Smear Campaign

4th-level Marketing & Optics

Casting Time: 1 action
Range/Area: Unlimited; one organization you can identify as a competitor
Components: V, S, M (an anonymous tip, or a strategically timed leak, consumed)
Duration: Until the news cycle moves on, typically 1d4 weeks
Classes: CMO, Head of Communications, outside PR firm (as a ritual)

Choose a rival organization. You seed a piece of true, exaggerated, or misleading information about them into public circulation, without the source being traceable to you. The target must succeed on a Discovery saving throw or suffer a reduction in Blamelessness score and a corresponding drop in stakeholder confidence, treated as though it had recently failed a Root Cause Analysis publicly.

If the underlying information was entirely fabricated rather than merely exaggerated, this spell still functions, but your own organization becomes subject to a Discovery saving throw of its own, made by any creature investigating the leak’s origin.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the target has disadvantage on its Discovery saving throw if your organization has cast Greenwash or Rebrand within the past year — the target has less standing credibility to push back with.

Flavor: “We’ve heard some concerning things about how they’re actually run over there — obviously can’t say more than that.” — conversation, overheard at a conference