All mind-altering spells are inherently Evil

My GM once had a weird house rule for crits on skill checks. If a nat 20 came up you could roll and add a d4 on top of that, roll a d6 then subtract a d3+1 from that, roll a d8 then subtract a d6+1 from that, roll a d10 then subtract a d8+1 from that, roll a d12 then subtract a d10+1 from that, or roll another d20 then subtract a d12+1 from that. He then just stopped that rule for some reason after a month of normal play.

Justify a master swordsman accidently dropping his weapon/cutting off his arm/stabbing his friend 5% of the time.

Shit happens

super low standards for "mastery"

Sounds like unnecessary math to me. 8f I already succeeded and you need additional info to tell me how well, it sounds like the system isn't conveying the knowledge you need in the first place.

Anakin Skywalker

As long as everyone is clean I don't see an issue.

>you get to touch Shaun's hair.
There's backstory here. I'm not sure I want it.

Evil Aligned seems fair, hard to mind fuck someone in a good way.

Lawful might be a better alignment though, given that mind alteration fucks with a person's sense of self and personality and undermines their self detirmination and control in a way that would make chaotic aligned folks uneasy if not outright disgusted.

Nah. It was basically a little bonus on top of a crit. So if you rolled a 2 on the d4 your result before mods is 22.

We have a fancy way of rolling stats.

>for each state you make a 3x3 grid
>for each of the nine spaces you roll a d6 and record the results
>you then pick a row, column, or diagonal line
>add up those three and that is your stat
>you do this for each stat, done the line, of course

There are a few caveats though
>if you get three of a kind, you roll a d3 and add that final result from the grid

>you can also have up to three d8s throughout your array, but you need to call them
>to call them you say you are putting X d8s in whatever stat, then choose where in the grid you want them and roll a d8 for that spot instead of a d6
>but for each d8 you use you need to put a d4 somewhere else

>finally you can apply for a boon
>first you call what stat you want to boon, then you roll a d4
>the result is how many levels you start the game lower at (we traditionally begin at level 6, and when rolling new characters the default starting level for new character is the last character's level - d2)
>once you call it you are stuck
>for that stat you now fill out a 4x4 grid and pick four horizontally, vertically, or diagonally
>you can do this as many times as you wish, but each stat can only have one boon

My favorite way to roll stats. There is a little more to it, but that's the basics of it.

Shaun is Jewish.

...

I just do away with alignments because it brings up all this Evil vs. Good stuff.

I don't see Slavery as an evil. I see slavery that benefits the owner at the expense of the slave to be evil, yes, but actions that benefit {person taking action} at the expense of {other person} are evil regardless of action.

Sometimes, person 1 is just better at making long-term decisions than person 2. Thus, if person 1 values person 2's well-being, person 2 ends up better off as a slave than with agency and freedom and choice.

With mind altering spells, the mind is a tool. It is a means, not an end. Sometimes it is a poorly maintained tool, or an inefficient means.
Look at all the people whose emotional baggage gets in the way of them improving their life, whose knee-jerk offended reactions prevent them from learning, or whose Salt stops them from Gitting Gud.
While mind-altering spells have evil applications, so does any spell.
You can use mind-altering spells to unfuck people's personalities and demolish their hurt feelz complexes.

People place far too much importance on their conscious will, their agency, and the sovereignty of their personality and emotions. What if that stuff is incorrect (factually), wrong (morally), inefficient at achieving a goal, or it chooses goals that are self-destructive or destructive to the person's peers and friends?
Outside help would be a benefit in those cases, to the person themselves.

We typically don't let people at suicide risk kill themselves. We try to stop them.
Well, why doesn't that apply to ALL times a person might wreck themselves with a bad decision?
Like, women who leave a stable marriage with a child (or children) because they wanna burn some coal, they end up paying the toll AND their children grow up with single mother syndrome.
Who benefits from any of that?

I don't understand why people value freedom when it includes the freedom to fuck up. You can help people by making decisions for them, why don't we do so?

>this shit.
so always pick the d20-13.

Could one use it to cure someone's schizophrenia/phobias/traumas?

The problem is that even if you use a mind-altering spell with good intentions and/or with the target's consent, it would probably be impossible to tell if you truly "unfucked" them or added some alterations that benefit you on the sly. And most people would use this kind of magic for evil or underhanded means. For this reason, it only makes sense that most societies would keep mindfuckery illegal and/or heavily stigmatized.

And before someone brings up the obvious rebuttal,
>Who made you the judge of what's right mind and wrong mind?

I don't have to be the judge!

