Mending or Make whole to fix dead bodies

[Steven Hume]

i have a player wanting to use mending or make whole to fix a dead body so can speak with dead with it, am wondering what others thought of this? are bodies objects when then dead?

[tergiver]

Huh. I hadn't thought about make whole on bodies.

I have generally ruled that bodies are objects, but that typically matters when trying to teleport out of fights - fallen comrades count toward weight limits, not creature limits. My PCs have also used shrink item to carry and preserve large and valuable monster corpses back to civilization.

By the SRD rules, I'd have to learn towards 'yes', but might have fun describing how some gods would choose to make a corpse 'whole'.

Fortunately for Pathfinder, the Beta describes things differently. mending requires that all the parts be present, and make whole is based off of mending and does not eliminate that requirement.

So, in the Beta, I would say:

If your PC is trying to repair a smashed, sliced, or squished head for speak with dead, then make whole will do that

If the body has naturally decayed and the important parts - like the tongue - are no longer present, then make whole is of no utility.

On a related subject, I did see a module recently where a skeletonized corpse could nod or shake its head in response to speak with dead.