You suggest a course of activity (limited to a sentence or two) and magically influence a creature you can see within range that can hear and understand you. Creatures that can't be charmed are immune to this effect. The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable. Asking the creature to stab itself, throw itself onto a spear, immolate itself, or do some other obviously harmful act ends the spell.
The target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, it pursues the course of action you described to the best of its ability. The suggested course of action can continue for the entire duration. If the suggested activity can be completed in a shorter time, the spell ends when the subject finishes what it was asked to do.
You can also specify conditions that will trigger a special activity during the duration. For example, you might suggest that a knight give her warhorse to the first beggar she meets. If the condition isn't met before the spell expires, the activity isn't performed.
If you or any of your companions damage the target, the spell ends.
* - (a snake's tongue and either a bit of honeycomb or a drop of sweet oil)
I think this spell could be absolutely hilarious to cast on a Lizardfolk
so in the middle of combat, can you just get someone to stop, stand still and do nothing for 8 hours?
That sounds pretty suicidal to me. I would just make them run away.
Attacking an ally does not sound like a reasonnable course of action at all. Further more, the spell does not allow you to totally take control of a PC like you ruled it. Such a spell exists, it is Dominate person, and is a 5th lvl enchantement spell. The effect you did is very powerful, there was no way that suggestion can do such a powerful thing. You add concentration but no way for the player to get out of it?
Only until the first swing, for example, the orc that recieved the suggestion will attack the other orc, and the spell will end. At this point, the orc that was not affected by the spell will swing back and combat will initiate betweeen them. So it would work
The suggestion spell can manipulate your emotions.
Asking a knight to hand off their favorite horse isn’t reasonable either. Attacking an ally over gold has some potential benefits to you. All in all I hate how the spell is vaguely worded.
Could this make someone walk through a prismatic wall? I think it could but I’m not sure
So this is literally the Jedi Mind Trick?
>Bard: *uses suggestion* "No, this is not like the Jedi Mind Trick...<
Yeah, I think I was wrong, this is nothing like the Jedi Mind Trick...
But honestly, the reason I think this spell is awesome is that, other than every other spell to manipulate others you can cast anywhere near this level, the target is NOT AWARE THAT IS WAS CHARMED after it ends.
I still use this on my Archfey Warlock alot, even though it gains nothing from upcasting, just because this spell beats every other charm spell in a scenario where you do not want to make enemies.
I heard a rumor...
How I see it, the suggestion would still be in effect, since the exception is for when the action would harm the creature that the suggestion is being applied to, so unless killing the other ogre is harmful or irrational to the creature affected, the suggestion is completely vaild.
Ah, yes, the level 4 Changeling Bard in my party is having fun with this spell. Whenever he wants something from one of us, he'll just use this with Unsettling Words to make the DC unbearably high. The only one who can resist usually is the cleric lmao
I have some issues with the wording of this spell, it seems way too powerful for a level 2 spell at least the way i read it.
So my Group wanted to go through a gate protected by a Stormgiant, that was meant to be way too strong for them to fight it. The Giants whole purpose in life was to guard this gate, and he fulfilled this duty for hundreds of years. Until a Wizard with a Level 2 Spellslot came along....
They were supposed to reason with him and find arguments to make him overthink his mission, or at least go on a quest for him to prove that they were worthy.
But then the Wizard just casted Suggestion on him, the Giant rolled a natural 3 and failed and that was it. With a Level 2 Spell....What if they were in front of a King and used the Spell to make him give up his crown?
The way this spell is worded makes it hard for a DM to object to this kind of action, because neither the King nor the Giant were harming themselves in a physical way. Is there anything in here that I don't see or do i just have to find reasons why important social NPCs are immune to charmed or have an absurdly high Wisdom Save?
My problem with this spell is that it puts the whole burden of ruling how it's working on the dm. Is's so vague that everything and nothing seems possible with this.
I had one player cast it and asked one enemy to take off all his armor (would take 1min). At this moment i ruled that it worked. In the aftermath after thinking about it, i would have it fail. Putting down your armor while in combat would never be a reasonable thing to do.
Now i would rule it as if a good friend of you would say to you: "Wouldn't it be greate if you did X".
In some situations you totally would say: "Yeh right dude cool idea let's do it" in others it's "Are you serious? This sounds stupid/dangerous/boring"
Does Suggestion have to be spoken or can it be a sound?
