In the material components for the 'Clone spell' it requires "1 cubic inch of flesh of the creature that is to be cloned, that's the spell consumes".
My question is what happens if you take this from a creature that is already dead? Would you essentially be able to make a replica of him? Would the body be forever inert? Could someone use some sort of spell to enter said body? Should artificers be able to cast clone if they came upon A spell scroll with it?
The purpose of the clone spell is to protect a creature against dying, if it's already dead then there's nothing for the spell to do. 😉
The first line of the spell actually specifies "a living creature", so there is no way to use the clone spell with a corpse.
That said, a corpse is technically no longer a creature, it's an object (but for the purposes of revivify etc. it is also "a creature that has died"). If you wanted you could potentially duplicate the corpse using any spell that allows you to create an object, though what you could then do with it will vary considerably.
For example, if you used creation to produce the corpse of a creature, you'd have a big question mark over whether the creature would function properly if reanimated in some way, i.e- does shadow matter shaped to appear like humanoid cells actually function as cells or would it just disintegrate? If you convinced the soul to be reborn in the copied body you created, would it die when the duration of creation runs out (answer is probably "yes, horribly")? etc.
In the material components for the 'Clone spell' it requires "1 cubic inch of flesh of the creature that is to be cloned, that's the spell consumes".
My question is what happens if you take this from a creature that is already dead? Would you essentially be able to make a replica of him? Would the body be forever inert? Could someone use some sort of spell to enter said body? Should artificers be able to cast clone if they came upon A spell scroll with it?
Thoughts?
The purpose of the clone spell is to protect a creature against dying, if it's already dead then there's nothing for the spell to do. 😉
The first line of the spell actually specifies "a living creature", so there is no way to use the clone spell with a corpse.
That said, a corpse is technically no longer a creature, it's an object (but for the purposes of revivify etc. it is also "a creature that has died"). If you wanted you could potentially duplicate the corpse using any spell that allows you to create an object, though what you could then do with it will vary considerably.
For example, if you used creation to produce the corpse of a creature, you'd have a big question mark over whether the creature would function properly if reanimated in some way, i.e- does shadow matter shaped to appear like humanoid cells actually function as cells or would it just disintegrate? If you convinced the soul to be reborn in the copied body you created, would it die when the duration of creation runs out (answer is probably "yes, horribly")? etc.
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Fairly straightforward here - invalid target, nothing happens.
Ok thanks just a fun thought experiment.