"Domination" Domination

[eamon]

Another possibility, which is more complicated but easier on suspension of disbelief, would be to say that dominate effects have trouble overriding a victim's instinct for self-preservation. If you compel a dominated creature to do something that would expose it to direct harm (provoke an OA, enter damaging terrain, attack itself), it gets a free save to end the dominate effect. So you can try to make a dominated creature run the gauntlet, but you might be better off making it whack its buddy instead.

I like this solution. If you make a creature do something dangerous, it gets a save.

Heh. I find it tempting to provoke OAs when I have someone dominated, as player or as GM, but I also find it possible to resist. My general feeling is that charop tends to make the game break down, since the game isn't designed for optimizers. This doesn't make optimizers bad people, it's just something to be aware of.

The appropriate solution is to fix the game, perhaps by saying don't do that. In particular, it's terribly incongruous for either side to not choose a winning strategy merely because "it upsets balance". Particularly in the case of domination, which is more effective in the hands of the monsters than in those of the PC's. If something is game-breaking, remove it from the game already.

House Rule: When you have dominated an opponent you have temporarily made the opponent into an ally, for purposes of targeting spells and opportunity attacks.

For balance, this works, but it doesn't make sense. Why can't allies take OA's? In practice, they don't because it's generally unwise, but that limitation is one caused by intention, not necessity. If they want to attack, well, they aren't truly allies then, and they should be able to.

I think the appropriate ruling would be that the dominated creature gets a save for each square entered where it can see that doing so would provoke OAs from the dominator's allies, and/or that each time it's attacked by an ally of the dominator it gets a save to end the effect.

Edit: I think the latter (save per attack) is probably a better ruling as it does not require a judgement call.

I really like the second suggestion, also because it allows the dominator to call for a charge without save---so long as his allies don't take the OA. It also allows for potentially interesting OA's by other party members to make him "snap out of it" - or, if it's a fighter, to even physically stop the dominated target.

So, putting it all together, I'd say you should grant a save before the creature is forced to do something obviously harmful (charge off a cliff, zigzag through a wall of flame), and right after the creature is attacked or hurt because of the command (i.e. get's an OA or walks through an invisible wall of flame if such a thing should exist).

The save-granting clause is intentionally broader and more vague than the "hindering terrain" clause in the RC: by erring on the side of granting too many saves, it's in the dominators best interest to make the dominated creature do something effective rather than find a loophole in the house-rule.

 

[Psikus]

Would it be that bad of a house rule to rule that while dominated, movement or making a ranged attack, doesn't provoke OA?

It is a nice and much-needed house rule, in my opinion. For our campaign, we addressed this by making all movement by dominated characters count as forced movement, and subject to the same rules (i.e. no OAs, and can save vs. cliff).

There is an additional exploit against dominated characters, which isn't as blatantly broken, but is nevertheless quite strong: marking a dominated enemy in order to trigger an extra attack from the defender/soldier. This is a bit more difficult to solve, so we defined attacks by dominated characters as "forced attacks", and stated that they never provoke OAs nor violate marks.

I blogged about these issues a while ago, you can find it here, if you are interested.

 

[erf_beto]

Even if the target is dominated by a player, it's still the DM's job to determine its actions, right? You utter your command and the DM decides how the target acts, to the best of its ability.

Just because you "tell" a "friend" to walk to the other side of the fight, it doesn't mean he will run straight through the crossfire, does it? Maybe he goes around it, leaving a 2-square distance from any combatants, because that's the safest path. If unable to do so, like in crowded corridor, he'd probably remain idle for the turn, waiting for the opportunity to safely get to the other side. Unless of course he's a proud full-of-himself juggernaut or a high evasion rogue, who usually don't care about OAs...

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Ryujin]

Even if the target is dominated by a player, it's still the DM's job to determine its actions, right? You utter your command and the DM decides how the target acts, to the best of its ability.

