Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 garurumon6 Jul 02, 2011 4:57:00	Ah, mind affecting magic. So many of the spells in this school require abstract thinking that it seems to always end in player/dm bloodshed. So here is my problem. Today in my party's adventure, we tracked a couple hired thugs to a seedy bar and proceeded to clear it out of most of the riff raff with a well placed ghost sound spell. This left only the two thugs we tracked, their spellcaster boss and a few noncombatants. I then proceeded during the combat to use hypnotism and get one of the thugs who had just drawn his weapon. I chose to try and have him sheath his weapon, trying to convince him with my command sentence that killing us was a too much hassle for not enough pay. I was not deluded enough to think he wouldn't join the fight again soon, just that he would have to take the time to pull his weapon out again, and slightly delay him. I was in essence told that I couldn't do that. This brings up the question. What is the general opinon on how far a suggestion from spells of this nature should stretch?
#2 milkducks Jul 02, 2011 5:48:41	You're probably going to get a lot of different responses, but in my opinion, what you attempted to do was well within the bounds of that spell.  When you use the spell, the target becomes two steps friendlier (in this case, Hostile to Indifferent), and since you used it in combat, he even got a bonus to his saving throw.  At that stage, he has no strong feelings about you one way or another; kind of a blank slate.  Your suggestion, that "We're too much trouble for the amount you're being paid", would be a perfectly reasonable non-magical argument, in my opinion, against some indifferent mercenary ... the fact that your words are honeyed, in this case, with arcane charm only help your case.  There's absolutely no reason (again, in my opinion) that what you tried to do shouldn't work.  So, take that for whatever it's worth. I'd probably have a chat with your DM, though, and lay out some ground rules for mind affecting magic in the future.
#3 miniaturegeek Jul 02, 2011 11:03:47	I would have allowed it, it wasn't like you were trying to convince him to kill his team mate.  To be honest though I might have allowed you to do that without magic, it seems like a perfectly reasonable arguement to me.
#4 Mysteria Jul 02, 2011 16:52:51	Was your DM aware of the fact that all you wanted the thug to do was sheathe his weapon and have to redraw it? He might have interpreted it as you wanting to completely remove him from the fight and might have disallowed it on that presumption.
#5 tequila_sunrise Jul 03, 2011 0:59:13	Was your DM aware of the fact that all you wanted the thug to do was sheathe his weapon and have to redraw it? He might have interpreted it as you wanting to completely remove him from the fight and might have disallowed it on that presumption. This is exactly what I'm thinking. As a DM it's easy to fall into an all-or-nothing mindset about spells, and mind-control in particular. As a player too; Gar's DM may have been thinking the same thing as Gar. ("Sheathing and then redrawing a weapon is a reasonable result of this spell.") He may have decided to just say no on the chance that a player would get in a huff over it. ("He's redrawing his weapon?! But the spell worked!!")
#6 flamespire Jul 06, 2011 20:10:37	For mind-affecting spells, the ruling ultimately rests on the DM's shoulders, as the DM is really the only one who knows how the NPCs will react to your roleplaying, or what the NPCs modivations are. For all you know, maybe the enemy boss was paying the thugs ALOT of money to kill off the party. Beyond that reason, individual DMs will act according to their styles. Some DMs are adaptable, and ready to take on anything their players throw at them, even if it messes with thier encounters, and some DMs must have control over every aspect of the encounter/world, and suddenly moving an NPC foe to be an NPC ally seems incomprehensible to these people. That and control spells like Suggestion and the like require alot of interpretation, and the DM can interpret them far differently than you can. Case and point: I once played a control mage with a relatively new DM, in one of our first battles, I cast a Suggestion on an enemy and followed it up with a natural 20 on Bluff, telling him that his allies were shapeshifters and that we were his actual allies. The DM ruled that the enemy would attack his former allies and every PC that had attacked him thus far (which was pretty much everybody but me) .
#7 salla Jul 06, 2011 20:20:58	I throw my hat into the 'that was a more than reasonable request/command/order' camp. On the other paw, this demonstrates amply why I never cast mind-affecting spells or illusions then I played 3e.  The range of adjucation from 'completely useless' to 'getting away with murder' made them too unreliable and unpredictable.
#8 draco1119 Jul 06, 2011 20:56:25	I throw my hat into the 'that was a more than reasonable request/command/order' camp. On the other paw, this demonstrates amply why I never cast mind-affecting spells or illusions then I played 3e.  The range of adjucation from 'completely useless' to 'getting away with murder' made them too unreliable and unpredictable. You guys are just asking for too much.  I've been using Command since the days of AD&D.  "Die" is a very effective way to take them out of the fight for a round.  Since you can only use one word, and you can't actually kill them, it just makes them drop like a stone.  And since that was an actual example from the AD&D PHB's spell description, it's been really hard to argue against.
#9 crowscape Jul 06, 2011 22:54:00	No, your command wasn't unreasonable. However, if I was DMing it, he wouldn't have sheathed his sword based on your command. Instead, he would have taken a defensive posture while he haggled with his boss/colleagues for an increase in pay. It would have likely taken 1 or 2 rounds, assuming no one else did anything to directly threaten him, before he was back in the fight, which should have given you a decent bang for your spell casting buck.
#10 mesinock Jul 15, 2011 17:00:54	My question is, how experienced is your DM? I ask this because adjucating mind affecting spells is probably one of the most difficult tasks for a fledgling DM. Your DM may have thought that your expections where too high. This probably due to his/her inexperience. Talk with your DM out side of game play and find out what his/her expectations are for such things vs. your expectations. From there you build a footing on which to work from in the future. Keep gaming and have fun.