D&D 5E Charm Person 5e vs Older

[Coroc]

...
a trusted friend and ally to be heeded and protected.
...

So in your opinion, how far would this protection go if the trusted friend is attacked?
In a 50:50 combat encounter e.g. the charmed mob thinks it has a 50% chance to win but 50% to perish,
will it then fight for the caster or flee?

 

[Maxperson]

So in your opinion, how far would this protection go if the trusted friend is attacked?
In a 50:50 combat encounter e.g. the charmed mob thinks it has a 50% chance to win but 50% to perish,
will it then fight for the caster or flee?

It depends on the alignment, personality and abilities of the charmed individual. I would jump without hesitation into a fist fight on the side of one of my best friends, unless drastically outnumbered. I would not charge someone with a knife or gun if I were unarmed. I would probably engage a knife wielder if I could grab a solid chair or something else to give me an advantage over the knife wielder.

A LG 10th level fighter who was charmed would have a much higher threshold of who he would jump in and defend the caster against than a N farmer would.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The issue with 1E-era misunderstanding/abuse of Charm Person was twofold. First, people wanted it to be Domination - which it decidedly isn't and even goes out of its way to try to establish that it isn't. Second is that people want it to apply to not just the caster but also all the casters friends. But that isn't even close to what the spell describes. The end result is that people want it to be a combat spell that completely neutralizes a successfully charmed opponent, turning them into a totally submissive puppet. What it actually is written to be able to do is overwhelmingly a matter of out-of-combat circumstances. Unless you cast Charm Person on someone who is currently attacking you or intent on attacking you very soon, charming them doesn't actually benefit you much - and never did. It won't make the charmed victim change how they feel about THEIR current friends and allies, nor how they feel about YOUR current friends and allies. It only makes YOU into a trusted friend. That obviously has only marginal benefits in combat and won't change their personality and world views regarding others. A charmed attacker won't attack the caster, but it would take a HEAP of additional instantaneous pleading and convincing to get them to not just very simply change targets and continue to attack other PC's. It is only the rampant and willful misreading (or more accurately, NOT reading) the spell description that makes Charm Person as powerful as it often seemed.

What enabled monsters in 1E and other editions to do what PC's can't with that same effect is that monsters get it at will, with a gaze or simple proximity to them or the like. Unless the victim has blanket immunity they can just keep charming by staring at them or hanging around them until it finally takes hold. By contrast PC's have to cast a new spell on every victim they want to charm (which may or may not succeed) and they don't have a bottomless supply. But then the charm effect lasts for weeks typically, assuming average human-ish intelligences.

5th Edition is only significantly changing the effectiveness of it for monsters by reducing the duration compared to 1E. They're still mostly getting it as an unlimited-use effect I believe so 5E monsters wanting to maintain charmed victims long-term have to keep them very close for daily re-establishment of the effect.

 

[Coroc]

The issue with 1E-era misunderstanding/abuse of Charm Person was twofold. First, people wanted it to be Domination - which it decidedly isn't and even goes out of its way to try to establish that it isn't. Second is that people want it to apply to not just the caster but also all the casters friends. But that isn't even close to what the spell describes. The end result is that people want it to be a combat spell that completely neutralizes a successfully charmed opponent, turning them into a totally submissive puppet. What it actually is written to be able to do is overwhelmingly a matter of out-of-combat circumstances. Unless you cast Charm Person on someone who is currently attacking you or intent on attacking you very soon, charming them doesn't actually benefit you much - and never did. It won't make the charmed victim change how they feel about THEIR current friends and allies, nor how they feel about YOUR current friends and allies. It only makes YOU into a trusted friend. That obviously has only marginal benefits in combat and won't change their personality and world views regarding others. A charmed attacker won't attack the caster, but it would take a HEAP of additional instantaneous pleading and convincing to get them to not just very simply change targets and continue to attack other PC's. It is only the rampant and willful misreading (or more accurately, NOT reading) the spell description that makes Charm Person as powerful as it often seemed.

What enabled monsters in 1E and other editions to do what PC's can't with that same effect is that monsters get it at will, with a gaze or simple proximity to them or the like. Unless the victim has blanket immunity they can just keep charming by staring at them or hanging around them until it finally takes hold. By contrast PC's have to cast a new spell on every victim they want to charm (which may or may not succeed) and they don't have a bottomless supply. But then the charm effect lasts for weeks typically, assuming average human-ish intelligences.

