Ruling on Suggestion (longish)

[EOL]

I would also point out, dominate person, a higher level spell than suggestion, allows an extra save if you force the victim to attack their friends. Lastly, this seems like a clever tactic now, and you were probably looking for an out to avoid killing the whole party, but if it works once, it has to work everytime. Would you want your PC's opening up every fight with "Kill all your allies!" I know I wouldn't, and I don't think the spell was intended to be used this way.

I had already compared suggestion and dominate person, but your post made me look one more time, and I noticed one other HUGE difference. The target of suggestion is "any living creature" while the target of Dominate Person is "one humanoid of medium size or smaller" you have to get all the way to Dominate Monster, which is 9th level! before you get the same targeting options. Actually Dominate Monster says "one creature" rather than "one living creature" but undead are completely immune so the point is moot.

I'm feeling pretty good about that call right about now.

 

[Galfridus]

Still as I said earlier if I had to do it over again... No, sorry I must be strong!! The DM is GOD! I am infallible! I would change nothing! May the bloodied remains of the characters be washed away with the sewage never to be remembered!

I can't argue with this.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Suggestions for suggestions

To make a guard put down his weapon: "Your hands are cold." The guard drops the weapon.

To make the lord of the castle see a ghost: "At midnight, it is said that the ghost of Lady G appears in the South Tower." At midnight, if the lord is there, he thinks he sees a ghost. It could actually be the party rogue sneaking around, or nothing. He could just stare hard while you stab him in the back, steal his gold, etc.

"Leave this room and forget you ever saw this book." A 2e suggestion placed in a spellbook.

"Why don't you all leave?" From a Monte Cook adventure. (Bruce added "by your most potent means of travel.")

Does adding "Why don't you..." to the beginning of a suggestion make it reasonable? Even if they get a +4 bonus to their Will save?

"He means to kill/harm/etc you." Kill him, get away from him, plot against him, etc. Whatever you would do if you didn't trust them. Great way to split up a king and queen, huh?

"Did you notice how grating Belkins' laugh is?" The next time Belkins (a paladin) laughs, the PC thinks somthing is wrong with them. Continued suggestions such as the paladin is untrustworthy, just a fighter/cleric of an untrustworthy deity, etc, might work (from how to fight fiends from a Dragon mag).

"You can have her." From Dune. Basically, Paul and his Mother Jessica were prisoners on a flying machine. Both can use their voice to make suggestions, but no one knows that Paul has this ability (usually only found in women). One of the two evil guards is deaf and thus immune to the suggestions. Paul suggested to the other guard to kill the deaf guard and then have his way with Jessica. The deaf guard was killed; the gleeful surviving guard cut Jessica's bonds and found out the hard way she could kill him when unarmed. Seeing how the not-deaf guard was a lustful rapist, I see how it works.

"There aren't any cars on the street." Victim runs into traffic. Not too sure how to use this in DnD. Maybe make him run into an enemy army? And is that reasonable?

"The next time you see the ambassador, you must kill him." Iffy, depends on alignment. Used in ALTERNITY; I'm guessing lesser domination would push this command.

Perhaps more to come later.

 

[Galfridus]

Suggestions for suggestions

To make a guard put down his weapon: "Your hands are cold." The guard drops the weapon.

To make the lord of the castle see a ghost: "At midnight, it is said that the ghost of Lady G appears in the South Tower." At midnight, if the lord is there, he thinks he sees a ghost. It could actually be the party rogue sneaking around, or nothing. He could just stare hard while you stab him in the back, steal his gold, etc.

"He means to kill/harm/etc you." Kill him, get away from him, plot against him, etc. Whatever you would do if you didn't trust them. Great way to split up a king and queen, huh?

"Did you notice how grating Belkins' laugh is?" The next time Belkins (a paladin) laughs, the PC thinks somthing is wrong with them. Continued suggestions such as the paladin is untrustworthy, just a fighter/cleric of an untrustworthy deity, etc, might work (from how to fight fiends from a Dragon mag).

