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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8733181" data-attributes="member: 22779">Hey, I'm with you on this.  Please don't think I disagree.I'm just telling you what my experience with this sort of thing has been.  The second that some players get even the merest whiff of the DM getting any sort of power over their characters and they revolt.  This is why you see all the "Man with No Name" characters with Outlander backgrounds (if you play 5e - or something very similar in any other edition) with no living family and zero interpersonal connections to the campaign.  For added protection, make the character Chaotic Neutral so that the DM can never, ever suggest that you wouldn't do something.There are more than a few players out there that will absolutely lose their poop if you even begin to think of influencing their character in any way, shape or form.Heck, gaming story time.  This one was recent.I ran an adventure where there was a temple of Baphomet.  The party was there to raid the temple for a variety of reasons, not particularly germane to this example.  Within the temple, I placed several fonts full of clean, clear water where you could bathe.  The fonts radiated magic if checked.  The party took one look at the first one they found and gave it a hard NOPE.  No worries.  Then a bit later, a summoned wolf was hit with a fear effect and ran (entirely randomly) into one of font rooms and splashed into the pool.  The party discovered that bathing in the pool healed all wounds.  Bathing in a second pool granted all sorts of bonuses, which they fully enjoyed.  But, when they came across a third pool, there was a magical compulsion for those who had willingly bathed twice to bathe a third time.  One of the characters (well, two actually, but, only one is needed for this example) failed the save and bathed a third time.  This basically baptised the character into the cult of Baphomet.  Baphomet appeared to him in a dream and told him that they were going to do great things together.  Now, the ONLY effect this had was that Baphomet would be able to contact the character from time to time and offer different enticements to cement their relationship and that the character would not willingly sever the contact.  The character was under no compulsion to accept anything whatsoever and it was 100% up to the player (and the character) how he would deal with this, other than the fact that the compulsion would not allow the character to try to sever the connection.The player absolutely lost his naughty word.  I had ruined his character and he basically refused to do anything further in the game until I removed this compulsion.  This, honestly, was the deal breaker for my last group.  I walked away from the group over this.  The complete lack of trust in me as a DM and complete and total refusal to engage in anything I tried to do in the game was too much.  I left the group.But, yeah, this is a thing.  This is very much a thing.  There are players out there that will absolutely freak out if you tried to do anything like your examples [USER=6855114]@Helldritch[/USER].  I wouldn't dream of trying anything like you just suggested  because I know, before I even tried, that it would just not fly.  Heck, in my current game, I was very, VERY careful to ask the player first, many times, before I even hinted at putting a fingerprint on the paint job on his character.  So, yeah, my experiences have been VERY different from yours.</blockquote>

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