Classy Quests, Part 2/4
Gotta love disgruntled background Thief. We already know how well she deals with jealousy, so she can’t be happy with Lord Cragchin’s smooth talkin’ ways. Insult to injury, I daresay she’s getting outdressed by her boyfriend. That’s a double-whammy, folks! I’d be upset too.
Of course, today’s comic isn’t about jealousy. It’s about the proper application of magic, and I’m not talking about Fem Wizard’s enchanting evening gown. When it comes to spell slinging, a little subtlety and finesse can go a long way. Case in point, imagine that instead of an elaborate plan involving transmutation magic and a kick-ass makeover, Wizard had gone in guns blazing.
“What are you doing in my court?” demands Lord Cragchin.
“I assure you,” says Wizard, “I like this seduction business even less than you do. Let’s just get it over with. Charm person!”
Sparks fly. Courtiers gasp.
“That elf has magic’d his lordship!” shouts the captain of the guards. “Get him!”
*stabbing sound effects*
Yes, magic gives you the means to do damn near anything you can imagine. It’s not an auto-win button though. You’ve still got to set it up properly depending on context and situation. In Wizard’s case, you’ve got to get the rest of your party to distract the guests while you cast. You’ve got to wait for the crescendo of the waltz so that no one hears your magic words. You’ve got to approach the problem like it’s more than a Monkey Island puzzle, selecting the one right answer from a menu of options.
The same principle applies to collateral damage and AoE spells, relying on speak with dead to solve mysteries, or detecting evil at the ambassador. Knowing when and where to leverage your magic for optimal effect is the art within arcane science. Just something to think about next time you want to charm a public official.
Question of the day then! Have you ever seen someone use the “right spell at the wrong time” in one of your games? Let’s hear of your tales of unsubtle charming and fireballs in the firework factory down in the comments!
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Wow, Wizard cleans up nicely! Love the gown.
As to the question: We did have a party that was in a delicate political web. We were being very careful not to kill anyone, but our enemies were still jerks that we were trying to defeat. Their leader was riding a mistreated drake, who our sorcerer targeted with suggestion. “Break the shackles off your servitude!” the sorcerer encouraged the monster in draconic, hoping it would throw it’s rider, putting the man at our mercy for an easy capture, “Throw him off, and fly away to freedom!”
…The drake threw him off alright. Then the drake caught him in its mouth and flew off, happy and free, and with a meal for the road, with the rest of us just standing around and thinking “Oops”.
The spell ended the battle, but we’d forgotten that a mistreated and probably starving drake was likely going to grab something to eat at the first opportunity. We’d gotten to 8th level without actually killing anyone until that happened.
Nothing beats a good polymorph when prepping for a hot date. The gown, however, finally put Thief’s ranks in Craft (sewing) to good use.
Nothing sucks harder than screwing up a pacifist run. I hope you were save scumming so that you could reload a try again.
In my current game, our GM said the BBEG wouldn’t just wait while we went around and finished up all the side-quests and plot hooks we couldn’t follow up on the first time through. Do you believe the nerve of that? I wanted to get 100% completion without having to start another save-file!
The cad!
Ah, it’s great when you can finally find a good use for that obscure craft or profession skill. Those things are dust-gathering pros at times.
I love ’em for flavor, but good Gygax above you’ve got to work to actually make those skills relevant.
Nice work staying pacifist all the way up to level eight, though; you must’ve really put the work in. And even on that fateful battle, you only accidentally set the events in motions. Nice work to your party, proving the Good can mean Nice.
Oh, we weren’t good, just political.
We tried to count that one as not really our fault and keep up our record, but had another oopsie at 9th level when our psychic thought a gentle prod with one of his 2nd level spell slots would bring the villain down without killing him.
Turns out 5d8s can result in 40 damage to the now-splattered-everywhere head of the bad guy.
