I'm w/o books at the moment. Does the Mass Hold Monster spell have the same save every round mechanic as the singular spell?
IMO, the whole series of "charm" spells are much weaker than their name.
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I'm not sure that explains it. Charm Person is 1st, and Hold Person is 3rd. Hold is not much less powerful than Charm. Also, Enchantment is widely considered one of the weakest schools since it can be defeated so easily. I don't think there's a great need to especially control charm.
Besides, this doesn't account for the 8th level "mass" being marginally more powerful than the 4th level single target spell. If Charm Monster actually worked on a "massive horde of monsters", I probably wouldn't have started this thread.
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The reason it doesn't work on mass hordes of monster is because that would be significantly more powerful then almost any other spell in the game. Have a roughly 30 foot area of monsters suddenly being all chummy with your spell caster for over two weeks is relatively game breaking, and thus a restriction is absolutely required lest things get quickly out of hand.
Even as it is written it's still incredibly powerful. To start off with, how about just the simple fact that it's an 8th level spell instead of a 4th level spell? That's +4 to the will save to try and resist it and also makes it unaffected by the spells such as Spell Immunity, Globe of Invulnerability, and a few others. It normally will not be cast into a ring of counter spells and will likely not have a contingency against, as most would feel comfortable enough just to cover Charm Monster.
The hit dice cap certainly prevents you from instantly befriending a 30 foot circle of 18 hit dice demons, but you know what it does do? It totally gets almost any city's council members in one casting, it will get even at minimum caster level up to 30 random low hit dice town guards to look the other way for you and your friends for a while. How about a decent size crowd of people on a busy market street? Or how about small tribe of kobolds or dwarves? Always handy when you need a tunnel dug out. Throw a party at a residence and invite some of the nobility or high powered merchants and see how few of them have more then a level or two of aristocrat. It will get you more friends then you could possibly imagine.
For a +1 level adjustment you could even extend it, so now your casting of mass charm monster works for a whole month. That's enough time to have a group of NPCs with around 30 total hit dice build you a small castle to live in, well worth a 9th level spell slot.
Charm spells are amongst the most dangerous spells to disrupt game balance. Mass Charm can essentialy give a spell caster a huge supply of friends as Morgen pointed out. The caster can then take full advantage of these friends in different ways. The best example Morgen pointed out was gaining political influence in a geographic region. The wizard can become the true power behind the throne with very little cost. Not only that if it affected all hit dice imagine having an of high hitdice fiends. How unabalncing can they get...
Unless they've changed the way charms work, I have to agree with cercanon. The way we play charmed persons and monsters doesn't require the nerf. We play that they just treat you as friendly. It doesn't mean that they treat you as a life long friend that they'd do anything for as long as it doesn't go against their character.
In real life, if my good friend asked me to build him a house, I'd laugh at him. If a total stranger (who I'd be friendly to by default) asked me to, I'd think he was joking. Changing a persons attitude towards you (and only you) has limited use and doesn't even guarantee that you'll be able to stop them from attacking or continuing to attack your friends. If the town guard catches you robbing a local merchant, unless they're corrupt, they'll probably still take you in whether they want to or not. Odds are at best a 50-50 chance but probably not even that good since they know that their carreer is over if anyone else rats them out. They're certainly not going to help you carry stuff out the back door.
The long duration could pose some problems but that's not the part that they nerfed. If you wanted to, you could still easily have every person in a small town friendly towards you and even gain influence with the ruling class. There's still nothing to stop you from doing that. All the nerf seems to do is stop you from getting a bunch of high HD monsters from slaughtering you which I think is fine for an 8th level spell.
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Charm Person/Monster makes it so a person, monster or group of them consider you a trusted friend and ally. That's significantly more then being what being friendly should do. That's changing what the spell does and decreases it's power.
It's job as the enchanter to come up with things to tell the charmed people. If you can't think up something smart to ask them or tell them, then no the spells won't help much.
