Why do humanoids get screwed

[Umbran]

Yes thanks. A dragon can cast the spell at another dragon. It makes more sense for creatures to know how to charm creatures similar to itself before it can easily charm other types of creatures.

Not unless the creature actually has much knowledge of magical theory and magical biology/psychology, and creates the spell itself. The vast majority of spellcasters get their spells from someone else - the same spells get handed around. Your own knowledge of your species means little if the spell was designed by someone else.

Think of it this way - there are loads of humanoids out there, and most of them aren't very powerful. That means many low-risk opportunities to test out Charm Person spells, until you find one very good and simple one. The number of chances you get to test Charm Dragon spells before you get eaten is pretty small, so nobody's found one quite as good or simple.

 

[Squire James]

I think the main reason why "person" spells are prevalent at the lower levels is simply that, in most early D&D games, humanoids tended to be serious opponents only for low-level characters. Once the character attains a certain level, mere humanoids didn't provide much of a challenge, and presumably they'd go out after "monsters". Remember, before 3e most humanoids didn't get class levels, so most humanoids had at most about 4 Hit Dice.

That being said, I think "people" are now as powerful, if not more so, than "monsters", so that grandfathering of old rules no longer really applies. Sorta like how Heal is still a 6th level spell despite the fact there are now 3 levels of power above it where there once was just 1 level.

To be "fair", I'd suggest removing all "person" spells from the game, and add Hold Monster to the Cleric list somewhere. This may require some reorganization of domains that have such spells as domain spells. Level 3 clerics and level 5 wizards shouldn't be running around with "Will save or probably die" spells anyway! They don't have to be quite as high as the "Fortitude save or most certainly die" spells, though (which places Hold Monster as a 4th level Cleric spell, or a 5th level Wizard spell).

 

[DWARF]

Why do humanoids get screwed?

Because they're cheaper than elf wenches?

 

[ArcOfCorinth]

Its pleasurable and keeps the population up? If you're a goblin, its divine commandments.

 

[DDK]

I have to say I quite like this idea. Makes far more sense and is, IMO, more balanced.

What's the problem with a dragon charming another dragon? Most dragon species revile each other and attack on sight, even the good ones, so the +5 bonus would apply pretty much constantly. But even if it didn't, so what? So two dragons are working together now, why's that such a bad thing? Charisma checks still have to be made, resistances passed, etc. And any dragon worth it's salt is gonna be suspicious after the spell wears off.

I'd like to see how you do the other versions, though. It would be fairly important to do them correctly to balance it properly.

 

[s/LaSH]

Of course, a dragon's likely to have Will saves out the wazoo, spell resistance, etc etc. You could try casting a low-level charm spell, but the DC would be lower. One good reason to have bigger spells for bigger creatures is that the bigger creature might actually be overcome by a bigger spell; it's built into the rules like that.

Mutter mutter homebrew duzzit better mutter mutter.

 

[Gez]

Slightly off-topic, but anyway...

In the wonderful language that is French, the word "personne" has two distinct meaning, the first being "person" as in English, the second being "nobody".

I've found out that charm person is a spell that can only be really understood by a French. Its real name in English should, in effect, be charm nobody, unless the revised edition of D&D remove the blasted save. Even a 2nd level fighter with under-average Wis (Will save of -1 IIRC) successfully thwarted all attempts to charm him (and it just made him angry, as he sensed there was a magical attack upon the pathetic little bits of things he call his mind).



To go back on topic, I find it quite logical there are the various verb person spells out there. Humanoids just define the world. They are the majority, and the normality.

Dragon, outsiders, fey, elementals -- they exist, but they exist in marge of the normal societies. They are exceptions, and they know it.

That's also the reason why rangers or bane weapons can't take "humanoid" as a whole (although there are probably more logical reason to consider experience against humans can be used against orcs or elves also, while experience against carrion crawler is not going to much helpful againt chokers, aboleths, beholders, or mind flayers).