Spell question: Speak with Dead

[DM-Rocco]

I had a player try and cast speak with dead last night and I told him I was going to limit him to yes or no questions because it was a skeleton and didn't have a mouth. The spell says you need a way of communicating with the creature and they must have a mouth, which a skeleton doesn't have, just a jaw and some teeth.

He decided not to cast it since he couldn't ask full questions. We stopped shortly thereafter so I may back up a bit depending on the nature of this discussion. What is the correct usage of this spell? Can you engage in a full verbal conversation with a skeleton without a mouth? Shouldn't the dead creature have vocal cords inorder to verbally communicate with you?

 

[dcollins]

I rule "yes, the skeleton can speak" on this issue. The spell does say "you can cast this spell on a corpse that has been deceased for any amount of time". If corpses reduced to a skeleton could by their nature not speak, one would think that would present a hard limitation on the spell. A distinction between "having a jaw and teeth" versus "having a mouth" doesn't appear in the spell.

There's lots of examples of skelatal-appearing dead speaking in fantasy and gaming. In D&D, somehow spectres, ghosts, liches, and whatnot can speak even though they don't have physical muscles to do so. This is a Necromantic spell, after all.

 

[Liquidsabre]

From the readin of the spell, you ruled exactly right. The skeleton can shake it's head yes or no, rattle some bones, clatter some teeth, and that's about it. Yes or no answers are about the best the poor ol' skelie can do without a mouth or any substance to the body capable of producing sound.

 

[Scion]

yeah, the lack of the tools to speak would disallow it to speak. It does talk about 'mostly intact' and really a skeleton does not fall under that description.

yes/no sounds perfectly reasonable, further communication would be very difficult.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Ah, 1:1, got to love it. We wasted about ten minutes debating this issue last night. I think I am right since it requires a mouth, which is flesh, which it doesn't have. Yes, lich can talk, but some of that is more powerful magic at work, perhaps part of the process for becoming a lich has magic mouth as part of the spell process, but whatever, that is not the same in my book.

Perhaps hypersmurf will weigh in, sigh.

 

[Menexenus]

I think limiting the player to Yes/No questions is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Gunslinger]

As written it seems that you ruled correctly. However I don't think it would be unreasonable to allow a spell which would allow the caster to speak with the souls of the departed in the same manner as Speak with Dead (albeit, in a non-necromantic form). The idea of prying information from the dead mind of a corpse just doesn't seem like something that most "good" aligned clerics would be very comfortable with, as you are actually raising the corpse back into un-life to a certain extent.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Oh, that reminds me, if you bring up the fact that it might be evil, the cleric is a good cleric of pelor and it may be against his nature to do so. That aside though, that doesn't bother me that he wants to talk to dead, the spell just reads like I said unless someone else can prove me wrong.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The skeleton can shake it's head yes or no...

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

-Hyp.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Good point, figured you jump in some time soon, good day.

Although, I can see animating a dead body to move, like a skeleton, but with out any type of throat or vocal cords, I don't know how it could talk. If it said the ghost of the dead came back and talked to you I would say sure, but how many time have you seen a skeleton, in a movie or a book, start talking, with the exception of liches and demi liches.