Have you been Charmed?

[Kemrain]

When you have a spell cast upon you, and you make your saving throw, you are made aware that some kind of magical effect was placed upon you. I found it in the player's handbook, and I'll concede the issue (hate being proven wrong). However, what I couldn't find was a ruling about whether you become aware of an enchantment cast upon you, once the spell expires.

Say a Succubus casts Charm Monster on somebody, using her spell like ability (so there's no solmatic or verbal component for him to notice), and her target fails his save. After the spell expires, does the target realise he'd been charmed, or does he simply revert back to the emotional state he was in before he had been charmed?

This raises another question about Charm spells...

Say a Sorceress casts a Silent, Stilled Charm Person on a date her brother set her up on. He didn't really want to be there, he was doing it as a favor to the Sorceress' brother, so he was Indifferent towards our girl. He fails his save and is instantly helpful towards his friend's sister, and will be for quite some time (she's not low level.) They go dancing, have dinner, and enjoy eachother's company. She doesn't mistreat him at all (unless you count Charming him in the first place mistreatment) and over the course of the night comes to like the boy. They've hit it off, they agree to see eachother again, he gives her a goodnight kiss at her doorstep, they part ways, and a few hours later the charm wears off. Even though he had a great time that night, he was looking forward to seeing her again, he becomes indifferent towards her the moment he's no longer Enchanted... Is this right?

A friend you make while charmed will stop being your friend afterwards? What if I charmed someone, and introduced them to another friend of mine. I asked the charmed person to take my friend out and show them a good time, and they hit it off. After the charm expires, are they still friends with my friend?


- Kemrain the Charming.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

After the spell expires, does the target realise he'd been charmed, or does he simply revert back to the emotional state he was in before he had been charmed?

This is a hard one to answer. There is no real information one way or the other. I think this spell is probably THE hardest to adjudicate as a DM. It brings up many questions: What exactly would someone do for their best friend? What if they are evil and don't care about anyone, even their best friend? Does charm even have any affect?

I think, in this case, it is up to the individual DMs. I would suggest that although someone might realize SOMETHING has happened to them, they are very likely to just write it off as unimportant if the person who charmed them is there to say "Don't worry about it, it was nothing." How they feel about it afterwards depends on the person maybe, and the DM as well. Does the person still feel good towards the other person? Well, if they were treated well the whole time, maybe. It all comes down to how much you play up each part of the spell. I see it going two ways:

"Wow, that was an amazing night. Still, why did I kiss her on the first date, that isn't like me. Also, I really didn't know her all that well, why is it I let her take me somewhere I didn't really want to go? And there was that strange feeling I felt at the beginning of the night. It was just before I started acting strangely."

OR

"That was so amazing. I was so in love that I didn't even feel like myself. I can't wait to see her again." (likely forgetting all about the saving throw because they were told to, and they had much more interesting things to remember)

The difference between the two might just be the intelligence of the person you charmed (whether or not they figure it out).

Of course, mean DMs might opt for a third option:

"I've been charmed all night! I did all sorts of things I never would have thought of doing and I've been used by someone else all night, and magic was used to make me LIKE it! When I find that person, I'm going to kill them."

In my opinion, most people should be weak willed enough that unless you ask them to do things severly beyond what they would do normally, they likely wouldn't notice when the spell wore off.

Majoru Oakheart

 

[Thanee]

At least you should remember what happened while you were charmed.

You shouldn't directly know you have been charmed, but depending on the situation, you sure might have done some strange stuff and wonder about that, afterwards.

Some knowledge in Spellcraft or Knowledge: arcana, or even Sense Motive maybe might help to deduce that it was actually a charm.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nellisir]

IMO, you'd be aware you were charmed only if it was obvious. In the first situation given, the guy likely would revert to Indifferent, but not be aware of the charm. It'd more along the lines of "well, I thought she was really nice, but now that some time has gone by...I'm not sure."

In the second case (friends with friends), yes. They don't have to like your friend to show them a good time (though they will want to be nice, for your sake). If they hit it off during the date, it's 100% natural. The charm victim may wonder afterwards why they did YOU that favor, but probably brush it off as having paid off in the end.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I'd say their opinion afterwards depends entirely on how they were treated while charmed-- the magic is no longer in effect, but if the sorceress treated him nicely the entire night, he's going to remember the kind treatment. Of course, a low Charisma might affect this anyway, since he'd also remember her mannerisms... but Sorceresses are not normally low Charisma creatures.

Of course, knowing he's been charmed will make a huge difference. If you decide he's aware of the effect afterwards, it depends on his reaction to being magically manipulated. For some people, not being mistreated or exploited during the spell's effect will be a strong mitigating factor, while others will be unforgivingly outraged. (I tend towards the latter, especially due to priding myself in the fact that I'm damned near impossible to manipulate via mundane means.) In either case, if they're aware they've been charmed, I'd assume that their starting opinion is the best possible outcome, with a much worse opinion far likelier, unless they were remarkably well-treated during the spell's duration.

