A friends paladin cast the command “forget” on an enemy wizard after falling the save we spent about 20 minutes debating what he should forget, the final decision was that he forgot to act on his turn
We got ambushed by a minor BBEG as we were running away from his manor that we had just "liberated" a miguffen from. I commanded him to "Monologue" after his and his men's first round almost one shotted our paladin and barbarian. The BBEG's background was of an arrogant noble, so once he started he just kept going even after the spell expired and even reprimanded his soldiers who attacked us for "interrupting him" giving us plenty of time to heal, buff, and re-position everyone.
session with a somewhat new player to DnD. DM: ok you cast command and he failed the check, you can give any command as long as it's one word. New Player: ok, suicide! DM: uhhhh no you can't do that, command works like charm so you can't force someone to take actions that directly harm them. NP: ok... hmmm is there ice on the floor since is snowing? "we were on a ravine on the side of a mountain" DM: yes there is a snow layer but it's icy since we are pretty high up. NP: and the altar is near the edge of the tower right? DM: y... "checks map" yes it is. NP: ok. command: backflip DM proceeds to have a 6 dexterity wizard try to backflip with disadvantge near the edge of a 50m high tower, fail miserably and fall to his doom. one of the best moments i had the pleasure to witness.
Be me: a Grave Cleric (forgot the race tbh but that's not important here) be the enemy: a paladin who hit me with Command and I flubbed the save, he issued the command 'Leave' knowing how the Banishment spell works, I used it on myself and willingly failed the save since Banishment sends you to a harmless demiplane for a minute but once I was away from the Paladin I just dropped a concentration and only missed one round of combat instead of 10 the DM's response: "Well played, I hate you."
We were facing some hags and managed to kill a few, but one survived and tried to get away on a Broom of Flying. Before she could get too far away, the bard cast Command on her, and she failed the save. The DM asked what he commands. "Come." She still got away, but let out a moan upon doing so.
@jonathanmarks3112 There's no misinterpreting, the single word is a limitation of Command. The creature is at liberty to interpret it. For example, when issuing command "Flee", creatures can take the Disengage action so they don't suffer opportunity attacks.
@@nathaniellasnetske613 I guess if there’s anything that would know how to circumvent the Command spell, it would be a highly magical fey creature 🤷♂️
"Counterspell!" on enemy wizard. Almost ended the session ten minutes after start, cause no one was sure, shoud mage Counterspell this Command or he won't be able, because spell already affected him, so he would ready Counterspell for the first spell? Finally we agreed on this one. Other players took turns, eventually grouping up, GM smirked and described, how enemy mage was ready to throw Fireball at us... And Counterspelled himself.
since 3rd level Counterspell is a reaction and Command takes an action. You can't use an action on another character's turn, unless you had used the "ready action" to ready the command spell, which used your action on the previous turn and you would have had to set the condition "i ready action the command spell, with the condition that if an enemy casts a spell, i will react". if you did, indeed use the "ready action" I would agree that your move is legit and should allow you to "command" the enemy wizard to counterspell themself, but they do get a saving throw. the actual counterspell spell is still more effective, since it doesn't use your action and it's automatic success as long as it is cast from an equal or higher level slot than the enemy.
Underwater combat moment: The DM's rule was that lightning bolt, when cast underwater, acted like a fireball centered on yourself due to the conductivity of water. Makes sense. So my sorcerer didn't use it underwater, except for the one time she did. See, the whole party except her got charmed by sea nymphs, and doing damage to them was the fastest way to break the charm. So I dropped a lightning bolt on the party, zapped them back to their senses, and we were able to fight off the nymphs.
This was from a playthrough I watched on RUclips. One of the players was a gnome warlock named Deborah Mustard and he made it clear he had never played DnD before. So along with a bunch of other weird and silly actions, he was sometimes pretty random and wasteful with his one-use-per-day Command Spell. That is until the party arrived at the temple where the magic item they were searching for was housed. In the final chamber before the item, a whole bunch of man-eating beetles began crawling in. Similar to ants, they were basically acting as one cohesive organism and the party was desperately thinking of ways to save themselves. That is until Deborah got an idea. Since the beetles were acting as one organism, he suspected his Command spell might effect all of them. So in a final attempt to save the party, he jumped into a nearby chasm! Just before he started to fall, he turned towards the horde of beetles and gave them the command; “Follow”. He fell down the bottomless chasm and all the beetles followed him. He had saved the rest of the party who then had a moment of silence in his honor before finishing their quest.
Managed to find the video this incredible use of Command is from! :D (it’s towards the end) ruclips.net/video/9DOAgfw6-9I/видео.htmlsi=45y0Fm1HwsqTWO_V
Command "help" to make an enemy give the help action to a nearby ally. It was genius. He helped a ranger climb up to gain the high ground and partial cover, which basically tilted the entire fight in our favor. Another good one was "peek". Basically forcing an enemy to reveal themselves to a third party unwillingly. And while they duked it out, we got away virtually unchallenged. An improvised barricade later, and we had one dead foe, and one foe missing the majority of their spell slots and a fair few hitpoints. It basically turned an unwinnable fight into a precarious one.
I've actually used "confess," myself! We had a DM that wanted to run the most box-standard one-shot adventure; save the kidnapped princess from the tower. We learned the Black Knight that kidnapped her was as dumb as a post, so we knew there had to be an accomplice. Once we entered the room he was in, I cast Command, and said "confess." The knight failed the save, and immediately told us the entire plan, exposing a member of our party, our wizard, to be his father and co-conspirator. The DM said that was one of his favorite uses of Command he'd ever seen lol
I like using old elnglish words as they can have many well terms "Prostrate"- lay oneself flat on the ground face downward, especially in reverence or submission.
I like to use the command "Defenestrate" on nobility. It has two meanings: 1. a throwing of a person out of a window. 2. a usually swift dismissal or expulsion (as from a political party or office). The DM has to choose weather the noble/royal jumps out of a window or give up his political power. My party actually made a king kill himself by jumping from a tower window with a combination of illusions and our bard convincing him that we were still on the first floor before the fight started.
Rather short story but party was fighting the BBEG, wich was some sort of anchient dragon. Bard casts command on BBEG, points at the dragons hord and said something like "sort" or "organise". One nat1 from the dragon and there is a thousands of years old dragon starting to sort piles upon piles of coins by systems of age, material or name of curency.
Use the one Jaidenanimations did "Depression" or use the one I like to use "autodefenestrate" the act of jumping, propelling oneself, or causing oneself to fall, out of a window. Jumping out a window doesn't result in harm, the fall after the command ends however will so by using RAW it works.
@@sliestwheel This is nonsense. Obviously harmful acts are invalid, which includes jumping from dangerous heights. Only if the target is (or believes to be) on the ground floor would "Autodefenestrate" be a valid command.
Command, "Dismiss" or "Retreat" on an enemy leader. Usually works well for solving groups of enemies. Command, "Befriend". Good for when you don't have the more powerful versions ready.
I use command to tell the badguys to backflip, because the hubris of most people is that they think they could do one if pushed. Ultimately proning or hurting themselves, or at worst waste a turn. My wife uses command to Confess, convincing them reveal their darkest secrets and turn their allies on them. The best being a Goblin who confessed to eating all of the candy they stole from town.
Oh, I've got a favourite. We were playing a Halloween one-shot and had just cornered what we assumed was the BBEG*, roughly halfway through the adventure. The party were not in the best place to deal with him right then, and were hired to get answers in any case. So, I had my cleric cast Command, telling him to ‘Monologue’. Sure, by RAW that would only give us one turn, but that would be enough for the wizard, paladin, and the rogue to get themselves prepped for a potentially fight winning nova round. Except that's not what happened. The presumed BBEG was another victim, acting according to compulsions to seem like the villain, and under so much psychological stress that once he started talking, it just all came out. We learned what the actual threat was, and turned him over to a lynch mob (led by the Oath of Vengeance paladin) of his fellow victims (sure, his will hadn't been his own, but he had still put dozens of people through centuries of torture). So, even disregarding the dark ending to that encounter, if you're up against a villain, try getting them to monologue at you. If you're DM likes the villain tropes, it can turn Command into a fight winning spell. *The actual adventure, not that we knew it at the time, was based on a creepypasta called the Endless House (or something like that). The actual Big Bad wasn't a person, but a malevolent genius loci.
I heard a story from a friend of a player in his game who got Command and other spells of that nature banned from games, before being banned himself. He was constantly trying to use them to get people to soil themselves, reasoning they'd be less effective after having done that...but it was clearly because he found it funny. No one else did and it became a brake pedal to gameplay each time he tried it.
I fought a Mind Flayer that was sitting in a chair, I pulled a Lich from Adventure Time and said "Fall." He stood up and then immediately fell down the stairs to his chair.
"Bathe!" Is a pretty good use when near open bodies of water/rivers Depending on how the dm rules it, the affected will either start bathing in full armour, and inadvertently drown, or will strip of before bathig as not to cause themselves harm. The current will then carry them away as they bathe, as they're not going to actively try to swim whilst under the effect.
