Helpless

['o Skoteinos]

When a wizard is drained from all his strength, he's helpless. He can't move or attack or cast spells with somatic components. But he can cast stilled and silenced spells, since that's a purely mental action, right? But he is still breathing too, so would he be able to cast a spell with only vocal components? After all, he only has to whisper some words...but on the other hand, he is considered helpless. So, how helpless is helpless exactely?

 

[Carnifex]

Silent Spell allows you to cast a spell without verbal components, and it wouldn't be much use if you could do the verbal components with barely a whisper. I assume that the magic requires strong, forceful words of at least a certain volume in order to ensure that the energy is properly formed and directed, or something like that.

 

[shilsen]

Carnifex is right. See Pg.150 of the PHB under "Verbal", which says that to "provide a verbal component, you must be able to speak in a strong voice".

 

[Omegium]

For your information: it's my wizard who's one the line here.

If you are helpless because of loss of strength, you are still consious, and still able to breath, and your hart's still pumping. And pumping 5 litres of blood around costs a lot of energy either. And you don't have to be shouting, it has to be in a firm voice. And I think if you can breath, you should be able to talk, after all: talking is nothing more than shaping your lips, throad and mouth in the good way while breathing out. And in the rules about helpless only not moving is mentioned, there is not a single note saying you could'n speak.

 

[Greythax]

I recently had a minor surgury. When I woke up, I was VERY tired and weak due to the anesthetic still in my bloodstream. Now, I was concious, and remember events quite well in recovery, but for a good 5 minutes, I was litterally too tired to speak. I don't know if you have ever been in recovery, but they ask you questions constantly, and I litterally lacked the strength to answer. Twice they even had to remind me to breath, because the machine they had me hooked up to that monitored my blood oxygen level kept going into alarm. Eventually I got to the point where I could grunt, and then made it on to speaking, but let me testify first hand, you can indeed be too weak to talk.


Greythax