D&D 5E Using COMMAND to break a caster's concentration?

[evgen88]

Old thread, but I read through the whole thing and had to add my 2 cents XD
I think there are a few things to consider.

If the command is confusing to the player it very well could be to ther character
The target isn't obliged to do the action in a way the pleases the caster.
If it's something they could potentially do at all they should try for the round.
Knowing you can't succeed at something does not prevent you from trying.

In the case of sleep, I believe they would lie down and try to sleep. And seeing as one of the ways of ending concentration is to do so voluntarily, you would do so to try to sleep.

Does that make it too powerful? Not really. You could use magic missille to a similar effect, just with a different saving throw with the bonus of also doing damage.
It seems like a smart option for an enemy that would have weaker wisdom than constitution, so lots of them.

Fort the confusing part, I'd rule that smarter enemies would make the best choice for themselves. With the command Dispell for example, why not dispel your Command?

I also thought of a word that actually might work aside from sleep, Befuddle XD
For Meditate I would think it could also backfire, because it had a different meaning in the West at the time Western fantasy settings are based off of, so it could be confusing, or they could just decide the best way to meditate would be to only think about the spell they are concentrating on, or on how to defeat this meddling spell caster.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Hmm... not even a year since the last post before the one above. I'm not sure if that is really worthy of the necro-thread honors...

BTW, welcome to the forum and have a like!

 

[James Gasik]

Command has, in my experience, been abused by DMs a lot over the years. Like an NPC telling my PC to "jump" when we were on ship. So I jumped in place and the DM just said "you know what I mean" and then made my PC jump off the side of the ship. Because apparently jumping in place or to the middle of the ship wasn't jumping. Since I was in armor, he said I sank straight to the bottom like a rock. Fortunately we were in harbor.

This was a public game and for whatever reason this particular DM was a dick to me from the very first game we played before I even had a single turn. But the moral of the story is there's a reason I limit the commands to things similar to those in the list because things can be broadly interpreted by the target to mean many different things.

If command can be anything just command the target to die.

Really, that just means you need to be specific. "Dive", "Swim", or perhaps "Sink" would have worked better, eh?

 

[James Gasik]

Oops, I really need to check dates on posts. I keep adding to dead threads, lol.

 

[Gravenhurst48]

Old thread, but I read through the whole thing and had to add my 2 cents XD
I think there are a few things to consider.

If the command is confusing to the player it very well could be to ther character
The target isn't obliged to do the action in a way the pleases the caster.
If it's something they could potentially do at all they should try for the round.
Knowing you can't succeed at something does not prevent you from trying.

In the case of sleep, I believe they would lie down and try to sleep. And seeing as one of the ways of ending concentration is to do so voluntarily, you would do so to try to sleep.

Does that make it too powerful? Not really. You could use magic missille to a similar effect, just with a different saving throw with the bonus of also doing damage.
It seems like a smart option for an enemy that would have weaker wisdom than constitution, so lots of them.

Fort the confusing part, I'd rule that smarter enemies would make the best choice for themselves. With the command Dispell for example, why not dispel your Command?

I also thought of a word that actually might work aside from sleep, Befuddle XD
For Meditate I would think it could also backfire, because it had a different meaning in the West at the time Western fantasy settings are based off of, so it could be confusing, or they could just decide the best way to meditate would be to only think about the spell they are concentrating on, or on how to defeat this meddling spell caster.

Right because the victim is not actually sleeping, just Commanded to act like sleeping, still aware of their surroundings - less powerful than the Sleep spell, which actually puts the target to sleep who loses awareness of their surroundings - more powerful.

 

[Weiley31]

Wizard is casting Ultima, but fails DC on Command

PC: I want you to River dance.

Wizard begins river dancing and is too focused to concentrate on death spell of mass doom

 

[Weiley31]

Oops, I really need to check dates on posts. I keep adding to dead threads, lol.

Look: either me or you were gonna pull the trigger. So, it was meant to happen regardless of intention.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, until I saw this last page, I hadn't realized that this was necro'd. But, hey, what the heck, interesting question.

For me, I'd rule it that Command could break concentration. Actually, I'd go a step further and argue that virtually any command would break concentration. I have a few reasons for this:

1. The wording of the Command spell says that the target takes the action (whatever that action is) and then immediately ends its turn. While concentration isn't an Action (as the game mechanic), it's still something you have to do. Command doesn't even allow the victim to talk for the round. The victim does the action and ends its turn, full stop. So, the victim does the action, ends its turn, and stops concentrating, because the victim is not allowed to do anything other than fulfill the terms of the Command.

2. From a mechanical standpoint, the cleric is burning an action to end concentration on a target. That's perfectly fine. Whether that action is an attack, or something else, it's not like the cleric is gaining anything here. Had the cleric dropped a Toll the Dead, it would have triggered the concentration check. And that's only a cantrip. Dropping a 1st level spell (when there are many first level spells that will end concentration, like Tasha's Hideous Laughter) that ends concentration isn't breaking anything.

So, yeah, I have zero problems with Command ending concentration. At the very least triggering a concentration check.

 

[seebs]

I wish to point out that the historical objection to "old" threads was mostly "they stop being relevant and things have changed since then", which is true in some contexts but not in this one, so it's fine.

I think my intuitive answer is that there are quite a few commands which I think would reasonably break concentration, but I think a lot of them I'd categorize as "distracted", which is to say, they'd cause concentration checks. I would probably shy away from allowing command to induce incapacitated in and of itself, so I'd be looking at the "distracted by the environment" category, which would imply some kind of constitution save to maintain concentration. So there's a lot of things where I'd probably eyeball a DC for retaining concentration while doing them, tending towards 15 because it feels like you already got a save against command. But note also that the target takes the action on their next turn, not immediately, so their spell is still active until then regardless.

 

[Argyle King]

"Defecate" is a one-word command. I imagine that would make concentrating on a spell difficult.