D&D 5E A Flesh to Stone Creature is Not an Object?

[cooperjer]

Jeremy Crawford recently stated, "Neither the petrified condition nor the flesh to stone spell turns you into an object. You are a creature subjected to the petrified condition (PH, 291)." This is interesting and not intuitive. From D&D Beyond the final sentence for the flesh to stone spell is, "If you maintain your concentration on this spell for the entire possible duration, the creature is turned to stone until the effect is removed." I'm free to adjudicate as necessary in my game, but why would this spell not turn a creature into an object?

I checked a few spells. Fireball wouldn't harm a stone statue, but it will harm a stone creature. Disintegrate will remove HP from a stone creature, but will destroy a medium sized object. Thunderwave will damage a stone creature and push it, but it will only push an object. Carrying a creature reduces your speed, while carrying an object looks to encumbrance.

What am I missing that this is designed into the game? This once again emphasizes that a spell does nothing more or less than is written in the text.

Source: https://www.sageadvice.eu/2018/03/1...ture-an-object/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I am not sure what the issue is.

 

[cbwjm]

That is unintuitive. Like you I think that if this ever comes up, I'll treat the petrified creature as an object for anything that refers to objects specifically.

 

[jaelis]

JCs ruling makes sense to me. Like you say, the spell does what it says, and it doesn’t say that it turns you into an object. I don’t have any problem with a stone creature being a creature. I guess if that doesn’t make sense to you though then you’d play it the other way.

 

[SkidAce]

I guess so you can save your buddy....

I mean, if he became an object...do we have any healing that targets "objects"?

 

[ccs]

Of course, since the petrified victim is turned into a solid inanimate substance, breathing will become really really difficult....

That'll result in an object known as a corpse. A petrified corpse, but still a corpse & therefore an object.
Takes 78 rounds max for a PC, maybe slightly longer for some monsters with Cons of 21+.

 

[ccs]

I am not sure what the issue is.

Developers babbling non-sense.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Developers babbling non-sense.

I still don't see any issue. Nor do I see any confusing parts or nonsense.

Of course, since the petrified victim is turned into a solid inanimate substance, breathing will become really really difficult....

That'll result in an object known as a corpse. A petrified corpse, but still a corpse & therefore an object.
Takes 78 rounds max for a PC, maybe slightly longer for some monsters with Cons of 21+.

It's magic, they are a statue not a corpse they don't need to breathe.

And what will take 78 rounds. I don't get anything about your comment.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

This sounds like another spell tweak from older editions to this edition. The way I always understood it, and always played it, is that flesh to stone, or petrification of any other type, is game over for your character unless there is some way to reverse it available to the party or to someone who would come looking for your missing, and now stone, character. The character is not technically dead, and no raise dead types of magic will have any effect, and the spell could be reversed in a day or in 100 years, as in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But if the statue that was your character is damaged, your character will have that damage when returned to flesh. I never really had to deal with the weight issue in games, but a stone you would be much heavier than a flesh and blood you, especially if you default to the standard types of stone used to make statues. But to me, a statue is an object by default, an awkward and hard to carry object too, depending on what position the character was in when petrified.

 

[MechaPilot]

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. A petrified creature (or even a dead creature) straddles a line between being an object and being simply a creature with a negative status effect. Exactly how you want to treat that dual-state being should be a matter of DM interpretation.