Corporeality

This article is a work in progress. Several editors are making significant changes to the article, and you might encounter awkward formatting, contradictory or unsourced information, or other undesirable elements below. Learn how you can help with the project in the discussion.

At left, the necromancer Geb as a corporeal mortal. At right, Geb as an incorporeal ghost. See also Category:Images of incorporeal creatures.

Corporeality is the state or quality of having a physical form. A corporeal entity has a tangible form subject to physical interactions in accordance to the physics of a plane. The opposite of corporeality is incorporeality; an incorporeal entity lacks a physical form, and its form is not subject to the plane's physical forces.

Properties

Corporeal entities can interact with each other, but not with incorporeal entities. The converse is true: incorporeal entities can interact with each other, but not with corporeal entities.

Corporeality is typically a permanent, fixed state; either an entity is naturally corporeal or incorporeal. In exceptional cases often involving magic, a corporeal entity can be made incorporeal and vice versa.

In creatures

Corporeal and incorporeal beings can often perceive each other, and invisiblity and incorporeality are not the same phenomenon. For example, a corporeal being can interact with but cannot pass through other corporeal entities, such as a solid wall or another corporeal being. Corporeal beings can perceive and pass through a visible incorporeal being, but cannot interact with it.

Likewise, an incorporeal being can interact with but cannot pass through other corporeal entities. They can perceive and pass through corporeal entities, but cannot interact with them.

To go through a mundane physical door with a latched knob, a corporeal being turns the knob and pushes the door. An incorporeal being cannot interact with the knob or physically push the door, but they can pass through it as if it did not exist. Alternatively, from the perspective of an adventurer, the difference between corporeality and incorporeality is most often tested in combat. A mundane weapon can strike a corporeal entity, but it cannot make contact with a typical incorporeal entity.

However, extraordinary forces such as magic can create exceptions in both natures. For example, weapons with the ghost touch rune allow corporeal weapons to harm incorporeal entities, and manifestations of supernatural force can cause incorporeal beings to inflict harm on corporeal beings. Incorporeal creatures can also touch, hold, and use such items.

Conversely, items such as ghost ammunition that are or become incorporeal in use can pass harmlessly through corporeal entities, but can strike incorporeal beings otherwise unaffected by corporeal items.

Spirits, incorporeal undead, weaker forms of technological holograms, and intangible forms of illusions are typically incorporeal in nature, or share many of the properties of incorporeality. However, ectoplasmic creatures, corporeal undead, powerful holograms, and some tangible forms of illusion can have (or at least convincingly simulate) a corporeal form.

Incorporeal entities and beings are generally immune to afflictions and types of harm that have only mundane corporeal forms, such as diseases, poisons, and many types of weapons and physical harm. However, supernatural equivalents, metaphysical force, and many types of magic (including magical weapons) can often affect incorporeal entities in similar manners as a corporeal entities.

Anchored incorporeality

Several incorporeal hands reach out from a haunted pile of corporeal rubble.

While incorporeal beings are not necessarily subject to physical forces, some incorporeal undead or haunts incorporating incorporeal phenomena can be anchored to a physical site or prevented from passing through certain walls.

Possession

Some incorporeal beings can possess a corporeal form, such as animus shades.

In magic

The metaphysical concepts of material and spiritual essences are strongly associated with corporeality and incorporeality, respectively.

Across planes

Certain overlapping planar phenomena can manifest across planes in corporeal or incorporeal manners.

This sentence contains spoilers for the following products: major spoilers for encounters and plot points in the Season of Ghosts Pathfinder Adventure Path.
You can disable this banner in your personal preferences.

For instance, at a physical intrusion upon a spiritual mindscape where those phenomena intersect, corporeal beings within the mindscape might perceive beings at the shared location outside of the mindscape as incorporeal beings, and vice versa.

References

Corporeality and incorporeality are mechanical concepts of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Details about their behavior might differ between editions and revisions, and might be depicted inconsistently with their mechanical definitions in fiction or other media.

External links

• Incorporeal trait on Archives of Nethys for Pathfinder Second Edition
• Incorporeal Universal Monster Rule on Archives of Nethys for Pathfinder First Edition