There is still the question of what revivified undead corpses some back as. I would expect they would come back as what they were immediately before they were killed, unless something like gentle repose was cast first, in which case I don't know what they would come back as.
There is still the question of what revivified undead corpses some back as. I would expect they would come back as what they were immediately before they were killed, unless something like gentle repose was cast first, in which case I don't know what they would come back as.
Using Revivify on a freshly slain undead restores the undead. That much, at least, has been cleanly established. Sage Advice
The RAI disagreement only comes into play with higher level spells. The "safe" assumption is that only True Resurrection and Wish can restore someone whose body has been destroyed or animated. In this case, "animated" would be interpreted as "no longer available" due to some as of yet unclarified mechanism.
There is still the question of what revivified undead corpses some back as. I would expect they would come back as what they were immediately before they were killed, unless something like gentle repose was cast first, in which case I don't know what they would come back as.
They come back as the undead creature, as was explicitly in the SA I previously linked. A dead Zombie comes back as a Zombie. A dead Ghoul comes back as a Ghoul.
Yes, they very explicitly are an undead creature, and they do not cease to be an undead creature after being killed (again). Did you not actually read the Sage Advice, or even the OP's post? Because they spell it out quite clearly...
You are welcome to believe that, but it really isn't clear (1), and the consequences of your interpretation would be very significant.
If a zombie, or greater undead, continued to be considered an "undead creature" after it died again, then spells like Regenerate would still apply and you could continue to revive a "killed" undead indefinitely until it was "destroyed". (2)
In fact, it opens up enough loopholes, that it could end up causing a lot of problems. (3)
Edit: Aura of Vitality is a third level spell that would let a Paladin necromancer revive 10 "undead creatures", as it does not exclude undead from its healing ability.(2)
What part of "Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the GM has the creature's game statistics)." is difficult to understand?
Uh... no. I don't know how you can even begin to think that. Healing only works on living creatures, and what that means in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition is "not dead". Undead =/= dead. A "foul mimicry of life" is still life.
Regenerate & Aura of Vitality do not reanimate dead Undead (or dead anything), but they will heal living Undead. There are no issues here.
Cure Wounds specifically does not work on Undead or Constructs.
There are no loopholes present except the ones that you have built up in your own mind.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Sigred, it's clear that we are not communicating well, so I won't bother responding to the content of your previous post, for the sake of thread clutter.
I'm content with the exchange we have had so far, and readers are welcome to interpret it according to what makes sense to them.
If that is so then the corpse of an undead creature retains the undead tag despite no longer being an undead creature and becoming an obect. So not all corpses are created equal. I wonder how many categories of corpses there are.
If that is so then the corpse of an undead creature retains the undead tag despite no longer being an undead creature and becoming an obect. So not all corpses are created equal. I wonder how many categories of corpses there are.
The issue comes with a "chain of ownership".
For example: If you wanted to Scry on someone, you could improve your chances by having one of their possessions, say, a wedding ring. Now, if that wedding ring is an heirloom that has been passed down through the generations, could you then use that same heirloom to scry on their mother and their grandmother? Almost certainly, because once you have it, it is technically your possession, so current ownership is not what defines a "possession".
In a similar vein, the corpse is clearly connected to the undead, but it is probably also connected to the original host. Revivify does not call a soul to a body, but rather directly revives a dead creature. The implication is that at approximately 1 minute, the soul leaves the body. This could mean that the [Undead] element of the corpse lingers for a minute then dissipates back into necromantic energy. After that time has elapsed, it may just be a boring ol' corpse again.
Raise Dead does not work on Undead, but it isn't clear what would happen if you cast it on a corpse between that 1-10 minute window with the intention of reaching out to the original soul, as neither the body nor soul are undead on their own.
Alright, I found a loophole that seems to have been overlooked.
