Quote Originally Posted by pendell
He's using the spell to keep his adventuring party alive in a hostile dungeon. That's a different kettle of fish entirely. It's the difference between stabbing a wandering monster with a sword and stabbing a civilian in the city street with the sword. The first is a battlefield-type situation in which life and limb are at risk. The second is a situation where all parties are at peace; resort to weapons or magic is uncalled for and unjustified.
The party wasn't in any immediate danger when Raistlin cast that spell. Nor had they even tried regular diplomacy. (Which might well have worked. Raistlin was doing pretty well impressing the gully dwarves with his sleight of hands tricks before he broke out the enchantment magic, so it's perfectly possible he could have won over the gully dwarves without the use of actual magic.)

Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
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Youre either misremembering or misreading what is going on. The plan wasn't for Bupu to sneak into the lair with the party, but show them where the secret entrance was while Raist caused a distraction. Bupu wasn't intended to be anywhere near the danger, except things went horribly wrong (as they do in a dungeon crawl).
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Fair enough. I just reread that part of the book, and you are correct that Bupu wasn't supposed to actually sneak into the lair with the party. Still, the plan was for Bupu to be with Raistlin while he caused a distraction (which was intended to get the attention of the dragon.) Being with someone who is trying to provoke a dragon is perhaps not quite as bad as outright sneaking into the dragon's lair, but it's still a really dangerous mission, and thus not the kind of thing that it is fair to ask someone to do after you have magically compelled them to adore you.


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Beyond which, the spell doesn't take away free will. Youre confusing it with Dominate Person. The spell simply causes the caster to be viewed as a friend, in a favorable light. Everything she did, she did of her own will for somebody she liked.
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And you don't think that magically rewriting someone's brain so that they see you as a friend is a massive subversion of their free will? Look at it this way, if someone slipped you a drug that made you think of them as your best friend, and while under the influence of that drug you gave them your most valuable possession and risked your life for them, are you really telling me you would not feel that you were horribly taken advantage of by them once the drug wore off? And that's what a charm spell is. No, it doesn't fully obliterate free will. (Even the Dominate spells can't do that.) But it definitely subverts free will by magically changing your feelings for another person.


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Raist didn't force her to do anything, magically or otherwise, that she wasn't already willing to do.
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He forced her to see him as a friend. Everything else flowed from that initial violation.


Quote Originally Posted by zimmerwald1915
I believe the argument that using magic to cause someone to view you as a friend is bad in the same way, if not necessarily to the same degree, as taking away someone's free will. I would extend it further - that any affirmative action you take to cause someone to view someone as a friend (i.e., giving compliments, doing favors, etc.) is bad in the same way and to the same degree as using magic to cause someone to view you as a friend.
I guess that would be the difference between the Friendship spell (which as you described it seems to just temporarily raise a person's charisma) and a Charm Person spell (which is a direct mental subversion of another person.) The former could certainly be viewed as deceptive (since it is creating a false impression of the spell caster), but it still seems much less invasive than the later (which is directly mind-altering.)