D&D 5E Casting Tasha's Mind Whip on enemy who is under Crown of Madness

[ECMO3]

When using Crown of Madness, you use your action to make an enemy use his action to attack someone. This is problematic because said charmed creature can move on his own away from his allies thereby eliminating future attacks.

What of you used a bonus action to cast Tasha's Mind Whip on him? Now he can only use one of an action, bonus or move. If you then use your action to make him attack then he uses his action for this and can't.

Am I understanding this correctly?

 

[ninjayeti]

Mind Whip says if the target fails its save "it must choose whether it gets a move, an action, or a bonus action; it gets only one of the three." Based on this language the target could choose to keep its move, meaning it would negate the effect of Crown of Madness since then it wouldn't have an action to attack with.

Also Mind Whip is not a bonus action spell; even if it was you can't cast two leveled spells on the same turn (PHB. 202). So you would essentially need two casters to make this trick work anyway.

 

[ECMO3]

Also Mind Whip is not a bonus action spell; even if it was you can't cast two leveled spells on the same turn (PHB. 202). So you would essentially need two casters to make this trick work anyway.

Thanks, COM also says "The charmed target must use its action before moving " So one spell says he can choose to use an action, move or bonus and another says he must use an action, so I could argue can't choose something else. I will ask my DM since I think this is up to interpretation.

The character I am doing this with is an Order Cleric-Enchantment Wizard multiclass. He can cast 5 enchantments a day as a bonus action and both Crown of Madness and TMW are enchantments,. He can also quicken another spell (any spell) once a day because he also has the metamagic adept feat. It would not be two castings in one turn, because the spells would be cast on separate turns. I know I can't cast the spells on the same turn, I would use the action to make an enemy attack the same turn as the TMW spell.

As far as action economy, the way I would do this is cast COM as a Bonus action turn 1 and use my action to ready action to use hypnotic Gaze if he tries to move away. So he would do the COM attack the first turn IAW the spell and if he tried to move after it he would immediately save or have a speed dropped to 0. Then on my turn I would use my action command him to attack again (which would break hypnotic gaze) and cast TMW as a bonus action.

I can cast both the spells as bonus actions, the problem is "commanding the attack" after the first round is not a spell and needs to be an action. Hypnotic Gaze also needs to be an action because it too is not a spell. I could do it differently using hypnotic gaze on my turn along with COM, since COM does not damage him, they would not interfere with each other until the next turn. But I would lose his first attack if I did this, because he would be incapacitated from Hypnotic Gaze.

turn 1: cast COM as a BA, ready HG
BBEG turn: COM attack, use HG if he tries to leave
turn 2: direct BBEG to attack as action, TMW as bonus action

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Either ruling is correct, depending on which spell description you prioritise. DM's call.

How to make the call? I can think of two ways:

1) If the affected character has a target in melee range they must attack, otherwise they can choose another option;

2) Higher level spell wins.