D&D 5E Charm, the evil spells

[Maxperson]

Hypnosis... by trained therapists who (in many countries and states) are regulated by the government and is used typically with other types of therapy as well, not alone, on consenting patients ...and which may just be a placebo affect thing anyway, or a type of meditation. It's not movie-style mind control, since nobody can actually agree what hypnosis is or does anyway.

I can't find anything on using it to change the thoughts of the "criminally insane" anywhere, and I doubt it would work on anyone who wasn't willing to try--if it even works at all. Wikipedia lists hypnotherapy as an alternative medicine, along with crystals and phrenology.

I'll bet it has been tried. I mean, The Men Who Stare at Goats was based on some amount of truth.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

People are arrested and charged with assault(and battery) for pushing all the time.

A decade of working in high school education tells me that yes, pushing someone out your way can be considered both. Don't believe me? Try to break up a fight between two students opposite your gender and see what accusations you open yourself up to.

The thrust of my argument remains though; most magic spells cannot be used as intended as a "good" act, unless you consider violence of some type or another a good act. I don't believe charm spells are alone in this, I in fact would say most spells are equally alarming, if for different ethical or moral reasons.

We have reached the nitpicky BS tipping point. I won’t be responding to either of you on any subject for a while.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What it sounds like to me is that you value personal mental autonomy over the physical condition of your body, such that a person threatening the one in any capacity is always evil whilst a person threatening the other may not be. Is that accurate?

No.

Groping someone who has not consented is worse than punching someone, if we must have a physical example.

The thread is about mind control spells.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No.

Groping someone who has not consented is worse than punching someone, if we must have a physical example.

The thread is about mind control spells.

I dont see anything in that response that refutes what I said. If I'm off base about what I think you believe, where am.i wrong? Serious question.

 

[Maxperson]

As I told someone else, this BS edgecase dilemma argument is not useful and I won’t engage with it.

Also, violence isn’t inherently evil, and is not a “violation”. Violation, here, refers to rape.

Tackling someone is not inherently violating them. Controlling their mind is.

Rights can be violated. Bodies can be violated(and not just by rape). Any physical violence is a violation of the person having it perpetrated upon them. It's not an edgecase at all. Tackling someone against their will is a violation of that person's body and personal space.

Which brings us to the "inherent" portion of your argument. Controlling someone's mind is no more inherently a violation than tackling is. You can consent to both and there is no violation at that point. If something is inherently a violation, consent cannot remove it.

 

[HammerMan]

Now Order of the stick played with this a bit MANY years ago. They had someone cast it (maybe twice) first suggested “Kill your friends and bring me there magic items” and the character refused that was not in his character… so they reevaluated “Kill your friends and keep there magic items” and then the character said “OKAY”

Now that is played for laughs, but I started to think back to times I had seen suggestion used in games… to get discounts shopping (aka stealing) to get past guards (mostly good I mean better then killing them) an a few jokes here and there, but over all in the 30 (oh god is it really 30?!?) years I have been gaming we haven’t used it a lot.

However 1 time sticks out (at least one time that didn’t involve the above bad player) where my friend Becky used suggestion from her sorcerer (3.5) a few people at a party that the king was a tyrant. The reason for this had a goodish reason, the king was refusing to help with the main plot but the princess believed us, so we started to over throw the entire country to insert our puppet dictator…for the good of the world (yeah, that sounds bad I know..,)

SO I started to think about those party guests, and those guards, and even those shop keepers… and that yes it is just a game and they are not real, BUT what we are doing is oh so wrong to them. The R word that is not grandma friendly and could often be used to describe the above problem player’s actions is not something I would through around casually… but add the word mind in front of it and it gets pretty on the nose.

this is from my OP, I was already thinking about alot of what you guys are talking about now back at the begining.

notice none of my examples where combat. I understood then and understand now when we are in initative we do things we most likely shouldn't out of it... but these all stick out.

 

[HammerMan]

No.

Groping someone who has not consented is worse than punching someone, if we must have a physical example.

The thread is about mind control spells.

this is an itresting take. I am not fully diasgreeing but I think an arguement could be made either way for what one is worse

 

[Amrûnril]

The knowledge of how to fight isn’t evil. Weapons aren’t evil. Physical violence does not, outside of nitpicky edge cases, rob anyone of their fundamental self. “What about stabbing people with magical lasers” doesn’t change the argument at all.

Killing a person robs them of their fundamental self in a uniquely profound and lasting way. That's not a nitpicky edge case. It's what most weapons and many combat techniques are designed to do as efficiently as possible.

And even physical violence that stops short of killing can inflict lasting trauma (physical or psychological). The same would presumably be true of mind control effects in a setting where they existed. Either form of assault would be evil in most circumstances, but either could plausibly be used (in rare cases) to avert some greater evil.

I personally don't think that hold person or blindness/deafness are capital-e Evil spells. For starters, they are almost invariably used as combat spells, when it's kill-or-be-killed and the PCs are in battle against (hopefully) proven bad guys. Charm, suggestion, and other enchantment spells, however, have a bad habit of being used out-of-combat, though, and either as a time-saver (instead of RPing conversation while trying to persuade someone to do something they don't want to do) or for... disturbing reasons.

I don't think anyone here is disputing that such uses of mind control are evil. But I think the evil is resorting to any form of assault in such circumstances, not the form of assault that's chosen.

Also, violence isn’t inherently evil, and is not a “violation”. Violation, here, refers to rape.

Rape describes a specific form of violation that occurs disturbingly often in the real world. It's probably best not to appropriate that language to describe a distinct, fictional form of assault (both out of respect to survivors and in the interest of allowing a constructive dialogue).

 

[Remathilis]

We have reached the nitpicky BS tipping point. I won’t be responding to either of you on any subject for a while.

And neither will I.

 

[Maxperson]

this is an itresting take. I am not fully diasgreeing but I think an arguement could be made either way for what one is worse

Responding to you here, I don't agree. Punching is primarily physical, while groping is almost certainly guaranteed to bring a lot of mental and emotional harm along with it.

My father was an abusive alcoholic/drug user. He used to beat me all the time, including kicking me with pointed cowboy boots and steel-toed work boots, and whipping me with willow switches, belts and ramrods. When I think of those times I'm not really affected at all. However, he was also verbally abusive to me and the emotional damage that caused can still bring me very close to tears if I think too long or hard about what he said to me. I think I might have seen him 7 or 8 times from 1983(when I moved away at 13) until he passed away in 2015. Emotional scars are a lot worse.