Command Undead and Telepathy


Rules Questions


Command Undead wrote:

This spell allows you a degree of control over an undead creature.

If the subject is intelligent, it perceives your words and actions favorably (treat its attitude as friendly). It will not attack you while the spell lasts. You can give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. Retries are not allowed. An intelligent commanded undead never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing.

A nonintelligent undead creature gets no saving throw against this spell. When you control a mindless being, you can communicate only basic commands, such as “come here,” “go there,” “fight,” “stand still,” and so on. Nonintelligent undead won’t resist suicidal or obviously harmful orders.

Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the commanded undead (regardless of its Intelligence) breaks the spell.

Your commands are not telepathic. The undead creature must be able to hear you.

Bold text for my question.

If a creature who uses this spell naturally has telepathy (or can use it due to an item or other source), CAN he issue commands telepathically? Receiving a message telepathically counts as hearing that message, right?


No. The undead creature must be able to hear you, and the commands you deliver it are explicitly not telepathic. It's a constraint of the spell and not your other abilities. Telepathy is not hearing. It is purely mental.

Liberty's Edge

To run it under the strictest RAW as possible, Buri is right.

However, I'm 99% certain that the rule was written under the assumption that you do not already have telepathy from another source. The line is to clarify that your commands are not being magically communicated via the Command Undead spell itself. This would mean that something that gains telepathy from some other source could potentially use it to command their undead.

There is also one hitch in the RAW which is: When someone uses telepathy on you, do you "hear" them in your mind, or do you just magically receive pure abstract thought? If you hear them in your mind than telepathy would be sufficient for delivering all sorts of language-dependent effects. Sadly, telepathy never uses the word "hear", just "communicate", so this has no direct RAW support.


Hmm interesting.


I would say StabbittyDoom has the right of it. By strict RAW you can't but pretty sure if you have some other way to communicate the orders it should work, for example I would allow you to use sending to pass on orders. Ask your GM is sound advise here.

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