Imagine a computer expressing binary through the two states of being for a magic mouth, screaming and silent. Millions of mouths screaming in unison in order that one man might fight the fires of hell.
I think because a magic mouth can have only one trigger and only one action. So it can only observe two states, and only reproduce two states. So binary is its limit.
I love this, but I'm dying laughing at the idea of a party sneaking up on a monster to catch it by surprise, only to have the caster's spell book scream "IT'S VULNERABLE TO FIRE, GUYS."
I heard his Idea to have it "Alert the party if an Invisible creature makes a sound or Displaces dirt" Shadow Touched Rouge Ally: I'm going to go invisible and sneak up on the guard for a sneak attack. Magic mouthed shoe the wizard is wearing: *THERE IS AN INVISIBLE CREATURE NEXT TO YOU!*
Cast it on an important letter. The text says whatever you want your enemies to believe, but if the intended recipient looks at it, the real message is spoken.
Just hope the enemy does not screen the letter with detect magic! Should work in a low magic setting, but good luck in Ebberon or any high magic setting.
That's what Nystal's Magic Aura is for! For just one easy month of casting a no gp cost 2nd level spell you can make a magic item appear non-magical to divination spells permanently! (including identify) You can also just cast it once for a day long effect (also instead of magic mouth, Illusory Script is what you'd want)
I like to think wizards with lots of spare gold and time just randomly cast this on objects they find while traveling and give it really cryptic triggers and outputs, just for the knowledge that some day a wandering commoner couple is going to wind up finding this nice scenic spot and get hot and heavy only for the nearby tree to shout "Oh, back here with another one are you?"
I'm imagining the DM rolling a d100 every time the party enters a new location where there's no-one else around, and on a 100 a previous prank wizard's Magic Mouth goes off Bonus if the party meets the NPC before or after this and/or can figure out who set the "trap" based on what exactly it says
Magic mouth is unironically a top tier spell for shenanigans. Want to prank your friend? magic mouth one of their items. Want to prevent in-party theft? Magic mouth your backpack. You can even use it to prepare a distraction for a heist. The possibilities are endless.
In terms of shenanigans, Magic Mouth is fine and all, but Hail to the King! Sending is so good at messing with people it can single handedly ruin campaigns. Keep in mind: You can contact any creature you know at any time and it doesn't cost any ressources outside of the spellslot itself to do so - AND there is no way for the creature to avoid getting the message. So, basically: It's late at night and you're about to go to bed, but then you remember that you still have 2 3rd level spells left? Well, you're in luck! That's fifty words worth of constant screaming beamed directly into the mind of the BBEG! (Bonus points if they were already asleep by then!) What's that? You're having a few weeks of downtime where you don't need your spell slots at all? Cast away! Scream into the brain of your nemesis every hour of every day! Insult them! Laugh at them! Cite your shitty poems to them! Do whatever you want, because there's literally nothing they can do to stop it!
My favorite use was to sneak into the Fighter's bedroom and cast it under his bed. It triggers if there are rhythmic wood creaks above it. It recites it in the voice you speak in, so flex your Performance for whatever mood-ruining line/sound you want.
@@Silungar It's all fun and games until the BBEG who has many, many more times as many spell slots as you returns the favor in kind, or has their minions do it for him. Enjoy your death from exhaustion :P
@@moartems5076 Starting to sound like ransomware scheme waiting to happen. All that they need is one given instructions to to delay the message a few months.
@@moartems5076 You just gave me a vision of a horrible (amazing?) reality TV show where two wizards flip ruins into marketable real estate by scouring them for magical pranks and traps.
The fun part is that you can set magic mouth to interact with other "untill dispelled" spells such as programmed illusion, arcane lock, glyph of warding, etc. to allow Mister Pewter to have direct physical interactions with the real world.
The amount of gold, items and time it would take for something like that. Good luck getting anything out of it. Plus actually figuring out how many Mouths are needed, and the multitude of various things you'd need to set up to get something that can only ever talk.
My favorite use of Magic Mouth is using it in combination with Glyph of Warding to make magical booby-traps out of unorthodox things. For example, there's a glyph of warding hidden in a room behind a book-case, meaning it can't be found without moving the book-case, and it contains a fireball spell. There's a very blatantly obvious object on this book-case that will get someone's attention, say a small golden statuette for this example. When touched by any creature that is not the caster, which would most likely be adventurers or thieves, the golden statuette promptly screams the code-word to the hidden glyph of warding, meeting the glyph's activation requirement, and setting off a fireball. edit: Yes, this also means you can make a random object shout an expletive before an explosion goes off for seemingly no reason other than the object just doing that, which is hilarious.
You cast about 1000+ magic mouth on item you are wearing/carrying and you get a specific coordinate of where that invisible creature is, including how high from the floor.
As an artificer, I always avoided this spell because magical tinkering gets you 6 second audio messages or text of 25 words or less *for free*. BUT now that I know that magic mouth is turing complete, I think I'm going to program Baldur's Gate inside my campaign.
Magic mouth is one of those spells where you absolutely need to TALK TO THE DM. Since it has a gold cost, pretty much the only times magic mouth is worth casting is when its pushing against the boundaries of what it can do. Yell "invisible" whenever an audible invisible creature other than the wearer enters within 30ft. Say "Magical" whenever a magic item that isnt being worn or carried enters or is dropped within 30ft. Say "secret tunnel" whenever a hidden passage enters within 30ft. .... And these also need to be made a big deal to the dm, because even if rhey allow it, the player cant activate them. The dm has to realize of their own accord that when theres an invisible creature/ magic item/ secret passage nearby that this spell needs to go off. That can be hard when they have 5 pcs to think about and the spell was cast 6 sessions ago.
Unless the item is visually or audibly magical, there's no way for magic mouth to detect which item is magic and which is not. These kinds of shenanigans are another reason why I prefer Pathfinder 2e, they go into a lot of detail about the rulings of things. Magic Mouth in that game, along with any other 'trigger' type spell, is clearly explained to require line of sight, that it is fooled by illusions, disguises, and invisibility and that you can even sneak past them with a successful check. In 5e, depending on your interpretation, magic mouth is a 10-gold 2nd-level spell that detects illusions, ambushing creatures, invisible creatures and hidden objects.
...and the DM will definitely try to screw you over with the wording. I know, I am a DM and we kinda consider this spell our own since it's main use is in dungeons for puzzles, to threaten or annoy players and a bit for comical relief. It is also a spell that certainly can be abused and screw over the game balance if players use it in a certain way. So most of us will try to screw over the players who use it, kinda like if you use a Wish spell. Or at least old school DMs like me will do it, it is a tradition going back to AD&D 1st edition that any spell that require specific wording should use Genie rules. Heck, 1st ed Dungeon masters guide had a section on each spell how the players would try to abuse them and how the DM could screw them over with them. Good times. :) But there is also an unsaid rule that we are nicer the less the players use it to abuse the rules. The "invisible" shouting mouth for instance isn't generally that bad while the "Magical" one is worse in a dungeon since you can use it to find hidden treasures and magical traps (depending on where the trap is set and your exact wording). There are a certain type of player that is an "Exploiter" who constantly tries to bend all rules to their advantage, while of course ignoring anything that would be bad for themselves and DMs are not a fan of those players. "Rule lawyers" can also be annoying but they at least are consistent. So play nice with your DM.
@@utes5532 Its very up to interpretation. Some dms would allow it and wouldnt be going against raw to do so. I mentioned purposely controversial castings.
@@loke6664 I would hope for the dm to take wording into since that keeps some mystery. Having my object yell "invisible" might tell us an invisible creature is nearby, but not location or anything about them and it would miss invisible objects. So when the item procs thats simply the beginning of a scene we still need to play out. But in my experience with 5e dms, I need to remind them what I cant do far more often than what I can. Like they'll recall my item detects invisible creatures and just casually tell us where they are. Then i need to remind them my item cant decern that.
Imagine enchanting as many items in a town as possible to yell out "were all going to die" every time a magic mouth yells that phrase. Then have 1 mouth set to some other trigger. Set off the trigger mouth and bask in the chaos.
Now imagine a city using a similar system of layered messages, but constructively. Like a city-wide alert, in case of general emergencies or in response to specific events. (Ex: "Alert! Alert! Tarrasque incoming! This is not a drill! Evacuate!")
I can imagine some cruel Wizard with expendable income (let's face it, they all have plenty to spend later on) scouring the map for a place to live. He finds a simple forest location that, while the trees look a bit off, the forest itself is innocent enough, and provides no major harm to anyone. He then starts casting Magic Mouth on random trees. As you walk through the recently "haunted" forest, voices seem to whisper to you from all sides. There is nowhere to hide. They're all around you.
Magic Mouth is also pretty amazing for Artificers. Something I've seen done with them is using Magic Mouth in combination with a Decanter of Endless Water and a ship's steering wheel. The artificer built what was essentially a water wheel on a wagon, attached the decanter to it aiming at the wheel, and made the Magic Mouth repeatedly yell "Geyser" (one of the Decanter's use words) whenever someone holds the steering wheel after pulling a lever. Basically they took a wagon, attached some seemingly unrelated stuff to it, and turned it into a water powered car. The blueprints can be found online, I for one think this is just hilarious.
@BarrakDraconis There is nothing in the spell that specifies that it cannot activate magic items. So as long as the DM allows it, you could absolutely let it activate magic items. In fact, the spell doesn't even specify that it can't target magic items in general, so you could put the mouth on the Decanter itself if you so chose. But then it would basically be trying to vomit water and words at the same time, which while funny, wouldn't be very practical.
@@invertedghostgames9899 They must've removed that restriction then. In 3rd ed. it specified "The mouth cannot utter verbal components, use command words, or activate magical effects."
