Speak with Dead also doesn't work if it was cast on the corpse within the last 10 days, so you could have the assassin cast the spell themselves to buy some time. This gives the players some information about the resources the assassin had access to, and it can also act as a "backup" if the players get stuck: It's been 10 days, let's try Speak with Dead now.
Replying to a two-year-old comment that this doesn't *just* have to be the assassin covering their tracks, but a lead in itself; it could be a clue that the victim knew something the assassin wanted to learn, and could only get an honest answer via Speak With Dead.
@@Stuurminator It's an interesting idea but does Speak With Dead actually guarantee honesty? Looking it up " 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. " So it could very well say "screw you you killed me" it would be very dramatic though
@@cruye9633 For some reason I thought the corpse only gave truthful answers, albeit brief and cryptic ones. I think my brain just read "the soul doesn't return, just an animating spirit" and immediately assumed the body acted like a computer with no moral judgments.
I ended up doing just this thing with a murder mystery at a secluded roadside inn I ran. I had a situation all set up for the inevitable use of Speak with Dead and how the victim speculated on the unseen killer struck him from behind while he was getting ready for a lady caller from the kitchens coming to visit after her shift. Then the player of the cleric completely forgot they even had the spell and so it never came up. They ended up taking a much longer amount of time solving it the "old fashioned" way. /facepalm
I remember writing a 300-word list of tips on how to come up with murder mystery clues in a DnD facebook group i was in (in response to a request for help planning such a scenario) and managed to get exactly 1 like while "advice" like 'mysteries are impossible because of speak with dead' and 'just make stuff up and then make the killer whoever they suspect' got dozens of likes and lots of sage nodding about how pointless mysteries are. I left that group the next day.
A friend and fellow DM once described divination spells as player's gift to the DM to reveal some of the hard work they've done behind the scenes. Love the take on Speak with Dead and outlining some of the possibilities!
As a GM currently running a murder mystery, I find this very useful. When planning, I did a quick check of my players sheets for divination spells specifically, and designed what information they were likely to get if they used them.
Yet, again, great stuff! The concern with Speak with Dead spells never really made sense to me, because the victims don't have to know everything. And if they do, there could be valid reasons why they don't want to share it with these random people from beyond the grave!
I love the idea that you need the skull of the corpse in order to have it speak when you cast on it. The local gangs know this, and when they kill, they smash up the skull. (would mending work?) The authorities have declared animate dead to be legal in order to restore a smashed up skull for speak with dead. (They animate it, then stab it in the torso to re-kill it).😮
Very helpful explanation. I never liked the idea of disallowing something like Speak with Dead in my games, but I could never articulate why exactly. This video frames it in a very helpful way, thanks!
Ace Attorney is brilliant for this, cause spirit mediums are a big thing in there. Especially in Spirit of Justice, where a key piece of evidence you have are the last moments of the victim. Everything from "I was in a room with a guard and my son, so I'll say it was the guard who killed me" to "I can't distinguish faces, but the guy who killed me was wearing that person's clothes, so it has to be him!"
You don’t have to necessarily give the players what they thought they would get, but give them something (if the players ask bad questions, the dead can still volunteer something unrelated). Sly Flourish’s approach with “secrets and clues” might be great to help come up with something on the spot if the players catch you by surprise with this spell.
The murderer casts "contingency" to turn the corpse into an undead when "speak with dead" is cast upon it. If the undead nerds orders.... then who was controlling it? They'd have to be close!
In one campaign I had a player to cast Speak with Dead after each fight. It became their routine to kill enemies first, then ask the questions later. :) It wasn't really a problem. I was expecting it and prepared for it.
A few thoughts on other ways to play with the availability of Speak With Dead. First, you kind of tangentially touched on this but if Speak With Dead would break your murder mystery it's easy enough to just have your assassin take and destroy the body (or just the head), since Speak With Dead requires an intact corpse. While you are blocking the PC from using their ability to solve this mystery, the fact that it's not arbitrary or irrational should make it feel less like a screwjob and more just like dealing with a smart adversary. Or perhaps most houses are routinely warded against scrying, to protect personal privacy, and that sharply limits what information you can get from divinations. There's also a fantasy murder mystery I read, called Shatterglass, where part of the conflict is that local religion required that anyplace where a human had died be mystically purified, to remove the taint of death. The problem is, this also prevented any use of magical forensics to divine useful information or track the killer. So perhaps Speak With Dead, as a necromancy-adjacent spell, is illegal in certain parts of the world. And that gives the PCs a choice between using this powerful spell and getting answers at the cost of breaking the law, or doing things the hard way. You could even have the PCs find a way to use Speak With Dead without getting caught, and find out the name of the murderer... except that now they can't explain *how* they know who the murderer is, so they've got to find other evidence to prove he did it.
