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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.
I may be wrong, but is there any other place in the book that talks about attitudes and friendly? Because the diplomacy skill is the only place I know of.
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Thats more difficult than you'd think.
You are going to try to play with someone's mind, to mess with their free will, and forcibly alter their perceptions of you with a deeply personal alteration to their very selves.
If they make their spellcraft, they will know this, otherwise they just know I waved my hands and said "Humhana be nice to me now please humhana" with an obvious magical effect.
You are attacking them, and people get just as much chance to notice this as they do to notice that you're going to try to suckerpunch them. In short, you're starting combat, and they have a chance to defend themselves via the same perception sense motive or some other check to determine awareness that the players would want in the same situation (and that i am a real stickler on insisting that they get)
Fair enough, I'm willing to do a bluff check versus a sense motive for a surprise round. Seems a little off as now they might as well always get a +5 to their saves in your case, but I can handle that.
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If they make their spellcraft, they will know this, otherwise they just know I waved my hands and said "Humhana be nice to me now please humhana" with an obvious magical effect.
That is not the only signal you're giving. You're looking at them. you're probably gesturing in their direction. You're thinking about what you're going to do to them, wondering if they've spotted you, how they're going to react etc. while you're trying to pretend nothings wrong and that you're NOT about to do untoward things unto their brain. That is very definitely a bluff check vs perception to determine awareness.
I'd say they'd only get the +5 if they won init.
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What I was pointing at in the first one is that they have no idea I'm about to alter their personality. I could be about to fireball them. I could be about to cast cure serious wounds. They have no idea without a spellcraft check.
I handled the "them panicking over a caster casting a spell in a magical world filled with magic" on the next part of saying that if you ruled I had to make a bluff check vs their sense motive, then I would in your game.
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I guess some people want that, but what I want is what the Charm Person spell says it does. I want to wave my hands, say "Humhana be nice to me now please humhana" and watch their attitude shift from unfriendly to friendly.
Then I'd like to make a request from this now friendly person and make my appropriate skill check (diplomacy is the typical check) against a DC with appropriate modifiers and if I'm lucky I have succeeded in my quest to get information/a bargain/temporary ally/whatever sounds reasonable at the time.
I don't mind being detected in most circumstances, as to be honest the newly charmed person will likely back me up in saying "It's alright, the caster did nothing bad". I don't care about being unobtrusive, those no mags don't know what they're taking about anyways, and total power was out of the scope of the spell anyways.
I don't think it's too much to ask for. That's a lot of hoops to go through just to have a chance of getting a successful diplomacy check.
Also, just to clarify, manifestations do not say that it makes a spell visible, just that there is an obvious magical effect taking place during the casting.
More or less, that is exactly how I picture Charm Person too.
Though regarding making the spell undetectable, it does require either a shared language or "phantomiming" in order to give any commands. So I don't think you can do it in an entirely motionless and quiet manner. Maybe with further magic for non-verbal communication.....