Charm do they notice ?

[LokiDR]

Dominate person affects your body. Your mind might scream in rebellion at what you are doing, but it is pretty much stuck in the sidelines while your body is "remote controlled". Here, attacking your friends would be against your nature (most likely, unless it is a situation where you would attack your friends if you were not dominated). Except for cases like the samurai, most people do not attack their friends. A good short definition of friend is "someone who will not attack you" And the definition of neutral on the good-evil alignment access includes caring for close friends and family. So most cases of non-evil dominated people would have them acting against their natures if they attack their friends. Examples of a non-evil, non-insane person attacking one's friends not being against one's nature, would be rare indeed (and are the focuses of tragedy in stories "Alas, I must attack my friend at the order of my lord" or "Alas, I must fight my friend because we are on opposite sides of this war" or even "Alas, I must kill my friend at the order of my lord".

Ok, you again point out where some stupid absolute doesn't apply. You demonstrate that a LN, or even LG PC might attack another PC. This shows again that the letters you slopped down for alignment aren't the end-all and be-all of resisting dominate.

But one could be dominated and ordered to do other stuff that is not against one's nature. "Give me your sword" or "run down that passageway and look for goblins" is not against most PCs' nature in the way that "kill your friends" is. Its all in the phrasing.

PC: "I never let anyone touch my equipment, I should get a new save"
DM: "Well you never have lent a weapon out. Ok, make the new save."
This situation can't come up if you judge "nature" on what the PC has agreed to or not. If the character has never made a point of being careful about his equipment being touched by another PC, it isn't his nature. Some characters would never go scout a passage for goblins, so they should get the extra save. Paranoia is a personality trait that can be judged.

 

[Particle_Man]

Maybe this is a verb/object confusion.

Fighter tend to fight. But good fighters tend to fight bad guys, not good guys. So on the "Verb" interpretation, it is in the nature of the fighter to fight, so they could be dominated to fight good guys. On the "object" interpretation, it is a violation of the nature of the good fighter to fight good guys, so he would get a new save.

I think the "Verb" interpretation allows for too much. I mean, it seems odd that a woodcutter "whose nature is to chop things up" would not get a save if he was told to chop up his children.

Is the "object" interpretation too limiting on dominate person? I think there are ways around it. It probably is not a violation of most people's nature to give up their stuff (it might violate the nature of those who make a point of keeping their stuff). It probably is not a violation of most adventurers' natures to scout for goblins (it might, if one person is opposed to ever leaving his friends alone). I mean there might be exceptions in some of these cases, but they would be rare. But the idea of it being against the nature of good characters to kill innocents, or non-evil friends, or non-evil family, is probably more common. There may be some extremely rare exceptions where one might have it not against one's nature to kill a friend (the samurai, perhaps?) but people killing friends/family is seen as "unnatural" when we see it in the news, and a fantasy world would not be that different in that respect.

So "Give me your weapon" -- probably not a violation of one's nature, unless the player can show this through a specific roleplaying history.

"Kill these (innocents/friends/family)" -- probably a violation of one's nature unless on is evil, again allowing for rare exceptions where the player (or more likely, the one whose character casts the spell on the player's character character)can show that the dominated person has a history such that this would not violate his nature, or can show that the specific situation is such that it does not violate the characters nature.

I mean, modern soldiers are trained to kill. I think that it would be unnatural/evil if "good guy" modern soldiers killed innocents (and I don't want to get into politics -- just pick your own "good guys" and fill in the relevant blanks). So using the "object" interpretation, modern soldiers are trained to kill "the enemy", not just to kill indiscriminately. Thus we could say it is against a soldier's nature if some otherwise "good guy" soldier killed some innocent people in his home town. Thus in a fantasy world, a warrior that is a "good guy" would also have a violation of his nature occur if he killed innocents, because he is trained to kill, but his nature is to kill "Bad guys", and innocents are far apart in concept from "Bad guys".

Anyhow, I am going to a movie. It is in my nature to watch movies. I wonder if that means it is in my nature to watch snuff films? Nah.