The problem I have with these is that they don't suggest a course of action. I've used suggestions like these against players, and they just come up with a course of action which doesn't cause them any problems ("I blow on my hands; I ask him why he wants to kill me; I get annoyed at his laugh.")

 

[Uller]

Comparing Suggestion to Dominate Person is fine. But don't forget that with Dominate Person, you use telepathy to control your target. With Suggestion, your target must understand you. So while Suggestion can work on anything that has a mind, you must know the language of the target. So I would say the numbers of targets available is roughly balanced for the two in most campaigns(unless you have the Tongues spell). If you are in a campaign where most of your foes are humans who speak your language, then you probably will want to take a more conservative interpritation of the spell.

Anyway...Hold Person's major limitation is that you get one or two sentences to get your point across. Beyond that, you have no control over the target. You also have to make the command sound reasonable. This is rather subjective and different DMs may have a different standard. The example of a reasonable suggestion given in the book is that a pool of acid is actually cool water and the target should take a quick swim. I assume the target KNOWS the caster is an enemy and that the acid is indeed acid in this example(although I have nothing to back that up). So if that is a reasonable suggestion, so too is the suggestion that your allies have betrayed you and you should change sides or stay out of the fight. Obviously, this will be more effective if you can provide some evidence of treachery...

I don't have a problem with the PCs using Mass Suggestion to get weak willed fodder monsters to change sides any more than I have a problem with using Circle of Death to outright kill several weak creatures or Disintegrate to kill even a powerful one...

 

[EOL]

Comparing Suggestion to Dominate Person is fine. But don't forget that with Dominate Person, you use telepathy to control your target. With Suggestion, your target must understand you. So while Suggestion can work on anything that has a mind, you must know the language of the target. So I would say the numbers of targets available is roughly balanced for the two in most campaigns(unless you have the Tongues spell). If you are in a campaign where most of your foes are humans who speak your language, then you probably will want to take a more conservative interpritation of the spell.

That is an excellent point with a couple of caveats. First Dominate does have some language limitations. If you don't share a common language the commands can only be very basic, not quite the same level of language limitation of suggestion, but it's there. Secondly a wizard has no excuse to not know just about every language, with 3 or 4 bonus languages at the beginning and at 2 skill points a pop, it's pretty cheap.

Anyway...Hold Person's(edit I assume you mean suggestion) major limitation is that you get one or two sentences to get your point across. Beyond that, you have no control over the target. You also have to make the command sound reasonable. This is rather subjective and different DMs may have a different standard. The example of a reasonable suggestion given in the book is that a pool of acid is actually cool water and the target should take a quick swim. I assume the target KNOWS the caster is an enemy and that the acid is indeed acid in this example(although I have nothing to back that up). So if that is a reasonable suggestion, so too is the suggestion that your allies have betrayed you and you should change sides or stay out of the fight. Obviously, this will be more effective if you can provide some evidence of treachery...

This speaks to one of the points that has come out in this thread, that yeah it is subjective and the DM has to make a judgement call, and once he has the players have to live with it.

I don't have a problem with the PCs using Mass Suggestion to get weak willed fodder monsters to change sides any more than I have a problem with using Circle of Death to outright kill several weak creatures or Disintegrate to kill even a powerful one...

Neither do I, but the creatures in question were not fodder most were high level fighters, and since suggestion doesn't have "humanoid" limit, mass suggestion could just as easily be used against a group of dragons. You may think it would never get past their "good" will save, but a 12th level enchanter should reasonably cast a mass suggestion with a will save of 27 (Adjusted Int 24 w/ +4 item plus greater spell focus) in a group of 12 adult red dragons on average at least three would have their SR penetrated and fail their saves. Give him greater spell penetration and it's 4. Give him four mass suggestions, two rounds and a haste spell and it's 10 of the 12. Those are adult Reds with CR 14 and 22 HD. Given this example and as a B.A.D.D. member I'm inclined to be view suggestion and mass suggestion with a very strict interpretation, since it would take the 9th level spell dominate monster to affect even one of the dragons. So I would have big problems with any ruling which skirts even short-term identical effects.

