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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Markn" data-source="post: 2231613" data-attributes="member: 21827">DM-Rocco, first let me say that I respect you for making a stand on your ruling and by no means am I trying to change your mind.  I just wanted to chime in with a few points of interest...I for one actually contact WotC on a fairly regular basis.  I find it more informational to call them than email them as speaking is a higher form of communication than email (and by higher form I mean that you get a better idea of the knowledge of the person on the other end and its a 1-800 number so why not...).  As for Speak with Dead I have called them three times and recieved three different answers.  One was yes it will work on a skeleton and one was no it won't and the third was DM's discretion.  Each time there were different levels of knowledge.  One could anwser right away with supporting information, one had to put me on hold to check different sections of the PHB and one I had to lead by the nose to check different sections of the book before he made a full ruling as he wasn't taking everything into account.  In my mind the answer should be DM's discretion from the information gleaned from WotC.In the adventure path in Dungeon there is a module called Test of the Smoking Eye.  In it, the PC's come across a cleric of Wee Jas that holds a severed head in his hand and is using speak with dead on it.  Now there are several things that you can extrapolate from this.  1 - The ONLY intact portion was the head and so it is the ONLY thing necessary 2 - Since the head is the only thing left, that means the vocal chords have been severed.  From this we can rule out the necessity of vocal chords.  That then begs the question, does one need a tongue or muscles to answer?  From an earlier poster we learn that a tongue is not necessary so then do we need muscle?  In my view, no (since we see instances that rule out physical necessities for living people to speak).  So, no tongue, no muscle, no vocal chords, hell take the body away even - That pretty much leaves a skeletal head.  That should then conclude that a mouth (meaning an upper and lower jaw) is all that is necessary.In case my position needs to be stated, I am for ruling that speak with dead works on a skeleton.  Besides, as a DM (which I am almost always finding myself in that position), if the answers could potentially ruin the story its not that difficult to 'change' the knowledge of the skeleton/zombie/corpse and thus be unable to answer certain key questions but still reward the PCs with some insight for their foresight in using this to advance the story.  Besides, I think the spell is pretty limited in scope that making it zombie only would likely cause my players to stop memorizing the spell.  And the reverse of allowing them to talk to a skeleton isn't a game breaker either so I am for the latter.  I guess in a nutshell, does it ruin the game if they can speak with a skeleton?  Not in my game anyways so I allow it.</blockquote>

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