I've heard on more than one occassion the school of Enchantment being called 'mind rape'.
In degrees of influence, where do you draw the line?
Is a diplomacy score high enough you could make the most holy saint murder a helpless beggar considered mind rape?
I don't want to dilute the term 'rape'. I don't use it myself when referring to mental influence/control, but other players do.
If a creature's attitude toward you is at least indifferent, you can make requests of the creature. This is an additional Diplomacy check, using the creature's current attitude to determine the base DC, with one of the following modifiers. Once a creature's attitude has shifted to helpful, the creature gives in to most requests without a check, unless the request is against its nature or puts it in serious peril. Some requests automatically fail if the request goes against the creature's values or its nature, subject to GM discretion.
To force someone to do something they would otherwise not do, you need dominate person. Diplomacy and charm person simply will not suffice.
Good point. I don't believe PF includes the allowance for making people fanatical and thus betray their own nature to fulfil requests.
Rape is a very nasty word, and one that deserves to be treated seriously - but so is murder. People would do nearly anything - and often literally anything - not to die. Yet how often do adventurers kill?
Dominating someone has the potential to be very nasty and disturbing, definitely, but so can a lot of things the PCs can do. It shouldn't get a free pass, but it shouldn't be a taboo when things as "fireball" are perfectly ok.
I know that you used the word for intellectual reasons (i.e. discussion) but even so--I'm a bit uncomfortable even reading the word. I agree that many people (at one point, myself included) have used the word out of context, diminishing its meaning. That said, it is a trigger word for many. Hearing, or even reading, that word can seriously mess up some peoples' day.
@ The Shaman: It's all about how it's used. Enchantment magic is not expressly evil, unless used to accomplish evil acts. The only exception, I think, is dominate person simply because it's denying a person access to free will. Someone may use charm person to condition a victim, making them stray more and more from their ideals, or it may be used in any number of benign ways (such as convincing a guard to let you and your party into the city without inspection).
There are several ways to use dominate in somewhat benign ways, too - i.e. to stop a suicidal person from killing themselves, to subdue someone you don't want to kill, etc.Essentially, dominating someone is not that far from restraining them or otherwise physically forcing them to do something. It definitely has the potential to be very evil and sinister, sure, but PCs of the appropriate level can restrain someone's will in other ways as well.
That said, I would definitely be very wary of how a good PC uses compulsion spells.
If used responsibly, even dominate person can be justified, certainly. If a character uses it to "intervene" in another character's life, just long enough to detour them from suicide, or to break their addiction to a deadly drug, for example, it might be considered justified as the intent was to help the person. Still, when enacting your will upon another, for any reason, you're committing, to my mind, an evil act. Granted it's not a terribly evil offense, but it's still questionable. Then again, desperate times call for desperate measures--not everything can be viewed in black and white.
Now that it occurs to me, there's more than moral implications with these spells, but also ethical ones. Infringing upon someone else's freedom, by use of these spells, seems to be something that a lawful or neutral character might consider acceptable, given the outcome. A chaotic character, though, would resent the very notion, regardless of the outcome.
Thus, all three characters (LG/NG/CG) may come into conflict on this issue, among others.
I can agree with that, definitely, but it should be seen in the context of everything else that happens in the game - especially all the killing PCs often do (and the game often revolves around, especially when it is the "baddies"). Free will matters very little when all you have to do with it is writhe on the floor in agony for the remaining 15 seconds of your life.
Trigger-happy player characters aren't necessarily good to begin with, even if their players have "G" written down on their character sheets.
Oh, definitely--hence I used CG in my example. Chaotic evil characters would likely enjoy the use of these spells (and everybody knows that CN is basically chaotic evil in everything but name*).
* = a joke ;)
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The compulsion sub-group of spells puts a great big kink into our normal conception of morality because it straight-up erases one of the big requirements in making moral judgments: free will. Where Diplomacy can only make someone see an argument, it can't make them do something they believe to be wrong. Compulsion spells, especially Dominate Person throw that right out the window.
So, here's the question: is it ever ok to strip someone of their free will? If you want to get purely utilitarian about it, the answer is "sure." Stripping someone of their free will before they act on a desire to hurt themselves or others seems to be just the kind of thing a good enchanter would do. On the other hand, does the person who has overwhelmed the will of the miscreant now have moral responsibility for anything that person does while compelled? This raises some interesting questions about what conjurers do with summoned creatures, but one morality-warping school of magic at a time, neh?
