Corpse mutilation

[Pool]

Perhaps I'm extremely late to the party on this, but it's been bugging me for awhile now.

When a PC dies, for any reason it could entail, people decide to do terrible, terrible things to them. Cut off their head, cut off all the limbs, burn the head, limbs and chest, take the ashes, bury them in different places of Ymph and say a prayer of 'get dunked' to Garagos.

It's just a corpse! It is not a jig-saw puzzle you have to take apart with a weapon! What is the purpose of that? They're already dead. They're not going to get up. If they do, unless they are a complete meat-head, they will not come back so soon. Or be a problem.

Does the candle of life bother people that much? Do Priests with diamonds warrant a barrage of pitchforks and torches to the nearest corpse? Come on. :U

[Pigadig]

It happens in any setting where death isn't a permanent thing. It gets taken to silly extremes, but it's just a side effect of when death can be overcome so long as the body is whole.

If the setting had a precondition that any corpse smothered in blueberry sauce would prevent people coming back from the dead you'd find people carrying around buckets of it and slathering their dead enemies with it.

[TheBarmaid]

Also new character concept, The Smurfator, he goes around killing people and slathering them in Blue Berry Sauce.

[granny]

rofl, I join you, barmaid!

[The Beggar]

Mutilation is Meh

[Teeth in a Bowl]

It's usually done to increase the cost of raises to levels that most find themselves unwilling to pay.

That might just be the cynic in me, though.

[The Old Hack]

*scratches head* Does this mean I was being bad when I played that character who carried around a sackful of false moustaches and glued one to the upper lip of all his slain enemies?

...more seriously, yes. Mutilating a body is kind of yucky. Doing it 'just so they won't be raised' strikes me as extremely petty and inviting others to do the same to you, thus continuing the trend. I don't like it and I haven't ever done it to anyone I have FDed, not even when I suspected they might later be revived.

Oh, by the way. You should probably have a DM present if you insist on trying to make a body unrevivable. One, someone might want to stop you from doing it and they should be allowed to try, two, it saves later argument when someone gets revived and then gets told, "But you don't have arms and legs!"

~tOH.

[Teeth in a Bowl]

Oh, by the way. You should probably have a DM present if you insist on  trying to make a body unrevivable. One, someone might want to stop you  from doing it and they should be allowed to try, two, it saves later  argument when someone gets revived and then gets told, "But you don't  have arms and legs!"

I'm quite sure you do need to have a DM present when/if you mutilate a body, for the purposes of model changes/mechanical changes. I'm welcome to correction, though.

Edit: I should also add to that someone wanting to stop you, aswell, same point you made.

[SanTelmo]

There can be the reason of making an example through horrific scenery: "This is what will happen to you if you come after ME". I can't imagine anyone going through the trouble of cutting of heads and whatever over someone they barely know and happened to kill -meaning, these mutilation issues likely have story behind them. However, a guard catching a gruesome criminal he has been hunting for a while - executed and head piked to the gates? Stygians used to nail heads daily to their walls in Ziggurat. Or vice versa, criminal piking the head of someone who was sent after him?

Wasn't it not long ago when musters own Captain tried to burn (meaning, making it even harder to revive the corpse) someone he had killed in the cells- likely to assure that person is never brought back? Or was he simply just making that pyre out there on top of the Last Keep for barbeque party? Maybe it was that...

Burning, cutting of heads and otherwise piking corpses is maybe not the everyday thing you do the corpses but I surely have not seen it used overly in game. I am also pretty sure it is common knowledge in this magical world (at least to adventurers) that priests/relics can bring back the life of a fallen friend who is in good condition so if you suspect someone might want to bring the guy you want to keep dead back, you might wish to assure he stays so.

[Jayde Moon]

Pertinent part of the Raise Dead spell:

A raised creature has a number of hit points equal to its current Hit Dice. Any ability scores damaged to 0 are raised to 1. Normal poison and normal disease are cured in the process of raising the subject, but magical diseases and curses are not undone. While the spell closes mortal wounds and repairs lethal damage of most kinds, the body of the creature to be raised must be whole. Otherwise, missing parts are still missing when the creature is brought back to life.[/u] None of the dead creature’s equipment or possessions are affected in any way by this spell.

Ergo, when you bring back a corpse without a head, they are still headless and will very likely simply just die again.  Immediately.

Therefore, desecrating a corpse in this manner can be legit practice.  However, just as any part of PvP, it can just as easily be a tasteless practice as a warranted one.

A DM must be present for corpse mutilation to have any actual effect.  Ie, if you emote removing the head but a DM is not present and allowing it, then the head is not removed.

[Red Swirl]

There can be the reason of making an example through horrific scenery: "This is what will happen to you if you come after ME". I can't imagine anyone going through the trouble of cutting of heads and whatever over someone they barely know and happened to kill -meaning, these mutilation issues likely have story behind them. However, a guard catching a gruesome criminal he has been hunting for a while - executed and head piked to the gates? Stygians used to nail heads daily to their walls in Ziggurat. Or vice versa, criminal piking the head of someone who was sent after him?

Wasn't it not long ago when musters own Captain (NPC) tried to burn (meaning, making it even harder to revive the corpse) someone he had killed in the cells- likely to assure that person is never brought back? Or was he simply just making that pyre out there on top of the Last Keep for barbeque party? Maybe it was that...

Burning, cutting of heads and otherwise piking corpses is maybe not the everyday thing you do the corpses but I surely have not seen it used overly in game. I am also pretty sure it is common knowledge in this magical world (at least to adventurers) that priests/relics can bring back the life of a fallen friend who is in good condition so if you suspect someone might want to bring the guy you want to keep dead back, you might wish to assure he stays so.

[Valo56]

Mutilating a corpse should be done with the same mindset as killing the character. What is your reason for it? If the reason is "They'll just get raised, come back and attack me later" then it should be the same as if you subdued someone and thought "They'll just get up, come back and attack me later."

Consider if they really earned it, if you really NEED them to be dead with no chance of coming back. Odds are you don't. If you want to do something else like pike a -major- enemy's head up on the gates of Mistlocke, awesome, but piking up the head of every repeat offender or murderer isn't necessary.

When going through your character's adventuring career, you don't burn the corpse of the boss of the Granary Quest. Muskroot's apprentice is left intact quite often, and the Harpy Queen got to keep her wings, so why mutilate these corpses of PC's who likely haven't dealt NEARLY so much damage as the NPC's you go on quests to kill?

[granny]

mutilation is essencial before you're going to eat! unless you're a dragon and can swallow it whole.