Just wanted to double check this. Rules as written, I don't see anything that would allow a party to free someone from a geas spell by killing the caster. Only a "remove curse", "greater restoration" or "wish" spell would do the trick. Correct?
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Rylan - L1 Human Paladin - Barty's "Princes of the Apocalypse"
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I typically rule that revivify or similar magic also works, or rather, the state that requires those spells.
Just a note that the Raise Dead and Resurrection spells specifically do NOT remove curses and similar effects while the level 9 True Resurrection spell does.
"This spell doesn't, however, remove magical diseases, curses, or similar effects; if these aren't first removed prior to casting the spell, they take effect when the creature returns to life."
So I would tend to not allow revivify to remove curses either since level 5 and level 7 spells can't do that - why would a level 3 spell?
P.S. RAW, all revivify does is restore the creature to life.
I typically rule that revivify or similar magic also works, or rather, the state that requires those spells.
Just a note that the Raise Dead and Resurrection spells specifically do NOT remove curses and similar effects while the level 9 True Resurrection spell does.
"This spell doesn't, however, remove magical diseases, curses, or similar effects; if these aren't first removed prior to casting the spell, they take effect when the creature returns to life."
So I would tend to not allow revivify to remove curses either since level 5 and level 7 spells can't do that - why would a level 3 spell?
P.S. RAW, all revivify does is restore the creature to life.
My point was rather that being dead makes them no longer a valid target for geas, potentially breaking it. That said, the fact that the other spells specifically call out that they don't break curses makes that seem less likely.
This is an interesting question and one that could prompt some discussion of Conditions and game states in 5e and how they work.
To make a long story short, I think that the assumption in the OP is correct -- killing the caster of the Geas spell does not seem to end the enchantment / magical command / charm / curse / effect that was placed upon the target by the spell. Mechanically, the target of the spell becomes afflicted with the Charmed condition -- one of the official Conditions defined by the game in Appendix A of the PHB. The Charmed Condition is defined like this:
Charmed
A charmed creature can't attack the charmer or target the charmer with harmful abilities or magical effects.
The charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature.
Interestingly, and perhaps counterintuitively, there is nothing in the definition of the Charmed condition that suggests that this condition ends if the caster is killed. Compare this against another listed Condition, Grappled:
Grappled
. . . The condition ends if the grappler is incapacitated (see the condition) . . .
So, there is precedent that the Condition ends if something happens to the aggressor only if explicitly stated in the definition for that condition. Since there is no similar wording within the definition of the Charmed Condition, that Condition must persist even after the caster is killed.
Next, it has been suggested that a creature who is the victim / target of a Condition such as the Charmed Condition would lose this condition upon dying itself. However, in 5e it appears that just about all Conditions actually persist beyond death -- again in some cases it would be pretty counterintuitive, but there are no rules anywhere that suggest otherwise.
In fact -- something that I find to be pretty bizarre -- there are almost no rules anywhere in the game which specify exactly what happens mechanically as a result of Death. Death is actually NOT a listed Condition in 5e and so it's more of a game state that can affect individual creatures. The only statement that I've been able to find that details what happens when you die is a one-liner buried in Chapter 9 of the PHB which says this:
Unless it results in death, damage isn't permanent.
From this, we can infer that when a creature dies, damage IS permanent. And that's literally it. This is the only mechanical consequence of dying that I could find anywhere in the rules of the game. There are so many weird consequences of this that probably deserve a separate thread, but here are a few:
The "normal" way of dying is that you are reduced to 0 HP which makes you Unconscious and Prone and then fail at least 3 death saving throws: "On your third failure, you die. The successes and failures don't need to be consecutive; keep track of both until you collect three of a kind." Does this even necessarily mean that a dead creature stops making death saving throws? Are we sure that that's what it actually says? The rules explicitly state that a stable creature does not make death saving throws -- the wording regarding a dead creature is a lot less clear at best. Ok, so let's assume that that part works as intended. The only reason such a dead creature seems to have the intended consequence is that it still has the highly restrictive Unconscious condition AND it cannot be healed until life is restored. So, being dead sort of works as intended in that case.
What about instant death by massive damage? Now we have a creature with 0 HP and statements in the rules like this: "you either die outright or fall unconscious" and "If damage reduces you to 0 hit points and fails to kill you, you fall unconscious." It could easily be interpreted that if you suffer instant death by massive damage, you never actually gain the Unconscious Condition. So, being "dead" in that case is just being at 0 HP and unable to be healed. Can you still move around and take actions? What rule in the game actually prevents this? It's weird.