I didn’t even realise it was wizard at first aha
But for the question, i remember once my party was at a dinner party, we were all mingling and trying to find some secret agent who was there to assassinate a lord. So the cleric in his wisdom (badumtss) decided to cast Zone of Truth. Now usually a great idea however, the player forgot one core part of 5es Zone of Truth spell and that is all creatures under the spells effects are aware of it and so the entire room turned on the cleric. Needless to say the party had to make a dash out of there
Cue the outraged nobles: “You would presume to etc etc!?” That’s minus a lot of diplomacy points right there.
I actually thought it was Wizard’s sister at first, and I thought this was going to be about getting the NPC’s involved in your quests.
Shushers, man! You’re going to blow Aristocrat’s cover!
Besides, the quest is souldbound. You’ve got to do it yourself.
Wait, but I thought Soulbound didn’t- “Koff koff”. Darn you and your smoke bombs, Quest Giver!
(Also, I totally thought that it was Aristocrat at first, to)
There’s definitely a family resemblance, I’ll give you that.
Yeah, subtle hints like that can be tough to bring across in a non-visual medium sometimes; it can be a fine line between dropping enough clues that the players feel smart while not giving the game away all in one go.
I mean, “skinny, light-haired, androgynous elf” doesn’t really narrow it down much, but if you drop dialogue like this…
GM: Wow, Aristocrat sure bears a lot of resemblance to fem-Wizard.
Players: Exactly how much resemblance would you say?
GM: I’d say it’s a suspicious amount of resemblance.
Then the lifespan of your NPCs can usually be measure in minutes.
This is especially true when players have different attentions to and intentions for the game, and pick up on things at vastly different rates. The party can walk right past the 30-ft tall neon signs you’ve erected, but then out of nowhere one of them will add 2 and 2 and cheese together and perfectly deduce the identity of your BBEG from among a pack of 30 identical grand viziers.
Adventurers get bribed, threatened, coerced, or blackmailed into doing other people’s dirty work all the time! I just want the shoe to be on the other foot for once.
Duly noted for future comics.
Once, we had to participate in an arena battle. Not a “kill the other dudes so you get to live” arena battle, more of a “flex your muscles, put on a show and impress the king before the banquet” arena battle.
The fight began, and my Witch started using her Sleep hex. Three turns later, all enemy combattants were taking a nap. I was happy, we had won! Except we got boo’ed out of the arena by a bored crowd. Woops.
Great example! The win condition had shifted, but you stopped listening at, “Win the battle, but don’t kill nobody.” Happens to the best of us.
So did Wiz tell rogue: Thief aboot this, or did she just spot him here?
Thief is part of the plan:
She’s not happy about it though.
In high-level 3.5, combat can become really slow. Our party had charged into a battle against an evil sorcerer, and then we engaged in a great fight!
One and a half hours later, we were still fighting. Eventually, even though this might not be the final fight of the day, I decided, “You know what? I’m bored. Lets finish this!” And then I dropped my most powerful spell, Harm. The enemy rolled a two on his will save, meaning that he took that full one hundred and fifty points of damage!
The DM started describing how the sorcerer’s flesh falls away, and I said, “Well… actually… harm can’t knock people below one hit point”. And, naturally, it was the sorcerer’s turn next. And, naturally, he had exactly one meteor swarm left.
I always wondered whether the Pathfinder version of Harm + a Magus spellstrike could KO. Order of operations gets wonky in a hurry.
Tough break with that evil sorcerer though. Did he at least have the good grace to target himself in the meteor swarm and go out on a high note?
It seems that he saw dagger to the face as being a more noble death than dying in a vast explosion of fire, with meteors called down from the heavens themselves striking down himself and his enemies alike.
Or, in other words: I vaguely remember him being stabbed by our rogue.
At least Wizard put a nice dress still he could have used some magic to appear more feminine.
