OK so I want people to go ahead and keep an open mind here and get some opinions. I understand that Fey Charm is *NOT* a dominate. I had a big discussion with my players regarding it and finally had to concede to just letting the entire thing go due to the "letter of the spell", but I want to see what other people think.
Situation: Party is sleeping, the person on watch gets surprised by a dryad, fails his wis save and is charmed.
Dryad comes up and tells the person she wants to play in the forest, and he should come immediately and play with her.
The player refused 100% to go without first waking his entire party and telling them what he was doing, despite the insistence of the dryad he didn't need to and they would be fine. His argument was that his character wouldn't just leave watch without waking someone up. Of course the party just murdered the dryad immediate.
My thoughts on the matter was that while he isn't dominated, that if someone is magically charmed it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he would be so focused on the dryad and heeding her requests that he would not even consider other thoughts like "If I'm going to go with the dryad what do I need to do first? Well I need to wake someone up to take my watch, tell them where I'm going, etc" I equated it to being distracted by a good book, a movie, or a riviting conversation and letting something burn in the oven, or forgetting to pick up your kid from school. I said that even though you don't *WANT* to do those things, and you wouldn't do them if someone pointed them out and you realized you were neglecting them, that because you are magically charmed that you would be focused on the Dryad and her requests and therefore not get to the point where you are considering everything you need to do in order to make sure your party was "safe and sound for the night".
Is that crazy? I mean people forget their kids in their car because they saw something interesting in Wal-Mart and they die. Is it really out of the question that a MAGIC CHARM might make you not stop to think about how your actions effect your party members? I realize that it isn't dominate, and no one is forcing him to leave, but I just think that there has to be at least some elemental of "mental fogging" going on to make you believe a plant woman in the middle of a swamp is a trusted friend, and therefore not having the presence of mind to wake your party up so they can kill your friend is not out of the question.
They said that only dominate could make them do that, but I still disagree. I think that in practice being charmed could cause a person to leave their party unattended, even if it isn't in their personality to do so normally.
The charmedcreature regards the dryad as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn't under the dryad's control, it takes the dryad's requests or actions in the most favorable way it can.
With the key parts in bold. If the dryad said "You don't need to wake your friends, it's perfectly safe", the most favourable way the PC could take that is that the dryad is telling the truth, it is perfectly safe, and there's no need to wake their friends.
This ultimately boils down to the problem with charm effects on PCs; you either have to hope they can 100% put aside player knowledge and get into the in-character perspective, or you have to take away their agency and tell them what their character would do.
When I encounter this issue, I always layout the wording of the spell and reiterate what their character would know/perceive. For example
"The dryad asks you to come play with her in the forest, a request that seems completely reasonable as she is a trusted friend to be heeded. She tells you that you don't need to wake your allies, as they are perfectly safe and it'd be a terrible shame to disturb their sleep. You have no reason to disbelieve her, considering how much you trust her as a friend. If she says it's safe, it must be, and it would be a shame to wake your friends from their restful slumber"
You are giving the player the maximum insight to how being charmed is affecting their characters perspective, and making it clear what the effect is doing. You're not telling them "You cannot wake your friends", but you are making it so they would need to find a very compelling reason to do so
sigh, you must have a lot of practice at this =P. This is my first go at being a DM. That answer was brilliant really, and I wish I had gone at it with that angle instead. It is about 2 hours more succinct than trying to explain my thought process vs. "Sorry charm isn't what you think it is, it isn't dominate". hah.
In the future, keep in mind that the main difference between charm effects and dominate effects are that charm causes someone to think that the charmer NPC or PC is a wonderful person who has the charmed creature's best interests at heart whereas dominate effects are a more direct version of mind control that gets affected creature to treat the dominator as unquestionable master.
