Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
It also has to be a reasonable Suggestion. I make this very literal in my campaigns, as a 2nd level spell would never win a war in my campaigns.
Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
It also has to be a reasonable Suggestion. I make this very literal in my campaigns, as a 2nd level spell would never win a war in my campaigns.
What Brewksy said. Suggestion is a powerful spell, but you can't make someone do something that doesn't seem reasonable to them. You can use the spell Suggestion on someone and tell them to murder their own spouse, but if there is no reason they would do so the spell would just fail. Just like casting suggestion on someone to convince them to attack their allies. If there is not a good reason the creature would do so then the spell fails. I've seen players try to word their two sentences to make it seem very reasonable (I'm guilty of it too), but you can sound as reasonable as you want, if the creature wouldn't find it reasonable it doesn't work.
However, Enemies Abound doesn't need reason. If they fail the check, everyone is an enemy and they'll attack enemy and allies. I think this a very useful spell as you can cast it on the biggest guy in the group, watch them fail the intelligent save, and let them do all the work killing your enemies. Stay out of reach of any of his attacks and you basically have another teammate.
I've seen players try to word their two sentences to make it seem very reasonable (I'm guilty of it too), but you can sound as reasonable as you want, if the creature wouldn't find it reasonable it doesn't work.
The spell does explicitly encourage you to use wording to make it sound more reasonable - the restriction isn't that the action be reasonable, it's that the suggestion must be worded in a way to make it sound reasonable. "Murder your spouse" automatically fails, regardless of wording, because it's an obviously harmful act. "Sign this piece of paper" should be fine unless the GM is deliberately nerfing the spell into oblivion, and if you can't win a war with "sign this piece of paper", you're doing it wrong.
"Sign this piece of paper" should be fine unless the GM is deliberately nerfing the spell into oblivion, and if you can't win a war with "sign this piece of paper", you're doing it wrong.
This right here is completely false. You might be able to get them to sign a piece of paper, but at the end of the spell they don't just keep thinking that everything is ok. You get them to sign a paper. They sign it, spell ends, they realize what they've just done and rip up the paper. Suggestion isn't a forever lasting spell. So the notion that "if you can't win a war with 'sign this piece of paper', you're doing it wrong", is a DM giving far more power to a spell than it actually has.
Speaking of suggestion not working if it isn't reasonable they would do so. Could you use modify memory to fabricate a scenario that would get the target to do something they wouldn't normally do. Using the murder your spouse example, you can modify their memory to make the target think he caught his wife cheating on him. Then tell him to murder his spouse.
Speaking of suggestion bot working if it isn't reasonable they would do so. Could you use modify memory to fabricate a scenario that would get the target to do something they wouldn't normally do. Using the murder your spouse example, you can modify their memory to make the target think he caught his wife cheating on him. Then tell him to murder his spouse.
Seems legit. I mean, as long as the modify memory is realistic and reasonable too (maybe they were suspicious to begin with), and they were perhaps prone to violent outbursts or could reasonably kill someone if they were angry enough, I’d absolutely say yes.
Remember modify memory doesn’t let you change their disposition, and it’s a brief moment in time that you adjust. I’d say if you did your homework on your target and found the right triggers, this could be an amazing mission 🙂
Speaking of suggestion bot working if it isn't reasonable they would do so. Could you use modify memory to fabricate a scenario that would get the target to do something they wouldn't normally do. Using the murder your spouse example, you can modify their memory to make the target think he caught his wife cheating on him. Then tell him to murder his spouse.
Absolutely. There are a variety of spells that can work if used just the right way or with the right combination of spells working together. If you have something like this planned, just make sure you bring it up with your DM ahead of time if you're able, after all they are the one that decides if something will work or not.
No. Suggesting that they can’t distinguish friend from foe is not something suggestion does. It doesn’t hamper perception at all. And is it reasonable that someone would just turn sides and decide that his long time allies are now his enemies?