Best underwater combat: We were fighting a vampire sorcadin in an underwater temple. My artificer used Shatter to break a hole in one of the walls to flood the room. Our warforged sorlock was charmed by the boss and used wall of force to protect his new friend. I smashed the tiles under the wall of force and our druid cast control water. We washing machined a vampire to death.
I had a "LIFT Domain" Cleric obsessed with personal fitness in a 2-shot. We got attacked and my cleric, Tony, cast Command "CRUNCHES, BRO!!!". The enemy dropped to the floor on his back and into vigorous exercise. Tony stood over him yelling encouraging words like "You got this bro!" and "Feel that holy burn, bro... yeahhh", as the rest of the party laughed their asses off beating him to death with advantage. I can't wait to play Tony again.
In my last session, I commanded a drake to "betray" as well. To be fair, we were a party of three (lv4) fighting three drakes, one of which was corrupted and mutated, so all it did was lessen the damage to the party. What made it cool was that I didn't know anything about drakes, my Yuan-Ti just figured "Hm, those things kind of look like dragons, maybe they understand my dialect of Draconic", and... Turns out they do. Also turns out they have an INT score of 4, which happens to be the bare minimum for Command to even work. That was my luckiest panic action ever.
My favourite underwater moment. Early campaign, meeting the BBEG for the first time. He's significantly higher level than us. He's monologuing about all the things he's been doing. I run up and grapple him. He does nothing to stop me because he knows i can't actually kill him. Hell, I'd probably need a nat20 just to meet his AC. So, I push him into the courtyard fountain. He calmly goes in and stares back at me. He knows that his guards are on the way and that I don't have the time to outlast his breath. So, I use command. I tell him to scream. He fluffs the roll. And looks in horror as he screams his lungs empty. Now the DM tries to argue that I cannot make a command that immediately harms someone. I point out that hes actually got a number of rounds equal to his con modifier before he takes damage. This is no more immediate harm than making someone kneel when youre aiming to cut their head off. DM agrees that im technically correct. So, of course, the bard jumps in to the fountain and also tries to grapple the BBEG. Then before i know it, the whole party is in a fountain holding the bad guy underwater. BBEG isnt very strong, he's a wizard type. But he cant cast many spells, because he has no breath to speak, he can't use his arms as the bard and wizard are sitting on them. The DM handles it like a champ and tells us in vivid detail how we watch as a man drowns in our hands.
So much potential with this one. These don't come from experience but I just want to throw some ideas out there. Have an ally throw something dangerous / shoot an arrow at somebody, and command them to *Catch* Is the enemy holding something important that you want to destroy? If applicable, try *Crush Smash Shatter Shred or Cut* Same vein as the last one, one day I'd love to force a wizard to *Burn or Melt* their own spellbook. If you're able to cast Command without getting caught, you may be able to dissolve the relationship between people by ordering them to *Argue, Bicker or Criticize.* Commanding an enemy minion to do this while speaking to their BBEG, only to immediately get murdered is probably be the funniest potential application of this. Is somebody in the middle of a long swig of a drink? *Breathe* Having somebody drop their weapon is nice an all but try ordering them to *Throw* it, just make sure you take cover.
I used command when I was being chased by a player with a cursed weapon. He was a Goliath barbarian and I was a tiefling bard (command from magical secrets). As I was running away and climbing ladders to get out of the range I cast command. My character just screamed sh*t repeatedly in fear. It worked 😂
I immediately thought of people using german words, you could litetally force someone to just "get out and go fuck yourself" and its great. Also second.
Our DM was pulling nasty trick after nasty trick and enjoying it far too much. Our paladin (run by his girl friend) got so sick of it that when she cast Command at one of the DM's favorite BBEG's she demanded he roll the save in the open. Given he was starting to realize she really was getting royally irritated at him, he complied and blew the save very badly. When he asked what her command was, she replied, "*_Mast*rb*te!_* And you'd better get used to it!" The rest of us couldn't wait for that session to end.
Request for favorite underwater encounter granted: We managed to roll up an encounter to find the ship of one of our party's heroic past lives (long story) and so most of us dove down to investigate. I had my druid stay behind to cast Plant Growth on some shrubs we were awakening, but gave the rest of the party Water Breathing so they could check it out. One of our paladins was out for a session so the GM let me play his character isntead. As we approach the ship, our GM asks if anyone speaks primoridal, specifically of the water plane variety (Aquen i think?) and it turns out our dragonborn paladin actually did. Without another word, the GM starts playing "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid over discord and describes that we see some sharks circling around inside the ship through some large holes in its hull, singing said song. Normally, this paladin was a bit of a murder hobo, and 100% would've just gone in and used smite. But that's never been my style, so I rolled performance instead. Nat 20, and just as the song was coming to an end too. The paladin drifts down singing so well, the sharks and the merfolk didn't attack us on sight. We eneded up fighting them later anyway because they were definitly evil, but we made friends with a young bronze dragon when all was said and done so it all worked out. good times.
My poor armored villains when it comes to taking on my players' spellcasters. There are lots of things that you can't to in armor, so under the spell they have to either try to make it happen in their armor or remove their armor first. So I end up with a bunch of baddies in their undergarments doing things like "backflip", "jete (a ballet leap)", "backbend", "crabwalk", "yoga", "scorpion", etc...
I don't know about creative, but it was certainly memorable. This was back in the 90s. We were a group of teenage friends playing in 2nd edition back when rounds were a minute instead of six seconds. The group was up against some important villain who was making a speech in front of his underlings. The speech finishes, and combat begins. The priest (who's super chaotic) goes first and uses Command: Masturbate...
I’ve never used it successfully but my most memorable attempt was when I was in a spooky mansion filled with undead. The villain was a dead religious fanatic who had killed his daughter and her child because he didn’t approve of her husband, sparking a cursed groundhog-day time loop for all involved, forcing them to relive the events over and over. We confronted him in the graveyard where his daughter was buried (everyone was either undead or a ghost except the husband who buried his wife and left) As we were fighting him near her grave, I pointed to the dirt in front of it, used command, and said “eat.” He saved but man it would have been glorious
My favorite underwater moment was me playing a warforged fighter who got quite a few bonuses when he crit including advantage to everyone attacking the same opponent until his next turn. Dm ruled that attacks underwater are made with disadvantage due to not being able to move as well. Not sure if thats raw or not as i never checked. I rolled twice and got 2 natural 20's allowing the rest of my attacks that turn to be made normally. The warforged cares not about the difficulty of the task, for they will see it done reguardless
Attacks made underwater are rolled at disadvantage unless the attacker has a swimming speed or the weapon deals piercing damage (because thrusting attacks are not impeded as badly). Ranged attacks cannot reach targets beyond a certain distance, underwater, either. I believe 30ft.
@@CaptainDCaponly short melee piercing weapons, not all of them and ranged attacks miss automatically at long range and have disadvantage at short range unless it’s a crossbow
Only one word came from the Wizard's lips at the end of his spell. "Beg." And the Mad King did beg. He begged for forgiveness. He begged as the Barbarian drug him to the window. And he begged the many gods for his life as he fell. Some say you can hear his spirit on the Castle grounds still begging
once during a particulary lenghty villain discour my bored character used command: poop ,on a passing bird ,the BBEG had a brain freeze due to the shock of having been interupted in their "BIG moment" ,we used an artifact called the "hearth of the child" wich made a LOT of ours spell and cantrip ,very juvenile
My favourite spell. Found a big bad that kept using misty step. Shouted to the Barb, "push him off the ledge" as he did, i shouted the command word "vomit" (i know, its gross, but i figured silence could be misconstrued, so i did the only thing i knew would stop him speaking.) The BBEG plummeted towards the ground in a disgusting spiral of stomach contents, failing to use the verbal element of misty step. Technically, he survived the fall. But the DM agreed that he wasn't in fighting shape after that...
I hope this goes to the next video because this is a epic, amusing, dark and inspiring tale. I had a abaration Aasimar or corrupted Angel named Feathers, who is a wizard. I made a deal with a demon and accepted a demon contract. It took away my soul, a lot of strength and some dex, but gave me a lot of charisma. A LOT OF CHARISMA. I still have my character sheet and it has 36 charisma. I renamed myself Gigachad Feathers. Our group and I was In hell and hijacked a demon ship sailing on lava with about 13 tough demons on board. When it was my turn i raised my hand up and got into ALL of the demons minds, made them go insane and commanded them with one sinister word that would end our encounter in seconds..."Swim!" I commanded them all to jump in lava killing them alive in agony, thinking they could swim. My charisma was so high that it made me so powerful. I can easily control and command enemies and make them lose their minds. I also saved the group later on after and became a God by summoning my minion with stats as an actual Boss encounter because of my Charisma stats. But that is another story.
The best Command I ever saw was simply "drop". It was used on an antagonist who, at the time, was in the middle of a significant tribal ritual. The bad guy had stepped ahead of us in what was essentially going to be 'the trials of the chosen one' and ruined our hopes of succeeding the trial ourselves. Final trial is essentially just a winners lap, he's already won but must run this small wooden carving around the arena. Our bard commanded him to drop it while he was running and... it broke. The crowd tore our enemy to pieces, seeing their artifact destroyed.
