Communicating Commands To A Charmed Person / Monster When There's No Shared Language

[graypark]

I had asked this originally in the general Rules Questions forum, with little response. As most of my GMing and playing is done at PFS tables, I'm most interested to learn how this is adjudicated by RAW in organized play.

When the caster and subject of a charm person or charm monster share no common language (or, perhaps, one or the other has no language at all) how are commands communicated? I've seen it run several different ways at PFS tables, but can find no published rule which clearly supports one method or another.

[Bbauzh ap Aghauzh]

I would use the whole bluff/sense motive thing to pass a secret message.

[Erai]

Charm Person is easy, it does, after all, not give you full control over your victim. These two lines in the spell description are essential:

"This charm makes a humanoid creature regard you as its trusted friend and ally (treat the target's attitude as friendly)."

"You must speak the person's language to communicate your commands, or else be good at pantomiming."

In other words: communicating commands to a charmed person you do not share a language with can be a fun challenge ;-) .

Charm Monster is essentially identical to Charm Person, but with more cases where communication could be a problem. In some cases, a handle animal check (at -5 if used at a "non-animal" with int 1 or 2) should do the trick, but only for the purpose of pushing the creature do do something that it would naturally be able to do.

[graypark]

But the caster isn't trying to pass a secret message. The caster is trying to clearly communicate something to someone and (probably) doesn't care if anyone else knows what that communication is.

If the subject of the charm monster is an animal or some other creature of limited intelligence, why not use the Handle Animal mechanic to push the charmed creature into obeying?

[graypark]

How about a Perform: Pantomime check to communicate one's commands? But against what DC and how would the DC be determined?

Obviously, there is no RAW answer, yes? So expect table variation?

[Erai]

graypark wrote:

How about a Perform: Pantomime check to communicate one's commands? But against what DC and how would the DC be determined?

Obviously, there is no RAW answer, yes? So expect table variation?

Yes, that might be the best answer: there really is no RAW answer to this question. Which is a good thing, really: charm spells, after all, are roleplaying opportunities first and foremost :-)

[Erai]

Oh, and about the pantomime check: I think I would ask the player to show how his/her character pantomimes the command, and possibly assign a DC to some roll or other based on that. But again, that's all outside the realm of RAW.

[Cormac O'Bron]

Semaphore??? Smoke signals??? Interpretive dance???

[BigNorseWolf]

Throw BBQ sauce on the ones you want the monster to eat first.