D&D General How did you deal with Command: "Blaspheme!"?

[Quartz]

A memory surfaced and I thought I'd share. Many, many, moons ago I was in a 1e or 2e AD&D game and one of the players tried the Command: "Blaspheme!" The DM told him to roll for divine intervention, which duly came up but it was the PC that got crisped! No one ever tried it again at that DM's table.

How did you deal with it?

 

[TarionzCousin]

You may be shocked to hear this, but I have never had a player cast "Command: Blaspheme."

 

[Krachek]

Thou shalt not take the name of Lolth in vain

 

[jayoungr]

You may be shocked to hear this, but I have never had a player cast "Command: Blaspheme."

Me either, but I've got a great idea now ...

 

[Morrus]

Never had it happened. That said if it did I’m sure deities know that their servants are acting under magical control, so it’s not a problem.

 

[iserith]

Back in the 1e and 2e days it's was blaspheming just to play.

 

[Superbeast20]

LOL wow that's a spell I had never heard of before. I do want to play something that declares someone excommunicate. Preferably John Wick

 

[pogre]

Never had it happen, but that is pretty cool.

 

[Salthorae]

That’s a fun story.

Personally I wouldn’t of had anything happen. The caster would have been fine and the one who failed their save would have said something blasphemous and moved on with their combat.

I guess if you were in the high temple of X god in a fight it might be different. Don’t know.

What edition are we talking about to the rules are very different for that spell in different ones.

 

[Shiroiken]

The most evil one I've used as a DM is "defecate." Nothing upsets a player more than having their character crap themselves as their turn.

 

[cbwjm]

The most evil one I've used as a DM is "defecate." Nothing upsets a player more than having their character crap themselves as their turn.

Hahahahaha! That's so evil, I'm going to have to do this to my players. I don't think any of them has access to the spell, but the thought of them going up against an evil high priest of a death god, or a haughty even wizard and making the naughty word their pa t's is hilarious.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Never had it happened. That said if it did I’m sure deities know that their servants are acting under magical control, so it’s not a problem.

Yup. This seems like the divine equivalent of a nose tweak. "Ha ha! My guy made your guy say something bad!"

The whole alignment change penalty system falls apart if mental compulsion or even non-magical duress can trigger it, and this isn't much different. Not that some 1e DMs weren't antisocial enough to assign penalties.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Hey, let's change the 3.x "You may select from the following options" to "You might issue a command other than one described here. If you do so, the GM determines how the target behaves" for 5e, because no one ever came up with cheesy commands in 1e!

Sorry. Anyway, the official party line back in the day, IIRC, was that ambiguous commands would fail. Since "Blaspheme!" is innately ambiguous - do you, as a Cleric, mean blaspheme against your own deity? Or against the targets? What if he's an atheist? - it probably does nothing.

 

[77IM]

"Strip."

 

[Lanefan]

...quietly lurks and gathers ideas...





oops, did I just say that out loud?

 

[StormbringerAUS]

If you made a High Priest or even a lesser servant do it in front of other followers it might not be the god the wails on them but the other followers.