The no verbal components thing I absolutely agree with. The mouth isn't the one casting the spell after all. And for certain magic items, like wands and such, I can more than understand not letting the mouth use those either. But if it's something that generally won't be too out of pocket, I'd allow it. Back then it was a hard limit. Now, it's DM dependant.
"The carving on the wall before you seems to be old as time itself. The ancient script has a single word, whose definition has no doubt been lost to time. The best you're able to ascertain is it has something to do with the heavens and beasts." "'Up... dog'? What's 'up-dog'?" "The earth shakes beneath your feet. A voice, grander than any you've heard before, shakes the very air. You can feel in your bones that every creature in the world hears the message being uttered forth from the noble and grand people who left it behind." 'Nothing much, what's up with you?'
@@leyruathat depends on the definition of 'unattended.' Like, does it work on things being held? Touched? Stood near? Looked at? It's so vague. However, you COULD conceivably cast it on a deserted island...
I have decided to headcanon that the example goblin throughout the animation is, not a quick way at drawing a goblin's mouth but that they are wearing a scarf, bandana or face mask with a big toothy squiggly line across it
Pro Tipp: Set one of the conditions as " the caster must not be wearing a ring inscribed with *_DO NOT DISTURB_* ". Very useful for staying stealthy or when visiting theatres.
@@Valsorayubetter: The screams argue the merits of every sociopolitical and economic system, but with excessive use of fallacies and interruptions, thus never making any useful points. Additionally some just loop fellatory compliments of their own enlightenment for supporting milquetoast or lowest common denominator opinions...
This spell was strangely useful a while back in a Campaign. My character had to send a warning that there was assassin in their midst, but he figured the assassin would get their hands on the letter before arriving. So he casted magic mouth on a letter that was generally just a mundane letter to the family, but in truth had Magic Mouth cast on it to give the real warning when the person the letter was intended for actually read it.
Here's a neat piece of info, in the forgotten realms there exists a 300 meter long bridge, called Illikurs Bridge, where each rock has a rune that is works as a magic mouth but is also undetectable by magic. It's so ancient even Elminster managed to decipher only a couple dozens of the hudreds of rocks there. Most people just believe it's haunted.
I like the idea of a protective parent making a bunch of these on their child's equipment before allowing them to be an adventurer. Or the idea of someone selling items that give advice in combat. The sword isn't magic, but it'll tell you when certain creatures are around.
I once had a fun idea to be a businessman artificer who would create self-reading holy books which were basically a bunch of items with the magic Mouth spell. Expensive, yes, but when your market are churches... you're going to make it back.
It does imply that every page might need to contain only 25 words or less, or that instead of making it one Mouth per page you daisychain several across the pages allowing it be more compact
@@camblycreeper7999 Had I been in that campaign long enough to bring my plans to fruition, I would absolutely have experimented with more optimal ways of doing it.
@@camblycreeper7999 And no pause function. Once you open the first page, you are going to listen to a bellowing oration of the entire book, complete with unskippable ads for the creator's magic shop.
@@camblycreeper7999 I was thinking about something like this for a tomb. The guide is a book with each page giving you the hint to get threw the current room.
Playing Matt Mercer’s new Blood Magic wizard in an upcoming campaign where costly components can be replaced by 1d10 necrotic damage per 50 gp. You can keep casting Magic Mouth so long as you have hit points. EDIT: If your buddy happens to be a 5th level Warlock with Cure Wounds and you’re both good without sleep, you can cast Magic Mouth about 131 times every 24 hours.
You can bypass the components with a College of Creation Bard, which can use Performance of Creation to create 20 * level gp worth of an item that CAN be used as a spellcasting component, and can spend a 2nd level or higher spell slot to do it again. Sit around for a couple hours and ritual cast Magic Mouth with the dust created from PoC and depending on your level you can get quite a few of them per long rest.
Magic Mouth is one of those spells that serves verisimilitude. The wizard might have no interest in casting Magic Mouth, but they know it exists, so when the DM uses it to build a puzzle, it feels like the evil wizard bad guy is the one who actually set it up, not your weird friend sitting behind a screen at the other end of the table asking you to pass the almonds.
Scribbles note in DM journal: "Have wizard tower that includes magic mouth breaking off mid-script to ask for almonds, as wizard got distracted/hungry while casting"
The phone network idea relies on the fact that there is no size limitation for the object in question in order to be cost efficient, so if you have a several mile long cable, for example, you can set up the magic mouth to trigger at one end and speak on the other. Since there also isn't a limit to how many magic mouths can be on the same object, you can cast it on an object four times (or more for more efficiency) to give Morse code or binary communication in both directions and boom, you can build a telecommunications network at a reasonable cost. (This can still be sabotaged by someone cutting or dispelling the cable)
@@Lelebees The magic mouth has to have a set trigger and set phrase to speak, neither of which can't be changed once the spell is cast. So you could relay words, but you would need to cast magic mouth for every word you wanted to use (at least hundreds of castings per cable), sounds (around 45 castings per cable) or letters (26 castings, plus any punctuation per cable). But with binary you can send arbitrary data with only two castings per cable. Even at 'only' 10g per casting, this still saves a lot of money in the long run. If you want to get very clever with it, you can set up magic mouths at either end to 'translate' the binary in to or from plain text, since then you are only paying that cost at each end, but it's not strictly necessary for the contraption to work
Had a Kenku Rogue with a Bard dip just for this spell. We'd put sound effects & phrases on arrows, things like the sound of a crowd running down a hallway so when it's shot one direction guards would think people are heading that way & we'd go the other way. Or the sounds of a Dragon we'd fire over a castle's walls. Or just 10 minutes of snoring so we didn't have to hide a body....
One of my staple recurring wizard characters utilizes Magic Mouth as his calling card. The best prank I am fond of involved casting it on the door to a inn's bedroom. Trigger: When someone has been sleeping in this bed for 2 hours Message: "AAAAAAGHHHH They're upon us!!! Wake up! AGGGGHHHH!!!"
You place a magic mouth on each page of a book and send it to the castle of the big bad guy. Make the noise trigger when the bad guy goes to sleep within 30 feet of the book and have all the mouths yell at him
I love how you're actually posting practical advice on how to use this spell and I, in all my wisdom, read the spell and thought "y'know, in a room where it's hard to gauge where the sound is coming from, you could totally rickroll someone." Wizard applications vs bard applications, I guess 😂
This is why I love this series - no matter how many spellcasters you play, you can be so oblivious to some basic and ridiculously cool applications of spells. Zee, we're always in need of your wisdom!
The only problem would be a 25g cost, which really depends on DM/campaign. For instance in my previous campaign we got paid for doing things all the time and 25g would be nothing. But in my current campaign we are in the literal Hell and even though we are lvl 11 we have basically no gold.
Time to spice up my Wizard spell list with this spell. I never gave it a shot because I never understood how it works. This gives me some ideas that I think my DM would love.
@@blackgriffinxx Good to know, and knowing how my DM likes to game, I already have like 50 different ways to mess with them, lol. Honestly it would fit with how my dm plays games.
@@alphacreeper222 You figure it out? It pretty busted and would let level one PCs break mid- high magic games. Their a reason why DMs should not let gold farming be a thing in their games. Well uncontested and tried anyway.
@@blackgriffinxx Thanks to this video explaining how the spell can work, I have came up with a few ideas for things that my DM will hate me for. If you have any ideas for me, let me know.
@@alphacreeper222 Well it can track things any thing. it only with in 30 feet. So with the right wording. You can hunt down plants minerals and animals. So at level one you could just gold farm. The weirder part is this spell can fill in for a lot of other spells and magic items. You could make a questionable lie detector( zone of truth) . A better alarm. Wand of detect magic. One thing i question is can you combo this with vicious mockery. That would just be mean if you could. An arrow will never miss again.
could also be used for a sentimental moment too. Where a spellcaster knows they will die and so they leave a simple message for their child, that says something in their voice like "My son/daughter, know I am proud of you and that I love you always," but it will mostly be used irrevocably for shenanigans...
"I cast Magic Mouth on my codpiece." "Okay? What are the conditions and what does it say?" "Any time someone says something that can be misconstrued as or twisted into sexual innuendo, I want the codpiece to say, *that's what she said!"* "Fine. And I hate you."
Did not notice you could carry it around. 25gp jade dust & honeycomb per cast made me think of setting up a helpmenu for a complex structure, like how you would use continual flame to light up a hallway designed to be abandoned for an extended period of time. Time to look for a scroll and put this on my gem pouch.
Magic mouth is underrated. I once used it in dragon queen to clear out a fort by having a familar fly among the people with an item yelling that there was an attack outside the fort.
Thanks for not giving up Zee Bashew! Nice video and I think you captured some of the original scary factor of Magic Mouth in old school dungeons too, with the hall of mouths echoing far ahead of the party from a single point, alerting the evil false hydra at the end of the lair before one of its minion creatures charges at you on a chariot. Good voice based dungeon there... i think Magic Mouth is one of those rare D&D spells that classically comes from back in the day, so is all powerful, makes the world interesting and very magical, yet is not unbalanced in any way really.
My bladesinger kept a bag full of stones with Magic Mouth cast upon each one. They were programmed to sing backup for her performances, turning her into a one-woman choir.
I don't know about later editions offhand, but in 1e the magic mouth can't detect invisible creatures, or tell things like alignment, class etc. That said, it's still versatile in ways that many players never think of. Great vid!
In 5e there’s basically no restrictions on what it can do. So long as the trigger is visual ot auditory, and so long as ‘what it does’ is deliver some message (25 words or less), that message can be anything. Even the activation phrases of a magic item.