Your DC's are wrong for Knowledge Arcana, it's 20+Spell Level for identifying a spell in place. You don't use knowledge arcana for something like that thought unless you think someone is under someone's influence. That's Sense Motive's job at DC 25 to give you a hint that something might be up.
What campaign world are you playing in where there these wizards are just roaming about casting all these spells for free? What rulers are just letting random wizards cast spells in their courts like that either, that's how you end up charmed in the first place. Not only that, you can charm the darn wizards to so that's completely useless to do.
Just because you don't understand how to use it properly doesn't automatically mean it needs errata or changes. It's a perfectly wonderful 8th level spell and fits there just fine. You just need to learn to think more creatively if your going to cast more then magic missile or fireball, or move on to 4th edition where you don't have to.
Charm Person/Monster makes it so a person, monster or group of them consider you a trusted friend and ally. That's significantly more then being what being friendly should do.
So is my best friend. I still won't build him a house just because he asks me to. Your words hold great weight with the subject but there are many things that people won't do, even for a trusted friend.
You're right though. I did understate the effect that a charm has a little.
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So is my best friend. I still won't build him a house just because he asks me to. Your words hold great weight with the subject but there are many things that people won't do, even for a trusted friend.
You're right though. I did understate the effect that a charm has a little.
So you wouldn't help if your best friend asked you to come over and help them build a deck next weekend? Really?
So you wouldn't help if your best friend asked you to come over and help them build a deck next weekend? Really?So is my best friend. I still won't build him a house just because he asks me to. Your words hold great weight with the subject but there are many things that people won't do, even for a trusted friend.
You're right though. I did understate the effect that a charm has a little.
Slippery slop Mergen, he said a house, nothing about a deck. A complete house at that with no expertize, and he was building it all.
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Slippery slop Mergen, he said a house, nothing about a deck. A complete house at that with no expertize, and he was building it all.So you wouldn't help if your best friend asked you to come over and help them build a deck next weekend? Really?So is my best friend. I still won't build him a house just because he asks me to. Your words hold great weight with the subject but there are many things that people won't do, even for a trusted friend.
You're right though. I did understate the effect that a charm has a little.
Just build it in steps.
"Hey, #Fred, could you give me a hand with the deck tomorrow?" Reasonable request.
Tomorrow: "Fred, sorry, but I've been called away. Would you mind making a start and I'll help when I get back?"
Later, "Sorry, Fred, was delayed. still, you're almost done there. And as you've got all your tools and stuff, could you maybe work on the doorframes while you're here?"
And so on and so forth. Every step is reasonable. You can build up some really horrific chains of seemingly reasonable steps if you don't challenge things, and as you're talking to your best friend who you trust implicitly, why would you challenge any of the foundations of the propositions?
Or, as we're talking about Mass Charm, get an entire set of craftsmen with different skills in the same room and get them all to help.
Every DM is different. Some may make charms way too powerful if they let the players have too much control over their subjects and other may make them useless if they go too far the other way. I believe that we've found a happy balance.
You may, by making it sound plausable, convice a bunch of dwarves to build you a small keep but that doesn't mean that they won't question (and possibly figure out why) when the charm eventually wears off.
We also play where any magical intrusion to your mind is a noticable effect if you make your save. If someone tries to read your thoughts and you save, you feel it and know that someone tried to get in your head in some way. Without a proper Spellcraft check (meaning seeing/hearing the spell cast) you don't know what it was or who tried it but you know that someone likely nearby did. It has it's risks and can't be used without abandon.
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Just build it in steps.
"Hey, #Fred, could you give me a hand with the deck tomorrow?" Reasonable request.
Tomorrow: "Fred, sorry, but I've been called away. Would you mind making a start and I'll help when I get back?"Later, "Sorry, Fred, was delayed. still, you're almost done there. And as you've got all your tools and stuff, could you maybe work on the doorframes while you're here?"
