Charm Person discussion - how flexible is it?

[Segev]

In another thread, this came up:



What does Diplomacy have to do with a Spell that sets the target's disposition to Friendly for, the duration? You can't make them Helpful or even Fanatic, they're stuck at Friendly until the end of the Spell.

This actually is an interesting point. The spell charm person specifies that it makes the creature view you as a trusted friend and ally, and gives the mechanical effect of this as: "treat the target as Friendly."

I usually have assumed this was a baseline below which they couldn't go without the spell breaking (as by an attack or it ending), but that you could use Diplomacy or other means to raise it. However, Threadnaught seems to have a point: it doesn't say "raise his attitude to at least Friendly;" it says to treat him as Friendly.

Does this mean that a charmed person is, even if they were Helpful or Fanatic before, suddenly only Friendly? Is charm like darkness, in that it ironically can go the opposite direction from what one expects (as darkness "sheds shadowy illumination" which would actually make a pitch dark room brighter)?

Are you unable to make those who are charmed any better disposed towards you than Friendly?

I believe one of my favorite tricks still works: hypnotism, as another spell, says to treat them as two attitude levels better for purposes of a request. If you treat them as Friendly for the charm, then as two attitudes better for the request, that should work. It's just two magics interacting, and you're not really changing the attitude overall. But wouldn't the same apply to Diplomacy? So then, does one of the spells override the other? Or is charm mutable despite saying what, precisely, you set the target at?



Finally, I still think Threadnaught is mistaken in one respect. He was bringing this set-to-Friendly feature up to explain why the charmed individuals wouldn't be persuaded to be cooperative or would be angry afterwards. Diplomacy still works on the targets: treating them as friendly, use Diplomacy to raise their attitude towards you at that DC multiple times during the hours you have them charmed, and by the end, their base attitude will be higher than Friendly.

And charm itself specifies that, while charmed, the targets can be talked in to doing just about anything you want them to (short of suicide) by winning an opposed Charisma check.

Still, it's an interesting question: if you charm your fanatical devotee, does he suddenly become MERELY Friendly, requiring opposed Charisma checks to get him to things his Fanaticism would make automatic? (It says "to get them to do things they wouldn't normally do." Is that "normally, without being charmed," or "normally, if they were Friendly without magic?")

[Troacctid]

Yes, Charm is kinda weird in that it makes them act friendly even if they were helpful before. Presumably this is because they're a little dazed by the influence of the enchantment and not really thinking clearly.

Fanatical, by the way, is 3.0 material that was not carried over to 3.5. It was written out of the Diplomacy rules in the update; the 3.5 attitude tables don't include it.

Furthermore, you cannot improve an NPC's attitude more than once. The Diplomacy rules are explicit on that.

[ShaneMRoth]

...
Are you unable to make those who are charmed any better disposed towards you than Friendly?

I believe so.

In addition to reading the text on Charm Person, take a glance at this text on the Charm sub-school...


Charm
A charm spell changes how the subject views you, typically making it see you as a good friend.

So, if their attitude towards you was Helpful before, it becomes Friendly now. And no amount of Diplomacy from you, or anyone else, is going to change that until the spell ends.

When you are casting Charm Person on someone who was already Friendly, that may seem to be redundant, but you are magically locking them into that 'attitude' for the duration of the spell. Meaning you could do some things that person would really find objectionable and that person is still locked into a friendly attitude.



I believe one of my favorite tricks still works: hypnotism, as another spell, says to treat them as two attitude levels better for purposes of a request. If you treat them as Friendly for the charm, then as two attitudes better for the request, that should work. It's just two magics interacting, and you're not really changing the attitude overall. But wouldn't the same apply to Diplomacy? So then, does one of the spells override the other? Or is charm mutable despite saying what, precisely, you set the target at?

The wording of Hypnotism isn't two levels higher...


While the subject is fascinated by this spell, it reacts as though it were two steps more friendly in attitude.


Not two steps more Helpful...

Not two steps more Fanatical...

Not two steps higher...

Two steps more Friendly...

As in two steps closer to Friendly...



Finally, I still think Threadnaught is mistaken in one respect. He was bringing this set-to-Friendly feature up to explain why the charmed individuals wouldn't be persuaded to be cooperative or would be angry afterwards. Diplomacy still works on the targets: treating them as friendly, use Diplomacy to raise their attitude towards you at that DC multiple times during the hours you have them charmed, and by the end, their base attitude will be higher than Friendly.

And charm itself specifies that, while charmed, the targets can be talked in to doing just about anything you want them to (short of suicide) by winning an opposed Charisma check.

