Prince Charming
Ahhh, the mind whammy. It is a staple of the sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure genres. You’ve got artifacts like the One Ring or Crenshinibon, psychics like Professor X or (to a lesser extent) Ben Kenobi, exotic doodads like the flashy thing from MIB or Captain Jack’s psychic paper, and even the slightly racist brainwashing of Temple of Doom (take that, Short Round!). But here’s the thing about mind whammies. As fun as it is to take control of the bad guys and march ‘em around like meat puppets, nobody likes when it happens to them.
In tabletop, the mind whammy can result in GMs taking literal control of characters. You can get private confabs in another room as the new team of mind-controlled PC and evil mastermind GM plot the downfall of the hapless party. Depending on the table you might arrive at compromise solutions like “roll to see if you resist for this round” or “you stand and do nothing as you war with yourself.” But in the worst case scenario gamers always seem to wind up in this tedious semantic debate about the exact meaning of the word “friend” or whatever, which is generally when you start yelling at yours.
I have a word of advice for GMs in this situation: don’t let the rules dictate player actions. It’s tempting to point to the printed description of a psychic power or troll the forums for absolute clarity on what the charmed condition really means. But at the end of the day, this is just another case of railroading. You’re letting the rules dictate how the player gets to roleplay. In my humble opinion, the rules of most systems are intentionally vague here because they ought to vary player by player.
I’ve always found that getting mind whammied allows for some of the best roleplaying. However, that only seems to occur when left to player discretion. I’ve personally had players try to break up fights between the party and their newfound best friend. I’ve seen guys skirt the charmed condition by casting haste on friends and foes alike (“They’re trying to kill you man. Run!”). I’ve even seen yackety sax chases through dungeon complexes as possessed characters do their utmost to stick and move, playing to win against the party. All of these were memorable moments, and probably wouldn’t have happened if I just said, “Sorry man, I’m in control of your character.” So trust your players on this one. It’s their character. Let them shine.
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Still one of the most fun moments in my Supers campaign was the look of absolute glee on one player’s face when I handed her the note explaining that she was mind whammied. The giggle that followed was music to my GM ears.
As the fire guy in that campaign, I would like to say that mind-controlling the ice princess was OK by me. >:D
One of my favorites was when I actually did save, but only after I’d added in a forgotten bonus. Amazingly, the party didn’t even catch on when I hit the boss with a sneak attack from a point-blank range, so I started carrying on about how I loved him enough to fight him to stop him before my party hurt him worse.
I suspect this largely worked because it was an online game, and no one could hear the DM dying of laughter.
Edit for clarity: I thought I failed the roll, so the DM declared me mind whammied, and then I remembered that I’d forgotten a circumstantial bonus and messaged the DM. She gave me the choice of how I wanted to handle it (just declare I’d saved, break free at a dramatic moment, etc), so I told the DM I wanted to act as if I HAD fallen madly in love with the bad guy, just to see what happened.
That’s beautiful.
Rock solid. I hope that boss had some good loot, ’cause you earned it.
My group actually had a similar situation. Our tiefling magus failed his save vs. hold person. The evil cultist cackles, steps over his prone form, and begins monologuing. Half way through the standard “you shall all perish upon the altar of my god” schtick the magus shouts, “I’m not a person!” Turns out tieflings are outsiders, and thus immune to that particular spell. We wound up saying that he’d been playing possum, and he KO’d the cultist mid-monologue. Good times.
I’ve had that exact same situation happen; I was playing a half-dragon Bard, and got hit by a ghast’s paralyzing claw attack. I failed my save, and had to be carried around by the party’s dwarven Fighter for a few rounds before I remembered that the Dragon type conferred by the half-dragon template rendered me immune to paralysis. It was ruled that my character had suffered a psychosomatic reaction, and he was unceremoniously dumped on the ground by said fighter.
To this day, “Oh, wait! I’m immune to paralysis!” is among the in-jokes that will consistently get a chuckle or two from my gaming group.
lol. I like “suffered a psychosomatic reaction” as a justification. Ima have to adopt that one next time these shenanigans occur at my table.
Ideally, you’d know and trust your players well enough to allow them to still control their own mind-whammied characters. That, however, takes really good relationship bonds and roleplaying chops, and I know not everyone (and every group) is up to it.
If you have any doubts at all, I would just have the GM take control of the player’s character just like an NPC. If you do it to much or to ham-handedly, then you can end up with a player angry that the GM. But you can mess up in that sense the same way with anything else, and hopefully the rest of the party will act as a sort of balance. If you leave it to a player and THEY screw it up, then you risk having one PLAYER angry at another, and in my experience that kind of thing will badly end a campaign faster than anything else.
It definitely depends on the table. My method relies on player maturity, meaning that your method is likely smarter for pickup games on roll20.
However, my larger point is that removing a player from the game leads to frustration. They mind-whammied player gets to sit there and take no actions while somebody else manages their character. Spectator mode is boring, and player boredom is something to be avoided.
Ah, this was a fun one. GM had us in an Arena fight for sorta-funsies (so NPC Clerics on standby to keep us alive no matter what) and hit us with some nasty undead- wraith-y dudes and a bone-snake. My character was the party’s primary Tank (though we had 2 more- it was an odd party) who’s modus operandi was to get in the way of attacks instead of dealing damage.
He got Charmed immediately out the gate, and his low Wis meant he didn’t make ANY of his saves. So he spent the whole arena round being all “No, friends, don’t fight each other!” and standing in the way of attacks.
Ah… good times, good times…
I love this mess. There’s nothing quite as much fun as, “I grapple the wizard to keep him safe!”
Well, the old familiar Charm Person only states that the charmee treat the charmer as a friend. Nothing about actually fighting one’s preexisting friends for them. Wizard’s reaction here seems about right really.
I might nudge the player if they are taking it too liberally, but on the whole, I err on the side of “let them decide”.
Nine times out of ten, the debate about these kinds of spells boils down to “would it force me to fight my friends?” And since that’s a judgement call, getting the player’s input seems like a good idea. That can be frustrating if you’re into fighting out the tactical wargame side of things, but as a matter of personal preference I like the experience of hamming it up of my own volition.
Most TRPG players already want to murder at least one of their companions. (Think of Roy Greenhilt fighting Nale.) This scenario lets them do the next best thing.