90% Resistant to Sleep and Charm Spells

[Scott]

Do you think the charm part of this refers specifically to charm person spells, or do you think it includes spells of the charm type? Hold person, for example, is a charm spell. Would an elf's resistance apply?

Scott

[GRWelsh]

There is a Sage Advice column in one of the issues of DRAGON Magazine, which gave a pretty rational answer to this. The resistance does not apply to all spells in the Enchantment/Charm school, but only spells that specifally make one either go to sleep or be charmed (sleep, slumber, drowsiness, charm person, charm monster, mass charm, fire charm, suggestion, friends, domination, etc.). Spells like hold, scare, fear, antipathy, confusion, forget, chaos, cause paralysis, etc. would still affect the elf normally. One could also argue the resistance only applies to spells (or spell-like effects) with the words charm or sleep in their names, therefore resisting fire charm but not suggestion (this doesn't make much sense to me).

However, considering elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, one might be able to argue elves should also be resistant to hold person, paralysis and or scare spells (the scare effect makes one paralyzed, perhaps the same sort of magical horror effect inflicted by a ghoul). Perhaps their resistance applies to all spells in the Enchantment/Charm school. I don't think that was the original intent, however. I think the resistance was intended to apply to all sleep and charm magic, including the sleep-gaze of jackalweres, and the charms of harpies, dryads, vampires, etc. but not affecting other emotion-affecting magics necessarily.

If the resistance was meant to include all magics in the Enchantment/Charm school, I think it would have stated, since both sleep and charm are part of that school. And if the resistance was only supposed to apply specifically to the the 1st level spells charm person and sleep, I think that would have been stated as well.

[grodog]

I agree, Gary. FWIW, I also treat the resistance as MR, and reduce or increase it according to caster level, as well.

[GRWelsh]

That would mean elves have 100% resistance to sleep and charm cast by all casters/monsters of 9th level or lower. Although one can make a reasonable case to treat it the same as MR (since it is MR, but simply of a limited form), I have always treated it as a unique power and a flat 90%.

[gantry]

grashyewl said:

However, considering elves are immune to ghoul paralysis, one might be able to argue elves should also be resistant to hold person, paralysis and or scare spells (the scare effect makes one paralyzed, perhaps the same sort of magical horror effect inflicted by a ghoul).
.

The immunity to ghouls was explained away in another Dragon article about elves: They do not fear death. It went to say the ghasts affect an elf because an elf doesn't "not fear death that much." The article also said that elves do not "sleep" so no sleep inducing spells would work on them--I suppose a COMMAND spell used in this fashion would not work either. I do not remember how official the article was.

Our group did argue this one and whoever did DM essentially had his/her own ruling. I personally scrutinized the spells as we went along and if sleep or charming was the main jist of the spell or part of the spell (suggestion) the resistance stood--and always at a straight 90%. At least there was resistance to part of the spell if part of the spell concerned sleep/charm.

Say, do you think dark elves should get the same or do they have too much baggage already?

Gantry

[Scott]

Per the UA, they're supposed to get it. I don't know if it was in the original description or not. I'd give it to them.

[gantry]

The 90% wasn't in the original, but then again they had all-ourpose magic resistance. In UA they lost the MR and got the 90%.

Interestingly, I always figured drow LEARNED their spell ability. It seems a little odd to be born with it or something that comes to you that a magic-user would give his eye-teeth for. Anyway since all elves are supposed to be magical creatures, I let players using other elves have some added spells: One spell level at second level and another at fourth level and another at seventh. They can pick a from a list of magic-user and druid spells that I made. These are spell levels, of course, and can be saved as I have a list of first level and second level spells.

To even things out, dwarves are given saving throws versus ALL spells starting with a 20 minus their constitution bonus. (I mean, even magical rings can malfunction with dwarves). Gnomes and halflings can choose the crossbowman or archer fighter subclass and be unlimited in level advancement.

Perhaps I give too much but the adventures are correspondingly tougher and I thought something was needed to influence my group to play demihumans more often, especially gnomes. I'm the only one whoever played a gnome.

Oh well.

[geneweigel]

It seems a little odd to be born with it or something that comes to you that a magic-user would give his eye-teeth for.

Sounds like the victim of another "Flinty Pall" campaign to me! Just kidding!

Seriously, those "powers" in UA for the players do seem like they were written by a rules lawyer instead of a Gygaxian game designer (Mentzer no doubt!). And the undocumented fact that transgender roleplaying was encouraged by pc availability of the drow's sex boost (i.e. females get even more free spells) sounds jokeworthy but in retrospect it does seem that "guys playing as girls" seemed to be going on everywhere without the blink of an eye as time went on.

Somebody should make a list of Gygax's unfinished blunders where he wrote a rule and it rolled into something else after he was out of the company.

I think I'm going to host a game show at the con:

[glow=red,2,300]COME ON DOWN! YOU"RE THE NEXT CONTESTANT ON

FINAL WORD DELINQUENCY

Okay, Jake, "What founding member of the Circle of Eight has his own Irresistible Dance?"

Otto!

XXX

Oooooh! Sorry, Jake, it was another Final Word Delinquency!

Now for the celebrity round we call "WHATS MY D&D DILUTION?". You have twenty questions to figure out which one of these 3 designers didn't have access to the AD&D Designer's Bible! [/glow]

[GRWelsh]

The resistance to sleep & charm wasn't explicitly given to Drow in their description, so I wouldn't give it to them. They have their general magic resistance, which is more than good enough. I never liked the UA-option of Drow PC's, much less the 'watering down' of their unique abilities and weaponry to make them 'playable' -- blech. The one time I did let a player run a dark elf, it was a solo game and I let him have all the powers and weapons described in the monster description entry for Drow in G3. He adventured in the Underworld, and didn't mix with surface-dwellers in a Drizzt-like fashion. And he played a male fighter. He didn't go the power-gaming, gender-bending way of being a female cleric/fighter, just to get the better stats and bonus spells. I ran that Underworld game the way I thought it should be... tougher than usual, to reflect how dark elves evolved to get all those powers in the first place.