Plants, Intelligence, and Mind-Affecting Effects

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The other thing is that plants (particularly ones with an Int score) would seem like something susceptible to charm spells.

Think of fey or druids charming intelligent plant creatures. Isn't there a control plants spell?

 

[Runestar]

Except that command plants is transmutation, which seems to suggest some sort of external telekinetic control, rather than internal dominate effect.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Except that command plants is transmutation, which seems to suggest some sort of external telekinetic control, rather than internal dominate effect.

That's interesting...

Maybe it's transmutation to simply get around the immunity to mind-affecting effects...

Which would mean the intention is for them to be mindless with all those immunities...

 

[Voadam]

Do you houserule out Mind blank spell?

No. I don't mind a top-tier powerful wizard spell that protects someone from scrying and mind-affecting powers. It has been a part of D&D since AD&D and I'm fine with it.

I want sentient treants to be affected by charm monster but not mindless monstrous venus fly trap monsters. It seems more in-genre appropriate to me. That is why I house rule it.

Because it is just a racial mind blank effect.

Except for the anti-scrying and dispellable and 24 hour duration and using up an 8th level wizard spell aspect of it. And being inappropriate IMO for a generic racial type trait.

 

[Voadam]

Except that mindblank is an 8th lv spell, while polymorph can effectively grant mindblank at 7th lv (by transforming say, the party barb into a treant).

I don't think he is saying that virtually immunity to mind-affecting abilities is bad, but rather, the ease with which it can be obtained (FR has a LA+2 plant race, while woodling template is LA+3, for instance). Mindblank can only be accessed by spellcasters of at least 15th lv, which severely limits the number of people who can benefit from it.

Not to mention that this is a convenient solution to plants generally having poor will saves.

I just assume this has already been factored into their cr though (for example, the treant has a fairly high cr of 8, despite having only 7 HD, and I assume plant traits account for part of that).

Its not the ease of PCs gaining the plant type, just an aesthetic judgment on the appropriateness of making intelligent plantmen immune to PC charms and telepathy due to "the alien nature of their thinking and brains" while living water and rock (elementals) can be charmed despite having even more alien brains and thoughts.

The plant mind-immunity is generally factored into CR, as is their plant immunity to crits. In general I'm not sure it would be worth a full CR point downgrade to take away a treant's immunity, they are still huge, strong, and immune to crits while mind-affecting attacks are not that common.