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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ab0b0" data-source="post: 1710388" data-attributes="member: 22291">I've read the description of charm person and the chapter about magic in the PHB 3.5 multiple times but I still had trouble trying to figure out what to do. Here was my situation: A party of 3 1st level characters were fighting a harpy who attempted to charm all 3 while flying. The published adventure I was using had said that the harpy's charm effect was a spell-like ability that mimicked the spell, charm person. 2 PCs made the save while 1 failed (a dwarf with no missile weapons) and the book said that a character cannot be made to attack his friends without the caster winning an opposed CHA check.  This is where the problems started (luckily, the harpy never successfuly won the check): 1. If the harpy had won the CHA check, would the dwarf have continued to attack until the spell was broken or would he only have attacked once? Would he have gotten to make another check? 2. Since casting charm person as a spell-like ability takes a standard action, what kind of action would commanding the dwarf to attack have counted as? Would the command have had to have been given more than once? If more than 1 character were charmed could they all have been commanded as one action? 3. Since the spell's description had stated that it changed a character's status to helpful toward the caster, and presumably the charmed character also would have had helpful status toward the other PCs, would the other PCs have been able to attempt a CHA check to get the charmed character to have attacked the harpy? 4. If the harpy had henchmen would the Dwarf have been able to attack them? What if the harpy had ordered him not to? 5. Would seeing the harpy attack, or even just threaten, the other PC's have affected the dwarf's CHA check? What if the harpy had henchmen would they have influenced the dwarf if these henchmen were to have attacked the other PCs? 6. If the harpy had failed the CHA check could the dwarf have just run away so that it wouldn't have had to attack any of his friends, since he had considered the PCs and now the harpy as his friends? Anyway, after the harpy landed it attacked the other 2 PCs, trying in vain to get the dwarf to help [she lost every(approx.4) opposed check] until they killed the harpy ending the spell. The whole time the dwarf did nothing but get confused watching his friends fight with his new friend(the harpy). I really wish there was some more explanation in the PHB. If anyone has any official answers, or even some well thought out house rules, they will be much apppreciated. Thanks,Bill</blockquote>

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