There's not really any skill in D&D to cover introspection. I could, perhaps, see a Sense Motive check, after the fact, to examine one's own motivations-- Sense Motive, being linked to Wisdom, seems like a natural choice. Without the requisite K: Arcana or Spellcraft check, I wouldn't let him know exactly what was wrong, but Sense Motive should be enough to know something was wrong with his own behavior-- with the DC set by how out of character he had been acting. Trusting people might wonder if she reminded them of someone else, or somehow or another unconsciously appealed to them, while more paranoid types would probably immediately assume magical coercion. (Even, or perhaps especially if it were not actually the case.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The Arcane Unearthed version of Charm grants you a +10 bonus to Charisma (or charisma based checks? I don`t know off-hand) against the target of the spell. This makes it much easier to adjucate - if you now succeed at your Diplomacy check to change the target´s attitude, the effect is as permanent as if you succeeded without the bonus, even if the bonus gets lost after a few hours.

In D&D it is a bit more difficult, since the attitude automatically changes.
So, if becoming friends/partners would require a certain attitude (you would usually reach by a Diplomacy check), the Charm spell automatically makes this possible, but only for the duration. Afterwards, the effect ends.
Maybe the Sorceress in the example should make a diplomacy check as if she wanted to change the attitude of her target without the charm effect, but give a circumstance bonus to the check. (Which would effectively change the longer lasting effects to something like the AU version)
This probably should only work if you don`t know that you have been charmed after the spell ends - if you would do know it, you would certainly be offended. (Isn`t this one of the typical movie clichés? Man uses a trick to get contact with a woman, woman and man fall in love, but woman finds out about his trick, gets angry and leaves him, but then they make it out again, happy end?)

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I'll go against the grain and state an emphatic "yes." You know upon recovery when you've been charmed. The spell causes the target to feel and to behave as if the caster were a "trusted friend and ally." The spell does not erase or alter the memory of the time spent charmed. Even if the target didn't regard the caster as a threat pre-charm -- for example, the target may not have even had the chance to see the caster -- once the spell expires the target is going to remember feeling and behaving as if the caster were a trusted friend and ally.

And that's mighty strange.

The target may or may not know that he was the target of the charm person spell, depending upon his IC knowledge of specific spells and effects -- but he knows damned good and well that he was the target of some kinda magic futzing with his will and emotions. And his memories are usually gonna be a pretty good indication of the source of that magic.

The only possible exception is if the caster genuinely is a trusted friend and ally of the target (or disguised as one). Perhaps the caster simply needs to convince the target to do something the caster knows the target wouldn't do, for instance. Even then, depending upon the action(s) requested by the caster, I'd almost always say the target recovers from the charm with the memory that he's done something he wouldn't normally have done. And, if so, so much for his "trusted friend and ally."

 

[Ferret]

I would say that if the character is treated well even after the spell ended they would be friendlier. However it would differ between victims, an orc that charmed an elf might treat them well, but afterwards they might not act the same way. On the other hand it may have changed their view on the race.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'll go against the grain and state an emphatic "yes." You know upon recovery when you've been charmed. The spell causes the target to feel and to behave as if the caster were a "trusted friend and ally." The spell does not erase or alter the memory of the time spent charmed. once the spell expires the target is going to remember feeling and behaving as if the caster were a trusted friend and ally.

And that's mighty strange.

With the only caveat of "if he thinks about it." Let's say you charm a guy and spend the next few hours with them. You get him to buy drinks, dinner, and generally mooch off of him for a night. For the duration of the spell, he's fine with what happened because it was the right thing to do. IIRC, the charm spells last a long time (hours/level for Charm Person, days/level for Charm Monster) so if you get out of sight of them an no one brings it up again, you won't *realize* you were charmed.

After the charm wears off if he wonders why he's low on cash he'll realize something's up. If he's the fighter IMC who never spends a second thought on his finances, he'd have no idea.

Charm person, well, with only a few hours after the fact anything significant makes it more likely they'll realize it. Charm Monster means it's more than a week 'til they get a chance and I know I'm likely to forget what I was doing two or three days ago, let alone last week.

The best uses for Charm I've seen, FYI, have been when the person using it was really nice to the target. Half-orc sorceror charms a barkeep, tips him heavily all night, and makes a concerted effort to be diplomatic. The barkeep then has no reason to question the Charm because that guy's just so nice and easy to be around, especially for a half-orc. From then on he's got no trouble in that bar and can relax knowing the barkeep is fairly fond of him.