Domination question

[Endur]

Dominate "Attack your fellow/former party members"

This could be interpreted in many ways. You could verbally criticize them, grapple them, cast spells at them, or use weapons. Depending on the character's relationship with other party members, this might not be against their nature.

Dominate "Kill your fellow/former party members"

This is much more likely to bring up a saving throw for being against their nature.

 

[jgsugden]

This is one area where a DM must come to a ruling and stick with it. There can be no consistent general rule.

Why? Because the possibilities are too broad.

What is with in the nature of a given creature? Any rule that hoped to cover such a broad field would either by billions of pages in length and far too complex to use, or it would have obvious loopholes and problems that would lead to counterintuitive results.

Some areas of the laws need to be clarified to improve the quality of play. Some area need to be left vague and open to DM interpretation to keep them playable.

For me, my standard is this: If the dominated creature would find the action repugnant, it is against his nature. If the dominated creature would find it odd, quirky, unusual, or mildly annoying, it is not sufficient to be against his nature to perform.

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

This is one area where a DM must come to a ruling and stick with it. There can be no consistent general rule.

Agreed there can be no consistent general rule, however, getting a dominated creature to attack his allies should be an extremely common situation. More clear guidelines should be provided about whether this violates "a creature's nature" or not. Guidelines for how Charm Person can be used in this situation are provided, after all.

 

[just__al]

Best example I can come up with...

The NPC was writing to his sister (a PC) talking about how much he hated being in the service of a lord because he hated be told what to do and how to do it. His lack of being a good guard earned him a one way trip to "special duty" which amounted being either dominated by the Lord's vampire father or if he couldn't be dominated would be dinner for the vamp.

He didn't get a second save when he was dominated to fight off intruders because he was an archer and quite a good one at that. He did however get the save when it came time to shoot at his sister. THAT was against his nature and he got a save. I gave him a save every round that the vamp chose his sister as a target. The vamp only thought he was being hesitant to fire upon another Elf and didn't think the brother was going to resist so he kept having the brother shoot at her and finally he was able to save.