This probably shouldn’t have worked but the party was facing off against a oathbreaker paladin and I used the command repent. What followed was the fight turned into a religious debate between my paladin vs him where the party eventually managed to talk him down.
Forced movement is a myth, you can use Command to force Attacks of Opportunity from a Paladin, but keep in mind most enemies are at liberty to take the Disengage action when obeying a Flee command. Something like "Run" would work better, but they could do something smart like run on the spot.
Don’t know how creative they are, but some of my favorite uses of the spell from my first campaign - Awaken, to get one of my party members to get up when we were being ambushed - Land, enemy in the air with advantage against enchantment effects crit failed and landed on the ground, conveniently a tile away from the barbarian - Divulge, same enemy as before, crit failed again, got some spicy lore about one of our party members
The DM allowed me to play two characters and the second one was the antagonist of the campaign. "Valeria Thorne" A Powerful Apostate Near the end it was revealed to the rest of the party that the antagonist used to be their friend at the Mage school they all attended and before the events of them leaving the school she used Command and commanded her friends "Forget me" erasing her from their memories and she would invent this persona to band them all together to stop her😢
I have a BBEG for a large arc in my story named Deliorah. He was a a very charismatic circus ringleader to most, but to the party, he was a deplorable and manipulative puppet master with goals to find the location of the last living embodiment of Xabalanque the destroyer, an ancient battlescarred winged tarrasque given life by the true BBEG of the story. By now, he had found the map with its location, and was preparing to hold a circus directly above the cavern. While the circus went normally, as he his show reached its climax and his showmen bowed (all of which were in reality just extremely impressive puppets) and the audience started clapping, he used the Mass Command spell and said “Arise”. Two things immediately happened at once. The first was the entire crowd stood up and gave him a standing ovation, and secondly, the stage behind Deliorah exploded as The once slumbering beast awoke and clawed its way out of the ground. We ended the session there, and next week will be likely be very intense.
We once had our Barbarian attempt to throw a goblin at an enemy fighter who was standing near a balcony. The fighter was actually able to catch the goblin and somehow avoid damage to either it or the terrified goblin. Our Warlock was up next, and he cast Command saying "defenestrate." The poor goblin was promptly tossed off the balcony and killed. I later asked the Warlock players why he used one of his only 2 spell slots on a goblin. He laughed and reminded me that that goblin had gotten incredibly lucky and had been missed by 4 Eldritch Blasts (2 rounds of combat) and he had decided that it just had to die no matter what.
Personal favorites are Self-Actualize, Strip (by technicallity, creatures not fully wearing armor can't benefit from it), and the classic Backflip (especially when they fail). Just to bully my fellow DMs, Rap and Sing are pretty good ones if you're a fan of giving out irl embarrassment debuffs.
I played an aarakocra rogue/cleric (weird mechanically, but fun for the character development). We had a minotaur paladin/barbarian whose love interest was the little sister of the BBEG, who had captured her and cursed her so that she didn't remember us. On a hunt for information through the BBEG's lair, we found her, sitting in an illusory garden, sipping tea. She was terrified of us, having been told we were murderous monsters out to get her, and was about to call for help. My character really wanted to gtfo but, seeing the pain on our poor paladin's face, they instead cast command on her, told her, "remember." And she did. Since the spell lasts for a round, the DM gave us 6 seconds of information from her that revealed to us who the BBEG had been disguised as. 6 seconds of her seeing her love again, 6 seconds of our paladin feeling so relieved to know that there was at least a chance that she could save her love. It was brutal and beautiful.
my favorite was in session 1. I was a forge domain cleric with another player and an npc. We had just gotten out of killing a bunch of slavers and releasing the captured people without letting any townsguard know, and got back to the inn we had stayed at the previous day with the npc just getting healed from going uncounscious. I took him up to the room we had rented while he was wanting to get a pint of the strongest alcohol they had, which led to my character and the npc arguing till I just casted command "Sleep". Before he fell asleep he said that he was not happy before passing out, but then afterwards 2 pints of the alcohol was brought up, which lead to my character, A Furnource, to drink one and the other player drank the other, which they immediatly got drunk. I just returned the pints, went back up to the room, and locked us all in for the night
Command: Forgive over Command: Unlock hits so much deeper. It’s not just “unlock that shit dawg” it’s a “feel it bro. You’re emotional about this right now. You forgive them, potentially questioning everything even for a mere 6 seconds”
last session we had a boss fight on a pirate ship with a cart full of very hot rocks. Most of our players were down and i kept missing with my attacks, so my turn i decided to cast command on the boss with the word “dive”, intending for to dive into the water away from us. instead, the dm decided that his take on the command was to dive headfirst into the cart full of hot red rocks leading to our barb to take an opportunity attack on him as he dove burning his skin off and losing his legs. the now fried and delegged boss went limp and just died. twas a good fight
My fav underwater combat has to be with one of my fav dnd characters: Derrek Drowbane, a grey dwarf guerilla. And it was against a Skrag in a swamp. Doing hit and run to swipe people into the swamp. Our figther did well with massive penalties underwater, and our beguiler forgot spells are somatic, cast one underwater, and started drowning.
Favorite underwater encounter: I DM'd a custom campaign of Starfinder (sci-fi sequel for Pathfinder for those who don't know). The party had to go check out an underwater research lab that had gone radio silent. They didn't realize it at the time, but they were walking into a tried and true Lovecraftian bit. When they went down there they were beset by the local wildlife like giant Mantis Shrimps and the like, all with a deep orange glow in their eyes. As they managed to get into the research facility proper they started getting attacked by the researchers themselves - again, with the glowing orange eyes. They learned early on that the creatures and corrupted researchers were susceptible to Force Damage and were pretty liberal with their application of such. All the while, they had been finding lore dockets that described a Commander in the base who was afflicted with some strange ailment none of the researchers could identify besides the orange glow of the eyes... and worse yet, they realized it was spreading like a contagious madness; unable stop it. The party freaked out a bit when they reached an underwater elevator of sorts that descended into the black abyss leading to the ocean floor. Freaked out a hell of a lot more when they discovered the Commander - in a full on Metal Gear style submersible mech - was waiting for them. But the freak out reached an apex when they finally realized what they were dealing with was a Colour Out of Space that had been feeding on the flora and fauna there... And they'd just burned all their Force-damage abilities/equipment.
Under water action: In a pirate campaign, we wanted to rob a ship that was full of cultists but also out gunned our two surface ships. However our pirates had a submarine. The problem was we couldn’t surface and we needed to board to take the treasure. We also had a cube of Force and some Marvelous paints. So we used the cube to create a force field to act as a diving bell that connected us to the hull underneath the ship. Then we drew a hatch door onto the ship. Right into the treasure hold. Next session we had to quickly bail as the cultist had managed to summon a demon that one shot the Bugbear Barbarian. Cue the mad dash for the new hatch below the waterline, we managed to close the hatch to our sub and deactivated the cube of force. And then remembered we did not close the hatch to the cultists’ ship… the one that was opened below the ship… and that’s how we looted a ship that outgunned our ship, sank it, and did it all with our invoking that which all sailors of our waters fear the most… the smell of wet bugbear.
Favorite underwater moment. Happened recently and has been my first real time playing a wizard. Our DM is new and running a homebrew dungeon crawl similar to pokemon, a dungeon type in each town. So far has been really good, though he has been gunning for me for a bit at this point. Warcaster wizard as a support mage for our party has had me finding a 'solution for each dungeon'. The homebrew has been unique though. Sesame Street dunegon with Cookie Monster as a huge monstrosity boss. Swamp zone with a vampire/cryptid twist. And now the subject, water temple. He had pulled out all the stops. Dungeon is underwater, a good majority of it is difficult terrain. Potions or items to breathe underwater are a requirement... And his attempt to stop me from messing up his encounters, no vocal components. Apparently blub blub doesn't count for spell casting. We are at the start of a large cavern/tunnel descending to the depths of the dungeon. He went into detail how the tunnel entrance was an open pool on a beach and tube straight down. *Idea hits*. Fun thing about war wizards and warcaster. It removes some of the spell requirements for casting. Leaving vocal components the only factors. But you simply need to speak the words, not necessarily be heard by anyone. My wizard is a telepathy and has bubble for air. The first huge encounter had hords of minions and mersquid, crab things like from Harry Potter 4, giant angler fish, squids, and crab monsters. Potential party wipe. I smile, go first on initiative, and say "I cast control water". I proceeded to move a 100 cubic feet of water (the entire tunnel area) out the tube and hold it there making a very large air pocket and a lot of dead/dying fish that can't move or breathe. He closed his book and shook my hand and said we'll take lunch break.
our favourite underwater combat moment: during pathfinder 1e, as the party was going through the campaign module rise of the runelords, a side combat area was left after the first act boss. while it is entirely optional it is more deadly than the regular boss because of the environment. a giants helm is in a tidepool with little fish swim about trapped in there. the party try to get a set of pulleys and ropes to get the helm as it is worth quite a bit if it could get out of the area. the party member who went down fought the creature hiding inside the pool as it revealed itself, a giant hermit crab. since this is pathfinder 1e, there is a negative to hit and damage while swimming, and if fully submerged have total cover from land bound people. the party member was doing their best as weapons and build arent suited for the task. eventually the party is able to disengage, taking more damage than the previous fight with boss and minions. they left that boss there for later and got at least half exp for their troubles getting level up.
i was in a fight once with a bbeg who was about to do a ritual and we were trying to stop him. he was out of legendary resistances and he was next in the initiative order. i casted command and told him "Freeze!" he was stunned and couldnt do the verbal or somatic element of the ritual since his hands and tongue were frozen, essentially stunning him for the turn.
