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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 3962099" data-attributes="member: 5143">It's likely to be something like this.  Either the caster just makes a new check each round to keep the person charmed (ala hold person as it was changed in 3.5) or you limit each charm spell to a very specific use that is easier to balance other spells against.You've seen some of this design philosophy in the alternate wildshape ability for druids in PHBII and the new polymorph spells.  The idea is that if a spell does just ONE very specific thing that it is easy to see the effect of it.  If it allows you to do all sorts of things(and is worded in a vague way) the power level of the spell varies wildly from casting to casting and from DM to DM.Take Charm Person, for instance.  It lets you make someone into your best friend.  I've seen interpretations from "You're his best friend but orders are orders and he's evil, he'd kill his best friend if he was ordered to" to "Sure, I'll take you inside the king's chamber and let you kill him even though I'm supposed to guard him with my life.  You're my friend and I'd do anything for you!  What's that?  You'd prefer I kill him myself...no problem."  One interpretation makes the spell completely useless for combat(which maybe it should be given its a level 1 spell) and the other one makes it more powerful in a lot of ways than dominate person, which is much higher level(and capable of solving problems that would take a good 5-10 spells if the PCs decided to do it themselves instead of using a charm).So if you are going to do charms properly, you need to be able to figure out fairly accurately what effect the spell will have to balance it properly.  A spell that makes the enemy lay prone during its next action is quantifiable.  You know that the enemy will lose its next action and it will get the minuses for being prone for a round and it'll have to spell and action getting back up again.  You can use that information to compare it to a spell that uses force to knock the enemy prone.However, if a charm spell lets you have an enemy fight for you then it suddenly has a lot of effects at once.  You have:1. Prevented damage to your group(since the enemy isn't attacking you)2. Did damage to your opponents(since the enemy is now attacking them), and the amount of damage you are doing varies heavily based on the creature you've managed to charm3. Paralyzed the enemy (since he's not taking non-combat actions that could help his allies)4. Buffed your party (as the enemy is now providing flanking bonuses for your allies and possibly casting its own buffing spells to help them)5. Given a miss chance to your allies (since the enemies might target the charmed creature instead of them)It's essentially 5(or more) spells in one.  Which is a bane of balance.I think you'll see the limiting of effects to shorter duration, more defined effects for charm spells.  With a couple more open spells mixed in that have possibly extremely short duration with the ability to resist them each round.</blockquote>

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