And so on and so forth. Every step is reasonable. You can build up some really horrific chains of seemingly reasonable steps if you don't challenge things, and as you're talking to your best friend who you trust implicitly, why would you challenge any of the foundations of the propositions?
Or, as we're talking about Mass Charm, get an entire set of craftsmen with different skills in the same room and get them all to help.
If you had a trusted friend that tried to take advantage of you, would you let them do it?
I suppose if you play it like that it would be powerful, but in my campaigns, Charmed creatures don't have 1 INT and 0 memory. They view you as a trusted friend, but they also have zero cognitive impairment.
Then you're not playing it according to RAW where "Hey, Fred, could you hold of that dragon for a few seconds?" is considered a perfectly acceptable and reasonable request (see the PHB spell description). No wonder you don't think it's powerful.
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Then you're not playing it according to RAW where "Hey, Fred, could you hold of that dragon for a few seconds?" is considered a perfectly acceptable and reasonable request (see the PHB spell description). No wonder you don't think it's powerful.I edited my post above yours, but I don't think it alters the conversation.
If I was playing 3.5 D&D, the PHB would be RAW...
Fine. I'll play this game of semantics, if you want. The Beta says "The target views your words in the best possible light." So if you present an even slightly plausible reason, it will be taken in the best possible light, which is to be believed as the best possible light certainly isn't "he's trying to exploit me", now, is it?
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Fine. I'll play this game of semantics, if you want. The Beta says "The target views your words in the best possible light." So if you present an even slightly plausible reason, it will be taken in the best possible light, which is to be believed as the best possible light certainly isn't "he's trying to exploit me", now, is it?I'm not playing a semantic game at all (except that the exact effect of Charm highly depends on semantics and how your GM interprets). Changes were made from 3.5 to PF. You really shouldn't cite the PHB in a PF discussion.
Besides, both 3.5 and PF say "might believe you" or "might be convinced". I'm not sure that aligns with your absolutist interpretation of "perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way".
I suggest you reread the Beta then as that is EXACTLY what it says. Page 208.
The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way.
You have to present an excuse why it's a good idea. If you went "Fred, build me a house!" he'd say no. If you asked him to help you with some work but you get called away as it starts, then that's an unfortunate accident. And then you get delayed, well, these things happen, and suddenly Fred's done a load of work for you but it seems reasonable because he believes the excuses you give.
The spell description explicitly states he's going to give you the benefit of the doubt over everything. But you disagree that has any effect, so of course the spell seems crippled to you.
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I suggest you reread the Beta then as that is EXACTLY what it says. Page 208.The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way.You have to present an excuse why it's a good idea. If you went "Fred, build me a house!" he'd say no. If you asked him to help you with some work but you get called away as it starts, then that's an unfortunate accident. And then you get delayed, well, these things happen, and suddenly Fred's done a load of work for you but it seems reasonable because he believes the excuses you give.
The spell description explicitly states he's going to give you the benefit of the doubt over everything. But you disagree that has any effect, so of course the spell seems crippled to you.
Huh? I'm quoting that part of the spell, and the rest too. No need to pretend I'm unaware of what the spell says. What you are saying is inconsistent with the fact that the target "might" not do what you say. This is fundamental to the fact that the target has free will and can tell you "no" for reasons of his own. He is not dominated, and you do not have control over him. He doesn't have to suspect that you are a bad person to deny you (strawman), which actually would not be allowed by the spell. But, he could say "sorry, I have a family to support, I don't have time to help you right now, friend". Lol, it's not that complicated..... It's a first level spell!
I'm really starting to repeat myself here. I apologize.
Of course he can. But if he refuses almost all the time, as you're saying he does, that's the DM crippling the spell. Most of the time, requests that sound reasonable should go through. Otherwise, you'd be better off using Diplomacy. But you're right, we're repeating ourselves, so as we've both clearly made the save against a first level spell and aren't going to agree, I'll stop.