[RPG] Will a PC turned into an undead once always need resurrection

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When a character gets turned into an undead, the Raise Dead and Reincarnate spells do not work on that character, and Resurrection is needed.

As an example: a PC becomes a vampire, then is destroyed, then is brought back from the dead as a nonvampire PC by resurrection. If the PC then dies again, does the PC need a resurrection spell to be brought back from the dead, or is raise dead enough?

Best Answer

RAW could be interpreted either way.

The English present perfect tense/aspect can be used to describe either 1) a present state arising from a past event or 2) merely something having occurred some time in the past. Of course, often those are effectively the same thing. When they're not, the ambiguity is usually resolved based on context.

For example, if you're waiting for a train and hear an announcement that "the train has been delayed", your natural interpretation would be that the train is currently running late (i.e. #1) and not that the train has certainly been delayed at least once in the past (i.e. #2), as the latter would be a useless and absurd thing to announce.

On the other hand, if you're applying for a visa to visit a foreign country, and the form asks you "have you been deported from or denied entry to any country?", you'd better believe that it doesn't mean "last week" or "last year", but rather "ever in your life". If you answer "no" and it turns out that you were in fact denied entry 20 years ago, the consulate will assume that you deliberately lied to them and no amount of grammar quibbling is going to get you that visa.

So, how does that relate to Pathfinder? As That_Knight_Guy notes, the descriptions of Raise Dead and Reincarnate both contain the following text (emphasis mine):

A creature that has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can't be returned to life by this spell.

So, does this mean that:

  1. the creature is currently in the state of having been turned into an undead (even if that undead has since been destroyed), or that
  2. the creature has ever been turned into an undead in the past, even if they were later restored to normal life?

Technically, the rules don't say. Had the writers wanted, they could've amended the quoted sentence to explicitly resolve this ambiguity, but they didn't. There are valid arguments in favor of either interpretation, and a GM could choose to rule either way.

As GM, I would definitely allow Raise Dead to work in this case.

It simply makes no sense to me that, after a creature has been turned into an undead, destroyed and returned to normal life by Resurrection or True Resurrection, the "stain" of having once been undead would still linger upon them and prevent Raise Dead and Reincarnate from ever again working on them.

Also, one grammatical argument in favor of this interpretation is that, if the authors of the rules had intended Raise Dead to never again work on such creatures, they could've easily made that explicit by inserting the word "ever" into the sentence I quoted. Since they didn't, that was presumably not their intent.

(It's not an airtight argument, however, since the omission of the word "ever" could've also simply resulted from insufficient care and attention to possible alternative interpretations.)

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