Taking as a given that Raise Dead can not save anyone whose body has been turned into an Undead, both Reincarnate and Resurrectionalmost certainly can, though a little preparation may be warranted. This is because Reincarnate and Resurrection do not require a whole body, and there is no specification for how large a "piece" needs to be, nor how long the piece can be separated from the body prior to death.
Combat is rough and can certainly be messy. So as long as there are "bits" of the original character strewn about the battlefield, then it ought to simply be a matter of tracking some down and using that as the target. If a pool of blood is adequate, then anything short of Finger of Death is likely to present an opportunity. (Though, even Finger of Death has a one round delay.)
Recommendation: Give someone you trust a locket of hair. If you are teamed up with other friendlies and are in a rush, take a hand or ear with you for later.
Alright, I found a loophole that seems to have been overlooked.
Taking as a given that Raise Dead can not save anyone whose body has been turned into an Undead, both Reincarnate and Resurrectionalmost certainly can, though a little preparation may be warranted. This is because Reincarnate and Resurrection do not require a whole body, and there is no specification for how large a "piece" needs to be, nor how long the piece can be separated from the body prior to death.
Combat is rough and can certainly be messy. So as long as there are "bits" of the original character strewn about the battlefield, then it ought to simply be a matter of tracking some down and using that as the target. If a pool of blood is adequate, then anything short of Finger of Death is likely to present an opportunity. (Though, even Finger of Death has a one round delay.)
Recommendation: Give someone you trust a locket of hair. If you are teamed up with other friendlies and are in a rush, take a hand or ear with you for later.
Edit: For Clarity
No loophole.
Cutting pieces off a creature and they cease to be part of that creature.
Kill the creature, and then you can cast resurrection on that dead creature. If it was undead at the point of it's death then Resurrection fails, but True Resurrection would work.
Alright, I found a loophole that seems to have been overlooked.
Taking as a given that Raise Dead can not save anyone whose body has been turned into an Undead, both Reincarnate and Resurrectionalmost certainly can, though a little preparation may be warranted. This is because Reincarnate and Resurrection do not require a whole body, and there is no specification for how large a "piece" needs to be, nor how long the piece can be separated from the body prior to death.
Combat is rough and can certainly be messy. So as long as there are "bits" of the original character strewn about the battlefield, then it ought to simply be a matter of tracking some down and using that as the target. If a pool of blood is adequate, then anything short of Finger of Death is likely to present an opportunity. (Though, even Finger of Death has a one round delay.)
Recommendation: Give someone you trust a locket of hair. If you are teamed up with other friendlies and are in a rush, take a hand or ear with you for later.
Edit: For Clarity
Reincarnate requires a humanoid, which undead are not. Resurrection specifies that the dead creature cannot be undead. Neither of these spells will work.
@Farling, If a creature is cleft in twain, which part is "the dead creature"?
@Saga, You seem to have overlooked the main purpose of my post, which explicitly bypasses the undead issue. By taking part of the body before it becomes a zombie, it is never a part of an undead creature. You are effectively dealing with two separate corpses.
~~~
A body reanimated as an undead creature (zombies) is not the same as a creature turning into an undead creature (lich). In the former, the creature is still dead, the corpse is just now an undead corpse instead of a humanoid one. In the latter, the creature themself is undead.
@Saga, You seem to have overlooked the main purpose of my post, which explicitly bypasses the undead issue. By taking part of the body before it becomes a zombie, it is never a part of an undead creature. You are effectively dealing with two separate corpses.
Except it doesn't really bypass the undead issue. Let's go spell by spell:
Reincarnate says "You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid." While a hand or an ear is certainly "a piece" of a creature, if the creature has become an undead, then the creature is not a humanoid, and that piece of them is a piece of a dead undead. It doesn't matter what it used to be a piece of. What matters is what it's a piece of at the time of Reincarnate's casting. Now, something to note here is that this is only relevant the humanoid and the undead are the same creature. Something like Animate Dead doesn't seem to do anything to the original creature. It uses the corpse to create a new creature. In such a case, it may be possible to use Reincarnate to restore the original creature to life (though this has no effect on its original body or whatever creature is using it). But, that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about resurrecting undead, not humanoids whose bodies are being used as undead. Something like a vampire is a clearer case to use an example.
