This spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body, only its animating spirit.

Could someone explain this part to me? Where is the difference between soul and animating spirit?

Lets say you have the corpse of someone who used the clone spell and his soul is in his clone. How would Speak with Dead work?

I think it's like an echo or afterimage. Kind of like how you can stimulate a corpse's muscle with electricity and make the limb twitch, but it's not going to be a complete smooth movement like when the person was still alive.

So given that, if someone moved their soul over and the body remains then speak with dead should work as before, with the echo answering questions but it won't know anything that happened to the new clone version of the person. Which means someone could talk to their own echo, I guess?

Why isn't this spell available to necromancy wizards?

@cleej112 I would guess it is because necromancy wizard uses the dead body by animating it with their very own magic where as this uses the will that the corpse had.

Quote from cleej112 >>

Why isn't this spell available to necromancy wizards?

 Well it kinda is now: https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-ClassFeatures.pdf

Quote from Crombir >>

This spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body, only its animating spirit.

Could someone explain this part to me? Where is the difference between soul and animating spirit?

Lets say you have the corpse of someone who used the clone spell and his soul is in his clone. How would Speak with Dead work?

 Lol. Lets see what Religious/ Philosophy viewpoint the spell writer has of soul spirit distinctions - even if its just from past D&D writings re petitioners and mortal souls. 

The distinction is there to avoid game mechanic problems.

Souls are in other spell descriptions

So to avoid the misuse of speak with dead and things like  trap the soul they made the distinction.

Might have been better to write and "animating spirit" as a spiritual linkage of the mortal soul to a petitioner who is bound not to speak of things across the "Veil" of death.

with the actual soul not transfering.  Leave it to the GM to determine if a particularly powerful soul could say more.  

As a  mortal soul can find out more and interact with others it can conceivably know more than what it knew during life.

Admittedly a  GM could have just said have  Nah to the misuse of the spells without help but it also shows the intention of the writer as to its power level.

If my necromancy wizard can’t cast Speak With Dead, how is he supposed to make sure people are okay with their corpses being raised as zombies?

Quote from Evil__Overlord >>

If my necromancy wizard can’t cast Speak With Dead, how is he supposed to make sure people are okay with their corpses being raised as zombies?

The ethical necromancer.  It sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s the fun of it.

When someone dies in the game, they are sent to the Raven Queen who then strips their memories from heir souls.  The Soul is then sent to the Outer Plane destination to become Petitioners/Larvae/Ect while the Spirit/Memories goes to the Negative Material Plane. When your spell contacts the dead, you forge a temporary link between the corpse and the memories in the Negative Plane, the same but weaker version of the connection undead use to animate corpses.

This also means normal people passing onto their Afterlife destination do not remember their past lives.  There are exceptions for people who arrive there using nonstandard means of travel such as Night Hags taking them there, for example.

This is as far as I understand it.

Why is this spell 3rd level?

Quote from Evil__Overlord >>

If my necromancy wizard can’t cast Speak With Dead, how is he supposed to make sure people are okay with their corpses being raised as zombies?

 Make sure you only reanimate Klingons? ;p  (Just make sure they're destroyed in battle, with honor.  They may be dead, but they're still Klingons. ;p )

So, got a spell book in a game with this spell in it. Tried to look for it to copy. I am a Wizard and looking to add the spell after copying it via a long rest period, etc. I am following a Necromancy path. When I tried to find it the DnD Beyond platform does not have it for me to find? I can't add it. Do I have to be a different level? Thanks! Sorry if I am missing something obvious.

Quote from Hazerend >>

So, got a spell book in a game with this spell in it. Tried to look for it to copy. I am a Wizard and looking to add the spell after copying it via a long rest period, etc. I am following a Necromancy path. When I tried to find it the DnD Beyond platform does not have it for me to find? I can't add it. Do I have to be a different level? Thanks! Sorry if I am missing something obvious.

 Sorry, I just saw that. It is only available for Clerics or Bards. Weird it is in School of Necromancy. That reminded me that Clerics are the better option to make a powerful Necromancer. Ugh. No response needed. 

Quote from Beldragos >>

When someone dies in the game, they are sent to the Raven Queen who then strips their memories from heir souls.  The Soul is then sent to the Outer Plane destination to become Petitioners/Larvae/Ect while the Spirit/Memories goes to the Negative Material Plane. When your spell contacts the dead, you forge a temporary link between the corpse and the memories in the Negative Plane, the same but weaker version of the connection undead use to animate corpses.