It seams much more reasonable that you could get a cowardly person to flee and think the battle is lost even when they’re winning, convince an evil character to attack a target that they hate without regard to strategy, persuade a dumb monster to think that attacking a Wizard is a bad idea because of all the things they could do to their souls, convince a lazy guard to let you in past the gates because the paperwork required for entry is just too much work, or even deceive a half-hearted enemy to consider not fighting for either side because the cause might not be so worthy after all.
I'm with Brewksy - I can't think of a valid suggestion that would simulate enemies abound to any substantial degree. Remember this line: " On a failed save, it pursues the course of action you described to the best of its ability." If you make a suggestion the target can't really choose to obey - e.g. suggesting someone contract a mental illness - the spell may "stick", but won't actually accomplish anything. Every way I can think of to suggest enemies abound falls afoul of that line.
Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
It also has to be a reasonable Suggestion. I make this very literal in my campaigns, as a 2nd level spell would never win a war in my campaigns.
Does giving away your belonging to the first peasant you see sound reasonable?
It doesn't sound reasonable to me, not in the slightest and yet its an example of what it can do. Reasonableness is not a requirement, at most it needs to be phrased in a reasonable way.
A mundane reasonable suggestion could be made without a spell. I don’t think a spell is supposed to be limited to the same thing that could be achieved without casting a spell.
Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
It also has to be a reasonable Suggestion. I make this very literal in my campaigns, as a 2nd level spell would never win a war in my campaigns.
Does giving away your belonging to the first peasant you see sound reasonable?
It doesn't sound reasonable to me, not in the slightest and yet its an example of what it can do. Reasonableness is not a requirement, at most it needs to be phrased in a reasonable way.
"The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable."
Giving away belongings can sound reasonable. After all people give away their stuff all the time for charitable reasons. Asking a Knight to give up their horse to a beggar can be reasonable to the Knight depending on how you word it. Eg. "A Knights duty is to better the lives of those you protect. So you should give your horse to the first beggar you see and have your Lord praise you for your good deeds."
However, finding a way to word a suggestion that would make someone turn on their allies would be far more difficult. Can you think of a way to word a suggestion so it sounds reasonable for a person who has been working with a group to suddenly start attacking them? Or make a suggestion that would question who was friend or foe?
Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
It also has to be a reasonable Suggestion. I make this very literal in my campaigns, as a 2nd level spell would never win a war in my campaigns.
Does giving away your belonging to the first peasant you see sound reasonable?
It doesn't sound reasonable to me, not in the slightest and yet its an example of what it can do. Reasonableness is not a requirement, at most it needs to be phrased in a reasonable way.
"The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable."
Giving away belongings can sound reasonable. After all people give away their stuff all the time for charitable reasons. Asking a Knight to give up their horse to a beggar can be reasonable to the Knight depending on how you word it. Eg. "A Knights duty is to better the lives of those you protect. So you should give your horse to the first beggar you see and have your Lord praise you for your good deeds."
However, finding a way to word a suggestion that would make someone turn on their allies would be far more difficult. Can you think of a way to word a suggestion so it sounds reasonable for a person who has been working with a group to suddenly start attacking them? Or make a suggestion that would question who was friend or foe?
Easy. The people posing as your allies are dopplegangers. Your true friends are in desperate need of your help. Defeat these dopplegangers and force them to tell you where your friends are being held captive.
or,
Your allies are being mind-controlled. Tie them up and take them to a spellcaster who can dispel the enchantment.
A mundane reasonable suggestion could be made without a spell. I don’t think a spell is supposed to be limited to the same thing that could be achieved without casting a spell.
Yup if its reasonable you probably don't even need a persuasion attempt.
Easy. The people posing as your allies are dopplegangers. Your true friends are in desperate need of your help. Defeat these dopplegangers and force them to tell you where your friends are being held captive.
or,
Your allies are being mind-controlled. Tie them up and take them to a spellcaster who can dispel the enchantment.
So just to point out, the first one is 3 sentences which the spell is limited to a sentence or two. But that could easily be changed so not going comment any further on that.
As for the sentences themselves, the question is this reasonable? Because you're no longer just trying to give them a suggestion you are now attempting to change their complete view on their teammates. From what I can tell, people are trying to make suggestion far stronger than it is. It doesn't allow you to alter the person's perception on the reality or make them believe something they wouldn't normally. What suggestion does is force someone to complete an action that they find reasonable even if they would not normally do so (Eg. A knight being noble by giving a beggar their horse, not a Knight treating a beggar like royalty because it's really their king in disguise.)
