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The Oracle Revelation called Voice of the Dead is causing my head to explode. When we look at Speak with Dead we see that it has a time limit, and a limit to the number of questions you can ask. Since talking is a free action unless the DM says otherwise, the practical limit is the number of questions.
Enter Voice of the Dead. You can use this ability for a number of rounds equal to your Oracle level, but there is nothing that says how many questions you can ask each round. I have no idea how this is supposed to work!
Do you get a full assortment of questions appropriate for your caster level each round? Do you get one question per round, or some other arbitrary number of questions? Do you get a number of questions appropriate for your caster level then the effect ends regardless of how many rounds you may have remaining? *confused*
I can't see any RAW interpretation or limitation, but I would assume 1 question per round or 1 question per 2/caster levels as per the spell. It seems wonky as you would have more rounds than questions, and since they do not need to be consecutive, I can only assume that they are including 1 round to ask the question and one round to answer it. Big guesses here though.
The benefits I would assume are that you don't need to spend 10 minutes casting the spell, and you don't need the material components. I would also assume the limitations (such as whole body, bluffing, etc.).
References below for ease of comment
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Voice of the Grave (Su): You can speak with dead, as per the spell, for a number of rounds per day equal to your oracle level. These rounds do not need to be consecutive. At 5th level, and every five levels thereafter, the dead creature takes a cumulative –2 penalty on its Will save to resist this effect.
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School necromancy [language-dependent]; Level cleric 3
Casting Time 10 minutes
Components V, S, DF
Range 10 ft.
Target one dead creature
Duration 1 min./level
Saving Throw Will negates; see text; Spell Resistance no
You grant the semblance of life to a corpse, allowing it to answer questions. You may ask one question per two caster levels. The corpse's knowledge is limited to what it knew during life, including the languages it spoke. Answers are brief, cryptic, or repetitive, especially if the creature would have opposed you in life.
If the dead creature's alignment was different from yours, the corpse gets a Will save to resist the spell as if it were alive. If successful, the corpse can refuse to answer your questions or attempt to deceive you, using Bluff. The soul can only speak about what it knew in life. It cannot answer any questions that pertain to events that occurred after its death.
If the corpse has been subject to speak with dead within the past week, the new spell fails. You can cast this spell on a corpse that has been deceased for any amount of time, but the body must be mostly intact to be able to respond. A damaged corpse may be able to give partial answers or partially correct answers, but it must at least have a mouth in order to speak at all. This spell does not affect a corpse that has been turned into an undead creature.
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Was hoping to get an answer to this question as well...
Does Voice of the Grave grant 1 question per Round?
Does it grant 1 question/2 oracle levels?
I'm hung up on the idea of a HalfOrc Shaman(oracle) who keeps a sack full of skulls that he has collected...
Skulls from old tribal chiefs, ancestors, enemies killed in battle, clerics and wizards. and he cleans and preserves just the skulls and jaw bones. The Jaw bones he keeps as a "Key" to each skull and maybe he wears the jawbones as an amulet or locks them away...
but in any case he etches and carves necromantic runes on each skull...and then he communes with them using Voice of the Grave/Speak with Dead. Using their dead knowledge skills to amass information,treasure,artifacts of power,secret locations/passwords...etc
i thought it would be a cool character concept to keep around a dusty old wizards skull and talk to it from time to time.
Would any DM's out there in the community have any trouble with a character bending the rules with Voice of the Grave and allow him to talk to the same corpse more than once a week?
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It says "as per the spell". So, I would rule that you get 1 question/2 levels - and you "use" as many rounds as it takes to ask those questions and get the answers. It may be that the answer to a question takes several rounds to give, depending on complexity of the question. If time or number of questions run out, you're done.
