At my table the definition of reasonable is that the spell must give something more than a hard Persuasion check (even with disadvantage) and less than Dominate.
The spell specifically states that any attempt to make the target harm itself "ends the spell." So whether it sounds reasonable or not, it would end the spell to tell someone to cut out something from its own abdomen.
My question wasn't directed at you. Lyxen made a statement about how to adjudicate Suggestion that I am not quite clear on so I posed a hypothetical to try and clarify how he would run it.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
And I guess to clarify my point, Lyxen you say that something only has to sound reasonable and I wonder how exactly you mean that. Do you mean that it only has to meet a certain standard of intelligibility? You don't take into account subjective knowledge of the target? Do you think the example of "cut a parasite out of your stomach" counts as self harm because the process would result in self harm or do you take the stated purpose of the suggestion, which is to help/heal/save oneself? Do you count outright lies in the suggestion as "reasonable" as long as it is possible because it's magic? Like "you're on fire, pour this over yourself to put it out" when they are not actually on fire and you're handing them a bucket of acid?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
So basically anything that is not immediately, directly harmful is reasonable?
Not by my interpretation. I also don't think the book's interpretation would support that position either, as the example of giving away the war horse to the beggar used a knight, not say an assassin or a thief.
It is Knight snd not thief for the same reason it is not wizard or warlock. It’s just easier to explain with saying that “knight has a war horse” because knights have war horses and not thieves in media.
So basically anything that is not immediately, directly harmful is reasonable?
It's not a question of BEING reasonable, just sounding reasonable, which is not the same thing at all. And therefore yes, as per the spell description, if you can phrase it in a reasonable manner, attacking your friends is perfectly fine, just make it sound reasonable by pretending that they are traitors, that they have been charmed or converted or replaced.
100% agree with you. You need to say it in reasonable manner. Spells usually do bad stuff to you that you don’t want to happen coz it is magic
Making this spell be just a better version of just talking charismatically. It is like debating if vicious mockery was worded properly enough to be an insult. It’s just magic
For me, it is one of the points which are at the centre of the question. You will notice in particular that the formulation is not linked in any way to the target, it does not say that the action must be reasonable or sound reasonable to the target, just in general.
I feel that is a point of interpretation which is not obvious from the wording of the spell itself. My DM interprets that as must sound reasonable to the target and I think this is a very valid interpretation on the face of it. Because what even is something that is "reasonable in general?" Is reasonability inherently subjective?
Have you notice the extremely careful wording about the self-harm: "do some other obviously harmful act" ? This implies that even self-harm by deceit is within the power of the spell. Like "go stand over here" when standing in that place starts a deadly trap. This would certainly be allowed, unless the target knew about the trap.
Deceit is one thing, but outright and blatant falsehoods like "you're a bird, go fly off that cliff" sound reasonable only if the premise of the statement is accepted and it seemed like you were saying that the magic makes any premise accepted.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Again, it does not have to be reasonable, just sound reasonable, and if it had "to each specific target", I'm pretty sure that each player will quickly explain to you that, whatever suggestion it is, it would not seem reasonable to his character. This is why it's left to the DM's judgement, and therefore "in general".
This sounds like an eminently valid interpretation based on a need to circumvent rules lawyering players, but still an interpretation. So far in my game my bard character has been the only character to use Suggestion and it has only been on NPC's mostly because my DM really hates taking player agency away from them. So the issue of "sounding reasonable" has come up for me and my DM has asked me how a particular suggestion would be reasonable for that character to believe or follow.
I don't think that I said that any premises are accepted, I'm just saying that this is a spell, not just an opportunity for a charisma check to convince someone. And jumping off a cliff is obvious self-harm, right ? On the other hand, go stand over there by the edge of the cliff, when the caster knows that it will crumble at the slightest weight put on it and it's not obvious to an observer, is not "obvious" by definition.
I'd have thought a better use is "That bloke standing right next to you is really a doppelganger. Fireball the bastard before he kills the lot of you!" Then watch the hilarity as the rest of the party scatter.
