Spell question: Speak with Dead

[DemonAtheist]

i think allowing an intact skeleton to speak is fine, i would say no if it was missing its mandible or too much of its body (like having only a skull woulndt work). The corpse becomes animated...even tho it has no muscles, why cant it speak without vocal chords? Its magic after all.

I would however rule that fresher corpses give better information. An ages old skeleton might answer with "i think i recall it was somewhere over there, guarded by some magic user", while a fresh cadaver could say "the magic ring was in the castle of the lich"

 

[Raven Crowking]

i think allowing an intact skeleton to speak is fine, i would say no if it was missing its mandible or too much of its body (like having only a skull woulndt work). The corpse becomes animated...even tho it has no muscles, why cant it speak without vocal chords? Its magic after all.

I would hate for the point to get lost: the question is not, is it okay to allow speak with dead to make a skeleton speak vocally, but rather, is it okay to restrict a skeleton to speaking nonverbally when affected by sepak with dead?

I don't think anyone on this thread, DM-Rocco included, would claim that the DM could not allow the skeleton to speak vocally, if the DM so ruled from the spell description. The question was simply, if the DM ruled not, is this somehow wrong? I believe that the answer is clearly a resounding no.

Based upon the description of the spell, who determines how the spell works? The DM or the player casting the spell? Should the DM revise his ruling because the players started whining when he made it?

Anything else is irrelevent to the original question.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Interesting no one has brought up the biggest change from previous editions - namely, removing the rules regarding length of time that the body has been dead as a limitation on the spell. I had always assumed that the "intact corpse" bit was meant to imply that the body had to have flesh, and all the parts that would normally be required to make speech. That then creates a time limitation in terms of how long the body can have been dead - though not an absolute one.

My interpretation is the body must be "fleshy" and must have all the bits that a live person needs to talk - throat, tongue, jaw, lungs, etc. The arms could be missing, the legs even, but the majority of the torso would have to be there as well as an intact head.

 

[ThirdWizard]

There is some question as to what the word "corpse" means. To DM-Rocco, myself, and (apparently) WotC, the terms "corpse" implies that there is flesh on those bones. As for the "of any age," the discovery of a mummified "Ice Man" from prehistoric times in the Alps is a perfect example of how speak with dead could be used to speak with an intact body "of any age."

Whoa whoa whoa! I have to comment on that! You're saying that you can't cast Ressurection on a skeleton!

Morte would be rolling in his grave right now if he were buried. (Planescape: Torment). As would many Intelligent magical items, I suppose.

 

[uzagi_akimbo]

Indeed.

How does a skeleton talk without any talking apparatus? It's like asking it to dance with no legs.

Oh, sorry, but weren't we talking magic and magical effects in a fantasy world ? How do Shadows float btw ? Or Wraiths pass through walls - or how does a Ghost wail, if he is incorporeal and certainly missing any physcial vocal chords and thorax ? Because its a world that is kept ticking by slightly different rules, laws and universal field theories than the real one perhaps ?
If I can accept a divine being channeling power through its mortal servants to speak with corpses rather frequently, but flinch at the lack of a thorax to faciliate communication, something smells fishy....
The question IMHO ought to be - is the lack of a voicebox/thorax/throat too much an impedienment for a spell of the 3rd level to overcome or would it be unbalacing to the game if allowed ?

In all honesty - I don't see all that many problems with magic conjuring up a disembodied voice to speak up for the dead body about information the caster is arguably extracting from the cadaverous remains of the deceased ( strikes me - YMMV - as slightly more difficult then a mere "ghost sound" parlour trick to convey the information )....
So game-effect balancing looks allright from here.

As for the more difficult question of the rules for "Speak with Dead" making sense - taking the WotC email's text verbatim will lead to some massive adjucating problems (not that WotC ever really worried about those) , because if applied universally, a plethora of wounds will preclude the use of the spell.
E.g. having your throat cut (happens to guards all too often ), torn out (always a favourite way of dispatching by large predators - wolves, lions etc. ), smashed, getting decapitated (be it by bite, blow, blade or guillotine) or even simply having you jaws smashed by some wicked blows. Things like a smashed chest, lungs punctured by bundles of arrows etc etc etc ad nauseam might prove pretty much of an obstacle, too (no air pressure form those lungs) - from a medical/physical point of view. But D&D V3.5. is not - or rather "shouldn't be" - a pathology class, right ? Again YMMV.

D&D v3.5 does not support a "hit-location" and "type-of-wound" system, so any description of a wound is an arbitary, unsupported by the rules act by a GM (not that there is anything wrong with that ). But what precisely then makes a corpse a " mostly intact" one ? Personally, as long as the limbs are all there and accounted for, and the body has not been ground to dust or splinters, we have a candidate for "Speak with Dead". Victims of headhunters, things swallowed by dragons, dissolved by green slime, gelantinous cubes, puddings of any colour, taste or size etc need not apply. Or basically, if you can animate it, you can interrogate and cross-examine it.

