10

I don't regret allowing the party Bard to take Find Greater Steed as a Magical Secret, but I am starting to realize it may be a perennial source of questions.

In our last session, the Bard summoned her steed:

While mounted on it, you can make any spell you cast that targets only you also target the mount.

While mounted, she used her Hat of Disguise to cast the Disguise Self spell,

While wearing this hat, you can use an action to cast the disguise self spell from it at will.

targeting only herself and thus creating an independent cast of the spell on the mount. While the original spell has a duration of 1 Hour, since it was cast from the Hat it is also subject to

The spell ends if the hat is removed.

The spell on the Bard will certainly end if the hat is removed - but will the replicated and independent spell targeting the mount also end when the Hat is removed from the bard?

Jack
  • 31,646
  • 13
  • 112
  • 200
Kirt
  • 50,327
  • 7
  • 121
  • 276

1 Answers1

27

The spell is only cast once, so when it ends, it ends for both the bard and the mount.

Nothing in the description of find greater steed indicates that disguise self is cast more than once:

While mounted on it, you can make any spell you cast that targets only you also target the mount.

It only makes the steed an additional target of the single spell you cast; it is not a “replicated and independent spell targeting the mount”. You cast one spell, and that one spell targets yourself and your steed. Then, disguise self says:

You make yourself--including your clothing, armor, weapons, and other belongings on your person--look different until the spell ends

So when the spell ends, the disguise effect ends. Since the spell ends when you remove the hat, the effect ends on both the bard and the steed at that moment.

Thomas Markov
  • 148,772
  • 29
  • 842
  • 1,137
  • Having read your answer, I agree that this is a single spell with two targets. But if the bard and steed then separate, is there any limit to the distance between them for the hat removal to end the spell on the Steed? Would it work if the Steed was subsequently on another plane of existence than the hat, possibly one with a different flow of time? Is this spooky action at a distance? – Kirt Sep 11 '21 at 23:50
  • 2
    @Kirt Yeah, spooky action is a good way to describe. You’re on the right track anticipating weird interactions. I played a bard with find greater steed and I just had conversations with my DM throughout the week about how fgs would interact with different spells, so that when it came time to select new spells, I already had a ruling on how they would function with fgs. – Thomas Markov Sep 11 '21 at 23:53
  • 1
    That description of "self" is typical for spells. I posit that claiming a steed counts as wearable item is a matter of magical semantics which Find Greater Steed loosens. – Ouroborus Sep 12 '21 at 02:14