Resurrection is a different case. You cannot cast it on a hand or an ear, and certainly not a lock of hair. You need "a dead creature." It needn't be intact, as the spell restores missing limbs, but heads and torsos are not limbs, so if you don't have those, Resurrection isn't going to help you. If the torso and head are in use as a zombie, then once you kill it, it's still a dead zombie, not a dead humanoid. Now, a potentially interesting fact about Animate Dead is that it only requires a pile of bones, not any specific bones. If you pile up a bunch of arm bones and leg bones and raise some skeletons, I'd definitely say you can still cast Resurrection on the heads/torsos that remain, the missing limbs regrowing as per the spell.
~~~
A body reanimated as an undead creature (zombies) is not the same as a creature turning into an undead creature (lich). In the former, the creature is still dead, the corpse is just now an undead corpse instead of a humanoid one. In the latter, the creature themself is undead.
It depends on the nature of the reanimation, but if the bodies are reanimated with something like Animate Dead then yeah, I agree, as I mentioned above. But that's not what the thread is about, as I mentioned above. And there are still limitations, as I mentioned above :D
An example of a zombie that falls into the latter category, rather than the former, is one created by a wight. Here's the relevant text: "A humanoid slain by this attack rises 24 hours later as a zombie under the wight's control..." The humanoid itself rises as a zombie. It's not a new creature inhabiting someone else's corpse.
But, that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about resurrecting undead, not humanoids whose bodies are being used as undead. Something like a vampire is a clearer case to use an example.
l read that unless you use a wish or true res,a undead cant be returned to life. However,what exactly counts? like l can guess that you cant use revivify to turn a lich into a normal guy,but what about if you are attacked by a person that was just turned into a zombie and kill it? Could you bring that back to a living body? or does anyone effected by animate dead/create undead become unable to be revived?
The phrasing of "resurrecting undead" is being used generically to refer to both restoring a deceased undead creature to unlife, as well as reviving a character whose body was corrupted.
The official ruling is obviously that a killed zombie produces an undead corpse and that corpse can not be restored as a zombie, nor can that corpse be used to resurrect the living creature that it once was, with lower level magics.
There is no disagreement here. If the "creature" has become undead, that's different than the typical case of a zombie or animated undead, which was the specific scenario mentioned in the OP.
"It needn't be intact, as the spell restores missing limbs, but heads and torsos are not limbs..."
You are quite right that a head and torso are not "limbs", fortunately the spell says the following, "This spell closes all mortal wounds and restores any missing body parts." A head and a torso are most definitely "body parts".
"It depends on the nature of the reanimation, but if the bodies are reanimated with something like Animate Dead then yeah, I agree, as I mentioned above...."
The most common case of being attacked by someone who was "just turned into a zombie" is the result of a spell like Finger of Death. I'm assuming this part of the question was specifically about a PC who was corrupted mid-battle and is suddenly "perma-dead" unless the party gets access to high level magic.
The OP mentioned Revivify which requires that the creature be dead less than 1 minute, which automatically rules out Animate Dead and Create Undead.
The OP was a bit of a shotgun question that is ambiguous enough to cover a very broad range of topics.
@Farling, If a creature is cleft in twain, which part is "the dead creature"?
The examples were of taking a part of the body long before the blow that caused death. If an undead creature dies by being "cleft in twain", then you still have two parts of an undead creature, so True Resurrection is still required.
The wording of Revivify does not disqualify it from working on the corpse of an undead creature, but would bring it back to life as the same undead that it was before it "died".
