Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Egan_BW]

The mansion has a magical hospitality rule, which acts to prevent spellcasting and violent acts (IE, increasing the spell slot needed to cast any spell by X, reducing damage done by attacks by Xd4.). As the various guests turn on each other, they also begin to weaken the hospitality enchantment, until it becomes so weak that spells like that can be cast. This is pretty much a failure condition because everyone will be rioting at that point, but it does mean that the mystery can be solved too late. If you want a better outcome, better get to traditional detectiving!

[IcyTea31]

The question is more, how do you keep them from immediately using the spell, while eventually letting them do so?

Speak with Dead requires that the corpse has an intact jaw. Simply make the death gruesome enough that they need to go on a scavenger hunt for bone fragments if they want to solve it that way.

[Trekkin]

The question is more, how do you keep them from immediately using the spell, while eventually letting them do so?

Well, since Speak with Dead can only get information the target knew in life, it might help if the manner of death made it appear unlikely that the subject died knowing their killer. Suppose they maybe-slipped maybe-were-pushed and fell off a roof, for example, or unknowingly ingested poison. If the honest answer to "who killed you" is visibly going to be "I don't know", the players will probably hold off until they have enough context to ask something more useful.

EDIT: Actually, if you can contrive it so the evidence points to a massive overdose of poison, this has some black comedy potential. Just have the corpse tell them "I found a bottle o' pirate potion in one of the secret liquor cabinets under the floorboards, yarr, and in that bottle I found me way out o' me former life o' indolence an' irresponsibility as the third son o' a minor baron. Aye, I swigged it down and waited to transform an' begin me new life o' nautical adventures!"
"There were some words on the bottle, yarr, but the only lettarrs a pirate needs to know be the C 'an the R, and 'tweren't none of them. No mistaking the skull and crossbones, though. What the yarr would a pirate need to be litarrate for anyway, says I."

This as the mansion quietly burns down behind them in the midst of the N-way civil war his death set off.

[Loud Whispers]

I mean Greek Xenia works pretty well with adventurers. Adventurers are obligated to give information about the outside world / world affairs to their host, and hosts are not supposed to ask questions if their guests haven't finished their food / do not want to answer. Adventurers get free board, lodging, cleaning and food, hosts get to hear about the player's questing and misadventures. If they fuck up some minor transgressions like asking about their host's dead wife over brunch then just have the host react as such. I think only serious guest right violations like killing the host, stealing from them or destroying their home should carry over to the next lodging

[Rolan7]

*    The respect from hosts to guests. Hosts must be hospitable to guests and provide them with a bath, food, drink, gifts, and safe escort to their next destination. It is considered rude to ask guests questions, or even to ask who they are, before they have finished the meal provided to them.
*    The respect from guests to hosts. Guests must be courteous to their hosts and not be a threat or burden. Guests are expected to provide stories and news from the outside world. Most importantly, guests are expected to reciprocate if their hosts ever call upon them in their homes.[3]

Naturally I wondered whether this applied to those of lower status - but as I learned recently, the Greeks had the same stories as the Norse did about the Gods taking the form of vagrants or even beggars!

Which, wow, lives on.  My father almost went out of his way to engage with people... "outside our life".  My brother and I met a lot of people who most families would have avoided.  My dad loves to talk, and these people were happy to talk.  And the stories they told were well worth the price he paid.

I don't have that confidence, and there are dangerous situations which my father was... wise to, from experience.  But I see it as a virtue.

[Jimmy]

Reminds me of one of my favorite ice-breaker game questions I use for new characters in an adventure. I ask them about their toughest battle.

Since the characters are new, they have to improvise about their background. It's a great way to get the players into the mind of their characters.

My own offering from an NPC to kick off the exchange is usually some form of battle in the frozen north, where my character was hunting an ice troll. The troll knocked him out, dragging him to its ice cave lair. It hung him from his feet from the ceiling of the cave, but my character, through either magic or strength, freed himself and slew the troll. Unfortunately he was caught in a blizzard on his return. He ended up having to kill his mount and take shelter inside its carcass from the cold.

The story never fails to get a laugh from the table, along with a few contributions to embellish the details, and serves as a great starting point for inspiration for the group's stories.

[Kagus]

Y'know, I used to think that Enchantment was kind of a silly Wizard specialization, since I didn't think their school perks really matched up against some of the others like Evocation or Transmutation... But rereading and reconsidering things, I believe I was grossly mistaken.

