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I've just did a search of the forums for examples of fun uses of charm person, and all I can find are stories of people either wanting to know why their GM wont treat this spell as basically dominate person, or GMs complaining about players trying to basically make this spell dominate person.
I have a bard, and I want to try and use this spell in interesting ways, even bordering on some interesting ways to start combat to our groups advantage. like infiltrating a cult of demon worshipers using disguise skill and looted cultist outfits along with a charm person at the first introduction to the cultists. In conjunction with a silent image to make one of the cultists look like they had a holy symbol of iomedae hidden up their sleeve. followed by an opposed charisma check to make charmed person openly accuse their fellow cultist of heresy. who knows if this would actually cause the other cultists to kill one of these two, either the accuser or the accused. using another player to make bluff checks to distract the other cultists so they dont see my bard casting, or my own bluff check to hide behind another player to mask my casting.
In my opinion, as a player if I go through that much trouble to set up what I consider to be a good strategy, I dont see anything wrong with this resulting in the death of a cultist, and even my group getting a surprise round out of the deal after they've dealt with their own. but some people seem to think that stuff like this is abusing first level spells.
whats with all the charm person hate, this seems like a way more fun way to start combat than "we draw our weapons and attack, everyone roll initiative."
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I dunno the hate but I have seen charm person at work. Between good roleplaying, the muse of the NPC working well with it, and fluffy tail our Kitsune sorcerer managed to turn a CN Skinwalker Barbarian from an enemy to a traveling companion for the party at level 2.
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Cultists are often minor spellcasters. Good luck casting that spell in front of one without them identifying it. Charm person doesn't erase memories.
...is what I would expect a fun-destroying-rules-lawyer to say.
Just talk to your GM about the idea. At least then you will both have a better idea of each other's expectations on the matter.
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Charm Person is one of those things that looks more powerful than it is so it starts fights. Player want advantages and GMs don't want encounters trivialized excessively easily.
As a first level spell it shouldn't be very powerful but your use is mundane enough to work. Just keep in mind that with the spell components its not terribly useful in a fight because aside from the charmed person its very obvious that you are casting a spell and the charmed guy is more likely to favor his friends if a fight starts over it. Adding the silent image will probably make the charmed guy fight friends if he believes it and the non-charmed guys will probably fight you if they're smart enough to notice what's going on.
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Can't say much on people hating charm person but I'm uneasy about the enchantment school generally. There are often debates as to whether or not necromancy and the creation/control of undead is evil but I've never seen one on enchantment and the subjugation of a sentient living creatures will. Why does animate dead have the [evil] descriptor but not dominate person or unnatural lust?
We basically don't use it at our table, people just pump Diplomacy to ridonculous levels.
No casting required.
Also, it isn't easy to adjudicate one NPCs actions once he 'becomes friends' with the PCs...
Does he turn on his old friends? No probably not... but he is magically compelled... so what does it do, exactly?
Things that aren't clearly spelled out are often hated upon, for me, it's the entire illusion school... I have one player that I simply won't allow to play an illusionist because he knows all the rules inside and out, and I don't... and he is a serious rules lawyer, so if I let him play it, he would basically be God.
Charm person, if used out of combat, can be hilarious and helpful, I encourage it... it isn't really a combat spell.
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Can't say much on people hating charm person but I'm uneasy about the enchantment school generally. There are often debates as to whether or not necromancy and the creation/control of undead is evil but I've never seen one on enchantment and the subjugation of a sentient living creatures will. Why does animate dead have the [evil] descriptor but not dominate person or unnatural lust?That is actually a very interesting observation. It wouldn't be hard for a philosopher to create an argument that casting such spells would be an evil act.
Meh.
Charm Person is a tool. If you use it to kill someone (through trickery, etc.), it is no more or no less evil than if you used a sword to kill the same person. If you use it to subjugate a person's free will, it is no more or no less evil than if you beg/bribe/blackmail/coerce that same person without using the spell.
In other words, it's the INTENT of the ACTION, not the tool you use, that determines whether your activity is evil.
So Charm Person, as a tool, is not inherently evil, no more than a sword is inherently evil.
On the other hand, many of the undead-related necromancy spells ARE evil because, from the devs point of view, what these spells actually do is evil at their core, regardless of the intent of your action. Philosophically, that can be argued, but the devs have put the evil descriptor on these spells so their point of view is already quite clear.