But, that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about resurrecting undead, not humanoids whose bodies are being used as undead. Something like a vampire is a clearer case to use an example.
l read that unless you use a wish or true res,a undead cant be returned to life. However,what exactly counts? like l can guess that you cant use revivify to turn a lich into a normal guy,but what about if you are attacked by a person that was just turned into a zombie and kill it? Could you bring that back to a living body? or does anyone effected by animate dead/create undead become unable to be revived?
The phrasing of "resurrecting undead" is being used generically to refer to both restoring a deceased undead creature to unlife, as well as reviving a character whose body was corrupted.
The official ruling is obviously that a killed zombie produces an undead corpse and that corpse can not be restored as a zombie, nor can that corpse be used to resurrect the living creature that it once was, with lower level magics.
There is no disagreement here. If the "creature" has become undead, that's different than the typical case of a zombie or animated undead, which was the specific scenario mentioned in the OP.
"It needn't be intact, as the spell restores missing limbs, but heads and torsos are not limbs..."
You are quite right that a head and torso are not "limbs", fortunately the spell says the following, "This spell closes all mortal wounds and restores any missing body parts." A head and a torso are most definitely "body parts".
You're absolutely right. That's just a flat-out misreading on my part. The general point remains: a hand or ear or lock of hair will not work, because it requires a "creature." How much is required for the target to actually count as a creature, as opposed to just a part, becomes a DM's call, which is very annoying territory to be in.
"It depends on the nature of the reanimation, but if the bodies are reanimated with something like Animate Dead then yeah, I agree, as I mentioned above...."
The most common case of being attacked by someone who was "just turned into a zombie" is the result of a spell like Finger of Death. I'm assuming this part of the question was specifically about a PC who was corrupted mid-battle and is suddenly "perma-dead" unless the party gets access to high level magic.
The OP mentioned Revivify which requires that the creature be dead less than 1 minute, which automatically rules out Animate Dead and Create Undead.
The OP was a bit of a shotgun question that is ambiguous enough to cover a very broad range of topics.
Finger of Death changes the fundamental nature of the creature; it doesn't create a new creature the way Animate Dead does. Therefore, Resurrection does not work.
Something like Animate Dead doesn't seem to do anything to the original creature. It uses the corpse to create a new creature.
The animate dead spell targets the corpse of a humanoid. The target becomes a skeleton or zombie. So the spell DOES do something to the original creature!
But Finger of Death only creates an undead if the PC has low original hit points so that the damage kills it immediately, at least according to JC at https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/973778654445543424 (since NPCs/monsters don't do death saves, it would always work on them).
Something like Animate Dead doesn't seem to do anything to the original creature. It uses the corpse to create a new creature.
The animate dead spell targets the corpse of a humanoid. The target becomes a skeleton or zombie. So the spell DOES do something to the original creature!
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. As you say, the target is the corpse of a humanoid, so the spell does nothing to the original creature.
Something like Animate Dead doesn't seem to do anything to the original creature. It uses the corpse to create a new creature.
The animate dead spell targets the corpse of a humanoid. The target becomes a skeleton or zombie. So the spell DOES do something to the original creature!
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. As you say, the target is the corpse of a humanoid, so the spell does nothing to the original creature.
Um, I'm not quite understanding your position.
The creature died. It is now a corpse. The spell targets the corpse to turn it into a skeleton or zombie. Thus once the undead is killed, the corpse that ends up lying on the ground is the corpse of a skeleton or zombie.
The creature died. It is now a corpse. The spell targets the corpse to turn it into a skeleton or zombie. Thus once the undead is killed, the corpse that ends up lying on the ground is the corpse of a skeleton or zombie.
In D&D, creatures have both a soul and a body. When a creature dies, its soul and body separate, leaving behind an Object "Corpse (type)" and their soul goes somewhere else. When a corpse is animated as a skeleton or zombie, the original creatures soul still exists separately from the zombie, resulting in two separate creatures. One remains dead, and one is animated. The dead creature hasn't itself become the undead creature, in basic cases.
