Unnatural Lust: does clear spindle or Protection from Evil protect from it?

[aboyd]

Unnatural Lust is a compulsion. Does the Protection From Evil stop it? We're not sure if it's mind control. It does force people to move to the target....

[Belafon]

aboyd wrote:

Unnatural Lust is a compulsion. Does the Protection From Evil stop it? We're not sure if it's mind control. It does force people to move to the target....

FAQ wrote:

Protection From Evil: Does this work against all charm and compulsion effects? Or just against charm and compulsion effects where the caster is able to exercise control over the target, such as charm person, command, and dominate person (and thus not effects like sleep or confusion, as the caster does not have ongoing influence or puppet-like control of the target)?

The latter interpretation is correct: protection from evil only works on charm and compulsion effects where the caster is able to exercise control over the target, such as command, charm person, and dominate person; it doesn't work on sleep or confusion. (Sleep is a border case for this issue, but the designers feel that "this spell overrides your brain's sleep centers" is different enough than "this spell overrides your resistance to commands from others.")

I'd say that since unnatural lust has the caster choose a creature or object for the target to rush towards, that's very close to what command does, so yes, it could be stopped by protection from evil.

However remember that unnatural lust is not itself an evil spell so protection from evil has no effect unless the caster is evil (see the FAQ above that one).