ZEITGEIST 5e and Remove Curse, Geas, etc.

[Bercilak]

So, my group is partway through Adventure 3 right now, and have used Speak with Dead to good effect so far. I can keep the mystery alive because of some of the restrictions inherent in the Speak with Dead spell.

However, they also have Remove Curse. They've already tried to use it on Xambria, but I ruled that her situation was somewhat different.

My question is about the magical compulsion on certain NPCs that limits what they can say. I feel like I have to rule that that restriction is not actually the Geas spell, since that is easily removed with Remove Curse.

Any of you DMs have interesting ways to justify why Remove Curse or Dispel Magic won't work on things like that?

--Berc

 

[W'rkncacnter]

book 4 acknowledges lifting the geas as a very real possibility (when talking about lifting lya's - which can get them a LOT of info VERY early). one way to do it could be treating it like dispelling a spell (specifically one of 8th level, since kasvarina does the geases), but with some kind of special cool down (maybe you can only try to counter it once a day or week?).

 

[Bercilak]

book 4 acknowledges lifting the geas as a very real possibility (when talking about lifting lya's - which can get them a LOT of info VERY early). one way to do it could be treating it like dispelling a spell (specifically one of 8th level, since kasvarina does the geases), but with some kind of special cool down (maybe you can only try to counter it once a day or week?).

That's a good idea. Adventure 4 says "if the party works extra hard and manages to break the geas," which seems to imply something more than burn a readily available 3rd level spell.

In Adv. 5, it says that Harkover can't use Remove Curse to remove a geas and says this is because Lee isn't as high of level as Kavsvarina. But that seems like a relic from a version for a different rules set.

 

[RangerWickett]

Yeah, in the edition where we wrote it, you could not dispel a geas unless you were at least as high level as the original caster.

So, um, they can't dispel it, or remove curse it, or anything, until the party's at least 15th level (by which point it doesn't really matter). Yes, it's a fiat, but a wizard did it so the movie can happen.

 

[Roko Joko]

in the edition where we wrote it, you could not dispel a geas unless you were at least as high level as the original caster.

That is illuminating. I got the impression that the campaign would work better if you house-ruled that for divination magic as well. (For 5e, that you need to use a spell slot of the same level or higher.)

 

[hirou]

To be honest, mechanics of the game will break, if you look at them hard enough in any edition, I think. 4e has Absence amulet (from Adventure vault, one of the very first books!), which is better than any and all of Ob anti-divination enchants, and only costs 13k gp. Some things just require a suspension of disbelief to function.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

To be honest, mechanics of the game will break, if you look at them hard enough in any edition, I think. 4e has Absence amulet (from Adventure vault, one of the very first books!), which is better than any and all of Ob anti-divination enchants, and only costs 13k gp. Some things just require a suspension of disbelief to function.

i mean, i can explain why nic wouldn't have wanted to use those - he still wants the ability to scry on ob members himself.

 

[Falkus]

I'd personally say that the Obscurati version is better, since it doesn't require an expensive magic item for each each member, and returns an innocuous result to the scryer. Scrying on somebody and getting nothing back tells you they've got something to hide.