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.
SRD 5.2.1, p.164 · CC BY 4.0
Try this spell in RollQuest
Cast Speak with Dead on a real battle map. Pick a caster and a target and RollQuest plays the effect for everyone at the table. Free to start.
Make a caster for Speak with Dead in our free DnD character creator
The builder walks you through class, species, ability scores and spells, then you cast Speak with Dead straight from the sheet. RollQuest rolls the dice with your spellcasting modifier, posts the total in chat for the table and keeps count of your spell slots. Try the DnD character creator, for 5e and 5.5e.
