Suggestion Sucks

[noeuphoria]

I don't know if anyone else has the same problem in their campaign, but I think suggestion was a bad idea. I hated in 2nd, I hate it in 3rd. Here is a spell that never fails to start an arguement at the table. Example

DM: Ok, the illithid suggests you run away.

Me: I'm a paladin, sworn to justice and good, I wouldn't abandon my friends.

DM: Sorry, you're under the effect of a spell, you leave.

Me: Ok, but I'm not going to leave combat stupidly, I'll withdraw and take any attacks of oppurtunity against my enemies that present themselves.

DM: No, you need to run, like he suggested you do.

Me: That's not a reasonable action then.

How do you guys adjudicate this stupid spell.

 

[Kabol]

Well - the Illithid more then likely came up with a good sugestion but your DM jsut didnt bother to word it as he would have.

When we deal with Sugestion in game, the DM ( me atm ) Tells the player what the sugestion is, and they then take reasonable steps to fill it - I have great players and trust them to do reasonable actions.

a sutable sugestion for a pally prob is somethin like :

There is not way to defeat this monster, the only way to save your friends to to flee, they will follow your lead

 

[sledged]

Suggest that the mind flayer and its allies (if any) are not the enemy, that the real enemy is in the opposite direction a mile away attacking innocent bystanders, and that he should run as quickly as possible to save the innocents.

 

[ForceUser]

It's open to interpretation. We play suggestion in such a way that creatures under its effects won't place themselves in harm's way unnecessarily, but will go out of their way to perform the action they have been commanded to do. An example from our last session: in a fight with demons, a succubus suggests to the party fighter that he kiss her. He fails his Will save, but since he's currently engaged in melee with a vrock, the fighter kills the vrock first, then flies to her for a kiss on his next action. In a previous campaign the party is engaged with a flying green dragon, and none of the PCs can themselves fly. The party psion suggests to the dragon that it land, it fails its save, so it does. Obviously this is bad for the dragon, but a suggestion is a suggestion.

In the example you provided, without knowing any details beyond that which you've provided, I can tell you as a DM that if one of my mind flayers had nailed your paladin with a suggestion to run away, your character would have ran away on his next action at his best possible speed, ignoring advantageous opportunities to gain attacks of opportunity. He wouldn't have entered other enemies' threatened areas if he could help it, but if he couldn't help it he'd barrel through, provoking attacks of opportunity. Does this suck for the paladin? Yep. Do I have a problem with that? Nope.

Finally, I think that suggestion is a good spell and that you appear to be expressing sour grapes because something negative and beyond your control as a player happened to your character. My advice would be to lighten up; sometimes player characters just get punk'd by the bad guys.

 

[Malin Genie]

There is a bonus granted to the save if the suggestion seems unreasonable - so 'run away and abandon your friends' might grant a save bonus to a steadfast Lawful Good Paladin.

On the other hand 'I am only a minor danger! You should quickly run to protect your friends from the great danger that lurks in the opposite direction!' might not.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Spells like Suggestion work best if there's an agreement between DM and players not to do too much lawyering on the exact wording.

One of the worst examples I can think of was an occasion when we had to rescue a princess from a castle of giants.

We Geased the giant sentry to cooperate with us in the rescue.

He attacked us.

The DM explained his reasoning later: the sentry decided that in order to rescue the princess, we would have to kill every giant we came across. He was a giant, so by that reasoning, we'd have to kill him to succeed... and thus by attacking us and forcing a situation where we'd kill him, he was helping us further our goal.

(... buh?)

Pointing out that we only really had to kill any giant we came across who wasn't Geased to help us didn't seem to register with the DM.

-Hyp.

 

[MerricB]

Nice story, Hyp!

I love suggestion, but it has to be adjudicated well. Thankfully, I'm the DM.

Cheers!

 

[Hypersmurf]

Nice story, Hyp!

It's a horrible story.

It's a story I wish I didn't have!

-Hyp.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think WotC could have included three more examples in the spell description, and it would make a lot more sense.

 

[Epametheus]

I'm still fond of the Suggestion to "sit down and shut up."