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[Lia Valenth]

Having a soul is not an ability, the books say ALL undead = No soul. For ki powers you dont forget them and if you some how got your soul back you could use them again but as long as you are undead you ki powers are as good as not there. Also means that your familiar would stop being a familiar, the only reason its part of you is due to your souls mixing no soul means no familair.

Unless, of course, the GM does not like it that way. In which case it becomes whatever works for the campaign. And while, technocally, you are correct, you are also incorrect. According to Dominus Exxet page 4, 'Ki in Beings without Souls' certain abilities separate the being from its soul temporarily, rather this is the case here or not I do not know, but in this case they still have access to Ki even though they are undead. However they have 1/2 Ki and Accumulation. Thus, even with this weak link to the soul, they would still be a familier.

Of course, with spells, all bets are off as that spells can disobey rules whenever they want to. Look at the spells list. In a simple example, one rule is a being cannot change their Gnosis, they have what they were born with forever. Ascension, Dark Ascension, Chimera, Necromatic Chimera, and others disobey this rule. If a spell disagrees with a rule, as GM I would rule with the wording of the spell, as that all spells are exceptions to rules. Really all supernatural abilities are exceptions to rules, a human cannot fly, without Ki, spells, or psychic powers. A human cannot create water, unless they can. A human cannot control fire, unless they can. An undead does not have a soul, unless they do.

The spell says they keep all their abilities, Ki is not excluded from this in the spell. Therefore they keep their Ki abilities, including Accumulation and Ki pools. Unless there is erata for the spell, or a ruling from Anima Studios I will read it this way. If there is a ruling I will HOUSERULE it to work this way, I like it much better. Either way will not change my game.

[Spirit_Crusher]

Well said Liah.

Also, the Void Knight in the monsters book is an undead but has 119 points of generic ki.

[kplate]

Unless, of course, the GM does not like it that way. In which case it becomes whatever works for the campaign.

With that logic you need not to ask for rules ever. "does it work like this? Well yes but I dont like it so it does not." Then why did you ask? My post is what the rules say, now if some one has a valid reason to fight my information or add coments cool, if not make a house ruling thread not go on about house rules when we should be looking at the real ones. Now I will reread some stuff and get back to you on the "Ki in beings without Souls" but will coment on the rest. First undead do have ki points it whould be the only way they could use the one ki tree they are allowed to have use of. On the spell beats your base rules fight I think you have a really good point here, but Im not 100% sold. The spells he whould be using say nothing on keeping your soul, and you dont really lose your ki powers they just dont work. I will double check everything but as I see it now it still looks to me as using that spell on someone makes it so they cant access their ki powers. Also both these spells are not temporarily so that argument is out. Again Im not here telling you how you run your game or anything I just think we need to know the real rules, house rules are awesome I use some myself but that is not the thing we are looking for, everyone needs to know the true base rule before they can make a good choice on house ruling

[Lia Valenth]

First undead do have ki points it whould be the only way they could use the one ki tree they are allowed to have use of. On the spell beats your base rules fight I think you have a really good point here, but Im not 100% sold. The spells he whould be using say nothing on keeping your soul, and you dont really lose your ki powers they just dont work. I will double check everything but as I see it now it still looks to me as using that spell on someone makes it so they cant access their ki powers.

Ok, let me get this strait. First you state undead do have Ki points. Then you state they still know how to use their Ki. Then you state the Ki powers do not work. Why? They have Ki, the knowledge of how to use Ki, and the ability to accumulate it. Plus the spell states they keep all their abilities. Ergo, as far as I can tell, they can use their Ki.

The spell allows you to keep your magic, psychic, and summoning abilities. Why would it let you keep all abilities except Ki and not say so? On rather it keeps them as familiars I do not know, I am not very well versed in summoning rules. I cannot say being a familiar is an ability. I would rule that the familiar would not keep their familiar bond.

That, however, is not the question posed by you. No one asked about its affects on Ki prior to your statement. The question asked was on familiar bonds. Insofar as the spell is worded, however, the Ki abilities still works.

