Shattered Kingdoms

I don't see why everyone is whining so much. If you feel charm is used in a bad way against you, report it to the imms. Imburr lost what was it, 3 whole levels, because he city-dropped somebody like the day after the new rule, before 90% of the mud even knew about it?

Do you really think any sorc wants to risk that? Especially since the penalty is SUPPOSED to be 5 levels and eq wipe? I imagine the penalty for an Algon-esque charm would be pretty hefty too, since a charm scroll only lasts like 8 minutes, and it'd be hard to get a sufficient amount of RP done, AND pk them within that time. Pretty sure if you sent a log of

You have been charmed by X!
X says Hello, you listen to me now.
You say Yes sir.
X says You are my enemy! You shall be punished for your crimes!
X orders you to remove all
X gets you killed.
X says You have been punished, criminal!

I imagine that person would get in a bit of trouble, since that is fairly horrible RP. However, it is NOT the sole responsibility of the caster to RP the charm. When the charmed person sits there and is acting like a tool, or not doing anything at all, don't be surprised when you get treated like a tool.

Honestly, I think a charm like the one I just described should receive an even worse penalty than city-dropping, since the only reason to do a charm like that one is because you want their equipment.

I've seen a lot of good/fun Charm logs lately.

any word?

I think my fix is going to be that if your charmee is ever underwater without being able to breathe, it automatically breaks the charm...

So you cast blind on the charmed person and he is just as dead as before. Or you attack him the moment you go under water - chances are he flees in the wrong direction and dies anyways etc etc.
Or how about if you overload the character and release giant strength the moment you go into the water...

I could go on .... nice gesture though

I don't think D plays enough or contimplates the acctual play of the game enough to realize where abuse can occur and how.

Using charm to kill someone isn't necessarily abuse. What I don't like is killing someone with zero risk while they are still charmed. Right now, I am concentrating on eliminating the environmental ways to do this.

If you cast blind on your charmee it breaks charm. (And uhh, most sorcs don't cast blindness.)
You can't release Giant strength.
Running underwater and then trying to immediately engage your charmee, while it might work, definitely exposes you to a lot more risk than just flying over a city, and opens up many possibilities for the charmee to escape.

Better remove etherealform then. All you have to do is go ethereal and sic your charmie on something strong, bam, death with no risk.

Once someone is charmed they ARE dead, you already hit them with the I Win spell. I don't understand why it makes a difference how they do it.

There are three tweaks I would suggest to alleviate the mess that is 'charm person'

The first suggestion is one that I find highly unlikely to be implemented, but I feel that it needs to be mentioned. Before everyone gets their knickers in a twist I'd just like to ask that you to spare me the "You can easily get 5 greater willpower mods" crap, 'charm person' has become an "I win" spell and the difficulty in winning needs to be made more challenging. That is why I suggest that it be tweaked so that it is harder to land on PCs. I am not expecting Dulrik to accept this suggestion, but I felt it was necessary and wanted to throw it out there.

The second and third suggestions are rather similar and make perfect sense. I am expecting Dulrik to find these suggestions favorable and to accept them. Since the new change, your list of things that you can perform while charmed has been severely lowered, warranted or not it is something we're faced with today. Now to alleviate the power and ridiculousness of the spell I propose that a charmed person is able to do all the things that they could do prior to the last changes (quaff, tells, cb, etc.) in two situations; when in combat "Screw my master, I'm fightin' for my life here!" and when your master is not in the same room as you "That bastard left me all on my own here!".

Only problem with that is (I think) you could still rest prior to the recent update, so it would be abused like this
Rest
Master walks west
Tell X hey I am charmed and I am at this location.
or quaff WoR vial
or cb I am charmed and am at his location.

You want a real soluition?
Auto charm
If auto charm is on, you will RP with your charmer
If auto charm is off, your character dies right away and something pops into the room and eats the corpse.