But... again, why would it be reasonable to suspect that someone who has not been out of your sight for 3 days in this dungeon, is now suddenly a doppelganger?
Because magic makes you believe he is. It's magic. It's a charm. It's exactly like a horrendous hag just becoming the most charming of maidens to your eyes because you are bewitched.
I wondered if you meant that the magic just makes you believe anything said by the suggester. Are you standing behind that still or does it sound reasonable simply because it isn't directly and immediately harmful? I guess I want you to lay out your criteria for "sounds reasonable" a bit more explicitly than you have been, so that I can understand it.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Idk but I think that this spell is extremely OP in combat if used properly. Like what if your BBEG arch-wizard uses their ONE action to cast Suggestion saying this “Go 500 ft away right now and cast spells using all your spell slots without harming yourself”. Boom.
It's easy to phrase a suggestion in a way that leads to a more complicated set of behaviors. The solution isn't to debate the value of a particular suggestion, but rather the set clear limits on what can be achieved and consequences for testing those limits. For example, giving spells like suggestion and command phrasing similar to wish:
You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your [intention] to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the [effect], the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the [Suggestion].
Many mechanics simply exist to ensure game balance, such as allowing a creature a dexterity save to avoid being trapped by Wall of Stone, even if the circumstance is realistically unavoidable. Anything as open ended as Suggestion should have had an "at your own peril" clause baked in.
"Obey my every command for the next eight hours." being the best way to cheese Suggestion and the prime example of why the spell needs to have limitations. The reasonability of the suggestion being the one place where the wording of the spell allows for such limitations, but which is also not enough guidelines as to how to implement it.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
(One group I know interprets Infernal to be such an extremely precise language [perfect for the fiendish lawyers of the Hells] that a single word can hold a lot of specifics.)
In one session, the person casting Command (not Suggestion) tried something extremely specific and the DM shot it down as being too specific even for Infernal - and before you ask, Infernal speech was everywhere. In a different session, the person tried something more simple in a single Infernal word: "Catch this as if your life depends on it." The DM required five checks the plan to work:
Prior to the encounter, the player noticed blades spinning so fast that it took a high Perception success to know they were there - lucky for them. In the encounter, the player threw a toy (iffy ruling IMHO - action or interaction to throw such an object?) at the blades and cast Command. Creature failed the WIS save. Object succeeded passing through the blades. Creature failed to notice the blades. Creature failed to evade the blades. Result: Creature in a blender.
Five chances for it to not work I think was very reasonable to have Command cause a creature to unintentionally and unknowingly harm (kill) itself with what seemed like a reasonable course of action in the moment.
I think similar difficulties should be required to create a Suggestion that would cause a creature to unintentionally and unknowingly harm itself.
IF the scenario has all the right opportunities as the above scenario did and any one thing going wrong would result in failure, I would allow the attempt based on the creativity of the attempt. Given how Suggestion works, I would make it even more difficult than a creative Command.
(I'm still up in the air on the ruling of throwing a toy and how specific single Infernal words can be, but I'll reward certain creativity by allowing an attempt, at least.)
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Problem with using Infernal for a Command (and Suggestion) is the target must understand what you're saying - which means they need to speak Infernal too.
At my table the definition of reasonable is that the spell must give something more than a hard Persuasion check (even with disadvantage) and less than Dominate.
My question wasn't directed at you. Lyxen made a statement about how to adjudicate Suggestion that I am not quite clear on so I posed a hypothetical to try and clarify how he would run it.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
And I guess to clarify my point, Lyxen you say that something only has to sound reasonable and I wonder how exactly you mean that. Do you mean that it only has to meet a certain standard of intelligibility? You don't take into account subjective knowledge of the target? Do you think the example of "cut a parasite out of your stomach" counts as self harm because the process would result in self harm or do you take the stated purpose of the suggestion, which is to help/heal/save oneself? Do you count outright lies in the suggestion as "reasonable" as long as it is possible because it's magic? Like "you're on fire, pour this over yourself to put it out" when they are not actually on fire and you're handing them a bucket of acid?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
It is Knight snd not thief for the same reason it is not wizard or warlock. It’s just easier to explain with saying that “knight has a war horse” because knights have war horses and not thieves in media.
