Charm Person and Other Enchantments    

Charming and enchantment spells are a key part of the bard class.  I'd like to talk about some of the problems with these abilities, and how they can be used well in a game.  In my past posts, I've talked a bit about enchantment, in combination with the trope of "beautiful woman enchants male protagonist."  There are several places that this ability comes up in the D&D rules, and I'll use Pathfinder to draw attention to some examples.

The Charm cleric domain is the most obviously tropey use of this ability.  It's description in the SRD reads:  "You can baffle and befuddle foes with a touch or a smile, and your beauty and grace are divine."  This is a very gendered description, evocative of many examples in genre literature of a woman's beauty entrancing a man.  Two subdomains of Charm are similarly gendered:  Love and Lust.  One might expect that Lust would be masculine, but the spells that it grants:  touch of idiocy and confusion, speak directly to the stereotype of men who are rendered confused and stupid by predatory, sexual women.

If charm is the feminine use of enchantment, the masculine use is hypnotism.  In the Captivation subdomain, hypnotism replaces charm person, and Entrancing Aura replaces the more feminine power of Charming Smile.  Hypnotists, in genre literature, are almost always men and they do not rely on sexual wiles to entrance people, but rather something akin to science, along with a strength of will that overpowers simple minds.

Throughout the many supplements and manuals of D&D, this gender divide in enchantment is pervasive, tracing back to the rules for Comeliness in First Edition (AD&D) that allowed particularly beautiful women to charm men.

The feminine forms of charm generally have the following qualities:

• They are often tied in some way to the beauty of the charmer, either their physical appearance or the beauty of their voice.
• They are generally persuasive, rather than controlling.  The target of these enchantments is aware of what they are doing, and believes that they are doing it of their own free will.

These include:

• The Charm, Love, and Lust domains.
• The charm subschool of Enchantment.
• Spells such as charm person and suggestion.

The masculine forms of charm generally have the following qualities:

• They are often tied to the strength of will of the charmer, either through holding and maintaining eye contact or through a hypnotic visual or sonic pattern.
• They are generally controlling, rather than persuasive.  The target of these enchantments is unaware of the actions that they are taking, and may not remember taking them.

These include:

• The Captivation domain.
• The compulsion subschool of Enchantment.
• Spells such as hypnosis and hold person.

Monsters that use enchantment are also overwhelmingly female.  More on that in a later post.

I feel that these sorts of rules lead to play and stories that recreate some of the harmful and gendered tropes found in fantasy literature.  Although I haven't gotten up to addressing the spell system, it seemed like a good idea to talk about this here, because bards use these sort of abilities all the time.  One way to break up this gender divide is to focus on tropes for charm that are gender neutral, or to deliberately gender-swap existing tropes.

 

How Do These Abilities Fit in the Story?

The first question that I feel needs to be asked is: how do we anticipate a protagonist, rather than an antagonist, using these abilities?  Here are some examples of ways that charm/compulsion abilities are famously used:

The Jedi Mind Trick:  "These aren't the droids you're looking for."  This is compulsion through mental strength, generally used by the heroes to evade capture.  It only works on the "weak willed."  As a trope, this type of charm is masculine in nature, but we can find examples of it being used by non-male characters (Rey in The Force Awakens, for example).

The Natural Charmer:  This is a subtle power, that may or may not be supernatural. Think Moist von Lipwig from Going Postal.  Generally an unconscious effect, it causes others to like the person more than they usually would.  This is a very widely used trope and is generally gender neutral.

The Seducer/Seductress:  Use of this ability may not be directly sexual in nature, but it is almost always sexually-charged.  Female examples abound, but Black Widow from The Avengers is one who comes to mind.  Although I haven't seen it, Eliot Spencer, from the show Leverage, is a apparently good male example of this (yes, I will see it, I just haven't had time yet!). 

The "Who, Me?" Trick:  Immortalized by Tasslehoff Burrfoot in the Dragonlance series, this protagonist is so clearly good and innocent that they can regularly get away with murder without being questioned.  This trope is usually associated with female characters, particularly young girls.  Gender is so strongly associated with that trope that when I read the books when I was young, I thought that Tasslehoff must be a girl in disguise!  (And, interestingly, it turned out that it was the player of the original character that was female.)

Note that all of these are abilities that mislead a (usually minor) character into doing something that is not harmful for them, but will help the protagonists.  The most problematic is the seducer/seductress, but it is still a good fit for some games, if handled well.  Most of these abilities require the person who is being charmed to understand the language of the charmer, and the charmed person is understood to be a human who normally has free agency.  In comparison, abilities that are more dominating than these are usually only used by antagonists, or, if they are used by the heroes, it is against creatures that are understood to not have free agency.

How Can the Rules Support This Use?

The structure of the rules should meet the following goals:

• Charm spells and abilities should be tools in the same way that a sword is a tool, and should be able to be used in diverse styles.
• Characters should not be forced to comply with tropes in order to make use of charm spells and abilities.
• Abilities should be written from the perspective of the protagonists' use first, and the NPCs' use second.  Evil uses of charm abilities should be expressed as evil.

