The Gaming Den

SRD wrote:A thin, green ray springs from your pointing finger. You must make a successful ranged touch attack to hit. Any creature struck by the ray takes 2d6 points of damage per caster level (to a maximum of 40d6). Any creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by this spell is entirely disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of fine dust. A disintegrated creature’s equipment is unaffected.

When Disintigrate drops a character to 0 HP or lower, they become a small amount of dust.

Not dead, just some dust.

So, since at 0 HP you enemies are Staggered, in powder form, you can carry around your enemies in an even more convenient form than Flesh to Stone petrified, since you can talk to them via telepathy.

Between -1 and -9 Hp, more options open up. If you can cast a little healing magic, or are willing to trust that they will stablize, you can keep them Unconcious.

If you need your dusty enemies awake, you can heal them. Even spells as powerful as Heal will not fix them, though a Break Enchantment will work.

Basically, all my mages are carrying small brooms and dustpans after 11th level, although Prestitigitation would be an easier way to collect them.

There's no specific DC modifier for your heal patient being a small pile of dust. We can assume that it's an unfamiliar physiology, however, and thus the DC to stabilize someone who is a small pile of dust is possibly as high as 25.

As far as I can tell, Regeneration will give them back their body. Break Enchantment won't, because the spell is too high level for the generic text, and the spell is not mentioned by name in the specific exceptions (as is Flesh to Stone).

-Username17

Sweet!!

This brings to mind Sarge's rant about the unknown uses of Concentration.

The spell description never specifies that the dust left behind is, in fact, the remains of or current body of your victim. In fact, since it is mentioned only in the spell description of Disintegrate and not anywhere else in the ruleset, I think the dust is part of Disintegrate's special effects suite, and Disintegrate should also have a light Conjuration aura to be able to summon the dust.

I'm fairly certain that there is a direct reference to the dust produced by disintegration as being a form of remains of the body in the resurrection spell description actually.