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This spell reverses petrification, but it also seems to do what it literally says in its title. What happens if I take a sculpted person-statue and cast this spell? What happens if I cast it on a stone ball?

A corpse.

Reference "Sculpt And Animate Clay Animals", the 7th level Earth Warlock spell; Sculpt& Animate Clay Animals, Clay to Stone, Stone to Flesh, Breath of Life makes a zombie-like creature; presumably, Stone to Flesh on a statue makes a corpse. Cast it on a stone ball and you have a big wad of flesh... may be rations for a while, but also a way to get out of a cave-in, provided your stomach is strong enough.

I have always wondered how tasty the stone to flesh is. If you do stone to flesh a rock does it taste like chicken? pork? fish? Human flesh?

Probably one of the better survival spells.

Personally I would say that it's the flesh of whatever creature the statue represented.

According to common lore, everything tastes like chicken. I'll stick to bread and milk.

22kg of stone flesh per level. Will feed the masses a lot better than create bread and milk
also when done, do you get 22kg of flesh, or just the volume that 22kg took up. (per lvl)

This does seem like a great way to feed the masses for sure

Get cow moulds and fill with lava, let it set and stone to flesh
I'd call it rocky mountain beef



(The only beef that tastes like chicken)

Create Dirt or Clay (2nd level, 6 PPE)
Clay to Stone (5th level, 20 PPE)
Stone to Flesh (6th level, 30 PPE)

Of course, you can cut out a step with just
Wall of Stone (3rd level, 15 PPE)
Stone to Flesh (6th level, 30 PPE)

Now, this gets a little dicey, but each section (8'*8'*4') of wall of stone weighs about 2400# (since you need a combined PS of 60 to lift, and lifting weight is twice carry weight, and carry weight for 17+ PS is 20* PS, we can go with 60*20*2=2400). Each casting from a 6th level warlock will generate 6 blocks of stone that way, and each stone to flesh will transform 600# of stone, so 4 StF per wall section. With a single casting of Wall of Stone on day 1, and 4 Stone to Flesh a day for 6 days thereafter, they can generate 1536 cubic feet of meat per week. Now, according to this site, 1 cubic foot of chicken is roughly 37# of meat, so we are looking at 56,832 pounds of meat... twenty eight TONS... per week.

That's hilarious.
Its the best source of magic created food that far outstrips the spells designed for the task.

If you go on a long journey apparently you're best off bringing an earth warlock as emergency supplies, even for sea trips.

And if you get tired of Smeat*!, you can use it as shark bait!

*Smeat! Stone Meat! Made by Earth Warlocks from 100% natural stone!

Well, I guess this partly explains how there are so many cities in Palladium that are far larger than medieval societies could historically support.

Welllll....

Ok, Stone to Flesh example is pretty extreme... and it also involves a level 6 Warlock more or less devoting themselves to making meat. A lot more is explained by the 2nd level Earth Warlock spell, Grow Plants. It's a mere 8 PPE per casting and, depending on what's meant by "ten foot area per level of experience", it will do a lot more to increase population carrying that slabs of mystery meat.

This whole thing made me think of Dibbler from the Discworld novels who sold sausages and meat pies, usually made from "genuine pig". He would never specify what part of the pig either. I can just imagine anything from these being "genuine cow". No need at all to let people know it was a stone cow, right?

So what happens if this is used on an Earth Elemental? My initial guess is that anything under the caster's weight limit is instantly destroyed (in terms of usefulness to an elemental), but what about the more massive bodies? Is there damage to be calculated in this case or not?

Hungry, have some wallburger! or SMEAT^TM pies

does the weightlessness spell effect the volume you can change? 6 isp could effectively double the amount.

Applied on an industrial scale, I wonder how fast you could take a rocky, barren landscape, cast this spell a lot, and then have the flesh rot/get eaten and pooped out, and turn it into a garden?

Would Rock to Mud (6 PPE for 30#/level) or Create Dirt or Clay (6 PPE for 50#/level) be more efficient? Perhaps with Wither Plants (10 PPE for 10' area per level) to help break up some of it? Rock to Mud breaks up big rocks. Dirt or Clay adds new, rich, soil. Wither Plants kills the weeds there. Grow Plants encourages whatever you plant.

It would seem a lot more efficient at hortiforming an area.

With all this, it's hard not to picture Earth Warlocks being high demand farmers in most settings, doubly so for areas that have low-yield crop areas and the stone to flesh spell can keep people fed, so an earth Warlock with the cook skill might be the one that creates or starts most towns

Its why dwarven underground strongholds are so big. Some dwarven friends turn up, you go to the tiny linen closet, stone to flesh. Cut out your smeat burgers. Feed the crew and hey presto, they have a place to stay now as well.

y'know, it says stone to flesh, not stone to muscle. what if you're making a big slab of skin, gristle and fat?

then again, C.M.O.T. dribbler already came up so i guess that might not matter if you're feeding everyone sausage.

