Speaking with the dead.

[Cret]

I have a question about speaking to people via an amulet who are dead.

Does the magic of the amulet pass through to the dead planes. Thus making the 'speak with dead' spell only used for actual raising..

I wanst thinking of this myself much, as I was doing it, but how do people hold conversations with thoese of the dead and get such specific details.. When they arnt the priestly/cleric types.

[Horace]

I look at it as an OOC necessity that i try to gloss over as much as possible.

But if you're looking for an IC answer or your PC's head will explode, it'd involve the amulet's strong affinity for amulets like it and one's spirit (true name?) who the user is trying to contact...and it also is hypersensitive to the focused thoughts of any entity trying to contact its wearer, allowing it to collect the deads thoughts for it's owner.

But yeah, it technically goes interplanar...all my characters but my wizard would be content in just chalking it up to "magic".

[Dalvyn]

Can people NOT affected with "speak with dead" initiate a tell-conversation with a dead character?

[Japcil]

I think they can, but my understanding is that the raise dead spell requires a mental connection that cannot be forged without the speak with dead spell. At least that is how I have seen it RPed.

[Cret]

You can hold a conversation with anyone as long as they are not stunned or detuned.

The only use ive seen for speak with dead is to raise dead. And even then, it isnt rped much when used.


..

The question was mostly for people who are dead contacting someone living. And then the said person, not of priestly alignment, being able to respond and hold conversation.

[Dalvyn]

Then I think there is a problem.

A spell should be effective on its own, and not be useful only to allow another spell to take effect.

[Raona]

Perhaps Speak with Dead could be made more useful by causing it to provide a list of everyone who is dead, and/or the the location of a specific corpse? Perhaps even transport of or to the same?

I'm reluctant to suggest making dead-communication for the purpose of seeking aid more difficult, given the trauma newer players already experience when they mis-step and there are very few people online. Perhaps amulet-communication could become more spotty with the number of times a PC has died, or their level, or the number of people online, to address this.

[Kelemvor]

I feel that being able to communicate with the living is OOCly very important to the individual in Fugue. Once a connection is established, I have no problem with folk communicating via tells in this way.

The change in amulets from 'mental' devices to physical ones messes with that IC picture a bit, but gloss over it for OOC consideration I think.

I would, though, be less happy with the living instigating a conversation with someone in Fugue without having to use the Speak with Dead spell.

Oh look, here's Fred's body.. whispers into amulet "Hey up Fred, are you dead?" That's a bit too much glossing

[Emrys]

I hope I'm not rambling off the topic here...

I remember seeing (somewhere else) the 'speak with dead' spell used to find out who killed someone. You would cast it on the corpse (PC or mob), and get a vision of the 'short description' of whoever killed the mob. If the killer was invisible or something, you just saw a shadowy form.

I think that would make the 'speak with dead' spell very useful. Especially for when assassins rampage through Waterdeep.

[Scylere]

I really like emrys's idea. Then someone with Speak with Dead could find out who killed a mob in Waterdeep, for example. I'm not sure if that is code possible though - sounds complicated.

I roleplay a Kelemvorite and sometimes he feels useless. I think it makes sense that dead PCs can contact someone in the world, but I'd suggest that the contacted person be unable to respond unless they are affected by a Speak with Dead spell.

To help with newbies: When a dead PC contacts a living PC, they could receive an echo like "Your ghostly whispers contact the living, but they may not be able to respond unless they can contact the spirit world." That's not overly creative, but you get the idea.

[Neriadin]

Such an idea would dramatically decrease the amount of people that can be contacted when you are dead.

[Kelemvor]

Indeed, that is not something I feel would be of value. Penalising any player who has died is not worth it to create roleplay so that Kelemvoran clerics dont feel useless.

As I said, a dead player should always be able to contact the living if they know someone, otherwise they have very little means of return.

I've often thought that it would be nice if dead folk could contact any player... ghostly echoes from the world of the dead. Unfortunately, this relies heavily on the dead player's desire to roleplay being a spirit as opposed to directing someone to the exact location of their body for a quick raise.