I've got a Magic Mouth tab in my D&D doc. Here are some of the ideas in there, some stupid some useful: Camp perimeter "Help" beacon when unconscious Idiot sword Cobblestone that says "ouch" Chamber pot that says "yum" Distraction pebbles Bag alarm Theme song player Two statues arguing forever Countdown/ranged trigger for glyph Giving commands to zombies/golems Ominous countdown Audience enhancers doorbell chastity belt self-playing flute auto-administer potion (arcane lock? open mouth?)
To prevent a marrage that would spark conflict between feuding kingdoms, I once cast the spell on a church's deity statue to state "By my righteous and divine authority, I object to this union" the moment the word "object" was spoken by the priest.
It can pray for you so you don't have to! It might even convert some peasants over time. It can yell "liar liar pants on fire" each time the king says they 500th word of the day. It can purr permanently! That's so darn cute. It can make annoying mosquito sounds at night randomly when a merchant is too greedy!
i had to look it up and apparently it can be set to repeat the message whenever the trigger is activated. that makes Zee's suggestions a lot better than I first understood
I had an illusionist that realized because the mouth is visible, it is subject to Malleable Illusions. Quickly spent a good chunk of change prepping an entire chess set so that they could be changed effectively at will without going through the full casting time.
Game died before I could use it too often, but I kept them in a default state to “sing rounds of row your boat when someone sings the first verse” because I didn’t want them randomly yelling strange messages in town. I did get to use them to widen the party’s protected area during long rests. Also had plans to use them for easy distractions, a dungeon alert relay network, a pickpocket detector, and (paired with my familiar) a private way to send a message without preparing sending. I confess, the idea of having them shout tactical advice never occurred to me, but that would have been fun.
Now I want to make a pudding with a bunch of magic mouths to scream out when in contact with metal. Then you serve "The Gibbering Mouther" to your guests.
Over the course of however long, enchant all of the rocks around your teams base to scream. The sound would be unimaginable. An absolutely horrific mess.
Magic mouth is like Minecraft's redstone. There are a few neat tricks a novice can use it for. But when an expert is given time with it: God help us all.
In the fantasy book series Xanth, there is a character named Com Pewter. A golem that can not move but has the power to change reality in his local vicinity. The last joke in video made me think of him.
One niche but interesting use I want to try is with an animate dead spell and some trinkets, a mask, and a robe to hide the body, just have a bunch of lines prepped for certain questions and have the undead just do tasks around the town like a permanent unseen servant. Apparently their intelligence is high enough to carry out fairly complex tasks and with being able to stay for 24 hours it’s quite handy. If they ever die just raise another and use the items again
I used magic mouth in my Artificer NPC magic workshop. Magic Mouth was basically near every single means of egress (window, doors, etc) and had a basic command: "If someone attempts to take a crafted item from the store without first placing it on the counter: Scream." The Screaming would then trigger a mechanical trap that causes metal bars to drop over the doors and window, and all the Magical Tinkering (level 1 artificer feature) to take snapshots of the store and its inhabitants. I got to see it all go off because OF COURSE the party attempted to steal from the only genuine magic shop in the kingdom, and of course they got hunted by the guard who had accurate portraits of the party and equipped with tools donated by the artificer to catch them. Its a very bad idea to make an enemy of a magical arms dealer who has no qualms about arming your enemies if you cross him.
I can definitely see a GM messing with a player who tries to cheese the spell. In the detection of invisible creatures I'd just make it go off every time an earthworm in the ground or a mouse in a wall moves around since you can't see them. Since the spell isn't sentient or can determine things for itself.
@@Merilirem They are the same thing. Per definition "Invisible" refers to something that cannot be seen, if you are blind then all creatures are invisible to you, a mouse under a blanket would equally be invisible to you.
You can also use it to trigger Magical Items with command word, since those don't even need to be held by a person. Use a Decanter of Infinite Water and Magic Mouth to drown the world!
A side possibility that I've seen using said item, that I posted elsewhere in here, is an Artficier using Magic Mouth set to repeat its message so long as the trigger was active alongside a Decanter of Endless Water. The trigger was someone pulling the parking break and holding the steering wheel of a wagon they attached a miniature water wheel engine system to. They built a medieval car out of a Magic Mouth and a Decanter of Endless Water.
At 30 gallons every 6 seconds, you are filling an Olympic sized pool every 13 hours. Drowning the whole world is not something you'll be able to accomplish in your lifetime. A cave network? Definitely. The world? It's a big place out there.
Imagine enchanting several small objects, like individual pieces of copper, and implanting them inside your helmet so each one can whisper tactical advice on your ear. Now imagine that several of them are triggered at once because you hadn't considered the possibility of encountering Orcs AND Werewolves at the same time, NOR do you expect either would happen in the slippery terrain of a Bog (triggered whenever your boots are partially submerged in a specific composition of muddy water). Now you have several different voices rattling off advice in your ear all at once, none of it is audible, and it's all very distracting such that you don't even notice the Werewolf charging you from behind until it's too late.
I used magic mouth too make a door respond with our bard using the help option to create a message saying "its ok" in the boss voice to anyone who asked a question to the boss from outside his chambers. It led to us convincing the guards and cultists that everything we were doing was fine, plus thanks to either our DM was being generous or having shit rolls.
The real use of this spell is to cast it on a pebble whenever you need to use it and then collect those pebbles in a jar. When you’re done scatter them on like a beach or something and wait for them to be randomly triggered. Could be someone says ‘dandelion rainbow’ and gets top secret intel from twenty years ago yelled at them from god knows where. Or you could set a rock to “whenever someone says the name of an animal out loud yell ‘what?’ really loud” and just fuck with people forever. Alternatively you could use it as ye ol FAQ forums. Every time someone has a question for the mages guild secretary you record the answer in a rock and the trigger is asking the question or something like it depending how lenient you can be about phrasing. Then the pebble spits out a pre-recorded answer to a question. Jar grows over the years and eventually you can answer most any question a customer would have without ever having to interact with them. Which is nice cuz customer service sucks. Equally stupid but practical, get a bunch of items to shout out advertisements whenever it’s relevant. Like place a spell on a table at the local inn that triggers whenever someone says they need a new sword and it tells them where to find the blacksmith who paid for this spell. Or the reverse, enchant the stable to direct you to the local inn or something idk. Maybe more useful in port I guess. Either way, it would be entertaining to have infomercial levels of pop-up advertising in a dnd setting. Bonus - an enchanted mug at the tavern that yells for a refill whenever the mug is emptied. Popular with dwarves, and nobody else.
I've got a game going where a society on islands in the sky uses magic mouths to keep triggering the key word on a bunch of decanters of endless water so that they'll constantly be fountaining water full-force and keep the people there from running out, since they don't have access to other water sources reliably that don't also require magic. It's a FANTASTIC spell.
YES THIS! For the past few weeks I've been a little too obsessed with trying to put Arcane Lock on a Creation Bard since it's afaik the only way to convert trigger conditions into mechanical action, and is activated the same way as Magic Mouth. Theoretically you could also used Programmed Illusions the same way, though in all cases the delay between when it was last activated and when it can be activated again is extremely annoying. For Arcane Lock based mechanisms you might need 2-5 backup locks depending on how often the mechanism must be triggered. Not a perfect example but imagine a mechanical keyboard where you can press S many times in quick succession. Mechanisms like that REALLY hate the "it becomes dormant for 1 minute before it can be triggered again" thing.
@@Aviivix True enough about the delay. Don't forget about classical physics, though. You'd be surprised what a water wheel and some gears and shafts can do, especially with arcane lock mechanisms and magic mouth logic.
I love to mess a little with this spell, setting alarms on doors, your equipment, making distracting noises with screaming marbles, annoying NPCs... This spell is amazing at that.
A brick, every 20 feet, yelling something, triggering the other brick to yell, and so on, and have the brick chain lead onto itself, to make a never ending yelling wall around a village, town, keep, or encampment.
Didn't think of this before, but DM's, this is what you need TO MAKE THE WORLD'S MOST ANNOYING DUNGEON FOR ADVENTURERS TO DIVE INTO!!! (Just non-stop ungodly unintelligible noises at full volume!)
Perhaps, but even then it is kinda hard to hide from an invisible, constantly alert, intangible, formless force. You literally have no idea something is watching/listening in a constant 30 foot 360 degree sphere unless someone has warned you specifically about a Magic Mouth.
@@josephperez2004 Not 360 degrees. The object needs a direct line of sight to the trigger. It cannot see through walls or detect invisible things. That also means it cannot see through, for example, the body of someone wearing it. More specifically I'd say the line of sight needs to be exactly where the "mouth" was cast onto. So if you put one on the center back of a cloak, only things aligned with the center back of the cloak will be detected, it doesn't matter that if you wrap your cloak around you, "the cloak" has a full 360 view of the area. The part that's enchanted, doesn't. The passive perception ruling is probably something that should just be included in the spell.
Grungeon Master came up with the idea of making a choose-your-own-adventure roleplaying game out of them, then charging admission, effectively creating the first arcade.
Using it to detect invisible creatures is definitely not something I would allow as a DM without those creatures making noises (like speaking). The Magic Mouth does not have a perception, so assuming it has perfect perception down to being able to notice displaced dust (and being able to distinguish when it is caused specifically by an invisible creature and not some wind) seems to be a stretch, and comes across as less creative and more cheesy.
