D&D 5E player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[Charlaquin]

Are cases of charm, suggestion, dominate monster and the like different?

If Valindra had successfully charmed the player in question, could they still scream out she was a lich and try to attack, even though they viewed her as a "friendly acquaintance"? Can charm always be worked around by a resourceful player since they could think their friendly acquaintance had been replaced by a doppelganger, or maybe had been cursed where the only way to save their soul was to kill them before they committed some evil act?

No, in this case the specific rules of the charm effect are overriding the general rules regarding player authority over their character’s thoughts and actions.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Why do there actions necessarily need to come out differently? The rules only require they act like the caster is a friendly acquaintance. Maybe they just sometimes attack friendly acquaintances, or run away from them in fear? Who is to judge that those aren't the thoughts a character might have to a friendly acquaintance?

Why should a DM ever expect anything from a character who has been subjected to a Charm Person and how would it be adjudicated without requiring the player to explain what the character was thinking (seemingly contra to half this entire thread)? @iserith , for example, said they would leave it fully up to the player (see #963) to decide what was appropriate. Would your table differ?

I'd have to think more about that. @iserith is the master and I am only the apprentice, so he probably has a good point. In general I trust the people I play with, so if they think that a certain action complies with the magic compulsion, I'll probably go along with it.

 

[Charlaquin]

No. I declared my action only.

...huh?

 

[Cadence]

No, in this case the specific rules of the charm effect are overriding the general rules regarding player authority over their character’s thoughts and actions.

Except Charm Person only requires them to act like they would towards a friendly acquaintance. How can one judge how a character thinks they should act towards a friendly acquaintance anymore than they can judge anything else a character from a particular world would react in any other situation? (As opposed to Dominate Monster where the spell compels certain specific actions if I read it correctly).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"Mother may I mix sulpher, potassium nitrate, and charcoal in (insert correct proportions, which I don't know offhand) proportions?"

"Sure. You can do whatever you want."

"Cool, I make gunpowder!"

Yawn. "That mixture of ingredients does not, in this game world, seem to produce gunpowder. Hmmm. Strange, huh?"

Fixed.

Except you cant always do that. What if this is game set on historical Earth, thus having the same laws of physics? And furthermore, there is countless amount of purely mechanical inventions for which it would be super difficult to argue that they wouldn't work in the fantasy world.

Also, be perfectly honest, if a person would actually do this, wouldn't you feel that they really are not taking this rolepalying thing seriously? Again, I am sure this is not a thing that would ever come up, because pretty much all players have already internalised that this is not an OK thing to do. They know that this sort of metagaming is bad.

Hey, I didn't bring that topic back.

Yet this is the absurd logical outcome of your stance. Of course it doesn't have to be. You can easily say that you're OK with most use of metagame knowledge, but this would require you to draw some line or at least accept that such line exists. Don't you really see that there are some cases where it leads to way more ludicrous outcomes? Can't you accept that some metagaming is bad?

I mean I do it in the other direction. Like I said to Charlequin, I don't know, twelve pages ago or so, that there are some instances where it is not a problem at all.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Except Charm Person only requires them to act like they would towards a friendly acquaintance. How can one judge how a character thinks they should act towards a friendly acquaintance anymore than they can judge anything else a character from a particular world would react in any other situation? (As opposed to Dominate Monster where the spell compels certain specific actions if I read it correctly).

Of course, the other answer is that because they're a friendly acquaintance, any aggressive acts count as PvP, and thus the target (controlled by the DM) gets to narrate the result.

 

[Cadence]

Of course, the other answer is that because they're a friendly acquaintance, any aggressive acts count as PvP, and thus the target (controlled by the DM) gets to narrate the result.

Oooh. That's a nice split of the Gordian knot.

 

[Cadence]

Of course, the other answer is that because they're a friendly acquaintance, any aggressive acts count as PvP, and thus the target (controlled by the DM) gets to narrate the result.

Oooh. That's a nice split of the Gordian knot.

Of course then the DM might want to try that with any of the friendly NPCs or the like which seems a slightly slick pathway to letting the DM skate past all kinds of die rolls and the like a player would usually be entitled to.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Except Charm Person only requires them to act like they would towards a friendly acquaintance. How can one judge how a character thinks they should act towards a friendly acquaintance anymore than they can judge anything else a character from a particular world would react in any other situation? (As opposed to Dominate Monster where the spell compels certain specific actions if I read it correctly).

This is a really good angle to look at this. Free metagaming stance would logically render this spell completely powerless.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Also, be perfectly honest, if a person would actually do this, wouldn't you feel that they really are not taking this relepalying thing seriously?

Not necessarily that they aren't taking roleplaying seriously (they obviously think their character has this knowledge, for whatever reason) but maybe they're not fully on board with some of the premises of D&D.

You could certainly make the campaign veer off in a strange direction where, instead of exploring dungeons and killing monsters, they're building and selling wondrous machines. It's still roleplaying, just....weird.