Mass Suggestion: Creeper by the Dozen

Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Spell Level: 6

School: Enchantment

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 60 feet

Duration: 24 hours

Components: V, M (A snake’s tongue and either a bit of honeycomb or a drop of sweet oil)

You suggest a course of activity (limited to a sentence or two) and magically influence up to twelve creatures of your choice that you can see within range and that can hear and understand you. Creatures that can’t be charmed are immune to this effect. The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable. Asking the creature to stab itself, throw itself onto a spear, immolate itself, or do some other obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell.

Each target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, it pursues the course of action you described to the best of its ability. The suggested course of action can continue for the entire duration. If the suggested activity can be completed in a shorter time, the spell ends when the subject finishes what it was asked to do.

You can also specify conditions that will trigger a special activity during the duration. For example, you might suggest that a group of soldiers give all their money to the first beggar they meet.

If the condition isn’t met before the spell ends, the activity isn’t performed. If you or any of your companions damage a creature affected by this spell, the spell ends for that creature.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a 7th-level spell slot, the duration is 10 days. When you use an 8th-level spell slot, the duration is 30 days. When you use a 9th-level spell slot, the duration is a year and a day.

Review by Samuel West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

“No, you can’t just take away their free will like that! It’s barbaric! It's cruel! I don’t care how delicious the cakes are, you can’t just suggest a whole bakery into- wait, did you say they make cinnamon rolls too? Well, okay, just this once, but then let them go!” - A goody-two-shoes paladin to their bard companion.

Mass Suggestion, like most of the Mass spells, takes a thing and both improves it and multiplies it. In this case, you can control up to twelve creatures at once with a simple suggestion. It can be as basic as “don’t move” to neutralize up to twelve enemies at once, or as complex as “be my personal staff for the day”. So long as it “sounds reasonable”, they’ll do it!

This spell has near endless applications, but in most of those instances isn’t that much better than regular Suggestion. If your suggestion is reasonable anyway, you can probably get the desired outcome with some hirelings and gold. In cases where you’re dealing with groups of baddies, Suggestion can turn their leader to your side, which is often enough. Charm Person scales in a similar manner, and while it won’t hit twelve, it can get up to six creatures charmed by you for a 6th level slot. Mass Suggestion lets you charm creatures you’re fighting as easily as those you aren’t, which is a decent upside, but you’re losing the slot flexibility offered by the lower level effects.

At its best, Mass Suggestion can warp encounters. Getting it off to successfully suggest a group of enemy spellcasters to turn on each other can end an encounter before it begins. If you want to turn allies against each other, suggesting half kill the other (in a “reasonable” way of course!) can be a wild power spike for your side of a fight as you turn up to twelve enemies actions into actions for your team. You’ll run into some potential issues with that annoying “reasonable” word, and might want to talk with your DM prior to taking the spell on how they’d run it. If reasonable requires a creature to be already somewhat pliable to the idea, it gets quite a bit worse than if they read reasonable as something easily doable.

Up-casting Mass Suggestion really only matters if you’re looking to start a cult or otherwise brainwash a whole army. This introduces the potential to have an entire town regularly suggested, and can lead to some cool world building moments and concepts. What if the villain has been suggesting the town forget they exist for centuries while using them to build weapons? Could every minion in the villain’s lair be simply suggested to be there, and add a deeper level of morality to the murders the party needs to comit to stop them?

In combat, Mass Suggestion is a house of a spell. Out of combat, it's still decent, but I think you’ll get more mileage out of the lower level charm effects than this. From a world building perspective, the existence of Mass Suggestion gives you a great jumping off point to run a body snatchers style campaign or another mind control type villain. You’ll nearly always get something out of your Mass Suggestion, making it a solid 6th level option, and an overall great spell for the game.

5e Spells

Mass Suggestion: Creeper by the Dozen