Spell Changes

[Ansha]

So I was looking on the NWVault and found a PW that made a number of changes to their spells to bring them in line with PnP more.

One was bringing all of the Power Word spells back into Enchantment instead of Divination, as per 3.x PnP rules.

The other, and I think the one more people might get behind (several players of spellcaster PCs I've spoken to like the idea, including BHM and paazin), is a change whereby Charm Animal/Person/Monster (and the Mass versions thereof) spells add an opposed Charisma check after a failed Will save. If the target fails the opposed Charisma check, they are dominated instead of Charmed, to reflect the PnP rule about getting the charmed target to do something they otherwise wouldn't do after an opposed Charisma check.

Given charm spells' significant weakness against hostile targets--anything threatened or in combat is given a +5 bonus to the save--and the fact that against a hostile target in a non-DMed situation, it just dazes, it seems that this would be a significant and worthwhile boost that reflects PnP more effectively than NWN2 does currently.

[Blindhamsterman]

can the opposed charisma check be forced EVERY time the player forces the other player/creature to do something they otherwise wouldnt? Im pretty sure in pnp it does.

[Ansha]

That is how it's done in PnP. The PW I got this idea from makes it a one-shot all or nothing deal with no retry, though.

[Blindhamsterman]

in which case a bonus for the one on the receiving end should be in order, as thats a lot more powerful than pnp.

[Ansha]

I have no idea whether it might be possible to force an opposed Charisma check every time you gave it an order from a technical standpoint.

Given the nature of the secondary "save," i.e. the opposed Charisma check, it's already a lot more swingy than a Will save. Even left as-is in the initial post, it is significantly weaker than a Dominate spell. Is it a bit stronger than PnP charm spells? Maybe, but they're also less useful than in PnP outside of DM intervention.

[paazin]

Make sure to also extend the effect of the sleep spell.

Dominate person would also be nice to correct the duration.

And add a generic RP spell in each level, if it does not yet exist. Though it'd be better to add the spells in question.

[NESchampion]

Would love to see all the spells put to their proper schools.

Burning Hands should be Evocation
Blindness/Deafness should be Necromancy
Cloudkill should be Conjuration
Feeblemind should be Enchantment
Banishment should be Abjuration
Mordenkainen's Sword should be Evocation
Blindness/Deafness, Mass should be Necromancy
Incendiary Cloud should be Conjuration

All the Power Word spells should be Enchantments

Unfortunately this leaves a lot of gaps in our spell lists; nothing for Necromancy at level 5, nothing for Enchantment at multiple levels, nothing for Illusion at level 8, etc.

[t-ice]

Charm person is a first level spell, it's never supposed to be a powerful "save or die" in combat - let alone "save or die", and if you fail the save "opposed cha check or die".

No offense, but up-powering of a spell -proposals really don't look too good from people whose PCs are prime user of said spells.

The wording on Charm is, probably purposefully, left somewhat vague:

You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing. Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the charmed person breaks the spell.

Shouldn't this means that succeeding on charming a person in battle makes that person confused about friends/foes, and that person attacks neither side. Nevermind the Cha check. Daze is actually a very good approximation there. Charm doesn't make the victim attack its former allies (whom he still considers allies, too), "never obeys obviously harmful orders". Even as it stands, charm can be very strong for 1st level spell - you can knock an enemy out of combat in a single action - almost "save or die". Yes, Sleep is much more powerful, yes, but that's because it's mega-bugged (enemies can't wake up their friends as they should be).

Dominate is there for taking mind control, not charm.

I suppose RP uses of charm (and dominate) are plenty more, and can go by PnP under DM, including spell duration. But in combat, is it really underpowered compared to other 1st level spells? The durations are clearly shorter than PnP, but then again, the AI is very bad in countering compulsions compared to what they would in PnP.

[Ansha]

If my suggestions have merit on their own, then the merit is there despite my own vested interest in it; and if not, then the merits are not there, again, despite my vested interest in the subject. The suggestions' worthiness is completely independent of its messenger. As such, I do not see how the fact that I am championing my own cause bears any weight on the suggestions made. Of course I'm going to champion my own cause--just as anyone else would champion their own.

To answer points you have made in specific, though:

Charm Person is a first-level spell, yes. However, Charm Monster is a fourth-level spell. They would both be impacted by the changes, along with Charm Animal and Charm Plant.

The Enchantment/Charm (3.x's Enchantment) school prior to 4e has always had a great number of "save or suck, save or die, all or nothing" spells. As you point out, one could argue that Charm spells do, in fact amount to encounter-ending spells even left as-is, "save or die"--if one were to be metaphorical enough about what "save or die" means . The current "daze" effect still prevents any action whatsoever for the duration of the spell (which, in ALFA, is PnP-standard at 1 hour per level) anyway.