The spell specifies that an opposed Charisma check is required to get a Charmed person to do something that they "wouldn't ordinarily do."

Set aside things "just short of suicide"... that includes things as mundane as getting that person to try a food he hates... "c'mon, just try it" requires an opposed Charisma Check, too...



Still, it's an interesting question: if you charm your fanatical devotee, does he suddenly become MERELY Friendly, requiring opposed Charisma checks to get him to things his Fanaticism would make automatic? (It says "to get them to do things they wouldn't normally do." Is that "normally, without being charmed," or "normally, if they were Friendly without magic?")



This question is interesting for other reasons.

Why you would cast a Charm Person on someone who already had a Helpful or Fanatic attitude towards you?

If you cast Invisibility on someone, and then cast Improved Invisibility on them... are they more invisible? Twice as invisible?

I would adjudicate it like this: if a player insists on bringing two Enchantment spells into play on the same subject, then it falls to me to choose which spell effect plays.

(A player who does this in the middle of play, without giving a DM a head's up, is insisting that the DM exercise full and arbitrary discretion. But in the context of this discussion, this is not the case.)

With the full benefit of foresight, how might this play?

Charm effects seem like they would yield to Compulsion effects regardless the order in which the spells were cast.

You have a Charmed Person and then you Hypnotize that person?

Okay, that person's attitude is now... two steps closer to Friendly... so it's still Friendly. The Charm Person effect yields to the Hypnotism effect.

Attitude remains Friendly, but the actions are informed by the Hypnotism spell's text for the duration of the Hypnotism spell. You make your one request, which is all this spell entitles you to make of the character.

Once the Hypnotism spell is over, the person remains Friendly to you, and the Charm Person spell remains in effect.

The character doesn't remember that you Hypnotized him.

The character does remember that you cast the Charm person spell.

And even if that character doesn't know what Charm Person is, or how it works, he does know that you cast a spell, and then his entire attitude towards you changed and didn't budge... and he is entitled to use his unaltered memories of what you did... and what you persuaded him to do... while that spell was in effect to inform his future attitude towards you.

[Duke of Urrel]

The spell charm person specifies that it makes the creature view you as a trusted friend and ally, and gives the mechanical effect of this as: "treat the target as Friendly."

I usually have assumed this was a baseline below which they couldn't go without the spell breaking (as by an attack or it ending), but that you could use Diplomacy or other means to raise it. However, Threadnaught seems to have a point: it doesn't say "raise his attitude to at least Friendly;" it says to treat him as Friendly.

Does this mean that a charmed person is, even if they were Helpful or Fanatic before, suddenly only Friendly? Is charm like darkness, in that it ironically can go the opposite direction from what one expects (as darkness "sheds shadowy illumination" which would actually make a pitch dark room brighter)?

Are you unable to make those who are charmed any better disposed towards you than Friendly?

I believe we can argue at least that the description of the Charm Person spell offers the spellcaster a means to influence the subject further, namely by winning an opposed Charisma check. I interpret the phrase "to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do" to mean to make your Friendly subject behave as a Helpful one.

I believe it is not usually possible to influence a charmed creature by means of Diplomacy skill, at least not with respect to the Charm spell itself. I consider it an important side-effect of every Charm spell that the subject does not believe that he or she has been charmed. (I make an exception to this rule only when the subject makes a Spellcraft check at DC 26, in which case the subject has proof that he or she has been charmed and may assume hostile intent on the part of the enchanter, so that the charm is instantly broken.) However, if an enchanter charms an ally of yours and makes him or her a tempting proposal, I allow you to make a Diplomacy check, opposed by the enchanter's Diplomacy check, to persuade your ally that doing what the enchanter proposes is not such a good idea. This house rule of mine is an exception both to the general rule (my house rule, or at least my house interpretation of the RAW) that I don't allow charmed creatures to be affected by Diplomacy skill and to the general rule (which I believe is implied by the RAW) that PCs cannot use Diplomacy to influence other PCs.


I believe one of my favorite tricks still works: hypnotism, as another spell, says to treat them as two attitude levels better for purposes of a request. If you treat them as Friendly for the charm, then as two attitudes better for the request, that should work. It's just two magics interacting, and you're not really changing the attitude overall. But wouldn't the same apply to Diplomacy? So then, does one of the spells override the other? Or is charm mutable despite saying what, precisely, you set the target at?