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Charm Person does NOT dominate anyone. It just makes them like you more. As a friend, your opinion matters more than it used to. They might listen to your opinion and maybe even do some thing things you suggest.
Use Charm Person to suggest that a father should stop beating his children. Use Charm Person to suggest that a merchant should donate to an orphanage. Use Charm Person to suggest that an ogre should stop marauding farms and move to more remote location.
None of that is "taking slaves".
Now, Dominate might be much closer to the idea of making a slave out of the victim. But it can still be put to good uses, such as dominating an orc to help rebuild the village he just pillaged with his tribe; the damage is done, but using dominate can turn him into an ally who can help with chopping trees and hauling lumber and rebuilding any homes that his warband burned down.
Would that be evil? Maybe, maybe not. If you let him go after his enforced atonement, maybe even wrap it in a life lesson that his bad deeds must meet atonement and we humans are able to forgive past wrong and give the orc a chance to seek his own redemption, then maybe that orc will turn over a new leaf and maybe even become a good guy, all because of the lesson you administered with the help of a Dominate spell.
Modern society uses prisons for much the same reason. Take away a criminal's freedom, re-educate him, reform him, and release him into society with a hope that he's become a better person. While incarcerated, he may even be put to work for the correctional facility. Road crews, agricultural work-release, etc. Is that slavery, or is it reform?
The point is still that these spells are simply tools. What you do with these tools might be good or might be evil. Like a sword, it's easy to do evil and not as easy to to good, but the choice is still up tot he tool's user.
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Charm Person kind of feels like force-feeding someone mind altering drugs and then taking advantage of that altered state.
Kind of icky (at the least) in my opinion.
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This one line from charm person causes a lot of debate, and to many people, makes the spell more powerful than dominate person.
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Charm Person kind of feels like force-feeding someone mind altering drugs and then taking advantage of that altered state.
Kind of icky (at the least) in my opinion.
And so is sticking them in the belly with a sword.
In fact, just about everything we do in this game is kind of icky, most of the time. But don't blame the tool; blame the tool who's using the tool...
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Charm Person kind of feels like force-feeding someone mind altering drugs and then taking advantage of that altered state.
Kind of icky (at the least) in my opinion.
And so is sticking them in the belly with a sword.
In fact, just about everything we do in this game is kind of icky, most of the time. But don't blame the tool; blame the tool who's using the tool...
I dunno. Being forced to betray everything you stand for by some jerkass wizard feels worse than being fireballed by some jerkass wizard. But that's just me.
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Charm Person kind of feels like force-feeding someone mind altering drugs and then taking advantage of that altered state.
Kind of icky (at the least) in my opinion.
More humane than 80% of the adventurer solutions to bad guys.
I think your use of the charm person spell and spell-like ability is what players should strive for. Charming spells are great opportunities for players to be creative and take the story in new directions.
I do admit inexperienced DMs and DMs that are running published material may become annoyed with the spell, I love it when players use it creatively.
My regular group doesn't mind being charmed, at first it is like "Oh crap it's a charm spell, I hope I don't fail my save". Then, "Oh s*#! I failed my save, well this gives me the opportunity to mess with the other players".
When I charm a player, I give him a broad idea I want them to complete then they carry that idea out how they want to.
Charm Person is a tool... If you use it to subjugate a person's free will, it is no more or no less evil than if you beg/bribe/blackmail/coerce that same person without using the spell.
Very well then let's go with that line of reasoning - if someone begs another to sleep with them then it can be no more or less evil then getting said individual drunk or drugged (as an RL analogy for the charm spell) to achieve the same goal.
In other words, it's the INTENT of the ACTION, not the tool you use, that determines whether your activity is evil.So Charm Person, as a tool, is not inherently evil, no more than a sword is inherently evil.
On the other hand, many of the undead-related necromancy spells ARE evil because, from the devs point of view, what these spells actually do is evil at their core, regardless of the intent of your action. Philosophically, that can be argued, but the devs have put the evil descriptor on these spells so their point of view is already quite clear.
So your opinion would change if the devs released an errata stating that all charm and compulsion now have the [evil] descriptor and lore of Galorion was retconned so undead related spells are accepted and animate dead was given the [good] descriptor?