Hypnotic gaze is honestly a bit ridiculous. Yes, you need to be standing next to the creature in order for it to work, but it has a single save and if that fails the wizard can simply continue the effect as long as they like, and is usable once per long rest per creature. You can still use it (or try to) on everyone you meet over the course of a day if you so wish, you just can't use it twice on the same schlub without taking a snooze between attempts. That's big.

So, nevermind the point that you can just hypnotize someone and let a buddy tie them up for a more permanent incapacitation (or, heck, even just let the barbarian freely put them in a headlock, since it's not "causing damage"), but since the subject is "charmed" you gain advantage on any social interactions with them while you've got them hypnotized. That's just a crazy interrogation/suggestion tool.

Instinctive Charm at 6th level lets you use your reaction to redirect an attack against you if the attacker fails a Wisdom save against your spell save DC. If the attacker does make the save and the attack does go through, then you can't use that ability on that attacker again until after a long rest... You can still use it on any other attacker, and if you do redirect the attack due to them failing the save, then you can just keep using it on them until they finally manage to slip one past your magical defenses! This is also pretty crazy when you think about it, since not only are you saving your squishy self from evil monster attacks, but you're also potentially turning those attacks around and hitting more enemies with them, basically for free (reactions are quite versatile though).


Then we've got that whammy at 10th level, Split Enchantment... "When you cast an enchantment spell of 1st level or higher that targets only one creature, you can have it target a second creature".

Ignoring the obvious munchkin bait that this line does not specify "target a second creature within range of the spell", realize for a moment that this means actually a fair bit more than "just" charm/dominate/hold/suggestion, which is already pretty dang useful...

No, the wording of the ability also means that it applies to Power Words. Or Feeblemind, if that's more your jam.


Alter Memories also opens itself up to some truly evil nefarious shit, but meh. We're already more than done by that point.

[Iduno]

Y'know, I used to think that Enchantment was kind of a silly Wizard specialization, since I didn't think their school perks really matched up against some of the others like Evocation or Transmutation... But rereading and reconsidering things, I believe I was grossly mistaken.

Yeah, enchantment and to a lesser degree conjuration are full of spells that just take enemies out of a fight. That was great in AD&D, and is way better now that the hitpoints of everything have been multiplied to the point that doing damage isn't very useful. Plus they work outside of combat.

[Rolan7]

An important question about enchantment which I don't remember seeing in the rules is how creatures react to being enchanted.  Even if they fail the spellcraft check to identify the spell (however *that* works in 5th edition) are they able to notice their altered behavior after the spell ends?  I don't remember the spells stating that they don't notice.  What would be a reasonable response to that?

It's actually a tricky question because the default settings seem to have a cultural acceptance of enchantment magic.  It's a valid field of study, perhaps a little weird but far less stigmatized than say, necromancy.  And yet in 3.5* it's far worse than most necromancy!  Animating a corpse is gross but harms no one - enchanters violate the minds of living people!

And then there's bards.  Fascinating people with a performance is all well and good, but they don't stop there do they?

The Elder Scrolls is particularly bad about this, but I think it's a weird oversight in official DND material too.

* In 5th edition animated dead remember languages they knew in life, implying that their mind and/or soul are pulled back into their corpse.  3.5 Animate Dead has the evil descriptor, but I haven't seen any evidence that the spirit of a zombie or skeleton is recalled from their afterlife.  It's just taboo to mess with corpses- but apparently not living minds.

[scriver]

Dude, you can't be both edgily faux-rationalist about how "it's only a dead body lol" and then turn around and be moralist about the autonomy of people's minds, pick one camp and sit in it

Not respecting the integrity of people's corpses is a thing that's usually very drowned upon. In Sweden we call it breaking the grave-peace. Pretending animating bodies is a moral non-issue is like saying enchanting is "just being very good at changing people's minds".

And that's before we get into the whole issue of negative energy and why using it is bad.

Agreed about TES though. Before Oblivion changed it so they could have a dumb, no-depth necromancer plot, Necromancy was a completely legal (if still loathed by people for obvious reason) practice in the Empire and the Mage' s Guild. Morrowind was singled out as the only place that forbade it or where it was taboo (and they still made exceptions for glorious voluntary undeadifying of oneself). But since Oblivion had a necromancer as the evil guy they had to make every single necromancer an evil guy too.