Here's the argument that you must overcome in order to pull off this trick. You must persuade the dungeon master that the Charm Person spell and the Hypnotism spell don't run afoul of the non-stacking rule. If we consider these two spells to have the same effect, namely a change in your subject's attitude, then when you combine the two spells, their effects cannot stack, but only the stronger effect manifests itself. Therefore, if you first charm an Indifferent person, so that you can treat his or her attitude as Friendly, and then hypnotise that person, so that he or she reacts to your hypnotic suggestion as if two steps more favorable toward you, your DM may easily rule that both spells have the same effect on a creature that is still basically Indifferent toward you, but that since the Hypnotism spell is stronger with respect to your hypnotic suggestion, your subject reacts to it as if Helpful (that is, two steps higher than Indifferent) rather than Friendly. On the other hand, if your subject's original attitude was Hostile, your DM might rule that the Charm Person spell is the stronger spell, so that Hypnotism cannot make him or her react to any hypnotic suggestion with any better than an Indifferent attitude.


Finally, I still think Threadnaught is mistaken in one respect. He was bringing this set-to-Friendly feature up to explain why the charmed individuals wouldn't be persuaded to be cooperative or would be angry afterwards. Diplomacy still works on the targets: treating them as friendly, use Diplomacy to raise their attitude towards you at that DC multiple times during the hours you have them charmed, and by the end, their base attitude will be higher than Friendly.

And charm itself specifies that, while charmed, the targets can be talked in to doing just about anything you want them to (short of suicide) by winning an opposed Charisma check.

I agree that the opposed Charisma check offers you some more persuasive power, but I believe that this power is very limited, because it replaces the possibility of using Diplomacy skill. In other words, you can make your Friendly subject Helpful with respect to your proposal if you win an opposed Charisma check, but not if you make a Diplomacy check at DC 20, because I agree with Threadnaught that this option is generally closed to you. I also think it would be reasonable to say that anybody other than you may still influence a NPC whom you have charmed by making a Diplomacy check. This wouldn't change the person's attitude toward you, but it would change the person's attitude toward the one using Diplomacy skill.


Still, it's an interesting question: if you charm your fanatical devotee, does he suddenly become MERELY Friendly, requiring opposed Charisma checks to get him to things his Fanaticism would make automatic? (It says "to get them to do things they wouldn't normally do." Is that "normally, without being charmed," or "normally, if they were Friendly without magic?")

I think that that argument against stacking that I proposed above applies when you try to use the Charm Person spell on a person who already has the attitude of a Fanatic toward you. I believe this person is still a Fanatic, because this person's attitude is in some respects as powerful as a Mind-Affecting enchantment. The rules don't say this, but I think it would be reasonable for a DM to make this a house rule. I also think it would be reasonable to say that any other enchanter may still influence someone who is a Fanatic toward you by casting the Charm Person spell. This wouldn't change the person's attitude toward you, but it would change the person's attitude toward the enchanter.

[Jowgen]

The target does get set to default-friendly. The thing is, being reduced from Helpful has no practical effect thanks to the "would normally do" clause. Rules Compendium and the mental-control articles on the WotC website carify rather nicely that "would normally do" refers to the character free of mental control, so if a character is normally helpful, even if he's technically friendly, he'll still do anything he would as a helpful character when asked.

If some other kind of magic tries to change that attitude, we have a conflicting mental-control effects case, so opposed charisma check... probably against oneself, which I believe means one can choose to fail whichever one doesn't want? Either way, one effect on attitude ends up over-riding the other while both are active at the same time.

Hypnotism is an interesting case, in that it permanently changes attitude towards a specific request after it's duration has run its course, so it's attitude improvement can be stacked if the proper order is observed I believe. However, improvement via diplomacy is as always limited to 1 try.

I personally hate the rules for Fanatic and would love it if they could be disregarded due to update, but I think that their omission from the 3.5 rules doesn't technically means their abolition (i.e. technically no conflict, so both ruleset stand).

[LokeyITP]

Furthermore, you cannot improve an NPC's attitude more than once. The Diplomacy rules are explicit on that.
SRD miss an update (there's a call for GM adjudication for retry but it's not explicitly disallowed)? Per that, you can still break the world at level 1 unless you're on the planet of the zombies.

[ShaneMRoth]

What are the implications of the appearance of the Fanatic attitude in the Epic portion of the SRD?

[LokeyITP]

Minor annoyance. It means you can't throw infinity diplo scores around since helpful is much better than fanatic (they're your super best friend forever, fanatic has an escape clause).

Maybe good for winning low level vs matches, if you use a language they understand and they aren't mind blanked, mindless or "alien intelligence," as long as you don't get one shotted before you can act you win. Later levels, the whole enchantment school exists to say you walk around with mind blank 24/10, you're somebody's mind slave eventually.