Speaking about right spell in the wrong time, have some one here ever played the Witcher games? One of the few spell Geralt, the games protagonist, cast is the Axii sign, think magical jedi mind trick. Useful during conversations to get people do or tell what you want, not so useful when the angry peasant rabble comes for you. This illustrate the point: https://www.deviantart.com/ayej/art/The-Witcher-3-doodles-311-738650440. Magic exist to rule man and never to serve over him, that is what i think and so many time i get persecuted or even prosecuted by my believes. Still common people fear power, unlimited power, and so the wrong time come calling, three times just because i piss off my DM. Like that time i decided to cast control weather on a village and my group ended running away of the pitchforks, again, that session. Also raise dead the king of the kingdom is not a good idea even if you want to save that king from an assassin. Mood-swinging DM, even worse that the pitchforks 🙁
I see that you and the scroll-over text are on the same page.
Well, Sorry, but for me all the elves are kinda the same, like dwarfs, and orc and humans, in fact in many game i don’t even bother to remind names, faces or even existences. Kinda Fighter and me are on more that one same page: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/notable-nobles.
So, I’m not entirely sure how to say this, but using mind control to “seduce” is very rapey for something as light as this comics tone normally is.
Hey, I’m sorry that the comic came off that way to you, it definitely wasn’t our intent to make anyone feel uncomfortable with it. We’ll try to keep this in mind for future scripts.
Thank you for responding compassionately instead of getting defensive. It means a lot to me.
I don’t think that’s a fault of the comic. It’s a long standing thing in tabletop games. Of course it’s most usually that the “seduction” is for the purpose of getting something or achieving a goal and not intended for the means of sexual congress.
And then there’s just…. how is mind control ever not “rapey”? A violation of someone’s mind is always a violation of some kind.
Then again, killing and theft are violations too.
The key thing is that what is acceptable behavior in a fictional environment isn’t the same as what is acceptable behavior in a real one. And not to take such things out of their intended context. Because sure, if you’re going out of your way to be offended by things, you’ll get offended. But that’s a rather pointless endeavor.
I’m making my way throug Jessica Jones at the moment. It seems like that whole show is built on the theme of violation. With a mind controlling antagonist in a realistic setting, you’ve got to wonder when mind control is ever unproblematic. I guess Professor X could pull it off…?
Still, mind control remains a trope, and things like charm person, domination, and magic jar remain part of the game for players portraying heroes and villains alike.
“When mind control is ever unproblematic”. It’s certainly tricky. Heck, even Lawful Good Paragon Mentor Obi-wan Kenobi has it as one of his signature powers, and the Jedi Mind Trick is mostly associated with the Light Side! I suppose it’s normally used as a short-term alternative to violence (trick a guard instead of gutting him, not much different from using a disguise), but there’s still the “You want to go home and rethink your life” moment from Episode II. For a sort-of decent exploration of these questions, see the DC Comics storyline “Identity Crisis.”
On more than one occasion I’ve actually thought about this issue for a bit.
What I keep coming back to is this… I dunno, maybe you’d call it a thought exercise?
So the idea is… at what point is manipulating others or using force on them in some way not a violation or at what point exactly is it acceptable?
We’d mostly all agree murder is wrong. (Except for apparently all those endless circumstances upon which people find it acceptable or even necessary. And I’ll note I’m not hypocritical enough to claim I don’t have cases where I’d find it an acceptable act.)
And mostly we’d all agree asking someone nicely with no implication of any negative consequence either way for a “Hello” is perfectly reasonable.
But then we throw mind control into the mix. In real world scenarios it would always be a “violation” because no matter how minor the mind manipulation is, you’re always unnaturally bending someone else to your will right?
Ok so let’s take it down a notch and go with things like super pheromones or such. Still effectively the same thing, but now it’s manipulating something natural about people more or less. And in a way that it’s a least theoretically possible, if not typically feasible to resist.
And let’s go down further to things people actually can do that are generally pretty icky. Using psychology and brainwashing techniques and so on to manipulate people for your own benefit.
And further down. Using those kinds of things to benefit other people.
Or that person?
And then we get down to things more common. Like being charismatic, intelligent, wealthy, connected, naturally high amounts of pheromones, or being just good looking. (Or the combinations of any of the above.)
And then there’s what anyone can (and should?) do. Just being nice and/or reasonable.
And then at the very bottom is just wanting things of other people at all and living in a way in which you don’t actively hide that fact.
