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View Full Version : 1001 uses for a Magic Mouth [D&D 3.5]



Draxar
2009-11-04, 10:38 PM
A Magic Mouth spell creates a enchanted mouth that speaks a message of up to 25 words (Which seems to generally be taken to be what can be said in a round, maybe two). You need to stick it on an object or a creature. Once it starts speaking it can carry on doing so for up to 10 minutes.

It is triggered under whatever conditions you choose, which have to be visual or auditory, and can be as simple and broad, or as complicated and specific as you like.

It ignores non-magical darkness for the purposes of whether it can percieve visual triggers. It is not clear whether it can pick out specific auditory triggers in difficult situations – it's stated that silent movement defeats it, but whether that just means attempting silent movement no matter what your roll, or what isn't clear. However, given the ignoring of darkness, it could easily be argued that it can detect its trigger in amongst a cacophony of other sounds.

And the best thing about the spell? It's permanent.

Sure it goes once it's triggered, but it means if you have downtime you can stick it on progressively more and more things, and the lack of any limits in terms of the complexity of its conditions means you can create some fairly weird and wonderful effects from it.

So, what effects can people think of? Here's my first few:

Anti-Steal effect: On all your possessions, if anyone that isn't you or your allies picks it up without you saying a particular codeword/action in the 30 seconds before or 10 seconds after, it starts shouting 'Help, help, I'm being stolen'.
Room scout: A piece of wire that you poke through a keyhole or slyly push around a corner so it can 'see' what is there. Activated by a keyword, I'm not sure of the right wording for how you get it to give information on the area you're pushing it into, rather than the one you're in, but I'm sure there's a way.
Room Survey: A bundle of wires, or one multi-enchanted wire, with a series of magic mouths put on it to tell you more information about what it percieves – numbers in the place, races, asleep or awake, armed and armoured or not, and so forth.
Distraction: Marble or somesuch you activate with a codeword, then roll into a room, if there's anything in the room (or even if there isn't anything it can perceive, if you set the conditions that way), it starts yelling and shouting to get their attention whilst you run in.
Taunts: If you can conceal your spellcasting, cast it on an enemy, or someone who's just annoyed you, and get it to insult them at some appropriate point. If they're male, then commenting on the tiny size of their genitalia the next time they go to the loo could be a good one. Or adding comments the next time they try and pull...
Alarm pegs: Put a bunch of pegs around your camp that will raise the alarm if anything non-small animal/normal insect approaches without saying an appropriate codeword. Has the advantage over the alarm spell that once they're made, you don't have to keep using up a spell on them each night.
Chain reactions: Worried that something is following you, or that you'll be trapped down a long dead end passageway without knowing something's coming? Drop a series of items enchanted with this, the first can set off the second that can set off the third...

Flanking arrows: If a rogue is attacking someone from one direction and an archer manages to hit/get close enough with shooting that someone in the back, have arrows that say something, making the target turn around/be sufficiently distracted for the rogue to get a sneak attack off.


I'll add more as I think of them, but what can other people come up with?

chiasaur11
2009-11-04, 10:55 PM
Medical warnings, as seen in Order of the Stick.

Pitchman for what you're selling for a bonus to profession checks.

Mongoose87
2009-11-04, 11:13 PM
To deliver a message: "You Just lost The Game."

Tyndmyr
2009-11-04, 11:34 PM
Damn you.

Bonus points for every use for a mouth that doesn't involve talking.

drengnikrafe
2009-11-04, 11:48 PM
Damn you.

Bonus points for every use for a mouth that doesn't involve talking.

*shudders*

"Smile. It's the second best thing you can do with your lips." In other words... for the very lonely wizard....

Wizard of the Coat
2009-11-04, 11:58 PM
Occupying space in an enemy spellbook? :smallwink:

Although good creativity on your part!

Ravens_cry
2009-11-05, 12:01 AM
To deliver a message: "You Just lost The Game."
Au contraire mon ami. (http://xkcd.com/391/)
Hmm. . .uses for Magic Mouth?
For either the most amazing (if in our world) or lame (in a D&D world) ventriloquist act.

Stompy
2009-11-05, 12:17 AM
A wall that tells knock-knock jokes?

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-11-05, 12:41 AM
I have an idea that ends in "... and I fart in your general direction!"

OracleofWuffing
2009-11-05, 12:56 AM
Slide it on the bottom of a table or on the clothes of your party "butt of every joke." Make it say either "in bed" or "except in bed" whenever it hears a fortune cookie crack open and a sentence spoken aloud.