[Sagetim]

I've always seen charm person as 'kind of useful, but probably going to bite you in the ass if you try to rely on it or use it too much'. First off, to me charm person is like mind control. You are imposing on someone's free will, and if you're doing that for your own convenience, you're going to start walking towards neutral evil if you keep doing it over and over again. Even if you're doing it a lot, for the right reasons (saving a town, charming a person to get them to leave a dangerous situation, insert heroic reason here). It's still morally quesitonable to me. Which, to me, makes it a bad tool. Factor in that it's a first level spell, will saves, and a limited valid target type are involved, and you have a spell that isn't super useful in my opinion.

However, how breakable is it? what could you really do with it? Well, if you raising a kid you could charm them and make an opposed charisma to get them to eat their veggies. In the long term, they might even appreciate the fact that you made them eat healthy even if it required resorting to magic. I wouldn't call it good parenting, but it's the kind of thing that could crop up in a dnd setting. In a similar vein, you could force someone into an arranged marriage that they were kind of blase' about. Not directly opposed, which would require more*, but someone with cold feet about a marriage could find that their sorcerer best man talking them into it at the last minute lead to the happiest night of their life. Or that the arranged marriage that they didn't feel strongly about one way or another was something they signed to a mantra of 'mother knows best'.

*If you were creative in it, a parent could combine coercion with a charm spell to try and shift their child's attitude about something from 'not going to do it' to 'grudgingly doing it'. Things like 'will remove you from the inheritance' could quickly shift someone's attitude about an arranged marriage to being within the realm of possibility, and allow for an opposed charisma check with a charm person spell.

Yes, I do seem to keep going back to arranged marriages, but I'm just trying to stay outside the box of 'kicking in someone's door and breaking their stuff then charm personing your way out of it'. The potential is there in the charm person spell to use it as a booster in more subtle forms of social manipulation. The problem being that to make use of those you're probably going to need to do a lot of roleplaying to set the situations up.

[Segev]

Fanatical, by the way, is 3.0 material that was not carried over to 3.5. It was written out of the Diplomacy rules in the update; the 3.5 attitude tables don't include it.As noted elsewhere, it's not contradicted by any 3.5 material, and is even in the SRD.


What are the implications of the appearance of the Fanatic attitude in the Epic portion of the SRD?
None, because the epic uses of skills are explicitly available to anybody who can make the skill DC, regardless of their level.


Furthermore, you cannot improve an NPC's attitude more than once. The Diplomacy rules are explicit on that.Hm. Let me look that up; there are some problems that might arise from it...


Check
You can change the attitudes of others (nonplayer characters) with a successful Diplomacy check; see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs. (snip)

Action
Changing others’ attitudes with Diplomacy generally takes at least 1 full minute (10 consecutive full-round actions). In some situations, this time requirement may greatly increase. A rushed Diplomacy check can be made as a full-round action, but you take a -10 penalty on the check.

Try Again
Optional, but not recommended because retries usually do not work. Even if the initial Diplomacy check succeeds, the other character can be persuaded only so far, and a retry may do more harm than good. If the initial check fails, the other character has probably become more firmly committed to his position, and a retry is futile.
I...don't see explicit forbiddance. The closest is that "retries usually do not work," and "the other character can be persuaded only so far." This gives the DM wiggle-room to prevent chain-diplomacy, certainly, but it is not a rigid "you cannot do it."

This actually works well enough, in most games, because it would permit longer-term efforts. Persuade somebody to be Neutral the first time you meet them. Next time, be friendly and try to raise them to Friendly. Then keep being friendly and eventually try to raise them, at another encounter in the future, to Helpful. This seems both within the spirit and letter of the rules, and a reasonable way to model real-world friendship-building.




I believe we can argue at least that the description of the Charm Person spell offers the spellcaster a means to influence the subject further, namely by winning an opposed Charisma check. I interpret the phrase "to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do" to mean to make your Friendly subject behave as a Helpful one.Not a bad interpretation. Combines well with another mention that "ordinarily" means "without the Charm effect," so your Helpful or Fanatical friend would still do Helpful or Fanatical things even without the Cha check, since he "ordinarily" would do so. In fact, one could use charm person to try to talk an overly Helpful or Fanatical ally into not doing something; reducing him to Friendly and then opposed cha-checking him could get him to, for example, not risk his life to save yours, when he normally would. This has interesting dramatic (as in narrative drama) applications.


I believe it is not usually possible to influence a charmed creature by means of Diplomacy skill, at least not with respect to the Charm spell itself. I consider it an important side-effect of every Charm spell that the subject does not believe that he or she has been charmed.While, again, a reasonable house rule, in this case it seems to actually require injecting more than mere interpretation, but rather an active house rule. Unless you have some textual backup for it?


