Firstly I'm loving this game, the mod pack is amazing and I'm running temple + as well. I've just reached the Temple for the first time and have 8 in my party but for some reason whenever I charm a person or monster they just don't do anything or even move. When it's their turn it simply skips to the next pc or npc's turn. This is the same for Monsters and Persons. Out of combat I can move them them around with my party but as soon as we hit combat nothing happens. Is this intentional or should the charmed enemy actually fight for me? If this is the case I feel I'm missing out slightly. Is there anything I can do to check this please? Other than that, I'm loving it!
That's the way it works for me, charm just makes them non-hostile to you but not hostile to former allies(i think)
While I haven't yet tested it, this behavior seems intentional. A charmed creature effectively goes on break for awhile and is open for chat sometimes, but won't immediately betray their former allies. You need dominate to recruit enemies into being allies.
I played more last night and had a temple bugbear fight for me, although when I charmed Scorp he just stood there
Charm spells in TOEE used to automatically turn enemies into allies that would fight their former mates without hesitation(which is not how it works in any version of tabletop DnD much less 3.5e rules), and lasted for hours (which is proper duration per 3.5e). This made the charm line of spells extremely, ridiculously overpowered in TOEE. I'm glad someone nerfed this finally - the game is easy enough as is with unsupervised crafting and the monty haul amounts of treasure*, without adding the capability of cheaply recruiting a small army of lvl 10 bugbears to do your heavy lifting for you with a level 1 spell. *honestly, someday someone needs to make an option to Co8 that features the shops (especially small village Hommlet and run down scummy Nulb) telling the party "Hey we can't really afford to give you coin for the 150th suit of chain shirt you've brought in - we're running out of cash and we don't have anyone to sell them to - take them to a big city." not so much for realism's sake (though the DMG clearly has guidelines for how much cash small town shops can afford to pay out), but just to keep the game's economy from getting completely busted, which also leads to everyone having custom crafted +4 items up the wazoo... etc etc
Isn’t Charm Monster a higher level spell though? I agree on the shop status a good way to implement this is to reduce the amount paid for each same and subsequent item until it’s worth nothing, but then where do you draw the line on realism, e.g not having to rest or then resting for 4 days, doing nothing. Sadly the only way to afford the premium vendor items is to sell everything
To my understanding, the game is balanced with the assumption that merchants will buy anything, unlike in other games such as Morrowind where vendors had monetary totals and limits. I prefer this 'vending machine' approach so I can get to the rest of the game sooner!
Charm Person: lvl 1 spell. Works on humanoids, which includes lvl 10 temple bugbears, which don't have stellar will saves. Get a decent INT score, spellfocus: enchantment+greater sf:enchantment, it used to be really easy to recruit a cheap army of midlevel or higher CR henchmen fairly early on in the game to romp around the temple with. The fact enchantment staples like Sleep spell at low levels and Tasha's Laughter, etc are devastatingly effective (the game features coup de grace) is additional gravy - running an enchantment specialist wizard in TOEE used to be ridiculously easy mode for most of the game's content which feature lots of humanoid opponents. Honestly in some ways this was a refreshing change of pace from most other DnD crpg's which heavily nerfed the school's usefulness (especially since all the best RP uses of enchantment spells in PnP are not remotely feasible in combat heavy CRPGs) But still, charm spells in TOEE needed to be toned down. To be more in line with 3.5 it also needs the bonus to save when trying to charm a hostile critter. Might have been interesting to keep the instant ally effect as it was, but add a new save/opportunity to break free every round during combat.
