Sending: Speak With Dead, but better?

[Rukelnikov]

Is a soul even a "creature"? you'd have to have your DM agree to it. Which I doubt they will.

In the usual Wheel afterlife, souls become petitioners, and those are definitely creatures, but the nature of each changes depending on the plane, as @millstone85 mentioned, most of the souls bound to the lower planes have to pass thru river Styx which erases their memories. So most lower plane bound souls shouldn't be able to answer a Sending (and actually, a Lemure created from the soul of John Smith, is not really John Smith, so It's doubtful if even the sending would reach them). On the other hand you have the non-Drow Elves who become petitioners in Aarvandor, and pretty much stay the same as they were while alive, so the argument there is stronger.

IMO it would depend heavily on the plane in question where the soul ended up. Some would be an almost automatic failure (all those whose memories were erased, or souls disolved into the plane), some would be hard to find a reaon why it shouldn't, like with most non-Drow Elves, and then you have everything in between.

I might allow this as a DM, but I don't think I would call it better than Speak with Dead. Speak with Dead is available much earlier, and it allows you to ask multiple questions from a single casting. It also "compels" the creature to answer (it gets a will save if there's an alignment difference but otherwise answers truthfully).

Sending requires familiarity, is higher level, has a much harsher word limit, and can be ignored or responded to with a lie. The bright side is that it doesn't need a corpse, can be cast multiple times if you have the slots, and of course has other uses besides just trolling dead people.

Also, I would have to look up exactly what happens to petitioners on each plane, because I think some of them lose their memories. And trying to contact someone who got turned into a soul larva might not get a response beyond horrible screaming.

I don't know "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". Does that imply that if you are not hostile or it doesn't recognize you as an enemy it offers a truthful answer? Seems to be the case, but its also not explicitely stated. I guess they would answer as truthfully as they would an acquaintance?

I mean, if I ask a recently dead corpse how to infiltrate their village, even if I wasn't an enemy before their death, they might recognize me as an enemy just for having asked that.