You place a magical command on a creature that you can see within range, forcing it to carry out some service or refrain from some action or course of activity as you decide. If the creature can understand you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become charmed by you for the duration. While the creature is charmed by you, it takes 5d10 psychic damage each time it acts in a manner directly counter to your instructions, but no more than once each day. A creature that can't understand you is unaffected by the spell.
You can issue any command you choose, short of an activity that would result in certain death. Should you issue a suicidal command, the spell ends.
You can end the spell early by using an action to dismiss it. A remove curse, greater restoration, or wish spell also ends it.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 7th or 8th level, the duration is 1 year. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 9th level, the spell lasts until it is ended by one of the spells mentioned above.
The creature has the charmed condition, which means "the charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature." The creature also takes the psychic damage if they disobey. That is how they are compelled to carry out the request.
I think you are referring to the demise of the recipient, not the caster. I would say that the spell doesn't end if the caster dies.
If you cast Geas on someone, could you cast Geas on the same person the next day to add another command? The spell makes no mention of not being able to repeat the spell on the same target.
Day 1 Command: "Always listen to me when I am speaking."
Now you have a captive audience for 30 days. So when you cast it again, they will be forced to listen for the full minute casting time.
It is not a concentration spell; I would rule that the geas itself is binding, not the will of the caster binding the target to some course of action, so whether the caster was alive, unconscious, dead or undead wouldn’t matter… the instructions hold for the duration of the spell.
It's Irish and is pronounced /geSH/.
No, as stated on pg 205 of the PHB (or D&D Beyond PHB - chapter 10: spellcasting -> Casting a spell -> Combining magical effects)
Thus only the highest level/newest Geas would take effect
Love the idea of this spell, but it really needs to be worded more clearly.
The fact that it says "forcing it to carry out some service" suggests that the target has no choice but to follow a non-suicidal command to the best of its ability, but this seems to contradict the psychic damage which only occurs if the target "acts in a manner directly counter to your instructions" which I would normally take to mean refusing to do it, or actively trying to fail to do it. So on that basis the damage wouldn't occur if the target was trying to fulfil your command but was unable to do so (as it's not acting directly counter to your command, it's just failing in the attempt to fulfil it). The only circumstance I can think of where the damage might occur in this case is if the target is also being affected by a conflicting spell such as a Command to "stop", a very persuasive Bard etc.
This interpretation would make the spell incredibly powerful, as it would not only be a very long-lasting Charm Monster for only one level higher, but also a 30 day Command with no word limit (other than what you can manage in 60 seconds) with the target powerless to resist after the initial save, and with no conditions for the charm effect to end. The only balancing factor seems to be the 1 minute casting time which means you'd need to be with the target for a full minute, but you can potentially get around that with a Glyph of Warding, or Hold Person or something.
There's also the matter of the openness of the command; it can be anything that isn't obviously suicidal, so you could command the target "Do as I tell you", in which case you can give any number of additional commands for the duration, but the downside is that you'd need to issue the commands, or give them a bunch of fallback commands and such. So this gives you a choice between setting a specific command and leaving them to it or an open command and issuing further instructions.
Personally I'm more inclined to swap "forcing" for "strongly compelled" and to interpret the spell in one of two ways:
One other weird thing with the spell is the damage itself; since it doesn't end the charmed condition (nothing does other than ending the spell), the target will have to somehow rationalise your weird requests and what is presumably excruciating pain when they don't do as you asked. I definitely don't think that the relatively low damage gives targets the freedom to just take the damage knowing that it won't kill them, as they don't know that they're charmed or that they've had this spell cast upon them, all they know is that if they don't do as you asked, they suffer terrible pain.
The final weird thing about this spell is that, again, unlike other charm spells the effect doesn't end if you attack; while an obvious attempt to kill the target would trigger the "nothing suicidal" condition and end the spell, everything else seems to be fair game, though I would assume that since the charm doesn't force them to view you as a friend, they are still free to react with fear and try to defend themselves or run away, even if they can't attack you, but they will most likely take the psychic damage at this point if they were ordered to remain where they are and take a beating.
So yeah, I think this is one of those spells where you need to be very clear with your DM what you're hoping to get out of it, and they need to work with you and be clear on what is or isn't a reasonable request for a particular character.
The you can't issue a suicide command put a hard stop on being zero
as complex as the creature is capable of understanding
i disagree on the ruling, the spell still happened even if they don't remember it
By certain death, does it mean in every possible situation, or in the current situation? Like, if I told a creature to stand still, but we were attacking it, would that end the spell?
I used to think this was a DM spell. But looking at Aberrant Mind, they can make REALLY evil use of this as a PC. Brainwash an NPC for and entire year, but no one would even know because you cast it with components and you can even heighten it.
Yes, it would detect magic within 30 ft, and then sense enchantment magic surrounding the creature if you use the action ability
I'd say it depends on the circumstances of the attack.
If it's a not-too-burly teammate punching him in the face, and you successfully cast the spell with the command "stand still and let him hit you?" I'd rule that the spell takes affect, and the target becomes charmed and doesn't want to hurt you. But your persuasiveness in convincing them to actually stay there and not run--since they don't know they'll be psychically punished at first--will still be tested. (Skill check time!)
If he's an unarmored peasant and the teammate is swinging his broadsword at him, yeah, I'd rule the spell fizzles. That would sound like certain death to most people. This would probably also hold true if it was, say, a mob of twelve trying to punch him. It's reasonable for someone to consider that a lethal situation as well.
Googling the possible inspiration for this spell:
geas
pronounced: ɡas
(in Irish folklore) an obligation or prohibition magically imposed on a person.
It would only be subject to the most powerful/most recent of the Geas spells.
The reddit post is whack, it's obviously the Irish word.
Any other DMs feel like this is kinda weaksauce when you look at it closer? Feel like it loses a lot of oomph once you're dealing with targets with over 100hp. Like yeah it's gonna hurt if they tell everyone all your top secret plans after you place them under a geas not to, but someone noble enough definitely would just eat the damage - ONCE PER DAY and then flip you the bird while they go all blabbermouth on ya. Seems like it should either do more damage at higher levels, or do the damage EVERY time they disobey. Loses a bit of oomph if the PCs go to interrogate someone under geas and they DON'T get to die dramatically once they reveal the tiniest tidbit, y'know? lol.
Or maybe there should be a "greater geas" or something...
....where did that spells survey link go... *grumbles*
Probably
My party had a city official die in our presence, so now I have to use disguise self and geas to get us out of this mess, because nobody will believe what really happened, and we will look really guilty otherwise lol I swear we didn't kill him.