Does Speak with Dead compel an honest answer?

[Pielorinho]

Yeah, but our horrible deaths are like, WEEKS from now. How can I worry about that?

Daniel

 

[Lord Ben]

I had PC's use it once in my game. There was a huge (actually gargantuan) giant corpse they found in this rockslide. They had reason to believe that it had loot and the PC's figured it probably had a home nearby. They used speak with dead.

PC: Do you have any treasure?
NPC: Yes

PC: Where is your stuff?
NPC: Home

PC: Where is your home?
NPC: The cave

PC: Where is that?
NPC: By the river.

PC: How do you get there?
NPC: ...

PC: Do you know where you are?
NPC: No

They ran out of questions REAL fast by not phrasing them right.

 

[moritheil]

Ben, that is AWESOME.

I wanted to pop in to note that evil conspiracies regularly feed their own members misinformation, so as DM I would not give 100% accurate info, although the corpse would be honest.

I had PC's use it once in my game. There was a huge (actually gargantuan) giant corpse they found in this rockslide. They had reason to believe that it had loot and the PC's figured it probably had a home nearby. They used speak with dead.

PC: Do you have any treasure?
NPC: Yes

PC: Where is your stuff?
NPC: Home

PC: Where is your home?
NPC: The cave

PC: Where is that?
NPC: By the river.

PC: How do you get there?
NPC: ...

PC: Do you know where you are?
NPC: No

They ran out of questions REAL fast by not phrasing them right.

 

[Laurel]

I am in agreement with those that say if the corpse had the knowledge it answers truthfully, but the answers can be deceptive.

It answers truthfully unless damaged. It states directly in the text that if the corpse is damaged it can answer with partial truth. This seems to me to say that a whole corpse tells the truth. If not why single that out as a special case for partial corpses?

The will save is more about other forces stopping the information- if the corpse is of someone within similar alignment or devoted to the same god as the PC that higher being would be more willing to let the information pass onto you.

But just my thoughts