@@dreamwanderer5791 Aside from just having every door cast Antimagic Field whenever it's touched, and you just use Gate spells to get everywhere, cuz you're a CR25 Mega Lich.
yeah fully agree, it can't know that something was caused by an invisible creature if it can't see the creature. Personally I'd probably rule that the triggers would also have to be under 25 words as well to avoid someone handing you a book of every scenario they want their hat to warn them about
Yeah I would limit the magic mouth to the skills/vision of the caster (at the time of casting). Having this work by fiat without rolls on anything even if the caster does not know it beforehand is a massive oversight in the rules
Does the object have to remain intact? Could you cast it on a big rock and then pulverise it, then scatter the dust to the wind to basically create a huge network of alarms? I’m imagining a court wizard being tasked with creating a warning system for a whole kingdom that revolves around doing that a bunch of times. “If an enemy soldier is present or another magic mouth shrieks, shriek until told by the king to stop”. That way you get to hold the kingdom to random too because if the king dies you’d have to go around dispelling all this screaming dust.
The triggering circumstances must be based on visual or audible conditions. The spell doesn't grant omniscience (i.e. it doesn't know whether a creature is vulnerable to fire, but only if it appears so (because it's made of wood or something). I think it would be actually fairly easy to fool the trigger if you know it.
So much potential, my favorite kind of spell. Earrings that whisper quiet warnings to you, a bunch of normal looking stud type earrings that each have special triggers to alert you to dangers that have visible or audible signs. Place a permanent alarm on a metal stake that shrieks if a creature not on your exception list comes within 30 feet of it when it's planted in the ground, nobody will ever sneak up on your party while they're sleeping or if they place the stake on watch behind them when they're entering a cave or somewhere, downside being: it's loud so you'd alert everything when it goes off. Create a scouting tool, a chain, each link enchanted with magic mouth, begins checking for conditions if it's "not wrapped in cloth" all similar trigger conditions except different distances and things for it to say: "Creature! 30 Feet!" "Creature! 20 feet!" "Creature! 10 feet!" "Creature! 5 feet!" "Creature! Here!" use it in combination with mage hand to continuously move the tool ahead of the party.
Ear rings that scream "She's cheating on you" if the person wearing them sees the person that holds both ear rings in one hand while spinning in a circle saying "Smoopy Doop" after having sex with someone who is not that person. A blacksmith forge that has multiple magic mouths enchanted into different parts that will tell the smith the specific metal inside is at the right temperature to be shaped. A scarecrow, that just screams when a crow gets close to it. A coin purse that tells you when someone is trying to cut its strings. A fancy bust, that just insults people. A safe that doesn't look like a safe and it has a mouth carved in metal around the lock and when you speak the password or perform the special action the mouth goes "Ahhhhhhhhhh". Fuck your practical adventuring equipment. I'm MONETIZING this shit!
In one of my games we are doing a 2 year long ritual in an ancient temple, so to ward against surprise attacks we set up a chain of magic mouths to shout "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!" if anyone not identified as one of our men entered, or another magic mouth nearby went off. We also used Glyph of Warding at all guard stations to trigger an aoe heal when activated for emergency med kits
You could use it to cast spells. Here is how: Cast Magic Mouth on a readily moveable object (staff, small rock, sling bullet, whatever), programming it to effectively say the verbal component to a spell you either regularly use, or something you use in desperate times (Healing Word, Lesser Restoration, Teleport, Wall of Force, Dispel Magic, etc). Set the trigger to go off when you are within its detection range and you are moving your mouth but no sound is coming out of it, all while you are performing the somatic component (if applicable). When you need it, you can toss the object outside of areas that don't allow sound (as if you are in an area under the effect of the Silence spell), or can function on your person when just you can't (or can't afford to) speak. This should allow you to cast that spell, and if you are casting Dispel Magic, you can potentially free yourself from the silencing effect. You could have multiple of these objects on you at once, just label each in such a way as you know which spell they correspond to. Keep them stowed away until use, as sound won't set off the trigger, preventing accidental triggering of the Magic Mouth effect. Edit: Also, you can use a similar trick to instead confuse creatures that rely on echolocation, as the sound comes from that rock you tossed down the well.
I'm imagining a quest near the start of a campaign where the local mayor tasks the party with bringing in the person who's been using magic mouth to make random walls and statues and benches scream obscenities at passersby. It would basically be very loud graffiti that's very difficult to clean up, since you'd need a spellcaster who knows how to dispel magic to get rid of it. Maybe the prankster wizard who did this could become a recurring NPC, always happening to be where the party where the party is going to cause some lighthearted mischief with creative uses of various spells
i had an intensely egotistical wizard enemy NPC who used magic mouth on zombies so they would compliment him when he walked past. had the party fighting zombies who were complimenting their "style" or calling them "virile stallions"
Didn't even think about daisychaining the spell, but that occurs to me there's a handful of spells that only activate/complete when a keyword is used; so you could use magic mouth as a failsafe, either to make sure goes off or to prevent it from going off prematurely.
As a lawful evil warlock I used it to manipulate the party's overzealous paladin. Every day the statue idol of his god would give him my instructions and messages. Why would he question the will of his deity? Mwahahaha
Every computer science major: *Happy robot noises* Every DM who has a CSM PC: *Sad forever DM noises* Every CSM DM: *Happy sadistic robot noises* Every CSM DM and their CSM PC/PCs: "LETS. FUCKING. GOOOO!"
I once had a Tomelock cast it on our Paladin's Dual-Scimitar to give encouragement when he missed an attack or congratulations when he hit... "Oh, no problem, you'll get the next one" - "Agh, so close" - "Thats the way Buddy" - " Aw Yeah, they felt that one!" He... did not appreciate it... as he thought he was an Assassin.
My party was trying to make a section of forest seem haunted in order to scare off a military encampment and we made a few dozen magic mouths that just make eerie stock horror sound effects whenever someone walked near them. Worked wonderfully.
Кино
Imagine a computer expressing binary through the two states of being for a magic mouth, screaming and silent. Millions of mouths screaming in unison in order that one man might fight the fires of hell.
What about hexadecimal? Why stop at binary?
Sounds like Deep Rot with extra steps tbh.
Sounds like a great idea, as long as your caster's deaf.
I get the reference. Playing DOOM on a mouth computer inside a game of D&D. Nice.
I think because a magic mouth can have only one trigger and only one action. So it can only observe two states, and only reproduce two states. So binary is its limit.
I love this, but I'm dying laughing at the idea of a party sneaking up on a monster to catch it by surprise, only to have the caster's spell book scream "IT'S VULNERABLE TO FIRE, GUYS."
Somewhere, deep in a bird-filled forest...
I WAAAARNED YOUUU!
I heard his Idea to have it "Alert the party if an Invisible creature makes a sound or Displaces dirt"
Shadow Touched Rouge Ally: I'm going to go invisible and sneak up on the guard for a sneak attack.
Magic mouthed shoe the wizard is wearing: *THERE IS AN INVISIBLE CREATURE NEXT TO YOU!*
@@tanith117 Wizard, while in jail, sitting next to the Rogue: "...Note to self, invisible _non-ally..."_
@@LucanVaris How would it know an ally, when it can't see them? Because they're invisible.
Put it on a weapon, and any time a gnome comes within 30 feet of you, the mouth screams "VENGEANCE FOR KURTULMAK!"
Cast it on an important letter. The text says whatever you want your enemies to believe, but if the intended recipient looks at it, the real message is spoken.
Draw a picture of someone on it so a random mouth on a letter doesn't appear too suspicious.
Just hope the enemy does not screen the letter with detect magic! Should work in a low magic setting, but good luck in Ebberon or any high magic setting.
That's what Nystal's Magic Aura is for! For just one easy month of casting a no gp cost 2nd level spell you can make a magic item appear non-magical to divination spells permanently! (including identify) You can also just cast it once for a day long effect (also instead of magic mouth, Illusory Script is what you'd want)
@@dogishappy0 No need. The mouth doesn't appear until it triggers.
@@DutchBlackManthanow imagine if the spell can be triggered by a portrait of the intended recipient looking at it. Arcane pen testing
I like to think wizards with lots of spare gold and time just randomly cast this on objects they find while traveling and give it really cryptic triggers and outputs, just for the knowledge that some day a wandering commoner couple is going to wind up finding this nice scenic spot and get hot and heavy only for the nearby tree to shout "Oh, back here with another one are you?"
I'm imagining the DM rolling a d100 every time the party enters a new location where there's no-one else around, and on a 100 a previous prank wizard's Magic Mouth goes off
Bonus if the party meets the NPC before or after this and/or can figure out who set the "trap" based on what exactly it says
@@Smeelio *furiously scribbling notes* Thank you!
That's horrible. 🤣
A False Treant.
And this is why trickster clerics don't get magic mouth.
Magic mouth is unironically a top tier spell for shenanigans. Want to prank your friend? magic mouth one of their items. Want to prevent in-party theft? Magic mouth your backpack. You can even use it to prepare a distraction for a heist. The possibilities are endless.
Truly there are innumerable possibilities with said spell.
In terms of shenanigans, Magic Mouth is fine and all, but Hail to the King!
Sending is so good at messing with people it can single handedly ruin campaigns.
Keep in mind: You can contact any creature you know at any time and it doesn't cost any ressources outside of the spellslot itself to do so - AND there is no way for the creature to avoid getting the message.
So, basically: It's late at night and you're about to go to bed, but then you remember that you still have 2 3rd level spells left? Well, you're in luck! That's fifty words worth of constant screaming beamed directly into the mind of the BBEG! (Bonus points if they were already asleep by then!)
What's that? You're having a few weeks of downtime where you don't need your spell slots at all? Cast away! Scream into the brain of your nemesis every hour of every day! Insult them! Laugh at them! Cite your shitty poems to them! Do whatever you want, because there's literally nothing they can do to stop it!
Hey ur cute
My favorite use was to sneak into the Fighter's bedroom and cast it under his bed. It triggers if there are rhythmic wood creaks above it. It recites it in the voice you speak in, so flex your Performance for whatever mood-ruining line/sound you want.