But it isn't an anatomically or biologically correct corpse unless the sculptor made it so and who knows how the sculptor made internal organs when he was chipping away from the outside. I think it would be a mass of fleshy feeling stone colored matter made in the exact shape of the statue. Flesh toga anyone? Flesh hair? I think the spell works on a person because they already were, but a statue the "hair" never knew what being hair was like. Plus there wouldn't be any bones.


SPAM for a cannibal

I count four different uses for Stone to Flesh brought up in this thread. The first two are pretty clear-cut
1) inanimate rock would yield "dead" (but not yet rotting) flesh
2) a stone statue that use to be living would restore the being

Then more complex two are the O.P.'s original question regarding sculpted statues and by another poster use of the spell on "living" rock-creatures.
3) a statue sculpted to look like a specific creature becomes either
- a lump of "flesh" which caves in on itself due to lack of anatomy
- a true likeness, but not living due to lack of lifeforce (hence Breath of Life to create minions)
4) a "living" rock creature like an elemental, may:
- become animate "flesh" creature
- damage the rock being like partial disentigration
- kill "part" of the creature, like if a character had just their arm or leg turned to stone



In cases 3 and 4, if I were G.M. I would consider both the caster and the spell. Things to consider:
- Should magic be considered flexible and dynamic? Or rigid and un-thinking? Could it "fill in the blanks" based on intent of the caster?
- Would the magic spells behave differently if cast by a Wizard or a Priest of Light or Darkness instead of a Warlock?

Specifically to the Warlock, animated minions can be created by a Warlock using Breath of Life in combination with Stone to Flesh and Sculpt Rock spells. Is this because the sum of the spells creates more than any spell is capable of alone or because of the nature of the Warlock's spells and where that magic originates?

As a GM I lean toward the sum of the spells being greater as I view magic as a force/entity itself. Magic will take part of the caster's thought/intent with it into the spell. If there is no thought/intent and the magic was created at random or by some sort of accident then in absence of intent, you would get a solid "flesh" statue rather than a non-living corpse.

This is why it's great to be a summoner, because at 1st level you can summon a Gorgon to do this for you.

If you can manage a Greater Earth Elemental at 2nd level that's safer though. They don't hold grudges over insulted ego and come back months later for revenge, plus they leave immediately if they win the battle of wills.

It's too bad it's a 5th level spell, too high for Gargoyle Mages to know. If they had this, I'm sure the gargoyle empire wouldn't have to go around eating humans so much.

Missed this (going back through old posts in boredom):

You may be right, but not if you're thinking magically. Magically, a representation of a thing becomes the thing; it's the basis of sympathetic magic, and part of why a True Name is supposed to be so powerful. So, a realistic sculpture of a cow, when magically transformed into SMEAT, becomes the corpse of a cow. Your sculptor did not have to build its bones and make little channels for blood; he made a Cow, and you made the Cow flesh, so the flesh Cow is a cow, no different than Bessie.

1. The stone cow doesn't have a true name.
2. If it turns into what it is supposed to be then it turns into a live cow not the corpse of a cow... unless the sculpture was the corpse of a cow.
3. Is it the artist or the caster that matters? If the caster has only ever known stuffed taxidermied cows and never knew they lived then does it turn into a leather cow suit wrapped around stuffing, stuffing is as much flesh as bone is. What if the sculptor was sculpting a gorgon and the caster thought it was just a cow?

depends who they used to be


My headcanon is that certain types of different stone turn into different kinds of flesh (ie fat, muscle, ligaments, etc) and that turning a flesh-first something into stone creates that proper arrangement of stone which will turn back into a proper arrangement of flesh.

If however you are building something stone-first, getting the proper mixture of stone to emulate proper flesh variety is a very complicated process. You would need a combination of skills in Biology and Geology and be constantly experimenting with turning different kinds of stones into flesh to see what it becomes, and vice versa.

Over time you'd know enough to build a human-ish collection of flesh from the proper stone precursors.

BOM67 "identify minerals" would be key to identifying the proper types of minerals that you would need to prep your sculpture. You can use stuff like "Crumble Stone" or "Dig" to help mine for them. BOM69 "Locate Minerals" would be important to know WHERE to mine, while 'identify' would be used to sort through your dig.

If you can't find them, then yeah you COULD use Clay to Stone to make them... in theory. But since it never mentions what KIND of stone it turns into... it may not be the proper type. The GM might rule that certain types of clay always turn into certain kinds of stone.

What this means is you need 2-tier knowledge:

1) the type of stone needed to make a proper flesh component
2) the type of clay needed to make a proper stone component

Some other kind of skill role should be involved!

On the plus side, if you have "create clay", you don't have to worry about tracking down precursors (as you would with Dirt to Clay) since you could just specify which type you created, presumably.

- - -

Newbie unskilled warlocks who try this build monstrosties which can't live on their own and can only be briefly animated via the remaining duration of 'sculpt and animated clay animals'. Once that expires, to re-animate them, you'd have to change the flesh back into stone, the stone into clay, animate them, then back to stone, then back to flesh, all before the duration expires.