Charm Person has a bit that makes it more powerful than Dominate. Namely, per RAW, you can make an opposed Charisma check to make them do things against their nature (unlike Dominate, which simply disallows it entirely).
I allowed this once in my game, and the player used it to get a man to attack his brother and adopted father. I determined that this was very, very stupid after the fact.
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Charm Person has a bit that makes it more powerful than Dominate. Namely, per RAW, you can make an opposed Charisma check to make them do things against their nature (unlike Dominate, which simply disallows it entirely).
I allowed this once in my game, and the player used it to get a man to attack his brother and adopted father. I determined that this was very, very stupid after the fact.
Apparently I read the Charm Person spell very differently than you do.
This charm makes a humanoid creature regard you as its trusted friend and ally (treat the target's attitude as friendly). If the creature is currently being threatened or attacked by you or your allies, however, it receives a +5 bonus on its saving throw.
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 can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn't ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing. Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the charmed person breaks the spell. You must speak the person's language to communicate your commands, or else be good at pantomiming.
That part I bolded there in the first sentence, I use it to govern the entire spell. This spell makes you the target's friend. A trusted friend. An ally. But not a dominator, not a puppet master, not a mind-controller.
Sure, you might try to give orders. If you do, you need to use your charisma to convince the guy to follow your orders. CONVINCE him. Not dominate him. As per the second thing I bolded in the second paragraph.
I admit, that entire sentence could be misconstrued to mean that you CAN convince him to do ANYTHING, even if he would not ordinarily do it. But, remembering the first sentence, you're only a trusted friend, not a dominator, so you actually cannot force him to do anything he does not want to do.
Here's another way to read that sentence: If you ever ask your charmed "friend" to do anything he would not ordinarily do, you must win an opposed charisma check to convince him - but he still won't do suicidal things or obviously harmful things.
There. I used all the same words, rearranged them for clarity, and it's still the same sentence. When you read it that way, and remember that you're a convincing friend, not a mind-dominating-controller, you can readily see that you actually cannot make him do anything he would not be willing to do for a trusted convincing friend.
Now, I ask you, how many of your real-life trusted friends could order you to kill your family? Even if they asked very convincingly?
Answer: None. I hope.
And Charm Person should probably work the same way.
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It happens IRL all the time. Your best friend tells you some lie about your half-brother that he raped your wife or something, and you believe him...
Charm Person explicitly allows that sort of thing. As long as you pass the Cha check, they believe you. Give them a plausible reason, and you're set.
Charm Person has a bit that makes it more powerful than Dominate. Namely, per RAW, you can make an opposed Charisma check to make them do things against their nature (unlike Dominate, which simply disallows it entirely).
I allowed this once in my game, and the player used it to get a man to attack his brother and adopted father. I determined that this was very, very stupid after the fact.
Apparently I read the Charm Person spell very differently than you do.
This charm makes a humanoid creature regard you as its trusted friend and ally (treat the target's attitude as friendly). If the creature is currently being threatened or attacked by you or your allies, however, it receives a +5 bonus on its saving throw.
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 can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn't ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing. Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the charmed person breaks the spell. You must speak the person's language to communicate your commands, or else be good at pantomiming.
That part I bolded there in the first sentence, I use it to govern the entire spell. This spell makes you the target's friend. A trusted friend. An ally. But not a dominator, not a puppet master, not a mind-controller.
Sure, you might try to give orders. If you do, you need to use your charisma to convince the guy to follow your orders. CONVINCE him. Not dominate him. As per the second thing I bolded in the second paragraph.
I admit, that entire sentence could be misconstrued to mean that you CAN convince him to do ANYTHING, even if he would not ordinarily do it. But,...
That's the thing though. You just convinced him to kill his family by winning the Charisma check. If it's not something he wouldn't ordinarily do then there's no check for it. But if it's something he wouldn't do then you have the check to get him to do it. If you stop that from working because it's something he normally wouldn't do then you're negating the check for the very reason you're making the check.
I allowed this once in my game, and the player used it to get a man to attack his brother and adopted father. I determined that this was very, very stupid after the fact.
It was sort of a balancing act for the fact of only being able to charm hookers in a IRL year.
But yes, even I complained that that use of the spell is just too much.
