Geas is a 5th level enchantment spell which allows you to compel a creature to obey your commands.

Geas: My Little War Crime

Usable By: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard

Spell Level: 5

School: Enchantment

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: 60 feet

Duration: 30 days

Components: V

You place a magical command on a creature that you can see within range, forcing it to carry out some service or refrain from some action or course of activity as you decide. If the creature can understand you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become charmed by you for the duration. While the creature is charmed by you, it takes 5d10 psychic damage each time it acts in a manner directly counter to your instructions, but no more than once each day. A creature that can’t understand you is unaffected by the spell.

You can issue any command you choose, short of an activity that would result in certain death. Should you issue a suicidal command, the spell ends.

You can end the spell early by using an action to dismiss it. A Remove Curse, Greater Restoration, or Wish spell also ends it.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 7th or 8th level, the duration is 1 year. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 9th level, the spell lasts until it is ended by one of the spells mentioned above.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Geas keeps up the tradition of morally disastrous mind bending magic used mostly for comedic effect at the D&D table. It's the big brother of Suggestion and Command, and with its up-cast durations ends up being the high end fantasy of the mind controller archetype. Unfortunately for those characters, it's bad; not so terrible it shouldn’t exist bad, but disappointing and sad bad.

The minute cast time makes the spell’s use cases limited to outside of initiative, and even with this prerequisite, the spell can fail on a single successful save. Should the target fail the save, though, you are bending a creature to your will, and charming them to boot. The charmed condition makes the entire arrangement feel more pleasant, but remember: you have forcibly broken the free will of some character so you can have a smiling butler for the month!

Ignoring these implications, Geas is at its best in a political intrigue style of game. It's the kind of spell you cast on a senator or noble to change opinion and alter a landscape to work for you. Outside that, it can be used to manipulate hirelings to defend you up until their certain death, manage your day to day, or otherwise act on your behalf in situations unbecoming of a character of your station.

The core issue there is that you don’t really need magic to do any of that. Coin is often a compelling enough force in the world. Bribery, blackmail, and just a convincing argument all can achieve what Geas is doing, but without needing to offend the fantasy equivalent of NATO. The spell is a cheap and easy way to get this result, and it does somewhat guarantee results, but ultimately I don’t think you NEED Geas for what its text gives you.

As for the damaging element, that is an odd limitation. It basically limits the targets to creatures that will be nearly killed or killed should they break your command; using this on something with hundreds of hitpoints is the equivalent to punching them in the stomach every morning for however long the spell lasts. Sure, it's inconvenient, but if the force REALLY didn’t want to follow the command, it's pretty easy to ignore, even when considering the charm effect.

All in all I think Geas ends up not being worth your time. Suggestion has a ton more flexibility, and is three spell levels lower. You usually aren’t going to be needing a full month's worth of servitude, and even if you are, there are better ways to do that that leave free your 5th level spell slots. It ends up being this inflexible mess you can survive without.

5e Spells

Geas: My Little War Crime