The word "reasonable" is key in this spell, and gives the DM all the necessary leeway to shut down OP uses like this.
If the player could craft the sorts of arguments you mentioned AND seal the deal with Suggestion, good for them. They can keep the giant away for at least 8 hours.
Otherwise, nope.
The word "reasonable" is key in this spell, and gives the DM all the necessary leeway to shut down OP uses like this.
I didn't realize it at first, but the net sentence (about examples of self-harm) is an additional clause that immediately shuts down the spell, NOT necessarily a clarification of the preceding sentence bout reasonableness. Both conditions (reasonable and not self-harming) are needed, I think.
If the player could craft the sorts of arguments you mentioned AND seal the deal with Suggestion, good for them. They can keep the giant away for at least 8 hours.
Otherwise, nope.
You definitely need to speak the suggestion to the target, based on the 1st sentence.
What's uncertain is whether:
a) the verbal component of the spell, which generally is a string of (suspicious) magic words, is replaced by this spoken suggestion OR has to be pronounced separately... but that would appear to make the spell less useful.
b) whether you could beam the suggestion into the target's head with an ability like Great Old One's telepathy, which would be handy for keeping what just happened secret from witnesses.
Crawford has clarified that a verbal component for a spell needs to be spoken aloud and via sounds, not through telepathy. So only that suggested action could potentially be telepathic. Anyway.
While I agree with you that the word "reasonable" is key in this spell, I don't think taking that word out of the context of the rest of the sentence (or the preceding/following ones) is a good idea.
The first thing to point out is that the actual words used in the suggestion only have to "sound reasonable". This, I would argue, is an entirely different requirement than saying "the request has to be reasonable", if that makes sense. Why would anyone waste a spell slot to cause someone to take a course of action that's perfectly reasonable? You could simply do that with a Persuasion check. With that in mind, earlier in the spell where it states that you "magically influence" someone, it stands that the magic itself is what causes the target to perceive the suggestion as reasonable. It follows that the target has to make a Wisdom saving throw to resist the effect of the spell, which would generally imply that a person wouldn't normally perform that course of action.
For example, you're in a tavern with the party, ready to sleep for the night, and you cast Suggestion on the tavernkeep. "Hey friend, my pals and I are dreadfully tired, will you give us the keys to a few rooms for the night?" If he makes the saving throw, the tavernkeep isn't compelled to simply give you the keys without asking questions. Tavernkeep says "Sure, that'll be 5 gold per room." On a failed save, the tavernkeep says "Yeah, sure thing bud." and happily tosses you the keys, even though you haven't paid. This example doesn't sound terribly overpowered, and that's because it's not supposed to be. Where it seems a lot of people start to question it is "can you use this spell to get someone to hurt their friends?" I would say yes, with the following reasoning.
So then it becomes a question of, is the spell overpowered for only being 2nd level? Looking at Dominate Person, as a 5th level spell, I would also say no. Dominate Person gives you complete telepathic control over another creature for 1 minute, and you command them without using your own actions for simple tasks, or use an action to precisely control them. You can also prevent them from taking any actions that you don't want them to. The action economy, as well as the degree of control, are certainly different enough to warrant the difference in spell level from something like Suggestion. With Suggestion you get a single action, that you have no real control over, in terms of how the target actually accomplishes it.
I like your thinking on it. I think the truth allows it to be a good deal more potent than your examples (except the do nothing one, that's pretty strong).
If you read the Sage Advice on it, you should notice the one I saw where JC says the Suggestion only needs to be reasonable at the moment of the ST for it to stick, even if circumstances change.
So as a DM I'd say that if you can really grease the wheels with offered money or w/e on a mercenary individual, you could feasibly get them to fight their allies (though certainly not at maximum efficiency, since they're trying to rationalize what's going on and may need to make compromises with those betrayed allies as they go. It's far from Domination, as you said.
But if it's a die-hard cultist who's given everything to the cause, there's probably nothing you could Suggest that would seem like reasonable grounds for betrayal unless you've already convinced them via Deception that you outrank them in the cult!
In Rise of Tiamat, Yuan-Ti malisons use Suggestion "to tell characters that a fellow party member has been replaced by a yuan-ti spy and should be attacked." I take from this that attacking an ally can be reasonable given additional context.