So No those suggestions would not be reasonable because now you're trying to brainwash the creature into believing something different and thus acting on their new perception, not giving them a suggestion to follow through on.
This is not saying that suggestion can't be used to achieve results like Enemies Abound (Eg. Creatures in a pitch black room and so they can't see who is friend and who is foe. So you offer the suggestion to one to attack everything that comes near and sort who is who later). Not the best example but it works well enough. This is what the spell does, it forces a creature to do something that sounds reasonable already but they might not normally do for one reason or the other.
The power that this spell offers is the ability to force creatures into reasonable actions that they may not normally do. To give other examples:
someone using suggestion to keep a cleric from healing the wizard because it's the paladin is on the front lines of combat and they need the all the healing. So now the enemy can take out the wizard easy because the cleric will only heal the paladin.
Using suggestion to get a person who is normally a pacifist to attack someone else because he caught him sleeping with his wife.
Using the spell to make a loyal Knight drop his weapons and give up because everyone else has already died.
Am I correct in noting that Suggestion is a more powerful spell than Enemies Abound?
Depends on what you mean by power, but yes. In exchange for drastically curtailed range, only working on targets that can hear and understand you, targeting a save that's statistically harder to overcome, having the spell expire if you or any of your companions damage the target, and being banned from coercing the target to do anything harmful, you get a lot more duration and, more importantly, extreme strategic flexibility. Enemies Abound wins battles, but Suggestion can win wars.
That's like asking if Invisibility is a better spell than Fireball. It's an apples-and-oranges comparison.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
It also has to be a reasonable Suggestion. I make this very literal in my campaigns, as a 2nd level spell would never win a war in my campaigns.
What Brewksy said. Suggestion is a powerful spell, but you can't make someone do something that doesn't seem reasonable to them. You can use the spell Suggestion on someone and tell them to murder their own spouse, but if there is no reason they would do so the spell would just fail. Just like casting suggestion on someone to convince them to attack their allies. If there is not a good reason the creature would do so then the spell fails. I've seen players try to word their two sentences to make it seem very reasonable (I'm guilty of it too), but you can sound as reasonable as you want, if the creature wouldn't find it reasonable it doesn't work.
However, Enemies Abound doesn't need reason. If they fail the check, everyone is an enemy and they'll attack enemy and allies. I think this a very useful spell as you can cast it on the biggest guy in the group, watch them fail the intelligent save, and let them do all the work killing your enemies. Stay out of reach of any of his attacks and you basically have another teammate.
The spell does explicitly encourage you to use wording to make it sound more reasonable - the restriction isn't that the action be reasonable, it's that the suggestion must be worded in a way to make it sound reasonable. "Murder your spouse" automatically fails, regardless of wording, because it's an obviously harmful act. "Sign this piece of paper" should be fine unless the GM is deliberately nerfing the spell into oblivion, and if you can't win a war with "sign this piece of paper", you're doing it wrong.
This right here is completely false. You might be able to get them to sign a piece of paper, but at the end of the spell they don't just keep thinking that everything is ok. You get them to sign a paper. They sign it, spell ends, they realize what they've just done and rip up the paper. Suggestion isn't a forever lasting spell. So the notion that "if you can't win a war with 'sign this piece of paper', you're doing it wrong", is a DM giving far more power to a spell than it actually has.
Speaking of suggestion not working if it isn't reasonable they would do so. Could you use modify memory to fabricate a scenario that would get the target to do something they wouldn't normally do. Using the murder your spouse example, you can modify their memory to make the target think he caught his wife cheating on him. Then tell him to murder his spouse.
Seems legit. I mean, as long as the modify memory is realistic and reasonable too (maybe they were suspicious to begin with), and they were perhaps prone to violent outbursts or could reasonably kill someone if they were angry enough, I’d absolutely say yes.
