Disclaimer: this is purposefully obtuse.
Other effects in the game which explicitly state they kill you:
Shadows, succubi, massive damage, death saving throws, beholder death ray (notably not even their disintegration ray kills you), power word kill, vampires, mind flayers, night hags, drow inquisitors.
Clearly, if they intended for disintegration to kill you, they'd have said so. Since specific overrides general, and there is no general rule that disintegrated creatures are dead, I rest my case. QED.
Well I didn't start as a pile of dust. I became one via a RAW spell.
So? That doesn't make it a playable option. Point to where it says, RAW, that you can continue to play as something you're turned into?
RAW, it is not a playable character option. Sounds to me like you prefer to abide by RAI...
I don't need to point to where RAW says that I cannot play it because nothing leads one to believe that you can't. If your character is polymorphed, its state changes but you can still play it.
Where does it say that, RAW? I'm using your own logic against you. You'll have to come up with a better response than that.
Edit: to clarify, where does it say RAW that you get to continue playing when polymorphed into a non-playable character?
Imagine a GM that takes control away from a druid player any time they wildshape, smh.
I mean, this is a game where we are being intentionally obtuse. I don't care about the game in any capacity. I care about what is written in the rulebook.
Feels like you may have lost the plot of your own joke post.
There was a plot?
So you're just giving up and not engaging with my point? That's super boring.
You can only beat a dead horse so much. Sorry mate. Hope the rest of the thread was entertaining at least.
OP could've just repeated "spells do what they say they do." It doesn't say you lose control of your character in the new form, all it says about the new form and how that affects the character is...well, that line(plus a few other things about the gear they were wearing and whatnot).
If it makes a character into a non playable character option, what rule is suddenly making that character playable? Nothing explicitly states that you can play as a character that is not a playable character option. You have a set list of RAW character options.
But nothing explicitly states that you stop playing as the character you were playing as if they were transformed, whether into a playable character option or not. There is no rule saying that that character is playable, but there is no rule saying you can't play as them. Again, spells do what they say they do.
You seem to not be understanding so let me break it down.
Playable - you can play as this
You have a list of playable character options in the character creation section of the phb, and additional ones provided by sourcebooks.
If it isn't a playable character option, it isn't playable. RAW. It isn't an option. It isn't playable.
RAW. Let me get that through your head.
"Rules as written"
Not RAI.
Not "rules as intended"
RAW.
Written.
No, you're not understanding. There is nothing saying, RAW, you can't play as a gnoll. The RAW is that you can't choose a gnoll as your race - but in the case of being polymorphed into one, you didn't choose that, you were changed into one. And the RAW for that is to assume that everything works the same as before, barring what is explicitly said in the spell for that transformation. And once again, nothing in the spell says you stop playing as a character who is transformed, regardless of if the transformation is "playable" or not. There is not even a "playable" tag for anything, anywhere, in RAW.
You could say that about anything. You want to move left? Point to where it says, RAW, that you can move left.
You can do anything unless the rules forbid it. And there's nothing forbidding continuing to play after your character is transformed any more than there is anything forbidding you to play while they're wearing a red shirt.
You being able to move left is covered clearly by the rules under movement speed.
You cannot "do anything unless the rules forbid it". That's not how RAW works.
Honestly, RAW just doesn't work. If you can't do anything unless specifically allowed, then you can't do anything because whatever you do will always be more specific than what the rules say. If you can't do anything unless forbidden, then it doesn't work because there's so much the rules didn't bother with, just leaving it to common sense. And then there's the fact that sometimes rules contradict. Sure there's a rule that the more specific rule overrides the general rule, but that's just yet another contradicting rule on the pile.
There's nothing specifically saying whether or not you can move left. There's nothing specifically saying whether or not you can move through walls. We all know you can do one of those but not the other, but it's not because of anything the book says.
Granted, the book sometimes gives creatures special abilities that let them move through walls, which would be an odd thing to do if it's something you can do anyway, but the game constantly goes into different levels of detail about things.
I think maybe you've missed the whole point of this thread, dawg. I read the first sentence and then dismissed the entirety of your comment because you clearly either don't understand or aren't engaging with the premise.