What to do about Dominate Suggestable Monster

There was some discussion of this in the Atari buglist thread. The gist is that Suggestion, as currently implemented in ToEE, is thoroughly broken. By adding a creature of any type to your party as an NPC, it functions just like Dominate Monster, which is a 9th level spell (Suggestion is 3rd level for Sorcerers/Wizards and 2nd level for Bards).

Here's what the rules have to say about Suggestion:

It allows you to compel a creature to follow a course of action that sounds reasonable to the creature. "Turn against all of your allies and serve my every whim" is not a reasonable suggestion, which is what it effectively does now.

There are even creatures in the game, like the Balor, who would normally have Dominate Monster as a special ability and Suggestion is given to them instead.

What does the community think we should do about this horribly over-powered spell?

I didn't list re-working the spell to comply much closer to the rules because someone would have to volunteer to perform the work on that, whereas the 3 options listed are much easier tweaks to make.

 

I say option 2 with a splash of option 3 in there.

 

Any way to swap it out with Charm Monster or similar, maybe with tweaks to Duration and Saves to get it closer to the tabletop Suggestion spell?

 

I agree entirely with Allyx and his suggestion.

 

Option 2; make it as rules compliant to the 9th level spell as possible. Do something else for replacing the 3rd level spell.

 

yeah I agree with, umm, everybody. Now how often do you get to say that? You'd almost think our will was being dominated.

Cuchulainn.

 

Remove it, unless it can be made more rules compliant. Do you have any ideas for this based on what's possible in the game Kalshane? I think that the nearest effect I can think of is command, the level 1 cleric spell where you can choose from four commands:

Approach
On its turn, the subject moves toward you as quickly and directly as possible for 1 round. The creature may do nothing but move during its turn, and it provokes attacks of opportunity for this movement as normal.

Drop
On its turn, the subject drops whatever it is holding. It can’t pick up any dropped item until its next turn.

Fall
On its turn, the subject falls to the ground and remains prone for 1 round. It may act normally while prone but takes any appropriate penalties.

Flee
On its turn, the subject moves away from you as quickly as possible for 1 round. It may do nothing but move during its turn, and it provokes attacks of opportunity for this movement as normal.

Halt
The subject stands in place for 1 round. It may not take any actions but is not considered helpless.


Suggestion could use this for more than one round - what do you think?

 

The same as command, but more than round makes it very similar to Greater Command, which isn't neccessarily a bad thing (Greater Command is higher level, but also lets you effect more than one creature). But the choose from some specific options is definitely the best way to go. We can either stick with the Command options, or come up with different ones. The problem is coming up with Suggestions that are reasonable within a combat situation. (Or else come up with a way for it have different options whether you cast it in combat or outside of it.)

 

well as alot of NPCs are CE I don't think many of them would think "stab that guy" unreasonable.

 

Can you cast Suggestion on your Chicken animal companion, have it level up as a barbarian, let it leave the party when the spell expires, still retain it as a companion, and end up with a Loyal Chicken Berserker Companion?

Just wondering.

 

It's unreasonable if "that guy" is an ally. Yes, CE doesn't have much in the way of loyalty or friendship or any of that, but CE also knows if he just turns around and stabs his ally, all of his other allies are going to stab him in return.

 

Suggestions like "attack that person" or "defend me" could be very reasonable, though. I don't know how to account for all the variables in situations which may occur.

 

I like it fine the way it is. As the spell stands it is a way to gain interesting NPCs attached to your party without them having been modded to be joinable. I've had a moathoouse brigand, a lizard man, and most recently Falrinth. I realy had fun leveling the lizard man up as a fighter/barbarian.

While it may not be rules compliant, it makes the game far more interesting if someone wants an unusual party composition.

We could do my LE Horned Society party, as an example, and add Hobgoblins from wandering encounters as melee troops to suplement the diabolic monk, cleric, and wizard that represent the heirarchs.

I may want to do a campaign based on a pirate crew ashore and build a three character PC party with a sorcerer specializing in air and water based magics, a thief with a cutlass, and a cleric of some seafaring deity, and then get fighter muscle from the first band of crossbow weilding pirates that we encounter. "Ahoy Matey, welcome to the press gang!"

Someone else may want to do an evil elven party and snag drow from the moathouse respawn or from verbobonc to build a small starting party up to size.

With Suggestion as written, a medium level party can begin to diversify into anything the player's imagination can conceive in the way that you can in pencil and paper, for example cooperating with lizard men in a raid on Sahuagan, or offering to combine with a party of wandering NPC adventurers. I think that's worth a little rule breaking.