For me (both as player and as Gm the charm person entry gives just enough. It makes clear the person isn't under the users comman, but simply views the person as a trusted ally. What that translates into will be highly situationally dependant and dependant on the NpC's personality. This is exaclty the kind of spell you want in the GM's court for interpetation and i don't think additional mechanica (beyond those described for the saving through) would be helpful.
I agree that such a spell will be situational and dependant on the target's personality, if it is included in the system (which I'll come back to later), but how often do GMs have this sort of thing plotted out in advance for every monster and NPC? My experience would suggest the answer is "seldom". In which case it becomes essentially arbitrary, and the "concrete setting" you mention in reply to Hussar is actually just an illusion.
More info can be good. What I don't want is turning a highly open ended spell like charm person into something with highky specific mechanical effects that end up confining the spell to a bonus on the battlefield or something that doesn't really follow from the concept itself but is just created to establish a consistent combat use.
The other half of this is too much info is equally bad because you need to read a page of spell description before casting anything (as a Gm this can be a pain until you have memorized the spells).
I mostly agree, here - but I'll get into details in my reply to Andor, below.
Don't take this as a snipe or anything Belasir, I am just curious, but this seems like an odd criticism of pre 4e editions. Since those had pretty robust descriptions of what the spells did flavorwise, whereas 4e had much shorter entries that usually supplies highly specific mechanical effects. It sounds like you are just asking for a more comprehension explanation of the spell, and if anything, 4e leaves a lot of that for the Gm and largely limits itself to the combat grid effect (not entirely but that appears to be the focus of spells under the character power entries). Pre 4e spells could be anywhere from half a column to a page or so.
Not taken as a snipe - no worries.
I'm really not after descriptions of what the effects are in terms of flavour; I'm after a systemic model that can be applied to convery player actions to game effect. This should be as elegant and simple as possible, but, if it's not possible, I would honestly prefer that the effects be left out of the game (which is what 4e did, in several cases).
Ahh. I see what you mean, but I disagree with you about cause and effect. 4e did not solve the issue of vagueness that you dislike by providing specific, concrete instructions, it did it by excluding most of the effects in the first place. Now admittedly I am only working from the PHB here, as I own no other 4e books, but I'll note that neither of the spells you mentioned are in it, although they have been in the PHB of every previous edition as best I can recall.
There are actually effects that are reminiscent in later books, but nothing so flexible, I agree.
Now you do have a couple of Rituals that perform much the same function as Phantasmal Forces, but they also provide exactly zero explanation for how a person should react when seeing a bridge appear overnight.
This is true, also, but Rituals perform a rather different role in the system to powers in any case. They tend to be used in Skill Challenges, where the systemic measure of the "effect" they have is whether or not they provide a "success" in the skill challenge. That is far from a perfect system for non-combat encounters and events, but it is at least more than any previous edition offered in the published material.
Furthermore I don't see the same perfect clarity you see, instead I note that the Insight skill gives you a chance to notice illusory effects, but doesn't tell you what that means. Individual illusion effects might tell you what happens if someone makes his Insight check but not all do. Mirror Image for example is an illusion, but provides no guidence for what happens if you spot the illusion. Worse (from my point of view) are powers which claim to be illusory in the fluff, but do not use the keyword, apparently because it would be too difficult to explain what the effect of an Insight check would be. (I'm looking at "Crown of Madness" on p[age 134.)
The active effect of "Crown of Madness" is a Charm, so "recognising" the illusion has no effect at all; it is merely a side-effect of the spell that might, for example, allow another caster to identify what the target is being affected by. This seems obvious, to me, but even if it did not the overall rule that "the fluff text is not rules text" would make it clear that there is no systemic effect from the illusory "crown".
So I don't think what you're seeing is a virtue of superior design, but the laziness of game designers who don't want to make GMs have to make judgement calls and so skirt the issue entirely. (Or tried to, but failed in my examples.)
I actually agree that it's deliberate avoidance (I wouldn't say "laziness", at this point, because there are many issues) by the designers. I
would say that leaving it to the GM to invent a system/model is laziness, in this day and age, but "skirting the issue" I see as forgivable because constructing a
good system would be a big challenge.
In an ideal world, what I would want to see is a system that covered the areas of mental influence and deception simply, elegantly and well. It has been managed for combat - even though it has taken years of work to perfect the D&D model in this area. Would it be a big job? Sure - that's why I'm prepared to pay someone to do it through buying their product(s)!
What you see as a weakness, I see as a strength in earlier editions. "Charm Person" is vague because it covers an impossibly broad range of options, people and situations.
A simple push, pull or slide in combat can cover a whole range of uses and implications. It can be used to push an enemy over a cliff, to hurl them into an inimical spell effect, to line them up for a nasty attack, to bunch them up for a trapping effect, to move them away from a vulnerable ally, to move them such that they hinder another enemy's intended actions, to put them into a disadvantageous combat situation or a whole host of other indirect outcomes, many of which are situational and dependant on the intentions of the target or others in the encounter. But these implications can all be catered for because a solid system is in place to describe the environment and participants in a combat encounter. Put a similar system in place (and make it elegant and simple!) to describe and govern the social and explorational encounters, and I can see effects such as "Charm Person" and "Phantasmal Forces" being quite easy to define in system terms for use in such a game.
The core problem, to me, seems to be that defining something in "system terms" when you don't have a system to cover the aspects of play that an element relates to is more than a mite tricky!
Make a system for the mental realm - with attributes and so on as for combat - and I can see great game play arising. Give that street kid a longing for affection (that works a bit like a Vulnerability, maybe?) that boosts the effectiveness of the Charm. Give that Paladin an Oath attribute (like a feat or something) that must be overcome before the Charm will affect the subject of the oath - maybe working like Resistance, or additional "hit points" to be overcome before the Oath will be compromised.
I've been working up some ideas in this area, but it's hard to get it right. If someone comes up with a good stab in published form, I'll gladly buy it!