We always get into arguments about what characters would or would not do when under Charm Person or Dominate. It always causes arguments...always. Thankfully, it rarely gets used either by PCs or NPCs (although I have used it on pc's by npc's more than my pc's have used it on npc's), and to date I have not had npc's use the opposed charisma check built into Charm Person to force them to do things they would not normally do.
But I always have to remind the charmed pc that the caster is now they very best and dear friend. My players have a very hard time with that. I have only used Dominate Person twice, but it tends to be less controversial than Charm Person because understanding they are dominated and doing things against their will is easier to swallow than having their friendship usurped by an enemy.
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I've just did a search of the forums for examples of fun uses of charm person, and all I can find are stories of people either wanting to know why their GM wont treat this spell as basically dominate person, or GMs complaining about players trying to basically make this spell dominate person.
I have a bard, and I want to try and use this spell in interesting ways, even bordering on some interesting ways to start combat to our groups advantage. like infiltrating a cult of demon worshipers using disguise skill and looted cultist outfits along with a charm person at the first introduction to the cultists. In conjunction with a silent image to make one of the cultists look like they had a holy symbol of iomedae hidden up their sleeve. followed by an opposed charisma check to make charmed person openly accuse their fellow cultist of heresy. who knows if this would actually cause the other cultists to kill one of these two, either the accuser or the accused. using another player to make bluff checks to distract the other cultists so they dont see my bard casting, or my own bluff check to hide behind another player to mask my casting.
In my opinion, as a player if I go through that much trouble to set up what I consider to be a good strategy, I dont see anything wrong with this resulting in the death of a cultist, and even my group getting a surprise round out of the deal after they've dealt with their own. but some people seem to think that stuff like this is abusing first level spells.
whats with all the charm person hate, this seems like a way more fun way to start combat than "we draw our weapons and attack, everyone roll initiative."
It is not hate at all, but different people have different views on the line between charm person and dominate person. That causes arguments as I am sure you have seen during your research.
Also fun is subjective, as well as what is "ok".
I allowed this once in my game, and the player used it to get a man to attack his brother and adopted father. I determined that this was very, very stupid after the fact.
It was sort of a balancing act for the fact of only being able to charm hookers in a IRL year.
But yes, even I complained that that use of the spell is just too much.
To be fair, you got quite a bit of mileage out of Charming hookers and hpumping them for information.
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You're already seeing the reasons for the hate here, and even in your original post you step out of line:
Like infiltrating a cult of demon worshipers using disguise skill and looted cultist outfits along with a charm person at the first introduction to the cultists.
Charm Person is a single target, and has verbal and somatic components. Even if you succeed against ONE cult member, the others are going to scream, "Hey, he just Charmed Charlie! Kill him!"
I see many, many reasons for the hate.
- As mentioned, Charm Person has verbal and somatic components, yet players treat it as if they can just cast it willy-nilly while walking down the street without repercussion. If the target makes his/her Will save, he/she should darned well know you targeted him/her, unless you've paid for Silent and Still metamagic feats. Everyone else on the street knows you just cast a spell. Too many players treat it as, "Oh, I can cast this in secret and even if I fail, no one will be the wiser!"
- *You're* the trusted friend, not your pillaging gang of murderhobos. I've had "trusted friends" who hung around with sociopaths. Just because I trusted the friend didn't mean I suddenly liked the sociopaths. I just avoided attacking them openly. Again, players treat Charm Person like, "OK, now XXX gets along with everyone in the party!"
No.
- Rynjin really hits the nail on the head with the opposed Charisma check verbiage. It's extremely unfortunate. It should read, "Can be convinced to do what they might normally do as a favor for a friend with an opposed CHA check." The whole, "An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders" is supposed to be the brake on this. Attacking your fellow cultists should be viewed as "obviously harmful", but most players will vehemently argue that it isn't.
I've seen Charm Person used magnificently well. Unfortunately, more often than not, it's abused in the same way a bard with a Diplomacy skill of 50+ is abused; things like, "You cannot adjust a creature's attitude by more than 2 steps," "Diplomacy checks take at least 1 minute," or, "An affected creature never obeys... obviously harmful orders," are swept under the rug in favor of, "This pathetic creature failed its Will save against my 1st-level spell, and now I OWN it!!!"
