My players need nookie. Any ideas?

[Friadoc]

My thoughts on this are that if you cast Charm person on an 83 year old woman she is going to give you some cookies and a silver piece to get yourself a proper meal, not jump on you. Similarly, if you cast it on a woman who's not attracted to you, she's going to be giving you the "I don't want to endanger our [fake, magically induced] friendship" speech.

Charm person should be no more effective than taking someone out for a meal, with flowers, chocs and half a bottle of red plus some nice conversation.

But that may not be how its being used in the OP's games...

Afterwards of course, the target may (not entirely unjustly) feel they've been taken advantage of, if they work out what happened.

Is this worth a forked thread?

I don't think it's worth a forked thread, as it is related to the core situation of the post.

Charm Person is a lot more effective than a dinner date with some extras, a lot more. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a spell.

Charm Person could take a person who thinks the character is an idiot, devoid of personality, and then make them someone that is looked at as a close friend or ally. While it will not make a character jump into bed with the casting character, it will put the character in a state where they are more inclined to listen to the casting character, be open to approaches of the casting character, and, thus, it is an external influence that inhibits the reasoning of the character.

If my character used charm person on a guard, thus making the guard friendly toward my character, thus more likely to turn their back on their trusted friend, then they would not see the sneak attack coming, would they?

Thus, if charm person is used, in conjunction with a silent spell, it is more easy to get a charmed character to trust and follow the caster, who cannot call for help due to the silent spell, thus is can be akin to rohypnol and other such drugs. Sure, they have good uses, but like with anything there is also misuse.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

The entire thing is disgusting. I don't care if it's "just a game," some things are simply not appropriate.

Absolutely. D&D is predicated on killing other sapients and stealing their stuff. There is no room for rape in it.

 

[Friadoc]

Absolutely. D&D is predicated on killing other sapients and stealing their stuff. There is no room for rape in it.

Not to parse the point to fine, but most players are playing heroic characters, not evil. At least, I suspect, that is the average campaign model.

So, generally it is the heroic characters going after the evil characters, which generally means that they would be killing the rapists, not being the rapers. More so, you would think that the players would prefer to not think about raping and stealing and murder as the focus, but combat between good and evil.

Of course, your mileage may very, as everyone has a different campaign style.

 

[Sonny]

There is an article in Dragon issue 10 called "Orgies inc". You may want to look into that.

Or look into a having the players go on a road trip to Nevada with you.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I can understand people being offended by the sorcerer using charm in this manner but I think, considered in context of the game, some people are overreacting. This doesn't mean I condone it, but there's a lot we don't know about the situation and people are jumping to conclusions.

We have no idea if the DM is including any repercussions in his game for this behaviour. We don't know if it isn't a bunch of awkward teens sitting around the table doing the silly sorts of things we all used to do before we knew any better.

More generally, people play evil characters and carry out things they would (hopefully) never do in reality. Why is it "just roleplaying" when my evil character sacrifices an innocent for his own gain but "condoning date rape" when he uses a charm spell to get someone into bed?

This is not an uncommon behaviour in the mythology that D&D is based on. We don't need to look any further than Arthurian legend to see a case of magic being used to get someone into bed against their own judgement. From memory there is a similar incident in the introduction section of the Ars Magica rulebook where a narrator is describing how he became involved with a wizard. There are clear repercussions for the narrator following the event.

Really, though, most any use of a charm or compulsion type spell is a pretty gross violation of the victim whether or not it is followed up by physical assault of some kind. Further, characters kill many creatures, some sapient and some not so much, usually with no remorse and for a variety of justifications with a commonly quoted one being "kill them and take their loot". I think it's a little hypocritical to be outraged by some of these things and not others, but I think there's also a large element of cultural conditioning behind these contrasting reactions.

I think it's interesting to observe what kinds of actions people find acceptable and which they don't, even in the context of a game, when from a more objective point of view they all seem equally reprehensible.

 

[Noumenon]

I've never started a controversial thread like this before! I'll get back to it later, but for right now let me say that I wasn't trolling, that the way my game works would probably seem way too sexist to me if it was a work of fiction, but just like I eat Cheetos on game night and spinach souffle at home, my game doesn't always reflect my higher tastes. Creating complex, well-described women characters is a lot harder than describing them with a number and a hair color. Again, analogize to treasure. Sometimes a PC gets an intelligent bow that whispers to you when you string it, and sometimes he gets a "masterwork crossbow." Depends how much time you put into making it good treasure.

I am gonna keep digging myself in deeper for a while and hopefully at the end I will get something back out. I did laugh at finding out what my thread title really said!

 

[Rel]

There is so much wrong with this thread that I'm not sure I can wrap my brain around it without chemical assistance. My current plan is to revisit it later after I'm good and drunk and moderate in whatever manner seems best at that time.