She was immune to the attempt to exercise mental control.
You can control the actions of any humanoid creature through a telepathic link that you establish with the subject's mind.
If you and the subject have a common language, you can generally force the subject to perform as you desire, within the limits of its abilities. If no common language exists, you can communicate only basic commands, such as "Come here," "Go there," "Fight," and "Stand still." You know what the subject is experiencing, but you do not receive direct sensory input from it, nor can it communicate with you telepathically.
So Merisiel was immune to the attempts to control her through the telepathic link. Harsk was not--the commands were only suppressed.
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@RE: Ah, I see. Okay, that makes a little more sense. I was under the impression that both Harsk and Merisiel were in effectively the same state, making it ludicrous for the authors to write PfE the way they did (meaning "suppress the effect" in both circumstances, but only writing it in one and writing something completely different in the other).
Even so, that would then mean that the authors not only wanted to make a distinction between a dominated person who has a command waiting for them and a dominated person who doesn't (which alone seems unlikely to me), but also that they chose to communicate that distinction in a really odd way.
An idea I try to keep in mind when interpreting rules is that the rules are not "self-existent", so to speak. They are a person's attempt to communicate a specific thing. Can the text potentially be read to mean what you're suggesting? Sure. But when I try to imagine that someone had in mind the functionality we're discussing, it makes my brain hurt to think that they'd have ended up writing the current text of PfE as their attempt to communicate that functionality.
Meanwhile, the interpretation I'm holding to is one which, if it was what the authors intended, makes sense that they would try to communicate with the text that ended up getting published. It's maybe not 100% water-tight, but it's easy to believe that those words would be used to communicate that thought (with that lack of water-tight-ness easily attributable to trying to be concise in an already wordy spell).
I see two interpretations, both of which could be read into the text, but only one of which could produce that text. Thus, it's only that one that I can believe is correct.
...Did all that rambling make sense?
Ultimately, it is up to the GM. Thus the GM may rule that you still have to save vs. Dominate or Charm Person and that if you fail, you are Dominated or Charmed... but cannot have commands given to you because of the Protection spell.
Or the GM may state "blanket immunity, no charms or Dominate spells while the Protection is up."
BTW, the Babua Demon casting Dispel Magic on the former situation would have a chance of negating the Dominate spell while the Protection spell remains up. In addition, any other higher-level spells would have to be rolled against first. Thus a player who is buffed and has Protection up would have multiple layers of protection from the Protection spell going down.
A smart demoness might very well hide for ten minutes and then attack. ;) Or she might play Sniper Alley against the players, teleport and shoot, teleport and shoot... ;)
I do understand the rambling. And while I don't agree fully, as I said in my very first post, I find your interpretation compelling as well. Consider, they could have also said "While under the effects of this spell, the target is immune to any new instances of such spells and effects" if they meant immunity to the spells and effects themselves.
Now, as I said, for dominate the difference doesn't matter in PFS too much, as you don't usually see an enemy escape to fight another day. Let me give you an example where I think it really does show a big difference.
For whatever reason, Ezren becomes evil. Then he casts demand on Merisiel, who is under the effects of protection from evil. Maybe he didn't have sending available.
Under interpretation 1 (yours), Merisiel is immune to the spell entirely and does not receive Ezren's message.
Under interpretation 2 (David Haller's), Merisiel receives the message from Ezren and is immune to the mental command contained within.
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BTW, the Babua Demon casting Dispel Magic on the former situation would have a chance of negating the Dominate spell while the Protection spell remains up. In addition, any other higher-level spells would have to be rolled against first. Thus a player who is buffed and has Protection up would have multiple layers of protection from the Protection spell going down.
Dispel Magic can be targeted against a specific effect. That's one of the options listed in DM's text.
Under interpretation 1 (yours), Merisiel is immune to the spell entirely and does not receive Ezren's message.I don't understand how that's relevant to determining the correct interpretation of PfE.
You brought the discussion to the question of "why would the authors want to communicate the distinction represented in interpretation (2)"? And I showed a case where I believe the intention of the authors would be for Merisiel to receive the message from Ezren and not be commanded by it.
To put it another way, there's a simpler way to have communicated interpretation (1), and the way in the text is the simplest way to communicate intepretation (2). So I'll see your self-existence and raise you Occam's Razor. That said, this is mostly discussion just for fun here, as I said, I think both sides are valid, and I'd be happy with either of them being made official or even with table variation.
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the way in the text is the simplest way to communicate intepretation (2). So I'll see your self-existence and raise you Occam's Razor.
While under the effects of this spell, the target is immune to any new attempts to possess or exercise mental control over the target.
While under the effects of this spell, the target is immune to any new commands received through such effects.
I'll see your Occam's Razor, and raise you some clarity, with a little word-count improvement on top of it. ;)
BTW, the Babua Demon casting Dispel Magic on the former situation would have a chance of negating the Dominate spell while the Protection spell remains up. In addition, any other higher-level spells would have to be rolled against first. Thus a player who is buffed and has Protection up would have multiple layers of protection from the Protection spell going down.Dispel Magic can be targeted against a specific effect. That's one of the options listed in DM's text.
The Demons would need to make a Spellcraft Roll to determine which spell was affecting the person. They might also need to roll Knowledge: Arcana to know the spell provides protection from charms and the like. Nor is it guaranteed to work... and you're assuming the Babua demon lasts long enough to do that and is willing to do what the Succubus wanted; if it is being hurt by a specific individual, it might very well want revenge! You're talking a Chaotic Evil monster, after all.
Hey guys.. I just noticed there is a +2 morale bonus to saves against charm and compulsion and there is a +2 resistance bonus to all saves (vs evil).
So, when protection from evil is cast on a charmed friend, to temporarily suppress the effect of the charm, his save should actually be +4 (+2 resistance, +2 morale).
I didn't notice the bonuses were of different types before.
Just my 2 cents.