If you’re like me, the conclusion you might come to is that the very fact of being a thinking person with desires means you are inherently violating/using some manner of “force” on others every time you interact with anyone.
The question then is, where is the line between what is “good” and “bad.”? And where is the line between what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable”? I’d ask then if these answers line up, but we only have to look at the world around us to know they don’t.
And then further questions might be where other people draw those lines? And why? And what you should feel about that?
And I guess finally, if you feel that by writing this I have in some way violated or used force against you the reader by manipulating you into possibly seeing this issue from my perspective?
And when I should stop laughing manically about it? =P
Honestly, the Comic is fine. Mind Control gets used often in Fiction. This is a very Tame example. Especially since Charm Person only you makes you ínto the Guys very best Friend.
Dominate Person is a much much darker Spell. I mean, think about the Horror: With this Spell you can force anyone to do W H A T E V E R you want. No matter how sick and depraved. And the Person can’t do anything against it, and has to watch while his/her body does things,… Now think a truly sick/depraved/Asshole Person is using such a Spell,…
Yep this makes for a lot of Horror. I don’t even want to think of the Psychological Scars such a Spell can inflict on People.
Sadly in RPGS it’s also often an I WIN butten which i really dislike. Honestly in my opinen it’s the Evilest Spell ever written, since it Rapes the very Spirit of the Person you are using it against.
To clarify, my issue with this comic isn’t that mind control is being used at all, but rather that it is being used specifically to “seduce”.
Because even if we conclude that using Charm Person isn’t a violation in itself, in this case there’s an (probably unintended) implication that it is being used specifically to coerce Lord Cragchin into having sex against his will.
Naw, I get where you’re coming from. That’s a perfectly valid reading of the comic, though like Laurel said not the one we were going for.
Sex comedy is always tricky. Love potions and deception are uncomfortable stuff when you’re dealing with that genre, and feminist readings make it awfully difficult to turn your brain off an enjoy the shenanigans as shenanigans.
If it’s any comfort, you did have an effect on the scroll-over text in the upcoming Part 4 of this little arc.
Actually, he just needs the Silent Casting Feat, and no one notices his Magics. Anyway, while Magic can be used to be Creative, most of the Tim it boils down to: Scroll down through gigantic Spell list, pick Situation solving button.
Anyway, to the Topic at Hand. Shadowrun Story:
Two Person Run. My Decker just ate some maybe Radioactiv Tuna with Noddles provided by our Fixer, who also Runs a Noodle Shop. So jumps into the Matrix Googling Info for our Run.
So when he wakes up, he sees a Condom with some weired Runes Stuck to his Hand, while the other Dude, a Magic Adept is chanting something.
This was their first time Working together. So what is an apropriate Reacting to a Mage suddenly doing weird Magic shit, without explaining anything? Shooting him of course! So my Decker Pulls his Roomsweeper und fires some Shots of at the Guy. The Magic Adept jumps behinde cover.
The conversation was something like this:
MA:”STOP SHOOTING! STOP SHOOTING!”
D: “WHAT IST THIS FRIGGIN MAGIC SHIT, WHAT DID YOU TRY TO DO TO ME?”
MA:”Dude Calm the fuck down! You turned all shades of Green, it was just an anti Toxin Spell!”
D: “Why the hell ist there a friggin Condom stuck to me?!”
MA: “I had nothging else to make runes into,… but what the hell why did you Shoot at me?”
D: “Dude you do some Magic Shit. As far as i know you could be trying to blow me up, Enslave, or feed my Soul to a Spirit! You just don’t start casting Magic withou explaining it beforehand! Heck, you can be Happy I am such a bad Shot, every one else would have killed you the second you just suddenly started Casting!”
So yep. In Shadowrun there’s the first Rule: Kill the Mage First. Suddenly Casting without explaining anything will get everyone in the Room to Shoot you in preemptive Self Defense.
I wish: https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9tza
You’ve got to go for more obscure shenanigans RAW: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/conceal-spell/