(I make an exception to this rule only when the subject makes a Spellcraft check at DC 26, in which case the subject has proof that he or she has been charmed and may assume hostile intent on the part of the enchanter, so that the charm is instantly broken.)This is definitely a house rule, and it makes Spellcraft too powerful as it allows it to be an automatic substitute for a Will save. Charm person is broken if the spellcaster or his allies take overtly hostile action. Merely having charmed you is not overtly hostile; it's quite possible the caster's only goal is to make sure you don't go for your weapons without so much as listening to him. And, charmed as you are, expecting you to listening to him is hardly a hostile thing.

You might still warn your allies that you've been charmed; you're Friendly, not Helpful. Being charmed, you'll not want them to attack him or anything, but you know they'd want to know. You like this guy, though, so you hope he's going to prove that his charm isn't hostile at all.


Here's the argument that you must overcome in order to pull off this trick. You must persuade the dungeon master that the Charm Person spell and the Hypnotism spell don't run afoul of the non-stacking rule. If we consider these two spells to have the same effect, namely a change in your subject's attitude, then when you combine the two spells, their effects cannot stack, but only the stronger effect manifests itself.They're not the same spell, therefore they stack by the default rule (which specifically calls out the same source; different spells are different sources). Furthermore, hypnotism expressly changes your attitude; it doesn't mention a "base" attitude or anything like it. It takes what you are and treats you as two steps more favorable.

(Another poster in this thread has pointed out that the explicit text is "two steps more friendly," which is a pretty strong argument, actually. It doesn't capitalize it, leaving room to question whether it's the game term or not. It also creates strange situations when the target was initially Indifferent or Helpful: two steps in a direction would overshoot "Friendly" from there. It doesn't say "up to two steps," it says "two steps.")


I agree that the opposed Charisma check offers you some more persuasive power, but I believe that this power is very limited, because it replaces the possibility of using Diplomacy skill. In other words, you can make your Friendly subject Helpful with respect to your proposal if you win an opposed Charisma check, but not if you make a Diplomacy check at DC 20, because I agree with Threadnaught that this option is generally closed to you. I also think it would be reasonable to say that anybody other than you may still influence a NPC whom you have charmed by making a Diplomacy check. This wouldn't change the person's attitude toward you, but it would change the person's attitude toward the one using Diplomacy skill.Again, I'm not seeing support for this in the rules. It's a perfectly valid house rule, and probably quite reasonable. But it's not a "this is the way it is" setting.

As it is, Diplomacy seems to work just fine on people who are charmed, the only question being whether it affects their magically-induced Friendly state before the charm wears off.

(Conversely, if Diplomacy can make a charmed character Helpful or Fanatical, it could possibly make them Indifferent or worse if it was bad enough! Which would be funny: you're so crass and unpleasant that even those magically charmed to like you are merely indifferent to you.)

[ShaneMRoth]

The trouble with an ostensibly RAW read of Charm Person, is that RAW debates on this forum seem to consistently assume that adjudication by a referee must be excluded from consideration.

The problem with is that it falls to a referee to decide what the subject of the spell considers a Friendly attitude on a case-by-case basis.

A Hafling NPC might consider it Friendly to offer the caster a nice hearty meal and set up the guest room for her.

A Bugbear NPC might consider it Friendly to not eat the caster and enjoy her company for the duration of the spell, like a pig that won him a prize at the Bugbear County Fair.

The only thing I'd be willing to consistently assume is that a Charmed humanoid would cease hostilities toward the caster. Beyond that, referee adjudication become necessary.

[Duke of Urrel]

I...don't see explicit forbiddance. The closest is that "retries usually do not work," and "the other character can be persuaded only so far." This gives the DM wiggle-room to prevent chain-diplomacy, certainly, but it is not a rigid "you cannot do it."

This actually works well enough, in most games, because it would permit longer-term efforts. Persuade somebody to be Neutral the first time you meet them. Next time, be friendly and try to raise them to Friendly. Then keep being friendly and eventually try to raise them, at another encounter in the future, to Helpful. This seems both within the spirit and letter of the rules, and a reasonable way to model real-world friendship-building.

I think re-trying a Diplomacy check is okay only if you have added a new rank of Diplomacy skill since your last check. That's how I exploit the wiggle-room that the rules give me as a DM.


While, again, a reasonable house rule, in this case it seems to actually require injecting more than mere interpretation, but rather an active house rule. Unless you have some textual backup for it?