Outside of DM intervention, that is what Charm spells are, currently. Even with the proposed changes, this is also how they would remain unless the opposed Charisma check (which is PnP-rules) occurred. With the opposed Charisma check, they could be convinced to do something they wouldn't otherwise. The first line of the Charm Person spell's description reads that "This charm makes a humanoid creature regard you as its trusted friend and ally (treat the target’s attitude as friendly)"--all of the other Charm spells have similar wording. The DMG defines the Friendly attitude as wishing the person well, and includes possible actions like offering limited help, advocating, chatting and advising.

This is, again, without the opposed Charisma check. What about with the opposed Charisma check?

Q: Dear Sage,
What exactly is the limit to what you can 'persuade' a charmed enemy to do with the charm person spell? How trusting of the caster is a charmed individual?
--Dave

A: The spell description for charm person indicates that the target’s attitude toward you becomes “friendly” as defined by the Diplomacy skill (PHB, pg. 72).

Thus, a charmed enemy wishes you well, and will chat, advise, offer limited help, or advocate for you.

The spell suggests that you might convince a charmed fighter to hold back an onrushing dragon for a few seconds, but that’s a pretty extreme example and would certainly require the opposed Charisma check described in the spell entry.

A charmed enemy doesn’t automatically trust anything you say, but it “perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way” (PHB, pg. 209).

(http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20070213a ; emphasis mine)

So by the official 3.5 Q&A, Charm spells' subjects are baseline friendly--and you can do the opposed Charisma check to move them toward an action more in line with helpful--as an extreme example, holding the line for a few seconds while you run away from the dragon. (A far less extreme example: previous Dragon Magazine articles and previous AD&D editions stipulated that a charmed subject would try to halt a fight by defending its "new" friend against its old (using the minimum amount of violence--subdual could cover this) and generally trying to defuse the situation. Its new friend is still a friend, and it wants to keep both its new friend and its old.)

Balance concerns could be that the suggested spell changes would make the Charm spells too powerful for their respective levels: however, note that any target in combat gets a +5 bonus to its saving throw already; and also note that, again, an opposed Charisma check is very swingy compared to a saving throw with a set DC. Moreso when the caster does not have a high Charisma.

Most non-specialist enchanter wizards in PnP and organized society (RPGA, Pathfinder Society, etc.) play probably don't bump their Charisma score up very high. I know Charisma is often a dump stat with several of my PnP gaming buddies. But enchanters are supposed to be a bit more Charismatic than other wizards, and this gives them a reason to be so. The suggested changes actually benefit bards, favored souls, sorcerers and warlocks more than it does most wizards, being Cha-based casters of one stripe or another. They also benefit these casters more than they benefit me (but that's beside the point), and I don't really see it as being that big of a balance issue even then--the highest Charisma modifier I've seen on someone so far is +5, and that's not that sizeably different than the +3 CHA a wizard can get without even skimping too much on other vital stats.

[Blindhamsterman]

I think we should make this change, but because the opposed charisma is only rolled once, give the one on the receiving end a +2 bonus or similar for the roll (perhaps even +3).

[Brokenbone]

Just because Charm might make a target "Friendly" to the caster, or possibly even "Helpful", it doesn't mean their existing natural level of what is almost surely "Helpful" to their lifelong mob-mates, is destroyed.

Wouldn't engaging in combat with ANYONE, also count as a harmful action? If you're say, a goblin with a rusty knife and a t-shirt with holes in it for armor, getting into a fight even with squirrels is going to be a dicey affair, 70% risk that hey, it WILL ultimately be harmful to the tune of a few hit points.

Helping in combat vs. "the folks you also feel helpful towards" (i.e., members of your tribe or scout patrol or dungeon gang or whatever) just sounds over the top. It's harmful, and it's "not what you do to people you ALSO feel helpful towards" (i.e., Gnoll feels helpful towards his existing tribemates and also to the sneaky enchanter-adventurers, yet he attacks one "helpful" group over the other?)

Freezing critters in indecision I can see as an engine-capable thing, but all the other subtlety of these charm-line spells needs a DM and his PAUSE button to figure out how to manage "the rest of the mob who didn't get charmed.", plus figuring out if the target knows your language well enough to take instructions, and lots of other stuff.

As to other spells changing back to their "natural" schools, NES seems to have surveyed the topic well, it's possible some of the fudging was to manage gaps. If that's the case though, would it be possible to have some dual-school spells? I.e., if only to prevent gaps, say "yes, the unmodified one was Necromancy... but we're adding an identical one which is Alteration too, so as not to unfairly shake up people's existing PCs etc."

