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How the animate dead spell works in the video game Baldur's Gate 3 has me wondering:

Can I reanimate the remains of a dispelled zombie?

  • Does it remain a zombie (undead creature) after dispelling, and remain exempt from animate dead
  • Or is it again a humanoid corpse, and thus a valid target for the spell?

Some of the answers to similar questions address a destroyed or "killed" zombie, but not a dispelled zombie.

V2Blast
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Bex
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    I added the 5e tag for you as the text of your question is asking about 5e – Nobody the Hobgoblin Sep 16 '23 at 19:39
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    What do you mean by "dispelled zombie" in terms of 5e? And how do you want to reanimate it, using what feature/spell exactly? – enkryptor Sep 16 '23 at 19:40
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    It seems to me that BG3 questions ought to be fielded at arqade – KorvinStarmast Sep 16 '23 at 19:48
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    @KorvinStarmast I'll make a meta of how to treat those, as many of them are essentially questions about how the 5e rules work, triggered by someone playing the game. – Nobody the Hobgoblin Sep 16 '23 at 19:50
  • @NobodytheHobgoblin Good idea. Not sure how this should be treated. – KorvinStarmast Sep 16 '23 at 19:52
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    Are you asking about how that stuff works in BG3, or about how it works in the paper & pencil RPG 5th edition D&D, which is what BG3 is based off (with some important differences)? – Oblivious Sage Sep 16 '23 at 20:06
  • I’ve removed the question about reanimating bones, that’s an entirely different question, and we try to keep posts focused on one question per post. You are free to create a new question posts for additional questions. – Thomas Markov Sep 16 '23 at 20:10
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    I see it's been edited out, but in case there was something important in it. Why did this related to BG3 zombies. It rather distinctly doesn't include dispel magic so I'm failing to see the connection. (And it would seem I'm not alone in that.) – Someone_Evil Sep 17 '23 at 08:57
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    It being edited out really makes the answer seem odd – SeriousBri Sep 17 '23 at 19:35
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    Related Can you dispel animated dead? – Slagmoth Sep 18 '23 at 01:21
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    I'm voting to close for now, but would love to hear from @Bex what the focus of their question is really about. Is this a question about what you saw in BG3 and are asking if what you saw is accurate? Or do you have a question about the game itself? Or is it something else? I just want to make sure we're answering the question you have and not the question we think you have. – NotArch Sep 18 '23 at 17:01
  • Okay, the forced edit of my ask really made it unintelligible. I am an old school tabletop DnD player who hasn't updated to 5e, on which BG3 is based. I was asking if in 5e, dispelling zombies is a thing, and if so, can the same corpse/ex zombie be reanimated again, or is a fresh corpse required. The mechanics in BG3 made me wonder - you can dispel but not reanimate the same corpse - and I thought allowing one but not the other was odd and got curious. My question was answered by the confirmation that dispelling zombies still isn't a thing in tabletop, so it's just a weird BG3 thing. – Bex Sep 25 '23 at 12:01

1 Answers1

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You cannot dispel Zombies in D&D 5e

Animate Dead, the spell that creates zombies is a spell with an instantaneous duration. You cannot dispel effects of spells with an instantaneous duration.

This has been explicitly answered in the Sage Advice Compendium:

Can you use dispel magic on the creations of a spell like animate dead or affect those creations with antimagic field?

Whenever you wonder whether a spell’s effects can be dispelled or suspended, you need to answer one question: is the spell’s duration instantaneous? If the answer is yes, there is nothing to dispel or suspend. Here’s why: the effects of an instantaneous spell are brought into being by magic, but the effects aren’t sustained by magic (see PH, 203). The magic flares for a split second and then vanishes. For example, the instantaneous spell animate dead harnesses magical energy to turn a corpse or a pile of bones into an undead creature. That necromantic magic is present for an instant and is then gone. The resulting undead now exists without the magic’s help. Casting dispel magic on the creature can’t end its mockery of life, and the undead can wander into an antimagic field with no adverse effect. [...]

Of course there are many other ways to off zombies, from just beating them down, to a cleric of level 5 or higher using their Channel Divinity to destroy them. (Thanks to @KorvinStarmast.)

Wether you can reuse the corpses of zombies that were destroyed in some way in 5e is covered by Can a Necromancer reuse the corpses left behind from slain undead? in detail. Short answer (also based on the SAC): yes, if the creature at some point was a humanoid.

Can I cast animate dead on the humanoid-shaped corpse of an undead creature such as a zombie or a ghast?

When animate dead targets a corpse, the body must have belonged to a creature of the humanoid creature type. If the spell targets a pile of bones, there is no creature type restriction; the bones become a skeleton.

V2Blast
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Nobody the Hobgoblin
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  • But a level 5 or higher cleric can destroy them with channel divinity. {Lvl | CR Undead Destroyed }
    {5th | 1/2 or lower } {8th |1 or lower } {11th | 2 or lower } {14th | 3 or lower } { 17th | 4 or lower }     – KorvinStarmast Sep 16 '23 at 19:53