Much of what I have proposed here is pure and simple house-ruling. This goes for a lot of what I write in these forums. I always have an ulterior motive, which is to see what the Playground thinks of my house rules.

I agree with ShaneMRoth's last posting to some degree. The SRD does give some guidelines about what "Indifferent" or "Friendly" means, so it's not all subjective. However, I believe Enchantment spells and Illusion spells rely heavily upon the dungeon master's interpretation and, indeed, house rules. I try to respect the RAW, but I believe very strongly that they leave some unresolved questions that only the DM can answer.


As it is, Diplomacy seems to work just fine on people who are charmed, the only question being whether it affects their magically-induced Friendly state before the charm wears off.

(Conversely, if Diplomacy can make a charmed character Helpful or Fanatical, it could possibly make them Indifferent or worse if it was bad enough! Which would be funny: you're so crass and unpleasant that even those magically charmed to like you are merely indifferent to you.)

Can Diplomacy work on someone who is charmed? This is one of the questions that I believe the RAW leave unresolved. How does the Charm Person spell compare to Diplomacy skill? Which is more powerful?

Here's my own partial answer – by my own admission, a house rule. I believe a Diplomacy check that achieves less than the Charm Person spell is weaker than the Charm Person spell, but a Diplomacy check that achieves more than the Charm Person spell is stronger. This is another reason why I make it a house rule that a Fanatic stays a Fanatic when he or she is charmed. However, I don't believe a poor Diplomacy check can affect a Friendly charmed person – unless it is poor enough to reduce this person's attitude two whole steps downward. Of course, you don't have to use reverse Diplomacy to break a charm; you can simply show Hostile intent, with no skill check required.


This is definitely a house rule, and it makes Spellcraft too powerful as it allows it to be an automatic substitute for a Will save. Charm person is broken if the spellcaster or his allies take overtly hostile action. Merely having charmed you is not overtly hostile; it's quite possible the caster's only goal is to make sure you don't go for your weapons without so much as listening to him. And, charmed as you are, expecting you to listening to him is hardly a hostile thing.

You might still warn your allies that you've been charmed; you're Friendly, not Helpful. Being charmed, you'll not want them to attack him or anything, but you know they'd want to know. You like this guy, though, so you hope he's going to prove that his charm isn't hostile at all.

This is a good criticism, and I may change my house rule because of it. The Enchantment school is considered by many to be underpowered, and I dare say that Spellcraft is regarded by many to be overpowered. Maybe it would be better to say that a charmed person who knows that she is charmed is still able to assume positive intent on the part of the enchanter, because the subject of the Charm Person spell "perceives [the enchanter's] words and actions in the most favorable way." (This is why I post comments in these forums – to get good feedback like yours!)


They're not the same spell, therefore they stack by the default rule (which specifically calls out the same source; different spells are different sources). Furthermore, hypnotism expressly changes your attitude; it doesn't mention a "base" attitude or anything like it. It takes what you are and treats you as two steps more favorable.

(Another poster in this thread has pointed out that the explicit text is "two steps more friendly," which is a pretty strong argument, actually. It doesn't capitalize it, leaving room to question whether it's the game term or not. It also creates strange situations when the target was initially Indifferent or Helpful: two steps in a direction would overshoot "Friendly" from there. It doesn't say "up to two steps," it says "two steps.")

Here's an explication of my reasoning – all of which goes well beyond the RAW, though I believe such excursions are sometimes necessary.

1. When you combine two spells of the Illusion school that are different, but do similar things, what happens? Suppose you cast first the Disguise Self spell and then the Veil spell. The first spell doesn't constrain the second, because it's just an illusion, so the stronger spell, the Veil spell, simply makes the weaker spell, the Disguise Self spell, irrelevant. Conversely, suppose you cast first the Veil spell and then the Disguise Self spell. The Veil spell still has the stronger effect and still prevails until it expires, at which time the Disguise Self spell manifests itself. Does this sound reasonable?

2. Here's a different case, using two other different but similar spells. Suppose you cast first the Alter Self spell and then the Polymorph spell. Again, I believe the first spell doesn't constrain the second, so the stronger spell prevails, and that is the Polymorph spell. However – here's where my judgement takes a different turn – suppose you first cast the Polymorph spell and turn yourself into a troll, then you cast the Alter Self spell. Does the Polymorph spell constrain the Alter Self spell? Yes, I believe it does, because these spells make real changes, so that once you are Large-sized and have the Giant type, the Alter Self spell can only transform you into a different Large-sized creature of the Giant type. You can't change yourself into a dwarf with the strength of a troll. (At least, you can't when I am the dungeon master!)