5th Edition is only significantly changing the effectiveness of it for monsters by reducing the duration compared to 1E. They're still mostly getting it as an unlimited-use effect I believe so 5E monsters wanting to maintain charmed victims long-term have to keep them very close for daily re-establishment of the effect.

Maybe my initial interpretation was also influenced a bit by gold box computer games, there it really was an insta killer.
What still stands though, is that hold person and sleep (sleep or lower level mobs) have been instakill spells in 1e and 2e and they changed to a better in 5e.

 

[Arnwolf666]

And thank god so.

When I started playing 2e I had to houserule some spells either do not exist or you would instantly snap out of them as soon as an attacking motion is made vs. the target of the spell. And I mean motion, not actually finishing.

Those spells were sleep, charm person, hold person. Why? Because those spells in 1e and 2e, designed for a sneaky gygaxian approach of a dungeon,
e.g. put all the goblins asleep, take the treasure, move out again, or RP approach of some fiddly situation e.g. you charm the guard to let you into a castle
in contrast to simply slaying said guard and goblins has a major flaw.

They all are instakill spells at spell level 1 or 2, mightier than other save or die spells in the case of sleep because with other spells at least you would get a saving throw, as mighty than a level 9 power word kill!

With charm person you could add insult to damage, back then you could basically order the charmed mob to jump the cliff. And you were always fast because you had the shortest casting time.

Way better now with 5e way, way, better.

I never ever had a problem with those spells. Sure it let an encounter end quickly. But in 2E there is lots of them per day.

 

[zenopus]

The original conception of the spell, in Vol 1 of Original D&D (0e, 1974), actually did bring the target fully under the caster's power: "If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the "charm" is dispelled". This version didn't even have a time limit! The basic idea was for the M-U to charm a human/humanoid to fight for them. The creature would probably die before long, so duration wasn't really important.

The duration (based on Int) until a new saving throw could be made was added in the first OD&D supplement, Greyhawk (1975). Then AD&D rewrote it as influence rather than domination. So the history of the spell is something of a continuous rewrite over the editions to reduce the power from the original idea.

 

[Maxperson]

The original conception of the spell, in Vol 1 of Original D&D (0e, 1974), actually did bring the target fully under the caster's power: "If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the "charm" is dispelled". This version didn't even have a time limit! The basic idea was for the M-U to charm a human/humanoid to fight for them. The creature would probably die before long, so duration wasn't really important.

The duration (based on Int) until a new saving throw could be made was added in the first OD&D supplement, Greyhawk (1975). Then AD&D rewrote it as influence rather than domination. So the history of the spell is something of a continuous rewrite over the editions to reduce the power from the original idea.

I disagree. It was changed during 1e in 1978 when the PHB came out. So for 41 years out of the 45 years that D&D has been around, it has more or less held the current incarnation. Some slight details change, but the idea that it can't force anything and the victim gets a lot of leeway to decide what to do has been a constant. That's hardly a continuous rewrite on the spell.

 

[zenopus]

Well, perhaps I overstated it, but my comments were made in the context of this thread, which is about the 5E version being much less powerful than the 1E version. But I also could also point to other editions. 2E added more restrictions to the 1E version, including checking the saving throw during the Int-based interval (rather than at the end), which potentially makes it much shorter and unpredictable. 3E drastically reduced the duration to the much shorter 1 hour per caster level, and 5E just has a flat 1 hour duration. The trend line over the years is to reduce the power of the spell.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, perhaps I overstated it, but my comments were made in the context of this thread, which is about the 5E version being much less powerful than the 1E version. But I also could also point to other editions. 2E added more restrictions to the 1E version, including checking the saving throw during the Int-based interval (rather than at the end), which potentially makes it much shorter and unpredictable. 3E drastically reduced the duration to the much shorter 1 hour per caster level, and 5E just has a flat 1 hour duration. The trend line over the years is to reduce the power of the spell.

I think that's more about how people, including DMs, have used the spell improperly, rather than to limit the spell's actual power. If you just follow the wording and have the victim only do for the caster what he would do for his best friend, the spell loses a huge chunk of its "power." I think the designers have been moving to save people from themselves.