Suggestion: Make Some Suggestive Remarks

Usable By: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Spell Level: 2

School: Enchantment

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 30 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 8 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 a creature you can see within range 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 ends the spell.

The 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 knight give her warhorse to the first beggar she meets. If the condition isn’t met before the spell expires, the activity isn’t performed.

If you or any of your companions damage the target, the spell ends.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

“Hey man, maybe you should just, like, you know, chill out for a while, what do you say?” A wisp of smoke leaves the bard stoner’s lips, flowing in a green leaf shaped cloud towards the gnoll warchief. The hyena-like warleader inhales, and stops for a moment, blood-crazed eyes turning warm and bloodshot instead. He lets out a little giggle. He stops his warband, turning: “He, hehehe, a’ight, Scavengers, stop, we’re cool!”

Suggestion is a spell with one of the most powerful potentials in the game for its level. Clever words paired with misleading circumstances can lead NPCs to perform in ways that radically shape the outcomes of the story. With a duration of eight hours, at minimum, Suggestion can act as a save or die to remove foes from a fight that they feel isn’t entirely necessary. Sometimes you’ll suggest a reluctant noble son give up his crown to pursue his dreams of becoming a baker, turning you into royalty on the spot. Sometimes you can convince the leader of a ravenous band of gnolls that violence here isn’t as good a time as violence in the future. Suggestion has the potential to ignite or defuse near any situation with the right context.

Context is critical to the chances of the spell’s success. The most important words in the entire bulk of rules text to me is “The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the course of action sound reasonable.” This makes the variance table to table gigantic; some DMs will say yes to most anything player’s come up with, while other DMs, regardless of how hard the players try, will find any action their NPCs take outside of the norm typically unreasonable. Most tables land somewhere in the middle.

I find it plays best at tables that dive deep into bonds, flaws, and NPC history. If a character has fleshed out motivations that the party is aware of, playing towards those motivations can help shape Suggestion into a tool that rewards paying attention and engaging with the narrative. This doesn’t necessarily require deep character lore or motivations; surface level motivations like “The ogre loves food more than anything” fits at tables where narrative typically takes a back seat over combat or silliness, and with that alone, Suggestion has a lot of room to craft reasonable statements involving food.

Suggestion is one of the 2nd level spells I take the most; bards, sorcerers, and wizards are happy to cast it in almost all tiers of play up, as it does something that few other spells can. It's like an illusion in that way: it's bound only to your creativity and your DMs willingness to say yes. Warlocks can’t really justify using 5th level spell slots on this, making it a lot worse for dedicated warlocks, but if you’re taking a three level dip into warlock for some invocations, an empowered familiar, a subclass feature, and a pair of short rest 2nd level spell slots, Suggestion is an excellent choice. All in all if you can find room on your sheet for Suggestion I recommend it; at minimum it’ll lead to some hilariously bad ideas and memories made for life.

5e Spells

Suggestion: Make Some Suggestive Remarks