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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5605622" data-attributes="member: 42582">RC, some thoughts on a couple of things you said.From memory, the biggest creature Charm Person can affect, in AD&D, is an Ogre - which is able to attack as a +1 weapon. To get something bigger than that we're talking about 4th level spells (Charm Monster, Enchant Weapon), and I can't imagine there have been that many AD&D campaigns where (i) the GM was using monsters which require magic to hit, and (ii) 7th level PCs didn't have access to sufficient magic weapons to hit them.So if we focus on the ogre example - I can see there is a certain sort of puzzle-solving wit in a low-level party working out "OK, how can we get the loot from the gargoyle in Room 4? I know, by Charming the ogre in Room 3 and having it fight the gargoyle for us!" But, a bit like the Tomb of Horrors as discussed in another recent thread, this is an approach to play that doesn't grip everyone - and certainly it doesn't grip me all that much, and after the first time I think I'd just find it tedious!The alternative option of the wizard blowing up the gargoyle with magic missiles is, I think, more exciting (Lewis Pulsipher made this same observation in an early discussion of the merits of Charm Monster vs Lightning Bolt). But both strategies also have a sort-of "wizards trump" flavour that I'm also not a big fan of.My preferred solution to this issue in AD&D - and one which I implemented in Rolemaster, which also has a "magical weapons to hit incorporeal and some non-fleshy monsters" rule - would be to have a first level spell (a cleric spell would be a good fit for D&D, I think) that grants no bonus but enables a weapon to count as magic. Then the cleric could bless the fighter's sword (which is what clerics do) and the fighter could beat up the gargoyle (which is what fighters do).While I can see the force of the comparison, I also think there are some significant ways in which hit points and healing surges differ in the sort of effects that they have on play.The key difference is that a player does not have to do anything to access his or her PCs' hit points, whereas s/he does have to do something to access his/her PC's healing surges. So no matter how many healing surges a fighter PC has, if the player can't access them then they won't do any good.The upshot of this, at least in my experience, is that whether the fighter has few or many surges remaining, many of the tactical considerations with regard to accessing surges in the course of the combat are likely to be similar.A fighter with 0 surges available is, perhaps, a special case - having only your hit points to rely on in a 4e fight is a tricky proposition, especially for a fighter. In this particular case, my experience suggests that play will more closely resemble that which you would get in AD&D if the fighter has significantly less than full hit points remaining.</blockquote>

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