Was once playing a Glamour Bard. This hulking behemoth activated Rage. I used Command to tell him to chill (out). Made the fight easier than the DM was aiming for.
My favorite use of command was not done by me or anyone i know but I read it online and thought I’d was freaking awesome. So a party was fighting a ( i believe) ancient red dragon who had already downed half of the party with breathweapon attacks but decided to be creative with the paladin by throwing him of the cliff they were standing on. The dm allowed the palandin one action during the fall. As the paladin falls through the air he utters a single command : “catch”
It was very niche but so much fun. Genie warlock had filled a book with glyphs of warding with the trigger being read the first glyph and it done within the first 5 feet of their demiplane so it could be moved 5 feet out and not trigger the movement condition. On their turn they entered their plane and threw the book out into the first 5 feet. Wizard was up next and cast command: read. The warlock had managed to fill the first 25 pages leading to 125d8 thunder damage. A truly spectacular moment, and we were politely asked not to do that again.
I'm a relatively new player, and we were in a large dungeon with multiple powerful enemies. Our party is relatively large, and we had picked up a few strays to rescue from the dungeon. Cue a fight with a Purple Worm. NPC has taken some damage and isn't looking so hot, and Purple Worm eats him. My character, a Bard/Cleric, who is almost entirely a support: "Vomit" Purple worm fails the save, NPC is vomited up, prone, but alive, if not now in desperate need of a shower. I was so grateful our DM allowed that particular use of the spell.
Favorite underwater combat didn’t start out underwater. Each of the PCs had an officer role on the ship they sailed; one was captain, one was purser, one was master at arms, and one was the surgeon. The PCs had split up, master of arms and captain to chase down a pirate enemy that had fled combat with them; but surgeon and purser remained behind on the ship to keep the crew safe from the sharks attacking it. Once the surgeon PC went belowdecks at the suggestion of the crew, the one remaining up top was the purser, who drew his sword and looked down at the sharks ramming the sides of the ship. Let me be clear about something: purser made the crew very uneasy. They never saw him eat or sleep. He wore his heavy armor at all times. He also recommended harsh punishments to the captain for every minor infraction *over* the ship’s disciplinarian, and because he and the captain were friends he often listened. He also had a tendency to light his sword ablaze with an evil green fire and laugh maniacally in combat. So when the crew asks if he’s up to the task of repelling the sharks he brags that he could slaughter the crew of the ship single-handedly and still have enough in him to kill the sharks. Naturally the crew seems to view this as a bit crossing the line. He goes down in the lifeboat with sword drawn, while the crew covers him one of the two with ballistae. Once all the sharks are defeated, the crew cut the lifeboat’s tow rope and shoot a bolt through the bottom. Turns out heavy armor isn’t conducive for swimming.
This is from the current campaign I am in right now. My favorite underwater exploration was at a shipwreck that we had come across while traveling to another location for our main quest to gather some powerful artifacts to stop a ritual to bring about an endless night by Shar. We get to this shipwreck and start exploring. The ship was busted in half and clearly looked like it didn't just hit the rocks and sank. Well, looking at the ship closely, we find out it is possibly the same ship that our NPC navigator, a Tabaxi named Robin, spouse was on navigating for. This is the time we got introduced to how long your character could actually hold their breath. Our DM was cool about it, though, and I am pretty sure that I stayed down much longer than I should have. Through some good rolls on some skill checks, I got to have my hero moment and ripped a door off of one of the cabins. Inside this cabin was a couple of chests and a set of drawers. The chests had some goodies for us that we were able to find out later on. Digging through the drawers, I found an item that belonged to Robin's spouse. Came up and told her about it, then dove back down to get it. I didn't have the air to finish grabbing it and leave. Well, what would you know shortly after all of that? we got attacked by a Kraken Spawn and my character nearly died. All in all it was a great spot in the campaign among so many others that brought in the NPCs and just made the story we are building so much better. Lol if you see this guys, thanks to our DM and the other players it's been great playing this for over a year and I hope we can continue for an even longer time!
I've only ever had it work once in any meaningful way and it was telling one of our Goblin ambushers to "Rebel". He immediately took a shot at his leader. Missed, but it was still funny.
Against any flying enemy with a mind: tell them to "Land." Works best when the party has actions readied to hit or bind them once they're on the ground. Entangle comes to mind. Also, I don't know if this counts as "creative," but my Bard once used the basic feature of "Command" to order an enemy cleric to fall prone. Our Sorcerer, reserving their action, used Animate Rope to tie them to the ground. Try strength-saving out of ropes while prone or concentrating on a spell while all attacks against you have advantage.
My most creative was in a PvPvE "one shot" game I was in. It was down to me another player atop a clif and another at the shore of the river that was below. I commanded them to "Dive." we did a little diliberate if they would dive on the ground ala baseball or dive off the cliff into the water. It was obvious what my intent was, and i think we landed on it. It was a 3/4 roll chance of them doing the cliff since it was aperent with other having jumped it was safe. Ended up, they did, and I just stayed atop the clify lying low until the one finished off the other. It was getting late, and we determined that by the time he would have gotten back up i couldve run off even then i had way more slots/HP so it was a bad idea so we decided whoever could survive the longest would win via survival skill. Being a cleric, I won in the end in so my character in game had won the competition and became an Overseer.
A 5th edition campaign that recently ended. I was playing a Twilight Cleric and the rest of the party were getting our asses handed to us by a summoned creature that was CR 6. This may not seem like too big of a challenge, but most of the players don't have the same level of real world playing experience. To get rid of the creature, I cast command on the caster and using the word "Dismiss". The wizard then dropped the spell and we then proceeded to beat that wizard in two rounds!
A friends paladin cast the command “forget” on an enemy wizard after falling the save we spent about 20 minutes debating what he should forget, the final decision was that he forgot to act on his turn
We got ambushed by a minor BBEG as we were running away from his manor that we had just "liberated" a miguffen from. I commanded him to "Monologue" after his and his men's first round almost one shotted our paladin and barbarian. The BBEG's background was of an arrogant noble, so once he started he just kept going even after the spell expired and even reprimanded his soldiers who attacked us for "interrupting him" giving us plenty of time to heal, buff, and re-position everyone.
A truly epic command.🤪
MacGuffin*
I'm imagining that scene from The Incredibles. "See? Now you respect me because I'm a threat..."
You sly dog! You -caught- made me monologuing!
session with a somewhat new player to DnD.
DM: ok you cast command and he failed the check, you can give any command as long as it's one word.
New Player: ok, suicide!
DM: uhhhh no you can't do that, command works like charm so you can't force someone to take actions that directly harm them.
NP: ok... hmmm is there ice on the floor since is snowing?
"we were on a ravine on the side of a mountain"
DM: yes there is a snow layer but it's icy since we are pretty high up.
NP: and the altar is near the edge of the tower right?
DM: y... "checks map" yes it is.
NP: ok. command: backflip
DM proceeds to have a 6 dexterity wizard try to backflip with disadvantge near the edge of a 50m high tower, fail miserably and fall to his doom.
one of the best moments i had the pleasure to witness.
That's hilarious. I'm really glad your DM went with it instead of saying, "He casts feather fall."
@@victormedina1600prone prevents reactions?
@@mingkaipan832 I could be wrong, but I think that's highly unlikely. That would make knocking someone prone a lot more powerful.
Be me: a Grave Cleric (forgot the race tbh but that's not important here)
be the enemy: a paladin who hit me with Command and I flubbed the save, he issued the command 'Leave'
knowing how the Banishment spell works, I used it on myself and willingly failed the save since Banishment sends you to a harmless demiplane for a minute but once I was away from the Paladin I just dropped a concentration and only missed one round of combat instead of 10
the DM's response: "Well played, I hate you."
Love the idea of the paladin yelling "Leave" only for the cleric to just pop out of reality.
@@bdletoast09 imagine the horror when the cleric came back sooner than planned
We were facing some hags and managed to kill a few, but one survived and tried to get away on a Broom of Flying. Before she could get too far away, the bard cast Command on her, and she failed the save. The DM asked what he commands.
"Come."
She still got away, but let out a moan upon doing so.
Did you command the DM to misinterpret?
