Hi,
So, party encounters a Succubus, which suggestions are reasonable or even very reasonable?
1:
Flee to the Iomedae temple 20 miles away and find help there! They have a Paladin immune to compulsions! Is probably a reasonable suggestion, not harmful (apart from leaving your friends on their own), and seems to be a rather powerful thing to do.
2:
The fiendish vixen cant dodge all the time if you manfully grapple her! Probably not reasonable, harmfull if the character knows what a Succubus does? Definitly generates laughs at the table though.
3:
The Succubus controls your horny bard friend! Disarm and restrain him quickly!
Perhaps harmful, perhaps reasonable?
4:
You are outmatched, surrender for now and bide your time!
Harmful, because you are surrendering? Perhaps reasonable?
5:
Paint a picture of this combat, reprint it in a printing press and get rich selling copies!
Not harmful, debatable reasonableness?
1.) How powerful is the party compared to the succubus? If the succubus is way too tough for the party that would be reasonable, but if the party outclasses the succubus it is not as reasonable. Leaving a party member while doing so makes it dangerous so probably not going to work.
2.) Unless the target is completely unaware of what a succubus is it isnot going to work
3.) This one seems to be fairly likely to work. A caster might try dispelling the “control” instead of physically restraining him.
4.) Goes back to the question on the relative power of the succubus. If the party is low level this will probably work. If the party has a 15th level Dhamphir paladin with a Holy Avenger probably not reasonable.
5.) This one might work, but not in the way the succubus wants. The wording of the request does not say that the target has to stop combat. I would allow the target to decide what he wants to do as if the suggestion was not made. After the combat is over (assuming the party wins) the target would follow the suggestion.
2 semi came up because a player rolled a nat 1 on a kn. check and shouted just that (this is what I call fun metagaming).
Other party members thought the player character was suggestioned.
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I agree with Mysterious Stranger that the "painting" suggestion doesn't need to be fulfilled immediately.
You can instead specify conditions that will trigger a special activity during the duration. If the condition is not met before the spell duration expires, the activity is not performed.
For the other options. I think none is immediately harmful. Even grappling with the succubus doesn't make the kiss an automatic success. It is still an attack that requires a CMB check.
You influence the actions of the target creature by suggesting a course of activity (limited to a sentence or two). The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the activity sound reasonable. Asking the creature to do some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell.
"Reasonable" doesn't mean "The best action for the party", only "An action that someone can consider". So "We can kill the succubus by ourselves" doesn't mean that "Get more reinforcements" is non-reasonable.
It will not give the negative modifier for "very reasonable suggestions", but it will have a chance to still work.