Honestly, in my experience as a GM, I *like* Charm Person, and I wish my players used it more instead of relying on Intimidate for every situation. But the Will save is pretty easy, and it only makes the *caster* the target's "trusted friend", so it's not nearly as effective as rules lawyers make it out to be. (Not accusing Rynjin -- he's just making a good point, and clearly not lawyering for himself.)
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It happens IRL all the time. Your best friend tells you some lie about your half-brother that he raped your wife or something, and you believe him...
Charm Person explicitly allows that sort of thing. As long as you pass the Cha check, they believe you. Give them a plausible reason, and you're set.
Just because you believe the lie does not mean you are forced to then go kill your half brother.
You're already seeing the reasons for the hate here, and even in your original post you step out of line:
Like infiltrating a cult of demon worshipers using disguise skill and looted cultist outfits along with a charm person at the first introduction to the cultists.Charm Person is a single target, and has verbal and somatic components. Even if you succeed against ONE cult member, the others are going to scream, "Hey, he just Charmed Charlie! Kill him!"
I actually did cover this somewhat by talking about using using another player using his bluff skill, or maybe perform, to draw attention away.
having said that, to give you more back ground on the scenario i was working with was that the cult where holed up in a safe house, and there was a password to get in. which means one of those great little slidy windows in the door, as every movie tells us accompanies buildings with passwords. which would mean that I would not be visible to anyone else in the room, while having eye contact with the person answering the door, but not being the center of his focus while someone gives him the password.
anyways, I really appreciate everyones feedback!
anyone else got any good stories about fun uses with charm person?
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Just because you believe the lie does not mean you are forced to then go kill your half brother.It happens IRL all the time. Your best friend tells you some lie about your half-brother that he raped your wife or something, and you believe him...
Charm Person explicitly allows that sort of thing. As long as you pass the Cha check, they believe you. Give them a plausible reason, and you're set.
As per Charm Person, yes, yes it does.
You give the justification (in my case, as I recall, it was that the brother and father had been replaced by dppelgangers or something), tell them to do it, and make the Cha check.
100% rules legal.
Dumb as hell, but legal.
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I disagree.
Dot... Might comment later...
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What if the person who was charmed is a terrible friend? Like, the kind of guy who borrows things without ever returning them and gets angry if called out on it?
Can't say much on people hating charm person but I'm uneasy about the enchantment school generally. There are often debates as to whether or not necromancy and the creation/control of undead is evil but I've never seen one on enchantment and the subjugation of a sentient living creatures will. Why does animate dead have the [evil] descriptor but not dominate person or unnatural lust?
It could have to do with the side effects. Animate Dead (and Infernal Healing) might be exercising lower planar sources -- temporarily using some of their energy, but bulking them up in the long run. Charm Person, even though just as evil to do to someone, might not necessarily do these things. In addition, Animate Dead traps souls in unlife (even though not creating intelligent Undead), and Infernal Healing might cause growth of fiendish tissue in the target, while Charm Person doesn't do these things. The [evil] descriptors seem like the kernel of something interesting, but currently it's mostly undeveloped.
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I still think many people are reading this text the wrong way.
The spell text says you cannot control the person.
At best, you are a trusted friend. But if you ask the victim to do anything he would not normally do, you need to convince him.
"Convince" is not a game term. It's not a condition, template, universal monster ability, combat maneuver, or any other game mechanic. It simply means what it really means in real life: tell or demonstrate something in such a way that you are believable.
It happens IRL all the time. Your best friend tells you some lie about your half-brother that he raped your wife or something, and you believe him...
Charm Person explicitly allows that sort of thing. As long as you pass the Cha check, they believe you. Give them a plausible reason, and you're set.
OK, fine, as a trusted friend you've told your victim that his half-brother raped his wife. You make the check and he believes you. You still have no way to make him murder his half-brother. He might just go to the authorities. He might go punch him in the face and tell him to leave and never come back. He might go stone his wife to death because that's what he does in his culture. You have no control over what he does.
Now, if you manage to word your lies in such a way that he has only one plausible recourse, especially if that recourse is the one the guy is likely to choose, then yeah, you have managed to influence his behavior by convincing him that your lies are true.
That's the best you can get with this level 1 spell.
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Except you DO have control over what he does. It literally says it in the spell. You can make them do things against their nature with a Cha check.
No, "convince" is not an ability. That is the fluff justification for that very open-ended game mechanic that says unequivocally you can make Cha checks to CONVINCE someone to follow an order against their nature.
