Bestow curse to gain a buff?

[CyberThread]

If someone was a real numbskull, and tried to use bestow curse to give benefits instead of debuff, would the spell giving something beneficial, count as

You may also invent your own curse, but it should be no more powerful than those described above.

[Segev]

It's really a DM's call. Generally, since it's a divine spell, if the god in question feels it is an appropriate "curse" (even if it's "cursed with awesome" to the "victim"), and it's in line with the power of the other listed effects, it should work.

The best example I can think of here is using Bestow Curse to switch the target's gender. For many, that's a curse. In fact, it's explicitly the spell used in the Belt of Gender-Changing. However, anybody who WANTS to be the opposite sex wouldn't feel "cursed" by this. It would be up to the DM whether the god granting the spell would feel it's an okay use or would tack an extra penalty onto it, somehow.

Certainly, if the god is friendly towards the target, or if it's being cast without a god's intervention and this is in line with the power source being tapped, it should work out.

Remember that curses are made to be broken, however. So if you're "bestowing a curse" that makes you more awesome, somebody might inconveniently fulfill the conditions to "release" you from it at an inconvenient time.

[Lightlawbliss]

a "curse" in BoVD is making you older. Some beings *cough* dragons *cough* become stronger with age.

[Greenish]

Infertility is also something you can Bestow, according to BoVD. Could be pretty handy for a bard. :smalltongue:

[(Un)Inspired]

Or for a bards victims.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Infertility is also something you can Bestow, according to BoVD. Could be pretty handy for a bard. :smalltongue:

It would also remove any other curses from the spell.

[OldTrees1]

So they want to use Bestow Curse (3rd level spell that can be used repeatedly to create several permanent debuffs) to create buffs?

Given downtime, that means everone in the party would have all the buffs it could possibly make. The buffs would be dispellable. However the only cost is having downtime and knowing the spell.

I think either the variety of cursebuffs would need to be severely limited or the strength of each cursebuff would need to be severely limited.

[Callin]

Tossing the curse from the cursed beserker sword on a Barb would be beneficial.

Sorta

[Icewraith]

You could definitely use Bestow Curse to bestow potence. Nothing stops a lothario in his tracks like a horde of angry pregnant women and their husbands. Quadruple the issue if it's a horde of angry pregnant noblewomen and their title holding, army commanding, wealthy enough to afford the assassins' guild husbands. Note however that this sort of thing may take your game places you or your players don't want to go, so know your players before allowing it.

You could also curse nobility so that they always bear triplets or something, guaranteeing a ridiculous amount of power jockeying and civil strife in the country's near future (in a political campaign).

You could grant someone a +4 STR bonus but they randomly make sunder attacks on their own items just by moving.

You could grant a stat bonus in one score to tank another score by a larger amount than the spell normally allows. (Say, you want to penalize DEX, make the cursee enormously fat, give them a CON bonus but increase the DEX penalty by the same amount)

A particularly nasty (general) one would be nauseating the target whenever they hear their own name.

I think the end result of the spell has to still be a net loss for the character in question. Sort of a reverse flaw- instead of a (hopefully) trivial penalty in exchange for a significant bonus, you gain an even bigger penalty in exchange for a fairly trivial bonus, or a penalty that actually makes having the bonus harder on the character (like the STR one where you're so strong you break your own items, or party members' items if you have VoP).

[Lord Vukodlak]

Infertility is also something you can Bestow, according to BoVD. Could be pretty handy for a bard. :smalltongue:

I had a cleric who asked about that but the DM ruled it be a curse of inverse fertility.
(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawOfInverseFertility)

[dantiesilva]

Well Lycanthrope is a curse, and a disease, so one could be cursed with it and thus be buffed. Sure one night a week your killing people all the time, but hey as long as you spend the skill points to control it, its all good.

[Dalebert]

I always wanted to curse someone as a bunny lycanthrope.

[MukkTB]

This spell is really badly written. The only limit is the DM's judgement. However the guidelines for the DM to make a judgement are almost non-existent. Can you hit someone with a 'nerf' that would benefit them if it would normally hurt someone else? Can you hit someone with a curse half as powerful as one listed, such as -3 to a stat? Is +6 to a stat 'more powerful' than -6 to a stat?

How about a curse like "The victim takes 1 bleed damage from each wound received." Is that more powerful than being unable to act 50% of the time or -6 to a stat? How do you even compare two such different kinds of effects?

This looks like house ruling is built into the spell.

[Jack_Simth]

If someone was a real numbskull, and tried to use bestow curse to give benefits instead of debuff, would the spell giving something beneficial, count as

You may also invent your own curse, but it should be no more powerful than those described above.
As with anything not clearly specified in RAW, DM call.

From a game balance perspective, however, it's a really bad idea to let it work well. I mean, sure, for things that are largely RP (such as making the Bard infertile, or changing the gender of someone who decided to make a character that was uncomfortable in their own skin) it's fine. Because, you know, if you let it add +6 (or whatever) untyped to a stat without consequences, any party with a Cleric can give free bonuses to everyone during down-time starting at 5th level (and those with a Wizard, after 7th).

Oh yes, and you don't generally need to worry about it getting dispelled in combat. Break Enchantment and Remove Curse apply, but not Dispel Magic.

[Segev]

The two keys are that penalties and bonuses are not "equivalent" to each other in power, generally speaking, in a directly measurable sense, and that it is a curse. Now, it might be "cursed with awesome" to specific "victims," but it should still always at least give a nod to being a curse. Whether that's because it has a significant downside that is blatantly considered a "curse" by most people (e.g. the curse of lycanthropy) or because it has limited mechanical effect but generally will ruin the life of somebody who doesn't explicitly want it (e.g. being sex-swapped), we as a culture do have a feel for what constitutes a "curse."

The third guideline, aside from "in line with the listed effects' level of power," is that it probably shouldn't directly copy another spell, particularly a higher-level one. Bestow Curse is neither Binding or Baleful Polymorph, so you can't use it to "curse" somebody into being a frog or into pricking their finger on a spindle and sleeping for 100 years. Nor into being turned to stone (as that is Flesh to Stone).

I'd think very hard about the Curse of Lycanthropy, as well, since it's questionable whether that's in line with the power of the others. Cursing a lycanthrope to lose control of his powers (particularly a natural one to suffer the full moon the way an infected one does) might be viable. Cursing somebody to be stalked by lycanthropes, too, might work.

But...well. I suppose infected lycanthropy still has loads of downsides, and for most PCs the sudden ECL-jump is not worth the powers gained. So it works, but certainly isn't more crippling than a -6 to a stat.

My favorite use of Bestow Curse that I ever pulled off, by the way, was in a game where a particular elf got herself and the party into trouble every time she managed to get ahold of a crowbar. So I cursed her thusly: "May you never find another crowbar." Every time she went to find one, it was missing. Even if she was raiding somebody else's supplies. No store she went to carried them, or had them in stock. Serendipity was against her when it came to finding crowbars.

[Chronos]

How about the old classic "May you live in interesting times"? No DM will ever object to that one, because it just gives them carte blanche to do whatever it was they were planning to do, anyway.

[Greenish]

How about the old classic "May you live in interesting times"? No DM will ever object to that one, because it just gives them carte blanche to do whatever it was they were planning to do, anyway.It may be beyond the scope of Bestow Curse, affecting not just the target, but an area.