Besides deep freezing someone (and except for some unlucky alpine tourists, that happens very rarely, mostly to polar explorers ), there is hardly any way to preserve a corpse "intact" (well, do the maggots and other decaying symptoms count - and what knowledge is lost in what way by that , if one wants to stick to high percentage "intact" corpses ?) over any amount of time. Mummies - it helps taking a good look at mummification processes here - are not really "intact" anymore, once they are ready for the afterlife. Ritual disembowelment, removal of the brain and several other procedures do not really keep a corpse complete.... Other real life mummified corpses like those created through exposure to a dry cold (e.g. Incan mummies, or the more or less famous ice age corpse "Oetzi") are usually pretty much damaged by the environment, including massive shrinking and distortion, abrasion from wind and particles... the works. Intact ?
As for "Moorleichen" corpses, preserved through immersion in oxygen-poor bogs (which keeps them from rotting - but at the same time tans them much like hide is tanned to become leather), the same phenomenon applies - and I sincerly wonder how (and why, in a fantasy campaign ) one would get access to one of those in the first place underneath several feet of peat and bog.

The main troubling question with "Speak with Dead" is - how much does it ruin the plot, if the players cast the spell on a key corpse and ask precisely the right questions ? And whether they do not deserve the information if they do everything right...
Keeping such knowledge from players on a technicality like "oh, no thorax, sorry guys, your spell fails" seems like a cheap cop-out to me. If it ruins your plot, be vague, distort things by the corpses prejudices, lack of information and point of view. As noted in the spell's description - be brief, cryptic and repetitive. Besides, the corpse does usually get a Will-save... which the GM is free to "fudge", in the interest of keeping the plot interesting and fun. YMMV.

As a short-cut solution - IMC, villains commonly take the head as a trophy, if they are afraid someone may spill the beans (and drop it off some miles away, if the PCs then find and recover it, more power to them ). Oftentimes though , that gesture alone is clue enough to help the players along and in a way, verify their suspicions.

 

[Gnarlo]

I don't think anyone on this thread, DM-Rocco included, would claim that the DM could not allow the skeleton to speak vocally, if the DM so ruled from the spell description. The question was simply, if the DM ruled not, is this somehow wrong? I believe that the answer is clearly a resounding no.

Based upon the description of the spell, who determines how the spell works? The DM or the player casting the spell? Should the DM revise his ruling because the players started whining when he made it?

Well, of course the DM can rule that the spell does or doesn't work a certain way under DM perogative; hell, if he wants to say that Speak with Dead allows someone to fly that's his right. But the... mmm... atmosphere... of the question (or perhaps the way you're phrasing it) strikes me as of the KODT "DM vs players" theory of gaming; especially the "because the players stated whining" phrase.

I would be afraid that a DM that stated "woops, sorry boys, the skeleton doesn't have a tounge or larynx, so your speak with dead doesn't work" would be the same DM that would screw me over on the wording of a Wish ("Give me enough gold to last the rest of my life" = seal me inside of a hollow gold cube and let me suffocate).

Unless the DM also makes all his skeletons and zombies take the blind fight feat or else fight with a penalty, since they probably don't have eyes, either.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Whoa whoa whoa! I have to comment on that! You're saying that you can't cast Ressurection on a skeleton!

Morte would be rolling in his grave right now if he were buried. (Planescape: Torment). As would many Intelligent magical items, I suppose.

Admittedly, I am looking at 3.0 right now, but the wording in that book for ressurection is "any deceased creature" whereas the wording in speak with dead is "a corpse" and animate dead specifies "the bones or bodies of dead creatures" (emphasis mine). Again, it appears that the distinction in WotC is clear.

Lest there be any doubt, resurrection goes on to specify that "The condition of the remains is not a factor. So long as some small portion of the creature's body exists, it can be resurrected, but the portion receiving the spell must have been part of the creature's body at the time of death."

Compare this to "...but the body must be mostly intact to bbe able to respond. A damaged corpse may be able to give partial answers or partially correct answers, but it must at least have a mouth in order to speak at all."

Clearly, the bodily conditions for resurrection and speak with dead are not even remotely similar, apart from both dealing with dead people. Equally obviously, this makes your comment specious at best.

You will also note that a partial corpse can give only partially correct, or partial answers. This seems to imply that the information given resides in the body rather than the spirit of the creature questioned. One would assume it resides in the creature's brain. If this is the case, then DM-Rocco's ruling is actually quite generous, as a skeleton has no brain at all!

