Command spell, I find it a bit Op, any ideas?
EDIT: YMMV! but I decided to add this to the spell description:
"of the same or lower level as the caster" this fixes the issue for me, sure it nerfs spell a bit, but still useful in many situations and it works both ways, evil priests etc won't be able to command higher levels PCs.
It has come up before in my campaign that this only Tier 3 spell does not have too many limitations.
TL;DR, spells too powerful for me at least, any ideas?
Last night's example, they faced (in Stonehell) off against Prospero, The Mad Jester from Monster Mondays, it was fun! :D But:
Priest cast Command "Freeze" successfully at once (he has pretty high bonus, so successfully casting it nor maintaining focus in later rounds) was not a big issue.
Right after Priest, the Wizard successfully cast: "Web" on Prospero. Besides not knowing if Prospero's Dazzling Orb, Got your Nose, Induce Fugue, Tumble were innate magical abilities or not? Could he still do them while "frozen" & webbed?... that was not easy to adjudicate. Also he was webbed by other character, the ongoing "freeze" command and priest casting it was that "directly harmful to the creature", bit debatable, and sorta moot since he was webbed anyhow.
Command RAW reads:
"Range: Far" "You issue a verbal command to one creature in range who can understand you. The command must be one word, such as “kneel.” The target obeys the command for as long as you focus. If your command is ever directly harmful to the creature, it may make a Charisma check vs. your last spellcasting check. On a success, the spell ends."
"Far" makes it powerful, as long as are in shouting range and creature can understand that language it works!
"Creature" makes it very powerful, afaik Creature includes almost anything that understand the casters 1 word command/language, so a: Storm Giant, Balor (=Balrog), or Ancient Dragon?! Who might have really high power level and 40 to 150 HP?
Should Command truly work as well and easily on them as on a small 2 HP Kobold?! Okay, some of those creatures will have a higher CHA score, but still, that does not come into play until the command is directly harmful.. players are clever enough to not do that.
That makes little sense to me. Nothing in the wording of the Command spell nor the Stats of the powerful monsters above would suggest they'd be affected any less than the little Kobold...
" If your command is ever directly harmful to the creature, it may make a Charisma check vs. your last spellcasting check" I also find that broken, last night after he was "Frozen" the Fighter tried to Battle axe decapitate Prospero, oc that didn't work (because Fighter doesn't have some special ability to decapitate and did ca. 10 dmg, not 40hp like Prospero has) but still, Prospero failed his Charisma check, still stood frozen for the next round, after being Battle-axed in neck,.. seems wrong.
Anyway, i'd love to hear your thoughts and how you use this spell or perhaps nerf it?
Sure, if all rolls go against players, it is not too powerful. But in practice, I find that it rarely goes that way = spell seems OP for me in almost every battle it is used that has only 1 to 4 adversaries, and I do not like using more than 5 enemies at a time due the slog/time waste/turns per round. But, using only one of them, was obviously part of what made this problem worse. But I like! using One Big Bad guy sometimes, this spell makes that really not challenging a lot of them.