What about dying in situations where you are not reduced to 0 HP? Power Word Kill says this: " If the creature you choose has 100 hit points or fewer, it dies." Ok, so what does this actually mean mechanically? Again, the only thing that I can find is that when you are dead, damage is permanent. So, you cannot be healed. But otherwise, this spell seems to do nothing substantial to the creature. It can still run around and take actions, right? What rule prevents this? Again, it's weird.
Death from 6 Levels of Exhaustion is another weird case. What does this actually mean? You do not necessarily have 0 HP. Your speed is already reduced to 0 from prior exhaustion and now as a consequence of death you can no longer be healed. Ok, so can you cast spells? Again, it's weird.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that we run games like this -- it's just a massive oversight in the rules and we should all just make some assumptions about what it is "supposed" to mean when a creature has suffered from Death. But, I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that it sure would be nice if the game actually defined what happens upon Death and also of asking the question about which assumptions should we make?
Getting all the way back around to the OP and to the suggestion that Conditions are wiped out upon Death -- I think that it's a LOT less obvious that we should make this assumption. It's quite possible that the intention is that all Conditions persist through death. Even less obvious ones such as Frightened or Poisoned are probably supposed to stick with you through Death, mostly because there is no rule regarding Death that says otherwise. So, this would also include the Charmed condition from the Geas spell.
There was also a suggestion that the True Resurrection spell might cure the enchantment / magical command / charm / curse / effect that was placed upon the target by the spell. I'm not so sure. Here is the relevant portion of True Resurrection:
This spell closes all wounds, neutralizes any poison, cures all diseases, and lifts any curses affecting the creature when it died.
Unfortunately, this does not appear to cure the Charmed Condition. The "curse" caused by the Charmed Condition in the Geas spell might be temporarily lifted for an instant, but I believe it would be immediately reinstated. The Geas spell states that "While the creature is Charmed by you, [negative consequences occur]". I could see this interaction between these spells being interpreted differently though so maybe that's open to debate.
This spell closes all wounds, neutralizes any poison, cures all diseases, and lifts any curses affecting the creature when it died.
Unfortunately, this does not appear to cure the Charmed Condition. The "curse" caused by the Charmed Condition in the Geas spell might be temporarily lifted for an instant, but I believe it would be immediately reinstated. The Geas spell states that "While the creature is Charmed by you, [negative consequences occur]". I could see this interaction between these spells being interpreted differently though so maybe that's open to debate.
The Geas spell also states that its effects can be removed by a Remove Curse spell or Greater Restoration.
Remove Curse states:
"At your touch, all curses affecting one creature or object end. If the object is a cursed magic item, its curse remains, but the spell breaks its owner’s attunement to the object so it can be removed or discarded."
On your other comments regarding Death in 5e, 5e usually tries to use natural language meanings. Do dead creatures have movement and take actions? No. Then I would not expect a dead creature in 5e to also do that. In addition, the body of a dead creature is usually considered an object as far as I know. It is no longer a creature though some spells specifically target corpses or a body of a dead creature as a specific type of object that the spell can target.
Well, Remove Curse and Greater Restoration are specifically listed within the Geas spell itself as ways to "end the spell". The manner in which Remove Curse ends curses is less relevant than the fact that Remove Curse simply ends the Geas spell. Indirectly, ending the Geas spell removes the Charmed condition that it caused since the target creature of the spell is Charmed "for the duration". So, while the spell is active it is Charmed but when the spell ends it is no longer Charmed. This then also ends the curse / effect since the negative consequences of the spell occur "while the creature is Charmed". In other words, I'm not convinced that the Remove Curse spell is actually permanently curing the "curse" in this case, instead it is simply ending the spell. Since True Resurrection is not listed as a method of ending the spell I don't think that it will work as intended since the creature will still be Charmed.
the body of a dead creature is usually considered an object as far as I know. It is no longer a creature though some spells specifically target corpses or a body of a dead creature as a specific type of object that the spell can target.
I'm not so sure about this -- maybe someone could quote a rule to support this? Even within the spell we were discussing, True Resurrection, there is this text: "You touch a creature that has been dead for no longer than 200 years and that died for any reason except old age. If the creature's soul is free and willing, the creature is restored to life with all its hit points." This spell seems to assume that a dead creature is a creature that is suffering from some sort of "Death condition" rather than actually being an object that used to be a creature.