Multiple people can all be the judge. Get enough people working on the problem and, on average, they'll end up at a better solution than 1 person working alone.
The problem in this case is "Make the best mind" and the 1 person is the one the mind belongs to.

>but what if people want to change your mind?
Like I already allow them to do?

>ok. But what if people decide your pro-slavery pro-mindcontrol pro-grooming "Fuck the sovereignty of your feelz, your feelz are wrong, let me do it" attitude is wrong, and change it?
Honestly it's more a loss for them than it is for me.
They're only wrecking themselves with that, since the point of the system was to stop other people from making shitty decisions.
If society, as a whole, is content to allow its individuals to make bad decisions then so be it. They make their own problems in that case.

>But what if evil government corporation 1984 controls people's thoughts to stop dissent and force obedience?
Hmm
>evil
Found your problem! Anything can be used to obtain personal benefit at others' expense.

>The problem is that even if you use a mind-altering spell with good intentions and/or with the target's consent, it would probably be impossible to tell if you truly "unfucked" them or added some alterations that benefit you on the sly.
Unnecessary. Get multiple people to work on the same target, alterations will even out.

> And most people would use this kind of magic for evil or underhanded means.
I disagree. It's more of a plowshare than a sword.

> For this reason, it only makes sense that most societies would keep mindfuckery illegal and/or heavily stigmatized.
At least until they see the massive benefits to productivity that arises from having your populace work in unison towards the same goal without their personal feelz getting in the way!

> And most people would use this kind of magic for evil or underhanded means.
The closest analogue we have in real life is people trying to change each-others' minds or behaviour through speech.
Convincing them through dialogue.

In real life, yes, that DOES get used to manipulate people.
Overwhelmingly though it's used because you think your ideas are good and you want to spread them because of that.
Wikipedia, though it obviously has elements of the manipulative former, has more elements of the good-natured latter.

Moreover, if you're building a general tool that ~can~ be used in many tasks, then it usually ~does~ get used in many tasks.
While of course there's tasks that benefit 1 person at the expense of others (A hammer can be used to bash someone and rob them), most often the tool gets used for some positive benefit for the person that's neutral to others. Over a large enough average, that makes the tool more positive than negative.

Here, the human being is the tool. It's a meta-tool that solves problems on its own using other tools.
You're right in that you can use a human for evil or underhanded means.
Ignoring the mind control, how are humans used IRL?
They're used in work.
Work to make more humans, to build stuff, to spread information. And yes of course work to invade some poor dude and take his stuff, but that isn't most work.

Humans are inherently a tool for human benefit. Access to human-affecting magic doesn't change the inherent nature of a person.

Will the early adopters be immoral? Probably. But there's FAR more moral or at least neutral uses that benefit the person and those around them.

But that's true. Especially in a universe like D&D where death isn't final, taking away someones free will is the most evil thing you can do to a person.

Works if you Rule 0 well enough. A nat 20 won't let you jump to the moon, but it might let you more easily (or automatically succeed at) disable that trap you searched for and found.

What happens if humans (and their human emotions/personality) are considered community property or state property, rather than under the sovereignty of themselves?

Good argument for the 2nd Amendment to apply to mind-altering spells, I think.

I recently drew on the Light Side and influenced a bunch of rebels into feeling more hopeful despite the depredations of the Empire. (Due to the rules of Influence, you can only use the light side to instill 'light' emotions on people and the dark side to instill 'dark'.)

Would this be considered 'evil'?

>taking away someones free will is the most evil thing you can do to a person.
Then why do players consent to play in a world ruled by the DM?

Taking away someone's free will and making them work AGAINST their own values is the most evil thing you can do to a person.

Taking away a person's free will and making them work towards their own values though is basically giving them a super powerful buff so that their own laziness or incompetence can't stop them any more.

which is why you confirm crit fails

Rolled 11 (1d20)

Okay. Now you rolled a 9 on the d12 which puts this up to a -10. Remember this modifies your base score.

Not in my opinion but I'm far from the only person with an opinion here.

Then again, I don't think that instilling dark emotions is a bad thing either. Pain and fear are great motivators.

heh...nothing personnel...kid *

As an actual autist, introducing that much RNG for so little gain irritates my sperg.
It's so inefficient and unpredictable.
This is ... anti-autism.

As a sperg I juse use ELITE array
(or 12 11 11 10 9 7 for commoners)

*teleports behind you*
*cures your social anxiety with magic*

>Especially in a universe like D&D where death isn't final
Actions you perform while Dominated don't affect your alignment and require no penance.

Huh, I thought they did?

