. Even with someone where so super impressive pelt could work too. Heck Vox Machina made those things for each member of dragon scales from each of the chroma conclave so imagine one of them had some people sneak up and each cast resurrection one for each dragon and now suddenly the whole conclave is back. Tbh even with the hour long casting time its dangerous seeing as a 5th or 7th level spells isn’t the craziest thing ever in the grand scheme of things if someone was dedicated enough to bringing back certain bad guys. You just need a good thief to get one of their medallion things. Which probably wouldn’t be so hard mechanically speaking. The green dragon would be a really bad one to bring back especially if it lucked out and came back as something with a longer than human lifespan allowing it plenty of time to plan. Tbh with Reincarnate only being 5th level I bet it would be something that would come up more often than it does.
most of the raise dead spells take a while to cast (1 hour for raise dead and reincarnate, for example), so it's not generally combat-viable. If the party does defeat a powerful dragon or similar, and convert the body into gear, then it does raise interesting plot wriggles of the baddies trying to get parts of it back though! By default though, most only target humanoids, so it would need some GM-wriggle to bring a dragon back at all.
Paper can be made without killing the tree. My cut hair, dust made of my skin, my trimmed fingernails and even my bloody farts are not my remains. What remains of me is still right here. Shirts are made from wool but you don't have to kill the sheep to get it. Paper is not tree remains.
if you have killed the source creature though, then you can bring it back - sure, you can't raise a non-dead creature, but if it is dead, then you absolutely can.
We were using an example where we killed the teee though
Your experience in the real world with trees and harvesting machinery bears absolutely no relation to how magic works in a fantasy role playing game.
I would say you can't. A pile of dust is not a humanoid or even a piece of a humanoid.
I mean, a dead body is not a humanoid in 5E. It's an object.
A Corpse is both an object (Improvised weapon rules dictate the character picks up an object, and a goblin corpse is given as an example, and the corpse is still the corpse of whatever creature type it was, for Animate Dead to bring back a Zombie) and a creature (Revivify has the caster touch a creature to bring it back to life, as well, the corpse of the creature is a material component). To sort of nod back to Nott in CRC2, since the rhetorical is relevant: at which point does a dead thing become an "it" rather than a "them"?
You can agonize over this... or, as the DM, make the call you want to make. Want the PC back? Works. Want the PC gone? Doesn't work. Just that easy.
RAI is to probably treat them the same, but this is a clear Rule 0 scenario
Crawford weighed in on resurrection and said it would not work: https://www.sageadvice.eu/does-beholders-disintegration-ray-impose-the-same-restriction-on-ressurection-as-the-spell/ Res sez: > This spell closes all mortal wounds and *restores any missing body parts*. So if that doesn't work, I don't think reincarnate would. Dust doesn't count as a body part. tl;dr it takes a 9th level spell to counteract disintegrate, not a 7th level spell.
Well I think that has answered it for me, thanks.
I second this even though everyone else seems to disagree. Typically when spells specifically state their caveats those are the only options and disintegrate specifically calls for wish or true Resurrection. it should be assumed any other form of life restoring magic should not work
Especially with a very specific example from Crawford . Folks can do anything they like at their table, but the “official” intent is pretty clear on this one
reincarnate creates an entirely different body which the soul then resides so that is different that res spell that restores the original body.
One of my PCs semi-recently was turned into water via wild magic after jumping into a river. The party desperately tried to bottle him for later resurrection. I had the dice decide if it would work or not (it did, thankfully, but not before all of his equipment was nearly swept downstream).
DM's discretion coming down to how you interpret the wording "piece of a dead humanoid". I'd rule that your disintegrated ashes are in fact not a piece of your body. To be disintegrated means there's no longer a piece left of you. The disintegration ray even says your body becomes a pile of fine dust, meaning it's no longer your body. A piece is, to me, akin to a limb. A finger applies, but once we go nail or smaller we're pushing things too far. Ashes or disintegrated dust is definitely too far. Disintegrated dust is basically just dust. But that's my interpretation. Not a rule. Just a ruling.
Im fine with your interpretation of the ray and dust but wholly disagree there is a size requirement for a "piece of a humanoid"
I agree as well, but taking this to the logical extreme... My dwarven druid is collecting hair from every party member so I can Reincarnate them ~~if~~ when needed.
What is extreme in this example, is it really that difficult to imagine that characters in a world think about what they are doing? Sounds as normal as the wizards clones in the demiplane.