 

[Uller]

...12 Adult Red Dragons...

Perhaps you are missing one minor point with the spell...No two targets can be more than 30 ft apart. If you can get more than 1 Red Dragon with this, you've got some really stupid dragons...If you can get 12 of them with a single casting, you're a god.


So...with a _realistic_ example(say two adult reds). You've got roughly the same chance to Disintegrate an Adult Red as you do of convincing one to join your side in a fight(given that you can speak it's language or had the foresight to cast tongues). If you're relying on that to keep you alive for more than a round or two in such a fight, you're taking a BIG risk. Besides...Suggestion can be dispelled and since an Adult Red is also a 7th level sorcerer, there is a good chance he'll have Dispel Magic as one of his two 3rd level spells(I'd give him Dispel Magic and Haste, most likely). So even if you DO manage to break through the SR of one AND it fails it's save(about a 25% chance) the other will just cast Dispel Magic over and over until it frees it's comrad.


And at 2 skill points per language, languages are NOT that cheap when you've got so many other valuable skills to choose from: Spellcraft, concentration, knowledge, listen, spot, etc, etc. You'd be far better off learning Tongues and scribing it on some scrolls than trying to learn more than 2 or 3 extra languages.

 

[Victim]

Hmm, a red dragon's dispel check of +7 versus a DC of at least 22 from a wizard casting mass suggestion. Not good. Maybe they could have protection from good up instead.

If regional tongues are in sue, it will be hard enough getting the languages to Suggest most human and demihuman foes, much less all the monsters.

 

[EOL]

Perhaps you are missing one minor point with the spell...No two targets can be more than 30 ft apart. If you can get more than 1 Red Dragon with this, you've got some really stupid dragons...If you can get 12 of them with a single casting, you're a god.

Touche! That is a very good point, but I cannot be stopped!

The same example can be shifted to 12 Hezrou (same CR, 5x5 facing) with even greater affect. With a mere SR of 23 and a Will save of +8, on average using the caster from above with GSF(ench) and GSP and he gets a 7.5 right off the bat with a single casting.

And at 2 skill points per language, languages are NOT that cheap when you've got so many other valuable skills to choose from: Spellcraft, concentration, knowledge, listen, spot, etc, etc. You'd be far better off learning Tongues and scribing it on some scrolls than trying to learn more than 2 or 3 extra languages.

The wizard above is getting 9 skill points per level 2 does not seem excessive and speaking of listen and spot since they're cross-class his choice is one rank in either of those or a completely new language. Also, both example monsters automatically speak common....

Now obviously I have taken the examples to the extreme, but when you think that Dominate Monster, a 9th level spell, would affect at most one dragon, demon, or devil and mass suggestion a 6th level spell could conceivably affect 20, even after correction for duration and a few other factors I think the net effect of suggestion has to be played a quite a bit more limited than the effects of dominate. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Uller]

Now obviously I have taken the examples to the extreme, but when you think that Dominate Monster, a 9th level spell, would affect at most one dragon, demon, or devil and mass suggestion a 6th level spell could conceivably affect 20, even after correction for duration and a few other factors I think the net effect of suggestion has to be played a quite a bit more limited than the effects of dominate. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah. One spell makes one creature your complete slave for several days, the other will get several creatures(if you can get them all within 30' of eachother) to follow a two sentence instruction for several hours...if you can make it sound reasonable and if they can understand you. Sounds about right to me...

Granted...it should be difficult to convince a creature that he ought to attack his ally as if he were a mortal enemy with only two sentences. But it can be done. It should USUALLY require some real inside knowledge and some building up of distrust.