The first part makes a lot of sense depending on who the killer is. The PCs aren't the only people in the world who can cast Speak with Dead. Other people would know that the spell exists. So someone like a professional assassin would never make the rookie mistake of leaving a corpse that can be spoken with. Going off the 5e description of the spell it's even easier to counter than what you said - just cutting the tongue will make the victim unable to respond to a would-be diviner.
Nice ideas. It helps to know really well what the players can do (traits/tools/spells..). That bit around 3:00, about the GM nerfing or blocking player's abilities in order to enforce his notion of how things should play out, could inspire a whole new video (maybe a series of videos about railroad? ;) )
Now I'm imagining a whole side-story that starts because one dead-speaking NPC decides to settle some grudges by revealing a lot of other skeletons in the cupboard. Like some major career-ending whistleblowing - but you're dead, so why not?
Hi Justin! I'm a very longtime fan of your blog and am thrilled you've made the jump to youtube and twitch. The trouble with the kinds of 'magical arms race' or almost magitech you describe is that it deviates strongly from what I think of as Fantasy and charges straight into the realm of Fantastic science, where magic substitutes for technology. Magic is very unsatisfying to me when used in that way as all mystery surrounding it is lost. My favourite method of dealing with the problem you describe in D&D is through world-building. The magical weave is not evenly spread and magic is geomantic. The land is a patchwork of auras of different strengths (and some are even strong in only one school of magic). Humans and other mainly civilised folk choose to build settlements in places with low magical auras, where cantrips are the only spells that reliably function. This is because monsters tend to avoid these areas as many of their abilities require a stronger weave and they are disadvantaged by being in such a place. Once this kind of element is introduced, it makes mysteries possible again because magic cannot be used to solve everything, as towns are now places where magic won't work. I also often have divination spells possible only at certain locations (think of the ancient oracle sites) and journeying to them is an adventure in itself. An alternative is to make it so that information obtained via magic cannot be used to prove guilt. So the PCs might be able to discover who the killer is using it, but they will not be able to apprehend him or her using evidence and still must do the legwork required to get the truth.
I've done that - magic only functions in the Borderlands & the Realm of Chaos, not in the Realm of Law. But you can just run a low level setting, where only great and unusual heroes & villains can use level 3 magics like Fireball, Revivify, Sending, & Speak with Dead. Which spell do you think is the most disruptive to a medieval-esque setting?
@@simontmn it’s not particular spells, it’s when everyone in every town is ready for invisible thieves or people who can read minds etc. Campaigns where the NPCs are very magic aware are necessary to curb player abuses of magic but they end up feeling like a cartoon version of fantasy. It’s a magical arms race; every shop keeper has an invisible stalker and the gates are arcane locked etc. Once magic becomes technology it doesn’t feel like magic anymore. If I want that kind of game I’d play science fiction. So I use world building to get around it so the world feels right again.
Opinions that Divination and Necromancy spells make mysteries in D&D impossible are for amateurs. Professionals know that they're making it more fun. Enter the Illusion and Transmutation schools, various blocks, traps and false leads. Fooling enemies and not being fooled by them make excellent espionage game.
I was amused by the Pathfinder novel Hellknight and how it chose to full on just have the characters not bother with a Speak With Dead option because it's 'basically useless for finding information anyway'.
A good murder mystery novel for Pathfinder which does use speak with dead is Death’s Heretic. To not spoil too much, the killer does what Justin reasons is a good idea - they attack from a distance using a summoned creature.
@@sarainy9775 It's also mentioned that Speak With Dead's results can be ambiguous and cryptic, and only a small handful of questions can actually be asked (2-10 in Pathfinder 1st Edition). This means that you can be sparing with the clues and leads you give.
Another option is that the players find the killer, but the killer isn't the mystery, it's just the first clue. Maybe the killer was mind-controlled, or possessed. Maybe the killer was just a hired thug/assassin, but what you really need to figure out is who hired them and why. I think there was a Sherlock Holmes case where the killer of one victim, was the next victim. Could be an interesting adventure.