3. Now, let's look at the Charm Person spell and the Hypnotism spell. There are two ways to imagine how the two spells combine. The Hypnotism spell is potentially stronger than the Charm Person spell, at least with respect to the enchanter's hypnotic suggestion, because it can make the subject two steps friendlier, which is a bigger change in attitude than the Charm Person spell makes in a subject who is Indifferent to begin with. But do these two spells have "stackable" effects, like the two Transmutation spells I just mentioned, or does the stronger spell make the weaker one irrelevant, like the two Illusion spells I just mentioned?

I argue that the Charm Person spell and the Hypnotism spell are more like the Illusion spells than they are like the Transmutation spells, because they don't make real changes in a creature's attitude. The hypnotized subject "reacts as though it were two steps more friendly in attitude." The Charm Person spell allows the enchanter to "treat the target’s attitude as friendly." In neither case is the attitude change genuine or heartfelt. Therefore, I argue that the two Enchantment spells combine their effects like the two Illusion spells I mentioned above. In other words, I rule that only the stronger spell prevails.

Honest and intelligent dungeon masters may of course reach equally valid conclusions that differ from mine, on the basis of equally valid, but different lines of reasoning.

[Jowgen]

*pops up from his monitoring of this thread*

Okay, having read everything and reviewed all relevant text, this is my up-to-date RAW take on the matter.

The deciding, yet so far unmentioned, factor is that Charm Person and Hypnotism are from different subschools. Specifically charm and compulsion. There is one vital difference between the two: "A charmed creature retains free will but makes choices according to a skewed view of the charming creature" while "Compulsion overrides the subject’s free will in some way or simply changes the way the subject’s mind works".

The opposed charisma check for the charm seems like it contradicts the free-will statement, but really, I believe it simply represents pushing the skew of view a bit further to not only include the charmer but also the command he's given (i.e. skewed view of the charming command).

The fact that hypnotism is a compulsion means that the fascinate and the two-step-more-friendly reaction during the fascinate is an over-riding of the subject's free will. Once Hypnotism is over, the subject retains no memory and has its attitude towards one request permanently changed; meaning it's free will is restored but the way its mind works has been altered.

I think it's really quite beautiful that these two level 1 spells perfectly showcase the whole Enchantment school's base mechanics. :smallbiggrin:

But anyways, as per the distinction above, the two can generally both apply and (in some cases) stack their attitude improvements, as they affect the subject's mind in different ways; i.e. stacking subjects free will choice, with forced compulsion, with mind-mechanic alteration.

The question whether diplomacy can work in conjunction with any of this comes down to what part of this shabang one considers it to affect. I very much believe that it affects the free will element, as you're literally trying to influence the free-willed view the target has of you, which is the very same one that charm has magically skewed. By RAW, I believe this means that you can't further diplomacy a charmed creature; and a diplomacied creature defaults to "trusted friend and ally friendly" when charmed. You obviously can't diplomacy a Hypnotized creature while the compulsion is actively over-riding it's free will, but, once the compulsion has run it's course and altered the way the mind works, there is nothing preventing a diplomacy from affecting the mind's free will as normal.

Fanatic deserves special consideration due to how it counts as it's own mind-affecting enchantment effect. If we consider it to work by modulating perception and leaving free will intact like with Charms, then again we can't stack it with charm person any more than we can regular diplomacy. Really, the two just don't mix, as they're both mind-affecting mental control effects with conflicting effects.

Fanatic does seem like it would work in conjunction with the Hypnotism after-effects (so you can theoretically stack charm person in there by observing proper order/timing), but there is one tricky bit: hypnotism's after-effect only works in regards to 1 request as opposed to the enchanter as a whole. The target would only retain an attitude of Fanatic towards that particular request. Theoretically, a request of "fight for my cause" should work for all respects and purposes, but this is a thing were a DM can very easily pinch the shabang by arguing that you either need to improve the whole attitude, or that this is not a "bried and reasonable" request.

I personally would let it work if done well. By fluff, you're using charm to lower the targets resistance against you, take advantage of that as to use Hypnotism to change how the subject's mind works, all as to make them highly susceptible to your mundane influence. The hard limit of 1 + Cha days would still apply though, in my view, as the retained attitude has an inherent max duration under normal circumstances.