Someone who has time might want to post a link from this thread to the previous discussion about the 'speak with dead' prayer.

[Stayne]

I always considered "Speak with Dead" to be a RP tool that would allow me as a priest to find the location of the dead. I don't mean corpses here either but the location of the spirit in Fugue. Without this initial finding and contact, directing the energy required to raise them would be problematical at best.
To this effect I would often RP in the room, speaking out loud as if the dead player could hear me, informing them of what was to take place (This would be covered in tells to the dead player if need be). This allowed the RP to continue and ion one case allowed a IMM to tell me not to raise them and thus while I still conversed, I RP'ed a failed raise dead and then the subsequent loss of "contact" via speak with the dead spell.

I don't see much need for the spell to change - especially if that would impact on the amount of players a person can contact while dead, though based on what I said above, I would not be opposed to having the spell become targetable (ie cast 'speak with dead' stayne) thus enabling that player, if dead, to hear everything you "say" as if they were in the room.

Back to the original question - the amulet of communication is a device to help facilitate RP and gaming enjoyment. I don't think it detracts from speak with the dead in any way if you don't worry to much about official rules. Best just to consider it being one of those special magical items

Hope that helps
S.

[Oghma]

I would agree that I find the current system acceptable. Speak with the Dead has many function. In essence it allows one to see the dead, deal with them and know their status, it even interacts with the finger command to reveal bodily forms. More applications could be added like projection, but otherwise I think it should be kept the same.

[Dalvyn]

It used to be as follows:

You could not initiate contact with a dead person unless you had speak with dead active.

Dead ones were able to contact anybody, and people who had been contacted could use "reply" to answer, but they simply could not initiate the conversation.

That gave some use to "speak with dead".

If in the current system, the only use of "speak with dead" is to make it so that "raise dead" works, then either this spell should be removed, or something should be changed to give it a proper use.

[Horace]

How about "speak with dead" gives you the name of the corpse you're looking at if you don't recognize them? So you can contact the spirit to raise?


edited to add: And know when their spirit is available to be raised (logged on)

[Japcil]

As it stands now, you can initiate a tell with a dead pc without speak with dead. However all you see is 'You tell someone Blah blah blah' And you dont need to have greeted them.

Edit: Raise dead doesnt require the use of speak with dead at all. So as it stands now, the spell is unnecessary and unrequired to be used.

[Dalvyn]

Edit: Raise dead doesnt require the use of speak with dead at all. So as it stands now, the spell is unnecessary and unrequired to be used.

Ok, even worse than I thought.

I really like the idea of "speak with dead" giving information about the death, and I think it would be relatively easy to code (though that would be something for Mask to say for sure).

On death, the code could add a hidden extra-description (if not hidden, just something with a keyword that you can't guess, like the serial number of the corpse object, or a combination of different values) to the corpse object and "speak with dead" would simply echo that hidden extra-description.

The extra-description could be something like:

- This dead creature's name is: (char's name or mob short description).
- Sex: ...
- Race: ...
- Class & Level: ...
- Deity & Faith level: ...
- Alignment: ...
- Killed by: (char's name or mob short description)
- Killed with: (weapon's name or weapon's type or spell or nothing if killed by a normal attack of a mob)
- Killed at: (room's name)

That might look like a lot of information, but that would be close to what the D&D "Speak with dead" spell is. This spell is supposed to allow the cleric to ask a few questions from the dead, and the dead CANNOT lie while answering.

Note that, if this was coded, it would be nice to add an imm command that would allow them to set the "Killed by", or make sure that it uses the imm's short and not the imm's true name.

[Raona]

Someone who has time might want to post a link from this thread to the previous discussion about the 'speak with dead' prayer.

Here's the above-mentioned prior discussion, I believe:

http://www.gallwey.com/fk/board/viewtop ... speak+dead

[Moloch]

I am not crazy with the idea that the mob would know the Character's name when the spell is cast on their corpse. I can see if you had an extensive history with that mob, but how would the code differentiate?