On your other comments regarding Death in 5e, 5e usually tries to use natural language meanings. Do dead creatures have movement and take actions? No. Then I would not expect a dead creature in 5e to also do that.
I get what you're saying in that the 5e rules do try to take this approach in many instances but this is simply not a good enough approach for something as fundamental and important to the game as the concept of Death. Really, Death definitely should have been a fully defined Condition within Appendix A. If they really didn't want to do it that way because they didn't want spells and other rules all over the place to have to use phrasing such as "the target creature acquires the Death condition" instead of saying something like "the target creature dies" then at the very least there should have been a detailed sidebar in the PHB somewhere similar to how being Hidden gets the full treatment of what exactly it means mechanically, what can cause it, what can end it and so on.
If you did a search in the core books for how often the words "dies" or "dead" or "death" occur -- these words pop up in the books hundreds and hundreds of times. It's an incredibly important part of the game. It's just shocking to me that it's left almost entirely open ended as to exactly what happens when a creature dies. Sure, maybe we can assume that such a creature is "Incapacitated" or "Unconscious" or something that aligns with our natural language meaning. But what about the less obvious questions like whether or not any or all Conditions are cured by Death? Or should a creature's HP be automatically reduced to 0 even if it died in some unusual way such as from dehydration? It's just really bad for the mechanics of Death to not be fully defined somewhere in the game.
Hopefully staying sort of on-topic, out of curiosity I did some research into how to cure each of the Conditions listed in Appendix A (excluding Prone and Invisible). It seems that it's surprisingly difficult to cure a Condition in 5e beyond just waiting for the effect which caused the Condition to end. Especially if we assume that Death does not cure Conditions. For example, if you were Unconscious due to being reduced to 0 HP then gaining HP cures the Unconscious condition but there is no direct cure for it. Here is a list of spells from the Basic Rules and some (limited, situational spells) and some [general Basic Rules] which can directly cure the various Conditions:
Blinded: ------------------- Lesser Restoration, Mass Heal Charmed: ---------------- (Dispel Evil and Good), Greater Restoration, (Hallow), Power Word Heal Deafened: --------------- Lesser Restoration, Mass Heal Exhaustion: ------------ [Finishing a Long Rest], [Being Raised from the Dead], Greater Restoration Frightened: ------------- (Dispel Evil and Good), (Hallow), Power Word Heal Grappled: ---------------- [Grappler is Incapacitated], [Forced Move out of Reach], Freedom of Movement Incapacitated: -------- (None) Paralyzed: -------------- Lesser Restoration, Power Word Heal Petrified: ---------------- Greater Restoration Poisoned: -------------- Lesser Restoration, Protection from Poison Restrained: ------------ (Speak with Plants) Stunned: ---------------- Power Word Heal Unconscious: -------- (None)
Just wanted to double check this. Rules as written, I don't see anything that would allow a party to free someone from a geas spell by killing the caster. Only a "remove curse", "greater restoration" or "wish" spell would do the trick. Correct?
DM - Classic Adventures Reborn
Rylan - L1 Human Paladin - Barty's "Princes of the Apocalypse"
That is correct.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I typically rule that revivify or similar magic also works, or rather, the state that requires those spells.
Just a note that the Raise Dead and Resurrection spells specifically do NOT remove curses and similar effects while the level 9 True Resurrection spell does.
"This spell doesn't, however, remove magical diseases, curses, or similar effects; if these aren't first removed prior to casting the spell, they take effect when the creature returns to life."
So I would tend to not allow revivify to remove curses either since level 5 and level 7 spells can't do that - why would a level 3 spell?
P.S. RAW, all revivify does is restore the creature to life.
My point was rather that being dead makes them no longer a valid target for geas, potentially breaking it. That said, the fact that the other spells specifically call out that they don't break curses makes that seem less likely.
This is an interesting question and one that could prompt some discussion of Conditions and game states in 5e and how they work.
