More from Shakham the Great

  Another spell from the masters book, as I promised to write here earlier.
  One evening while I was accompanying Shakham and his fellows, a drunken local thug tried to harass the group in the city street. Not wanting to draw attention to themselves, as to not compromise their mission, Shakham cast this spell on the bully to make him turn elsewhere:

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Shakham's Riddle

Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]

Level: Brd 1, Sor/Wiz 1

Components: V, S

Casting Time: 1 standard action (or more, depending on the riddles length; see text)

Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Target: One intelligent creature or object

Duration: 1 hour/level

Saving Throw: Will negates (and see text)

Spell Resistance: Yes

  "To cast the spell, he pointed his finger at the man and asked him the riddle at a commanding voice. The man's face suddenly filled with urgency as he ran past us, pushing us aside, and started a frantic quest for the answer, asking everyone he met in his way."

  This spell imbues the target with an uncontrollable need to solve the riddle you face him with. It will not sleep, eat, drink, or do any of its plans or duties until it finds the answer. It will defend its own life if the need arises. If in the middle of combat, it will fight its way out so that it could search for the solution. The riddle must be uttered in a language the target understands. The riddle must have a logical answer

  If the target knows or discovers the answer than the spell is broken. The game master may roll a knowledge or intelligence check to see if the target succeeds on solving the riddle, assuming the target can answer it on its own (a simple commoner could not likely be able to answer a riddle about the different plains of existence, as he probably has no knowledge on the subject). The riddle's DC will be determined by the game master according to the difficulty of the riddle and the save DC of the spell (altering the spell's DC by a small amount (+2/-2) to account for a good or bad riddle). On a successful roll by the target, the margin in which the roll was higher than the riddle's DC will determine how long it took the target to answer (the bigger the margin - the quicker the time).

• If the target's knowledge/intelligence roll scores any higher than the riddle's DC, then it takes the target half the spell duration to solve it.
• If the target rolls by a margin of 5 or greater then it takes a quarter of the spell's original duration to solve the riddle.
• If the margin is 10 or greater, or a natural 20 is rolled, then the riddle is answered on the spot.

  For wizards, a riddle must be chosen as the spell's trigger during the spell's preparation. A different riddle can be assigned for each separate preparation of the spell.

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  Although the two examples presented so far deal with smaller things than Shakham's title would imply, I assure you that future excerpts from his spell collection will amend this situation. His more advance work deals with space, time, and the cosmos; matters his early work may only hint at.