@@Silungar It's all fun and games until the BBEG who has many, many more times as many spell slots as you returns the favor in kind, or has their minions do it for him. Enjoy your death from exhaustion :P
This spell has horrific prank potential. Cast the spell on a door frame with the condition that every 628th time someone opens the door, it screams.
I like the idea of wizards working as plumbers to dispell pranks
@@moartems5076 Starting to sound like ransomware scheme waiting to happen. All that they need is one given instructions to to delay the message a few months.
@@moartems5076 You just gave me a vision of a horrible (amazing?) reality TV show where two wizards flip ruins into marketable real estate by scouring them for magical pranks and traps.
For anyone confused, Tom Pewter is code for Computer. You could even create a Turing Complete system with the right conditions.
The fun part is that you can set magic mouth to interact with other "untill dispelled" spells such as programmed illusion, arcane lock, glyph of warding, etc. to allow Mister Pewter to have direct physical interactions with the real world.
@@nonasuomi282 And here we see a couple of novice artificers discussing how to create the first warforged prototype /j
Piers Anthony beat him to the joke decades ago, too, lol. Though there it's Com Pewter.
The amount of gold, items and time it would take for something like that. Good luck getting anything out of it. Plus actually figuring out how many Mouths are needed, and the multitude of various things you'd need to set up to get something that can only ever talk.
Concisely put. Thank you.
My favorite use of Magic Mouth is using it in combination with Glyph of Warding to make magical booby-traps out of unorthodox things.
For example, there's a glyph of warding hidden in a room behind a book-case, meaning it can't be found without moving the book-case, and it contains a fireball spell. There's a very blatantly obvious object on this book-case that will get someone's attention, say a small golden statuette for this example. When touched by any creature that is not the caster, which would most likely be adventurers or thieves, the golden statuette promptly screams the code-word to the hidden glyph of warding, meeting the glyph's activation requirement, and setting off a fireball.
edit: Yes, this also means you can make a random object shout an expletive before an explosion goes off for seemingly no reason other than the object just doing that, which is hilarious.
You cast about 1000+ magic mouth on item you are wearing/carrying and you get a specific coordinate of where that invisible creature is, including how high from the floor.
"Hello there, I see you found my priceless artifact. I do hope you fetch a fair price. However, before you depart my study, cast fireball."
*picks up the trigger item* “skibidi bob m dada-“ BOOM!
I will be inflicting this upon my players soon. Thank you!
Couldn't you just set up the glyph of warding to do that on its own? Glyph has a complex trigger as well
As an artificer, I always avoided this spell because magical tinkering gets you 6 second audio messages or text of 25 words or less *for free*. BUT now that I know that magic mouth is turing complete, I think I'm going to program Baldur's Gate inside my campaign.
Magic mouth is one of those spells where you absolutely need to TALK TO THE DM. Since it has a gold cost, pretty much the only times magic mouth is worth casting is when its pushing against the boundaries of what it can do.
Yell "invisible" whenever an audible invisible creature other than the wearer enters within 30ft.
Say "Magical" whenever a magic item that isnt being worn or carried enters or is dropped within 30ft.
Say "secret tunnel" whenever a hidden passage enters within 30ft.
....
And these also need to be made a big deal to the dm, because even if rhey allow it, the player cant activate them. The dm has to realize of their own accord that when theres an invisible creature/ magic item/ secret passage nearby that this spell needs to go off. That can be hard when they have 5 pcs to think about and the spell was cast 6 sessions ago.
Unless the item is visually or audibly magical, there's no way for magic mouth to detect which item is magic and which is not.
These kinds of shenanigans are another reason why I prefer Pathfinder 2e, they go into a lot of detail about the rulings of things. Magic Mouth in that game, along with any other 'trigger' type spell, is clearly explained to require line of sight, that it is fooled by illusions, disguises, and invisibility and that you can even sneak past them with a successful check.
In 5e, depending on your interpretation, magic mouth is a 10-gold 2nd-level spell that detects illusions, ambushing creatures, invisible creatures and hidden objects.
...and the DM will definitely try to screw you over with the wording. I know, I am a DM and we kinda consider this spell our own since it's main use is in dungeons for puzzles, to threaten or annoy players and a bit for comical relief. It is also a spell that certainly can be abused and screw over the game balance if players use it in a certain way.
So most of us will try to screw over the players who use it, kinda like if you use a Wish spell.
Or at least old school DMs like me will do it, it is a tradition going back to AD&D 1st edition that any spell that require specific wording should use Genie rules. Heck, 1st ed Dungeon masters guide had a section on each spell how the players would try to abuse them and how the DM could screw them over with them. Good times. :)
But there is also an unsaid rule that we are nicer the less the players use it to abuse the rules. The "invisible" shouting mouth for instance isn't generally that bad while the "Magical" one is worse in a dungeon since you can use it to find hidden treasures and magical traps (depending on where the trap is set and your exact wording).
There are a certain type of player that is an "Exploiter" who constantly tries to bend all rules to their advantage, while of course ignoring anything that would be bad for themselves and DMs are not a fan of those players. "Rule lawyers" can also be annoying but they at least are consistent. So play nice with your DM.
@@utes5532 Its very up to interpretation. Some dms would allow it and wouldnt be going against raw to do so. I mentioned purposely controversial castings.
Brilliantly worded!
@@loke6664 I would hope for the dm to take wording into since that keeps some mystery. Having my object yell "invisible" might tell us an invisible creature is nearby, but not location or anything about them and it would miss invisible objects. So when the item procs thats simply the beginning of a scene we still need to play out.
But in my experience with 5e dms, I need to remind them what I cant do far more often than what I can. Like they'll recall my item detects invisible creatures and just casually tell us where they are. Then i need to remind them my item cant decern that.
Imagine enchanting as many items in a town as possible to yell out "were all going to die" every time a magic mouth yells that phrase. Then have 1 mouth set to some other trigger. Set off the trigger mouth and bask in the chaos.
That's some expensive trolling, but hilarious nonetheless
Mouth no.1 "Adventurers !" Mouth group "We're all going to die !" Adventurer "Maybe we should skip that town..."
Now imagine a city using a similar system of layered messages, but constructively. Like a city-wide alert, in case of general emergencies or in response to specific events. (Ex: "Alert! Alert! Tarrasque incoming! This is not a drill! Evacuate!")
I can imagine some cruel Wizard with expendable income (let's face it, they all have plenty to spend later on) scouring the map for a place to live. He finds a simple forest location that, while the trees look a bit off, the forest itself is innocent enough, and provides no major harm to anyone.
He then starts casting Magic Mouth on random trees.
As you walk through the recently "haunted" forest, voices seem to whisper to you from all sides. There is nowhere to hide. They're all around you.
Combine this with Programmed Illusion, which is the visual version of this spell, and you can get up to ALL KINDS of Scooby Doo shenaniganry.
@@Leukodin And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling party!
Magic Mouth is also pretty amazing for Artificers. Something I've seen done with them is using Magic Mouth in combination with a Decanter of Endless Water and a ship's steering wheel. The artificer built what was essentially a water wheel on a wagon, attached the decanter to it aiming at the wheel, and made the Magic Mouth repeatedly yell "Geyser" (one of the Decanter's use words) whenever someone holds the steering wheel after pulling a lever. Basically they took a wagon, attached some seemingly unrelated stuff to it, and turned it into a water powered car. The blueprints can be found online, I for one think this is just hilarious.
That's pretty great, lol.
Isn't one of the limitations of Magic Mouth that it cannot activate magic items? It would say "Geyser" but then nothing would happen.
@BarrakDraconis There is nothing in the spell that specifies that it cannot activate magic items. So as long as the DM allows it, you could absolutely let it activate magic items. In fact, the spell doesn't even specify that it can't target magic items in general, so you could put the mouth on the Decanter itself if you so chose. But then it would basically be trying to vomit water and words at the same time, which while funny, wouldn't be very practical.
@@invertedghostgames9899 They must've removed that restriction then. In 3rd ed. it specified "The mouth cannot utter verbal components, use command words, or activate magical effects."
The no verbal components thing I absolutely agree with. The mouth isn't the one casting the spell after all. And for certain magic items, like wands and such, I can more than understand not letting the mouth use those either. But if it's something that generally won't be too out of pocket, I'd allow it. Back then it was a hard limit. Now, it's DM dependant.
Something interesting about Magic Mouth...
It says you cast it on an object. But it does not give a size or weight limit to the object.
"The carving on the wall before you seems to be old as time itself. The ancient script has a single word, whose definition has no doubt been lost to time. The best you're able to ascertain is it has something to do with the heavens and beasts."
"'Up... dog'? What's 'up-dog'?"
"The earth shakes beneath your feet. A voice, grander than any you've heard before, shakes the very air. You can feel in your bones that every creature in the world hears the message being uttered forth from the noble and grand people who left it behind."
'Nothing much, what's up with you?'
The only thing stopping you from casting it on the planet itself is that the target must be "unattended".
But there is nothing stopping me from making "Screaming Mountain". 😈
Very cheeseable if your campaign takes place in a city where there are likely to be smiths or other artisans who can make metal wire for you...
@@leyruathat depends on the definition of 'unattended.' Like, does it work on things being held? Touched? Stood near? Looked at? It's so vague. However, you COULD conceivably cast it on a deserted island...
I have decided to headcanon that the example goblin throughout the animation is, not a quick way at drawing a goblin's mouth but that they are wearing a scarf, bandana or face mask with a big toothy squiggly line across it
I've always thought that was exactly what that was. I just figured we couldn't see where it ties together because its head was too big.
Kinda like the one Bowser Jr. sometimes wears.
