Shattered Kingdoms

Oh yeah, I'll spend hour on end enchanting my gear to no avail because the beautiful simplicity is going to beat me.

Shattered Kingdoms, where simplicity and roleplay collide.

I've seen a few posts that are against the idea, but they're all flames. I haven't seen one single post explaining why charm is not overpowered against PCs.



Translation: Aren't there ways to get out of charm?

Answer: No, any possible way for the player to escape charm got removed in the last update which everyone -thought- was going to wimp charm because it was overpowered then too.

The only thing you can do with charm is say, look, and auto summon. That's it. You can't tell, flee, cb chat, wimpy, use any skills, rest, etc. -All- commands now return a "you need your master to tell you to do that" message. Charm used to have ways of getting out if your owner wasn't very careful. Now it's an instant win, unless a priest happens to see you get charmed and summon you away before your charmer is able to sit you in the back row and kill you with magical spells after they order you to remove all drop all, at which point you may as well be dead anyway.

As Konge has said, charm is perfectly fine against NPCs, but against PCs it's completely overpowered and overwhelms any other single spell that can be cast or scribed. In addition, it's capable of instantly sentencing any PC to death and EQ loss regardless of buffs or enchantments, unlike any other spell in the game. THAT is the very definition of overpowered. Crap, with charm scrolls charming 25 WIS 35 willpower gnomes, not even Dark-Avenger could say Magma is more overpowered than it. Not even triple finger of death scrolls stand up to overpowered charm scrolls, not in the slightest.


Possible nerfs that I think would be useful against PCs include the following:

1. You can only charm enemies that are the level of the spell cast or lower. This would (should?) prevent scrolls from charming GM PCs.

2. Disable charm from working against PCs that are in combat or have their pulse racing.

3. Increase the casting time on charm to be closer to that of petrification. This doesn't solve the scrolls problem, though, which is half of what makes it overpowered.

4. Have the charm break if anyone in the charmee's group attacks the charmed person.

5. Have charm against PCs break on the fast effects system on somewhere around a 20 or 30 second interval.

6. Allow PCs an extra saving throw against charm at every tick of the fast affects system. That one would actually be pretty nice.

7. Disable the 'all' command from being used on charmed PCs. Remove all, drop all, etc.


No one likes having every single piece of their equipment that they've had enchanted for hours lost because some mob-equipped scroll that anyone with gate can get in 2 minutes upon login instantly won a fight.

Yes, I'm sore because I died to it. But I'm not sure because I lost my gear (They only took some jewelry and left the rest), I'm sore because it's totally cheap and overpowered. I got spam harmed to death in the back row of their group and there wasn't a single thing I could do about it, all because of a single mob-found scroll. At least with petrification you can spam quaff recall, with charm you have zero recourse.

Fill in the blank, please, and don't answer "willpower" because that's been seen to fail critically on a decent rate.

The only tactic I can come up with is "charm them first," which indicates to me a severely overpowered and unanswerable skill. To my knowledge, there are no other skills, spells, or items in the game that result in instant loss of all control / skills, with no possibility for retaliation or escape.


That being said, I believe it needs to be more balanced. But I'm a firm believer that criticism without suggestion is a waste of time. From Turon's post, I like 1 and 6 as individual solutions; but honestly, I believe it should behave more like dominate toward PCs: you simply can't charm anything above master (but can still charm Lathron et.al.).

Just wanted to let you know that someone got it, and chuckled.


Also, charm is overpowered when used as an offensive spell in pk.

I am an advocate of removing charm from scribing, wands, and prespelled scrolls. I was an advocate of this when charm was changed last winter. I don't think those changes work without that additional tweak. I'm pretty sure I can help with the prespelled scrolls and wands. The scribe factor will probably require Dulrik.

the biggest culprit in the features of charm person is the cast time

we can easily identify that other similar spells such as petrification has a long cast time, and thus long re-cast, it's not really spammable because combat goes so fast

casting spells such as petrification, and finger of death takes a conscious decision and risk (well not really, most priests and paladins just holy word instead of heal but that's another topic!)

some years ago midnight's cast time got increased a little, it is still extremely potent, same with energizer

charm person is just spammable over and over until the spell lands

re: scrolls, weak scrolls of charm person is okay, however one might debate that the cast time is potentially 0 there, but that's where enchants come in! rng needs to happen sometimes even if it's 1 out of x

what is a problem though, is that players buy strong powered scrolls of something else and then scribe an offensive spell on it, and thus giving the spell an incredible strength to use in combat >_<

I was the one that recently got lucky in landing a charm on Edoras' character (and thus stand to lose if charm is nerfed).

I agree that charm is overpowered.

In response to Edoras' options:


Don't like this one. It hurts lower level mages trying to charm NPCs.


Not so fond of this one either.


This is part one of the solution, IMO.


There are so many ways to kill someone who's charmed with or without this change that I hardly think it's worth implementing. Wouldn't mind either way.


This is too much of a nerf. Instead of a timer on it, I'd like to see PCs who drop below 50%, 30%, etc. get successive save checks. You could also have a save check on certain commands (like remove all) or for each order command (btw, this should apply vs. PCs only).


Don't like the timer idea, see above.


Agree sometihng should be done about "remove all," but think it should be another saving throw.

Then you have to do something about devices. I don't like making it entirely unscribable because there's something to be said for the utility of a rogue, warlock, necromancer, and priest having short-term access to additional skills from an NPC. My preference would be to somehow weaken their usefulness against PCs, but I'm not sure how to do that without affecting other scribed spells.

In summary: 1) increase casting time, 2) institute multiple save opportunities, and 3) weaken devices.

Yup....another 10+irl hours of enchanting lost to charm person...

Charm is op.Let us quaff cancellation vials if we bother to prep for it. I guess this would be going back to how it used to be, which was fine considering how often it lands.