Then order Chinese.

jeek
2009-11-05, 03:45 PM
This seems much more useful than "Bigby's Nighttime Companion".

jiriku
2009-11-05, 03:52 PM
Attach it to a gigantic spear of lead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129080), drop said spear on your enemy from a height of 20 km or so. It will activate when it comes within 200 ft of the ground. It is programmed to say "WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Cast it on a rival's mouth, with instructions to whistle crudely whenever a a female of the local royalty comes within earshot.

Thurbane
2009-11-05, 08:43 PM
Cast it on a weapon, so that when you ask it "Do you have any uses of Greater Shout left today?' it says "I sure do boss! Let's blast this suckah!". Good for a bonus on Intimidate checks. As a bonus, doubles as a permanent Nystul's Magic Aura until discharged. :smallbiggrin:

Ceric
2009-11-05, 09:42 PM
Cast it on a super bouncy ball to shout "Think fast!" whenever it is moving through the air at at least 3 ft per second and is about to hit someone in 1 second.

(I want this in real life. :smallbiggrin:)

Saintheart
2009-11-05, 09:54 PM
"And remember, if any of your PC force is caught, or killed, the DM will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This message will self-destruct in five seconds."

Brendan
2009-11-05, 10:29 PM
Does the mouth have teeth? Houserule it in. Give someone a ring. The ring now bites like a toddler with a tooth infection.
The thing it is cast upon a switch. It opens the mouth and the switch is pushed open.
Auto-sunder. The item opens the mouth and deactivates. It is now irredeemably bent.
Cast it on someone's mouth. whenever they try to speak, it clenches the mouth shut. The perfect remedy for anyone who has 6 to 8 wisdom and NEVER STOPS FLAUNTING THAT FACT.

Mephibosheth
2009-11-05, 10:47 PM
During the campaign against the Hukbalahap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukbalahap) groups in the Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's, the Philippine army, under the advice of American CIA agent Edward Lansdale (and others), used a tactic they called "Eye of God." They would fly a plane above cloud cover and observe Huk units, using a powerful PA system to broadcast specific information about them to creep them out, demoralize them, and make it seem like the Philippine army was everywhere and knew everything. I'm sure you could use Magic Mouth for similar purposes, perhaps cast on arrows or sling stones and launched into enemy positions and programed to say creepy but generic things.

Korivan
2009-11-05, 10:53 PM
1. Use it on the someones weapons, have it tell them they hit like a pansy.

2. Use it on the someones armor/protective gear, have it tell everyone around what defenses they have.

I have done those two.

3. Also, its great to use on you door to warn away unwanted salesmen. "Warning, don't not want your crap. You have activated my defense grid. Run fast, Run hard, Good Luck, hope you didn't want all your organs."

OracleofWuffing
2009-11-05, 10:53 PM
Okay, I'm looking over the rules as written very carefully, at least on d20srd. It doesn't say you have to speak the words your giving the Magic Mouth to speak. So, stick it on a Paladin, and have it say Pazuzu three times and then wish that your character had a candle of invocation matching his/her alignment. Run really far away, both in character and out of character.

Assuming the DM hasn't given you a major concussion or worse by now (and, heck, assuming your DM is silly enough to even HAVE him in the campaign unaltered from what's in the book), your possibly nongood character gets a Pazuzu wish out of it, and depending on the awkward silence and DM rulings that are going to happen when that thing goes off, a Paladin may or may not have fallen for it.

Or maybe the Paladin kills the Demon Prince, and then it's sorta win-win all around I guess.

Darkmatter
2009-11-05, 11:47 PM
This needs (very) copious amounts of permanency to work, but you can make a fully functioning magical computer. A mouth appearing represents a one, not appearing is a zero, inputs can be accepted using mouths keyed to specific command words and fed into the computational mouths that have been programmed to respond and pass on information in a certain way. The computation can be just as fast as real world computers since all interaction happens at the speed of light (or magic, which might be faster). You can even get answers back verbally. However, at 1000 xp a pop, those are some transistors that make vacuum tubes look like crackerjack prizes.

Jade_Tarem
2009-11-06, 12:11 AM
By far, the most devastating effect the mouths can have is psychological warfare. Cast a sequence of magic mouths just before the battle with the BBEG, then cast deafness on everyone in the group.