Or like nott's mask from critical role
Pro Tipp: Set one of the conditions as " the caster must not be wearing a ring inscribed with *_DO NOT DISTURB_* ". Very useful for staying stealthy or when visiting theatres.
im now just imagining a giant wall with endless wailing, the scream activating by other screams in a chain reaction, hell of a intimidation tactic.
I can make it worse: It's screaming advertisements at you, for what is scarier than aggressive capitalism (joke).
@@Valsorayu HELLO ADVENTURER, BUY PRODUCT
@@Valsorayubetter: The screams argue the merits of every sociopolitical and economic system, but with excessive use of fallacies and interruptions, thus never making any useful points. Additionally some just loop fellatory compliments of their own enlightenment for supporting milquetoast or lowest common denominator opinions...
Probably cheaper than actually binding the souls of the damned into your tower's walls, too.
@@Coid I mean, it's the effect that counts. No one needs to know you cheaped out on soul-bindings.
This spell was strangely useful a while back in a Campaign. My character had to send a warning that there was assassin in their midst, but he figured the assassin would get their hands on the letter before arriving. So he casted magic mouth on a letter that was generally just a mundane letter to the family, but in truth had Magic Mouth cast on it to give the real warning when the person the letter was intended for actually read it.
See also: Illusory Script.
Here's a neat piece of info, in the forgotten realms there exists a 300 meter long bridge, called Illikurs Bridge, where each rock has a rune that is works as a magic mouth but is also undetectable by magic. It's so ancient even Elminster managed to decipher only a couple dozens of the hudreds of rocks there. Most people just believe it's haunted.
I like the idea of using Magic Mouth to make your stuff give you advice.
I LOVE that idea
I'm thinking you'd cast it on a paper clip and if you're having trouble with writing a letter it would start with "It looks like you're trying to..."
@@mrharvest"STOP! You've violated the ~~law~~ internet!"
I like the idea of a protective parent making a bunch of these on their child's equipment before allowing them to be an adventurer.
Or the idea of someone selling items that give advice in combat. The sword isn't magic, but it'll tell you when certain creatures are around.
"Wolves hunt in packs, Arisen!"
I once had a fun idea to be a businessman artificer who would create self-reading holy books which were basically a bunch of items with the magic Mouth spell. Expensive, yes, but when your market are churches... you're going to make it back.
It does imply that every page might need to contain only 25 words or less, or that instead of making it one Mouth per page you daisychain several across the pages allowing it be more compact
@@camblycreeper7999 VERY expensive indeed
@@camblycreeper7999 Had I been in that campaign long enough to bring my plans to fruition, I would absolutely have experimented with more optimal ways of doing it.
@@camblycreeper7999 And no pause function. Once you open the first page, you are going to listen to a bellowing oration of the entire book, complete with unskippable ads for the creator's magic shop.
@@camblycreeper7999 I was thinking about something like this for a tomb. The guide is a book with each page giving you the hint to get threw the current room.
Playing Matt Mercer’s new Blood Magic wizard in an upcoming campaign where costly components can be replaced by 1d10 necrotic damage per 50 gp. You can keep casting Magic Mouth so long as you have hit points.
EDIT: If your buddy happens to be a 5th level Warlock with Cure Wounds and you’re both good without sleep, you can cast Magic Mouth about 131 times every 24 hours.
Coffee mouth
Damn, I didn't think of that. Have to make some new considerations now.
Yea... If you are both masochists...
You can bypass the components with a College of Creation Bard, which can use Performance of Creation to create 20 * level gp worth of an item that CAN be used as a spellcasting component, and can spend a 2nd level or higher spell slot to do it again. Sit around for a couple hours and ritual cast Magic Mouth with the dust created from PoC and depending on your level you can get quite a few of them per long rest.
thank you for creating another Blood Magic wizard for an upcoming campaign - there is *nothing* i love more than this kind of madness
Magic Mouth is one of those spells that serves verisimilitude. The wizard might have no interest in casting Magic Mouth, but they know it exists, so when the DM uses it to build a puzzle, it feels like the evil wizard bad guy is the one who actually set it up, not your weird friend sitting behind a screen at the other end of the table asking you to pass the almonds.
Scribbles note in DM journal: "Have wizard tower that includes magic mouth breaking off mid-script to ask for almonds, as wizard got distracted/hungry while casting"
The phone network idea relies on the fact that there is no size limitation for the object in question in order to be cost efficient, so if you have a several mile long cable, for example, you can set up the magic mouth to trigger at one end and speak on the other. Since there also isn't a limit to how many magic mouths can be on the same object, you can cast it on an object four times (or more for more efficiency) to give Morse code or binary communication in both directions and boom, you can build a telecommunications network at a reasonable cost. (This can still be sabotaged by someone cutting or dispelling the cable)
Why use binary when you can just have the magic mouth relay every word said?
@@Lelebees The magic mouth has to have a set trigger and set phrase to speak, neither of which can't be changed once the spell is cast. So you could relay words, but you would need to cast magic mouth for every word you wanted to use (at least hundreds of castings per cable), sounds (around 45 castings per cable) or letters (26 castings, plus any punctuation per cable). But with binary you can send arbitrary data with only two castings per cable. Even at 'only' 10g per casting, this still saves a lot of money in the long run.
If you want to get very clever with it, you can set up magic mouths at either end to 'translate' the binary in to or from plain text, since then you are only paying that cost at each end, but it's not strictly necessary for the contraption to work
Oh gosh I had thought of magic mouth as mere simple shenaniganary, only to find out it was complex shenaniganary all along!!
it's complex shenaniganry all the way down
Had a Kenku Rogue with a Bard dip just for this spell.
We'd put sound effects & phrases on arrows, things like the sound of a crowd running down a hallway so when it's shot one direction guards would think people are heading that way & we'd go the other way. Or the sounds of a Dragon we'd fire over a castle's walls. Or just 10 minutes of snoring so we didn't have to hide a body....
One of my staple recurring wizard characters utilizes Magic Mouth as his calling card.
The best prank I am fond of involved casting it on the door to a inn's bedroom.
Trigger: When someone has been sleeping in this bed for 2 hours
Message: "AAAAAAGHHHH They're upon us!!! Wake up! AGGGGHHHH!!!"
You place a magic mouth on each page of a book and send it to the castle of the big bad guy. Make the noise trigger when the bad guy goes to sleep within 30 feet of the book and have all the mouths yell at him
I love how you're actually posting practical advice on how to use this spell and I, in all my wisdom, read the spell and thought "y'know, in a room where it's hard to gauge where the sound is coming from, you could totally rickroll someone." Wizard applications vs bard applications, I guess 😂
This is why I love this series - no matter how many spellcasters you play, you can be so oblivious to some basic and ridiculously cool applications of spells. Zee, we're always in need of your wisdom!
The only problem would be a 25g cost, which really depends on DM/campaign. For instance in my previous campaign we got paid for doing things all the time and 25g would be nothing.
But in my current campaign we are in the literal Hell and even though we are lvl 11 we have basically no gold.
Time to spice up my Wizard spell list with this spell. I never gave it a shot because I never understood how it works. This gives me some ideas that I think my DM would love.
This spell is broken in so many way they do not point out.Your DM will hate you if you can figure out how to break the game with this spell
@@blackgriffinxx Good to know, and knowing how my DM likes to game, I already have like 50 different ways to mess with them, lol. Honestly it would fit with how my dm plays games.
@@alphacreeper222 You figure it out? It pretty busted and would let level one PCs break mid- high magic games. Their a reason why DMs should not let gold farming be a thing in their games. Well uncontested and tried anyway.
@@blackgriffinxx Thanks to this video explaining how the spell can work, I have came up with a few ideas for things that my DM will hate me for. If you have any ideas for me, let me know.
@@alphacreeper222 Well it can track things
any thing. it only with in 30 feet. So with the right wording. You can hunt down plants minerals and animals. So at level one you could just gold farm. The weirder part is this spell can fill in for a lot of other spells and magic items. You could make a questionable lie detector( zone of truth) .
A better alarm. Wand of detect magic. One thing i question is can you combo this with
vicious mockery. That would just be mean if you could. An arrow will never miss again.
could also be used for a sentimental moment too. Where a spellcaster knows they will die and so they leave a simple message for their child, that says something in their voice like "My son/daughter, know I am proud of you and that I love you always," but it will mostly be used irrevocably for shenanigans...
"I cast Magic Mouth on my codpiece."
"Okay? What are the conditions and what does it say?"
"Any time someone says something that can be misconstrued as or twisted into sexual innuendo, I want the codpiece to say, *that's what she said!"*
"Fine. And I hate you."
Here's hoping your character is never sneaking around someplace and overhears a guard make a crude joke. 😉
Did not notice you could carry it around. 25gp jade dust & honeycomb per cast made me think of setting up a helpmenu for a complex structure, like how you would use continual flame to light up a hallway designed to be abandoned for an extended period of time. Time to look for a scroll and put this on my gem pouch.
1:27 "You can program objects to daisy chain" Magic Mouth: a computer programmer's dream, and a DM's nightmare 💻👄
Magic mouth is underrated. I once used it in dragon queen to clear out a fort by having a familar fly among the people with an item yelling that there was an attack outside the fort.
Thanks for not giving up Zee Bashew! Nice video and I think you captured some of the original scary factor of Magic Mouth in old school dungeons too, with the hall of mouths echoing far ahead of the party from a single point, alerting the evil false hydra at the end of the lair before one of its minion creatures charges at you on a chariot. Good voice based dungeon there...
i think Magic Mouth is one of those rare D&D spells that classically comes from back in the day, so is all powerful, makes the world interesting and very magical, yet is not unbalanced in any way really.