There is room for a school of thought that says it's not ok to strip away someone's free will ever. For those thinkers, compulsion is always wrong. If someone's about to do something harmful, you can try to stop them, but taking away their capacity to be free-thinking individuals is a step too far. It's the same line of reasoning as people who would never use deadly force or nuclear weapons: some actions cross a line that can't be uncrossed.
Given all of that, I think many Chaotic characters would be opposed to compulsion spells on ethical grounds: If I am ethically opposed to rules and regulations restricting my choices, how would I then endorse the use of magic to compel my choices or the choices of others? Certainly philosophies that hold up freedom as a higher (if not absolute) good would take issue with that sort of thing.
Great post, Bookkeeper.
If you cast dominate person on someone and give the command 'act as you would', is that evil? :P
It came up in a local game, since one member of the party kept getting controlled. It was safer to have a friendly party dominate him and leave him with the command to be himself. :P
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That's pretty creative, Umbral Reaver. It takes a lot of trust for a party member to willingly allow such a spell to be cast on him. That said, if he's likely to fail a saving throw versus an enemy's spell, he's probably not very likely to make his save versus his ally's spell--leading to the question, was it consensual? Haha, that might lead to all kinds of problems.
Fighter "Damnit, stop it! I'm sick of you casting that spell on me."
Enchanter-Wizard "No--now act as you will!"
Fighter "And if I..."
Enchanter-Wizard "Then I'll make you think you're a dog."
Fighter "Uhh..."
Enchanter-Wizard "That's right... be a good boy, won't you, and--act as you will."
It was more about the charisma than the save DC. Competing compulsion effects induce opposed charisma checks to maintain control.
Not sure dominate can make you think something. It just impacts what you do, not what you feel, think etc.
You can make a fighter bark, but not tell him he is a dog to make him bark.
It was more about the charisma than the save DC. Competing compulsion effects induce opposed charisma checks to maintain control.
He'd have to fail his initial save, though, or allow the spell to be cast on him willingly--that is, before an opposed Charisma check could be made.
Not sure dominate can make you think something. It just impacts what you do, not what you feel, think etc.
You can make a fighter bark, but not tell him he is a dog to make him bark.
Yea, I know--but I can imagine a smart-ass wizard making such a statement. The fighter might not necessarily know a whole lot about magic, so the wizard's bluff might be taken as a matter of fact.
Baleful polymorph can make someone think they are a dog...
It doesn't say it robs them of free will, just that they obey commands to the fullness of their ability. The command 'do what you want' basically gives free will want, as it depends entirely on what's in their head rather than in the caster's.
Multiple Mental Control Effects
Sometimes magical effects that establish mental control render each other irrelevant, such as spells that remove the subject's ability to act. Mental controls that don't remove the recipient's ability to act usually do not interfere with each other. If a creature is under the mental control of two or more creatures, it tends to obey each to the best of its ability, and to the extent of the control each effect allows. If the controlled creature receives conflicting orders simultaneously, the competing controllers must make opposed Charisma checks to determine which one the creature obeys.
No, my problem is other people calling it mind rape. That's why I brought it up. It upsets me, and I want to know if there's any justification in using that term.
I think "domination" or "compulsion" are perfectly accurate descriptions. The word "rape" is unnecessary and offensive.
"Chaotic" can mean different things to different characters; one character might be committed to "freedom" as an abstract ideal, both for herself and for everyone else. That character should probably be opposed to the use of compulsion spells unless the alternatives are really terrible. Other chaotic characters are very concerned about their own freedom, but not about other people's. That character might use dominate without batting an eye.
Whatever the character's attitude, though, I think part of the morality of the choice to use this magic involves the fact that it's completely reversible. Compare, for instance, the way Compulsion magic worked in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. In those books, when someone used Compulsion to make someone do something, they altered that person's personality, sometimes forever. It wasn't just a matter of shunting off their agency temporarily and substituting one's own agency in its place, which I take it is what the dominate spells do, but of altering their own agency at its roots. If the changes wrought by Compulsion were thorough-going enough, the victim would become basically a meat robot, and nothing could ever restore the person to their previous state. Now that is pretty darn evil, and because of this the good characters in those novels swore off Compulsion under all conditions except the absolutely most dire.
Here's an interesting test case for you: What if there were a spell in PF we could call change alignment? It wouldn't just make the target temporarily do what you wanted, but would instead fundamentally alter their character, their priorities, their values, and their perspective on the world. If you could hit the BBEG with this spell, steeped in vice and villainy as he is, and thereby make him see the error of his ways and give up his plans of conquest and slaughter to go run an orphanage, would that be evil? Do you feel differently about that than you would about dominating him?
