So for tonight's #dnd, I had to rule on if a corpse is "equipment" for the purpose of a druid's wildshape merging the "item" into the new form. I said no. @JeremyECrawford did I make the right call?
— Bryan Eskew (@BryanWrites) November 13, 2019
When writing the D&D rules, we didn't consider corpses to be equipment.
That said, I could see Orcus, a Large lich, or some other macabre monster rocking a robe of corpses. #DnD https://t.co/cdsY2a1bdJ
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) November 13, 2019
“When writing the D&D rules, we didn’t consider corpses to be equipment.”
God, I hate this mentality so much.
Kill a deer, throw it over your shoulders, wildshape – oops! Deer doesn’t meld.
Kill a deer, skin it, make hide armor, wear it, wildshape, the armor melds.
What if it’s not armor, but just a hide? Doesn’t meld, because its not equipment?
What if you use the hide as a blanket? Suddenly it counts as equipment?
Obviously the exact line gets drawn by the DM and differs at each table, but could we at least have less vague definitions that simply “equipment” or “objects”, et cetera? Maybe say that worn and carried equipment melds, unless it is especially “bulky” or “heavy” or something like that? Set a guideline that is easier to work with, and that isn’t so completely arbitrary and unclear as “equipment”?
As a dm, Hide would be equipment to me, but the corpse of an entire creature (organs, bones, muscles, tendons, skin, fur) that’s not equipment, an object yes, but not equipment.