spell failure

[limejuicepowder]

Do spellcasters know when one of their spells has been resisted? Failure is rather obvious when it comes to damaging spells, but what about enchantments, like charm person? I think it would be cool to have a quick-thinking villian pretend that the charm person (or similar) spell worked, allowing him to get close/suprise attack/etc etc.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Do spellcasters know when one of their spells has been resisted? Failure is rather obvious when it comes to damaging spells, but what about enchantments, like charm person? I think it would be cool to have a quick-thinking villian pretend that the charm person (or similar) spell worked, allowing him to get close/suprise attack/etc etc.



Succeeding on a Saving Throw A creature that successfully saves against a spell that has no obvious physical effects feels a hostile force or a tingle, but cannot deduce the exact nature of the attack. Likewise, if a creature’s saving throw succeeds against a targeted spell you sense that the spell has failed. You do not sense when creatures succeed on saves against effect and area spells.

Yes you know, I believe the 3.0 PHB even mentioned charm person as an example. So your trick doesn't quite work. However... protection from alignment surpresses charm effects it doesn't negate them.

Here's a situation that came up in a campaign of mine. The cleric suppressed the dominate on a PC via protection from evil. I then had the cleric make a spellcraft check(which he failed as he had no ranks). The villain fled a little over ten minutes later the PC's are still persuing him when the BBEG reappears and orders the fighter to attack the party.

I then explained that protection from evil didn't negate the domination it meerly suppressed it until the duration expired. The cleric failed the spellcraft check thus I did not remind him of that little drawback.

[Dimers]

Check out the Spelltouched feat False Pretenses (http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/feat:false-pretenses) from Unearthed Arcana.