Charm person and monster AI conflict

Started by merrychase, May 06, 2020, 05:38:22 PM

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merrychase

When a monster is charmed, they are controllable by the companion tool and the radial menu. However, the monster AI can make using these tools difficult.  The AI appears to be trying to take over every round  and resume what the monster had been doing prior to being charmed, and thus needs to be re-interrupted many times. This is especially the case if the monster has targeted the caster or neutral PCs prior to being charmed.

The upshot is that during combat, if you charm a hostile monster NPC, the best option is to spam the Hold your ground command, and usually the monster is still able to get a few attacks in (and not just involuntary actions like Attacks of Opportunity). Since the control companion tool is a two-step process (select companion, then issue command) it is tricky to get through enough commands to overcome the AI taking back over and attacking allies (or the caster himself). The caster player's action economy is exhausted in trying to get the monster to not attack allies as they target other creatures.

As a remark, if you have a fully aware and cooperative party of PCs, these problems can be overcome (e.g. they sprint away from the monster and let the caster manage the AI); but in the generic case, from the non-caster's perspective, the spell is confusing; the monster turns color, stops and starts a few times while aggressively attacking.