Astroturfing

5th-level Marketing & Optics

Casting Time: 1 action, though the appearance of organic growth takes 2 to 6 weeks to seed convincingly
Range/Area: Unlimited; any public forum, review platform, or social media conversation about your organization
Components: V, S, M (a network of accounts, personas, or paid participants, consumed; a sentiment to be seeded)
Duration: Until a creature makes a deliberate effort to trace the sentiment’s origin
Classes: Communications Lead, Growth Marketing Manager, PR Agency (as a ritual, at considerable cost)

You create the appearance of independent, organic public support for your organization, product, or position. Any creature encountering the resulting reviews, comments, or coverage perceives it as a genuine grassroots reaction unless they succeed on a Discovery saving throw specifically directed at the sentiment’s origin — scrutiny directed at its content instead, however rigorous, grants no benefit against this spell.

If a creature succeeds on this saving throw, the deception becomes obvious to any other creature it’s revealed to, and this spell cannot be recast targeting the same forum for the same underlying event.

At Higher Levels. When cast using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, this spell can additionally sway a public sentiment metric tracked by an Analytics & Forecasting spell, or a Halloran’s Read of the Room consensus, as though the sentiment were organic.

Flavor: “So glad I switched — this has genuinely changed how my team works!” — five-star review, account created the same week, only review ever posted