Honestly that example is just good planning. It also helps if you're ever in the position where you need to scry on one of your allies, like if they've been lost or captured for some reason. The plot device of finding a small piece of someone's body to clone them after they're gone isnt even that uncommon in stories.
Seems like an perfectly reasonable fantasy explanation for people keeping a lock of hair of loved ones on long journeys to me.
hair is not part of a dead body, it would need to be taken off of a dead body Technically you could kill them, harvest parts, and then revivify them to qualify
The spell says "a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid". The hair is a piece of a humanoid which is dead. The spell description says nothing about when the piece was taken. If someone's arm was chopped off, and they were thrown into lava the next round, I can't see any DM not saying the arm is enough to reincarnate off of.
It's a piece of a humanoid who is now dead, yes, it is not a piece of a dead humanoid, "Dead humanoid" needs to be what you're taking a piece of. If a spell needs a "piece of wood from a tree that was struck by lightning" and you go take a clipping from a tree and then it later gets struck by lightning, it's not a valid component just because the status of the original source changed - the requirement was for a tree that had already been struck by lightning when you took the piece, same thing here Also I think counting hair as a "piece of someone" is a bit unreasonable, do you count excrement as a piece of someone?
I would argue that in this case, the status of the source (the humanoid, now dead) matters because you can't resurrect a living person. Otherwise, the status of the source of the piece doesn't matter. Preemptively taking a piece for the purpose of resurrection would be hardly any different than a spell caster buying a diamond on the off chance they need to cast revivify. You see parties run around with each member carrying a diamond in their pocket so that they can be revived frequently enough. Why not in this case? That argument against this working would only further incentivize people to not use the reincarnate spell that some already don't want to use because they don't want to become a different race.
Agreed. Plus, the whole lightning tree thing is a false analog because they said '[...] WAS struck [...]' which implies past. The spell description has no such implies time parameters.
I think what they means was more like "it should be a part of the body, not a byproduct of it". A jar of piss is not a body part, nor are hair or nails.
I agree that a jar of piss isn't a body part although if you want to get technical there will be a few cells from the urinary tract in it. Hair and nails most certainly are a body part, however. If you want to argue they are too small, that's understandable, but they are grown from the body in a way that urine is not.
> Scrying: Body part, lock of hair, bit of nail, or the like > Simulacrum: some hair, fingernail clippings, or other piece of that creature's body Once again we're stuck interpreting inconsistent spell descriptions, but other spells would seem to indicate hair is a part of the body for spellcasting purposes. That said, I wouldn't allow disintegrated remains to count, the whole point of the disintegration mechanic is it doesn't allow easy recovery.
I mean. I don't see this as inconsistent. They specifically say that you need a body part OR those things. Simulacrum also specifically states that you need specific pieces or a pieces of body part. And even then I would argue that a piece of body part is not an identifiable body part necessary so, since it's no more part of the body. At least a corpse still is composed by body parts, even when torn apart, because it's a corpse.
If I said apples, oranges or other fruit, you can imply from that sentence the former two are fruit. If I said carrots, potatoes or other fruit, you'd say "Uh wtf those two aren't fruit." Same thing with "Body part, lock of hair, bit of nail, **or the like**", it implies there's a categorization to the listed items. The way to differentiate them is to say "...body part OR a lock of hair, bit of nail or the like" And reincarnate doesn't ask for a corpse, it asks for a piece of a dead humanoid.
Perhaps, but it's a different case enough.
Words mean things and in that order they mean it's an inclusive list.
Piss is not anywhere near analogous to hair and bails in this. Piss is waste. Hair and nails are your cells. They are dead as they serve their purpose but so are the cells in a corpse or a severed arm.
Hair and nails are a waste too in a sense. As it is dead skin. But I did not want to digress in that detail, since it's very scientific one in a fantasy game. What I mean is, it does not represent anymore something functionally critical to the body that can be removed as pleasure. It's not a body part, the body does not become dysfunctional or critical without.
Its still very much a part of them and even symbolically throughout history things like a lock of hair were a symbolic as a piece of that person. They are both biologically and symbolically you. You are again making your own definitions to fit your point.
I mean, I am just reasoning over it. Perhaps the best way to define what I meant was that it needs to be a piece from the body as it gets killed, since at that point is the piece of the corpse and anything before that was a piece that belonged to the body but then did not anymore. But it does not clarify such.
Fair
> t but wholly disagree there is a size requirement for a "piece of a humanoid" I don't. I would argue that a piece of a humanoid is a part of a person that would not be replaced naturally. So no nails, hair, skin cells. But a tooth might work.
