D&D General Odd Speak with Dead Question

[Umbran]

Today one of my players asked me, for future reference, if speak with dead could be used on a door that has a face, including a mouth, carved into it, on the grounds that a door is just dead wood, and speak with plants is already a thing. My thinking is "no," because I think the spell implies a functional (or once functional) mouth, but...I kinda wanna say yes, because I think it's an awesome idea. How would you rule?

I think I'm gonna say yes, but only if speak with plants is also active.

There are problems. The 2024 text says...

"You grant the semblance of life to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer questions you pose. The corpse must have a mouth, and this spell fails if the deceased creature was Undead when it died. The spell also fails if the corpse was the target of this spell within the past 10 days.

Until the spell ends, you can ask the corpse up to five questions. The corpse knows only what it knew in life, including the languages it knew.

...This spell doesn’t return the creature’s soul to its body, only its animating spirit."

Trees are not generally considered creatures, and trees don't know any languages in life, and don't generally have animating spirits. Treants and other plant-creatures, yes, but not normal trees.

Speak with Plants gives some limited sentience and animation to living plants, but doesn't work on dead materials. The door is not a valid target for the spell.

So, if you want me to be picky, no, I don't think this works. If there's divine magic involved, and the results are very specifically in service to the divine power behind the attempt... maybe.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Does the door the player plans to talk to

There is no specific door planned. The player is planning on using it on any door - presumably by using a woodcarvers kit to give the door a mouth.

I expect they are planning on asking things like “what is on the other side of this door?” or “how do I open this door?”

 

[gnarlygninja]

I'd say no because in my games spells do what they say on the tin and almost always nothing more.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There is no specific door planned. The player is planning on using it on any door - presumably by using a woodcarvers kit to give the door a mouth.

I expect they are planning on asking things like “what is on the other side of this door?” or “how do I open this door?”

If it's as mundane of a usage as that, then there's even less of a need to stop him from trying it. You can get practically the same information from a Perception check and not even spend a spell slot while doing it, LOL!

 

[Deset Gled]

Tangentially, I had never wondered about how that spell would affect how murderers went about things in D&D worlds. (I'm going to be thinking about this as I continue with the various cozy mysteries I watch).

If you're going to overlap a modern justice system with 5e's magic-as-tech pastiche, there are major issues: "Until the spell ends, you can ask the corpse up to five questions. The corpse knows only what it knew in life, including the languages it knew. Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive, and the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy."

You couldn't convict anyone "beyond reasonable doubt" based on testimony from a corpse. Whether such testimony would be admissible as evidence at all is questionable (prejudicial, hearsay, etc.), and would probably have lots of stipulations on when it could or couldn't be used. I'd guess it would be considered about as reliable inside a D&D world as lie detector tests are in the real world.

As to the OP, I would give a flat "no".

 

[Voadam]

Today one of my players asked me, for future reference, if speak with dead could be used on a door that has a face, including a mouth, carved into it, on the grounds that a door is just dead wood, and speak with plants is already a thing. My thinking is "no," because I think the spell implies a functional (or once functional) mouth, but...I kinda wanna say yes, because I think it's an awesome idea. How would you rule?

I think I'm gonna say yes, but only if speak with plants is also active.

I generally go with RAW for spells and their limitations unless I am doing something like thematic reskinning (turning spells into high tech effects) or if I think the RAW would be problematic for the game. Generally if they can get interesting uses out of something as written that is cool. So if I am going with '24 5e version here is the text:

Speak with Dead
Level 3 Necromancy (Bard, Cleric, Wizard)
Casting Time: Action
Range: 10 feet
Components: V, S, M (burning incense)
Duration: 10 minutes
You grant the semblance of life to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer questions you pose. The corpse must have a mouth, and this spell fails if the deceased creature was Undead when it died. The spell also fails if the corpse was the target of this spell within the past 10 days.
Until the spell ends, you can ask the corpse up to five questions. The corpse knows only what it knew in life, including the languages it knew. Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive, and the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are antagonistic toward it or it recognizes you as an enemy. This spell doesn’t return the creature’s soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can’t learn new information, doesn’t comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can’t speculate about future events.

So the issues I see with doing so RAW are:

Is the door a corpse? A stone door is not a corpse, a wood one takes a little more analysis. A dead plant is generally not considered a corpse, but I would probably allow it for a person one like a Treant and might allow it for a normal plant as the plant's dead body.

If a plant can be a corpse, would the wooden component planks of the door count as a corpse? They are more like a slice from a body than a whole dead body. Would you allow a speak with dead on an unattached skull without a body?

The corpse must have a mouth. Here I might go with sure it could have a carved mouth, possibly even a mouth-like image from the knots in the boards might be close enough if looking at it you would go "oh, a mouth!" Carving one in or drawing a face with a mouth to get it to talk is very evocative and cool IMO. This then brings up a gruesome follow up, if a corpse has a destroyed mouth, can you carve one into its chest?

Languages it knew is going to be an issue. Speak with plants would probably need to be active for asking it questions and understanding its answer.

Even if you got past all these it would only know stuff from when it was alive.

 

[pemerton]

Does the door the player plans to talk to have something interesting and compelling to say? Will it drive the party's actions forward in the campaign? Will it be fun or funny? If it is any of those things... then I say yes absolutely.

<snip>

The players always try to acquire information because it will inform their decisions and their actions going forward and will take the party off into interesting avenues and directions that they might not otherwise have gone if they hadn't acquired it. So why would any DM want to prohibit that? What would be the point? Just because the "game mechanic" as written wouldn't allow for that? How dumb. That's when "game mechanics" can go stuff themselves in my opinion.

If there is information that can be acquired by the players and that information can be useful to the players and the players think up interesting or cool ways to attain said information... then I always say go for it.

This does give rise to the question, why does the game have those rules at all?

 

[pemerton]

I think the idea of magically talking to a door with a face - most often I think this would be on a handle/knocker? - is kinda cool.

Roughly carving a face into a door so that it can talk, on the other hand, seems less cool.

And either way, I don't think Speak with Dead is the right spell. It's some version of Object Reading/Speak with Objects/Speak with Door.

 

[Clint_L]

There is no specific door planned. The player is planning on using it on any door - presumably by using a woodcarvers kit to give the door a mouth.

I expect they are planning on asking things like “what is on the other side of this door?” or “how do I open this door?”

To clarify, I don't think the player had any specific plans - I think they were just looking at their spell list and spitballing. We had had a game in which a door had a large, demonic visage carved on it, so perhaps that's what inspired the line of thought. They never brought up carving a face into a door themselves - that hadn't occured to me, either, until someone mentioned it in this thread.

Their basic line of thought was "door is dead wood," and they went from there. They're also a fairly new player.

As a kind of hypothetical question, does a plant count as a creature when speak with plants is active?

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

There is no specific door planned. The player is planning on using it on any door - presumably by using a woodcarvers kit to give the door a mouth.

I expect they are planning on asking things like “what is on the other side of this door?” or “how do I open this door?”

If he’s thinking of using it “in the future” why not just allow his character to also be thinking about that usage and allow him to create his own spell. Given a reasonable amount of time and research (and gaining another level to learn a new spell), he can create his own unique spell similar to “speak with objects.”