Does temporal stasis freeze spell effects?

Question

My question boils down to what qualifies as a condition in the spell temporal stasis, as emphasized below.

You place the subject into a state of suspended animation. For the creature, time ceases to flow and its condition becomes fixed. The creature does not grow older. Its body functions virtually cease, and no force or effect can harm it. This state persists until the magic is removed...

Clearly they do not suffocate, drown or become hungry. What if I cast dominate person/monster on them and then freeze them with this spell? When they are released, will they continue to be dominated until they've spent enough time outside temporal stasis to outlast my domination, or whatever other spell, effect?

Answer 1

Short answer: The rules don't say. Choose whatever you consider coolest.

Somewhat longer answer:

I would expect yes. Effects are said to travel with their subjects, so they can explicitly exceed for example their range once they've been cast. An effect with a non-concentration duration is therefore a feature of the subject and should share its frame of reference. You obviously can't actually issue commands to the subject while it's in stasis.

That's my expectation, but I think the real answer depends on how you conceptualize temporal stasis. Ask yourself this: Can a subject of temporal stasis be stripped of its gear? Neither the spell nor the rules governing targeting specify, but I consider the answer to be "no". And I construe an ongoing spell effect as just another thing that is temporarily part of the subject, but that's not the only valid interpretation of events.

Answer 2

I’m not aware of any rule that addresses this directly. However, it does explicitly say that “time stops,” and if time is stopped, durations should not expire. I suspect the strictest-RAW reading would involve showing that magic effects currently affecting a creature are “part of” that creature (and thus also stopped), but I’m not sure any such rule is explicitly written anywhere. That this is true makes “sense” to me, but then I’ve long since stopped expecting the rules to make sense.

Balance probably favors “no,” durations don’t stop and magic expires on them. But I’ve also stopped expecting the rules to be balanced.

Rule of cool? Depends on what’s going on. Putting a minion army in deep-storage is kind of cool. Having a kind of “swiss army knife” situation where you’ve got exactly the best monster for any given problem sitting somewhere on stand-by... is also pretty conceptually cool, but I suspect it would also get old quickly.

More than likely, this is an ambiguous case that a DM has to decide.

Also, if you’re interested in the idea of stopping time for the purposes of storing things, I direct you to quintessence, pretty much the ultimate form of this. Quintessence almost certainly works, because the magical effect would be “inside” the shell of quintessence and therefore time would not move. Quite a few theoretical optimization shenanigans rely on it.