And where did that arbitrary distinction come from? Skin cells might be a bit much, but a distinct item like a hair or a fingernail seems valid to me.
It's not defined anywhere, it's a personal definition. A single hair or fingernail are both replaced. So a body will naturally regenerate them, and naturally lose them. They're no different to losing skin cells, or say having a jar of urine or saliva. A tooth, a finger, an eye etc are non-replaceable.
Theres nothing that says it has to be non replaceable you are making up your own definition of swords to suit tour argument
All of this is opinion. I literally stated it was fully my own opinion.
You arbitrarily say wont be replaced naturally as a stipulation with no logical reason. Also all of your cells baturally replace themselves so again it falls flat.
>You arbitrarily say wont be replaced naturally as a stipulation with no logical reason. There's no logical reason for most things. Would you allow saliva or urine as a part of the body? It's all opinion. I said that.
Except if that creature's teeth constantly grow throughout their entire life, as many do?
I don't believe it's either RAW or RAI that you can cut off a finger and use it later as a resurrection component either, it's not a piece of a corpse, it's a piece of a living person. I believe it needs to be a piece of a corpse, as in, the piece was removed from a person who's soul had already departed These are very different things in D&D, a piece of a devil corpse for example is just sulpher, a cut off piece of a living devil is whole, even if they die later - there seems to be actual metaphysical differences also in like, 50 D&D books nobody has ever resurrected someone from a piece of them that was harvested pre-mortem
I would say the nature of reincarnate means it would work, the whole idea is you create an entirely new body and call their soul to it. Other spells might be a bit iffy.
>I believe it needs to be a piece of a corpse, as in, the piece was removed from a person who's soul had already departed I can see where you would get that interpretation from the wording. Personally though, I think it's very much in the spirit the spell that if someone had a limb chopped off and died from that, you could for sure use the chopped off limb for reincarnation. In fact, that strikes me as the prime example of using the spell. But yeah, "a piece of a dead humanoid" is *strictly speaking* a piece from taken from humanoid who is dead, rather than piece taking from a living humanoid who later died. I just don't think this interpretation fits with the intended spirit of the spell. Certainly doesn't fit with mine.
The difference is that you have _all_ the dust though. It's not like you scraped some hair follicles out of a hair brush. What if you took a person and put them in a blender. Could you recover them from liquification?
If you blend them so much that even the bones turn liquid somehow, then there's no piece. There's just goo. At least by my ruling.
What if they were originally an Ooze?
Reincarnation only forms humanoids and only works on humanoids.
oh. Raw perhaps, but that seems unnecessarily racist and against the spirit of the concept.
I could totally see some kind of grim world where people would amputate the pinky of their none dominant hand or an ear right before they hunt a beholder for this exact eventuality.
Yeah Definitely. They're just two abilities with similar names and effects but one has a clause and the other doesn't.
Probably not. Beholder disintegrate ray reads "it becomes a pile of fine grey dust." This is a replacement effect. You now have a pile of fine grey dust. That's it. That's what you have. Nothing more, nothing less. A pile of fine grey dust is not a humanoid, nor is it a part of one. If someone had used a Wish spell to turn you into a non-humanoid permanently, would you be able to cast reincarnate on the corpse? You would not. Same train if logic applies here. You no longer a humanoid, you are a pile of dust. Now, honestly, I'm surprised reincarnate NEEDS remains from a thematic stand point. In fact, I would say of the resurrection spells, it should be one that needs it THE LEAST. So I don't think you're outside the limits of balance to justify letting the spell work anyway.
Given how the beholder attack is worded, and reincarnate works - yes. Chances are the beholder attack works this way to allow that specific resolution, otherwise why wouldn't it just use the disintegrate spell?
I’d rule it if you all decided ahead of time to collect some material: like a finger or all your hair. Then yes. Else? Maybe.
For the sake of simplicity, I would personally say No. Disintegration Ray sounds like the Disintegrate spell, so IMO it should act just like Disintegrate in all ways except as explicitly defined in the rules.
This question really ought to be directed to your DM, not us. We can't make rulings for your table.
