How to model the 24 and 6 int character

[Plane Sailing]

I recently had an issue where one of my players had a dominated creature. My player gave him commands, and playing the dominated creature as best I can came up with ways to subvert his orders.

Actually I think this is needlessly screwing with the players. You are rendering a high level spell worthless.

Allowing for misintepretation of commands is one thing, but you are deliberately setting out to misuse commands, which sounds like wilful linguistic legalism and no-fun. I would put it in the same category as DMs who deliberately twist all wishes no matter what their source.

How did your players take this? Not too well by the sound of it.

 

[Rhun]

Actually I think this is needlessly screwing with the players. You are rendering a high level spell worthless.

Allowing for misintepretation of commands is one thing, but you are deliberately setting out to misuse commands, which sounds like wilful linguistic legalism and no-fun. I would put it in the same category as DMs who deliberately twist all wishes no matter what their source.

I disagree with this. What about scenarios where the evil efreet promises you a wish, and when you say "I wish for a thousand pounds of gold!" he drops it square on your head. Or something like this.

IMO, if it is in the creature's nature to attack and kill animals, and the character did not specifically instruct the creature not to do so, the creature was well played. I would tell the player to suck it up and think through his commands more carefully next time. You don't learn if you don't make mistakes.

 

[Plane Sailing]

That's why I said "no matter what the source". One would expect evil efreet or Glabrezu to twist wishes towards their own ends (but in a more dastardly way, I'd hope). Some DMs though (and I'm not suggesting that this is the case with Stalker0 BTW) gleefully try to twist wishes that are cast as 9th level spells etc. I.e. without regard to the source of the wish.

In this instance, the DM is effectively telling the player to lawyer-up every command he gives.

If the creature had been charmed, I could understand this approach since it still has almost all of its self-determination. A dominated creature has, by definition, considerably less volition. The key thing is that the DM was deliberately 'coming up with ways to subvert his orders'.

Lets hope he cuts the PCs the same slack should they be dominated by a vampire or something else in the future.

 

[Chorn]

IMO, if it is in the creature's nature to attack and kill animals, and the character did not specifically instruct the creature not to do so, the creature was well played.

But we're talking about a dominate [foo] spell here. They all create a telepathic link between the master and slave. You didn't specify, but it appears that the caster and creature do understand another enough to go beyond the "basic commands" only stage. As such, there's little room for misinterpretation when the wizard basically does your thinking for you.

I disagree with this. What about scenarios where the evil efreet promises you a wish,

I'll second what Plane Sailing has said. You really expect to get a good result when its the LAWFUL EVIL genie that's writing out and filling in the details of your wish before HE casts it? Would you expect a benevolent being that has nothing to gain from, and no intention of hurting you to drop the gold on your head if you made the same wish? Sadly, some DMs would still drop the gold on the character's head or even worse require the character to actually do good deeds for it. Lousy wish twisting DMs. *grumble grumble*

 

[Rhun]

After reading the spell again, I am going to stick with my opinion that the creature could still attack animals. According to the spell description, if no common language exists then the caster can only give the creature basic commands, such as "Come here" or "Go there." "Leave all humans in the area alone, and don't kill their animals, either" could be considered more than a basic command.

So before we can really debate this further, I think we need more info. Does the creature understand a language that the character speaks? Because if not, I think that Stalker0 probably took the right approach, within the boundaries of the spell.

 

[evolved]

semantics is intution as much as brain power i should know stop ignoring wisdom