Honestly... I'd rather they make these skills more relevant...
There's so few situations where they actually make a difference, where you couldn't simply use a Animal Handling skill check or just loot a note that tells you the same as the corpse would...
Also, Wildheart Barbarians get Speak with Animals, Warlocks can get an Eldritch Invocation at level 2 for Speak with Animals and at level 9 for Speak with Dead. Also literally anyone can get Speak with Dead from reading the Necromancy book the first time.
P.s. The Dungeons and Dragons movie actually also featured an amulet that provided infinite uses of Speak with the Dead... So it's not just a Larian thing.
By effectively letting any peasant talk to all the corpses and squirrels in the world, you remove a cool class ability. An ability that would be worth replaying the game alone for.
You're very likely to cover one or both abilities in a party of 4 already.
You literally just defeated your own argument.
If you're "Very likely to cover one or both abilities in a party of 4 already" then there's not much replayability is there if you simply already have access to those skills. It's not like these situational, out of combat, skills particularly define gameplay of a class.