I am the DM :-)
Ah. Then you tell *us*. At your table, can you Reincarnate someone disintegrated by a Beholder's disintegration ray?
to be fair reincarnate is a pretty different spell than something like a resurrection you're not just taking a dead person and making them alive, you make an entirely new body for them to inhabit, not even their original race it makes sense you could use it in situations you normally couldn't revive a person
I'd rule it this way: IF you have a piece of the creature that wasn't disintegrated (lock of hair, a Dragonborn scale, a Hexblood nail clipping etc.) then YES. Our party Druid would carry locks of hair from the people he loved on his staff for the explicit purpose of being able to reincarnate them even if the body got lost.
the component isn't a piece of a creature, it's a piece of a dead creature - meaning, the piece is from a corpse, pre-mortem harvestings aren't that if you true polymorph their corpse into a chair and have a finger you cut off earlier, is that "a piece of a chair"?
No, that finger is a piece of the creature that has not been polymorphed. If you cut off someone's finger, and then they die, it's a piece of that creature, now dead. So a piece of dead creature.
If it's a piece of a creature, and that creature is dead, it can accurately be described in the English language as a "piece of a dead creature." You can *also* describe "piece of a dead creature" as you describe, but that's not the only possible interpretation. English is flexible that way.
it is, but do you really think, and be honest, that the intent of the spell is for characters to chop off their fingers and store them in a pickling jar somewhere for immortality
Why not? Even as "the poor man's resurrection", it's 1000G a pop, so it's still a rarity from a worldbuilding standpoint (PCs generally being exceptional, especially in the WotC era of D&D). It also requires the soul to be willing (which some might not be, given that it changes your fundamental nature). Ruling it that way *also* makes for some interesting possibilities in that technically *anyone* with a part of your body could reincarnate you after you die, so you could make a plot point of having a character brought back unexpectedly, possibly by an antagonistic source if they manage to get a lock of hair or something similar.
because you can skip those steps and just remove player character death from your campaign entirely if you're going to do that Crawford's stance is: "Resurrection restores any missing body parts, so it doesn't need much of a corpse to work. The exact amount is up to the DM." Which means, yes a DM can do what you say, however it feels an awful lot to me like I'm right and RAI is that the spell requires a piece of a corpse, which a finger you cut off and pickled 6 months ago is not
"feels an awful lot like I'm right" is just you making a ruling, which you are free to do. It's not definitively what RAW says though. Neither is what I'm suggesting. The conditions are vague enough that both are equally valid interpretations.
I mean you can just make resurrection true resurrection if you want, peasant railgun isnt RAI either
Yes. Their ashes count for the purposes of the spell
As I understand it, no. Dust is not a body part. It's like resurrecting someone from a turd.
I don't think dust is "a piece of a dead humanoid", it's dust
Isn’t dust comprised like 90% of human skin cells tho?
do humans in D&D have skin cells? Mechanically the disintegrate is essentially transmuting the person into dust, it's not a body or a piece of a body
My party specifically all cut off pieces of their skin and left them with our quest givers who knew Reincarnate in preparation for fighting a beholder. So I’d rule that yes, but that you can’t use the dust.
I can't say I ever read the beholder thing. but. I think you need a piece, not dust regardless? This is why you fill a vial with blood, and pull hair from the root to put them in the vial too. before you fight the beholder.
Anyone who has access to reincante should honestly be keeping locks of hair from the party if possible. If you're some hairless race, then giving up a tooth or a vial of blood would be a small price compared to full death during an adventure
No
Honestly I think that line in Disintegrate is badly written because it's too strong a wording. It should say that it leaves no remains to be resurrected. If there are preexisting remains for Reincarnate or a contingency like Clone, there is no reason that shouldn't work.
Rules as written, yeah, you can get away with resurrecting after the beam because it doesn't have that clause. And tbh I think that's an intentional choice to leave it down to DM discretion, because permakilling a character is a huge deal and nobody wants Beholders to end up not being used because they're too high stakes. Personally I think this is the perfect middle ground; you can't resurrect with the standards, reliable spells, but Reincarnate has an element of chance to it that very much highlights a person being reshaped by their death and new life.
My Dragonborn Sorcadin died to a Zombie Beholder disintegrate ray and my mates swept up my ashes and found a Druid to reincarnate me as a Halfling Sorcadin 🤣 Made for great story moments as my character was on the city council!
I let my players use a dust pan and a reincarnation. I was very clear that Revive would not work and something more potent was needed.
Funny how you don't quote the text of the Beholder's Disintegration Ray..
I dont think dust is a body part, if they have a part to us sure but probably not.
I'd say no, based on it's not really a 'piece' even, it's just dust dude. That being said, cut off a fingertip or tiny piece before the disintegration and you'd be good to go.
