Dominate Person: Dance, Puppets, Dance!

Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 5

School: Enchantment

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 60 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S

You attempt to beguile a humanoid that you can see within range. It must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed by you for the duration. If you or creatures that are friendly to you are fighting it, it has advantage on the saving throw.

While the target is charmed, you have a telepathic link with it as long as the two of you are on the same plane of existence. You can use this telepathic link to issue commands to the creature while you are conscious (no action required), which it does its best to obey. You can specify a simple and general course of action, such as “Attack that creature,” “Run over there,” or “Fetch that object.” If the creature completes the order and doesn’t receive further direction from you, it defends and preserves itself to the best of its ability.

You can use your action to take total and precise control of the target. Until the end of your next turn, the creature takes only the actions you choose, and doesn’t do anything that you don’t allow it to do. During this time you can also cause the creature to use a reaction, but this requires you to use your own reaction as well.

Each time the target takes damage, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a 6th-level spell slot, the duration is concentration, up to 10 minutes. When you use a 7th-level spell slot, the duration is concentration, up to 1 hour. When you use a spell slot of 8th level or higher, the duration is concentration, up to 8 hours.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Dominate Person: at 5th level, this spell brings a world of complications and moral nightmares to play. The spell is at its best when used creatively out of combat; control over a very specific person at the right time can change the course of a campaign. In combat, the spell can be debilitating, or it can be one of the weakest spells you can cast. Dominate Person is volatile. Up-casting unlocks its true potential, while using at 5th level will be challenging.

If you are aiming to steal the grand tactician or archmage supporting the lich for a fight, there is next to no reason to up-cast it. Encounters rarely exceed a minute, and the subsequent save on being damaged will quickly lead to the spell's effect ending. In that short window, though, you can ensure specific outcomes and discern critical information. It can net you a huge amount of actions while taking away actions from your enemies, which is a major advantage in combat. Should you be facing forces with competent magical understanding, it won’t take much to break the control by either smashing you or prodding the controlled until they’re free. The odds of you successfully controlling an enemy combatant is at best moderate and often unlikely, making it so you’ll waste the slot to attempt to do something that can be crazy powerful or just fine. Like I said, Dominate Person is volatile to use.

Out of combat, casting it a 5th level is horrendous. One minute is barely enough time to get anything done save getting a bunch of questions answered. If it's used reactively to shut up a guard or buy a tiny bit of time it’s fine, but the potential for failure there increases as hostilities do. Ten minutes is slightly better, and can open up windows of opportunity to get out of stickier situations, but you really want at least an hour of control to start manipulations. Having an actor under your control to vouch for you and your allies that does and says whatever you want can deceive for long enough to pull off heists or work your way to a binding arrangement that can’t be taken back once entered into. Having the leverage of a figure of power, or somebody who has their ear, can give your party exactly what they need for a broad enough window of time to make something meaningful happen. Acquire land, steal from the rich, get an audience with a monstrous overlord; all of this can happen with way less effort if you’re willing to break a person’s free will.

Using it will invoke dire consequences. Mind control doesn’t sit well after the fact with those controlled; they will be at minimum bitter, and more likely enraged. You may have gotten the exact deal you were looking for through warping the minds of those involved; know that navigating post mind control can be vitriolic.

5e Spells

Dominate Person: Dance, Puppets, Dance!