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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7067351" data-attributes="member: 42582">I take it to be a magical charm. Otherwise it makes little sense in the fiction - after being clocked on the head the NPC stays conscious for a minute of docility and then swoons?And that's a big part of why I don't like it.Yeah, this.This is exactly what I mean by the mechanics leading the fiction in a silly way.In non-D&D fantasy - eg some fairy tale or legend about a knight or a monk who beats up a varlet who, as a result, changes his/her ways from bad to good - how does it work? The knight/monk beats up said varlet. Then, the varlet, dazed and disheartened, responds to the knight's/monk's words and presence - and the scales fall from the varlet's eyes!What stops the varlet from gutting the knight/monk is that (i) s/he is still dazed and disheartened by being beaten up, and (ii) s/he is held in awe by the knight/monk. The only reason that we would need some sort of magical effect to achieve that is because we are assuming that someone at 0 hp but still conscious must therefore be capable of launching attacks. It's the lack of a mechanical expression for the condition of being "dazed and disheartened" that is producing this outcome. That is, it's mechanics leading to (bad) fiction rather than expressing the desired fiction.</blockquote>