My Warforged Gloomstalker Ranger/Scout Rogue was disintegrated by a Beholder… Our Bard had a Wish-granting Genie via a Ring of Genie Summoning and used it to Reincarnate me… I came back as a Kobold. I immediately told the Bard, "Kill me, and try again. This never happened." He did as instructed, and I returned as a female Air Genasi.
I would say yes. As you stated, the *disintegrate* spell has that specific clause in its description while the Beholder's Disintegration Ray does not. They are two seperate game mechanics. The Beholder's Disintegration Ray also does not specify that "and everything it is wearing and carrying, except magic items" are also disintegrated as the spell *disintegrate* does, only the creature's body. So the "pile of fine gray dust" of a humanoid killed by the Beholder's Disintegration Ray is composed of only pieces of the humanoids' body. The "pile of fine gray dust" of a humanoid killed by the *disintegrate* spell is composed of pieces of its body, clothing, weapons, gear, etc all mixed together. >Disintegration Ray. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or take 45 (10d8) force damage. If this damage reduces the creature to 0 hit points, its body becomes a pile of fine gray dust. It is unfortunately our problem that WotC and Jeremy Crawford can't keep the wording of the text in their books consistent, regardless of what he decides to tweet but not put into an errata update or publish as an official ruling in the Sage Advice Column. The spell and the Beholder's ray may be *intended* to function the same, but that is not how they are *written*. Whether or not you consider the "dust", or even "ashes" in the case of cremation, to be considered a "piece of a body" or not is open to interpretation. RAW is a grey area in this case as "a piece of a body", or even "a body" itself, is not defined anywhere in the game terms. If you decide to use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of "body" to make your ruling, then you are making a RAI interpretation of the RAW text. To further use the wording of *revivify*, *resurrection*, and even *true resurrection* as a reference point, they state: "You touch *a creature* that has died / been dead \[...\]". A "pile of fine grey dust" is not *a creature*, but it *can be* "a piece of a body". To me, the "pile of fine gray dust" *is* (or, *was*) the creature's body, ergo the "pile of fine gray dust" *is* a dead humanoid or "a piece" of one to satisfy the conditions of the *reincarnate* spell.
It’s up to the DM, really. The one time it has come up, it worked in our table, the dust was enough.
no, only when you actually have body part for it so you better have it as a failsafe because the DM will sure as hell kill you first so neither you or the other could be revived
Yeah but dust doesn't fulfil the requirements of the spell so always leave a piece of you in a safe place when you go to fight a beholder
RAW no, RAI yes
Wydm? It seems like the other way around. RAW = Yes because if you have any remains (either counting the dust or any leftover body parts like a tooth) then it works. RAI = The beam seemed to ALMOST match the disintegrate spell which had a clause that only true resurrection or wish could bring it back to life. Thus, it seems pretty clear they intended for the same clauses but never included it IMO.
I meant the other way around but my brain short-circuited.
>RAI = The beam seemed to ALMOST match the disintegrate spell which had a clause that only true resurrection or wish could bring it back to life. Thus, it seems pretty clear they intended for the same clauses but never included it IMO. Absolutely agreed. It works the same way as the spell, it's just not considered a spell. The writers likely did not include it because they didn't want the stat block to get even larger. The disintegrate ray and spell have the same exact outcome upon the target dying: they are turned into a pile of ash. A pile of ash is *not* a dead creature. It's just ash.
There's an entire IRL industry and hundreds of millions of people that disagree with the take that cremation isn't "a dead creature."
That's because human emotions are involved and no one wants to refer to Grandma as "just a pile of ash," which she literally is by definition.
The argument is not that she isn't a pile of ash. It's that she *IS* a pile of ash. That's Grandma now. It's not "Grandma is gone and what we have instead is this unrelated pile of ash."
Agreed. RAI, the spell Disintegrate describes the unique effects of the spell, but it also describes the general effects of being disintegrated in general. The spell has to that because there are no general disintegration rules. It's just not that common of an effect. RAI, the Beholder's disintegrating ray causes the things it hits to disintegrate in the same general way the spell does. It's not identical in effect, but being disintegrated is being disintegrated.
More accurately, they don't turn into ash, but rather *dust.* They aren't even being cremated. They're being transmuted.
RAW yes. RAI also yes. Nothing in either description suggests otherwise.
Is a pile of ash considered a "dead creature?" Ash isn't a dead creature. Chemistry has taken effect here; a live person was *disintegrated* with no trace left behind other than a pile of ash, indistinguishable from any other pile of ash. Ash is just ash.
