Suggestion

Quote from MarnkusRonberntson >>

I haven't seen anybody talk about this yet, but RAW it seems like someone could cast Suggestion on themself, and... just like instant 100% willpower hack, right?

What does a world look like with real self-hypnosis? Like if a significant amount of its population can hypnotise themselves into full commitment to "the grind," whatever that grind is, with superhuman focus/endurance?

Imagine a town where all the people have a wand of suggestion that has 1 charge that recharges at dawn every day. They wake up, get their wand, suggest to do their job, come home and carry on. 

That's what command is for. 

Quote from faex >>

Could I use this spell to tell someone to approach me on the most direct way, even if a druid casted spike growth on that path? If the target fails the check to see the spikes, it wouldn't obviously do damage to them

 That's what Command is for. 

hey, thats even better! thanks

I don’t know whether the authors wanted to “simplify” the Suggestion spell or whether it was just a rushed description, but either way: this is not a spell you can afford to read at face value. Let me emphasize this clearly: Suggestion is a 2nd-level spell. It is not high-tier mind control. It should never function as a “do whatever I say, no questions asked” button.

DMs and players alike: just because WotC wrote something doesn’t mean you have to run it literally as written in your own campaign. Use logic. Use common sense.

“Harmful” should not mean “causes physical damage.” Harm can mean anything that clearly works against the target’s interests—financial loss, harming their goals, damaging their reputation, threatening their job, emotional distress, etc. And not all harm is equal. This spell needs degrees of harmfulness, not a binary “harmful/not harmful” label.

For example:

• Casting the spell on an innkeeper and saying: “Step outside the inn for an hour.”

• Casting it on a royal guard and saying: “Leave the treasury hall for an hour.”

Both technically avoid physical damage, but the consequences for the target are completely different. One is mildly inconvenient. The other is a catastrophic dereliction of duty.

A DM should absolutely reflect this difference - either by giving the target advantage, a flat bonus to the saving throw, or by ruling the suggestion outright unreasonable based on the level of harm involved. Suggestion should only work when the order is believable, safe, and fits within what the target could realistically be coaxed into doing.

Treat the spell with nuance, not as a low-level mind control exploit.

As a result, "Breathe out fully and stop breathing until I say so" is a legal suggestion

"must sound achievable"

Holding your breath until you die doesn't sound achievable

Quote from Serbiansword >>

I don’t know whether the authors wanted to “simplify” the Suggestion spell or whether it was just a rushed description, but either way: this is not a spell you can afford to read at face value. Let me emphasize this clearly: Suggestion is a 2nd-level spell. It is not high-tier mind control. It should never function as a “do whatever I say, no questions asked” button.

DMs and players alike: just because WotC wrote something doesn’t mean you have to run it literally as written in your own campaign. Use logic. Use common sense.

“Harmful” should not mean “causes physical damage.” Harm can mean anything that clearly works against the target’s interests—financial loss, harming their goals, damaging their reputation, threatening their job, emotional distress, etc. And not all harm is equal. This spell needs degrees of harmfulness, not a binary “harmful/not harmful” label.

For example:

• Casting the spell on an innkeeper and saying: “Step outside the inn for an hour.”

• Casting it on a royal guard and saying: “Leave the treasury hall for an hour.”

Both technically avoid physical damage, but the consequences for the target are completely different. One is mildly inconvenient. The other is a catastrophic dereliction of duty.

A DM should absolutely reflect this difference - either by giving the target advantage, a flat bonus to the saving throw, or by ruling the suggestion outright unreasonable based on the level of harm involved. Suggestion should only work when the order is believable, safe, and fits within what the target could realistically be coaxed into doing.

Treat the spell with nuance, not as a low-level mind control exploit.

Considering this line in the spell description
"“Fetch the key to the cult’s treasure vault, and give the key to me.” Or you could say, “Stop fighting, leave this library peacefully, and don’t return.”"
Both of your examples sound entirely within the intent of this spell. And... this spell *is* low level mind control. That's literally the point of this spell. Modify it if you want, but it's very clear the intent is to be mind control to do anything short of attacking one of its friends or itself. You can say its over powered, but I don't think you can argue this isn't the intent of the spell. Also, if the target could be convinced to do it without magic... what's the point? just ask it without magic.