I would still say an Undead Summoner would be required to get an undead familiar. Which does work, technically, according to the rules. Although I do not know if it was intentional, and Summoners should be unable to control undead at all. However, certain undead can summon other undead, and the rule state that only undead can do this. It does not say it has to be an ability of that type of undead. Therefore, according to the RAW, undead Summoners can create undead Familiars. I do not believe this was the intention, but it is the effect.

[Cerufel]

Reality works within certain bounds.  These are the rules set out in the book. 

Powers like Ki, Magic, and Psychic bend the rules of reality.  It is feasible to think some natural rules, that the universe normally follows, would thus be changed or completely ignored under their influence. 

Hence what Lia mentioned about changing a creature or character's Gnosis using spells when the book explicitly states that a character or creature cannot change their Gnosis.  Both the fact that you cannot change your Gnosis and the fact that you can change  your Gnosis through the use of spells are true.

The spells he whould be using say nothing on keeping your soul...

The spell also does not say it kills the creature or otherwise splits the soul from the body.

...and you dont really lose your ki powers they just dont work.

Yep, if it did so happen that one was blocked from using their Ki, which can definitely happen, they would not suddenly forget their abilities, they simply would not have access to the power source.  Like taking out the batteries in a clock.

I will double check everything but as I see it now it still looks to me as using that spell on someone makes it so they cant access their ki powers.

I suppose like most things that are questionable it is up to the GM to decide what works best for their players and their game. ^_^ I am interested to hear what you find out though. 

For my players I don't think I would let them effectively neuter a Ki wielding opponent permanently with one spell, unless of course they agreed it could be used on them by any high level necromancer I send their way.  Where as an NPC having an Undead familiar would be not be game-breaking or something that would immediately ruin one of my players, and vise-versa.  A PC with an Undead Familiar is more of a flavor thing than a power grab.  Taking away someone's Ki, Magic, or Psychic powers permanently is, in my opinion, a power play. 

[kplate]

The spells he whould be using say nothing on keeping your soul...

The spell also does not say it kills the creature or otherwise splits the soul from the body.

That is my point, if we go by the logic that unless the spell says other wise it works just like everything else in the base rules(ie. spell says I can up my gnosis thus I can) this spell does not say you keep your soul it says right in the spells wright up that you are now an undead, and going by base rules all undead lack a soul, thus spell says nothing of keeping a soul, base rules say you now dont have a soul, you must then lack a soul. Im doing the rereading today and will post tonight my findings about the rest.

[Lagnalok]

The spells he whould be using say nothing on keeping your soul...

The spell also does not say it kills the creature or otherwise splits the soul from the body.

That is my point, if we go by the logic that unless the spell says other wise it works just like everything else in the base rules(ie. spell says I can up my gnosis thus I can) this spell does not say you keep your soul it says right in the spells wright up that you are now an undead, and going by base rules all undead lack a soul, thus spell says nothing of keeping a soul, base rules say you now dont have a soul, you must then lack a soul. Im doing the rereading today and will post tonight my findings about the rest.

The base rules on page 283 state that the living dead (aka undead) normaly come in two base variants, they either are animated bodies (beeing between worlds) or specters (spirit). The former is a body without any kind of souls that is "only a shadow of their past life" while the later are "defunct souls".

This lets us conclude two thing:
1. being undead dosen't mean you have no soul, it only mean your soul us in some way fractured and has been cut of from the normal soul flow (the reason why undeads can only be affected from summoning abilities from other undead).
2. Taken that life perservation, surpass death and true rise all state that the affected beeing keeps all his characteristics and abillities of his past life we can definitly say that they would not count as being "a shadow of their past lifes". So we can say that there are undead beeings that differ from the standard rules and have a body as well as some kind of soul (thought not what you would define as a whole or "true" soul but something that is not whole and shouldn't exist in the normal world).

Anways, as far as it goes for the usage of Ki - there are two mayor theoris how Ki/Chi/Chakra is formed. The first states that your inner energy is formed by fusing your mental and physical energy together, the other states that you also fuse in the energy of your soul. Tho book dosn't state which one is used in anima, so you could pick either, and in case if its the later how much loosing your soul would affect your accumulation (easy going: 100%, normal: 66%/50%, strict:0%). However, taken the high-magic-level of those spells it problably shouldn't affect the target's Ki at all.