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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 1919002" data-attributes="member: 14159">Charm Person is hardly a universally Evil spell.  Example:  You are a 1st level Sorcerer, out on the town after a successful adventure drinking and carousing.  You are unarmed, since you are a Lawful Good character and the town forbids those who aren't in the city guard from carrying weapons inside the walls.  As you step out of a tavern into a mostly empty street, a skulking thief steps out of the shadows brandishing a hand crossbow, it's bolt visibly glistening with poison and a wicked looking dagger in the other hand.  He demands your coin pouch.  You know you can't fight him in melee, and if you try to run you'll catch a poisoned bolt, you're going to have to use your magic.  Your two spells you know are Shocking Grasp and Charm Person.  So which is the more evil action?Casting Charm Person, and telling your new "friend" he needs to step into the tavern and get a few drinks.  Or. . .Casting Shocking Grasp and quite possibly killing the thief right there in the streets.Robbing someone of their free will, while not exactly "good" can be the more merciful and compassionate of acts.  By D&D standards was Obi-Wan Kenobi doing an evil act when he used the "Mind Trick" at the Stormtrooper roadblock?  Even the very morality-heavy Star Wars game makes the point that mind-powers aren't universally evil, just very easily corrupted.  Just like making blanket pronouncements about such a broad practice as involuntary labor (i.e. slavery) cannot take into account the myriad of causes and extenuating circumstances that can arise.Let's put this in the context of the Slavery issue.  Let's say you are the King of a small kingdom.  You know that a larger, but not vastly larger, kingdom is beginning to arm for war on your border and you will likely suffer an invasion in a few months.  You have little in the way of defenses and not much of an army.  Your kingdom is well populated, has plenty of natural resources, and has a distinct problem with petty lawlessness (bar brawls, pickpocketing, ect).  What can you do?  Well, you could make enslavement (in the form of a prisoner work crew) a punishment for many minor offenses, and enslavement/conscription to the army a penalty for other offenses or repeat offenders.  You use your forced labor to build fortresses and defenses, and those with any usable trades are turned towards producing goods for war, while your armies are swelled with undisciplined troops (but troops well skilled at fighting, albeit not in units).  With some good officers/knights you could even shape them up a little.  You've removed a criminal element from society and put them to the use of the public, some may even learn a trade and be able to take up a law-abiding life after the coming war, others might learn discipline.  Those who survive the coming war are released from service with their slates wiped clean, having paid their debts to society.But by the definitions of many in this thread, you'd be Evil, because you "enslaved" people by oppressing them, stripping them of dignity and freedom, and making them labor for negligible compensation.  To you and the people of your nation, you'd be Good, since you protected the people from a conquering army, protected the citizens from crime by dealing with bandits and criminals who prey on the weak, and you were even a chance at redemption to those who might not have it otherwise.</blockquote>

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