So what, exactly, is "the semblance of life"?
Recently in our game we were jumped by an assassin, whom we promptly killed. We don't know much about the organization he works for, so Speak With Dead seemed like a great choice. It's a little tricky, though, as "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."
Obviously, it would recognize us as an enemy. But how? I argued that "semblance of life" means it's animated briefly, with all of its memories, personality, and most importantly, senses, in tact. So if it SAW us and RECOGNIZED us, it would know we were an enemy. However, since it retains no memory of what happens after it dies, we could gouge it's eyes out and just tell it that the ravens got to the body before we did.
The idea was to pose as his replacement. The assassin didn't check in, so they sent a second one, who since tracked down this one's corpse and is now trying to get a final report on what happened and the current state of the mission. I argued there could very well be a Deception or Persuade check involved in doing that.
My DM thinks: "I do not believe the corpse uses any senses to recognize the caster (such as sight or sound), but rather the casting of the spell itself links the caster to the corpse in a way that it either recognizes you or it doesn't.
This point is driven further by the next paragraph.
"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." If the corpse can't learn new information, then it can't take in information about it surrounding, such as a disguise, and process that information to determine if it's being deceived or not. You can't bullshit a corpse. Likewise, you can't persuade a corpse because, as before, it can't interpret new information and then change its output based on that interaction. It's this inability to learn new information which leads me to believe the corpse either recognizes the caster or it doesn't, based purely on the fact of who the caster is, and then it acts accordingly."
I dunno. I'm currently in the process of composing an argument against this position*, but I thought I'd put it up here for some extra input. From my perspective, this version of the spell is nigh useless, and kills a lot of the fun and imagination requried to get around the perfectly reasonable limitations already put in place by the text in the spell. Positing some infallable connection between caster and corpse seems extranious to me. Thoughts?
*Yes, I know, DM has final say, blah blah blah, but a little bit of out-of-game discussion between sessions can help everyone establish how the rules will work once the dice hit the table. If I can't convince him with a few salient points
I would have let you make a deception check for it. Seems like a clever idea to me.
Though the organization probably had passwords and things, it might have been a tough check, depending.
I think it's a clever trick, too, so it falls under the "Yes, and...." or "Yes, but...." school of answers.
The confusing element is that this is the only place in D&D where there's a distinction drawn between "soul" and "animating spirit" on an intelligent creature (though the line is a bit murky on undead). It seems that the metaphysics of life in D&D involve a soul (containing the creature's identity, memories, and so on, plus whatever unique property prevents them from being produced by mortals - this usually is some divine spark, but it doesn't have to be, because it still works in settings without gods), a body (or "meat suit"), and an "animating spirit" which is apparently the same idea as unguided neuron activity (i.e. why it can move and sense the world) but is not the same as neural plasticity (it can't learn) or advanced cognition or at least medial prefrontal cortex activity (it can't speculate).
You can't bullshit a corpse, true. But recognizing that you're being bullshitted (bullshat?) to involves recognizing that what's going on doesn't match up with what you expect. The thing is, there's no "expectation" in the corpse either - it can't speculate. It senses what's around it, and simply responds exactly to what it sees or hears. If you ask it a question, it can't decide it doesn't want to answer and spin you a tale instead: it hears the question and it responds with what it knows. If it senses a replacement assassin from its order (and your Deception was good enough to pass as said replacement), then it responds to its replacement - it can't entertain the speculation that it's talking to an impostor. It can, however, recognize it's not talking to a member of its order if your deception isn't good enough.
It seems like, logically, it all comes down to the quality of your lie. Which is what an ability check measures.
Oh, and as to the spell identifying you to the target? The only spells that set precedent for this reveal information about the caster to the target's soul, such as Raise Dead, so the subject learns if he's being revived by the Dark Prince of Deception even if he's disguised to the party as the High Priest of Light. It sends that information to the subject's soul so the identity in the soul can make a decision, possibly speculating on his reviver's motives for the resurrection. None of the italicized bits apply to Speak with Dead - you're basically pumping air back into the corpse and it pumps out words based on how the creature was when he died.
(And yes, scenes like the one on that link are kind of the "big guns" in this argument. 
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I'd say you can trick the corpse, but only based on what it knew up to (and including) the point of its death. You can't give it new information, even sensible new information, and have it use that when determining how it responds. That includes knowing about a second assassin being sent, even if that's normal procedure, since that's speculating about the future (from its point of view), even when that speculation is well-founded in past experience.
As a general guide, imagine that you're talking to the corpse while it was still alive and can only ask about things that have already happened. There's actually a lot you can get with the right phrasing. For example, you can't ask if the organization will send another assassin, since that would be speculating about the future, but you can ask if they had already planned to send another assassin if the first one failed, or if it was standard procedure to do so (definite facts from the past).
I would also, to play a small devil's advocate, like to point out that the spell isn't that bad under your DM's ruling, it just is not suited for interrogating enemies, who generally you have no problem killing in the first place.
I'd post more, and was planning on it, but I'm being called away to get other things done.
Firstly, I love this idea and would gladly entertain it in one of my games.
But that could be because I am fairly sure I understand the unwritten purpose of speak with dead. I'm not talking about the obvious (dead witness to a crime, victim who can talk about the murderer, etc) but the less-obvious. It is my opinion that speak with dead is a direct attempt to get around morality questions.
For example: it's almost always ok (in D&D, of course) to kill the baddies in the midst of combat. Unless you're being very strict with the definition of good vs evil, that's acceptable in most campaigns. However, it's rarely ok to torture baddies. Even if it's important. And reluctant informants can bring forth some of the loudest and most emotional arguing ever seen in a game (at least short of Smash Bros arguments, haha). It can grind a session to a halt, and in some cases kill an entire campaign.
Speak with dead gets around that. Just kill all the baddies like normal. Don't worry about leaving one alive to question later, because you can just cast a spell, get the answers you need, and continue with the adventure.
That is what I believe the spell was created to solve, and that (plus the awesome cleverness of it all) is why I wouldn't even hesitate to say "sure" to the above idea.
But then again, I'm also a DM who doesn't find much fun in withholding a bunch of information from my players all the time. Mystery does not automatically equal fun.
Tiarn wrote: