Dominated creatures

[Vendarien]

I was just wondering if there was a way to get a dominated creature to fight for you. Because it says in the description. "Obviously self-destructive orders are not carried out." and any form of combat is possibly self destructive. So what is a reliable way to make a dominated person or creature fight for you?

[Toliudar]

I suppose that a particularly harsh DM might rule otherwise, but I'd say that there's a big difference between "obviously self-destructive" and "potentially self-destructive". Fighting an obviously superior opponent (orc vs Solar) might count as an act of self-destruction, but striking out against an opponent in a fight that the opponent might consider winnable would, in my opinion, be well within the power of the spell.

[tyckspoon]

Any creature that was willing to fight against you clearly does not consider combat to be self-destructive to the degree where they will not do it, and so should be capable of fighting for you with the encouragement of a Dominate effect.

You're reading 'self-destructive' too broadly, I think, and keep in mind it says "obviously" self-destructive. People do things that are or potentially could be damaging to themselves all the time of their own will, including getting in fights.. if you can think of a stupid and dangerous thing you've seen somebody do on purpose, you can probably get a Dominated person to do it too. I'd use the benchmark of "Will this action cause immediate HP damage to the subject, and does the subject know this before performing the action?" If the answer is yes to both, then it's 'obviously self-destructive'. You can't tell a Dominated subject to go take a bath in a vat of acid, but you could tell him to go out on the narrow catwalk suspended over it to retrieve an item for you. Even if he has no Balance check worth speaking of and is somewhat likely to fall off said catwalk anyway.

[Cranthis]

If this is about my dominated guy, he generally wouldn't fight for us because he is a level 2, if I remember what our dm said. But generally, anything that's within 2 levels of us would also fight with us, should I make them.