The Power of Charm Person (and other 1st level spells)

[Deleted]

Recently I've realized once more how powerful 1st level spells are.

Last weekend I was running a convention game using OD&D/Swords & Wizardry rules with five PCs breaking into a stronghold of a wizard turned into a Machine God avatar. Players pretty quickly used up quite a lot of high level spells, and when they started battling the Big Bad's elite guards I started expecting a total party kill. However, once the PCs were down to 1st level spells, they started Charming the guards, including their captain, a 7 HD cyborg (I decided he qualified as a person).

From that point, further battles went fairly easy. The PCs had total control of the charmed guards (I decided, though, that friendly fire in battle or asking the guards about well-guarded secrets triggers a saving throw that can break the spell - things were going too easy for the players). Eventually they hacked the Machine God avatar to pieces.

That was fun - but I realized that a 1st level spell is more powerful than, say, reversed Raise Dead from Cleric level 5. If so, I thought that:

1) 1st level wizard in OD&D is really powerful, even with only one spell.

2) Maybe it would be a good house rule to remove spell levels completely? If first level wizards can take total control over a person, why can't they cast a small lightning bolt or a fireball (dealing 1d6 damage, of course). Maybe it would be fun for 1st level clerics to be able to cast weaker Raise Dead to resuscitate recently killed PCs, maybe with a risk of spell failure?

3) Maybe spell levels may be interpreted not as raw power of spells, but rather their complexity. Somehow, it is easier to alter mind with magic than to create a huge ball of fire out of nothing. This could lead to some interesting homebrew spells and character classes - say, an elemental wizard who cast "energy" spells from level one, but who only on higher levels learns charm and detection. Or a death priest who can cast Slay Living as a 1st level spell.

What do you think about it? And do you have similar experiences with low level spells turning out to be unexpectedly powerful?

(I found no previous threads in this topic, but I guess it's pretty likely that there's one I have missed. If so, sorry for thread duplication)

[makofan]

Charm Person is awesomely powerful. In my campaign I decided that a magician could have a number of charmed people up to the maximum number of hirelings defined by his Charisma. Strangely, my players have not exploited this spell at all, although they did use it to charm a 6th level fighter leading a drunken mob.

[scottenkainen]

I've tried some "fixes" for Charm Person over the years. I once moved it to the 2nd level spell list. I once cut the durations in half. More recently, I only tweaked the durations downward a little. As much as I like OD&D, I'm still uncomfortable allowing Charm Person as-is.

I'm much the same about Sleep, but I think allowing saving throws is appropriate and "fixes" that spell.

~Scott "-enkainen" Casper

[inkmeister]

Good questions.

Charm is amazing. Maybe too good. On the other hand, consider that many people decry the first level magic user as being too weak. Spells like sleep and charm really illustrate that the low level magic user is a powerful being indeed, if used thoughtfully.

I note that in Men & Magic, Gygax says that spells are assigned to their complexity levels on a somewhat subjective basis by the authors. When I look at D&D, I don't really see a balanced game. Certainly not in the sense of Chess or many other games with tighter rules and tighter game play. In some ways, I would go so far as to say its construction seems (to me) to be haphazard. This is both good and bad (from my perspective; I don't speak for everyone). On the positive side,while the lack of balance and the wild nature of the game's construction would not work well in competitive games like Chess, it can work really well in a game that is wildly open-ended (unlike many modern computer games, which modern RPG's seem to emulate). So you can enjoy the weirdness and wildness as is, if you just accept it for what it is. But at the same time, the fact that it is unbalanced and haphazardly constructed should lead you to feel very free to make changes as you wish.

In observing the retroclone movement and OSR over the last 4 years or so, it seems to me that the movement has been ever further back towards OD&D. I would like to see it go further still to where Gygax and Arneson and friends were before the game was written down. I think all groups could enjoy great fun and realize better games by creating what they want and need from scratch, borrowing ideas from any sources that seem worthwhile (like D&D). Most of my recent threads on this site have been in that vein; I ask a lot about what would happen if you dropped this, or changed that, and so forth, because I think strict adherence to the game as written doesn't make a ton of sense; the guys who created the game didn't think about it that way, so why should we?

Speaking to your questions, I for one feel that there are a lot of superfluous spells, and I would like to see the spell list streamlined and have spell levels thrown out. I'd like to see more groups inventing their magic systems from scratch (borrowing where necessary). I think with a single spell list, you could run a system where spell power increases with magic user power, and you could run it as some do here by having MU's memorize a number of spells equal to their level, with no duplicates.

I also believe some fantasy games should do without a formalized magic system and without magic user types. Instead, you could have generic "fighters" or "adventurers" that might pick up a magic ability somehow, probably through some artifact or magic item, and perhaps at great spiritual/physical cost. Magic might be gained through dealings with extra-planar entities, again at considerable cost. I think the D&D view of magic works great for a particular type of game, but I think some types of game (perhaps those that wish to have a less video-game like feel) would do better without such a utilitarian system.

Just some musings.

[Deleted]

Oct 22, 2013 8:58:19 GMT -6 makofan said:

In my campaign I decided that a magician could have a number of charmed people up to the maximum number of hirelings defined by his Charisma.

This rule is implied by the rules for non-player characters on page 12. OD&D doesn't make a clear distinction between hirelings and henchmen that AD&D does. It is also specifically mentioned that the Charm Person spell can be used to force high level NPCs to serve the PC.