Also, the spell doesn't say "harmful" it says "deals damage".

As other people have pointed out, one of the RAW uses of this spell is to just walk up to someone and say "give me all your stuff", and if they fail the saving throw they HAVE to do it. That seems way beyond what was intended, that sort of brute-force mind control should probably be reserved for Dominate Person. The old limitation of "it has to sound reasonable" makes it a lot more nuanced, but it still allows you to do pretty powerful stuff because just because something sounds reasonable doesn't mean it is reasonable.

With the old spell you can't just walk up to a king and say "give me your entire kingdom" because that sounds completely insane, but you could say "I'm a pretty upstanding person, maybe you should make me heir to the throne", which sounds reasonable but is completely stupid if you think about it for more then a second, and because of that it's probably beyond the realm of non-magical persuasion. I'd rather have my players come up with creative solutions then just give them an entire kingdom basically for free.

Also is it just me or has anyone else noticed that in the 2024 stuff WOTC doesn't seem to be putting much thought into things that aren't directly related to combat?

Quote from xXloorpik_slayerXx >>

As other people have pointed out, one of the RAW uses of this spell is to just walk up to someone and say "give me all your stuff", and if they fail the saving throw they HAVE to do it. That seems way beyond what was intended, that sort of brute-force mind control should probably be reserved for Dominate Person.

That is basically the example in the spell text. *go get the key to the treasure vault and give it to me* is basically give me all your stuff, and everyone else's stuff too. Given that it's in the spell text, I'd say that's exactly what was intended.

Like I said, you can disagree about if it should be that powerful, but I don't really see how you could say it's not intended given the examples.

And yeah, this set of rules seems a little phoned in, especially the weird obsession with making everything a saving throw. I never played before 5e, but saw some videos of a guy showing some of the old dnd content and characters, and there are literally pages of information about the characters and their histories and motivations. I realize not everyone would enjoy having to read that, but maybe wotc could have done a complete version of something then a tldr of the vital stats.

Quote from occoms_chainsaw >>

Quote from xXloorpik_slayerXx >>

As other people have pointed out, one of the RAW uses of this spell is to just walk up to someone and say "give me all your stuff", and if they fail the saving throw they HAVE to do it. That seems way beyond what was intended, that sort of brute-force mind control should probably be reserved for Dominate Person.

 

That is basically the example in the spell text. *go get the key to the treasure vault and give it to me* is basically give me all your stuff, and everyone else's stuff too. Given that it's in the spell text, I'd say that's exactly what was intended.

 

Like I said, you can disagree about if it should be that powerful, but I don't really see how you could say it's not intended given the examples.

 

And yeah, this set of rules seems a little phoned in, especially the weird obsession with making everything a saving throw. I never played before 5e, but saw some videos of a guy showing some of the old dnd content and characters, and there are literally pages of information about the characters and their histories and motivations. I realize not everyone would enjoy having to read that, but maybe wotc could have done a complete version of something then a tldr of the vital stats.

 To me “Fetch one key” seems pretty different from “give me everything you own, including your house and all your food”. Sure it presumably represents a lot of wealth, but it won’t completely ruin you. Plus the key thing is something that could be done normally with a few Stealth checks and Sleight of Hand checks, so it’s basically speeding up something that can be done mundanely. It would take a pretty genius plan to steal someone’s entire estate. 

I don’t even think that’s the most game breaking thing you could do, since it just occurred to me that you could sidestep an ENTIRE CAMPAIGN by just telling the BBEG “stop all your evil plans and walk yourself to jail”. There. Campaign done. I’ve noticed WOTC has been trying to remove stuff that’s hard to define clearly, and this is not the only time they’ve done that poorly.