Definitely should've gone with "approach," but that's... an option... I guess. 😬
@jonathanmarks3112 There's no misinterpreting, the single word is a limitation of Command. The creature is at liberty to interpret it. For example, when issuing command "Flee", creatures can take the Disengage action so they don't suffer opportunity attacks.
"Wait...She can just...Do that on command?"
@@nathaniellasnetske613 I guess if there’s anything that would know how to circumvent the Command spell, it would be a highly magical fey creature 🤷♂️
"Counterspell!" on enemy wizard. Almost ended the session ten minutes after start, cause no one was sure, shoud mage Counterspell this Command or he won't be able, because spell already affected him, so he would ready Counterspell for the first spell? Finally we agreed on this one. Other players took turns, eventually grouping up, GM smirked and described, how enemy mage was ready to throw Fireball at us... And Counterspelled himself.
since 3rd level Counterspell is a reaction and Command takes an action. You can't use an action on another character's turn, unless you had used the "ready action" to ready the command spell, which used your action on the previous turn and you would have had to set the condition "i ready action the command spell, with the condition that if an enemy casts a spell, i will react".
if you did, indeed use the "ready action" I would agree that your move is legit and should allow you to "command" the enemy wizard to counterspell themself, but they do get a saving throw.
the actual counterspell spell is still more effective, since it doesn't use your action and it's automatic success as long as it is cast from an equal or higher level slot than the enemy.
Underwater combat moment: The DM's rule was that lightning bolt, when cast underwater, acted like a fireball centered on yourself due to the conductivity of water. Makes sense. So my sorcerer didn't use it underwater, except for the one time she did. See, the whole party except her got charmed by sea nymphs, and doing damage to them was the fastest way to break the charm. So I dropped a lightning bolt on the party, zapped them back to their senses, and we were able to fight off the nymphs.
This was from a playthrough I watched on RUclips.
One of the players was a gnome warlock named Deborah Mustard and he made it clear he had never played DnD before. So along with a bunch of other weird and silly actions, he was sometimes pretty random and wasteful with his one-use-per-day Command Spell. That is until the party arrived at the temple where the magic item they were searching for was housed.
In the final chamber before the item, a whole bunch of man-eating beetles began crawling in. Similar to ants, they were basically acting as one cohesive organism and the party was desperately thinking of ways to save themselves. That is until Deborah got an idea. Since the beetles were acting as one organism, he suspected his Command spell might effect all of them. So in a final attempt to save the party, he jumped into a nearby chasm! Just before he started to fall, he turned towards the horde of beetles and gave them the command; “Follow”.
He fell down the bottomless chasm and all the beetles followed him. He had saved the rest of the party who then had a moment of silence in his honor before finishing their quest.
Holy shit, that legend.
Managed to find the video this incredible use of Command is from! :D (it’s towards the end)
ruclips.net/video/9DOAgfw6-9I/видео.htmlsi=45y0Fm1HwsqTWO_V
Command "help" to make an enemy give the help action to a nearby ally. It was genius. He helped a ranger climb up to gain the high ground and partial cover, which basically tilted the entire fight in our favor.
Another good one was "peek". Basically forcing an enemy to reveal themselves to a third party unwillingly. And while they duked it out, we got away virtually unchallenged. An improvised barricade later, and we had one dead foe, and one foe missing the majority of their spell slots and a fair few hitpoints. It basically turned an unwinnable fight into a precarious one.
See if I had been commanded to "draw", I would have deliberately misinterpreted and started daring a picture in the dirt
Or draw your weapon. Or a breath!
I've actually used "confess," myself! We had a DM that wanted to run the most box-standard one-shot adventure; save the kidnapped princess from the tower. We learned the Black Knight that kidnapped her was as dumb as a post, so we knew there had to be an accomplice. Once we entered the room he was in, I cast Command, and said "confess." The knight failed the save, and immediately told us the entire plan, exposing a member of our party, our wizard, to be his father and co-conspirator. The DM said that was one of his favorite uses of Command he'd ever seen lol
I like using old elnglish words as they can have many well terms
"Prostrate"- lay oneself flat on the ground face downward, especially in reverence or submission.
From years of playing LARP:
Polarms are long weapons
They tend to be at the back so they can reach over allies
Command: "Spin"
I like to use the command "Defenestrate" on nobility. It has two meanings: 1. a throwing of a person out of a window. 2. a usually swift dismissal or expulsion (as from a political party or office). The DM has to choose weather the noble/royal jumps out of a window or give up his political power. My party actually made a king kill himself by jumping from a tower window with a combination of illusions and our bard convincing him that we were still on the first floor before the fight started.
I didn't know about the second meaning. TIL
Wouldn't "defenestrate" cause him to throw *someone else* out of a window?
"Autodefenestrate" would be the self-inflicted one.
Rather short story but party was fighting the BBEG, wich was some sort of anchient dragon. Bard casts command on BBEG, points at the dragons hord and said something like "sort" or "organise". One nat1 from the dragon and there is a thousands of years old dragon starting to sort piles upon piles of coins by systems of age, material or name of curency.
With how many centuries that treasure has been slowly piling up that would take almost as much time as it took to find the treasure and retrieve it.
@@gratefulgamer7907 mhm
Evil wizard: “Draw!”
Gunslinger: “Don’t mind if I do”
_pulls out my Duel Disk_
*Sounds good to me, Kaiba*
"draw"
me, with my cat-cleric who has an intelligence stat of like 3: okay! *draws a picture of a cake on the stone floor with my claw*
Don't know if it's necessarily creative, but my last usage was "divulge"
Use the one Jaidenanimations did "Depression" or use the one I like to use "autodefenestrate" the act of jumping, propelling oneself, or causing oneself to fall, out of a window. Jumping out a window doesn't result in harm, the fall after the command ends however will so by using RAW it works.
I have a few good ideas:
Secure.
Contain
Protect.
One I’ve used, but not the exact word I used, was “POOP!”
@@sliestwheel This is nonsense. Obviously harmful acts are invalid, which includes jumping from dangerous heights. Only if the target is (or believes to be) on the ground floor would "Autodefenestrate" be a valid command.
@@sliestwheelWhat happens if you roll a one on that? Does the guy just land in a pile of feathers?
Command, "Dismiss" or "Retreat" on an enemy leader. Usually works well for solving groups of enemies.
Command, "Befriend". Good for when you don't have the more powerful versions ready.
I use command to tell the badguys to backflip, because the hubris of most people is that they think they could do one if pushed. Ultimately proning or hurting themselves, or at worst waste a turn.
My wife uses command to Confess, convincing them reveal their darkest secrets and turn their allies on them. The best being a Goblin who confessed to eating all of the candy they stole from town.
Oh, I've got a favourite. We were playing a Halloween one-shot and had just cornered what we assumed was the BBEG*, roughly halfway through the adventure. The party were not in the best place to deal with him right then, and were hired to get answers in any case.
So, I had my cleric cast Command, telling him to ‘Monologue’. Sure, by RAW that would only give us one turn, but that would be enough for the wizard, paladin, and the rogue to get themselves prepped for a potentially fight winning nova round.
Except that's not what happened. The presumed BBEG was another victim, acting according to compulsions to seem like the villain, and under so much psychological stress that once he started talking, it just all came out. We learned what the actual threat was, and turned him over to a lynch mob (led by the Oath of Vengeance paladin) of his fellow victims (sure, his will hadn't been his own, but he had still put dozens of people through centuries of torture).
So, even disregarding the dark ending to that encounter, if you're up against a villain, try getting them to monologue at you. If you're DM likes the villain tropes, it can turn Command into a fight winning spell.
*The actual adventure, not that we knew it at the time, was based on a creepypasta called the Endless House (or something like that). The actual Big Bad wasn't a person, but a malevolent genius loci.
I heard a story from a friend of a player in his game who got Command and other spells of that nature banned from games, before being banned himself. He was constantly trying to use them to get people to soil themselves, reasoning they'd be less effective after having done that...but it was clearly because he found it funny. No one else did and it became a brake pedal to gameplay each time he tried it.
“SHIT.”
When the BBEG is directing his/her minions in combat, you just can't beat commanding 'Yodel'. :evilgrin:
I fought a Mind Flayer that was sitting in a chair, I pulled a Lich from Adventure Time and said "Fall." He stood up and then immediately fell down the stairs to his chair.
"Ayo, the pizza here!"
@@addison_v_ertisement1678 "OOP-"
"Bathe!" Is a pretty good use when near open bodies of water/rivers
Depending on how the dm rules it, the affected will either start bathing in full armour, and inadvertently drown, or will strip of before bathig as not to cause themselves harm. The current will then carry them away as they bathe, as they're not going to actively try to swim whilst under the effect.
you do know that the spell only lasts 6 seconds , right?
Best underwater combat:
We were fighting a vampire sorcadin in an underwater temple. My artificer used Shatter to break a hole in one of the walls to flood the room. Our warforged sorlock was charmed by the boss and used wall of force to protect his new friend. I smashed the tiles under the wall of force and our druid cast control water.
