D&D 5E Does the caster know if a spell target makes their save?

[FrogReaver]

I do kinda like the interpretation where you don't know if enchantment spells take hold, because it opens the possibility of acting like you are under the caster's control, which sounds like it could be fun when it favors the players.

It's easy enough to create an enemy with a spell that doesn't require concentration to control people. As long as their isn't concentration then players can try to fool the enchanter.

 

[5ekyu]

Imo its either ask for official ruling or make it up. If the former then thread is useless. If latter its all choice.
I ask myself, which makes game better? If I go with "does not know" we have a lot of secret roll, we have a lot of case by case questions, we have a lot of insight checks etc and a lot of play time just wasted trying to figure out if spells worked or not and orcus knows how many rules issues. Is that going to overall make most conflicts more fun or make more conflicts slower? Is it worth this for a few mental mystery scenes? Consider how many spells are changed if you are attacked or damaged by allies and add in the not knowing if spell works?

So I come down to lot more grief than gain.

So I will continue to say "you know" your succeed or fail unless specific notes to contrary in specific spell or item.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Warmaster Horus]

A matter of DM discretion. I allow it because otherwise it starts a road where I conceal other most-likely-self-evident information about core abilities from other players. Do fighters really know how many HP they've inflicted? Do the players really get to know what their initiative is? etc...

 

[Fanaelialae]

Personally, I rule that a caster knows if the spell works. Otherwise you're favoring blasters (who will often be able to see the results of their spell) over more subtle casters, IMO.

Suggestion only requires verbal and material components. No somatic gestures are required. A spell casting focus gets rid of having to pull out the components. If the Verbal part of the spell really gives it away then as you mentioned subtle spell would solve that.

Personally I see the verbal component of this spell being more like the jedi mind trick in star wars. Nothing really more than an assertive phrase consisting of what you want the NPC to do.

Rule as you see fit, as always.

However, Crawford has this to say about suggestion: "Verbal components are mystic words (PH, 203). The spell's suggestion is a separate, intelligible utterance."
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/10/12/suggestion-spell-component/

 

[Zippee]

A matter of DM discretion. I allow it because otherwise it starts a road where I conceal other most-likely-self-evident information about core abilities from other players. Do fighters really know how many HP they've inflicted? Do the players really get to know what their initiative is? etc...

I see those as slighty but significantly different to the point under discussion.

Do players know how much damage they inflict - yes because rolling dice is important and I'm not taking that from them. And it's their character doing it.
Do players know what their initiative is - yes because again it's their roll and rolling is fun.
Do players know if they have saved against a spell - yes because it's their character that is affected.

Against that they also don't necessarily know how much that damage inflicted means to the thing they're hitting, likewise they don't necessarily know the initiative of their enemies and nor should they always know if an enemy made it's saving throw. They may get to know these things, or be able to gage them from experience or whatnot but it's not a given.

As for Concentration that's a judgement call. Personally I see it as concentrating to keep a spell in place - whether a target shrugged the effect off is immaterial to that. One is something Character A does, the other is something Character B does, I see no link between them [unless the specific spell would create one obviously] as the saving throw is independent of the spellcasting. Failure or success on the saving throw affects the creature who made the roll not the creature that cast the spell.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I see those as slighty but significantly different to the point under discussion.

Do players know how much damage they inflict - yes because rolling dice is important and I'm not taking that from them. And it's their character doing it.
Do players know what their initiative is - yes because again it's their roll and rolling is fun.
Do players know if they have saved against a spell - yes because it's their character that is affected.

Against that they also don't necessarily know how much that damage inflicted means to the thing they're hitting, likewise they don't necessarily know the initiative of their enemies and nor should they always know if an enemy made it's saving throw. They may get to know these things, or be able to gage them from experience or whatnot but it's not a given.