My bladesinger kept a bag full of stones with Magic Mouth cast upon each one. They were programmed to sing backup for her performances, turning her into a one-woman choir.
Villages could use it as a low resource relay system. Passing a message of "we are being attacked" down the line to the next village
Except the material component cost of 10 gold pieces of honeycomb and jade times the 30 foot range is not exactly "low resource".
@@blshouse I did not know that. I retract that comment
A line of screaming telephone poles every 30 ft running through the mountains.. you could annoy invaders away
Villages no but cities very much yes. Near-instant long range basic communication is worth the price
"the magic statues are screaming! Gondor calls for aid!"
I don't know about later editions offhand, but in 1e the magic mouth can't detect invisible creatures, or tell things like alignment, class etc. That said, it's still versatile in ways that many players never think of. Great vid!
In 5e there’s basically no restrictions on what it can do. So long as the trigger is visual ot auditory, and so long as ‘what it does’ is deliver some message (25 words or less), that message can be anything. Even the activation phrases of a magic item.
In 5e, the restrictions mentioned in the video are the only ones it has
I've got a Magic Mouth tab in my D&D doc. Here are some of the ideas in there, some stupid some useful:
Camp perimeter
"Help" beacon when unconscious
Idiot sword
Cobblestone that says "ouch"
Chamber pot that says "yum"
Distraction pebbles
Bag alarm
Theme song player
Two statues arguing forever
Countdown/ranged trigger for glyph
Giving commands to zombies/golems
Ominous countdown
Audience enhancers
doorbell
chastity belt
self-playing flute
auto-administer potion (arcane lock? open mouth?)
To prevent a marrage that would spark conflict between feuding kingdoms, I once cast the spell on a church's deity statue to state "By my righteous and divine authority, I object to this union" the moment the word "object" was spoken by the priest.
It can pray for you so you don't have to! It might even convert some peasants over time.
It can yell "liar liar pants on fire" each time the king says they 500th word of the day.
It can purr permanently! That's so darn cute.
It can make annoying mosquito sounds at night randomly when a merchant is too greedy!
i had to look it up and apparently it can be set to repeat the message whenever the trigger is activated. that makes Zee's suggestions a lot better than I first understood
I had an illusionist that realized because the mouth is visible, it is subject to Malleable Illusions. Quickly spent a good chunk of change prepping an entire chess set so that they could be changed effectively at will without going through the full casting time.
Oh wtf THAT is a niche interaction!
Wait what did you use the chess set for?
Game died before I could use it too often, but I kept them in a default state to “sing rounds of row your boat when someone sings the first verse” because I didn’t want them randomly yelling strange messages in town. I did get to use them to widen the party’s protected area during long rests. Also had plans to use them for easy distractions, a dungeon alert relay network, a pickpocket detector, and (paired with my familiar) a private way to send a message without preparing sending. I confess, the idea of having them shout tactical advice never occurred to me, but that would have been fun.
Imagine you enter an old library in a dungeon, and the moment you touch a book, THE ENTIRE LIBRARY SCREAMS
Now I want to make a pudding with a bunch of magic mouths to scream out when in contact with metal. Then you serve "The Gibbering Mouther" to your guests.
Over the course of however long, enchant all of the rocks around your teams base to scream. The sound would be unimaginable. An absolutely horrific mess.
Magic mouth is like Minecraft's redstone. There are a few neat tricks a novice can use it for. But when an expert is given time with it: God help us all.
In the fantasy book series Xanth, there is a character named Com Pewter. A golem that can not move but has the power to change reality in his local vicinity.
The last joke in video made me think of him.
One niche but interesting use I want to try is with an animate dead spell and some trinkets, a mask, and a robe to hide the body, just have a bunch of lines prepped for certain questions and have the undead just do tasks around the town like a permanent unseen servant. Apparently their intelligence is high enough to carry out fairly complex tasks and with being able to stay for 24 hours it’s quite handy. If they ever die just raise another and use the items again
This spell is great and becomes even better if your dm rules that creation bards can use the items they create as material components for a spell
I remember in the manga/anime, "The Law of Ueki", there was a member of Ueki's team who had a power like this. Fun times!
Was that the Monkey guy that joined the team near the end?
@@josephperez2004 That was the one!
I used magic mouth in my Artificer NPC magic workshop. Magic Mouth was basically near every single means of egress (window, doors, etc) and had a basic command:
"If someone attempts to take a crafted item from the store without first placing it on the counter: Scream."
The Screaming would then trigger a mechanical trap that causes metal bars to drop over the doors and window, and all the Magical Tinkering (level 1 artificer feature) to take snapshots of the store and its inhabitants.
I got to see it all go off because OF COURSE the party attempted to steal from the only genuine magic shop in the kingdom, and of course they got hunted by the guard who had accurate portraits of the party and equipped with tools donated by the artificer to catch them. Its a very bad idea to make an enemy of a magical arms dealer who has no qualms about arming your enemies if you cross him.
Best thing I heard is a vampire cast magic mouth on another side of a door to let himself in.
I can definitely see a GM messing with a player who tries to cheese the spell.
In the detection of invisible creatures I'd just make it go off every time an earthworm in the ground or a mouse in a wall moves around since you can't see them.
Since the spell isn't sentient or can determine things for itself.
Hehe yes!
You could just set a minimum size requirement. At that point the GM would have to throw invisible swarms at you.
Invisible and you cant see it aren't the same thing last i checked.
@@Merilirem prove it.
@@Merilirem They are the same thing. Per definition "Invisible" refers to something that cannot be seen, if you are blind then all creatures are invisible to you, a mouse under a blanket would equally be invisible to you.
You can also use it to trigger Magical Items with command word, since those don't even need to be held by a person.
Use a Decanter of Infinite Water and Magic Mouth to drown the world!
A side possibility that I've seen using said item, that I posted elsewhere in here, is an Artficier using Magic Mouth set to repeat its message so long as the trigger was active alongside a Decanter of Endless Water. The trigger was someone pulling the parking break and holding the steering wheel of a wagon they attached a miniature water wheel engine system to. They built a medieval car out of a Magic Mouth and a Decanter of Endless Water.
At 30 gallons every 6 seconds, you are filling an Olympic sized pool every 13 hours. Drowning the whole world is not something you'll be able to accomplish in your lifetime. A cave network? Definitely. The world? It's a big place out there.
@@TheXasti It's fine, just place the Decanter somewhere no one will be able to find and see how your worlds inhabitants react to the rising sea level.
I love the idea of a flaming sword yelling whenever it's drawn against a fire-vulnerable enemy! Incredible and added to the list. ✅
I wish I could watch the Presdedigitation, firebolt, and fireball episodes.
Imagine enchanting several small objects, like individual pieces of copper, and implanting them inside your helmet so each one can whisper tactical advice on your ear. Now imagine that several of them are triggered at once because you hadn't considered the possibility of encountering Orcs AND Werewolves at the same time, NOR do you expect either would happen in the slippery terrain of a Bog (triggered whenever your boots are partially submerged in a specific composition of muddy water). Now you have several different voices rattling off advice in your ear all at once, none of it is audible, and it's all very distracting such that you don't even notice the Werewolf charging you from behind until it's too late.
Set up acrivation phrases.
"Code Green!"
"Code Lycanthrope!"
"Code Bog!"
Nice. I don't know who Tom Pewter is either, though
He's a very divisive sort, as he sees things purely in black-and-white, on-or-off. People keep him around because he can think real good, though.
I like the daisy chain idea. You could basically make the beacons of Gondor out of shouting objects instead of fire
I used magic mouth too make a door respond with our bard using the help option to create a message saying "its ok" in the boss voice to anyone who asked a question to the boss from outside his chambers. It led to us convincing the guards and cultists that everything we were doing was fine, plus thanks to either our DM was being generous or having shit rolls.
Interesting approaches. You can use it as a Secrurity cam as a DM. I will try that
The real use of this spell is to cast it on a pebble whenever you need to use it and then collect those pebbles in a jar. When you’re done scatter them on like a beach or something and wait for them to be randomly triggered. Could be someone says ‘dandelion rainbow’ and gets top secret intel from twenty years ago yelled at them from god knows where. Or you could set a rock to “whenever someone says the name of an animal out loud yell ‘what?’ really loud” and just fuck with people forever. Alternatively you could use it as ye ol FAQ forums. Every time someone has a question for the mages guild secretary you record the answer in a rock and the trigger is asking the question or something like it depending how lenient you can be about phrasing. Then the pebble spits out a pre-recorded answer to a question. Jar grows over the years and eventually you can answer most any question a customer would have without ever having to interact with them. Which is nice cuz customer service sucks.
Equally stupid but practical, get a bunch of items to shout out advertisements whenever it’s relevant. Like place a spell on a table at the local inn that triggers whenever someone says they need a new sword and it tells them where to find the blacksmith who paid for this spell. Or the reverse, enchant the stable to direct you to the local inn or something idk. Maybe more useful in port I guess. Either way, it would be entertaining to have infomercial levels of pop-up advertising in a dnd setting.
Bonus - an enchanted mug at the tavern that yells for a refill whenever the mug is emptied. Popular with dwarves, and nobody else.
I've got a game going where a society on islands in the sky uses magic mouths to keep triggering the key word on a bunch of decanters of endless water so that they'll constantly be fountaining water full-force and keep the people there from running out, since they don't have access to other water sources reliably that don't also require magic. It's a FANTASTIC spell.
If you mix Arcane Lock with it, you can create things Luke automatic doors.