... So what's to stop you from dominating YOURSELF to avoid alignment penalties?

Because actions you perform while dominated count as actions performed by the dominator instead.

So what happens if there's a loop?
Guy A mind controls B, tells B "Go recruit troops for my army"
Guy B finds C, mind controls C, says "Go find something my army could use" without providing much details of the plan.
Guy C finds a high level spellcaster, figures this might be something the army can use, and mindcontrols it ... turns out it's Guy A.

What happens then?

My point was more its more evil than just murdering someone, because they can just get a resurrection spell

w o a h s h i t
h o l u p f a m

You don't measure an actions' morality by how much effort it takes to undo.

Of course you do. That's why assault convictions are far more lenient than murder convictions

So using mind control to incapacitate and try to rehabilitate a criminal later is worse than outright killing him?

Vagaries from domination means the dominated is still responsible for those actions, as it will not be an action taken out of that character's natural behavior.
Dominated persons behave completely normally unless it's a direct order.

In that case domination goes away after like a month (for anyone that isn't a godlike supercaster). If you're not forced to do anything horrible, it's basically the magical equivalent of being in a brief coma.

Well yes but conspiracy to murder the King that ultimately ends up going nowhere since your poisoned crossbow shot missed and hit a wall then becomes a crime equivalent to "Damaged a wall".

Also then Rape (that doesn't cause pregnancy or communicate disease) just becomes another regular ol' assault. Which I suppose it is, but most morality systems disagree.

Huh.
So if a Lich says "B! Mind control C, and force him to read carry out the actions on this paper. Do not read the paper yourself."
and the paper says "Mind control the first thing you're afraid of, and force it to go against its natural alignment"
And then the Lich, who is scary, hangs around C
Who do the vagaries hit?

And if the Paper is interperted as carrying the Lich's will,

then the Lich pays D (who is not mind controlled at all) to write on paper "A bunch of orders that might interact with Mind Control in weird in unexpected ways", and the Lich neither reads nor doublechecks nor verifies the paper.

Also, what happens if the Lich says "E! Follow the first command that F gives you" and then F says "E, go donate money to a puppy orphanage" (which is against E's alignment)
The Lich still gets the morality ding for that, right?
What if the Lich is Lawful evil, Person E is also Lawful Evil, and person F is Chaotic Evil., and person F gives person E a Chaotic command?
Does the Lich then get dinged for that?

The paper would be an extension of the lich in the first example.
In the second, nobody is going to receive guilt because D is a blending factor that eliminates it. He can write good or ill, but in so lacking the intention or knowledge that what he writes will have later consequences. That's like saying someone who boils water is responsible for a hurricane, because they messed with the chaotic system of weather.

>Also, what happens if the Lich says "E! Follow the first command that F gives you" and then F says "E, go donate money to a puppy orphanage" (which is against E's alignment)
>The Lich still gets the morality ding for that, right?
Assuming F is not dominated, no. F is utilizing the domination for his own orders, and essentially counts as a dominating influence in that case.
>What if the Lich is Lawful evil, Person E is also Lawful Evil, and person F is Chaotic Evil., and person F gives person E a Chaotic command?
A mitigated form, if he knowingly does not command E to belay the permitted orders. Again assuming F is not dominated.

Oh I see.
Huh, well I guess that's consistent then.
Thanks for clarifying.

So whatever forces Person A to perform an action, is the one that takes the morality for that action,
and if Person A is not forced, he'll act in accordance to his own alignment?

Just so. The person at the helm is the one the gods will glare at, and if there's nobody at the helm, there's nobody to blame.

This sounds like it would slow the game down too much.
(Also what if Shaun crits?)

>ITT: mind control is serious business

>you can't Hide unless you're completely obscured and broken line of sight and are instantly discovered if you cross their field of vision for a single nanosecond
Way to completely kill the concept of stealth-based characters.

I'm assuming that if two people co-operate to force A to do something that goes against A's alignment, those other two share the penalty?

Shaun is permitted to touch his own hair.

Yes, just like if two people cooperated to rob a bank they would both take the penalty.
Sharing an evil act just shares the evil alignment.

Taking a concept that is vague, and forcing it to apply to specifics, is bound to break something.

>Shitty homebrew rules thread
-4 str

Okay.

Let's assume that Bill doesn't want to burn an innocent orphan puppy.

But Bill also has a character flaw, where he is quite proud of his long hair and doesn't want to cut it.

Using mind control to put Bill in a situation where his character flaw is challenged - i.e. where the only way to avoid burning the innocent orphan puppy is to cut his hair (somehow).