You'd probably be better off just trying again from scratch (clay) to conserve PPE.

The only way "Breath of Life" could create a permanent servant (who remains animated beyond the duration of ACA) could perhaps be with godlike genesplicerish levels of biological knowhow combnied with geological knowhow.

In that way, maybe BOL could actually give permanent (well, maybe just reasnoable life span) animation to something as if it were a true resurrection. Not necessarily a 'soul' or anything, but then, do we even know how souls are formed? If the Splugorth clones someone, does the clone have a soul?

Normally even with BOL it's just not likely to be permanent. BOM74's "Transference of Essence" notes:

or ani­mal of clay creation (thus becoming permanent).

The difference that 'breath of life' would make is probably between these distinctinions of how the body is controlled

as if it were his own natural body
like a robot

The former is for "living plant" while the latter is for golem/mannequin/puppet.

What you COULD do (rather than redo the clay>stone>flesh process) is eentually make it into a Flesh Golem if yuo have access to Demon Magic (WB35p106). Apparently careless use of Soul Mind on them might actually grant them sentience which I assume is some combo of IQ and ME, though 7/6 is higher than some humans have...



Huh, never noticed that BOM69 gave that for WOS but BOM68 does not for WOC. Nor does WOC have the "all elemental walls" note.


All of which will vanish after 4 minutes / level or if hit prematurely with Dispel Magic Barriers.

You could enjoy eating flesh but not gain weight from it since it vanishes.

If you want something that'll last a bit longer, BOM70's Cocoon of Stone is 500 pounds lasting 1 day per level.

Whether anything with a duration is able to provide long-term nutrition is pretty questionable. I definitely see a problem with proteins your body forms from amino acids that will disappear.

At best it seems like an energy (calories) source (mostly from fat, since protein isn't quick energy and flesh is low-carb) as you might be able to digest it before it vanishes?


Very good question.

I'm thinking "just the volume" because otherwise what happens if I cast it on a 300 pound stone statue who used to be a 100 pound person? Do they get bigger?


BOM72-73 also mentions casting Breath of Life with just Clay to Stone atop the Animate Clay Animals.
way it seems to work is
Stone = double the MDC of clay
Iron = triple the MDC of clay (50% more than stone)
Breath of Life = adds melee attacks

The super weird part is BOL only adds a 50% increase (+1) in melee attacks to clay...
yet BOL+stone = 100% (x2) increase in attacks (+2=4)
and BOL+metal = 200% (x3) increase (+4=6)

But I don't really get why stone or metal would make them FASTER...not to mention more coordinated. Of course it only ATTACKS faster... the Spd attribute isn't mentioned as being increased so that stays the same... WEIRD.

"damage and bonuses" means +3 to strike and 3D6 MD at the top level though it doesn't mention PS increasing so I guess that's still 22.

Probably a good trick is casting Superhuman PS on this thing because base damage 3D6 x 3 = 9D6
of course you might just viwe that as being +2D6 but 5D6 is still decent in that case...

What I don't like about these combos is how it seems to take for granted you'd have this Air Warlock spell in play, when more likely a lot of warlocks (or earth elementals) will simply have "Animate Clay" + "Clay to Stone" so I'd want to know how that works alone.

I'm actually wondering, if we look at BOL as adding a fixed +1, maybe that means stone adds +1 by itself and metal adds +4 by itself?

Given that there's other stuff you can turn clay into (well, just Lead) I want to know the stat for that too.

I have always played intent of user of the magic effects things as well, so a sculpted cow could be turned into a real cow if that was his intention. (Medusa is a Gorgon, not a brass? cow). If a person has to understand how the organs to turn something from stone to flesh, unpetrifying someone would be hard.

1) Most cows do not.
2) It may have been supposed to be a live cow, but it does not have an animating spirit, which is why the spell chain referenced above requires Breath of Life.
3) It is artist which creates the thing; they imbue it with the energy of their creation. If you used Object Reading on it, you would see that they were making a cow or a gorgon or whatever. Only a significant disconnect ("This is a cow." "That's quite clearly a monkey.") would break the sympathetic magic.

Hmmm... Looking at the reversed spell...
You could cast the spell, let someone eat the food, then turn it back to stones.

That's dirty pool

So mages should learn how to object read so they dont try accidentally turn a modern sculpture of a gorgon into the real thing, thinking they were going to get a cow. Thankfully that should make truly alien creature sculptures incapable of being made flesh and since fictitious creatures have no "breath of life" things from movies and books shouldnt work with the spell... or we'd need to worry about Arakian Sandworms or Rankors.

Eww... that must be the kids side of the pool.

Please say it's a Baby Rooth. Please say it's a Baby Rooth. Please say it's a Baby Rooth.

Rogue Earth/Air Warlocks are what ACTUALLY cause unforseen monstrosities.

So... HR Giger makes something out of clay, casts Clay to Stone, then Stone to Flesh, and then Breath of Life... Hmmm...