As for Concentration that's a judgement call. Personally I see it as concentrating to keep a spell in place - whether a target shrugged the effect off is immaterial to that. One is something Character A does, the other is something Character B does, I see no link between them [unless the specific spell would create one obviously] as the saving throw is independent of the spellcasting. Failure or success on the saving throw affects the creature who made the roll not the creature that cast the spell.

So you're concealing the effects of a limited character resource because ... why? Let magic be magic and give casters the benefit of the doubt that they indeed have some insight on their trade. There may be cases where circumstances would make this hard to do or effectively concealed, but by and large not much is served, other than player frustration, by playing coy with spell effects. My $0.02.

 

[Zippee]

So you're concealing the effects of a limited character resource because ... why? Let magic be magic and give casters the benefit of the doubt that they indeed have some insight on their trade. There may be cases where circumstances would make this hard to do or effectively concealed, but by and large not much is served, other than player frustration, by playing coy with spell effects. My $0.02.

It's not playing coy, nor is it concealing the effects of a spell, nor is it denying a spellcaster insight. A save is something inherent to the creature making the save not the event provoking it. If there's an obvious and clear indication of pass/fail then sure that's obvious and clear but if it's not clear then it's not clear.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not playing coy, nor is it concealing the effects of a spell, nor is it denying a spellcaster insight. A save is something inherent to the creature making the save not the event provoking it. If there's an obvious and clear indication of pass/fail then sure that's obvious and clear but if it's not clear then it's not clear.

Concentration is inherent to the caster that casts a spell. Concentrating on a failed spell is something the rules never fathomed would come up and something no DM does in practice as evidenced by not asking for concentration checks from players that cast a spell the enemy saves against and then the player later takes damage.

Lets call this what it is. A rules lawyering attempt by a DM to nerf the suggestion spell because he doesn't like it

 

[Tormyr]

I know the clarifications about knowing whether you were yourself affected by a spell, but I can't find information on whether the caster of a spell knows if the target makes their save or not.

The specific situation that brought this up was a suggestion spell where it wouldn't be obvious to the caster whether or not the target had been affected. I ruled that the caster knows (because it was a PC and I temporarily rule in PC favor when in doubt), but I'm not at all sure that is correct.

Zone of truth specifically says that the caster knows, which implies that the caster doesn't normally know.

Has there been a clarification that I'm unaware of?

Highly technical answer: It depends, and it's the DM's call.

What I do: Most spells have some means of being obvious as to whether the target made a saving throw. Damage is "less", the target dives out of the way, the target is not whisked to another plane of existence, concentration is not in effect, etc.

suggestion is one of few spells where the effect may not be obvious. I usually roll out in the open, but one time a PC used suggestion against a war cleric they had just knocked out after a very difficult fight (players were starting to chant, "TPK, TPK!"). They woke him up and used suggestion to have him get them into the neighboring cult so they could assassinate the leader. This time I hid my roll and rolled a natural 20. He agreed with their plan and succeeded against insight checks to see if anything was going on. He led them through the enemy encampment, and when he felt he could escape he yelled that the party were intruders who needed to be killed. The party survived and shot the cleric from across a gorge as he was escaping. He fell into the shallow gorge and took a death saving throw failure but rolled a natural 20 on his next death saving throw and got back up. The party was furious, started spending their resources to hit him, and (some) even jumped into the gorge to make sure he died this time. It was vastly satisfying to pull the players in like that.

tl;dr
suggestion is, in my opinoin, one of the very few spells where there is no RAW/RAI indication of whether it worked. A Wisdom (Insight) check can fix that, but sometimes the story is better served by the party not knowing.

 

[Zippee]

Concentration is inherent to the caster that casts a spell. Concentrating on a failed spell is something the rules never fathomed would come up and something no DM does in practice as evidenced by not asking for concentration checks from players that cast a spell the enemy saves against and then the player later takes damage.

Lets call this what it is. A rules lawyering attempt by a DM to nerf the suggestion spell because he doesn't like it

I'd rather call it an opportunity to generate interesting plot twists.