[waysoftheearth]

I agree that charmed persons count toward a PC's number of retainers, though from what I remember the duration is "until dispelled"... I'm not sure how that could be halved?

FWIW, sleep (and other area effects) can be read as affecting friend or foe equally, which can make the "smack down" spells applicable only in favourable circumstances, or at least have undesirable side effects. Swords & Spells also defines sleep's area of effect as a 1" diameter (or radius, I can't remember) which would limit it severely.


And... although it's not applied consistently, a general feature of the spells described in M&M is that higher level spells tend to affect targets with larger number of HD (with or without saving throws). Spells such as sleep, wall of fire, confusion, cloudkill, death spell, etc. come immediately to mind.

One might apply this effect more generally and rule that low level spells (such as charm person) will affect normal types with no save, but allow heroic types a saving throw, and have no effect on super-heroic types. And so on.

Just a few crumbs to consider...

[oakesspalding]

Oct 22, 2013 7:43:37 GMT -6 @witoldk said:

...The PCs had total control of the charmed guards...

You don't have to play it that way. Indeed, I would say that the text implies that you shouldn't:

"If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User" (M&M, p. 23).

"Under the influence of" (even if "completely") is I think weaker than controlled or totally controlled, although I admit that alternate interpretations are possible. So, I would argue that you couldn't just direct your charmed conquests like zombies to attack their former comrades, even with an additional saving throw.

I like to think of Charm Person as working like the enchantment placed by the Witch on Prince Rilian in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair. She just MIGHT be able to convince the Prince that Eustace and Polly were evil and should be opposed or resisted in some way, but she couldn't just order the Prince to attack them.

So, a successful Charm Person would certainly stop a monster from attacking you and would get you a loyal hireling if you wanted the monster to be one, but it wouldn't, so to speak, just FLIP them, especially not during a battle.

[Deleted]

"Charmed" means "Charmed, I'm sure." The person is now your new best friend. They are NOT your mindless slave.

That's how Dave and Gary both played it.

[jacar]

Oct 25, 2013 4:39:55 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

"Charmed" means "Charmed, I'm sure." The person is now your new best friend. They are NOT your mindless slave.

That's how Dave and Gary both played it.

This is quite correct. The charmed person does not lose it's personality, likes, dislikes or even allegiances. So, the charmed guards might /like/ the PC party but that might mean that they won't go out of their way to harm the party. However, if they are some sort of machine god cultists and the party continues to attack said machine god then the charm would wear off very quickly.

Here is another example. There is a castle with the king. The king does not allow anyone into his castle. You charm a guard at the front gate and ask to let you in. The guard probably won't oblige you because the king said NO! He will probably still remain charmed because you caused no harm.

You also can't charm someone and tell them to fall on their sword.

[Vile Traveller]

I've never thought Charm Person to be overly powerful, but I've often thought it's one of the most abused spells. As others have said, it makes the victim believe the caster is his or her best friend, but that's all. The referee has to put himself into a similar situation, would you turn on your comrades because your best friend asked you to? That sort of thing is unlikely to work in the heat of the moment, but a clever player might convince the charmee that there is some sort of conspiracy afoot and get him to change sides after some clever persuasion. This is why the spell works best on powerful, solitary creatures with no particular loyalties, who have nothing to lose by throwing in their lot with the caster. If the charmee does have loyalties other than the caster, it's best to take him or her away to another place where those loyalties won't clash.

[jakdethe]

Oct 22, 2013 7:43:37 GMT -6 @witoldk said:

2) Maybe it would be a good house rule to remove spell levels completely? If first level wizards can take total control over a person, why can't they cast a small lightning bolt or a fireball (dealing 1d6 damage, of course). Maybe it would be fun for 1st level clerics to be able to cast weaker Raise Dead to resuscitate recently killed PCs, maybe with a risk of spell failure?

I really like this, like a lot. In fact I might steal this to make a "Sorcerer" class. I like the idea of having a few known spells, that slowly increase with power, that can be cast rather frequently (not unlimited).

[Vile Traveller]

I'd like to know what Holmes had in mind when he proposed a spell point system to Gygax.

[Porphyre]

Oct 29, 2013 7:50:55 GMT -6 Vile Traveller said:

I'd like to know what Holmes had in mind when he proposed a spell point system to Gygax.

Probably a death wish ...

[Zenopus]

Oct 29, 2013 7:50:55 GMT -6 Vile Traveller said:

I'd like to know what Holmes had in mind when he proposed a spell point system to Gygax.

I'd guess something similar to the spell point system in Warlock. It assigns each spell a fixed point cost and some also have a lesser continuing cost to extend the duration. IIRC spell points are based on Intelligence and Level. The caster is still limited to casting spells that are known and memorized. Not a bad system for D&D since it sort of works as an add-on to the existing D&D scheme. The big drawback is needing to know the separate assigned values for each and every spell but that could be simplified to a set number for each spell level.

[strangebrew]

Oct 22, 2013 7:43:37 GMT -6 @witoldk said:

2) Maybe it would be a good house rule to remove spell levels completely? If first level wizards can take total control over a person, why can't they cast a small lightning bolt or a fireball (dealing 1d6 damage, of course). Maybe it would be fun for 1st level clerics to be able to cast weaker Raise Dead to resuscitate recently killed PCs, maybe with a risk of spell failure?

Ohh it'd be really fun if the failure resulted in the recently-slain PC immediately rising up as a hostile zombie.....