This also means normal people passing onto their Afterlife destination do not remember their past lives.  There are exceptions for people who arrive there using nonstandard means of travel such as Night Hags taking them there, for example. 

This is as far as I understand it.

 That is actually really juicy lore lore about the Raven Queen, thank you very much for the info.

I knew that the Styx wipes the memories of larvae and petitioners on the Lower Planes, but I always wondered why Upper Plane petitioners were similarly forgetful.

I guess soulless undead (like most vampires) would also pull from this memory store, probably to the ire of the Queen.  Or, perhaps there’s information implicit in the physical corpse itself.

Aren’t people sent to Kelemvor when they die? And later picked up by their respective deity?

Quote from CANjIE >>

Aren’t people sent to Kelemvor when they die? And later picked up by their respective deity?

 Yes, you are absolutely correct.  That is how it is supposed to work, and what most living folk would know about the process.

The Raven Queen rules the gap between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead, and souls pass through her realm to reach Kelemvor’s halls (unless their deity comes to pick them up directly).  She’s a relatively young deity with an intentionally small and secretive cult, so she’s not very well known.

This should be updated to include Available For: Wizards (Per Tasha's Cauldron of Everything)

Quote from Crombir >>

This spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body, only its animating spirit.

Could someone explain this part to me? Where is the difference between soul and animating spirit?

Lets say you have the corpse of someone who used the clone spell and his soul is in his clone. How would Speak with Dead work?

For your first question, it's implied that the soul is your consciousness, while the animating spirit is the part of your life force that makes your "meat puppet" move to your soul's wishes. It has some semblance of awareness, since it can know something about the caster and react to the caster based on that information. (Like, the caster was the person who separated their soul from their body.) Since it can't know things it didn't know in life, speculate on events, won't learn anything new, etc., the animating spirit is more like a facsimile of a soul instead of being the soul.

I would actually rule that the animating spirit is more the power of the spell trying to make the body work as an actual echo of the life force that once inhabited the body instead of being some piece of that life force, since that would better explain the restrictions. But, the writers of this spell used the possessive pronoun "its".

Here is the relevant part of the flavor text for the spell Clone:

At any time after the clone matures, if the original creature dies, its soul transfers to the clone, provided that the soul is free and willing to return. The clone is physically identical to the original and has the same personality, memories, and abilities, but none of the original's equipment. The original creature's physical remains, if they still exist, become inert and can't thereafter be restored to life, since the creature's soul is elsewhere.

I would say that the answer to your question based on how the DM of the game rules what the animating spirit is. Remember, the Clone spell says that resurrection and restoration spells that would give actual life back to the dead doesn't work, but it says nothing about spells, like Raise Dead, where the spell's power is doing the reanimating. If the animating spirit is part of the former person's life force, then the answer would be no since that life force is currently manipulating a different meat puppet and isn't going to return to this meat puppet anytime soon. Now, if the animating spirit is a product of the spell trying to create a pseudo-soul from the echoes of the person's soul that was in the body, that's going to be a yes since it puts the spell in the same realm as Raise Dead.

This could be game breaking if you killed the BBEG, but he had a mature clone on hand. The BBEG jumps into the new body thinking the old one is just an inert meat sack. Meanwhile, the party that has the corpse of the BBEG, some not unsubstantial sack of gold, a list of questions, and access to a morally flexible knowledge cleric with a willing to thumb their nose that the town's laws about necromancy could potentially break the BBEGs plans. Mind you, this is limited by the fact that the BBEG might see the cleric as an enemy and chose not to answer truthfully, if at all. (And if one of the PC's casts the spell, it's DEFINATELY going to know that the PC is an enemy.) And, if it does answer, those answers are going to be obfuscated by being brief, cryptic, and/or repetitive.

Also remember, if you're the DM, rules like this are vague and gray for a reason. If you find it better that the spell is creating an animating spirit instead of acting on some left over remains of the critter's life force, then declare it so and move on. Does the spell allow for the corpse to know that enemies are in the room listening to the conversation or is it just aware of the caster? Great! Decide and move on. The ONLY thing I'll say is, regardless what you decide, inform the players BEFORE the spell is cast so they know what to expect. The characters may not know what to expect, especially if they're not casters, but the players should. This way, you can avoid arguments that might arise.

can you recast speak with dead on the same corpse after you have already spoken with it? what are the "guidelines" surrounding any repeated usage, extended usage, etc. of speak with dead?