Selande wrote:If you're sitting with a bucket of fried chicken, and a cleric walks by and sneezes some divine spell. Does the chicken come back to life?
That question posed, would it be a deliciously cooked living bird or negative-energy fueled chicken bits (animate dead). And what would these options taste like? Chicken I bet.
I suppose it would depend on the spell sneezed, the willingness of the clerics deity to determine if the sneeze was aimed at the chicken or not, and finally on the type of sneeze vis-a-vis the spell cast.
So, the second part of your questions relies heavily on which spell is cast by the cleric. If it is Resurrection, one would assume the chicken could be resored to full-living-chicken status (-2 CON) and therefore not be deliciously cooked anymore. As there is a requirement for the deceased not be dead more than 1 day/caster level for Raise Dead (PnP DnD) and the creature must have a soul, it is unlikely that the cleric would be of sufficient level or deification to affect the necessary incantation for Raise Dead to work on the chicken. If the cleric had some Druid blood in her and it was Reincarnation that was cast, then the chicken would in fact be brought back as per the d100% chance listed in the chart for the spell (from Bugbear to Troglodite) again assuming no more than 1 week per caster level of the spell has past since the chicken died, and that it does in fact have a soul. (q.v. The conversation about whether or not chickens have souls will be left for another post.)
With respect to negative energy spells the chicken could be reanimated via a Create Undead or Animate Dead spell (the skull would need to be present as the caster has to put onyx gems in its eyes, etc for Create, and the caster would need to mentally control the chicken with Animate) and I'd expect that due to the negative energy used to create it, that it would no longer be a tasty animated bird, but a rotten one - fried chicken left on the kitchen counter for a week rotten. Now, if the necromancer was smart (or should I say crazy) they could have tied the chicken's soul to a phylactory before killing it and cooking it (see q.v. above) and created a chickenlich or Lichchicken that could be killed and eaten repeatedly, assuming the phylactory remained in tact and there were suitable bodies for the chicken to animate. This is, of course, outside the bonds of credulity...
There is always room for "divine" interpretation of the sneeze as well, and if the cleric worshipped Beshaba, or Erevan Ilesere, as a DM I would offer a d100% chance that the god acted according to their portfolio and the chicken was returned to some life, unlife, animated part or parts, delicious or rotten, and the ensuing RP would evolve and revolve around the poor bloke who sneezed in the first place. "One Death Chicken, comin' up!"