I have run a few murder mystery games in D&D, it can work very well. The one spell I cannot seem to work around is Zone of Truth. I just end up telling players not to take it because it can break the encounter. Most of the mysteries I run are in one singular location and the players could just march everyone through the zone and ask if they did the murder. I just do not have a work around for that.
A couple thoughts on this one - 1. Zone of Truth allows a save - it's not a guarantee 2. There are likely social and legal ramifications to just "marching everyone through the zone" - think about folks who aren't responsible for the given murder, but who ARE hiding something (which is likely everyone). Folks may be justifiably worried about taking a magic truth serum, whether guilty of this particular crime or not. 3. Looking at the description for 5e - An affected creature is aware of the spell and can thus avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a lie. Such a creature can be evasive in its answers as long as it remains within the boundaries of the truth.
@@Jandor1 I definitely understand your points. Oh the killer passed the save always seems like a boring solution. I could understand that not everyone would want to go through a zone of truth but I then also see a large part of the game being the players trying to brow beat the suspects into doing that. The players optimizing the fun out of the game.
What if the person under Zone of Truth insists on also having the right to counter-question the PCs in front of witnesses, and asks them some rather uncomfortable questions? Or one NPC asking another stuff like "did you cheat on me" and a whole Jerry Springer side-drama ensuing?
I actually discovered The Alexandrian blog while looking for that sort of advice. In my case, the "problem spell" wasn't Speak with Dead but Zone of Truth. How comes fantasy police departments don't have resident clerics capable of casting that on any suspect?
Great content as always and this goes some way to reducing the seeming omnipotence of magic when it comes to mystery. I'm interested to know what you think about the logical conclusion of investigation and detection, ie trial. What kind of things do you think can be employed to get around the whole detect lie conundrum when it comes to determining guilt in a court setting?
Detecting lies in not the same as detecting truth. Zone of Truth specifically says that people are aware that they're under the effects of the spell, and can thus avoid deliberate lies by being evasive, telling half-truths, speaking in ways that are misleading or have false implications, or even lie by omission. Also, Zone of Truth doesn't help with gleaning information from someone who doesn't know it, someone who is mistaken, or someone who only has partial information. Also, in the real world people lie for all sorts of reasons. Catching someone in a lie isn't automatic proof of guilt. You don't necessarily know what they're lying *about*, either.
Divination spells are only as powerful as the GM allows them to be, and unfortunately many GMs just aren't equipped to handle them. I think that the DMG should have a section for how to integrate divinations into a campaign setting, along with other troublesome magic.
I have had a similar problem with a paladin's detect evil ability in Curse of Strahd. At first I thought a paladin would be a cool character to have in this campaign, but I have been having a hard time dealing with this ability. Either I've given away in an unsatisfying way that a character is evil, or I've come up with reasons why the ability isn't working 100% (too much background evil to really tell the difference etc). Neither of which is ideal. I've tried to do the "give a clue but not the whole truth" as you describe here for speak with dead....but this has also frustrated the paladin's player. Do you have any advice here on how to allow the user to use this ability in a satisfying way without giving up the plots of all the evil characters in CoS
I think your "its impossible" (a murder mystery in DND? its impossible) is very very catchy and should be a channel trademark. P.S: On the topic of the spell, I just try as best as I can to reward the player but also make it clear that the spirit absolutely can't have a "normal conversation", since its perception of things has been severely altered from passing. Cryptic, confusing, aloof, scared. That makes the players think carefully about what to ask and how to frame these questions. And that in of itself can be quite fun to roleplay.
Speak with Dead also doesn't work if it was cast on the corpse within the last 10 days, so you could have the assassin cast the spell themselves to buy some time. This gives the players some information about the resources the assassin had access to, and it can also act as a "backup" if the players get stuck: It's been 10 days, let's try Speak with Dead now.
Replying to a two-year-old comment that this doesn't *just* have to be the assassin covering their tracks, but a lead in itself; it could be a clue that the victim knew something the assassin wanted to learn, and could only get an honest answer via Speak With Dead.
@@Stuurminator It's an interesting idea but does Speak With Dead actually guarantee honesty? Looking it up
" 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. "
So it could very well say "screw you you killed me"
it would be very dramatic though
@@cruye9633 For some reason I thought the corpse only gave truthful answers, albeit brief and cryptic ones. I think my brain just read "the soul doesn't return, just an animating spirit" and immediately assumed the body acted like a computer with no moral judgments.