Remember modify memory doesn’t let you change their disposition, and it’s a brief moment in time that you adjust. I’d say if you did your homework on your target and found the right triggers, this could be an amazing mission 🙂
Absolutely. There are a variety of spells that can work if used just the right way or with the right combination of spells working together. If you have something like this planned, just make sure you bring it up with your DM ahead of time if you're able, after all they are the one that decides if something will work or not.
suggestion definitely is better then enemies abound. With suggestion, you could order the target to do the exact same thing as enemies abound. suggestion is also only 2nd level, so it is a much better use for your spell slot.
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No. Suggesting that they can’t distinguish friend from foe is not something suggestion does. It doesn’t hamper perception at all. And is it reasonable that someone would just turn sides and decide that his long time allies are now his enemies?
It seams much more reasonable that you could get a cowardly person to flee and think the battle is lost even when they’re winning, convince an evil character to attack a target that they hate without regard to strategy, persuade a dumb monster to think that attacking a Wizard is a bad idea because of all the things they could do to their souls, convince a lazy guard to let you in past the gates because the paperwork required for entry is just too much work, or even deceive a half-hearted enemy to consider not fighting for either side because the cause might not be so worthy after all.
But it is not Dominate Person.
I'm with Brewksy - I can't think of a valid suggestion that would simulate enemies abound to any substantial degree. Remember this line: " On a failed save, it pursues the course of action you described to the best of its ability." If you make a suggestion the target can't really choose to obey - e.g. suggesting someone contract a mental illness - the spell may "stick", but won't actually accomplish anything. Every way I can think of to suggest enemies abound falls afoul of that line.
Does giving away your belonging to the first peasant you see sound reasonable?
It doesn't sound reasonable to me, not in the slightest and yet its an example of what it can do. Reasonableness is not a requirement, at most it needs to be phrased in a reasonable way.
A mundane reasonable suggestion could be made without a spell. I don’t think a spell is supposed to be limited to the same thing that could be achieved without casting a spell.
"The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable."
Giving away belongings can sound reasonable. After all people give away their stuff all the time for charitable reasons. Asking a Knight to give up their horse to a beggar can be reasonable to the Knight depending on how you word it. Eg. "A Knights duty is to better the lives of those you protect. So you should give your horse to the first beggar you see and have your Lord praise you for your good deeds."
However, finding a way to word a suggestion that would make someone turn on their allies would be far more difficult. Can you think of a way to word a suggestion so it sounds reasonable for a person who has been working with a group to suddenly start attacking them? Or make a suggestion that would question who was friend or foe?
Easy. The people posing as your allies are dopplegangers. Your true friends are in desperate need of your help. Defeat these dopplegangers and force them to tell you where your friends are being held captive.
or,
Your allies are being mind-controlled. Tie them up and take them to a spellcaster who can dispel the enchantment.
Yup if its reasonable you probably don't even need a persuasion attempt.
So just to point out, the first one is 3 sentences which the spell is limited to a sentence or two. But that could easily be changed so not going comment any further on that.
As for the sentences themselves, the question is this reasonable? Because you're no longer just trying to give them a suggestion you are now attempting to change their complete view on their teammates. From what I can tell, people are trying to make suggestion far stronger than it is. It doesn't allow you to alter the person's perception on the reality or make them believe something they wouldn't normally. What suggestion does is force someone to complete an action that they find reasonable even if they would not normally do so (Eg. A knight being noble by giving a beggar their horse, not a Knight treating a beggar like royalty because it's really their king in disguise.)
So No those suggestions would not be reasonable because now you're trying to brainwash the creature into believing something different and thus acting on their new perception, not giving them a suggestion to follow through on.
This is not saying that suggestion can't be used to achieve results like Enemies Abound (Eg. Creatures in a pitch black room and so they can't see who is friend and who is foe. So you offer the suggestion to one to attack everything that comes near and sort who is who later). Not the best example but it works well enough. This is what the spell does, it forces a creature to do something that sounds reasonable already but they might not normally do for one reason or the other.
The power that this spell offers is the ability to force creatures into reasonable actions that they may not normally do. To give other examples:
It is easily as reasonable as your explanation as why someone would give away all their stuff.