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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ashrym" data-source="post: 9189171" data-attributes="member: 6750235">Wow, this thread went off topic since the last time I looked at it.  I'm not going to go into a lot of posts on the topic but wanted to point a few things out.The first thing I want to address is the irony of not using trigger or content warnings and spoilers given some of the comments that have come up.  In a discussion about harm we should be more careful not to accidentally harm people who might be reading those comments.  Just sayin'.Good and evil are not the correct terms to be using in this discussion.  Those words come with a lot of baggage even if the game has used those terms.  The conversation has moved on to forms of violence in the game and justifying those forms of violence.  For example, we were talking about the friends cantrip and charm person and those spells specifically target a person that they see the caster as "friendly".  Using magic to change someone's attitude is a form of violence that can cause that person to make a decision that person would not have otherwise made.  This is specific to what consent is and is not.Consent is not valid if obtained through force, threat of force, fraud, ignorance, or from an altered state of mind (such as the aforementioned drugs).  IE consent is voluntary and informed.  A character who is using friends or charm person is committing an act of violence by impacting the target's ability to make decisions through magic regardless of the mechanics to resolve when applying persuasion checks.  Persuasion on it's own is the ability of character to make a convincing case.  Persuasion on a charmed target has also altered that target's attitude which changes to what that target might agree to do.A character doesn't need magic for this to be true.  Intimidation and deception are also forms of violence.This does not mean enchantment is necessarily wrong either.  Spells like sleep or calm emotions are also a form of violence and are used to avoid more severe forms of violence, as are other enchantment spells.  Using enchantments to avoid escalated violence is not a bad thing.  We should be asking ourselves what the intent is behind using that magic on those targets and the how and who benefits from the results.  There's a big difference between using enchantment magic to exploit innocent people and humanely dealing with bullies.Enchantments are a strong tool for removing the autonomy of those targets but that doesn't mean the same principles do not apply to other spells.  We would still ask who benefits and how when we look at the intent when we examine those scenarios.Someone mentioned illusions earlier.  Yes, illusions can also fall into that category depending on how they are used.  Enchantments fall under force or an altered state of mind in this discussion and illusion falls under fraud or ignorance depending on the context of those illusions.  We are directly impacting a target's ability to make decisions.  The character would be inflicting violence that directly impacts making an informed decision because the target is not informed of the reality of the situation.The example given for zombies and skeletons helping the economy that was given earlier is an interesting topic.  When a character animates a corpse and creates a zombie or skeleton that character no longer sees the target as it once was.  For example, animating a human corpse has dehumanized the human that corpse was previously, and typically vilified it as a monster.  The way those zombies and skeletons help that economy is through adding unpaid labor and doing that has essentially inserted the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex" target="_blank">prison industrial complex</a> into the game; possibly worse depending on the intent and context behind implementing a system like that.  It might look good from a certain perspective but the concept itself seems rooted in colonialism.  Rather than get into a discussion here I would encourage reading theory on that topic.Conversely, a person might argue animating animals as automated equipment lessening the required labor of the working class.  Deciding ethics and morality requires looking at the intent and context of each spell cast.  It's not as simple as saying "such and such a spell or spell school is bad".  Every spell cast on a target is either to help or is a form a violence.  Those forms of violence can be less harmful or more harmful.  Why the character chose that spell and the impact is what we should really examine in a discussion like this.</blockquote>

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