When that zombie dies, you now have Soul (humanoid) and Corpse (Undead). Thus, the corpse can't be used to resurrect the original creature, but the original creature still exists, as an in-game entity, to be resurrected.
The creature died. It is now a corpse. The spell targets the corpse to turn it into a skeleton or zombie. Thus once the undead is killed, the corpse that ends up lying on the ground is the corpse of a skeleton or zombie.
In D&D, creatures have both a soul and a body. When a creature dies, its soul and body separate, leaving behind an Object "Corpse (type)" and their soul goes somewhere else. When a corpse is animated as a skeleton or zombie, the original creatures soul still exists separately from the zombie, resulting in two separate creatures. One remains dead, and one is animated. The dead creature hasn't itself become the undead creature, in basic cases.
Every single undead creature in D&D probably got created as undead from a non-undead creature.
It doesn't change the fact that only True Resurrection will get past the fact that a corpse/creature has been converted into an undead.
RAW doesn't mention a soul in terms of Raise Dead, Resurrection or True Resurrection. They require you to touch a "dead creature" (true res says "creature that has been dead no more than..."), no mention of "soul" at all. The first two say that it doesn't work on an undead.
More generally on the topic of bypassing the undead state, I would ask everyone to consider the Clone spell.
Scenario:
Wizard creates a clone, dies of boredom (leaving a perfectly normal corspe), and then transfers to new Clone.
Wizard(clone) slips when stepping out of the sealed vessel, because they forgot to put down a texture shower mat and subsequently cracks his head on the edge of the vessel and dies.
(A) Necromancer turns the original body into a zombie. Apprentice resurrects the Wizard(clone)
(B) Necromancer zombifies the Clone body. Apprentice resurrects the Wizard(Original)
Are both (A) and (B) viable options at your tables?
Note: the Clone spell does state, "The original creature's physical remains, if they still exist, become inert and can't thereafter be restored to life, since the creature's soul is elsewhere.", but I understand the RAI of this to mean that the corpse can't be resurrected because the soul is bound to a living body. I suspect that if the user died again, the soul is intended be free to return as normal.
Thoughts?
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There is still the question of what revivified undead corpses some back as. I would expect they would come back as what they were immediately before they were killed, unless something like gentle repose was cast first, in which case I don't know what they would come back as.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Using Revivify on a freshly slain undead restores the undead. That much, at least, has been cleanly established.
Sage Advice
The RAI disagreement only comes into play with higher level spells. The "safe" assumption is that only True Resurrection and Wish can restore someone whose body has been destroyed or animated. In this case, "animated" would be interpreted as "no longer available" due to some as of yet unclarified mechanism.
They come back as the undead creature, as was explicitly in the SA I previously linked. A dead Zombie comes back as a Zombie. A dead Ghoul comes back as a Ghoul.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Sigred, it's clear that we are not communicating well, so I won't bother responding to the content of your previous post, for the sake of thread clutter.
I'm content with the exchange we have had so far, and readers are welcome to interpret it according to what makes sense to them.
If that is so then the corpse of an undead creature retains the undead tag despite no longer being an undead creature and becoming an obect. So not all corpses are created equal. I wonder how many categories of corpses there are.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
The issue comes with a "chain of ownership".
For example: If you wanted to Scry on someone, you could improve your chances by having one of their possessions, say, a wedding ring. Now, if that wedding ring is an heirloom that has been passed down through the generations, could you then use that same heirloom to scry on their mother and their grandmother? Almost certainly, because once you have it, it is technically your possession, so current ownership is not what defines a "possession".
In a similar vein, the corpse is clearly connected to the undead, but it is probably also connected to the original host. Revivify does not call a soul to a body, but rather directly revives a dead creature. The implication is that at approximately 1 minute, the soul leaves the body. This could mean that the [Undead] element of the corpse lingers for a minute then dissipates back into necromantic energy. After that time has elapsed, it may just be a boring ol' corpse again.