We washing machined a vampire to death.
I had a "LIFT Domain" Cleric obsessed with personal fitness in a 2-shot. We got attacked and my cleric, Tony, cast Command "CRUNCHES, BRO!!!". The enemy dropped to the floor on his back and into vigorous exercise. Tony stood over him yelling encouraging words like "You got this bro!" and "Feel that holy burn, bro... yeahhh", as the rest of the party laughed their asses off beating him to death with advantage.
I can't wait to play Tony again.
In my last session, I commanded a drake to "betray" as well. To be fair, we were a party of three (lv4) fighting three drakes, one of which was corrupted and mutated, so all it did was lessen the damage to the party. What made it cool was that I didn't know anything about drakes, my Yuan-Ti just figured "Hm, those things kind of look like dragons, maybe they understand my dialect of Draconic", and... Turns out they do. Also turns out they have an INT score of 4, which happens to be the bare minimum for Command to even work.
That was my luckiest panic action ever.
My favourite underwater moment. Early campaign, meeting the BBEG for the first time. He's significantly higher level than us. He's monologuing about all the things he's been doing. I run up and grapple him. He does nothing to stop me because he knows i can't actually kill him. Hell, I'd probably need a nat20 just to meet his AC. So, I push him into the courtyard fountain. He calmly goes in and stares back at me. He knows that his guards are on the way and that I don't have the time to outlast his breath. So, I use command. I tell him to scream. He fluffs the roll. And looks in horror as he screams his lungs empty.
Now the DM tries to argue that I cannot make a command that immediately harms someone. I point out that hes actually got a number of rounds equal to his con modifier before he takes damage. This is no more immediate harm than making someone kneel when youre aiming to cut their head off. DM agrees that im technically correct. So, of course, the bard jumps in to the fountain and also tries to grapple the BBEG. Then before i know it, the whole party is in a fountain holding the bad guy underwater.
BBEG isnt very strong, he's a wizard type. But he cant cast many spells, because he has no breath to speak, he can't use his arms as the bard and wizard are sitting on them.
The DM handles it like a champ and tells us in vivid detail how we watch as a man drowns in our hands.
So much potential with this one. These don't come from experience but I just want to throw some ideas out there.
Have an ally throw something dangerous / shoot an arrow at somebody, and command them to *Catch*
Is the enemy holding something important that you want to destroy? If applicable, try *Crush Smash Shatter Shred or Cut*
Same vein as the last one, one day I'd love to force a wizard to *Burn or Melt* their own spellbook.
If you're able to cast Command without getting caught, you may be able to dissolve the relationship between people by ordering them to *Argue, Bicker or Criticize.* Commanding an enemy minion to do this while speaking to their BBEG, only to immediately get murdered is probably be the funniest potential application of this.
Is somebody in the middle of a long swig of a drink? *Breathe*
Having somebody drop their weapon is nice an all but try ordering them to *Throw* it, just make sure you take cover.
I used command when I was being chased by a player with a cursed weapon. He was a Goliath barbarian and I was a tiefling bard (command from magical secrets). As I was running away and climbing ladders to get out of the range I cast command. My character just screamed sh*t repeatedly in fear. It worked 😂
It's only hypothetical, but one I'm proud of coming up with is using Command: Sit on a werewolf.
I immediately thought of people using german words, you could litetally force someone to just "get out and go fuck yourself" and its great. Also second.
keep in mind, the target has to understand the command for it to work. .
Our DM was pulling nasty trick after nasty trick and enjoying it far too much. Our paladin (run by his girl friend) got so sick of it that when she cast Command at one of the DM's favorite BBEG's she demanded he roll the save in the open. Given he was starting to realize she really was getting royally irritated at him, he complied and blew the save very badly. When he asked what her command was, she replied, "*_Mast*rb*te!_* And you'd better get used to it!"
The rest of us couldn't wait for that session to end.
Request for favorite underwater encounter granted:
We managed to roll up an encounter to find the ship of one of our party's heroic past lives (long story) and so most of us dove down to investigate. I had my druid stay behind to cast Plant Growth on some shrubs we were awakening, but gave the rest of the party Water Breathing so they could check it out. One of our paladins was out for a session so the GM let me play his character isntead.
As we approach the ship, our GM asks if anyone speaks primoridal, specifically of the water plane variety (Aquen i think?) and it turns out our dragonborn paladin actually did. Without another word, the GM starts playing "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid over discord and describes that we see some sharks circling around inside the ship through some large holes in its hull, singing said song. Normally, this paladin was a bit of a murder hobo, and 100% would've just gone in and used smite. But that's never been my style, so I rolled performance instead. Nat 20, and just as the song was coming to an end too. The paladin drifts down singing so well, the sharks and the merfolk didn't attack us on sight.
We eneded up fighting them later anyway because they were definitly evil, but we made friends with a young bronze dragon when all was said and done so it all worked out. good times.
Me: Is the knight wearing his helmet with the visor down?
GM: Yesss?
Me: Command: Vomit!
My poor armored villains when it comes to taking on my players' spellcasters. There are lots of things that you can't to in armor, so under the spell they have to either try to make it happen in their armor or remove their armor first. So I end up with a bunch of baddies in their undergarments doing things like "backflip", "jete (a ballet leap)", "backbend", "crabwalk", "yoga", "scorpion", etc...
In jail, guard comes around to goad us. Command: "unlock"
2:30
“I use my sword and I make a smiley face in the dirt.”
I don't know about creative, but it was certainly memorable. This was back in the 90s. We were a group of teenage friends playing in 2nd edition back when rounds were a minute instead of six seconds. The group was up against some important villain who was making a speech in front of his underlings. The speech finishes, and combat begins. The priest (who's super chaotic) goes first and uses Command: Masturbate...
that paladin saying fight one has to be an oath of vengance and all i can think is the PICK, IT, UP from puss in boots the last wish
jaiden’s “DEPRESSION!” was also followed immediately by a disguise self spell, turning into BBEG’s WIFE, and then point-blank acid blasting him
I’ve never used it successfully but my most memorable attempt was when I was in a spooky mansion filled with undead. The villain was a dead religious fanatic who had killed his daughter and her child because he didn’t approve of her husband, sparking a cursed groundhog-day time loop for all involved, forcing them to relive the events over and over. We confronted him in the graveyard where his daughter was buried (everyone was either undead or a ghost except the husband who buried his wife and left) As we were fighting him near her grave, I pointed to the dirt in front of it, used command, and said “eat.” He saved but man it would have been glorious
My favorite underwater moment was me playing a warforged fighter who got quite a few bonuses when he crit including advantage to everyone attacking the same opponent until his next turn. Dm ruled that attacks underwater are made with disadvantage due to not being able to move as well. Not sure if thats raw or not as i never checked. I rolled twice and got 2 natural 20's allowing the rest of my attacks that turn to be made normally. The warforged cares not about the difficulty of the task, for they will see it done reguardless
Attacks made underwater are rolled at disadvantage unless the attacker has a swimming speed or the weapon deals piercing damage (because thrusting attacks are not impeded as badly). Ranged attacks cannot reach targets beyond a certain distance, underwater, either. I believe 30ft.
@@CaptainDCaponly short melee piercing weapons, not all of them and ranged attacks miss automatically at long range and have disadvantage at short range unless it’s a crossbow
Loving this video! Always fun to hear other people their ideas for fun spells!
Command: “glossophobia” giving the BBEG a fear of public speaking, in the middle of their monologue.
Only one word came from the Wizard's lips at the end of his spell.
"Beg."
And the Mad King did beg.
He begged for forgiveness.
He begged as the Barbarian drug him to the window.
And he begged the many gods for his life as he fell.
Some say you can hear his spirit on the Castle grounds still begging
once during a particulary lenghty villain discour my bored character used command: poop ,on a passing bird ,the BBEG had a brain freeze due to the shock of having been interupted in their "BIG moment" ,we used an artifact called the "hearth of the child" wich made a LOT of ours spell and cantrip ,very juvenile
My favourite spell. Found a big bad that kept using misty step. Shouted to the Barb, "push him off the ledge" as he did, i shouted the command word "vomit" (i know, its gross, but i figured silence could be misconstrued, so i did the only thing i knew would stop him speaking.) The BBEG plummeted towards the ground in a disgusting spiral of stomach contents, failing to use the verbal element of misty step. Technically, he survived the fall. But the DM agreed that he wasn't in fighting shape after that...
I hope this goes to the next video because this is a epic, amusing, dark and inspiring tale.
I had a abaration Aasimar or corrupted Angel named Feathers, who is a wizard. I made a deal with a demon and accepted a demon contract. It took away my soul, a lot of strength and some dex, but gave me a lot of charisma. A LOT OF CHARISMA. I still have my character sheet and it has 36 charisma. I renamed myself Gigachad Feathers. Our group and I was In hell and hijacked a demon ship sailing on lava with about 13 tough demons on board. When it was my turn i raised my hand up and got into ALL of the demons minds, made them go insane and commanded them with one sinister word that would end our encounter in seconds..."Swim!" I commanded them all to jump in lava killing them alive in agony, thinking they could swim. My charisma was so high that it made me so powerful. I can easily control and command enemies and make them lose their minds. I also saved the group later on after and became a God by summoning my minion with stats as an actual Boss encounter because of my Charisma stats. But that is another story.
