[RPG] Are undead ever healed by positive energy

dnd-3.5eundead

I always thought that positive energy is harmful to undead and negative energy heals them, but I recently found out that, technically at least, undead by default are only healed by negative energy, and nothing in their type description says that positive energy harms them.
This is supported by the fact that every positive energy based heal (or cure) spell in the core manual has to specify that it deals damage to undead.

I then started wondering if somewhere in the books is a positive energy based spell, supernatural ability, spell-like or whatnot ever described as healing undead?

I'm referring to 3.5e's rules because that is the only edition I've ever played, but if this interaction is true in any other edition or Pathfinder, I'm still interested.

And obviusly I'm talking about healing your average zombie or smarter types of typical undead. I'm not talking about particular creature like the deathless from Eberron.

Best Answer

(dumb) 3.5 RAW:

Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal undead creatures.

That's the only particularity of a undead regarding healing (besides the fact it can't heal itself).

Let's say you target a zombie with Heal. The spell's description tells us:

If used against an undead creature, heal instead acts like harm.

So we have to read the Harm text rules:

Harm charges a subject with negative energy that deals 10 points of damage per caster level (to a maximum of 150 points at 15th level). If the creature successfully saves, harm deals half this amount, but it cannot reduce the target’s hit points to less than 1.

If used on an undead creature, harm acts like heal.

It seems obvious we have to ignore the last line if we want to keep a little sense here. Basically what we learn is that casting heal makes us charge the zombie with negative energy that deals damage. The undead trait says undead can be healed with negative energy, not that every negative energy heals then, so it "makes sense" that you can harm it, with the heal spell, doing negative energy damage.

By the way, note that by casting harm on the zombie, you are supposed to make him gain HP through positive energy. That is the effect of the spell and does not trigger undead special ability.

Pathfinder rules on this are copy-pasted from 3.5, with the same nonsense.

RACP (rules as commonly played):

When you target a undead with positive energy, you make it take damage, when you target it with negative energy, you make it gain HP. That's pretty simple and the weird cases have to be houseruled by the GM.

I can't provide absolute evidence for the fact everyone plays with these rules, but this kind of material for example suggests undeads taking damage from positive energy.

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