To make a long story short, I think that the assumption in the OP is correct -- killing the caster of the Geas spell does not seem to end the enchantment / magical command / charm / curse / effect that was placed upon the target by the spell. Mechanically, the target of the spell becomes afflicted with the Charmed condition -- one of the official Conditions defined by the game in Appendix A of the PHB. The Charmed Condition is defined like this:
Interestingly, and perhaps counterintuitively, there is nothing in the definition of the Charmed condition that suggests that this condition ends if the caster is killed. Compare this against another listed Condition, Grappled:
So, there is precedent that the Condition ends if something happens to the aggressor only if explicitly stated in the definition for that condition. Since there is no similar wording within the definition of the Charmed Condition, that Condition must persist even after the caster is killed.
Next, it has been suggested that a creature who is the victim / target of a Condition such as the Charmed Condition would lose this condition upon dying itself. However, in 5e it appears that just about all Conditions actually persist beyond death -- again in some cases it would be pretty counterintuitive, but there are no rules anywhere that suggest otherwise.
In fact -- something that I find to be pretty bizarre -- there are almost no rules anywhere in the game which specify exactly what happens mechanically as a result of Death. Death is actually NOT a listed Condition in 5e and so it's more of a game state that can affect individual creatures. The only statement that I've been able to find that details what happens when you die is a one-liner buried in Chapter 9 of the PHB which says this:
From this, we can infer that when a creature dies, damage IS permanent. And that's literally it. This is the only mechanical consequence of dying that I could find anywhere in the rules of the game. There are so many weird consequences of this that probably deserve a separate thread, but here are a few:
The "normal" way of dying is that you are reduced to 0 HP which makes you Unconscious and Prone and then fail at least 3 death saving throws: "On your third failure, you die. The successes and failures don't need to be consecutive; keep track of both until you collect three of a kind." Does this even necessarily mean that a dead creature stops making death saving throws? Are we sure that that's what it actually says? The rules explicitly state that a stable creature does not make death saving throws -- the wording regarding a dead creature is a lot less clear at best. Ok, so let's assume that that part works as intended. The only reason such a dead creature seems to have the intended consequence is that it still has the highly restrictive Unconscious condition AND it cannot be healed until life is restored. So, being dead sort of works as intended in that case.
What about instant death by massive damage? Now we have a creature with 0 HP and statements in the rules like this: "you either die outright or fall unconscious" and "If damage reduces you to 0 hit points and fails to kill you, you fall unconscious." It could easily be interpreted that if you suffer instant death by massive damage, you never actually gain the Unconscious Condition. So, being "dead" in that case is just being at 0 HP and unable to be healed. Can you still move around and take actions? What rule in the game actually prevents this? It's weird.
What about dying in situations where you are not reduced to 0 HP? Power Word Kill says this: " If the creature you choose has 100 hit points or fewer, it dies." Ok, so what does this actually mean mechanically? Again, the only thing that I can find is that when you are dead, damage is permanent. So, you cannot be healed. But otherwise, this spell seems to do nothing substantial to the creature. It can still run around and take actions, right? What rule prevents this? Again, it's weird.
Death from 6 Levels of Exhaustion is another weird case. What does this actually mean? You do not necessarily have 0 HP. Your speed is already reduced to 0 from prior exhaustion and now as a consequence of death you can no longer be healed. Ok, so can you cast spells? Again, it's weird.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that we run games like this -- it's just a massive oversight in the rules and we should all just make some assumptions about what it is "supposed" to mean when a creature has suffered from Death. But, I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that it sure would be nice if the game actually defined what happens upon Death and also of asking the question about which assumptions should we make?
Getting all the way back around to the OP and to the suggestion that Conditions are wiped out upon Death -- I think that it's a LOT less obvious that we should make this assumption. It's quite possible that the intention is that all Conditions persist through death. Even less obvious ones such as Frightened or Poisoned are probably supposed to stick with you through Death, mostly because there is no rule regarding Death that says otherwise. So, this would also include the Charmed condition from the Geas spell.
There was also a suggestion that the True Resurrection spell might cure the enchantment / magical command / charm / curse / effect that was placed upon the target by the spell. I'm not so sure. Here is the relevant portion of True Resurrection:
Unfortunately, this does not appear to cure the Charmed Condition. The "curse" caused by the Charmed Condition in the Geas spell might be temporarily lifted for an instant, but I believe it would be immediately reinstated. The Geas spell states that "While the creature is Charmed by you, [negative consequences occur]". I could see this interaction between these spells being interpreted differently though so maybe that's open to debate.
The Geas spell also states that its effects can be removed by a Remove Curse spell or Greater Restoration.