The four examples of charm types in the section above are generally used by very different characters.  You wouldn't necessarily expect the same sort of person to use more than one of these.  And yet the same character who makes use of charm-type abilities (a bard or an enchanter, for example), is likely to have access to all four, even when three of them aren't a great fit.  So another way that the rules can help is to be agnostic as to which flavor of charm ability is being used.  A spell such as charm person will have a different flavor depending on how the player wants to roleplay their use of the spell.

Finally, the rules can help is to set forth specific categories of actions that a charmer can persuade their target to do.  The trick here is to set limits that aid in story, while still allowing the players to be creative.  In addition, setting forth such categories can keep these abilities from being abused, in the sense that they can easily be used for rape or torture if no such limits are set.  The Pathfinder rules already take steps in both of these directions.  The command spell now includes a list of things that can be ordered.  And the charm person spell will not allow the target to do something obviously self-harmful, and requires an additional die roll if it is the sort of thing they would not normally do.  I believe the former goes a bit too far, while the latter does not quite go far enough, but together they encompass a range of restriction that does the job.  More details when we get to spells and magic!

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Backtracking to Bards    

Here we are returning to the subject of bards, which we briefly skipped over!  Bards have a fascinating history in Dungeons & Dragons.  Sure, it's easy to become a bard now, but back in the day, you really had to work for it.  Bards first appeared in core rules back in First Edition D&D (technically AD&D).  To create a bard, you had to meet stringent requirements.  Your human or half-elf only character had to have extremely high ability scores to even begin to attempt to become a bard.  You would then create a fighter character, and go off adventuring.  Sometime after you reached fifth level, you would then dual class (a variant type of multiclass) into a thief.  Finally, after many adventures as a thief, you would dual class again, to a druid.  You would keep your fighter and thief abilities, and now you could also cast druid spells!  This idea of a fighter/thief/spellcaster was very appealing, and had previously only been available to elves.  Humans could get this combo, but they had to work for it.  However, when Third Edition came out, everyone could multiclass freely.  Fighter/thief/spellcaster types were now available to any race, and in a variety of different interesting combinations.  Where did the bard now fit into the game?

The core of bards in D&D is that they are knowledgeable about many things, they are jack-of-all-trades, and they can charm people with their music.  This last ability is greatly expanded in Third Edition and Pathfinder, and becomes the core of what makes a bard unique.  When Third Edition came out, I felt that there was a great deal of excitement about bards.  Like the monk, here was a class with an entirely new set of abilities.  However, as time went on, I noticed that interest in the bard had waned.  Bards were underpowered, it was argued, and often didn't really fit into the adventure in the same way that the other character classes did.

How Did the Jack-of-all-Trades Become the Least Flexible Class?

To understand the problems with the bard, you have to look at the multiclass system.  Multiclassing is highly favored among many players of the game, both in D&D and in Pathfinder.  And yet, as I've discussed in earlier posts, there are some multiclass combinations that just don't work very well.  And, unfortunately, that includes pretty much any combination that contains the bard.

The first problem is that the bard is a spellcaster.  Any class that combines with the bard that is also a spellcaster is going to be at a significant disadvantage.  That includes a lot of classes!  But fighter/bards, rogue/bards, and even monk/bards are still quite feasible.  Why do we not see more of them?  Part of the reason is that sorcerer gives a lot more bang-for-your-buck as a multiclass spellcaster.  Sorcerers get access to a larger variety of spells and can cast more of them.  Then, with the advent of the magus class, bards were even less useful, as the magus blends their spellcasting and fighting in a much more efficient way.  Another reason is that there is too much overlap between abilities.  The bard offers better fighting and better skills than the sorcerer, but a fighter and a rogue, respectively, already have those things.  Monk/bards have an issue with ability scores:  they need all of them to be viable, which spreads their scores fairly thin.

But I believe that the main reason that bards don't get multiclassed (or played) as much is that players have a hard time figuring out what to do with the musical component of the class.  The idea that bards will play music and aid the rest of the party through their song is a very specific one.  It feels sort of odd and out of place in epic fantasy.  The most popular example of a bard that regularly uses bardic performance to support his allies is one that pokes fun at the very concept.  And it is this musical support ability that the majority of bard archetypes reduce or get rid of.  Pathfinder has done their best to expand the different ways that one can play a bard, but the fact is, it remains a very narrow character concept.  A good analogy would be the necromancer.  A great concept for a character, but clearly not for everyone and not suitable for every game.

Performers in the Fantasy Genre

My approach to the bard, to address some of these issues, would be to focus on the bard as a performer, and allow this to include a broad spectrum of abilities.  A Performer component would encompass the traditional "play music to enchant and buff allies," but that type of performance would not be overly critical for the class's function.  Performers in fantasy can be broken down into a number of different categories, all of which would be accessible by the bard.