[Ansha]

Just because Charm might make a target "Friendly" to the caster, or possibly even "Helpful", it doesn't mean their existing natural level of what is almost surely "Helpful" to their lifelong mob-mates, is destroyed.

Wouldn't engaging in combat with ANYONE, also count as a harmful action? If you're say, a goblin with a rusty knife and a t-shirt with holes in it for armor, getting into a fight even with squirrels is going to be a dicey affair, 70% risk that hey, it WILL ultimately be harmful to the tune of a few hit points.

Helping in combat vs. "the folks you also feel helpful towards" (i.e., members of your tribe or scout patrol or dungeon gang or whatever) just sounds over the top. It's harmful, and it's "not what you do to people you ALSO feel helpful towards" (i.e., Gnoll feels helpful towards his existing tribemates and also to the sneaky enchanter-adventurers, yet he attacks one "helpful" group over the other?)

Freezing critters in indecision I can see as an engine-capable thing, but all the other subtlety of these charm-line spells needs a DM and his PAUSE button to figure out how to manage "the rest of the mob who didn't get charmed.", plus figuring out if the target knows your language well enough to take instructions, and lots of other stuff.

As to other spells changing back to their "natural" schools, NES seems to have surveyed the topic well, it's possible some of the fudging was to manage gaps. If that's the case though, would it be possible to have some dual-school spells? I.e., if only to prevent gaps, say "yes, the unmodified one was Necromancy... but we're adding an identical one which is Alteration too, so as not to unfairly shake up people's existing PCs etc."

Well, given the Ask the Sage column I cited, apparently there is a greater difference between "obviously harmful," "suicidal" and "very dangerous" than we are giving the terms credit.

If, as in the Sage's example, it is a feasible outcome of an opposed Charisma check that the charmed subject "holds off a dragon for a few seconds while you run away," then this is apparently not "obviously harmful" nor "suicidal," and falls under the heading of "very dangerous."

Going off of this, I think definitions for the three terms would be something like: "obviously harmful" is things that by their very nature would result in harm--intentionally smashing their head against a rock, for example; "suicidal" would be things like leaping into a volcano when there is no way to escape their fiery death; and "very dangerous" is "fighting against an opponent to help out my new best friend."

I mean, after all, if a charmed fighter who fails his opposed Charisma check will hold off a charging dragon for a few seconds (and the Sage uses this as an official example), then it's obviously not breaking the spell's restrictions about "obviously harmful" and "suicidal" orders.

With regard to your example that "life-long mob-mates," fellow tribesmen and the like are still regarded with a Friendly or Helpful attitude even while charmed: the opposed Charisma check is to get it to do things it would NOT ordinarily do. If it is ordinarily "Helpful" to its life-long mob-mates, then getting it to attack said mob-mates is something that would call for an opposed Charisma check in PnP--which is what I am suggesting we change to, here. If it was ordinarily Hostile toward something? I really don't think you'd need to goad it too hard to go smash its skull in.

As for Olaf's suggestion: I personally would like all of my Power Word spells back in Enchantment. A better (and, of course, more time-consuming) way to compensate for Divination's shortcomings as a school would be to look at additional spells that are Divination in PnP, and add them. I don't know that there's really a point to duplicating the spells so that they are BOTH Enchantment and Divination (or Evocation and Transmutation, or whatever), though. I mean the people who theoretically are hurt by these changes the most would be specialist wizards, but specialist wizards are not restricted in NWN2 to have to select a spell of their specialty school every time they level. They're not even required to memorize a spell of their specialty school in each level slot (which is what the extra slot you get from specialization is supposed to represent).


Oh, also: Feeblemind should be permanent duration, and arcane casters should get a -4 penalty to their saves against it. (It should also be counteracted by Heal.)

[Brokenbone]

Perhaps the fighter in the ludicrous "Sage" example is high level, high AC, high buffed, essentially dragonproof. And the dragon, is a baby. Few rounds of distraction, no sweat! I would not put a lot of mileage into that Sage example, apparently dragon-baiting is neither harmful nor suicidal in that joke example.

Anyhow, turning Charm Person (lvl 1) into essentially Dominate Person (lvl 5) with a lucky CHA check for engine purposes feels off. Again, in the engine, all you can really have critters do is "be hostile", "be neutral", or I suppose "be defender-like (towards a PC or all PCs)." I suppose you could alternately have them drop weapons and despawn to essentially "quit the field."