If Bill cuts his hair, then no morality penalty for either.

But if Bill burns the puppy, the guy who put him in the mind controlled situation is responsible.

Even if the guy who mind controlled Bill didn't really anticipate this and just wanted Bill to get a fucking haircut.

Normally, crithe fails on a master swordsman just leave him open to attack. He overextended or left an obvious opening for an enemy to capitalize on thus allowing attacks of opportunity. That way the character's defenses still matter, but they have a chance of accruing some chip damage.

So it comes out to a 21+modifier anyway? Cool!
What are you trying to say exactly? In terms of averages, the guy's completely right.

Because when you're dominated, you can't do actions you aren't explicitly ordered to do. So you'd just be a dribbling mess for 1 day/cl.

One of these days, I hope someone just makes a big goddamn book of Spells/Abilities to induce Muh Fetish.
And makes them available to Martials too via weeaboo fightan magic or whatever.

The dominator technically performed a good act by proxy. (Their lack of intention for it dampens this, because intention holds weight in D&D's alignments.)

How would one obtain a list of the most popular fetishes?

The more interesting question is if the lich's actions are good or evil (or lawful or chaotic), and what happens if he's just ever so slightly of the opposed alignment and said action is enough to kick him over.
For example, the evil lich's mind control is deemed a good act since it would make him do a good deed, but he's so slightly evil that that good deed makes him good, thus meaning being mind controlled would make him do evil instead which would recurse ad infinitum.
What alignment is the initial mind control?

You'd be amazed what anonymous polling can do if you actually look like a scientist. I've gotten people to tell me all sorts of personal things by hanging around a college campus in officious clothes with a university-branded clipboard.

Wait, what if you do a mind control-altering spell on someone who is evil?For example an evil lord is going to cut down someone innocent (could be good or neutral) and you control their mind to gut themselves in order to save the innocent?

if someone knowingly consents to mind control is it still evil?

If it has the [Evil] descriptor then yes.
Otherwise, depends on what you're mind controlling them to do.

"I'm scared of heights but my kite is stuck in the tree, please mind control me into climbing up there and getting it." isn't evil to mind control somebody into doing.
"I have to murder all these virgins, but I can't stand the sight of blood. Please mind control me into doing the demon summoning ritual right." is evil even if mind control isn't evil in and of itself.

"My life sucks but people need me to get this work done, please mind control me so I can be an emotionless automaton and get everything done"

"I need to perform some complex task I don't know how to do, please mind control me and help me do it"

"Mind control is my magical realm, please mind control me"

Rolling down the line no matter how convoluted the process is always a shit idea.

Does mind control really lead to magical realm that often? I'd guess even the less self-aware would know how blatant that would be

In my experience it leads to someone getting stabbed

My house rules.
Feel free to judge.
>No magic is inherently evil. It only matters how the laws of the land treat it.
>Evil characters does not always mean bad guy
>Good character does not ways mean helpful or nice
>fire spells have a chance to ignite whatever it hits, roll 2d10, a 2(1,1) means you get lit up. Take an extra d4 of damage.
>Damage immunity is bullshit. Either players spec to ignore it, which just makes required choices or it cant be which limits build options. So Immunity is just really high resistance.
>If you as a player come up with a sweet combo that wins always. Dont spam it or as DM i justify word has gotten out about this trick and they are prepared for it or are going to use it themselves.
>If you carpool with me, you are either chipping in for gas, food or you blow me afterwards.
>We operate on a Yes and... so if you want to push the plot one way, its a give and take with me, you tell just as much of the story as i do.
>If we meet a new npc and they havent been given a name first person to say a name decides it there.
>if you couldnt say it to your grandma dont say your character does it. If you can she is a dirty old girl and you will give me her number.
>Not everyone wants to fight and monsters arent always stupid
>I will be lenient for bad luck, it happens. I will not protect stupid, you will be punnished for it.
>Seriously have your shit ready before we start.

Also i guess. Rollout.

Seems pretty good. Carpool rule is lewd, though, and the grandma rule makes you sound like a prude.

>a wizard and sorcerer are forced into a loveless marriage
>they charm each other every day so they can feel love for each other

Carpool rule is pretty much i dont haul your ass for free. If im going to be a taxi im gon a get paid to be a taxi.

The grandma rule juat keeps edgelord shit to a minimum. So no, "i rape the corpses and then ressurect them so i can rape them to death." kinda thing. I play with many groups some of them children, forever dm, but if none of the adult campaigns hit that level i dont accidentally throw that out with the kid groups.

>fighters are now as powerful as wizards