Alefiend
2012-02-21, 02:29 AM
I've been playing D&D for a very long time, but there's something I've never quite been able to get my head around. Spells from the Enchantment school—specifically the charm and compulsion subtypes—are made for casters who want to get their way without resorting to force. But in order to use them, one must take an obvious and potentially hostile action, to wit casting the spell. This should raise problems.
1. These spells generally allow a saving throw, and while it's typically not hard to make the save DC beyond the easy reach of most NPCs, the chance of failure is still there. If the NPC is a powerful individual, perhaps a former adventurer, the success chance drops considerably.
2. They are typically single-target affairs, which means they are nearly useless if your target isn't alone. Thus, it's easily negated by refusing to be alone with the caster—easy enough to arrange for any NPC who has something the PCs want and is important enough to not murder.
3. They have significant limits on what they can persuade/force the victim to do, and trying to overreach those limits grants a new save with bonuses at best, and a breaking of the effect at worst. Players are notorious for asking too much of the spells they cast.
4. Casting spells in social settings is something that should be viewed with suspicion at the very least, unless you already implicitly trust the caster—it's the equivalent of waving a gun around in public. Stilled, silent, or otherwise covert casting helps with this, but it moves the point of utility for the spell back several caster levels. Distracting the target and any witnesses can also work, but such methods are hardly reliable and are likely to lead to comic levels of failure when put in the hands of our rich, violent hobos.
For these reasons and more, I've always been wary of playing wizards who made use of charm spells. If I'm right about my points, these spells should be nearly unworkable in a reasonable situation, being blunt instruments rather than the subtle tools you'd expect.
Despite this, people sing the praises of bards, beguilers, and enchantment specialists in social settings. What am I failing to understand?
1. These spells generally allow a saving throw, and while it's typically not hard to make the save DC beyond the easy reach of most NPCs, the chance of failure is still there. If the NPC is a powerful individual, perhaps a former adventurer, the success chance drops considerably.
2. They are typically single-target affairs, which means they are nearly useless if your target isn't alone. Thus, it's easily negated by refusing to be alone with the caster—easy enough to arrange for any NPC who has something the PCs want and is important enough to not murder.
3. They have significant limits on what they can persuade/force the victim to do, and trying to overreach those limits grants a new save with bonuses at best, and a breaking of the effect at worst. Players are notorious for asking too much of the spells they cast.
4. Casting spells in social settings is something that should be viewed with suspicion at the very least, unless you already implicitly trust the caster—it's the equivalent of waving a gun around in public. Stilled, silent, or otherwise covert casting helps with this, but it moves the point of utility for the spell back several caster levels. Distracting the target and any witnesses can also work, but such methods are hardly reliable and are likely to lead to comic levels of failure when put in the hands of our rich, violent hobos.
For these reasons and more, I've always been wary of playing wizards who made use of charm spells. If I'm right about my points, these spells should be nearly unworkable in a reasonable situation, being blunt instruments rather than the subtle tools you'd expect.
Despite this, people sing the praises of bards, beguilers, and enchantment specialists in social settings. What am I failing to understand?