All the more subtle stuff, including on-the-spot circumstance bonus / penalty for the various checks (possibly multiple checks!) that could come up, fall into the same sad bucket as other RP-intense, hand-managed by DM, type spells. Charm the goblin sentry to learn nuggets of info, etc.

[NESchampion]

On the subject of Charm spells, Rules of the Game archive has some info as well here:

Charm Person: The quintessential charm spell, charm person makes the target creature friendly to the caster. According to the sidebar on page 72 of the Player's Handbook, a friendly creature wishes you well and will chat with you, advise you, offer you limited help, and act as your advocate.

In general, a charmed (or otherwise friendly) person might be expected to be roughly as accommodating to you as a co-worker that trusts you and gets along well with you or as obliging as an old school chum. You shouldn't expect a charmed character to make any truly painful or costly sacrifices for you.

You have a limited ability to persuade a charmed creature to go out on a limb for you when the consequences to the charmed creature aren't immediately obvious. The spell description uses holding off a red dragon while you escape as an example (and that works only when the charmed subject is a fighter type with appropriate equipment).

That article links to a Save My Game entry too:

Fighting on your behalf is outside the realm of friendly -- only a helpful NPC (one step above friendly on the table) can be counted on for that kind of aid.

So how can you make a character helpful once your charm person has rendered him friendly? You could use Diplomacy, which normally requires a full minute, though you can speed it up to a full-round action by taking a -10 penalty on the check. Having a helpful creature on hand can be quite advantageous. It might actually fight to protect you of its own volition, without any orders from you at all. Since it's acting on its own, however, it may not use the kind of tactics you would like.

A charm person spell also lets the caster attempt an opposed Charisma check to convince the target creature to take some action that it ordinarily would not. But the spell description doesn't specify how long this process takes or what exactly it involves. Does the caster convince the target by talking (a free action), redirecting a spell effect (a move action), or taking some not-otherwise-specified action (a standard action)? In the absence of specific rules, it's up to you as DM to adjudicate such situations on a case-by-case basis. If you think talking would suffice in a particular instance, fine. If you feel that the creature takes more convincing, you might want to drop some hints to the player about what kinds of tactics might be effective.

Before you can determine what the target would not ordinarily do, though, you need to decide what it would do. Should its alignment play a role in such a decision, especially when the favor requested involves breaking some rule or law? How about the creature's Intelligence score, or knowledge the subject might have about the caster? Does a charm person spell make the target's mind all fuzzy? That is, if the infamous Tesfaye the Dark -- who has a price on her head big enough to buy a kingdom -- casts charm person on a guard, does he then treat her just the same as he would a no-name character? Does he care about -- or even remember -- Tesfaye's reputation and the value of the reward on her head while the charm person is in effect?

The spell description doesn't specify that the subject forgets what it knows, so he probably does remember who she is and what she's worth. And if he has any integrity at all, he probably wouldn't turn in his friend for money, any more than her boon companions would. However, if the guard is the sort who would turn in his own mother for a gold piece, then Tesfaye may still have cause to worry.

More importantly, can the caster make a request seem more reasonable than it really is? The charm person spell description appears to give conflicting information about what the subject can be made to do. At one point, it says that the subject will not obey suicidal orders. Shortly thereafter, it says that you could conceivably convince a charmed fighter to "hold off an onrushing red dragon for just a few seconds." Not only is such a request suicidal in all likelihood, but it also requires that the subject be willing to take risks on your behalf -- a favor above and beyond what a friendly character would do, as noted above. Perhaps, however, you could use Bluff to convince your friendly subject of the importance (or at least the reasonableness) of your request.

Ultimately I think that much like Illusion spells, Enchantment spells rely a lot on DM intervention to ensure things go accordingly. This works fine in PnP but not so well in NWN2. I'm not sure I like the idea of coding a single charisma check into the spell for what seems to be a fairly complex interaction. It's a very broad subject with a lot of circumstances that would require a DM to interact; for example I can't think of a single instance in which my character Olaf would be willing to attack SSMs character Alyra, even if charmed. If Olafs own mother told him to do it he wouldn't do it; a friendly PC or NPC isn't even close to that. Similar relationships possibly form between NPCs as trusted allies depending on what you are fighting; that band of kobolds you might be able to convince one to take on the leader who is always a jerk to him, but the bandits who are deathly afraid of their powerful wizard leader wouldn't turn against him because of fear of death. You might be able to convince them to play dead and then run away though.

It just feels like too many variables to be locked into a charisma check without a DM present or willing players taking part.

[NESchampion]

Oh, also: Feeblemind should be permanent duration, and arcane casters should get a -4 penalty to their saves against it. (It should also be counteracted by Heal.)

Agreed; would like to see Blindness/Deafness permanent as well.