Raise Dead does not work on Undead, but it isn't clear what would happen if you cast it on a corpse between that 1-10 minute window with the intention of reaching out to the original soul, as neither the body nor soul are undead on their own.
Alright, I found a loophole that seems to have been overlooked.
Taking as a given that Raise Dead can not save anyone whose body has been turned into an Undead, both Reincarnate and Resurrection almost certainly can, though a little preparation may be warranted. This is because Reincarnate and Resurrection do not require a whole body, and there is no specification for how large a "piece" needs to be, nor how long the piece can be separated from the body prior to death.
Combat is rough and can certainly be messy. So as long as there are "bits" of the original character strewn about the battlefield, then it ought to simply be a matter of tracking some down and using that as the target. If a pool of blood is adequate, then anything short of Finger of Death is likely to present an opportunity. (Though, even Finger of Death has a one round delay.)
Recommendation: Give someone you trust a locket of hair. If you are teamed up with other friendlies and are in a rush, take a hand or ear with you for later.
Edit: For Clarity
No loophole.
Cutting pieces off a creature and they cease to be part of that creature.
Kill the creature, and then you can cast resurrection on that dead creature. If it was undead at the point of it's death then Resurrection fails, but True Resurrection would work.
Reincarnate requires a humanoid, which undead are not. Resurrection specifies that the dead creature cannot be undead. Neither of these spells will work.
@Farling, If a creature is cleft in twain, which part is "the dead creature"?
@Saga, You seem to have overlooked the main purpose of my post, which explicitly bypasses the undead issue. By taking part of the body before it becomes a zombie, it is never a part of an undead creature. You are effectively dealing with two separate corpses.
~~~
A body reanimated as an undead creature (zombies) is not the same as a creature turning into an undead creature (lich). In the former, the creature is still dead, the corpse is just now an undead corpse instead of a humanoid one. In the latter, the creature themself is undead.
Except it doesn't really bypass the undead issue. Let's go spell by spell:
Reincarnate says "You touch a dead humanoid or a piece of a dead humanoid." While a hand or an ear is certainly "a piece" of a creature, if the creature has become an undead, then the creature is not a humanoid, and that piece of them is a piece of a dead undead. It doesn't matter what it used to be a piece of. What matters is what it's a piece of at the time of Reincarnate's casting. Now, something to note here is that this is only relevant the humanoid and the undead are the same creature. Something like Animate Dead doesn't seem to do anything to the original creature. It uses the corpse to create a new creature. In such a case, it may be possible to use Reincarnate to restore the original creature to life (though this has no effect on its original body or whatever creature is using it). But, that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about resurrecting undead, not humanoids whose bodies are being used as undead. Something like a vampire is a clearer case to use an example.
Resurrection is a different case. You cannot cast it on a hand or an ear, and certainly not a lock of hair. You need "a dead creature." It needn't be intact, as the spell restores missing limbs, but heads and torsos are not limbs, so if you don't have those, Resurrection isn't going to help you. If the torso and head are in use as a zombie, then once you kill it, it's still a dead zombie, not a dead humanoid. Now, a potentially interesting fact about Animate Dead is that it only requires a pile of bones, not any specific bones. If you pile up a bunch of arm bones and leg bones and raise some skeletons, I'd definitely say you can still cast Resurrection on the heads/torsos that remain, the missing limbs regrowing as per the spell.
It depends on the nature of the reanimation, but if the bodies are reanimated with something like Animate Dead then yeah, I agree, as I mentioned above. But that's not what the thread is about, as I mentioned above. And there are still limitations, as I mentioned above :D
An example of a zombie that falls into the latter category, rather than the former, is one created by a wight. Here's the relevant text: "A humanoid slain by this attack rises 24 hours later as a zombie under the wight's control..." The humanoid itself rises as a zombie. It's not a new creature inhabiting someone else's corpse.
This thread is about multiple topics.