@@StuurminatorI always thought that it's activating the brain, but does not bother the soul. Whatever that means in your setting
I ended up doing just this thing with a murder mystery at a secluded roadside inn I ran. I had a situation all set up for the inevitable use of Speak with Dead and how the victim speculated on the unseen killer struck him from behind while he was getting ready for a lady caller from the kitchens coming to visit after her shift.
Then the player of the cleric completely forgot they even had the spell and so it never came up. They ended up taking a much longer amount of time solving it the "old fashioned" way.
/facepalm
Don’t worry about it. In designing around such divination you created a richer and more robust scenario, regardless of how it played out at the table.
I remember writing a 300-word list of tips on how to come up with murder mystery clues in a DnD facebook group i was in (in response to a request for help planning such a scenario) and managed to get exactly 1 like while "advice" like 'mysteries are impossible because of speak with dead' and 'just make stuff up and then make the killer whoever they suspect' got dozens of likes and lots of sage nodding about how pointless mysteries are.
I left that group the next day.
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
A friend and fellow DM once described divination spells as player's gift to the DM to reveal some of the hard work they've done behind the scenes. Love the take on Speak with Dead and outlining some of the possibilities!
As a GM currently running a murder mystery, I find this very useful.
When planning, I did a quick check of my players sheets for divination spells specifically, and designed what information they were likely to get if they used them.
I love that this advice is so widely applicable to all of RPGs in general, not just mysteries. You explained it really well, too. Thank you for that.
The "sci-fi with cameras" analogy was very good!
What is a dwarf-etched ruby and why do I all of a sudden want them in my game?
Yet, again, great stuff! The concern with Speak with Dead spells never really made sense to me, because the victims don't have to know everything. And if they do, there could be valid reasons why they don't want to share it with these random people from beyond the grave!
So I had this great interaction between speak with dead and Feign Death. Left the players very confused for a while
I love the idea that you need the skull of the corpse in order to have it speak when you cast on it.
The local gangs know this, and when they kill, they smash up the skull.
(would mending work?)
The authorities have declared animate dead to be legal in order to restore a smashed up skull for speak with dead.
(They animate it, then stab it in the torso to re-kill it).😮
Very helpful explanation. I never liked the idea of disallowing something like Speak with Dead in my games, but I could never articulate why exactly. This video frames it in a very helpful way, thanks!
Ace Attorney is brilliant for this, cause spirit mediums are a big thing in there. Especially in Spirit of Justice, where a key piece of evidence you have are the last moments of the victim. Everything from "I was in a room with a guard and my son, so I'll say it was the guard who killed me" to "I can't distinguish faces, but the guy who killed me was wearing that person's clothes, so it has to be him!"
You don’t have to necessarily give the players what they thought they would get, but give them something (if the players ask bad questions, the dead can still volunteer something unrelated). Sly Flourish’s approach with “secrets and clues” might be great to help come up with something on the spot if the players catch you by surprise with this spell.
Speak With Dead is one of my favourite spells in the game. I really appreciate a video on it!
That one dislike is from that GM in 1858 who's flummoxed by security cameras.
Your videos are actually useful to experienced GMs, unlike many other videos which are just made for enthusiastic beginners.
I used to simply ban Speak with dead, but it always felt wrong. Thank you! I’m going to make it more interesting for my players.
Im magically alerted already.
These are always chock-full of great ideas and advice. Thanks, Mr. Alexander!
Great ideas there. The specific examples are really helpful to illustrate what you are talking about.
The murderer casts "contingency" to turn the corpse into an undead when "speak with dead" is cast upon it.
If the undead nerds orders.... then who was controlling it? They'd have to be close!
In one campaign I had a player to cast Speak with Dead after each fight. It became their routine to kill enemies first, then ask the questions later. :)
It wasn't really a problem. I was expecting it and prepared for it.
A few thoughts on other ways to play with the availability of Speak With Dead.
First, you kind of tangentially touched on this but if Speak With Dead would break your murder mystery it's easy enough to just have your assassin take and destroy the body (or just the head), since Speak With Dead requires an intact corpse. While you are blocking the PC from using their ability to solve this mystery, the fact that it's not arbitrary or irrational should make it feel less like a screwjob and more just like dealing with a smart adversary. Or perhaps most houses are routinely warded against scrying, to protect personal privacy, and that sharply limits what information you can get from divinations.
