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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5705231" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's hard for me to answer a question about an imaginary thing.  Instead of addressing your question directly, I'll discuss how I imagine my imaginary peoples view Dominate.First of all, even if you don't believe Dominate is inherently evil, it's easy to see why anyone who isn't magical would view anyone potentially capable of casting a spell like Charm or Dominate to be inherently suspicious and dangerous.  The very possibility that someone else might be able to take away their mind and take control over their body and use them according to their wishes is frankly discomforting and to many terrifying.  It just seems like a power that ought not to be trusted in any mortal hands, and in generally that's exactly how it is viewed regardless of whether the individual sees it as absolutely evil or only relatively so. For this reason, in almost every culture on Sartha, if you Charm or Dominate someone you have to prove that you were defending yourself from an immenent lethal threat, or its considered the crime of rape and is punished by drawing and quartering the spellcaster.  Whether or not its considered inherently evil, it is considered for all practical purposes inherently illegal. Likewise, even the suspicion that you are capable of casting magic of that sort is likely to lead to ostricization at best and a lynching at worst.  "She's a witch!", is a very serious charge and one that is hard to escape from.  "Jedi mind tricks" are not viewed as a flippant and amusing power, and really I find it difficult to imagine how a group known for such a power would be viewed as good guys and not at all hard to imagine why a purge of them would be supported by the general population.Secondly, even among those that don't see it as inherently evil, there is a strong agreement by most good folk and some neutrals that its inherently dangerous to the spellcaster because it places such a terrible power in his hands that its far too tempting and far too easy to misuse it.  There is a general feeling that if it isn't inherently evil, then its a very slippery slope and that once a person begins to use it for self-indulgent or flippant reasons evil of a terrible sort follows along very quickly.Thirdly, while there isn't strong agreement that it is inherently evil, there is fairly strong agreement that it leans both evil and law as an example of one of the most extreme forms of tyranny.  Almost all Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral characters find it extremely distasteful at a minimum, and many would view it as inherently and absolutely evil.   But just because it isn't seen as absolutely evil doesn't mean that such powers would be accepted.  Consider the case of a society that leans strongly LE.  While the idea of the supreme ruler possessing such a power might seem to such a society to be just and only proper, the idea that anyone else would possess such a power and therefore be able to usurp rights and dignities the inherently belong to their superiors in this manner would be just about the most horrifying thing imaginable.  How could you trust that you were recieving orders from your rightful leige if you could not trust that your rightful leige retained his will and reason?   The power to compell others to obey without regard to station is about the most terrible thing that a LE society can imagine, and so while their would be some who were duly authorized to use this power in the name of the leige they'd be kept on a short leash and anyone not so authorized would be most likely subject to summary execution.   That is to say, merely knowing the spell Charm Person or Dominate Person much less using it might be seen as the grounds for being put to death - not because of it is evil but because its a danger to the right ordering of society.  The power to compell properly belongs only to the tyrant.</blockquote>

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