The phrasing of "resurrecting undead" is being used generically to refer to both restoring a deceased undead creature to unlife, as well as reviving a character whose body was corrupted.
The official ruling is obviously that a killed zombie produces an undead corpse and that corpse can not be restored as a zombie, nor can that corpse be used to resurrect the living creature that it once was, with lower level magics.
There is no disagreement here. If the "creature" has become undead, that's different than the typical case of a zombie or animated undead, which was the specific scenario mentioned in the OP.
You are quite right that a head and torso are not "limbs", fortunately the spell says the following, "This spell closes all mortal wounds and restores any missing body parts." A head and a torso are most definitely "body parts".
The examples were of taking a part of the body long before the blow that caused death. If an undead creature dies by being "cleft in twain", then you still have two parts of an undead creature, so True Resurrection is still required.
The wording of Revivify does not disqualify it from working on the corpse of an undead creature, but would bring it back to life as the same undead that it was before it "died".
You're absolutely right. That's just a flat-out misreading on my part. The general point remains: a hand or ear or lock of hair will not work, because it requires a "creature." How much is required for the target to actually count as a creature, as opposed to just a part, becomes a DM's call, which is very annoying territory to be in.
Finger of Death changes the fundamental nature of the creature; it doesn't create a new creature the way Animate Dead does. Therefore, Resurrection does not work.
The animate dead spell targets the corpse of a humanoid. The target becomes a skeleton or zombie. So the spell DOES do something to the original creature!
But Finger of Death only creates an undead if the PC has low original hit points so that the damage kills it immediately, at least according to JC at https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/973778654445543424 (since NPCs/monsters don't do death saves, it would always work on them).
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. As you say, the target is the corpse of a humanoid, so the spell does nothing to the original creature.
Um, I'm not quite understanding your position.
The creature died. It is now a corpse. The spell targets the corpse to turn it into a skeleton or zombie. Thus once the undead is killed, the corpse that ends up lying on the ground is the corpse of a skeleton or zombie.
In D&D, creatures have both a soul and a body. When a creature dies, its soul and body separate, leaving behind an Object "Corpse (type)" and their soul goes somewhere else. When a corpse is animated as a skeleton or zombie, the original creatures soul still exists separately from the zombie, resulting in two separate creatures. One remains dead, and one is animated. The dead creature hasn't itself become the undead creature, in basic cases.
When that zombie dies, you now have Soul (humanoid) and Corpse (Undead). Thus, the corpse can't be used to resurrect the original creature, but the original creature still exists, as an in-game entity, to be resurrected.
Every single undead creature in D&D probably got created as undead from a non-undead creature.
It doesn't change the fact that only True Resurrection will get past the fact that a corpse/creature has been converted into an undead.
RAW doesn't mention a soul in terms of Raise Dead, Resurrection or True Resurrection. They require you to touch a "dead creature" (true res says "creature that has been dead no more than..."), no mention of "soul" at all. The first two say that it doesn't work on an undead.
More generally on the topic of bypassing the undead state, I would ask everyone to consider the Clone spell.
Scenario:
Wizard creates a clone, dies of boredom (leaving a perfectly normal corspe), and then transfers to new Clone.
Wizard(clone) slips when stepping out of the sealed vessel, because they forgot to put down a texture shower mat and subsequently cracks his head on the edge of the vessel and dies.
(A) Necromancer turns the original body into a zombie. Apprentice resurrects the Wizard(clone)
(B) Necromancer zombifies the Clone body. Apprentice resurrects the Wizard(Original)
Are both (A) and (B) viable options at your tables?
Note: the Clone spell does state, "The original creature's physical remains, if they still exist, become inert and can't thereafter be restored to life, since the creature's soul is elsewhere.", but I understand the RAI of this to mean that the corpse can't be resurrected because the soul is bound to a living body. I suspect that if the user died again, the soul is intended be free to return as normal.
Thoughts?