You can confidently stride in to face the final boss, and when you do, a whole chorous of high pitched voices ring out...

"It's a world of laughter, a world of tears.
It's a world of hopes, it's a world of fears..."

Novaya_Russia
2009-11-06, 12:40 AM
"Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still, but he told us where we stand..."

Deth Muncher
2009-11-06, 12:53 AM
"Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still, but he told us where we stand..."

/thread

No, really, get out of here. I'm surprised this didn't come up sooner.

Krazddndfreek
2009-11-06, 01:04 AM
By far, the most devastating effect the mouths can have is psychological warfare. Cast a sequence of magic mouths just before the battle with the BBEG, then cast deafness on everyone in the group.

You can confidently stride in to face the final boss, and when you do, a whole chorous of high pitched voices ring out...

"It's a world of laughter, a world of tears.
It's a world of hopes, it's a world of fears..."

The only problem with that is that most likely the BBEG is already insane

Jade_Tarem
2009-11-06, 01:08 AM
The only problem with that is that most likely the BBEG is already insane

True, but there's a difference between an Evil Crazy Genius and a strait-jacketed Looney Tune, locked in an asylum, his sobbing laughter echoing off the walls, having gone mad from the revelation that it is indeed a small world after all.

SurlySeraph
2009-11-06, 02:48 AM
Put it on a ball. Set it to be activated whenever within 5 feet of "someone who intends to harm me." Have it say "Hastur" or "Orcus" 25 times. Throw the ball at your enemies.

Trouvere
2009-11-06, 10:19 AM
Have a bunch of Magic Mouths cast on yourself, at a higher CL than your regular buffs (pay an NPC to do this, or keep a CL-boosting item in reserve for this purpose).
Now all the buffs you really don't want to lose are protected from the area use of dispel magic.
Magic Mouth is perfect for this, as the lowest level spell with a permanent duration (Arcane Mark is 0th, but its description says it can't be dispelled, so it doesn't work for this).

AgentPaper
2009-11-06, 10:28 AM
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

kestrel404
2009-11-06, 02:41 PM
Well, one obvoius use is to set a magic mouth to activate another magic mouth. This can be used as sort of a delayed fuse - each magic mouth to say a specific phrase up to ten minutes after it's trigger (the mouth doesn't need to repeat its message for ten minutes, it could wait 9.5 minutes and THEN give it). Thus, if you carry a bag full of magic-mouthed marbles, each one with 'if X is said, wait 5 minutes and say Y', where X is what another mouth would say and Y is the trigger to activate a third mouth. That way, you can choose phrases like ("Mouthtimer 25 minutes activate"), and have the mouths count down from twenty five minutes in five minute intervals, until the last mouth says something useful.

The 'something useful' is the tricky bit. The magic mouths cannot use spell triggers or give command words (for command activated magic items). So that stops about 90% of what I'd want a countdown to be able to do. Still, there are a few spells/effects that could be handy here. Such as:
Programmed Image - A 'permanent until activated by an AUDIBLE TRIGGER' pre-programmed four-sense illusion. More importantly, it can contain audible components, and nothing in the spell description prevents it from using command-word activated magic items you leave in the area of effect!
Animate Object - If you've got the mouths stored within a permanently animated object, said object could take orders from the magic mouth - such as 'Pull this lever'. In this case, the final magic mouth could be cast on the fly to give the thing a useful command.
Bestow Curse/Gaes/Binding/etc. - "You are cursed to stand imobile whenever you hear poetry." Magic mouth then recites a short (annoying) poem over and over for ten minutes. BBEG cries the entire time.
Mark of Justice - You could have a mark of justice on someone set to activate in the event that they hear a specific phrase. I honestly have no idea how you would actually use this in a game, but it's among the possibilities.

non-spells:
A trained animal - you train your pet to do something useful on hearing a specific phrase. Like setting off an entire necklace of fireballs.
Create a delayed distraction - have the magic mouths be muffled by their container, and have the container itself be enchanted with the final 'loud' mouth.

And just for kicks:
A sack full of magic-mouthed marbles - OK, this has nothing to do with anything, say you enchant two marbles a day (eternal wand!) for a year with "When you exit the sack, sing 'this is the song that never ends' for ten minutes". Then you dump the sack all at once (preferably down some stairs). That's 700+ magic singing marbles. That's GOT to be a pretty good distraction! (It's also possible to use this trick on live chickens. Especially if you're chicken-infested!)