hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (04/25/84)
<READ!!> The question I always had about the COMMAND spell referred to the really AWFUL crock of making a command be a single unambiguous imperative. Folks, in English, there IS no such thing. All nouns can be made verbs, and vice versa, by a simple, standard rule of transformation. However, in Spanish, a single word can be an unambiguous imperative. The command "kill yourself" is (pardon my possibly bad grammar) "matate" (in the informal). WHAT LANGUAGE ROOT IS COMMON? Is it English? Are you speaking Orcish? Does Orcish allow single unambiguous imperatives? Unfortunately the spell introduces more problems than it solves. The solution, which I don't use since I use a modified version of Chivalry and Sorcery, is to make the Command spell accept as parameters a single simple sentence: agent verb direct-object. This would be expressible in any language and would be very simple to check in English. The only adjectives allowed are those which modify the agent or direct object in order to disambiguate. No adverbs allowed. Further, the action cannot exceed the duration of the spell. Thus, the following are possible: "Orc, go to sleep" "Goblin, drink that red potion" "Fighter, join with our group" "Mage, kill yourself" - Mage might fail in attempt, or spell duration might lapse before success. And the following are IMPOSSIBLE: "Goblin, kill that kobold SLOWLY" - adverb slowly disallowed. "Fighter, be my slave" - Works for one round (spell duration). What think you? Hutch