• Actor:  Actors in the fantasy genre are often associated with masks and the type of very stylized acting represented by Commedia or Mummery.  They are more closely associated with illusions than other bard types, as well as trickery.
• Dancer:  This type of performance is almost always associated with combat, as well as the normal bard functions of enchantment and buffing.  The class of Dancer is a mainstay of Japanese fantasy RPGs.  It should be noted that dancers in the fantasy genre are almost always female and often tend to be sexualized.  Being aware of the problematic tropes associated with dancers is important, and I'll talk about it more in my next post, which is all about charms and enchantments.
• Juggler/Acrobat:  Another performance that is often associated with combat.  Jugglers do not tend to be able to enchant with their juggling.  It is seen as skill, not magic, and is often used for pranks or thievery.
• Musician:  The typical D&D or Pathfinder bard, this performer plays instrumental music and generally this has a magical effect.
• Singer:  Enchantment through song is a strong theme in fantasy.  It is often gendered (women tend to be singers more than men) and often sinister.  The harpy and the siren are examples of singers that enchant male heroes, often to their doom.  See my notes on Dancer, above.
• Storyteller:  Performers of this type are often used by an author of a fantasy story to introduce the myths and tales that are the core of the fantasy world.  In other words, they exist mostly for exposition.  Storytellers as protagonists do exist in fantasy as well, however, and they tend to be knowledgeable about many things.  They also tend to be the guardians of lore that would otherwise be lost.

Components of a Bard

We know, from prior posts, that our bard might include Spellcasting as a secondary component and Agile as a tertiary component.  Their other Secondary component could be Scholar (making them more like wizards) or Versatile (making them more like sorcerers) or Healer (making them more like clerics).  For now, let's look at a Performer component, which would be the primary component of the bard class.

Performer

Requirements:  None.

Hit Dice:  Primary Performers gain d8 hp, others have no change

Skills:  Performer characters gain the following class skills:  Acrobatics, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Disguise, Intimidate, Knowledge (local), Linguistics, Perception, Perform, Sense Motive, and Sleight of Hand.

Base Attack Bonus:  Primary Performers gain base attack as rogues, others have no change

Saving Throws:  Performers begin with a +2 Will save and advance quickly.

Additional Spells:  Performers add the following to their spell lists:

• 1st - cause fear, charm person, comprehend languages, confusion (lesser), hypnotism, remove fear, sleep, ventriloquism
• 2nd - animal trance, calm emotions, daze monster, enthrall, heroism, hypnotic pattern, pyrotechnics, rage, scare, shatter, sound burst, suggestion, summon swarm, whispering wind
• 3rd - charm monster, confusion, crushing despair, deep slumber, fear, glibness, good hope, haste, sculpt sound, slow, speak with animals 
• 4th - dominate person, freedom of movement, legend lore, modify memory, rainbow pattern, shadow conjuration, shout, speak with plants
• 5th - dream, false vision, heroism (greater), mind fog, nightmare, shadow evocation, song of discord, suggestion (mass)
• 6th - analyze dweamor, eyebite, find the path, irresistible dance, sympathetic vibration, veil

Special Abilities:  Tertiary Performers gain a single special ability from the list below at first level.  Secondary Performers gain one ability at first level, and one additional ability every two levels, starting at level two.  Primary Performers gain one ability at first level, and one additional ability every level, starting at level one.

• Acrobatic:  As the feat.
• Affect Animals (Su):  Use all Perform abilities on animals as well as people.
• Alertness:  As the feat.
• Animal Affinity:  As the feat.
• Athletic:  As the feat.
• Calm Emotions (Su):  Calm down listeners and make them peaceful.
• Catch Off-Guard:  As the feat.
• Countersong (Su):  Counter magical effects that rely on sound.
• Dazzling Display:  As the feat.
• Distraction (Su):  Counter magical effects that rely on sight.
• Dramatic Display:  As the feat.
• Fascinate (Su):  Distract others, so that they receive penalties on certain rolls (such as Perception).
• Gather Crowd (Su):  Compel all within a certain range to come closer to see and listen to your performance.
• Hero's Display:  As the feat.
• Inspire Competence (Su):  Grant allies bonuses on certain skill rolls.
• Inspire Courage (Su):  Grant allies bonuses against fear effects.
• Inspire Fear (Su):  Increase intimidation effects.
• Inspire Ferocity (Su):  Grant allies bonuses in combat.
• Intimidating Prowess:  As the feat.
• Mass Charm (Sp):  (Primary only) Extend the effects of certain enchantment spells to all who see and hear the bard's performance.
• Masterful Display:  As the feat.
• Mocking Dance:  As the feat.
• Murderer's Circle:  As the feat.
• Savage Display:  As the feat.

This is a draft of the Performance component, and it is far from complete.  But it should give you an idea of the direction that this component would go in, and the types of benefits that it would offer to characters.

Next post I want to talk a bit more about charm effects, as they are often used by bards.  Then we will move on to druids!

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