Here's an interesting test case for you: What if there were a spell in PF we could call change alignment? It wouldn't just make the target temporarily do what you wanted, but would instead fundamentally alter their character, their priorities, their values, and their perspective on the world.
This spell exists in both the Book of Vile Darkness (where it's actually called mind rape) and in the Book of Exalted Deeds (called sanctify the wicked).
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One of the challenges of Golarion philosophy (and D&D philosophy, for that matter) is that good and evil are not simply abstract concepts - they are forces that can be measured and weighed. So the larger philosophical question for your average good-aligned church is why wouldn't you use compulsion to force someone to be good? Several good-aligned churches would probably be down for a change alignment spell (which they had in the Book of Exalted Deeds). This raises two problems: one philosophical and one story. The philosophical one is the vague odiousness of one church deciding what's best for people. The story one is simpler: being able to rewrite someone's motivations at a fundamental level could make for some fairly boring stories.
Here's a disturbing twist on the Change Alignment question: What if it was used to change their ethical outlook? The church of Erastil just erases the church of Cayden Cailean by converting them all to Lawful Good. Is that ok?
Philosophically, it comes down to beliefs versus acts. Getting in front of the Blackguard who's about to sacrifice the innocent villager is attempting to prevent an evil act. An Alignment-shifting spell is about changing evil beliefs, which is a much touchier subject.
Just to throw some fuel on the fire, I'm going to leave this spell here.
One of the challenges of Golarion philosophy (and D&D philosophy, for that matter) is that good and evil are not simply abstract concepts - they are forces that can be measured and weighed. So the larger philosophical question for your average good-aligned church is why wouldn't you use compulsion to force someone to be good? Several good-aligned churches would probably be down for a change alignment spell (which they had in the Book of Exalted Deeds). This raises two problems: one philosophical and one story. The philosophical one is the vague odiousness of one church deciding what's best for people. The story one is simpler: being able to rewrite someone's motivations at a fundamental level could make for some fairly boring stories.
Here's a disturbing twist on the Change Alignment question: What if it was used to change their ethical outlook? The church of Erastil just erases the church of Cayden Cailean by converting them all to Lawful Good. Is that ok?
Philosophically, it comes down to beliefs versus acts. Getting in front of the Blackguard who's about to sacrifice the innocent villager is attempting to prevent an evil act. An Alignment-shifting spell is about changing evil beliefs, which is a much touchier subject.
Theres a DnD book series based on the concept of such a spell. I believe my friend called it Evil by Necessity. Basically a powerful wizard runs around whitewashing everyone wiping any evil away in people. These causes a drastic unbalance in the force of good and evil. Good cannot exist without Evil to oppose it thus the very fabric of morality is at stake and theres some end of the world ramifications thrown in. The party leader is a TN Druid who gathers up a bunch of super evil dudes to go kill the wizard.
No, my problem is other people calling it mind rape. That's why I brought it up. It upsets me, and I want to know if there's any justification in using that term.This wasn't you using the phrase mind rape?
Anyways. I agree, on disliking the term.Is a diplomacy score high enough you could make the most holy saint murder a helpless beggar considered mind rape?
Yeah. I'm playing an enchanter and a lot of the players casually refer to my character as a rapist. This includes the GM. I find it rather upsetting.
Interesting campaign hook: A good-aligned church is developing or near to recovering an artifact-level item that can permanently change the alignment of masses of people, and shows every intention of using it once they have it in their hands. What should the adventurers do? (In the Planescape setting, the Harmonium would be all over that sort of magic if they could find it.)
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Yeah. I'm playing an enchanter and a lot of the players casually refer to my character as a rapist. This includes the GM. I find it rather upsetting.No, my problem is other people calling it mind rape. That's why I brought it up. It upsets me, and I want to know if there's any justification in using that term.This wasn't you using the phrase mind rape?
Anyways. I agree, on disliking the term.Is a diplomacy score high enough you could make the most holy saint murder a helpless beggar considered mind rape?