I think it's stage-chart time. :smallcool:

Stage 1: Subject has any given attitude towards Caster.
Stage 2: Charm. Subject's view of caster is magically skewed, free-will operates under "trusted ally friendly" assumption for duration of effect (Diplomacy is forestalled). Opposed charisma option given.
Stage 3: Hypnotism. Subject's free will over-ridden, subject forced to react in Friendly + 2 (i.e. Fanatic) manner (free willed attitude remains at friendly), but no notable effect as Fascinated condition applies for duration (potential mental control effect conflict)
Stage 3.5: Hypnotism request. Brief and reasonable request is made for long-lasting effect. DM adjudication applies.
Stage 4: Hypnotism duration ended. Subjects free will returns, both free willed and reactive attitude back at to Friendly. Free-willed attitude towards Hypnotism request is set at Fanatic for 1 + Cha days due to change in mind workings.
Stage 5: Charm duration ended. Subjects view of caster no longer magically skewed, returns to original. Fanatic attitude towards request remains until duration expires. Diplomacy once again usable for changing view of caster.

[Segev]

Thanks, all, for the in-depth analysis. I do like some of the house rules and explanations of how people would adjudicate it.

I agree, Shane, that DM judgment is needed when it comes to what a given attitude level means; that actually isn't house ruling at that point, because it is explicitly vauge. That said, there are guidelines which are clear enough that a given DM call could be considered a house rule: for instance, determining that "Friendly" meant "grudgingly doesn't eat you and merely throws you in prison" would be a house rule. No creature treats its friends that way unless they actively do something to piss it off. Even CE monsters treat their friends aimiably...though possibly not comfortably (boistrous back-slapping, sharing their delight at others' misery, offering to let them carve up the torture victim du jour...).

Conversely, a DM who over-interprets Friendly to mean the king's bodyguard turns on the monarch he has served loyally for years and brutally murders him for your approval is also house-ruling.

But within the bounds of what's described - that is, better than "indifferent" (so wanting you to at least be content) and worse than "helpful" (so not quite willing to go out of his way or incur some notable cost to himself) - "Friendly" can cover a lot of ground. For one person, it might include buying a meal (I and my friends often do this for each other), while another might find such a thing trying (either due to expense, or simply because he's a miserly person who doesn't spend money on mere friendly acquaintances without personal gain). It does almost certainly include willingness to hang out for a few minutes to chat - opening the door to Diplomacy checks (if you're not ruling that they don't work at all on charmed people) - and certainly offer aid that really costs them next to nothing ("Would you mind handing me that tool over there? I can't reach it and have to keep my finger on this knot.") because, hey, why not?


This also brings us to somebody's comment about the opposed Charisma rolls to get the charmed target to act in a way "other than he otherwise would." I think what that represents is less a magical function of the spell, and more a codified mechanic to get somebody who is already friendly to agree to do you a favor based on your own personal, non-magical charms, guile, wit, and persuasive efforts. That is, "oh, come on, you never know unless you try it, and it'll be more fun for me with a buddy; let's go to that strip club," on the paladin who tries to keep himself (or herself) chaste. (How you got a paladin to fail his save is your own good luck.) If he loses the opposed cha check, he'll go along with you, because you're a friend and you've guilted/cajoled/tempted him into it. You won't get him to absolutely violate his morals (so, perhaps, you couldn't get him to sleep with one of the girls there, if that were truly against his moral fiber), but you could probably get him to go.


As for comparing multiple illusion spells to hypnotism and charm interacting, I don't think that's comparable. Two illusions overlapping will either look really weird (if they're poorly meshed so one's poking out of the other in odd ways) or will have the one that's "on top" be the only one visible. If you're using disguise self to appear as an elf when you're really a half-orc, and then somebody else casts veil to make everyone look like dwarves, the veil overrides because it's on top. If somebody pierced the veil, they'd see you as an elf unless they also pierced your disguise self spell. (This can happen if they make their disbelief save against one but not the other, perhaps due to having one pointed out as an illusion. Most magical means of piercing it would see through both automatically, admittedly.)

Similarly, transformation magics generally run off of order of operations. Alter self checks your current type when you cast it. So if you've used Shapechange or been PAO'd into a Giant type, alter self will change you into another Giant. This is not one spell dominating another, but merely applying them in the order they were cast, to the states and conditions the prior ones left in place. (If you lost the effect giving you the Giant type, and were naturally a Humanoid, the alter self spell would fail because it no longer is making you into a valid form. If it were some version of the spell which let you keep choosing new shapes, however, for its duration, you could choose to become a new Humanoid at that point.)

Hypnotism and charm person seem to me to be similar: Hypnotism operates off of the current attitude, treating them as two better. Charm person sets an attitude. If you were to use hypnotism first, it would improve their attitude by 2...but then casting charm person would set them to Friendly, regardless of where hypnotism put them. Though the Fascination effect would remain, rendering it mostly moot, except for the one request. Which...might be "Friendly"-locked due to the interaction of the two spells.