To better use charm on PCs, it helps to have some insight into what the player wants for their character besides abstract metagame concepts like "level up." If you have not done a Session Zero yet with your players, it's not too late to start. Get some backstory details from them about their characters. As the DM, part of benefit of your privileged position is being able to suss out the details to lives of these characters very directly and then later apply them to how you run your campaign.
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OK so I want people to go ahead and keep an open mind here and get some opinions. I understand that Fey Charm is *NOT* a dominate. I had a big discussion with my players regarding it and finally had to concede to just letting the entire thing go due to the "letter of the spell", but I want to see what other people think.
Situation: Party is sleeping, the person on watch gets surprised by a dryad, fails his wis save and is charmed.
Dryad comes up and tells the person she wants to play in the forest, and he should come immediately and play with her.
The player refused 100% to go without first waking his entire party and telling them what he was doing, despite the insistence of the dryad he didn't need to and they would be fine. His argument was that his character wouldn't just leave watch without waking someone up. Of course the party just murdered the dryad immediate.
My thoughts on the matter was that while he isn't dominated, that if someone is magically charmed it isn't outside the realm of possibility that he would be so focused on the dryad and heeding her requests that he would not even consider other thoughts like "If I'm going to go with the dryad what do I need to do first? Well I need to wake someone up to take my watch, tell them where I'm going, etc" I equated it to being distracted by a good book, a movie, or a riviting conversation and letting something burn in the oven, or forgetting to pick up your kid from school. I said that even though you don't *WANT* to do those things, and you wouldn't do them if someone pointed them out and you realized you were neglecting them, that because you are magically charmed that you would be focused on the Dryad and her requests and therefore not get to the point where you are considering everything you need to do in order to make sure your party was "safe and sound for the night".
Is that crazy? I mean people forget their kids in their car because they saw something interesting in Wal-Mart and they die. Is it really out of the question that a MAGIC CHARM might make you not stop to think about how your actions effect your party members? I realize that it isn't dominate, and no one is forcing him to leave, but I just think that there has to be at least some elemental of "mental fogging" going on to make you believe a plant woman in the middle of a swamp is a trusted friend, and therefore not having the presence of mind to wake your party up so they can kill your friend is not out of the question.
They said that only dominate could make them do that, but I still disagree. I think that in practice being charmed could cause a person to leave their party unattended, even if it isn't in their personality to do so normally.
Thoughts?
The wording of Fey Charm says:
With the key parts in bold. If the dryad said "You don't need to wake your friends, it's perfectly safe", the most favourable way the PC could take that is that the dryad is telling the truth, it is perfectly safe, and there's no need to wake their friends.
This ultimately boils down to the problem with charm effects on PCs; you either have to hope they can 100% put aside player knowledge and get into the in-character perspective, or you have to take away their agency and tell them what their character would do.
When I encounter this issue, I always layout the wording of the spell and reiterate what their character would know/perceive. For example
You are giving the player the maximum insight to how being charmed is affecting their characters perspective, and making it clear what the effect is doing. You're not telling them "You cannot wake your friends", but you are making it so they would need to find a very compelling reason to do so
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@Davedamon:
sigh, you must have a lot of practice at this =P. This is my first go at being a DM. That answer was brilliant really, and I wish I had gone at it with that angle instead. It is about 2 hours more succinct than trying to explain my thought process vs. "Sorry charm isn't what you think it is, it isn't dominate". hah.
In the future, keep in mind that the main difference between charm effects and dominate effects are that charm causes someone to think that the charmer NPC or PC is a wonderful person who has the charmed creature's best interests at heart whereas dominate effects are a more direct version of mind control that gets affected creature to treat the dominator as unquestionable master.
To better use charm on PCs, it helps to have some insight into what the player wants for their character besides abstract metagame concepts like "level up." If you have not done a Session Zero yet with your players, it's not too late to start. Get some backstory details from them about their characters. As the DM, part of benefit of your privileged position is being able to suss out the details to lives of these characters very directly and then later apply them to how you run your campaign.