Dominate Person Questions

[Jess Door]

So, we ran into Dominate Person in our Pathfinder Society scenario this weekend. And....surprisingly, have some questions!

Our fighter was dominated in the first round of combat. He was ordered to "Fight your[his] friends".

It says in the text of the spell:
"...Subjects resist this control, and any subject forced to take
actions against its nature receives a new saving throw with a
+2 bonus..."

We decided that ordering the fighter to attack his friends was against his nature (as he's not normally a backstabber), and gave him another save with a +2 bonus. He succeeded on the save...and we weren't sure what that meant. It didn't seem fair for a 4th level spell to just disappear. What we decided was he successfully resisted that particular command, and the controller would have to spend a move action to give the dominated person a new command - or in this case, the same command again as he resisted it the first time.

This ruling did lead to another question - what does the dominated person without a command do for his turn of combat? We had him stand there, essentially dazed.

Thoughts?

[Mirror, Mirror]

I am fairly sure the spell should ahve been broken with the second save. That is one of the big reasons that, when you cast the spell, you try to think of things for them to do that does NOT go against their nature.

Like the command "You have been decieved! Protect me!" The fighter can still take actions, and do his best to protect the enemy, but does not HAVE to betray his friends (could be using non-lethal combat maneuvers while trying to talk them out of "being played for fools").

[hogarth]

a) If you succeed on the additional save, the spell ends (IMO).

b) A dominated person without a particular command would do whatever it wants, I think. So it's in the best interest of the dominator to give a command right away -- no dilly-dallying!

[TriOmegaZero]

Not Dominate Person, but this thread reminds me of it.

[james maissen]

Jess Door wrote:

Our fighter was dominated in the first round of combat.

gave him another save with a +2 bonus. He succeeded on the save...and we weren't sure what that meant.

This ruling did lead to another question - what does the dominated person without a command do for his turn of combat? We had him stand there, essentially dazed.

Thoughts?

Edited down to the areas to which I'm replying.

1st. How did it happen on the 1st round of combat? Dominate Person is a 1 round casting spell. I'll assume it was a SLA or SU ability that mimicked Dominate Person that only took a standard action.

2nd. The spell would be broken. Such a hideous command let him bolster his will to throw off the hold of the spell on his mind.

3rd. He acts normally. Now a command doesn't need to be issued each round as the fighter would continue to try to carry out prior commands until completed. In fact the fighter would continue to carry out those commands to the exclusion of all else. A dominated creature becomes something of an automaton when commanded (successfully).

-James

[James Jacobs]

Yup; if you order a dominated target to do something against its nature, it gets a second save at a +2 bonus to end the spell. If that save fails, the dominated target does what the dominator wants and keeps doing it until ordered to do something else or it finishes its orders (after which, if the dominator orders the target to do something ELSE against its nature, it gets to save again).

If the target makes this save, though, the dominate effect ends and the caster will need to re-cast the spell in order to dominate the target more.

[Jess Door]

Thank you for the responses! Seems we did it wrong, but we wanted to keep the game moving so did our best to arrive at something most of us could agree with.

I was a player, not the DM, but I believe it was probably a SLA, not a spell. :)

[james maissen]

Jess Door wrote:

I was a player, not the DM, but I believe it was probably a SLA, not a spell. :)

Its something that you may wish to check on whenever it comes up in a game.

Dominate Person changed from a 1 standard action cast to a 1 round cast when 3.0 went to 3.5 and it slipped under the radar for many.

-James

[silverhair2008]

Just to clarify the question. We were running Eye of the Crocodile King to get it run before it retired. Yes, the Dominate Person is a SLA of the Crocodile King for 2/day. He had already used it once. I agree with Jess in her thanks for the responses. This is one thing we enjoy about Paizo and the boards the quick responses especially from the powers that be.