Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Mornin'!
I'd honestly chalk that tweet up to how he would rule it at his table, not how it should be ruled at all tables. Crawford tweets often shoot from the hip and are not considered in rules arguments in these forums or the discord. I think a DM choosing to use "magic" as the reason the victim can pick you out of a line up, even if they never saw you, or saw you disguised as someone else is a perfectly valid reading.
Nice day for fishin'!
DMs can always do whatever they want. Hearing that Crawford's clarifications on the rules isn't given much weight is.... surprising? I mean, when the guy in charge of the rules says the rules mean x, it is surprising when people go... no, thats not what they mean. I totally get going, I don't like that so I'm doing it different - and that's valid provided the players know ahead of time so it isn't surprising. But, saying, no you're wrong about what the rules mean, to the guy who makes the rules.....
He's not in charge anymore.
We do need more Sage Advice, tho.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
huh, huh!
Like I said, he often shoots from the hip in those tweets, and has been contradicted when sage advice has come out on more than one occasion. I think this is why they don't give it much weight. Especially now with 2024 out and him not holding a position in the company any more, as Maedra pointed out.
Note that JC's tweets haven't been official since they started putting out official Safe Advice columns, they're just considered his opinions. He doesn't remember 100% of rules interactions and has been shown to be objectively wrong in his tweets on multiple occasions.
I'll take a whack at it. Pretty soon all these townspeople will start talking about how that sorcerer charmed them to make deals or whatnot, and just like a crooked politician will become hated and reviled as these poor souls spin each other up into a frenzy. Fireball or flee sounds like the likely outcome. Typical crowd mechanics for simple folk who distrust magic to begin with.
The issue is complicated.
Yes, Crawford should know better than any of us what the intention of the rules were and are. I've seen examples of rules being written so poorly that they read as being explicitly the opposite of what they intended, so I'm always willing to accept a "uh, that's not what we meant, let us rephrase that in a way that communicates our true intent". The cynic in me says that a lot of the rejection of his rulings is more about pride and desire to be "right" than anything else. It's an extremely common thing that people really don't like their opinions and so forth being described as opinions, house rules, etc...even when that's what they objectively are. Any suggestion that their mental image of the rules is not what they actually are (even when in direct contradiction to what's written in the book in front of them) gets vehemently rejected. Rejecting what the rules designer says on the matter is just par for the course with that.
What makes it really complicated is that Crawford also frequently "shot from the hip", as it was phrased earlier, and got things wrong. He also seemed to be trying to be sardonic as possible...which meant his responses didn't always actually clear things up or were just as confusing as the original rules being sought to be clarified. With that, it meant that there was always room for debate on whether his rulings were correct or not (or our parsing of his rulings), so sometimes you really couldn't just take his Tweet as the real interpretation. Sometimes the problem was that Crawford was wrong, and that means all of his rulings would be debated.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Charm Person conveys two benefits. One: the target cannot attack you. Two: you have advantage on skill checks in social interactions with the target. That's it. It's not mind control. It's not Dominate Person. If you cast it on someone, and then don't interact with them, you've wasted a spell slot for nothing. If you charm a shopkeeper, you can get advantage on a persuasion roll to get a 10% discount, but you're not getting anything for free. The target perceives you as a friend, not as their one and only bestest friend and savior.
You are vastly overestimating the capabilities of the spell. Please reread the spell description and the definitions of "charmed" and "friendly".
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
maybe but I think it is pretty obvious that was what the spell was saying from the get go. The idea that the spell now gives the target infinite true sight that can penetrate any disguise you ever place upon yourself at the time you cast the spell or use in the future is pretty obviously not the intent or what they meant by knowing you cast it.
Charm Person
It says in the spell description quite clearly that the person knows that it was the caster. Doesn't matter what they look like, smell like, or anything. They know.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
But it doesn't say they know what you look like. It gives them no supernatural information or sense about who you are, only that you charmed them. They still have to piece the rest together on their own.
Yes that thing over there charmed me. But if you look like a dwarf due to a change self spell, get some distance and change self again to a different look when they come looking they wont know its you still. If the guards ask they will say a middle aged bald dwarf with buck teeth cast charm person on me, not insert character name. If you were invisible they would say some invisible guy cast charm person on me.
Why does it matter what anyone looks like? The Charm Person spell conveys ZERO benefit unless you personally interact with the target. So if you're staying in disguise, and at a distance, why are you bothering to cast the spell at all? You're just throwing away a spell slot for nothing.
I don't understand the purpose of this entire post. What kind of answer are you looking for? Charm Person conveys a very specific and very narrow benefit, and it's written quite clearly in the spell description. If you're trying to imply that the spell can do anything more than that, then either you haven't read the definitions of the terms involved, or you're just not arguing in good faith.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
Lets say you are a warlock and you keep change self up all the time changing what you look like hourly. you cast charm person, you charm the shop keep, you interact with them and then walk away a hour later the charm drops and the shop keeper is like crap that dude charmed me. That dude though is whoever you were disguised as, if you were invisible somehow and spoke to them he'd be like crap the invisible guy charmed me, now I know why I was so friendly with an invisible guy chatting me up. If you come into the shop later looking different, now visible or whatever maybe they recognize your voice, and react but if not they wouldn't instantly point at you and say you, you charmed me.
Why not? That's what the spell says it does.
Now, I'm perfectly happy if you want to run it like Crawford says, and since there doesn't seem to be an SAC on it one way or the other, you've got a decent chance of that being the intent as well. I wouldn't even mind if it was played that way at my table; it seems logical, afterall. And yet, that's not what the text of the spell says. And using logic only gets you so far when you are literally using magic on the person. Why can't there be an aura about your person that only the charmed can detect that says, "that person, right there, is the one that charmed me" no matter what you currently look like? Flavor is free.
The spell doesn't say they can identify you in any form you take. A more accurate way to interpret magical senses that it's you would be that they get an image in their head of your true form when they're charmed.
because it is not what the spell says it does. People like to say the spell only does what it says it does. I'm pretty sure if it gave the target supernatural senses to forever detect who you are it would need to say that. All the spell says is they know it was charmed by you. You very much encompasses just the disguised you, or the invisible you without adding in supernatural abilities to know the true you. As allowing them to detect you through all of that is more than adding just flavor that is adding additional abilities to the spell. Shit I'd charm all my friends and then drop it instantly so they could never be fooled by doppelgangers, disguises etc. Eh you look like bob but you never charmed me, so you clearly are not bob. All they are trying to say is after the spell end the effect was had a perceptible effect. They know their actions were influenced by the charm spell they know what the person who cast the spell looked like if they saw them. Sort of like if you cast a firebolt at them.
Can't be a lot more clear than that.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
yes because language works that way where a word can only have one meaning or implication.
Friendly does have meaning beyond influence rolls -- it causes the creature to 'view you favorably' -- and given that the DMG says that in general NPCs have one of three attitudes (friendly, indifferent, hostile) there's reason to think it has passive effects that aren't covered by skill rolls.
Now, this still isn't dominate person, there are lots of things a friendly person still won't do without further persuasion, but it also isn't just "charmed and nothing else".
So, here's a thought experiment (and no, I don't have a specific opinion of what the correct outcome is)
Suppose an NPC (say, a guard) is writing up a report describing an event involving the PC, and there's enough uncertainty in what actually happened that it can be written up in a way that makes the PC look good or bad. The NPC dislikes the PC (hostile). The PC sneaks up on the NPC and casts a subtle charm person. What report will the NPC produce?