Mind control effects

[theCountofMonteCristo]

Please revert it to having visual appearance. Thought it could be a neat thing, but it is just turning silly with players dominating NPCs and making them talk with no way to tell regardless of how much Spellcraft you have.

Please revert. This is getting silly.

[AstralUniverse]

But what's the problem?

[theCountofMonteCristo]

But what's the problem?

Ranging from people dominating the NPC Guards to bringing in named bandits to deliver ultimatums. Again, 0 IC way to tell that it is dominated, let alone a way to determine who ICly. No matter how much spellcraft your Epic Enchanter has.

It is on players to play their characters. It is on the DMs to play the NPCs. We currently have PCs playing NPCs with no way to figure it out IC and only ways to guess OOC.

[AstralUniverse]

We currently have PCs playing NPCs with no way to figure it out IC and only ways to guess OOC.

That's a problem indeed. I get you. And I understand that there's no way to report them either, except, reporting the incident and the DM would have to fish for who the dominate caster was.

[Baron Saturday]

Part of me wants to see this result in an IC attitude shift where people treat enchanters with the same mistrust and fear as necromancers.

[Archnon]

Oocly if you attack the mind controlled npc it should hostile the owner.

Otherwise ping the DM channel and hope someone is on. Or perhaps the -a command should be disabled?

[magistrasa]

Part of me wants to see this result in an IC attitude shift where people treat enchanters with the same mistrust and fear as necromancers.

This is my dream.

[RedGiant]

There is already an epidemic on Arelith of people peeking behind the curtain with mechanical knowledge to infer a limited range of options available to PCs. What would be great here is to roleplay the scenario thoroughly? If you can't tell, maybe you shouldn't and react accordingly? While I will leave it for the DMs to address the NPC issue, I see zero issues with doing this with hostiles. I don't mean to be pedantic here, but this seems to open a lot more RP possibilities than it closes.

And if someone is being super-stupid, then reporting this is the right way to go. The DMs have the tools to deal with this, including logs, so even pointing them in the right direction is likely enough.

[-XXX-]

So people are getting disappointed when they realize that what at first seemed like a DM quest turned out to be "yet another player run event"?

Why's that an issue? They have only themselves to blame for that.

[Hinty]

"You can control the actions of any humanoid creature through a telepathic link that you establish with the subject’s mind.

If you and the subject have a common language, you can generally force the subject to perform as you desire, within the limits of its abilities. If no common language exists, you can communicate only basic commands, such as “Come here,” “Go there,” “Fight,” and “Stand still.” You know what the subject is experiencing, but you do not receive direct sensory input from it, nor can it communicate with you telepathically.

Once you have given a dominated creature a command, it continues to attempt to carry out that command to the exclusion of all other activities except those necessary for day-to-day survival (such as sleeping, eating, and so forth). Because of this limited range of activity, a Sense Motive check against DC 15 (rather than DC 25) can determine that the subject’s behavior is being influenced by an enchantment effect (see the Sense Motive skill description).

Changing your instructions or giving a dominated creature a new command is the equivalent of redirecting a spell, so it is a move action. "

It is not at all hard to tell a creature is being dominated.

[Baron Saturday]

So people are getting disappointed when they realize that what at first seemed like a DM quest turned out to be "yet another player run event"?

Why's that an issue? They have only themselves to blame for that.

I think it's more that players dominating NPCs causes complications with the whole "no hostile actions against NPCs without DM supervision" thing, both in terms of NPCs reacting to the domination and other players knowing what they can do to the NPC in response.

[-XXX-]

Casting the Dominate Person spell is clearly a hostile action.
I'd assume that the rules are quite clear about using those against, say, city guards. If that's not the case, maybe a clarification might be needed here.

[Zaphiel]

I am pretty sure dominating NPCs (not MOBs) are forbidden. Report that person to DMs.

An announcement from DMs about this issue is welcome though. I just speaking from my past experiences.

[AstralUniverse]

So people are getting disappointed when they realize that what at first seemed like a DM quest turned out to be "yet another player run event"?

Why's that an issue? They have only themselves to blame for that.

We seem to think alike. lol.

Problem is that it's too open for exploit when someone can basically play an NPC as if they were a DM and there's no mechanical way to spot that at all. I do agree that thematically, it's a PERFECT and hilarious situation to face.

