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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Cleric Domains Using Components     

In Second Edition D&D, clerics got a whole lot more customizable and interesting.  So it is only fitting that we use them to start our examples of how switching class components works.  As described in my last post, clerics break down into four components:  Primary Healer, Secondary Spellcaster, Secondary Armored Fighter, and Tertiary Community Leader.  This paints the picture of a fairly standard, good aligned cleric who follows a deity of healing, community, or goodness in general.

Domains, from Third Edition, introduced the idea of portfolios of special abilities that deities could grant to their clerics.  Each deity generally grants a number of domains (including up to two based on their alignment), and clerics choose two of these.  Each domain grants some special abilities and a small list of spells (some of which may not be normally on the cleric spell list).  Clerics then receive a special "domain" slot for their spell casting, usable only for spells from this particular list.  Looking at the total abilities granted by domains, they are probably closest to a Tertiary component.

Currently, clerics have the Tertiary component of Community Leader.  Which is fine for many NPC clerics, since that is generally the function that they will have in the story.  But adventuring clerics rarely have a community that they remain attached to and active in during the course of the story.  For these clerics, there should be an option for other callings.

Giving Each Deity Their Own Domain Component     

When I was in college, playing Second Edition D&D, I made a handwritten list of 100 things that a deity could have as their area of focus.  It was, of course, a chart so that you could roll percentile dice to select a portfolio item.  By rolling twice or three times on the chart, you would be able to randomly generate a unique deity, and the list would tell you what spheres of influence that cleric had access to for spell casting.  Sadly, I do not have a copy of that list anymore (along with many of my old D&D notes, it got lost somewhere along the line.)  Pathfinder has more than 100 potential domains (when you include all the subdomains).  But the world that Pathfinder uses, Golarion, has substantially fewer than 100 deities in it, as do most campaign worlds (Forgotten Realms may be the exception!)

Making a class component for each type of cleric in your campaign world has a number of advantages.  It takes the place of not only domains, but can also be used for archetypes that are specific to only a few deities in your world.  If you want to have only one deity with multiple orders of clerics, each can have their own component.  Finally, you can have class components that represent clerics that are more generalized than those who follow a single deity each, perhaps representing an entire pantheon, or representing philosophical concepts rather than gods.  In this way, domain class components become much like heritages: specific to the particular community that the cleric represents.

The Domain components, generally speaking, will replace Community Leader (as it is the default).  If you want your cleric to also be a community leader, you might consider replacing of the other components of cleric, and making your Domain that much more powerful as a result (making it a secondary or primary component).  Here is an example of a Domain component with three separate levels.  Since I have run many games in the Forgotten Realms, I've used one of those deities as an example:  Mystra, the goddess of magic.  (Note that this is for purposes of example only, as material for the Forgotten Realms is copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast.)

Follower of Mystra (a Domain Component)

Requirements:  Must be either Lawful or Good.

Hit Dice:  no change

Skills:  Followers of Mystra gain the following class skills:  Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (religion), Spellcraft

Base Attack Bonus:  no change

Saving Throws:  no change

Additional Spells:  Followers of Mystra learn the following spells, in addition to any spells they learn from the Spellcaster component.  They must still meet level requirements to cast these spells.

• 1st - identify, magic aura, protection from evil
• 2nd - align weapon, bless water, magic mouth
• 3rd - dispel magic, glyph of warding, magic circle against evil
• 4th - arcane eye, holy smite, imbue with spell ability
• 5th - dispel evil, spell resistance, true seeing
• 6th - analyze dweamor, antimagic field, glyph of warding (greater)
• 7th - holy word, legend lore, spell turning
• 8th - holy aura, protection from spells, symbol of death
• 9th - foresight, mage's disjunction, miracle

Special Abilities:  Tertiary Followers of Mystra gain two special abilities at first level:  Arcane Beacon and Touch of Good.  Secondary Followers gain two abilities at first level, and one additional ability every three levels, starting at level three.  Primary Followers gain two abilities at first level, and one additional ability every two levels, starting at level two.

• Arcane Beacon: As the Arcane domain ability.
• Blast Rune:  As the Rune domain ability.
• Brew Potion:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Craft Construct:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Craft Magic Arms and Armor:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Craft Rod:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Craft Staff:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Craft Wand:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Craft Wondrous Item:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Dispelling Touch:  When you cast dispel magic as targeting a single object or creature, you may do so as a melee touch attack.  If the attack succeeds, the highest level spell on the target is automatically dispelled.  (Secondary Follower only).
• Divine Boon:  As the Divine domain ability.
• Empower Spell:  As the feat.
• Enlarge Spell:  As the feat.
• Extend Spell:  As the feat.
• Forge Ring:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Hand of the Acolyte:  As the Magic domain ability.
• Heighten Spell:  As the feat.
• Holy Lance:  As the Good domain ability, but using character level, rather than class level.  (Primary Follower only).
• Maximize Spell:  As the feat.
• Quicken Spell:  As the feat.
• Scribe Scroll:  As the feat, must meet level requirements.
• Silent Spell:  As the feat.
• Spell Rune:  As the Rune domain ability.
• Still Spell:  As the feat.
• Touch of Good:  As the Good domain ability, but using character level, rather than class level.
• Widen Spell:  As the feat.

Note that many of these abilities and feats may yet be modified, and this is a far from complete list (including mostly only Pathfinder Core Rules).  Next post I will tackle the huge subject of Spellcasting!

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