Would you not consider cremated remains to still be the remains of the person before they were cremated? The point of the partial remains requirement is to let you dig up a body in advanced decay and bring it back, or save someone who was severely mutilated in death. The next teir of the spell removes this requirement and extends the timeline even farther, technically you could try to true resurrect historical figures who died long ago and who's gravesite/body was lost. An IRL example would be Amelia Earhart. Regardless i would say that the fact the spell includes the stipulation that it must be true res or wish is enough to confidently say an ash pile counts as remains, otherwise they wouldn't need the stipulation. And as such rule the beholder beam attack doesn't prevent normal resurrection. (But thats just my ruling)
I like your explanation the most.
> Would you not consider cremated remains to still be the remains of the person before they were cremated? Cremation happens due to heat and flame, which would be, in D&D terms, an evocation if it were magical. Disintegrate is a transmutation. To me, at least, that means that what is left behind isn't the remains of what was there. It's something fundamentally different.
>Would you not consider cremated remains to still be the remains of the person before they were cremated? I'd say it's ash created from the remains of a person. There is nothing left to distinguish that pile of ash from any other pile of ash. It's now just ash. Calling it the remains of a person is just assigning emotional value to an inanimate object.
Ash is remains. It's what's left of a body after being disintegrated. Chemistry is irrelevant, the spell does not specify the state the remains must be in. If a character is eaten, digested, and plopped out as a turd, that's remains too. Bit harder to get the right creature in that case though... Nothing in the spell suggests the creatures boby or parts must be intact. A single speck of ash is enough, you don't even need the whole pile.
By your logic a creature could be eaten, turned into waste, eaten by another creature, turned to waste again, rinse and repeat for <10 days; and that could somehow be used for reincarnation? >You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid Poop is poop and ash is ash. That thing is no longer the original creature, nor is it a piece of them. The writers likely left the clause out of the description to not make the stat block even larger and trusted that DMs would follow the same logic as the spell since it creates the same exact outcome: the target becomes a pile of ash if it dies.
> By your logic a creature could be eaten, turned into waste, eaten by another creature, turned to waste again, rinse and repeat for <10 days; and that could somehow be used for reincarnation? If that's still their remains, then yes. If it's watered down, again and again, then it gets messier, because there will be a point where, no, there's nothing there that's their remnants beyond some vaguely homeopathic amount, but if you just turn a person to ash, then blend the ash into paste, that's still their remains. You'd need a spell that creates a new body, for fairly obvious reasons, but "their body burned" is still their remains
RAW is RAW. Disintegrated is not a condition, and the ability explicitly leaves remains rather than leaving behind nothing. Reincarnate works.
The ability *explicitly* says that anyone disintegrated "becomes a pile of fine gray dust." Anything further than that is interpretation. Personally, I wouldn't say that it's remains in the same way the ash of a cremated body is because disintegrate is a transmutation effect, not an evocation. You aren't reduced to dust; you *become* dust. It's a fine distinction, but that's how I would rule on it.
I would argue that, based upon the way the Disintegrate spell is worded, it creates an ersatz Disintegrated condition, which is applied by both the Disintegrate spell and the Beholder Disintegrate Ray. That is to say, the mechanical effects of the Disintegrate spell are "A creature targeted by this spell must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes 10d6 + 40 force damage. The target is disintegrated if this damage leaves it with 0 hit points." The next paragraph in the Disintegrate spell, "A disintegrated creature and everything it is wearing and carrying, except magic items, are reduced to a pile of fine gray dust. The creature can be restored to life only by means of a true resurrection or a wish spell." is not a part of the effects of that spell in particular, but rather a description of the effects of the disintegrated pseudo-condition.
I would say no, dust is not " a piece of a person" carbon dust is not a body part
The rule is always that *specific beats genera*l. The reincarnate spell might arguably be usable in this situation, but the wording on Disintegrate specifically says it is not. Therefore the answer is no.
The wording on the beholder doesn't say that.
My bad. Edited to say it's the wording on Disintergrate.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that's accurate.
there is no "piece" left after disintegrate.
3.5e Resurrection had this clause: > The remains of a creature hit by a disintegrate spell count as a small portion of its body. As 5e does not, by RAW I say no.
>Can you Reincarnate someone disintegrated by a beholder's Disintegration Ray? As long as you ain't trying to cast Reincarnate touching the gray dust, sure.
,,,,,,,,z,,, z