Charm Person vs a stalker.

[SangoProduction]

Charm Person sets a target's attitude to friendly. This is regardless of its current attitude, assuming it fails the will save. Presumably, this would mean it even reduces the attitude, if they were at say....fanatic? However temporarily.

So, doing this would mean that a stalker would then have a lower attitude you, and stop stalking, yes? Assuming it is an affection-related stalking an not a vampire-like one.

[Duke of Urrel]

Charm Person sets a target's attitude to friendly. This is regardless of its current attitude, assuming it fails the will save. Presumably, this would mean it even reduces the attitude, if they were at say....fanatic? However temporarily.

So, doing this would mean that a stalker would then have a lower attitude you, and stop stalking, yes? Assuming it is an affection-related stalking an not a vampire-like one.

If I would your dungeon master, I would say three things.

Firstly, if somebody has an attitude of a Fanatic toward you, he or she will not stalk you. A Fanatic worshipfully adores you, and if you tell a Fanatic to leave you alone and go home, he or she will do it right away, hoping that you will come to visit soon and pining for you until you do – or until the Fanaticism wears off, whichever happens sooner.

Secondly, the Charm Person spell is not more powerful than real persuasive power, which is what Diplomacy skill is at high levels of proficiency. It won't change anything about somebody who is already Helpful or Fanatical toward you.

These are my own interpretations of the rules and do not carry the authority of the RAW.

The third thing I have to say is nothing but interpretation, but I think it's the right interpretation.

If somebody carnally desires you and feels so entitled to have you that he makes a pest of himself and hounds you everywhere you go – and this is what we mean by stalking behavior – this attitude is not that of a Fanatic, nor even that of a Helpful or even Friendly person. This person cares only about his own feelings, not about yours. I would consider this person's attitude toward you to be Indifferent at best, probably worse; a sexual harrasser would be Unfriendly, a sexual assailant or rapist absolutely Hostile. The Charm Person spell would actually make this person behave much better toward you, because if you successfully charmed him and then asked him to leave you alone, he would do this – as any real friend would.

[DreganHiregard]

I think you're actually quite onto something here Sango

Charm person does not Rasie attitude, but instead Sets it as you said. And a stalker could certainly sometimes qualify as someone who is fantically devoted to you. The stalker would have to be someone who wants to help you, even though they KNOW you're just Too sefless to ask for help. So it can't just be your typical celebrity stalker who wants to steal your garbage cause they get off on it. But if we're talking a yandere who thinks they're doing whats best for you, absolutely charm person could dramatically queel their passions. But remember a fantic gets a +1 bonus to will saves, aaand it actually counts as a mind effect, so I'd reccomend looking at how mind effects interact with eachother.

[Coretron03]

So this is the charm person equivalent of the darkness spell raising the brightness if it starts dark enough? I think you might of found something for the dysfunction handbook.

Edit: Nevermind, they already have it listed in the handbook from the 4th thread page 8.

[Inevitability]

I'm with Duke here. Stalking someone isn't an indication of a Fanatic attitude. Stalking someone because you desire their love is no different from stalking someone because you desire their money (also known as 'waiting for them to be alone so you can mug them'), and no DM in their right mind would make the second person anything but unfriendly or hostile.

[icefractal]

There are some attitudes that don't map well onto the single Hostile-Helpful continuum. Stalking would fall into Hostile in most cases, but what about someone who's just kind of annoying? In terms of how much they benefit you, Indifferent would be right, but calling someone who's obsessed "Indifferent" doesn't sound right.

And then there's the case, seen in various media, where the protagonist is trying to convince someone else not to sacrifice their life to protect them: "Bob, keep running, we can all escape!" "No, they're too close on our tail - I'm going to make a stand here and buy some time." *smashes bridge or something like that* "Bobbbbb!"
That doesn't seem like a "Helpful" attitude - they're doing the opposite of what you want! But neither do Hostile/Unfriendly/Indifferent fit.

Maybe a 2D chart, with "Hates <-> Loves" on one axis and "Ignores <-> Obeys" on the other, or something like that.

[Afgncaap5]

Yeah, I'm in the duke camp. The real-life term "fanatic" and the D&D term "fanatic" are different things, so even if you can call a stalker fanatical there's no way that that's a "beyond helpful" mindset. One of the reasons stalkers are a problem is that simply telling them you don't want them to stalk you doesn't persuade them to stop. Sometimes getting the government to *also* tell them this doesn't persuade them. Given the number of suspense movies, and nigh-horror movies, made about how unwilling a stalker can be to do what the stalked victim wants by just leaving them alone, it's clear to me that the game term "fanatic" isn't what's happening.

Now, I *will* say that it's a curious interaction that Charm Person doesn't raise an attitude level but instead sets the attitude level. There's theoretically a lot of use that that could be put to in certain highly specialized situations. However... I don't think this is one of them.