That is what the Cha check does. Technically speaking, you don't even need something convincing, you just need to say "Do it" and be likable enough.
You say "Kill your wife". Roll Cha check. Success he does it, fail he does not.
Fuff that however you will. "Kill your wife, she's a doppelganger bent n killing your children". "Burn her, she's a witch." "Kill her, she has been slowly poisoning you, that's why you were sick last month".
Doesn't matter, really, the spell actually says you can do it. The Cha check is the determinant in that scenario, whatever you fill the blanks in with is just for fun.
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My beef with Charm Person is easy.
I have a decent spellcraft. I ID you casting the spell. I fail my Will, then somehow I start treating you like you're my BFF, despite the fact that I know EXACTLY why I am. How do I roll with that?
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Magic.
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I agree with DM Bu-LA-kay that the "trusted friend" and "convince" are the governing words in the description, and it's what I always focus on when explaining it to anyone with a RAWrd-on about it.
If it is something that you couldn't convince a trusted friend to do, there isn't a chance of getting the charmed person to do it. Just because you can come up with some theoretical scene in which you somehow talk a friend into murdering a family member, doesn't automatically make it something a GM needs to accept is possible with this spell. Its up to the GM what can be convinced just like it would be if you were talking to an actual friend NPC.
We're talking about things like "help me break into this house" or "trip that guard when he comes by". Anything he wouldnt normally do. Not anything he would never do. There are times when "anything" has implied boundaries and many people choose not to recognize them for this spell.
Also, if we are going to insist on absolute literal meanings, it says nothing obviously harmful. It doesn't say harmful to who. I realize that many people will choose to interpret that as referring only to the charmed person, but thats not what it says. Killing someone is harmful. So the spell specifically prohibits killing (or even hitting) another person.
So either way here, your new magical buddy isn't killing his wife.
My beef with Charm Person is easy.
I have a decent spellcraft. I ID you casting the spell. I fail my Will, then somehow I start treating you like you're my BFF, despite the fact that I know EXACTLY why I am. How do I roll with that?
It's simple. You realize that your trusted friend has cast a mindrape spell on you. People who you trust and who are your friends don't do that. Therefore, you do not trust them or consider them a friend anymore, and the spell breaks.
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Except you DO have control over what he does. It literally says it in the spell. You can make them do things against their nature with a Cha check.
No, "convince" is not an ability. That is the fluff justification for that very open-ended game mechanic that says unequivocally you can make Cha checks to CONVINCE someone to follow an order against their nature.
That is what the Cha check does. Technically speaking, you don't even need something convincing, you just need to say "Do it" and be likable enough.
You say "Kill your wife".
And he says no, because that's "Obviously harmful".
There are three categories of Charm Person command.
Category one: perfectly reasonable requests, like "don't stab me".
Category two: things that the person would not normally be willing to do (like, say, a guard lending you their only weapon), but might make an exception for a good friend - these require a Cha check.
Category three: things that are obviously harmful to the interests of the charmed person, such as attacking their allies, unless they already dislike those allies. A Cha check will not help you there.
(While the 'harmful' clause could be interpreted in other ways, a sensible GM should choose to read it in a way that doesn't make the spell grossly overpowered.)
It's simple. You realize that your trusted friend has cast a mindrape spell on you. People who you trust and who are your friends don't do that. Therefore, you do not trust them or consider them a friend anymore, and the spell breaks.My beef with Charm Person is easy.
I have a decent spellcraft. I ID you casting the spell. I fail my Will, then somehow I start treating you like you're my BFF, despite the fact that I know EXACTLY why I am. How do I roll with that?
In which case it becomes a spell with an unstated skill check that can be used to save against it. While witnessing and identifying the spell's casting makes sense for disbelieving illusions (proof that the illusion isn't real as per page 211 of the Core Rulebook), no such mention is made for Charms. There's simply no rules support for it.
Charm person has both Verbal and Somatic components, so there's no real disguising it (without Secret Signs/Still Spell/Silent Spell).
Then there's the scaling with how it compares to Suggestion, Dominate, and Command spells... The entire Enchantment school is messed up.
Really, I just hate plots that rely on mind control in general. It's a hacky plot device to get characters to act in ways they normally wouldn't with no creative thought put into it whatsoever.
It's the Super Dickery of fantasy fiction.