Perhaps things are different in 3.5. Perhaps your book is different than mine.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh, sorry, but weren't we talking magic and magical effects in a fantasy world ? How do Shadows float btw ? Or Wraiths pass through walls - or how does a Ghost wail, if he is incorporeal and certainly missing any physcial vocal chords and thorax ? Because its a world that is kept ticking by slightly different rules, laws and universal field theories than the real one perhaps ?

If I can accept a divine being channeling power through its mortal servants to speak with corpses rather frequently, but flinch at the lack of a thorax to faciliate communication, something smells fishy....

Yet, you have a hard time accepting a DM ruling that, while they can, they do not? At least not through the use of this spell?

As a short-cut solution - IMC, villains commonly take the head as a trophy, if they are afraid someone may spill the beans (and drop it off some miles away, if the PCs then find and recover it, more power to them ). Oftentimes though , that gesture alone is clue enough to help the players along and in a way, verify their suspicions.

Why would those same gods flinch at the lack of a head? Hmmm? If they can provide a ghostly throat, surely they can provide the rest? Hell, why do you need the body at all by that reasoning?

As you said above, "it's a world that is kept ticking by slightly different rules, laws and universal field theories." All limitations on spellcasting are part of those slightly different rules. None of them has a hard-and-fast reason for being. They are either what the rules designers felt would have the right "feel" or would work based upon game requirements.

Yes, you should work to give your world versimilitude. But anyone arguing on the basis of how magic must be limited by real-world physics (such as the post you were responding to) or on what presumably near-omnipotent gods could do if they desired it (which your post seems to do) isn't actually going to resolve anything. If it works for your campaign, that's all that matters.




RC

 

[Piratecat]

Without muscles, tendons, ligaments...? How does it do that?

-Hyp.

[Doug Henning] It's maaagic!" [/Doug Henning]

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, of course the DM can rule that the spell does or doesn't work a certain way under DM perogative; hell, if he wants to say that Speak with Dead allows someone to fly that's his right. But the... mmm... atmosphere... of the question (or perhaps the way you're phrasing it) strikes me as of the KODT "DM vs players" theory of gaming; especially the "because the players stated whining" phrase.

For the record, I have been DMing since Christmas of 1979, so I've been at it for a while. I have gone both routes, the "when in doubt, say YES" route, and the "when in doubt, do what you think is best" route. In my experience, the second route has always been better for both players and DM in the long run. Right now, I have a game with eleven players in it, and there are more waiting in the wings, hoping for a chance to play if someone drops out. This is not DM vs. player. Rather, making a rules call and then having it immediately questioned is players vs. DM.

While disputes have arisen at my table many, many times, I have undoubtably been blessed with players (including quite young players) who realize that D&D is a co-operative game. We are all working to make it fun. Consequently, if a dispute arises, it is over very quickly ("Did you consider point A?" "Yes, sorry, but the ruling stands" or "No, good point, so this happens instead." "Okay." End of dispute.) and/or it is about something that relates to the characters in a life-or-death manner (which might last a little, but not a lot, longer). Perhaps it is just that I have been lucky with players lo these many years, or perhaps it is because they trust me.

I would be afraid that a DM that stated "woops, sorry boys, the skeleton doesn't have a tounge or larynx, so your speak with dead doesn't work" would be the same DM that would screw me over on the wording of a Wish ("Give me enough gold to last the rest of my life" = seal me inside of a hollow gold cube and let me suffocate).

"You may wish for greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. Such a wish gives you the opportunity to fulfill your request without fulfilling it completely. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.) For example, wishing for a staff of the magi might get you instantly transported to the presence of the staff's current owner. Wishing to be immortal could get you imprisoned in a hidden extradimensional space (as in imprisonment), where you could "live" indefinately."

If you expect to spend 5,000 XP to gain access to unlimited wealth, then you can bet that something'll go wrong. Say D&D isn't meant to emulate literature or folklore if you like, Midas, but the...atmosphere...of the thing is important to me. How would this wish be rewarded in folklore or mythology? What would granting the wish the way you want it do to the game? All the gold you'll ever need is a lot more than a single staff of the magi, potentially. Should the DM screw you over (as you say) or screw the entire game over?

I think you know what my response would be. Twenty-five years and running. Never had an empty spot at the table. Support DM-Rocco's ruling 100%.

Unless the DM also makes all his skeletons and zombies take the blind fight feat or else fight with a penalty, since they probably don't have eyes, either.

"Most undead have darkvision with a range of 60 feet."

"Pinpoints of red light smoulder in their eyesockets."

From these two lines in the Monster Manual, I would rule that skeletons have darkvision 60 feet. Usually, if a monster is blind, it is mentioned specifically as a special quality (see Grimlock).

From animate dead: "A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones (so purple worm skeletons are not allowed). If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones." Note again, the distinction between corpse and skeleton, consistent throughout the entire product.

Really, people, what is the problem here?

RC