Just because you "tell" a "friend" to walk to the other side of the fight, it doesn't mean he will run straight through the crossfire, does it? Maybe he goes around it, leaving a 2-square distance from any combatants, because that's the safest path. If unable to do so, like in crowded corridor, he'd probably remain idle for the turn, waiting for the opportunity to safely get to the other side. Unless of course he's a proud full-of-himself juggernaut or a high evasion rogue, who usually don't care about OAs...

Just my 2 cents.

Thing is that dominate doesn't make the enemy into a friend. At least that's my take on it. The mechanics suggest that you're taking over the opponent's body, in a form of 'remote control', then forcing him to act against his own will. The 'dazed' status implies that the opponent is constantly fighting for control. He simply doesn't have the choice of not acting and is trying to regain control, which explains why he gets a save vs. hindering terrain.

 

[Riastlin]

Personally, I think that a good way of handling this, particularly if its getting abused, would be to grant the dominated creature a save against entering the "hindering" terrain (i.e. leaving the threatened square). Treat it exactly as you would forced movement into hindering terrain -- i.e. if the dominated creature succeeds, he falls prone in the last square before entering the hindering terrain, but he is still dominated.

I think that this makes it perhaps a little more viable to try this technique on "save ends" dominates, though its still likely that you'll have better choices.

As for marking a dominated creature, I really don't have a big problem with it myself -- of course, I have yet to have players try to abuse this. Its come close in some instances in a game in which I am a player where the mage loves to use Hypnotism on the fighter's mark but the thing to remember there is that the attack against the target's ally will still be at a minus 2, so much of the time you're still only getting in one actual hit (though its a bit more likely since you have two chances to hit).

 

[eamon]

Personally, I think that a good way of handling this, particularly if its getting abused, would be to grant the dominated creature a save against entering the "hindering" terrain (i.e. leaving the threatened square). Treat it exactly as you would forced movement into hindering terrain -- i.e. if the dominated creature succeeds, he falls prone in the last square before entering the hindering terrain, but he is still dominated.

But that means that even if the dominator's allys forgo OA's they're still seriously inhibiting the freedom he has to choose a nasty action. That's why I'd prefer to have the rule "save before visible, certain harm, otherwise save after harm or attack". It kind of makes sense too; the dominated creature gets a save when asked to do something self-destructive, and he realizes it's self-destructive either before the harm (if obvious and certain), or after the harm if non-obvious or uncertain.

And I'd let the save end domination. This is a save that'll only be granted when the dominator is pushing for more than is balanced. In-game that's very reasonable, but a more limited domination is too, so I'd pick the more limited variant of domination. Domination is more than strong enough even if the dominator can only choose non-self destructive actions; I'd even be OK (balance wise) with not just a save but automatically ending the domination, but a save has a little more tension and dramatic potential.

 

[S'mon]

Personally, I think that a good way of handling this, particularly if its getting abused, would be to grant the dominated creature a save against entering the "hindering" terrain (i.e. leaving the threatened square). Treat it exactly as you would forced movement into hindering terrain -- i.e. if the dominated creature succeeds, he falls prone in the last square before entering the hindering terrain, but he is still dominated.

I like this. I also think treating all Dominated movement as Forced movement makes a lot of sense.

 

[eamon]

I like this. I also think treating all Dominated movement as Forced movement makes a lot of sense.

Does it ignore difficult terrain? I don't think it's quite that simple .

 

[NewJeffCT]

We could eliminate opportunity attacks. I always thought it was pretty silly that if I'm dueling D'artagnan and suddenly a goblin runs past me, I'll break off from my swordfight to stab the goblin.

We could make it so that opportunity actions are now immediate interrupts, so you only get one a round. And maybe taking one causes you to grant combat advantage yourself. But that's getting into house rules territory.

Weren't they originally 1 per round, but then it was changed to 1 per turn? You could go back to the original rule.

I think it was 1/round in 3E days as well.

 

[Nullzone]

I'm not sure how you can't envision D'artagnan in a duel turning to hit a passing enemy...it happens in the span of 6 seconds. We're talking a quick thrust and then back to his primary focus. Happens a few times even in the Musketeers movies!