Also maybe for tasks lasting longer than an hour, the target should be able to repeat the saving throw each hour? I know that wasn’t in the old version either, but honestly it probably should be.

aZSqw

I have a question about how this interacts with other spells. Let us say you used Suggestion to have someone “ sit quietly without casting spells or making attacks for eight hours“. Normally the charmed condition would end the moment someone from your party, hit them with a Parthian shot, even if it was clear that they were leaving and wouldn’t do it again. The moment the charmed condition left them. The spell effects would too.

my question is if another spell like geas, kept them charmed after they received damage, could the effects of suggestion last the full duration? they would still be charmed and it sounds as though ending the charmed condition is what ends the spell effects. conversely, could the wording of this spell be interpreted as ending the charmed condition even when another spell such as geez would otherwise keep it going?

Quote from Dracoian_mage >>

I have a question about how this interacts with other spells. Let us say you used Suggestion to have someone “ sit quietly without casting spells or making attacks for eight hours“. Normally the charmed condition would end the moment someone from your party, hit them with a Parthian shot, even if it was clear that they were leaving and wouldn’t do it again. The moment the charmed condition left them. The spell effects would too.

my question is if another spell like geas, kept them charmed after they received damage, could the effects of suggestion last the full duration? they would still be charmed and it sounds as though ending the charmed condition is what ends the spell effects. conversely, could the wording of this spell be interpreted as ending the charmed condition even when another spell such as geez would otherwise keep it going?

It's possible for a creature to have more than one instance of the Charmed condition at the same time, but they don't interact with each other. This spell ends if its own Charmed condition ends; it doesn't matter what other instance of the Charmed condition might or might not be on the same creature at the same time.

Quote from Serbiansword >>

I don’t know whether the authors wanted to “simplify” the Suggestion spell or whether it was just a rushed description, but either way: this is not a spell you can afford to read at face value. Let me emphasize this clearly: Suggestion is a 2nd-level spell. It is not high-tier mind control. It should never function as a “do whatever I say, no questions asked” button.

DMs and players alike: just because WotC wrote something doesn’t mean you have to run it literally as written in your own campaign. Use logic. Use common sense.

“Harmful” should not mean “causes physical damage.” Harm can mean anything that clearly works against the target’s interests—financial loss, harming their goals, damaging their reputation, threatening their job, emotional distress, etc. And not all harm is equal. This spell needs degrees of harmfulness, not a binary “harmful/not harmful” label.

For example:

• Casting the spell on an innkeeper and saying: “Step outside the inn for an hour.”

• Casting it on a royal guard and saying: “Leave the treasury hall for an hour.”

Both technically avoid physical damage, but the consequences for the target are completely different. One is mildly inconvenient. The other is a catastrophic dereliction of duty.

A DM should absolutely reflect this difference - either by giving the target advantage, a flat bonus to the saving throw, or by ruling the suggestion outright unreasonable based on the level of harm involved. Suggestion should only work when the order is believable, safe, and fits within what the target could realistically be coaxed into doing.

Treat the spell with nuance, not as a low-level mind control exploit.

I have to agree with this view point on this spell

As it has the very real potential to be a story killer, because it isn’t a low level mind control spell, as RAW, it’s a very high level mind control spell with a very low cost.

And I think viewing, “Deals Damage” in a different light is much better, such as doing “Harm” as asking someone to swim out into the sea for an hour and dive as far as you can go, might not leave enough time to safely resurface. Which would bring in the suffocation rules and the character will likely die.

While it’s achievable and does not cause “damage” it can and likely will result in death, which certainly is harmful, and goes against the spirit of what this should be about.

And I agree that, there are degrees of harm, as not everything is a battle moment, there are and should be harmful social encounters, that should be factored into this spell too.

and DM should explore a less back and white approach to this spell in my opinion.

Having said that, making your suggestions seem more reasonable as the legacy spell “suggests” pun intended, and using one of the examples given in this post.

Instead of saying “Leave the Treasury hall for an hour” you might suggest “Go take a leak at the closest prevy and avoid peeing yourself at your post” (15 words)

This would give the players a chance to achieve there goal, but put a degree of time pressure on them to do so, which adds to the story excitement.

I’m often left, when thinking about this spell, that it was put together by folk who only really saw D&D as a bunch of bots going into a dungeon battling monster after monster and any social stuff is just Meh, no real added value. And in a modern storytelling game, that not be a good view point to have.

but hey just my thoughts on this spell, play your games the way you love and you can’t really go wrong, just make sure your players understand your view point on the matter(s)