There's also a fantasy murder mystery I read, called Shatterglass, where part of the conflict is that local religion required that anyplace where a human had died be mystically purified, to remove the taint of death. The problem is, this also prevented any use of magical forensics to divine useful information or track the killer. So perhaps Speak With Dead, as a necromancy-adjacent spell, is illegal in certain parts of the world. And that gives the PCs a choice between using this powerful spell and getting answers at the cost of breaking the law, or doing things the hard way. You could even have the PCs find a way to use Speak With Dead without getting caught, and find out the name of the murderer... except that now they can't explain *how* they know who the murderer is, so they've got to find other evidence to prove he did it.
The first part makes a lot of sense depending on who the killer is. The PCs aren't the only people in the world who can cast Speak with Dead. Other people would know that the spell exists. So someone like a professional assassin would never make the rookie mistake of leaving a corpse that can be spoken with. Going off the 5e description of the spell it's even easier to counter than what you said - just cutting the tongue will make the victim unable to respond to a would-be diviner.
Nice ideas. It helps to know really well what the players can do (traits/tools/spells..). That bit around 3:00, about the GM nerfing or blocking player's abilities in order to enforce his notion of how things should play out, could inspire a whole new video (maybe a series of videos about railroad? ;) )
That call to action...completely money. If you've never been a salesman, and a successful one, I'd be surprised.
Great video! Eagerly anticipating more :)
Now I'm imagining a whole side-story that starts because one dead-speaking NPC decides to settle some grudges by revealing a lot of other skeletons in the cupboard. Like some major career-ending whistleblowing - but you're dead, so why not?
Been reading for a while. Great and indepth.
Hi Justin! I'm a very longtime fan of your blog and am thrilled you've made the jump to youtube and twitch. The trouble with the kinds of 'magical arms race' or almost magitech you describe is that it deviates strongly from what I think of as Fantasy and charges straight into the realm of Fantastic science, where magic substitutes for technology. Magic is very unsatisfying to me when used in that way as all mystery surrounding it is lost. My favourite method of dealing with the problem you describe in D&D is through world-building. The magical weave is not evenly spread and magic is geomantic. The land is a patchwork of auras of different strengths (and some are even strong in only one school of magic). Humans and other mainly civilised folk choose to build settlements in places with low magical auras, where cantrips are the only spells that reliably function. This is because monsters tend to avoid these areas as many of their abilities require a stronger weave and they are disadvantaged by being in such a place. Once this kind of element is introduced, it makes mysteries possible again because magic cannot be used to solve everything, as towns are now places where magic won't work. I also often have divination spells possible only at certain locations (think of the ancient oracle sites) and journeying to them is an adventure in itself. An alternative is to make it so that information obtained via magic cannot be used to prove guilt. So the PCs might be able to discover who the killer is using it, but they will not be able to apprehend him or her using evidence and still must do the legwork required to get the truth.
I've done that - magic only functions in the Borderlands & the Realm of Chaos, not in the Realm of Law. But you can just run a low level setting, where only great and unusual heroes & villains can use level 3 magics like Fireball, Revivify, Sending, & Speak with Dead. Which spell do you think is the most disruptive to a medieval-esque setting?
@@simontmn it’s not particular spells, it’s when everyone in every town is ready for invisible thieves or people who can read minds etc. Campaigns where the NPCs are very magic aware are necessary to curb player abuses of magic but they end up feeling like a cartoon version of fantasy. It’s a magical arms race; every shop keeper has an invisible stalker and the gates are arcane locked etc. Once magic becomes technology it doesn’t feel like magic anymore. If I want that kind of game I’d play science fiction. So I use world building to get around it so the world feels right again.
Opinions that Divination and Necromancy spells make mysteries in D&D impossible are for amateurs. Professionals know that they're making it more fun. Enter the Illusion and Transmutation schools, various blocks, traps and false leads. Fooling enemies and not being fooled by them make excellent espionage game.
I was amused by the Pathfinder novel Hellknight and how it chose to full on just have the characters not bother with a Speak With Dead option because it's 'basically useless for finding information anyway'.
A good murder mystery novel for Pathfinder which does use speak with dead is Death’s Heretic.
To not spoil too much, the killer does what Justin reasons is a good idea - they attack from a distance using a summoned creature.
@@sarainy9775 It's also mentioned that Speak With Dead's results can be ambiguous and cryptic, and only a small handful of questions can actually be asked (2-10 in Pathfinder 1st Edition). This means that you can be sparing with the clues and leads you give.
Excellent advice as always.