Holy shit that is the best demon contract I have ever read about. THAT'S KINDA OP.
Hilarious part is they would say draw, so my character would pull out a pen and start drawing
The best Command I ever saw was simply "drop". It was used on an antagonist who, at the time, was in the middle of a significant tribal ritual. The bad guy had stepped ahead of us in what was essentially going to be 'the trials of the chosen one' and ruined our hopes of succeeding the trial ourselves. Final trial is essentially just a winners lap, he's already won but must run this small wooden carving around the arena.
Our bard commanded him to drop it while he was running and... it broke. The crowd tore our enemy to pieces, seeing their artifact destroyed.
That one tumblr post where a sorcerer gets yeeted off a cliff by a dragon and makes the ultimate Hail Mary command:
CATCH.
This probably shouldn’t have worked but the party was facing off against a oathbreaker paladin and I used the command repent. What followed was the fight turned into a religious debate between my paladin vs him where the party eventually managed to talk him down.
2:25
Bet. Hand me some charcoal and paper, oh evil one.
* gets comanded to draw *
* draws sword in dirt on the ground *
Forced movement is a myth, you can use Command to force Attacks of Opportunity from a Paladin, but keep in mind most enemies are at liberty to take the Disengage action when obeying a Flee command. Something like "Run" would work better, but they could do something smart like run on the spot.
Wizard: "PISS YOURSELF!"
DM (me): natural 20!
The rest of the party: YOOOOOOOOOO
Don’t know how creative they are, but some of my favorite uses of the spell from my first campaign
- Awaken, to get one of my party members to get up when we were being ambushed
- Land, enemy in the air with advantage against enchantment effects crit failed and landed on the ground, conveniently a tile away from the barbarian
- Divulge, same enemy as before, crit failed again, got some spicy lore about one of our party members
The DM allowed me to play two characters and the second one was the antagonist of the campaign.
"Valeria Thorne"
A Powerful Apostate
Near the end it was revealed to the rest of the party that the antagonist used to be their friend at the Mage school they all attended and before the events of them leaving the school she used Command and commanded her friends "Forget me" erasing her from their memories and she would invent this persona to band them all together to stop her😢
Wait, that's two words, command only let's you use one word. Was it suggestion instead?
I have a BBEG for a large arc in my story named Deliorah. He was a a very charismatic circus ringleader to most, but to the party, he was a deplorable and manipulative puppet master with goals to find the location of the last living embodiment of Xabalanque the destroyer, an ancient battlescarred winged tarrasque given life by the true BBEG of the story. By now, he had found the map with its location, and was preparing to hold a circus directly above the cavern. While the circus went normally, as he his show reached its climax and his showmen bowed (all of which were in reality just extremely impressive puppets) and the audience started clapping, he used the Mass Command spell and said “Arise”. Two things immediately happened at once. The first was the entire crowd stood up and gave him a standing ovation, and secondly, the stage behind Deliorah exploded as The once slumbering beast awoke and clawed its way out of the ground. We ended the session there, and next week will be likely be very intense.
We were facing an adult green dragon which had swallowed one player and grappling another with a bite. Command "vomit"
"Forgive" was so wholesome! ♥️
We once had our Barbarian attempt to throw a goblin at an enemy fighter who was standing near a balcony. The fighter was actually able to catch the goblin and somehow avoid damage to either it or the terrified goblin. Our Warlock was up next, and he cast Command saying "defenestrate." The poor goblin was promptly tossed off the balcony and killed. I later asked the Warlock players why he used one of his only 2 spell slots on a goblin. He laughed and reminded me that that goblin had gotten incredibly lucky and had been missed by 4 Eldritch Blasts (2 rounds of combat) and he had decided that it just had to die no matter what.
Personal favorites are Self-Actualize, Strip (by technicallity, creatures not fully wearing armor can't benefit from it), and the classic Backflip (especially when they fail).
Just to bully my fellow DMs, Rap and Sing are pretty good ones if you're a fan of giving out irl embarrassment debuffs.
I played an aarakocra rogue/cleric (weird mechanically, but fun for the character development). We had a minotaur paladin/barbarian whose love interest was the little sister of the BBEG, who had captured her and cursed her so that she didn't remember us. On a hunt for information through the BBEG's lair, we found her, sitting in an illusory garden, sipping tea. She was terrified of us, having been told we were murderous monsters out to get her, and was about to call for help. My character really wanted to gtfo but, seeing the pain on our poor paladin's face, they instead cast command on her, told her, "remember." And she did. Since the spell lasts for a round, the DM gave us 6 seconds of information from her that revealed to us who the BBEG had been disguised as. 6 seconds of her seeing her love again, 6 seconds of our paladin feeling so relieved to know that there was at least a chance that she could save her love. It was brutal and beautiful.
Command: Gimme
Brian, I strongly appreciate the Vergil joke at the skelechair
7:16 That should not have worked. The enemy might have forgiven the PC, but he was STILL a slaver.
my favorite was in session 1. I was a forge domain cleric with another player and an npc. We had just gotten out of killing a bunch of slavers and releasing the captured people without letting any townsguard know, and got back to the inn we had stayed at the previous day with the npc just getting healed from going uncounscious. I took him up to the room we had rented while he was wanting to get a pint of the strongest alcohol they had, which led to my character and the npc arguing till I just casted command "Sleep". Before he fell asleep he said that he was not happy before passing out, but then afterwards 2 pints of the alcohol was brought up, which lead to my character, A Furnource, to drink one and the other player drank the other, which they immediatly got drunk. I just returned the pints, went back up to the room, and locked us all in for the night
Escape via scrubs flashback is GREAT!
Command: Forgive over Command: Unlock hits so much deeper. It’s not just “unlock that shit dawg” it’s a “feel it bro. You’re emotional about this right now. You forgive them, potentially questioning everything even for a mere 6 seconds”
a DM who bans spells that are part of PHB RAW is a bad DM and nobody can bring a decent argument otherwise.
last session we had a boss fight on a pirate ship with a cart full of very hot rocks. Most of our players were down and i kept missing with my attacks, so my turn i decided to cast command on the boss with the word “dive”, intending for to dive into the water away from us. instead, the dm decided that his take on the command was to dive headfirst into the cart full of hot red rocks leading to our barb to take an opportunity attack on him as he dove burning his skin off and losing his legs. the now fried and delegged boss went limp and just died. twas a good fight
Would love to see a vid about underwater encounters, combat or otherwise! 😮
God, Command is one of like, My favorite spells ever.
I am so excited to play my next character- Who has Command as an integral part of their kit.
Jaiden casting “Depression” on the BBEG in Slimecicle’s campaign will never not be legendary
I commanded a guy to vounterspell his own counterspell
My fav underwater combat has to be with one of my fav dnd characters: Derrek Drowbane, a grey dwarf guerilla.
And it was against a Skrag in a swamp. Doing hit and run to swipe people into the swamp. Our figther did well with massive penalties underwater, and our beguiler forgot spells are somatic, cast one underwater, and started drowning.
Favorite underwater encounter:
I DM'd a custom campaign of Starfinder (sci-fi sequel for Pathfinder for those who don't know). The party had to go check out an underwater research lab that had gone radio silent. They didn't realize it at the time, but they were walking into a tried and true Lovecraftian bit. When they went down there they were beset by the local wildlife like giant Mantis Shrimps and the like, all with a deep orange glow in their eyes. As they managed to get into the research facility proper they started getting attacked by the researchers themselves - again, with the glowing orange eyes. They learned early on that the creatures and corrupted researchers were susceptible to Force Damage and were pretty liberal with their application of such. All the while, they had been finding lore dockets that described a Commander in the base who was afflicted with some strange ailment none of the researchers could identify besides the orange glow of the eyes... and worse yet, they realized it was spreading like a contagious madness; unable stop it.
The party freaked out a bit when they reached an underwater elevator of sorts that descended into the black abyss leading to the ocean floor. Freaked out a hell of a lot more when they discovered the Commander - in a full on Metal Gear style submersible mech - was waiting for them. But the freak out reached an apex when they finally realized what they were dealing with was a Colour Out of Space that had been feeding on the flora and fauna there... And they'd just burned all their Force-damage abilities/equipment.
*Command:*
_pulls out my Duel Disk_
*DUEL!*
Under water action: In a pirate campaign, we wanted to rob a ship that was full of cultists but also out gunned our two surface ships. However our pirates had a submarine. The problem was we couldn’t surface and we needed to board to take the treasure. We also had a cube of Force and some Marvelous paints. So we used the cube to create a force field to act as a diving bell that connected us to the hull underneath the ship. Then we drew a hatch door onto the ship. Right into the treasure hold. Next session we had to quickly bail as the cultist had managed to summon a demon that one shot the Bugbear Barbarian. Cue the mad dash for the new hatch below the waterline, we managed to close the hatch to our sub and deactivated the cube of force. And then remembered we did not close the hatch to the cultists’ ship… the one that was opened below the ship… and that’s how we looted a ship that outgunned our ship, sank it, and did it all with our invoking that which all sailors of our waters fear the most… the smell of wet bugbear.
