Shattered Kingdoms

I beleive all Foorsooth is being critical of is that the wording of the suggested help file may lead to the incorrect interpretation of restriction where it was not intended by the poster and we're discussing semantics here. I think you're both looking agreement on the best words to get the point you share across. My suggestion is to keep the language as simple and clear as possible to avoid confusion.

We've two different roleplay visions of charm: Let's call them body-control and affection-control. If one's going to become the standard through the change of a helpfile, it's worth discussing.

I think Seraphiction's scene is an excellent example of why affection-control is better for SK. If the caster needs to pretend friendship, he can't order groveling and worship in the first place. As long as the charmer has to treat the charmee as a person, there's much less potential for RP abuse.

The only advantage I see to body-control is that the victim still gets to voice resistance. But this resistance is completely impotent: empty words. The caster can still demand the victim say or do anything through commands, with no obvious threshold where you can say there's an RP violation.

I don't know about you, Seraphiction, but I'd much rather play a dupe than a powerless slave. With some IC/OOC seperation, playing stupid or foolish characters can be really fun. Give it a try next time around, and I don't think you'll be going back to body-control.

I agree completely.



Two problems here.
1> The more obvious, is that it restricts the avenues of roleplay.
2> This isn't offering a feature that doesn't already exist in my alternative. After all, I've suggested that the player MUST consider the emotional state of their victim, or it has the ability to break the bond. Attacks or humiliations that would surge emotion will break the charm. As such, it allows a knowledgeable charmer the ability to roleplay walking a very fine line when manipulating their victim. Yes, it's less -strict- than your form of affection-control, but offers more leeway. Actions and consequences - you screw up the charm, you lose your charmie, and they might even attack you.



Yet this is, as admittedly some of our points - strictly opinion. To some people thoughts are every bit as important as deeds. The difference between duress and true free will. To some (such as, perhaps the light-minded) it's every bit as important to show that defiance, however impotent it may be). If you serve a god of free will, wouldn't you mock the person who's charmed you for believing that what they are compelling you to do has any meaning? Wouldn't a follower of Truth recognize that difference? I could go on with that thought, but I'll leave it there.



And again, that's personal preference. I don't think that... when alternatives are available, people should be pigeonholed into playing a single preferred style. Sure, you can play a powerless slave. Or you can play a doomed but defiant (Spartaaaaaa) soul to the end. Or you could play a conquered servant of Sargas who has accepted his role of servitude to a powerful enemy, but would never consider himself powerless. The options are endless, and should remain that way.

Charm when used in pk shouldn't require anymore rp than the rest of the spells/skills in the game. There simply isn't time to rp during pk and its risky to do it afterwards, to expect a sorc to do anything other than o all remove all, o all drop all during pk is absolutely absurd. If thats what you guys are going for then all other skills/spells should require just as much rp when used.

As far as balance, charm is totally fine. Get some 5 greater will items and charm will hit 1/10 times as shown in the log peso posted. Obviously nobody here knows what they are talking about when they complain about charm. -Clearly- fear from a max art necromancer is 10x as good as charm but nobody is complaining about that. I mean how people can complain about spells at all is beyond me, everyone knows the counter to them and when fighting a prepared melee char all casters other than necromancers are literally -useless-.

The only things people have a right to complain about are things that in one situation or another simply have no counter or resist. IE taunt/voodoo. Anyone who complains about a spell like charm which has a blatant and easy to acquire resist needs to first stfu and then focus on voodoo/taunt which literally don't have counters.

Voodoo does have counters, several in fact. Unless you are a newb wearing nothing, it is nearly impossible to kill with voodoo. Even with a doll killing with voodoo is chancy at best with anyone with any protection. If they have the right prot up, and/or sanc, and/or several other things, they won't die. Newbs and Noobs die to voodoo.

You are right about taunt.

Charm's success rate should be less than petrification.

Pet is mentor

Charm is Jmam.

Cast times, costs, and success rate favor charm AND you get the loot with charm, it needs bumped up to master.

Muktar your wrong about voodoo damage. As a gm centaur barb with 26 hp trains i've been brought to 16% with protection up by a single voodoo no greet/no doll. A voodoo that strong will instantly kill any non warrior who doesn't have 24/7 protection/sanc. Any warrior who only has protection or sanc is still at risk and if they don't have either they are dead too.


I'm in agreement though that charm person should have a slower casting time than petrify and I don't think it should be available till at least veteran.

As I understand it, the entire argument around RP stemmed and grew from the notion that charm victims must be cooperative and behave a very specific way, and to act otherwise is cheating. From there, it ended up turning into this. Honestly, if it's going to be nothing more than a pk spell, that's fine, but if it's going to be defined that way, it should be applied equally to both sides.



Sounds to me like you don't really understand the concept of balance. Balance not only involves numbers and statistics, but the concept of risk versus reward. My gosh, this spell not only allows you an instant win if successful, (loot is irrelevant, the same is true of a corpse) plus absolute humiliation of your victim, should you so choose. People even go so far as to attempt to extend the benefits beyond the immediate pk, trying to "brainwash" their victims, or turn them into agents of their own agenda. All of that for nothing that requires any skill other than casting the spell. All of that on a spell that requires the victim to be tanked up in equipment to protect themselves from it, and even then they aren't completely protected. Yet you want to argue that it's balanced?



Name me another spell that grants an instant win unless the player is amazingly docked out and I will show you another that could probably use some tweaks. Those aren't anymore "balanced". You're suggesting that a spell that is part of a standard caster's repetoire is balanced when it requires -heavily enchanted equipment- to counter it's win effects. Completely ignoring the fact that most other classes can't easily come by that, making them dependent on other casting classes just to *maybe* stay alive. Balanced? Are you kidding me?



Charm is an old school stock spell. Please don't pretend you have some special insight that no other idiot here has.



So get your resident Algon on it right away. He'll be glad to show us how much it needs to be fixed.



The fact that you regard it as complaining no matter the input says a great deal about a lack of real perspective. You're outright dismissing any challenge of the spell as if it were magically balanced. Charm isn't and never has been short of modification.



Problem with them? Make an active effort to have them changed. Don't get all huffy over the fact that people don't see eye to eye with you. Honestly, you start calling everyone whiners and telling them to stfu, you lose any credibility that rage-less insight would have given you.

People are complaining about Charm. Make it so that charm cant be scribed 90% of your problems go away now.

In the middle of an ongoing fight, it's true we're not going to see spoken lines. But in the middle of an ongoing fight, maybe stripping naked isn't the most sensible action - even for a charmed unit.

If a fight is over, there's plenty of time. You can drag your charm wherever you want, and he can no longer resist via tells.

I'd agree all the attempts to make charm either high level or hard to cast are misguided. It's a tank-generator spell first, and a PK spell second. But that means it's not the end of the world if the caster has to spend more time on a charm-kill than a petrification-kill.

As for warrior/caster balance, that's a problem that needs more general solution. (i.e. a nerf to super-enchants) This is more a question of balancing charm against other spells, and against the roleplay privledges of the victims.