Shattered Kingdoms

What about it's apperent ease of landing?

What about it? Take out the instant win aspects of the spell and it matters less.

Like the ability to striploot, the ability to instantkill, and so on. It's not the spell landing that makes it instant win, it's the following orders.

So limit the commands able to be given to a PC? I would be game to that to some extent, as long as it was an RP thing.

Charm person being available at the level that it is should not be able to charm PCs. Much like skin, a low level skill, you cant get mithril until GM. Charm shouldnt be able to control a PC until 40, I would even go so far as to say 45.

I think the spells' original purpose was to give the Sorcerer a strong NPC to tank. It's now being utilized to obtain vast amounts of eq and rip apart groups in PK.

That was the point of my suggestion. You can pretty much rationalize any of it with RP easily enough, but here's the breakdown on what I wrote:

~ charm as a concious, line-of-sight sphere: Cannot be stacked with sleep, sleeping someone breaks charm. Can't charm someone while invisible or hidden, because they can't see you to be besotted with you.

~ counts as an attack: This means you can't simply keep casting petrify on your charmie until they die. Cast it, and the charm breaks, dead or not. Same for any other passive attack spell, such as maladictions.

~ charmie may do nothing but speak: Prevents people from loopholing their way out of the spell, though from what I understand, something already akin to this just went into effect. Duration of this spell is limited, and the charmer can use that time to either attack or roleplay. The latter is doubtful, given the nature of pk'ers with charm, but who knows.

~ Orders breaking charm: In order to weaken the "i win" effect of this spell, certain orders will automatically break the charm effect. This includes ordering a player to strip, ordering another NPC/player to attack the player (they're watching for godsake), ordering the player to make a suicidal attack, ordering them to reveal secret information (specialty skills and so on), and anything else that gives it an unduly powerful effect.

The "charm-breaker" list should remain open to revision, and any other unnecessarily empowering abilities it renders do the same.

I want to say that someone else attacking the charmie at all should also break it, but that's up for debate and has potential code issues.

~ Every order issued gives an x% + wisdom(?) chance of breaking the charm: Any pk'er wanting to use this spell as a means to kill someone is able to (or it becomes useless for anything other than NPCs) is free to try, but the less efficient they are, the more likely it will break. This is something of a counter to ease of casting, but it mainly there to keep charm from being a lockdown on the player charmed.

There's more, but this is what immediately comes to mind.

Any of this can be justified roleplay-wise, as the current helpfile on charm is ridiculously vague. No fault of SK, it's a throwback to pre-SK code.

Fundamentally, I view this suggested incarnation of charm person this way - it creates a very fragile bond between the victim and the master where the victim is in a mental fog and is inclined to do whatever their master says within reason. After all, who's going to stand there and watch as their master has them killed, or does all other manner of humiliating things to them? The element of compulsion is there, but takes a toll - every time it is exerted, the link is at risk of being broken.

Ejecting the charmee from the group breaks the charm.


This is generally where PC's get killed, the charmee is kicked out of the group so the group doesn't get attacked and dies to a NPC or two because they aren't able to flee the charmer.

Seems this is more of a problem with the new changes.

Never could actually understand that you keep adoring the guy that keeps getting you killed... You are a person.. You remember when last you spoke to him and found him such a wonderful person and the next moment he has you killed and the charmers buddies are laughing happily over your corpse.. Second time you see him and tries the same thing you fall again?? Imagine that.. Guess memory was lost when you were charmed but death ain't..

Having checks to break the charm seems right..

its still magic.. and whose to say what magic can and cannot do?

Whose to say? Coders with a good sense of game balance, for starters. As for the rest, it's standard (though there are exceptions) to have some rules to how magic works and can be used, short of godhood.

I realize that was probably intended as a rhetorical question, but it's one I've heard before and never made any sense to me in context of game balance.