D&D 5E 5e completely nerfed charm - for YOU, anyway

[Morlock]

Charm and Dominate, the un-nerfing:

Charm Person:

Replace the spell description with the following:

You attempt to charm a humanoid you can see within range. It must make a Wisdom saving throw, and does so with advantage if you or your companions are fighting it. If it fails the saving throw, it is charmed by you until the spell ends. The charmed creature regards you as a trusted friend, to be heeded and protected.

Each time the charmed target takes damage from you or your companions, or as a direct consequence of your or their actions, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends.

At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 1st. The creatures must be within 30 feet of each other when you target them.

Dominate Beast, Dominate Monster, Dominate Person:

Replace the following text in the spell description:

Each time the target takes damage from you or your companions, or as a direct consequence of your or their actions, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends.

With the new text:

Each time the dominated target takes damage from you or your companions, or as a direct consequence of your or their actions, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

I'm not talking anything bad. Just a love stab, it'll barely pierce his heart. If that much kills him, I am not sure I want him as a friend anyway.

It sounds like a joke, but some people really will murder friends at the drop of a hat. Evil alignment for the win!

 

[Jester David]

The problem with your argument is: "fine, then my player will "suffer" with the "inferior" rewritten charm spells for players, which will "sadly" be "only as good" as the Vampire's charm. You can keep "Dominate Whatever," I don't want it."

The vampire can also turn to mist and can only be killed by a stake to the heart.
Should my barbarian also be equally unkillable since its meant to be the tough class?

Monsters aren't player characters. They don't and shouldn't need to obey the same rules or have the restrictions. They can have one-shot kill powers (like the banshee) or potent communities or immortality.
They don't need to be balanced for play over 20 levels fighting 1-6 encounters. They just need to exist for 2-10 rounds of combat and then go away.

See where I'm going with this?

Not even remotely.

 

[Mecheon]

It sounds like a joke, but some people really will murder friends at the drop of a hat. Evil alignment for the win!

Oh please, evil people don't murder friends. Evil people murder pawns too dangerous to be kept alive

 

[I'm A Banana]

Charm and Dominate, the un-nerfing:

Charm Person:

Replace the spell description with the following:

You attempt to charm a humanoid you can see within range. It must make a Wisdom saving throw, and does so with advantage if you or your companions are fighting it. If it fails the saving throw, it is charmed by you until the spell ends. The charmed creature regards you as a trusted friend, to be heeded and protected.

Each time the charmed target takes damage from you or your companions, or as a direct consequence of your or their actions, it makes a new Wisdom saving throw against the spell. If the saving throw succeeds, the spell ends.

At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 1st. The creatures must be within 30 feet of each other when you target them.

I don't see the improvement. This spell as you've revised it looks like it's designed to be used to make your enemies toss themselves into danger on your behalf (until they make their save, anyway). Charm Person, as designed, isn't that spell. It's not meant to be.

Dominate Person is that spell, which is why it's Concentration and lets you dictate actions and keeps going when the victim is hurt (until they make their save, anyway).

A vampire's charm serves a different function than each of those effects, as well.

Dominate Beast, Dominate Monster, Dominate Person:

Replace the following text in the spell description:



With the new text:

Am I missing something, or did the one extra word you add not actually make any real difference in how these spells work?

I've noticed that every charm/dominate ability in 5e is nerfed all to [expletive].

I hear that you're disgruntled with charm/dominate abilities in 5e, but it might be helpful to be precise about what you actually want them to do. What's the goal here?

 

[NotActuallyTim]

Oh please, evil people don't murder friends. Evil people murder pawns too dangerous to be kept alive

They just aren't the psychotic and reckless types.



Don't worry. Joker is friends with everybody he kills. They're in on the joke.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Just to be clear, you can't attack your charmer even if you are evil. The Charmed condition, which pretty much all of these abilities inflict, stipulates that you can't attack your charmer and that your charmer has advantage on Charisma checks against you.

That said, I prefer 5e charms. In the case of a vampire, he's unlikely to be able to turn you against your allies, since you likely consider the rest of the party to be close friends worthy of protecting. At most, the charmed will try to keep both sides from hurting each other.

Dominate can break on damage, but that's a good thing. Dominate is a very effective spell, since it not only removes one enemy combatant from the equation, but also adds that creature to your side. As it is, in order to break the dominate the creature's allies not only have to help the party by attacking their ally and dealing damage to him, but given the wealth of low monster Wisdom saves there's no guarantee it will even work. Or they can ignore him while he beats on them, in the hope that they can defeat the party before their former ally kills them (long odds there), in which case the dominated creature gets no save. That's not even considering the practical applications of dominate outside of combat (where there is little to no chance of getting a save beyond the initial one).

I used dominate against the party a few months ago (dominated the barbarian) and it nearly resulted in a TPK. Luckily for them, they finally decided to try to subdue the barbarian after 3 rounds of domination and he rolled a nat 20 on his saving throw. But they survived that encounter by the barest of margins. If that save had required the dominator to attack the barbarian, it would have been a TPK for certain.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

The spells do different things. The Vampire's Charm won't get you to do anything against your alignment, inclinations, and won't generally be able to turn you against your party. Dominate person is full-on mind control and can make the target to anything. Its much more powerful in its effect.

The Vampire's Charm is longer-lasting, but only a bit more powerful than Charm Person; a level 1 spell.

 

[Jester David]

Charm and Dominate, the un-nerfing

The gist of the change seems to be that damage triggers a save only when the damage comes from you, your allies, or as a result of actions, either yours or theirs.
Other than the arguing point of what a "direct consequence"is I'm not sure how that changes anything. Anything done after being charmed could be a direct consequence. It's so broad as to be meaningless. It might as well read "any damage" and cause fewer arguments.

 

[famousringo]

Eh, the uber-powerful charm spells of this edition are the Suggestion spells. Sure, you only get one command, but that command can be anything short of suicide if you word it well, the duration is great, and Mass Suggestion doesn't even use concentration. i wouldn't trade them for Vampire Charm.