ekblaw@uiucdcs.Uiuc.ARPA (07/23/85)
The question came upin an earlier note about uses of the 1st level Clerical
Command spell. In my mind, truly great uses depend on the situation. For
instance, there was a dwarf thief in a party of mine who was a real pain in
the posterior. A cleric gave him the command to "swim" when they were by
a deep lake. The boob swam for a while, until the spell wore off. When
it did, he was out in the middle of the lake. The boob was afraid of water,
though, so he went into system shock and drowned. End of the pain in the
posterior.
I agree that the "masturbate" command would be great against a Paladin,
especially since that could displease his/her god to no end! However,
some other good uses I've seen include:
"Stare" when encountering a Medusa.
"Breathe" while swimming underwater.
"Shout" while hiding from a gang of berserkers.
"Hug" a huge black bear.
"Eat" a known poisonous plant.
"Disrobe" - spoken to a shy Paladin in a room full of Beautiful women (possibly
the best use I've seen yet. Funnier if you're a part of one of
those groups who act out the adventure!).
"Hari-kari" - worked when we encountered an ancient Samurai warrior.
There were others, but I forgot some of them over the years.
Robert A. Ekblaw.
US Snail: 1208 W. Clark St.
Champaign, IL 61821
E-mail: .../ihnp4/uiucdcs/ekblawsteve@siemens.UUCP (07/29/85)
I was just thinking about disambiguating ambiguous commands. Just because
there're more than one way to interpret a command does not imply that the
victim will not use the meaning intended by the caster. The right way to
deal with commands is to figure out what the first interpretation of the
victim would be. This depends on the victim's background, the current
situation and the victim's frame of mind. If there are several
interpretations the DM might roll dice to choose which one. But a sure-fire
winner (from the caster's point of view) would be to command the victim to
do something he is already thinking about not doing!! For example, victim
is involved in melee near the edge of a precipice. Then the command "fall"
should be a sure thing, aven though it's ambiguous. Etc.
steve clark {ihnp4, topaz}!princeton!siemens!steve