100% agree with you. You need to say it in reasonable manner. Spells usually do bad stuff to you that you don’t want to happen coz it is magic
Making this spell be just a better version of just talking charismatically. It is like debating if vicious mockery was worded properly enough to be an insult. It’s just magic
I feel that is a point of interpretation which is not obvious from the wording of the spell itself. My DM interprets that as must sound reasonable to the target and I think this is a very valid interpretation on the face of it. Because what even is something that is "reasonable in general?" Is reasonability inherently subjective?
Deceit is one thing, but outright and blatant falsehoods like "you're a bird, go fly off that cliff" sound reasonable only if the premise of the statement is accepted and it seemed like you were saying that the magic makes any premise accepted.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
This sounds like an eminently valid interpretation based on a need to circumvent rules lawyering players, but still an interpretation. So far in my game my bard character has been the only character to use Suggestion and it has only been on NPC's mostly because my DM really hates taking player agency away from them. So the issue of "sounding reasonable" has come up for me and my DM has asked me how a particular suggestion would be reasonable for that character to believe or follow.
Ok, so earlier when you said:
I wondered if you meant that the magic just makes you believe anything said by the suggester. Are you standing behind that still or does it sound reasonable simply because it isn't directly and immediately harmful? I guess I want you to lay out your criteria for "sounds reasonable" a bit more explicitly than you have been, so that I can understand it.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
That's two suggestions, at the least.
And that's "missing the forest for the trees".
It's easy to phrase a suggestion in a way that leads to a more complicated set of behaviors. The solution isn't to debate the value of a particular suggestion, but rather the set clear limits on what can be achieved and consequences for testing those limits. For example, giving spells like suggestion and command phrasing similar to wish:
Many mechanics simply exist to ensure game balance, such as allowing a creature a dexterity save to avoid being trapped by Wall of Stone, even if the circumstance is realistically unavoidable. Anything as open ended as Suggestion should have had an "at your own peril" clause baked in.
"Obey my every command for the next eight hours." being the best way to cheese Suggestion and the prime example of why the spell needs to have limitations. The reasonability of the suggestion being the one place where the wording of the spell allows for such limitations, but which is also not enough guidelines as to how to implement it.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
(One group I know interprets Infernal to be such an extremely precise language [perfect for the fiendish lawyers of the Hells] that a single word can hold a lot of specifics.)
In one session, the person casting Command (not Suggestion) tried something extremely specific and the DM shot it down as being too specific even for Infernal - and before you ask, Infernal speech was everywhere. In a different session, the person tried something more simple in a single Infernal word: "Catch this as if your life depends on it." The DM required five checks the plan to work:
Prior to the encounter, the player noticed blades spinning so fast that it took a high Perception success to know they were there - lucky for them. In the encounter, the player threw a toy (iffy ruling IMHO - action or interaction to throw such an object?) at the blades and cast Command. Creature failed the WIS save. Object succeeded passing through the blades. Creature failed to notice the blades. Creature failed to evade the blades. Result: Creature in a blender.
Five chances for it to not work I think was very reasonable to have Command cause a creature to unintentionally and unknowingly harm (kill) itself with what seemed like a reasonable course of action in the moment.
I think similar difficulties should be required to create a Suggestion that would cause a creature to unintentionally and unknowingly harm itself.
IF the scenario has all the right opportunities as the above scenario did and any one thing going wrong would result in failure, I would allow the attempt based on the creativity of the attempt. Given how Suggestion works, I would make it even more difficult than a creative Command.
(I'm still up in the air on the ruling of throwing a toy and how specific single Infernal words can be, but I'll reward certain creativity by allowing an attempt, at least.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Problem with using Infernal for a Command (and Suggestion) is the target must understand what you're saying - which means they need to speak Infernal too.
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