How does Geas work?

[LostSoul]

(pronounced "Gesh", apparently)

A few months back my PC was dealing with an adult red dragon. He was a little too tough for me to take on by my own, and the other PC in the party - a Githyanki - wanted to make friends with him. I thought - as a Chaotic Evil character - that making friends with a Chaotic Evil dragon was probably a bad idea, so I started prepping for an eventual fight.

I was looking at Geas and I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work. Is it the case that the victim of the curse can't avoid taking the prescribed action, or can the victim take any action and take 3d6 damage each day that it doesn't comply?

The latter doesn't seem to make sense to me, but:

the subject takes 3d6 points of damage each day it does not attempt to follow the geas/quest​

...which suggests to me that it can attempt not to follow the Geas. Which makes the spell rather worthless. Lesser Geas doesn't have that same "attempt" clause. It does have a save, but a one-round casting time instead of 10 minutes.

Anyway, I'm confused.

(In the game I ended up tricking the dragon into thinking I was casting Scry - luckily it failed its Spellcraft check, though I was ready for a fight anyway. We used the dragon to kill tons of enemies as well as a "motor" for my ship. Then we killed it - breaking the Geas, but I think a crit + Deep Impact + Power Attack did it in. At any rate, we put it down pretty easily.)

 

[bloodtide]

I think,

Geas, by itself, does not force or compel the target to do anything. The target gets the choice to act and follow the command of the caster or not. But if the command is not followed, then the geas damage kicks in.

So the spell sort of indirectly forces a target to do as the caster says...


I guess you could see Geas as a 'super charm person' effect though....

 

[Vegepygmy]

I was looking at Geas and I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work. Is it the case that the victim of the curse can't avoid taking the prescribed action, or can the victim take any action and take 3d6 damage each day that it doesn't comply?

"This spell functions similarly to lesser geas, except that it affects a creature of any HD and allows no saving throw."

Hmm, okay. So obviously we have to start with lesser geas, which says:

"If the subject is prevented from obeying the lesser geas for 24 hours, it takes a -2 penalty to each of its ability scores. Each day, another -2 penalty accumulates, up to a total of -8. No ability score can be reduced to less than 1 by this effect. The ability score penalties are removed 24 hours after the subject resumes obeying the lesser geas."

Okay, so that's pretty clear: the subject can't choose to disobey the lesser geas, but if it is unable to obey, it gets hurt.

Now let's look at geas again:

"Instead of taking penalties to ability scores (as with lesser geas), the subject takes 3d6 points of damage each day it does not attempt to follow the geas/quest."

So, since geas works like lesser geas except as noted, and the subject cannot choose to disobey a lesser geas, the subject cannot choose to disobey a geas, either. But if the subject is prevented from obeying the geas for 24 hours, it takes 3d6 damage each day instead of taking penalties to its ability scores.