Thanks for the English subtitles, it makes the video easier to watch by translating it into Spanish. (Google Translate)
Another option is that the players find the killer, but the killer isn't the mystery, it's just the first clue. Maybe the killer was mind-controlled, or possessed. Maybe the killer was just a hired thug/assassin, but what you really need to figure out is who hired them and why. I think there was a Sherlock Holmes case where the killer of one victim, was the next victim. Could be an interesting adventure.
great advice, commenting and liking every your video, sir!
I have run a few murder mystery games in D&D, it can work very well. The one spell I cannot seem to work around is Zone of Truth. I just end up telling players not to take it because it can break the encounter. Most of the mysteries I run are in one singular location and the players could just march everyone through the zone and ask if they did the murder. I just do not have a work around for that.
A couple thoughts on this one -
1. Zone of Truth allows a save - it's not a guarantee
2. There are likely social and legal ramifications to just "marching everyone through the zone" - think about folks who aren't responsible for the given murder, but who ARE hiding something (which is likely everyone). Folks may be justifiably worried about taking a magic truth serum, whether guilty of this particular crime or not.
3. Looking at the description for 5e - An affected creature is aware of the spell and can thus avoid answering questions to which it would normally respond with a lie. Such a creature can be evasive in its answers as long as it remains within the boundaries of the truth.
@@Jandor1 I definitely understand your points. Oh the killer passed the save always seems like a boring solution. I could understand that not everyone would want to go through a zone of truth but I then also see a large part of the game being the players trying to brow beat the suspects into doing that. The players optimizing the fun out of the game.
@@worthasandwich good points - and as with all things, the actual play is so table specific. Whatever works for your group is the way to go!
What if the person under Zone of Truth insists on also having the right to counter-question the PCs in front of witnesses, and asks them some rather uncomfortable questions? Or one NPC asking another stuff like "did you cheat on me" and a whole Jerry Springer side-drama ensuing?
Your "Subscribe" divination spell made me laugh. It's a good thing I cast it a long time ago!
...oh no, how long is the duration of the spell?
Until dispelled, at least in this edition.
I actually discovered The Alexandrian blog while looking for that sort of advice. In my case, the "problem spell" wasn't Speak with Dead but Zone of Truth. How comes fantasy police departments don't have resident clerics capable of casting that on any suspect?
Great video!
Great content as always and this goes some way to reducing the seeming omnipotence of magic when it comes to mystery. I'm interested to know what you think about the logical conclusion of investigation and detection, ie trial. What kind of things do you think can be employed to get around the whole detect lie conundrum when it comes to determining guilt in a court setting?
Detecting lies in not the same as detecting truth. Zone of Truth specifically says that people are aware that they're under the effects of the spell, and can thus avoid deliberate lies by being evasive, telling half-truths, speaking in ways that are misleading or have false implications, or even lie by omission. Also, Zone of Truth doesn't help with gleaning information from someone who doesn't know it, someone who is mistaken, or someone who only has partial information.
Also, in the real world people lie for all sorts of reasons. Catching someone in a lie isn't automatic proof of guilt. You don't necessarily know what they're lying *about*, either.
Post for engagement. Also please cover framing and pacing.
I like you Mr Alexanderian
Divination spells are only as powerful as the GM allows them to be, and unfortunately many GMs just aren't equipped to handle them. I think that the DMG should have a section for how to integrate divinations into a campaign setting, along with other troublesome magic.
Smart stuff.
I have had a similar problem with a paladin's detect evil ability in Curse of Strahd. At first I thought a paladin would be a cool character to have in this campaign, but I have been having a hard time dealing with this ability. Either I've given away in an unsatisfying way that a character is evil, or I've come up with reasons why the ability isn't working 100% (too much background evil to really tell the difference etc). Neither of which is ideal. I've tried to do the "give a clue but not the whole truth" as you describe here for speak with dead....but this has also frustrated the paladin's player. Do you have any advice here on how to allow the user to use this ability in a satisfying way without giving up the plots of all the evil characters in CoS
I think your "its impossible" (a murder mystery in DND? its impossible) is very very catchy and should be a channel trademark.
P.S: On the topic of the spell, I just try as best as I can to reward the player but also make it clear that the spirit absolutely can't have a "normal conversation", since its perception of things has been severely altered from passing. Cryptic, confusing, aloof, scared. That makes the players think carefully about what to ask and how to frame these questions. And that in of itself can be quite fun to roleplay.
Speak with dead doesn’t work if the mouth is destroyed or missing.
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