[pikachu17]

I just had a thought. Would a bathtub full of water count as one object including the water, two objects, or one object excluding the water which doesn't count?
Depending on the answer, 14th level Illusionists can take a bath anywhere without spending spell slots except the first permanent casts of Major Image. They can even use Disguise Self so no one can see them being naked, at least without Truesight.
Clearly the ability to take a bath anywhere is the very peak of the wizard class.
Sure, you can just use Thaumatergy to clean, but then you don't have a bath.

[Kagus]

An important question about enchantment which I don't remember seeing in the rules is how creatures react to being enchanted.  Even if they fail the spellcraft check to identify the spell (however *that* works in 5th edition) are they able to notice their altered behavior after the spell ends?  I don't remember the spells stating that they don't notice.  What would be a reasonable response to that?

The level 14 ability of specialist Enchanters (the ability to prevent one creature from noticing it's been charmed when casting a spell that charms one or more creatures) would somewhat imply that it's common to notice and react to charming magics, but in some light skimming I've only found two spells that directly state that the victim is aware after the fact: Friends and Charm Person. Friends explicitly states that the target becomes hostile to you and will act according to their demeanor in regards to such, but Charm Person simply states that the individual is aware that you've used enchantment magic on it.

Since these spells specifically state that the person is aware afterwards, we can assume that the enchantment spells that do not state this will not alert the target in the same way.

EDIT:

I just had a thought. Would a bathtub full of water count as one object including the water, two objects, or one object excluding the water which doesn't count?
Depending on the answer, 14th level Illusionists can take a bath anywhere without spending spell slots except the first permanent casts of Major Image.

I was going to break into a whinge about permanent castings not being a thing and how you'd therefore have to deal with DM fiat and homebrew rules and whatnot, but then I reread the spell description and realized you can make a permanent non-concentration version of the spell by just casting it at 6th level instead of 4th. Which is honestly more than a little bit ridiculous, once you think about it for a moment.

Unfortunately, the 14th level ability implies that you can only make the illusion component "real" for a maximum of 1 minute per casting, so that bath is going to get rather ineffective after a very short while.

However, it does still let you create a major image that can include a real component for 1 minute, and during that minute you can reposition that image anywhere within the 120' range with an action.

So you may not be able to keep yourself luxuriously hygienic for weeks, but you can at least fly a little over 7,000 feet in one casting if you just ride in the bathtub.

EDIT2: I suppose whether or not you can "re-real" part of the same spell again with another bonus action is a bit up to interpretation, but I wouldn't count on any but the most fun-loving DMs to let you get away with that reading.


EDIT3: What the fuck is my math... Action is 6 seconds, 60 seconds to a minute = 10 actions in one minute, 120 feet movement per action = 1080 feet travelled by flying bathtub (first action is spent creating the bathtub at our location, presumably)

[pikachu17]

Illusory Reality
By 14th level, you have learned the secret of weaving shadow magic into your illusions to give them a semi-reality. When you cast an illusion spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose one inanimate, nonmagical object that is part of the illusion and make that object real. You can do this on your turn as a bonus action while the spell is ongoing. The object remains real for 1 minute. For example, you can create an illusion of a bridge over a chasm and then make it real long enough for your allies to cross.
The object can't deal damage or otherwise directly harm anyone.

Which part of this suggests you can't re-real a spell? It says nothing about being used once a spell, and you can use it while a spell is ongoing. I suppose you might have to wait until it's un-real to re-real it though, in which case you might as well just use thaumatergy.

Also, how many spells with expensive material components are there that you can cast in a minute?
If so, the illusionist can make it on site.
I think revivify is on such spell.

EDIT: https://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/07/17/illusory-reality-2/
Apparently I'm wrong, and it is supposed to be only once. That's no fun. You can't carry multiple illusory handkerchiefs you can turn into adamantium walls then, you have to use your action to move them.

[Cruxador]

Dude, you can't be both edgily faux-rationalist about how "it's only a dead body lol" and then turn around and be moralist about the autonomy of people's minds, pick one camp and sit in it

You absolutely can. I don't know about your religious beliefs but actually it is relatively common to consider that the mind or soul is an ephemeral thing and is the true essence of a person, while the body is only a temporary vessel and not intrinsically valuable. Notably, this is the theological basis for Quakers and many related groups considering people to be inherently equal despite corporeal differences like race and sex.

[scriver]

What do they think about Enchantment tho