What can you really accomplish with various charm effects? I know that Dominate Person is pretty powerful, and unless you use it to force paladins to rape small children, pretty much anything is good to go.
Charm person/monster only makes the enemy your friend, meaning that you perhaps will try and grapple other friends who try to hurt them.
What about suggestion? In my last game, I had an enemy spellcaster cast Suggestion on one of the fighters. He failed. Unfortunately, this was the rules lawyer, who obeys by the rules any time it suits him, and points to logic anytime the rules don't suit him. Unfortunately, Suggestion is open for interpretation. The enemy NPC's suggestion was for him to kill the other fighter. The player read the description and said that he wouldn't do it. Why not, I asked. Well, because it said in the description that you could suggest anything within reason, and he didn't think it was very reasonable attacking his friend.
We had a brief argument about this, and reached a compromise where the suggested fighter tried to kill the other fighter with his bare hands. Didn't do a lot of damage, but at least kept him out of the combat.
What can you do with Suggestion? Was I wrong? He? Suggestions? (couldn't resist)..
You should probably think over whether your game is logic based or rules based and then go with you choice. If your going back and forth your providing to much wiggle room for the annoying kind of rules lawyer.
Beyond that make sure that you note what precedents have been set. If you do allow your players convince you of X make sure that this applies when its not in their favour - and arrange it so that they can experience that in the not to distant future at least some of the time.
Anyway he is right that the activity has to sound reasonable.
Another counter against this is to have prepped for this sort of thing in advance. I'd have worked out the sentence the mage would use ahead of time (specifically when I choose the spell for an NPC mage). This would have allowed you to move forward without having to resort to an argument.
In fact if your going to DM over rules lawyers you should probably make sure your very familiar with the rules yourself. Seems like a lot of work and to some extent it is but the alternative is arguments and frustration.
If you have a Rules Lawyer that reverts to logic arguments in a pinch you need to establish some kind of precedent for how long your going to consider such arguments. Note that your behavior here is a big factor - if you break the rules for logic reasons fairly regularly then its reasonable for the players to presume that this works both ways. If you almost never break the rules then this too is a precedent and the players can be made to adhere to that.
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What about suggestion? In my last game, I had an enemy spellcaster cast Suggestion on one of the fighters. He failed. Unfortunately, this was the rules lawyer, who obeys by the rules any time it suits him, and points to logic anytime the rules don't suit him. Unfortunately, Suggestion is open for interpretation. The enemy NPC's suggestion was for him to kill the other fighter. The player read the description and said that he wouldn't do it. Why not, I asked. Well, because it said in the description that you could suggest anything within reason, and he didn't think it was very reasonable attacking his friend.
We had a brief argument about this, and reached a compromise where the suggested fighter tried to kill the other fighter with his bare hands. Didn't do a lot of damage, but at least kept him out of the combat.
What can you do with Suggestion? Was I wrong? He? Suggestions? (couldn't resist)..
According to the RAW you were wrong;
Suggestion
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Language-Dependent, Mind-Affecting]
Level: Brd 2, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One living creature
Duration: 1 hour/level or until completed
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
You influence the actions of the target creature by suggesting a course of activity (limited to a sentence or two). The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the activity sound reasonable. Asking the creature to do some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell.
The suggested course of activity can continue for the entire duration. If the suggested activity can be completed in a shorter time, the spell ends when the subject finishes what it was asked to do. You can instead specify conditions that will trigger a special activity during the duration. If the condition is not met before the spell duration expires, the activity is not performed.
A very reasonable suggestion causes the save to be made with a penalty (such as –1 or –2).
Material Component: A snake’s tongue and either a bit of honeycomb or a drop of sweet oil.
So, if I interperate this correctly, the "obviously harmful act" needs to be something that harms the subject of the spell?
If so, then the following sounds reasonable to me:
Reasonable Suggestion:
"That fighter over there isn't nearly as powerful as you, kill him!"
Obviously Harmful:
"That fighter over there is much too powerful for you to fight. Go run through that Blade Barrier spell three times instead."
OK, I was wrong then, even though it was another part of the description he argued on. If a request is impossibly because it's unreasonable, every action can be impossible.
I'll remember this. In the future, Suggestion will be used to avoid attacks. What about suggesting that the character took the only boat (they were fighting on a small island) and rowed to the mainland, fetching healing potions?
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It doesn't have to be reasonable. It just has to avoid sounding unreasonable. The srd doesn't give the full spell text on this one. In the PHB the spell itself gives the example of suggesting a pool of acid is actually water and a cool dip would be refreshing. Taking a refreshing swim while adventuring certainly isn't a good idea. But it doesn't sound life threatening either.
Yeah rowing back would have worked fine and for many hours.
For this one the material components kind of give you an idea of the theme to keep in mind. A snakes tongue and honey. Not the fist of command.
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I have an interesting story.
In our last session, a hiding enemy wizard cast Suggestion on the party samurai (who failed his Will save miserably) and suggested to him that the "little guy" (a whisper gnome ninja) was evil and trying to kill the party.
This was pretty much what the samurai believed to begin with so he turned around and moved to attack.
The poor little ninja was desperately trying to convince the party he had no intentions of killing everyone, turned and jumped out a window to flee. Meanwhile the rest of the party pretty much sat back to watch...
When the samurai came to, he was appalled at his behavior and made up with the gnome.
The bad guy escaped rounds ago...
note: the bad guy was a mind bender and used telepathy to gain some insights on how best to use his enchantments. Good times!
Suggestion is a tough spell a) for immature gamers, b) for players who can't roleplay their PC being forced to do anything against their wishes and c) to interpret. As a combat spell, it's suboptimal because it forces these arguments to appear. One thing you can do if you know you have a battle coming up with mind-affecting spells NPCs are going to use on PCs is to print out the spell effects in advance and study them. A far crueler, Rat Bastard DM thing to do is to have the NPC cast it and then take nominations from the other players as to what their peer ought to be subjected to....
And so the Moff speaks. So it is said so it shall be.
note: the bad guy was a mind bender and used telepathy to gain some insights on how best to use his enchantments. Good times!
Funny.. so was the NPC in my example. Dominate Person is so much easier to deal with...
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In a recent game, I had a Suggestion cast on the Barbarian: "There's delicious honey in the other room. You should go get some." The beef of the party left the room, and would have had to fight the giant bees by himself if half of the party hadn't decided they'd be better off following him. Once he got the honey, the spell was over, but he was surrounded by giant bees.
