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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6825713" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, I'm on the side of the target can choose not to cooperate.  If they do so, they take the penalty.  Thus, you can't really make effective use of this as a combat spell.Additionally, as I would rule on it, the geas must be worded as a goal to strive to accomplish, not as a suggestion of what to do.So a geas that said, "Cooperate with me to try to rescue the princess", would fail on two grounds.  First, that's a suggestion not a quest, and secondly as soon as the target cooperated even once the goal of the quest would be completed.  So for example, if the target said, "She's being held in the topmost tower", he's now completed the quest because the explicit goal here is only to "cooperate with me", which is fulfilled as soon as he does it.   On the other hand, "Rescue the princess" would be a legitimate quest for the target of a geas, which would only be fulfilled when the princess was rescued (no wiggling around it), but certainly would not preclude the target killing the caster and then taking the princess back to her father for the reward himself rather than seeing the PC's claim the reward.A much better quest to achieve the desired result would be, "Serve me as a slave for one year."  However, since I'm on the side of "you may choose not to cooperate if you are willing to bear the consequences", again this is not as useful as the player may want it to be.  One thing geas certainly is not is Dominate Person with no saving throw.Likewise, to cite the vulgar example, you could geas a minion with the quest, "'Perform fellatio on your master'", and he would be under the geas to do so until he succeeded, but you couldn't with such a quest compel a minion via a geas to chase his master around the battlefield rather than for example buying candies and flowers and offering candlight dinners or trying to win his master's favor by killing those annoying heroes.  Geas as I read it is therefore a subtle spell used to avenge yourself on someone you don't believe can hurt you, to further blackmail someone, or to trick a person into obeying you by giving him a task which seems to them less onerous in its consequences than bearing the consequences of resisting your will.</blockquote>

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