Ok, I'm Stealing the "Eat" one. And the "Rearrange" one.
Favorite underwater moment. Happened recently and has been my first real time playing a wizard. Our DM is new and running a homebrew dungeon crawl similar to pokemon, a dungeon type in each town. So far has been really good, though he has been gunning for me for a bit at this point.
Warcaster wizard as a support mage for our party has had me finding a 'solution for each dungeon'. The homebrew has been unique though. Sesame Street dunegon with Cookie Monster as a huge monstrosity boss. Swamp zone with a vampire/cryptid twist. And now the subject, water temple.
He had pulled out all the stops. Dungeon is underwater, a good majority of it is difficult terrain. Potions or items to breathe underwater are a requirement... And his attempt to stop me from messing up his encounters, no vocal components. Apparently blub blub doesn't count for spell casting. We are at the start of a large cavern/tunnel descending to the depths of the dungeon. He went into detail how the tunnel entrance was an open pool on a beach and tube straight down. *Idea hits*. Fun thing about war wizards and warcaster. It removes some of the spell requirements for casting. Leaving vocal components the only factors. But you simply need to speak the words, not necessarily be heard by anyone. My wizard is a telepathy and has bubble for air.
The first huge encounter had hords of minions and mersquid, crab things like from Harry Potter 4, giant angler fish, squids, and crab monsters. Potential party wipe. I smile, go first on initiative, and say "I cast control water". I proceeded to move a 100 cubic feet of water (the entire tunnel area) out the tube and hold it there making a very large air pocket and a lot of dead/dying fish that can't move or breathe. He closed his book and shook my hand and said we'll take lunch break.
our favourite underwater combat moment: during pathfinder 1e, as the party was going through the campaign module rise of the runelords, a side combat area was left after the first act boss. while it is entirely optional it is more deadly than the regular boss because of the environment. a giants helm is in a tidepool with little fish swim about trapped in there. the party try to get a set of pulleys and ropes to get the helm as it is worth quite a bit if it could get out of the area. the party member who went down fought the creature hiding inside the pool as it revealed itself, a giant hermit crab. since this is pathfinder 1e, there is a negative to hit and damage while swimming, and if fully submerged have total cover from land bound people. the party member was doing their best as weapons and build arent suited for the task. eventually the party is able to disengage, taking more damage than the previous fight with boss and minions. they left that boss there for later and got at least half exp for their troubles getting level up.
i was in a fight once with a bbeg who was about to do a ritual and we were trying to stop him. he was out of legendary resistances and he was next in the initiative order. i casted command and told him "Freeze!" he was stunned and couldnt do the verbal or somatic element of the ritual since his hands and tongue were frozen, essentially stunning him for the turn.
Was once playing a Glamour Bard. This hulking behemoth activated Rage. I used Command to tell him to chill (out). Made the fight easier than the DM was aiming for.
My favorite use of command was not done by me or anyone i know but I read it online and thought I’d was freaking awesome.
So a party was fighting a ( i believe) ancient red dragon who had already downed half of the party with breathweapon attacks but decided to be creative with the paladin by throwing him of the cliff they were standing on. The dm allowed the palandin one action during the fall. As the paladin falls through the air he utters a single command : “catch”
It was very niche but so much fun. Genie warlock had filled a book with glyphs of warding with the trigger being read the first glyph and it done within the first 5 feet of their demiplane so it could be moved 5 feet out and not trigger the movement condition. On their turn they entered their plane and threw the book out into the first 5 feet. Wizard was up next and cast command: read. The warlock had managed to fill the first 25 pages leading to 125d8 thunder damage. A truly spectacular moment, and we were politely asked not to do that again.
I'm a relatively new player, and we were in a large dungeon with multiple powerful enemies. Our party is relatively large, and we had picked up a few strays to rescue from the dungeon.
Cue a fight with a Purple Worm.
NPC has taken some damage and isn't looking so hot, and Purple Worm eats him.
My character, a Bard/Cleric, who is almost entirely a support: "Vomit"
Purple worm fails the save, NPC is vomited up, prone, but alive, if not now in desperate need of a shower.
I was so grateful our DM allowed that particular use of the spell.
Auto-de-apotheosize when fighting a deity (if your DM allows prefixes on command). It means "make yourself not a god."
MrRipper commanded me to subscribe.
Favorite underwater combat didn’t start out underwater. Each of the PCs had an officer role on the ship they sailed; one was captain, one was purser, one was master at arms, and one was the surgeon.
The PCs had split up, master of arms and captain to chase down a pirate enemy that had fled combat with them; but surgeon and purser remained behind on the ship to keep the crew safe from the sharks attacking it. Once the surgeon PC went belowdecks at the suggestion of the crew, the one remaining up top was the purser, who drew his sword and looked down at the sharks ramming the sides of the ship.
Let me be clear about something: purser made the crew very uneasy. They never saw him eat or sleep. He wore his heavy armor at all times. He also recommended harsh punishments to the captain for every minor infraction *over* the ship’s disciplinarian, and because he and the captain were friends he often listened.
He also had a tendency to light his sword ablaze with an evil green fire and laugh maniacally in combat.
So when the crew asks if he’s up to the task of repelling the sharks he brags that he could slaughter the crew of the ship single-handedly and still have enough in him to kill the sharks. Naturally the crew seems to view this as a bit crossing the line.
He goes down in the lifeboat with sword drawn, while the crew covers him one of the two with ballistae. Once all the sharks are defeated, the crew cut the lifeboat’s tow rope and shoot a bolt through the bottom. Turns out heavy armor isn’t conducive for swimming.
3 enemies on the other side of a ravine in a cave. "Approach".
Quite harmful.
7:18 this is the most cleric shit i've ever heard.
One of my players commanded my bandit leaders right hand man to “betray” made for an interesting turn of the battle
This is from the current campaign I am in right now.
My favorite underwater exploration was at a shipwreck that we had come across while traveling to another location for our main quest to gather some powerful artifacts to stop a ritual to bring about an endless night by Shar.
We get to this shipwreck and start exploring. The ship was busted in half and clearly looked like it didn't just hit the rocks and sank. Well, looking at the ship closely, we find out it is possibly the same ship that our NPC navigator, a Tabaxi named Robin, spouse was on navigating for. This is the time we got introduced to how long your character could actually hold their breath. Our DM was cool about it, though, and I am pretty sure that I stayed down much longer than I should have.
Through some good rolls on some skill checks, I got to have my hero moment and ripped a door off of one of the cabins. Inside this cabin was a couple of chests and a set of drawers. The chests had some goodies for us that we were able to find out later on.
Digging through the drawers, I found an item that belonged to Robin's spouse. Came up and told her about it, then dove back down to get it. I didn't have the air to finish grabbing it and leave.
Well, what would you know shortly after all of that? we got attacked by a Kraken Spawn and my character nearly died. All in all it was a great spot in the campaign among so many others that brought in the NPCs and just made the story we are building so much better.
Lol if you see this guys, thanks to our DM and the other players it's been great playing this for over a year and I hope we can continue for an even longer time!
I've only ever had it work once in any meaningful way and it was telling one of our Goblin ambushers to "Rebel". He immediately took a shot at his leader. Missed, but it was still funny.
Against any flying enemy with a mind: tell them to "Land." Works best when the party has actions readied to hit or bind them once they're on the ground. Entangle comes to mind.
Also, I don't know if this counts as "creative," but my Bard once used the basic feature of "Command" to order an enemy cleric to fall prone. Our Sorcerer, reserving their action, used Animate Rope to tie them to the ground. Try strength-saving out of ropes while prone or concentrating on a spell while all attacks against you have advantage.
My most creative was in a PvPvE "one shot" game I was in. It was down to me another player atop a clif and another at the shore of the river that was below. I commanded them to "Dive." we did a little diliberate if they would dive on the ground ala baseball or dive off the cliff into the water. It was obvious what my intent was, and i think we landed on it. It was a 3/4 roll chance of them doing the cliff since it was aperent with other having jumped it was safe. Ended up, they did, and I just stayed atop the clify lying low until the one finished off the other. It was getting late, and we determined that by the time he would have gotten back up i couldve run off even then i had way more slots/HP so it was a bad idea so we decided whoever could survive the longest would win via survival skill. Being a cleric, I won in the end in so my character in game had won the competition and became an Overseer.
A 5th edition campaign that recently ended. I was playing a Twilight Cleric and the rest of the party were getting our asses handed to us by a summoned creature that was CR 6.
This may not seem like too big of a challenge, but most of the players don't have the same level of real world playing experience. To get rid of the creature, I cast command on the caster and using the word "Dismiss". The wizard then dropped the spell and we then proceeded to beat that wizard in two rounds!