Yep, that's totally uncool as a player or a GM. They need to stop, especially if you find it upsetting.
using magic to assert your will over another's to perform tasks they normally wouldn't, is no more evil than
poisoning the BBEG's Water Supply
fireballing the swarm of enemy bandits
coup de gracing the BBEG in his sleep with your scythe
Slashing the BBEG in the face with your 2handed sword
Turning the BBEG into a pincushion with your adaptable composite bow
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And fwiw, philosophers make a distinction between using a term and mentioning it. If I say, "Did you hear that kid say 'poop'?", I have mentioned the term, but not used it. Whereas if I drop a hammer on my toe and say "Poop!", I used the term. Mentioning a term requires it to pass through one's mouth (or keyboard, or what have you), but it's morally different from using it. Although if you know someone is going to be upset by even hearing the term, whether it's mentioned, used, or whatever, a decent person is probably going to be sensitive to that. Although I also don't think people shouldn't be able to use the word "rape" to describe acts in a fantasy world that arguably fit under that description simply because the word is (regrettably and perhaps understandably) a trigger for some people. If we're going to talk about horrific and evil acts, and it's reasonable to talk about such things, we need to have the terms available in which to do it.
Okay, I worded the original post badly.
I am meaning to ask if people think anyone would be justified in calling it that, as is frequently directed at my character.
It started the first time we captured an enemy soldier. The conversation went something like this:
"We can do this one of two ways. You can tell us where your camp is of your own free will, or by my will. It's your choice." (intimidate)
This conversation makes me want to make a Dawnflower Dervish Bard who's contribution to his faith's tenant of Redemption is to cast Beguiling Gift on the BBEG and hand them a Helm of Opposite Alignment.
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using magic to assert your will over another's to perform tasks they normally wouldn't, is no more evil than
poisoning the BBEG's Water Supply
fireballing the swarm of enemy bandits
coup de gracing the BBEG in his sleep with your scythe
Slashing the BBEG in the face with your 2handed sword
Turning the BBEG into a pincushion with your adaptable composite bow
Hmm, going to try to avoid having this become an alignment thread, but some of those actions seem to dance on the moral fine line.
I guess the difference between swinging a sword and suborning a will have to do with the concept of preemption. We're all pretty ok with actions taken to stop an evil act in progress, but where does morality stop us in taking actions to prevent that act from ever starting? How sure do I need to be that am evil act will occur, or is it enough to know that this person is evil and had it coming? Can I make someone act against their nature to further my own ends? The end only justified the means in a handful of moral philosophies.
So, big questions:
- Is free will a good?
- Under what conditions is it morally acceptable to suborn free will? (To save lives? To promote "good?" To get the gray out of my hair?)
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Okay, I worded the original post badly.
I am meaning to ask if people think anyone would be justified in calling it that, as is frequently directed at my character.
It started the first time we captured an enemy soldier. The conversation went something like this:
"We can do this one of two ways. You can tell us where your camp is of your own free will, or by my will. It's your choice." (intimidate)
There's certainly a cause for a sense of violation if you're made to do something against your will, but it's pretty clear that the term upsets you and doesn't contribute to anything while reducing your fun. So, no, they ought to knock it off.
Okay, I worded the original post badly.
I am meaning to ask if people think anyone would be justified in calling it that, as is frequently directed at my character.
It started the first time we captured an enemy soldier. The conversation went something like this:
"We can do this one of two ways. You can tell us where your camp is of your own free will, or by my will. It's your choice." (intimidate)
Intimidate checks are scarey. I might want to call you that too if you go around saying stuff like that. But only in character.
using magic to assert your will over another's to perform tasks they normally wouldn't, is no more evil than
poisoning the BBEG's Water Supply
fireballing the swarm of enemy bandits
coup de gracing the BBEG in his sleep with your scythe
Slashing the BBEG in the face with your 2handed sword
Turning the BBEG into a pincushion with your adaptable composite bow
Hmm, going to try to avoid having this become an alignment thread, but some of those actions seem to dance on the moral fine line.
I guess the difference between swinging a sword and suborning a will have to do with the concept of preemption. We're all pretty ok with actions taken to stop an evil act in progress, but where does morality stop us in taking actions to prevent that act from ever starting? How sure do I need to be that am evil act will occur, or is it enough to know that this person is evil and had it coming? Can I make someone act against their nature to further my own ends? The end only justified the means in a handful of moral philosophies.
So, big questions:
- Is free will a good?
- Under what conditions is it morally acceptable to suborn free will? (To save lives? To promote "good?" To get the gray out of my hair?)
Usurping one's free will is no more evil than taking their lives, and if murder can be used for good ends in pathfinder, so can mind control.
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Ehh, if I have engaged an opponent in combat, I have, in effect, given them the choice. Run away or die. That's why your coup de grace and poison examples are on shaky moral ground for me. Paladins accept surrender, but will kill those who don't stop trying to kill them.
Murder, as it is generally understood in both law and philosophy, is not the same as killing in armed combat.