Hello, I have a question related to the spell Speak with dead.

You grant the semblance of life and intelligence to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer the questions you pose. The corpse must still have a mouth and can't be undead. The spell fails if the corpse was the target of this spell within the last 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 hostile to 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.

How exactly the animated corpse knows whether the caster is an enemy or not? It does not need to have eyes or ears, only a mouth. It cannot think or learn new information. So how would it know if the caser is enemy? Can the caster use a disguise or illusion spell to trick the corpse?

This situation happened during our last session. The party killed a group of gnolls and then the bard used disguise kit and some improvisation to cover his face to seem as one of the gnolls. Then he casts the spell Speak with dead on one of the dead gnolls to ask questions. Do you think it would work? Or does the corpse automatically knows who the caster is?

I assume that the target of a speak with dead  can be fooled into not recognizing a creature as an enemy of it the same way a living one would. 

And even if you do pass yourself off as a gnoll, nothing says the target doesn't treat other gnolls it doesn't know as enemy and or just perceive you as one for other reasons, gnolls are chaotic evil afterall.

I also think i'd be very hard to pass as a gnoll to one of it's kind using a disguise kit and some improvisation.

EDIT XGE optional rule with disguise kit suggest DC 20 to copy a humanoid’s appearance. I'd certainly increase difficulty when trying to Imporsonate a gnoll to another one since it goes above and beyond visual look with how it sounds, smell, act etc

Quote from Aasimar11 >>

Hello, I have a question related to the spell Speak with dead.

You grant the semblance of life and intelligence to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer the questions you pose. The corpse must still have a mouth and can't be undead. The spell fails if the corpse was the target of this spell within the last 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 hostile to 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.

 

How exactly the animated corpse knows whether the caster is an enemy or not? It does not need to have eyes or ears, only a mouth.

In the same way that it can hear you potentially without ears and speak without vocal chords, lungs and a diaphragm, etc.

It reminds me of the funny speak with dead  scene in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie ;)

Ah, that was great.