Hi EN World,
I'd like to discuss effective/creative ideas for the Suggestion spell?
Also can this sentence work on an enemy that was cast a Suggestion spell
"Betray and kill your allies" ?
I'm afraid I don't have the brain for presenting creative uses of it at this moment, but I can definitely say that sentence doesn't look like it would work
in most cases. From the description of Suggestion, emphasis added:
PHB pg. 279 said:
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.
Thus, we can clearly see two important criteria for the Suggestion to work:
1. The phrasing (but not necessarily the effect) of the action must
sound reasonable to the target--not just to the caster.
2. The action itself cannot be
obviously harmful to the target.
"Betray and kill your allies" is rather baldly unreasonable. They're my allies! My friends! Why on
earth would I want to betray and kill them?! So that specific wording can't fly. Similarly, killing your allies...when people are
currently running at you with sharp objects, battle cries, and spellcasting...sounds like a pretty obviously harmful action to take. Given that this spell only allows a single save, and the target
must carry out the suggestion as long as the duration continues, it seems fairly clear to me that we should take a broad interpretation of what counts as "obviously harmful."
This is not to say that I think a suggestion like this would
never work. For example, let's say you know your main enemy (a group of humans) has hired some dragonborn mercenaries to help them. Your advanced scout reports back to you that the humans have been treating the mercenaries like crap, despite the fact that they're well-trained and effective and have not been properly paid recently. When battle finally breaks out, your party gets lucky and manages to off the head of the human group, and hasn't actually killed any of the dragonborn yet.
Then, you, the Wizard, cast Suggestion on the dragonborn commander: "
These humans have dishonored you and failed to uphold their contract: leaving them to their fate is *justice,* not betrayal." And she fails her save.
"Alright you soft-scales, we've had enough of this *crap*--the deal's off, and we're outta here."
It's certainly a type of betrayal, and it might require killing former "allies" to get out. However, it's not obviously harmful (in fact, it appears to be straightforwardly
helpful) and it's phrased to appeal to perhaps-stereotypical dragonborn social values: justice, honor, pragmatism.