Remove Curse states:
"At your touch, all curses affecting one creature or object end. If the object is a cursed magic item, its curse remains, but the spell breaks its owner’s attunement to the object so it can be removed or discarded."
On your other comments regarding Death in 5e, 5e usually tries to use natural language meanings. Do dead creatures have movement and take actions? No. Then I would not expect a dead creature in 5e to also do that. In addition, the body of a dead creature is usually considered an object as far as I know. It is no longer a creature though some spells specifically target corpses or a body of a dead creature as a specific type of object that the spell can target.
Well, Remove Curse and Greater Restoration are specifically listed within the Geas spell itself as ways to "end the spell". The manner in which Remove Curse ends curses is less relevant than the fact that Remove Curse simply ends the Geas spell. Indirectly, ending the Geas spell removes the Charmed condition that it caused since the target creature of the spell is Charmed "for the duration". So, while the spell is active it is Charmed but when the spell ends it is no longer Charmed. This then also ends the curse / effect since the negative consequences of the spell occur "while the creature is Charmed". In other words, I'm not convinced that the Remove Curse spell is actually permanently curing the "curse" in this case, instead it is simply ending the spell. Since True Resurrection is not listed as a method of ending the spell I don't think that it will work as intended since the creature will still be Charmed.
I'm not so sure about this -- maybe someone could quote a rule to support this? Even within the spell we were discussing, True Resurrection, there is this text: "You touch a creature that has been dead for no longer than 200 years and that died for any reason except old age. If the creature's soul is free and willing, the creature is restored to life with all its hit points." This spell seems to assume that a dead creature is a creature that is suffering from some sort of "Death condition" rather than actually being an object that used to be a creature.
I get what you're saying in that the 5e rules do try to take this approach in many instances but this is simply not a good enough approach for something as fundamental and important to the game as the concept of Death. Really, Death definitely should have been a fully defined Condition within Appendix A. If they really didn't want to do it that way because they didn't want spells and other rules all over the place to have to use phrasing such as "the target creature acquires the Death condition" instead of saying something like "the target creature dies" then at the very least there should have been a detailed sidebar in the PHB somewhere similar to how being Hidden gets the full treatment of what exactly it means mechanically, what can cause it, what can end it and so on.
If you did a search in the core books for how often the words "dies" or "dead" or "death" occur -- these words pop up in the books hundreds and hundreds of times. It's an incredibly important part of the game. It's just shocking to me that it's left almost entirely open ended as to exactly what happens when a creature dies. Sure, maybe we can assume that such a creature is "Incapacitated" or "Unconscious" or something that aligns with our natural language meaning. But what about the less obvious questions like whether or not any or all Conditions are cured by Death? Or should a creature's HP be automatically reduced to 0 even if it died in some unusual way such as from dehydration? It's just really bad for the mechanics of Death to not be fully defined somewhere in the game.
Hey! I just came across another clear consequence of Death in the rules:
Hopefully staying sort of on-topic, out of curiosity I did some research into how to cure each of the Conditions listed in Appendix A (excluding Prone and Invisible). It seems that it's surprisingly difficult to cure a Condition in 5e beyond just waiting for the effect which caused the Condition to end. Especially if we assume that Death does not cure Conditions. For example, if you were Unconscious due to being reduced to 0 HP then gaining HP cures the Unconscious condition but there is no direct cure for it. Here is a list of spells from the Basic Rules and some (limited, situational spells) and some [general Basic Rules] which can directly cure the various Conditions:
Blinded: ------------------- Lesser Restoration, Mass Heal
Charmed: ---------------- (Dispel Evil and Good), Greater Restoration, (Hallow), Power Word Heal
Deafened: --------------- Lesser Restoration, Mass Heal
Exhaustion: ------------ [Finishing a Long Rest], [Being Raised from the Dead], Greater Restoration
Frightened: ------------- (Dispel Evil and Good), (Hallow), Power Word Heal
Grappled: ---------------- [Grappler is Incapacitated], [Forced Move out of Reach], Freedom of Movement
Incapacitated: -------- (None)
Paralyzed: -------------- Lesser Restoration, Power Word Heal
Petrified: ---------------- Greater Restoration
Poisoned: -------------- Lesser Restoration, Protection from Poison
Restrained: ------------ (Speak with Plants)
Stunned: ---------------- Power Word Heal
Unconscious: -------- (None)
I just realized that this was never brought up in this thread -- I'm pretty sure that Dispel Magic can also free someone from a Geas spell.