YES THIS! For the past few weeks I've been a little too obsessed with trying to put Arcane Lock on a Creation Bard since it's afaik the only way to convert trigger conditions into mechanical action, and is activated the same way as Magic Mouth. Theoretically you could also used Programmed Illusions the same way, though in all cases the delay between when it was last activated and when it can be activated again is extremely annoying. For Arcane Lock based mechanisms you might need 2-5 backup locks depending on how often the mechanism must be triggered. Not a perfect example but imagine a mechanical keyboard where you can press S many times in quick succession. Mechanisms like that REALLY hate the "it becomes dormant for 1 minute before it can be triggered again" thing.
@@Aviivix True enough about the delay. Don't forget about classical physics, though. You'd be surprised what a water wheel and some gears and shafts can do, especially with arcane lock mechanisms and magic mouth logic.
2 months later and Zee came back with quality milk as usual
He does tend to deliver quality.
I love to mess a little with this spell, setting alarms on doors, your equipment, making distracting noises with screaming marbles, annoying NPCs... This spell is amazing at that.
A brick, every 20 feet, yelling something, triggering the other brick to yell, and so on, and have the brick chain lead onto itself, to make a never ending yelling wall around a village, town, keep, or encampment.
Epic.
nice love me some more Animated Spell book.
Same
Didn't think of this before, but DM's, this is what you need TO MAKE THE WORLD'S MOST ANNOYING DUNGEON FOR ADVENTURERS TO DIVE INTO!!! (Just non-stop ungodly unintelligible noises at full volume!)
I love the idea of a thief stealing the item, just for it to end up screaming endlessly until dispelled LMAO
OMFG i been missing your content! so good to see you again!
I know right?
He's so good!
Magic mouth is not omniscient. I would rule that it would only have the passive perception of the caster at the time of casting.
Perhaps, but even then it is kinda hard to hide from an invisible, constantly alert, intangible, formless force. You literally have no idea something is watching/listening in a constant 30 foot 360 degree sphere unless someone has warned you specifically about a Magic Mouth.
@@josephperez2004 Not 360 degrees.
The object needs a direct line of sight to the trigger. It cannot see through walls or detect invisible things. That also means it cannot see through, for example, the body of someone wearing it. More specifically I'd say the line of sight needs to be exactly where the "mouth" was cast onto. So if you put one on the center back of a cloak, only things aligned with the center back of the cloak will be detected, it doesn't matter that if you wrap your cloak around you, "the cloak" has a full 360 view of the area. The part that's enchanted, doesn't.
The passive perception ruling is probably something that should just be included in the spell.
the magic mouth door screaming got me. XD amazing work as always.
Grungeon Master came up with the idea of making a choose-your-own-adventure roleplaying game out of them, then charging admission, effectively creating the first arcade.
The fucking door scream LMAO
."emotional damage!?"
Using it to detect invisible creatures is definitely not something I would allow as a DM without those creatures making noises (like speaking). The Magic Mouth does not have a perception, so assuming it has perfect perception down to being able to notice displaced dust (and being able to distinguish when it is caused specifically by an invisible creature and not some wind) seems to be a stretch, and comes across as less creative and more cheesy.
Yeah, having a spell an npc can cast on every door of their sanctum to basically turn off invisibility automatically seems like a bit....much.
I think you're forgetting the "magic" part of Magic Mouth. 🤣
@@dreamwanderer5791 Aside from just having every door cast Antimagic Field whenever it's touched, and you just use Gate spells to get everywhere, cuz you're a CR25 Mega Lich.
yeah fully agree, it can't know that something was caused by an invisible creature if it can't see the creature. Personally I'd probably rule that the triggers would also have to be under 25 words as well to avoid someone handing you a book of every scenario they want their hat to warn them about
Yeah I would limit the magic mouth to the skills/vision of the caster (at the time of casting). Having this work by fiat without rolls on anything even if the caster does not know it beforehand is a massive oversight in the rules
No matter how little sense it makes, I can absolutely see someone pulling a Pickle Rick prank with this.
Welp, now I need to make a wizard who creates a room that chains magic mouths on a ton of paintings simply to Rick Roll anyone who walks in.
Does the object have to remain intact? Could you cast it on a big rock and then pulverise it, then scatter the dust to the wind to basically create a huge network of alarms?
I’m imagining a court wizard being tasked with creating a warning system for a whole kingdom that revolves around doing that a bunch of times. “If an enemy soldier is present or another magic mouth shrieks, shriek until told by the king to stop”. That way you get to hold the kingdom to random too because if the king dies you’d have to go around dispelling all this screaming dust.
"Now all of China knows you're here"
The triggering circumstances must be based on visual or audible conditions. The spell doesn't grant omniscience (i.e. it doesn't know whether a creature is vulnerable to fire, but only if it appears so (because it's made of wood or something). I think it would be actually fairly easy to fool the trigger if you know it.
I think the idea behind the "vulnerable to fire" one was that the trigger is "if you see ".
I love that you just low key whipped out the Astral Prism from BG3 as your mcguffin.
So much potential, my favorite kind of spell.
Earrings that whisper quiet warnings to you, a bunch of normal looking stud type earrings that each have special triggers to alert you to dangers that have visible or audible signs.
Place a permanent alarm on a metal stake that shrieks if a creature not on your exception list comes within 30 feet of it when it's planted in the ground, nobody will ever sneak up on your party while they're sleeping or if they place the stake on watch behind them when they're entering a cave or somewhere, downside being: it's loud so you'd alert everything when it goes off.
Create a scouting tool, a chain, each link enchanted with magic mouth, begins checking for conditions if it's "not wrapped in cloth" all similar trigger conditions except different distances and things for it to say: "Creature! 30 Feet!" "Creature! 20 feet!" "Creature! 10 feet!" "Creature! 5 feet!" "Creature! Here!" use it in combination with mage hand to continuously move the tool ahead of the party.
Ear rings that scream "She's cheating on you" if the person wearing them sees the person that holds both ear rings in one hand while spinning in a circle saying "Smoopy Doop" after having sex with someone who is not that person.
A blacksmith forge that has multiple magic mouths enchanted into different parts that will tell the smith the specific metal inside is at the right temperature to be shaped.
A scarecrow, that just screams when a crow gets close to it.
A coin purse that tells you when someone is trying to cut its strings.
A fancy bust, that just insults people.
A safe that doesn't look like a safe and it has a mouth carved in metal around the lock and when you speak the password or perform the special action the mouth goes "Ahhhhhhhhhh".
Fuck your practical adventuring equipment. I'm MONETIZING this shit!
I love the concept of casting it on an arrow and using it to play telephone.
Love the progressive close-up on the gobbo as MADNESS DOOR IS SOUNDED. XD
In one of my games we are doing a 2 year long ritual in an ancient temple, so to ward against surprise attacks we set up a chain of magic mouths to shout "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!" if anyone not identified as one of our men entered, or another magic mouth nearby went off. We also used Glyph of Warding at all guard stations to trigger an aoe heal when activated for emergency med kits
Love how you animated the narration as a series of Magic Mouth-ed objects!
You could use it to cast spells.
Here is how:
Cast Magic Mouth on a readily moveable object (staff, small rock, sling bullet, whatever), programming it to effectively say the verbal component to a spell you either regularly use, or something you use in desperate times (Healing Word, Lesser Restoration, Teleport, Wall of Force, Dispel Magic, etc). Set the trigger to go off when you are within its detection range and you are moving your mouth but no sound is coming out of it, all while you are performing the somatic component (if applicable).
When you need it, you can toss the object outside of areas that don't allow sound (as if you are in an area under the effect of the Silence spell), or can function on your person when just you can't (or can't afford to) speak. This should allow you to cast that spell, and if you are casting Dispel Magic, you can potentially free yourself from the silencing effect.
You could have multiple of these objects on you at once, just label each in such a way as you know which spell they correspond to. Keep them stowed away until use, as sound won't set off the trigger, preventing accidental triggering of the Magic Mouth effect.
Edit: Also, you can use a similar trick to instead confuse creatures that rely on echolocation, as the sound comes from that rock you tossed down the well.
I'm imagining a quest near the start of a campaign where the local mayor tasks the party with bringing in the person who's been using magic mouth to make random walls and statues and benches scream obscenities at passersby. It would basically be very loud graffiti that's very difficult to clean up, since you'd need a spellcaster who knows how to dispel magic to get rid of it. Maybe the prankster wizard who did this could become a recurring NPC, always happening to be where the party where the party is going to cause some lighthearted mischief with creative uses of various spells
i had an intensely egotistical wizard enemy NPC who used magic mouth on zombies so they would compliment him when he walked past.
had the party fighting zombies who were complimenting their "style" or calling them "virile stallions"
Didn't even think about daisychaining the spell, but that occurs to me there's a handful of spells that only activate/complete when a keyword is used; so you could use magic mouth as a failsafe, either to make sure goes off or to prevent it from going off prematurely.
As a lawful evil warlock I used it to manipulate the party's overzealous paladin. Every day the statue idol of his god would give him my instructions and messages. Why would he question the will of his deity? Mwahahaha
Every computer science major: *Happy robot noises*
Every DM who has a CSM PC: *Sad forever DM noises*
Every CSM DM: *Happy sadistic robot noises*
Every CSM DM and their CSM PC/PCs: "LETS. FUCKING. GOOOO!"
"We're making a Turing machine, and you can't stop us!"
The best line read "I don't know why you would want to make him out of mouths"
I once had a Tomelock cast it on our Paladin's Dual-Scimitar to give encouragement when he missed an attack or congratulations when he hit... "Oh, no problem, you'll get the next one" - "Agh, so close" - "Thats the way Buddy" - " Aw Yeah, they felt that one!"
He... did not appreciate it... as he thought he was an Assassin.
My party was trying to make a section of forest seem haunted in order to scare off a military encampment and we made a few dozen magic mouths that just make eerie stock horror sound effects whenever someone walked near them. Worked wonderfully.