Feign Death: Just Kidding, Mom!

Usable By: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Wizard

Spell Level: 3

School: Necromancy (ritual)

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Duration: 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (a pinch of graveyard dirt)

You touch a willing creature and put it into a cataleptic state that is indistinguishable from death.

For the spell’s duration, or until you use an action to touch the target and dismiss the spell, the target appears dead to all outward inspection and to spells used to determine the target’s status. The target is blinded and incapacitated, and its speed drops to 0. The target has resistance to all damage except psychic damage. If the target is diseased or poisoned when you cast the spell, or becomes diseased or poisoned while under the spell’s effect, the disease and poison have no effect until the spell ends.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Many a villainous monologue have been boldly orated across a field showcasing their atrocities. Heroes looking for a way to gain the upperhand classically hide among the corpses, feigning death to strike at the perfect moment as the villain surveys the massacre. When this once in a campaign moment occurs, you can trust Feign Death to cover you and your pals faking death needs!

As a tool, I both love and loathe Feign Death. Here is a spell that inspires players to come up with wacky plans involving slipping friends disguised as corpses into cemeteries to listen in on shady cultists meeting there at midnight; simultaneously, if the players already would come up with that plan, it removes all of the creativity that could go into disguising as said corpses, and removes a lot of utility from game elements like tool kits and clever charisma checks.

The ritual tag makes it so if you only need to be corpses for fifteen to twenty minutes, you can reliably get your party to all look dead, which is neat. In those moments, don’t forget to draw on the rogue’s smug face in sharpie. Being blinded and incapactitated leaves people ripe for pranks. They also are easy to move where they don’t want to go by people who are a bit too jovial to find them dead. Plans made on flimsy logic or information can quickly lead to the lone conscious party member figuring out how to stall a coroner throwing their “dead” buddies on to the funeral pyre.

A niche bonus use for the spell can be delaying specific diseases. If you know a disease will petrify or otherwise kill somebody within the next hour, you can continually delay it by suspending them in Feign Deaths until you figure out a cure or other means of handling it.

All in all Feign Death is fine. It's a neat ritual to pull out when you’ve got an incredibly stupid idea, just costs you preparnig it, and has some odd cases you’ll want to keep in mind should disease be a major threat. If you don’t want to figure out the logistics of presenting you and your friends as corpses, try it out!

5e Spells

Feign Death: Just Kidding, Mom!