[Morgy]

Keep VFX as is, it has great RP potential. You don't need to know if it's a player of DM behind the NPC, IC that shouldn't be affecting your response at all.

What I suggest as others have, is to put a spellcraft or enchantment/divination check in that can reveal dominated subjects on examine. There should be a way to mechanically identify it.

[Tathkar Eisgrim]

Um. Technically a lasso dominates an NPC enemy you capture. Perhaps some clarification on behaviour there is also required?

I admit to having spoken / emoted through those captured, but have tried to limit it to "let me go / nastiness" towards my PC the captor. -- Have I been naughty?


-- Tath.

[The GrumpyCat]

I'm honestly a little leery of this change too.

People can and do use it to dominate none hostile npcs, and cause problems that way. E.g. dominate a cordor guard and make him go 'Ho! There's a tax on wearing red today! Pay me 10000 gold!'

Now in theory this should be fine - if the npc guard could then, when the spell wears off, go 'what? someone domianted me!' or even if they were killed, they could say who killed them, or so on.

Sadly none of those things are true without constant DM presence. And whilst in general taking any hostile action (including domination) against an npc is wrong - this is wrong in a way that could be very difficult to trace, and dangerous to the game world.

In the ideal world this would be fine, because no one would abuse it. But I think we've already seen a few cases of abuse, and I am concerned going forward we'll see more.

[Shadowy Reality]

Dominating important NPCs seems like a big no-no, just like you can't attack them without DM supervision.

I don't think the change itself is the issue, but rather people not abiding the rules and common sense.

[The GrumpyCat]

Agreed, but the issue then becomes how often does it happen and how tracable is it?

A thing that happens once per irl month and is easily tracable isn't something I'd worry about.
A thing that happens five times a IRL day and is tifficult to trace is more problematic.

[Ninjimmy]

It's a fairly fun RP notion, even with NPCs, but it is a pain in the Snuggybear if there's no way to tell. Also if it removes an NPC for an extended period because no-one wants to go and sell their goods to find the merchants been dominated and/or abducted for fun and jokes.

[-XXX-]

It is possible to make NPCs immune to dominate effects by adding the spell immunity onto their creature skin.

That would remove any grey area from the issue at hand - PCs would be unable to dominate the NPCs that they're not supposed to.

[Morgy]

Out of interest how many reports have there been of abuse since the change? It's hard to measure prevalence with an anecdote or two in a thread.

Perhaps there should be a warning on domination casting that it is forbidden to dominate neutral/guard NPCs? Rather like the one when you pick up fixtures, for example.

[xanrael]

Seems like a fair bit of work to edit every friendly NPC in the module to prevent them from being dominated. Also sometimes you might have a legit reason to dominate a friendly NPC such as when one wanders about and then perma-blocks the only exit to a building and you need to move them to be able to leave.

Likewise removing the -associate command from them defeats the entire reason for the VFX change in the first place and removes a tool from everyone, including the vast majority not abusing it.

I'm still of the same mind as before, I think the VFX change has more potential for abuse than the RP opportunities it opens up.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Is there some kind of check to determine domination when examining a creature? I'm wary of giving spot any more perks than it already has, but since skills can be added/fudged in some regards, maybe talk about adding sense motive?

It is a relatively easy thing to tell if a creature is dominated - DC 15 can be beaten by an untrained individual with a 0 modifier.

We could just also give someone a flat 50% chance to notice on examine that a creature is dominated ("this individual's attitude does not seem to match its actions" or some other IC representation that gives away the domination.) This allows enchanters who dominate hostile mobs to still potentially get away with some shenanigans (at least for a limited time).

Wouldn't solve the problem of people abusing the system to control NPC's they shouldn't, but would then be much more likely to be able to give a time stamp for a report, which if including the name of the NPC would probably let the staff search for any -a commands at that time to track down the offender?

[NauVaseline]

Seems like a fair bit of work to edit every friendly NPC in the module to prevent them from being dominated. Also sometimes you might have a legit reason to dominate a friendly NPC such as when one wanders about and then perma-blocks the only exit to a building and you need to move them to be able to leave.

Adding code to the Dominate spell to see if the target is hostile would be significantly less work.