How to protect merchant from mind control?

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

The thing about mind-control magic is that infinite resources will be thrown into developing detection methods, counter-measures and access restrictions. No one thinks themselves being enslaved is a good thing. The only thing hated and feared more than a necromancer is an enchanter. The necromancer only enslaves you after you've died. The enchanter doesn't need to kill you to enslave you.

This is probably the key to it - it's not that mind control doesn't exist, any more than necromancy doesn't exist, it's just that it's not the sort of magic that it is socially acceptable to teach, and that to be caught teaching or practicing it gets you hunted down by whoever the setting's magic police are (wardens, aurors whatever) or lynched by an angry mob.

For those of us groggy enough to remember red box BECMI, do you recall how but-hurt you felt when Bargle charmed your character in that intro-adventure? For those who don't ... it was annoying, especially if you were a sprog at the time.

Resolve, therefore, for mind control magic to be the provenance of the sort of wizards who your players hunt down and kill, not the ones they play.

[patchwork]

There have been some good ideas already. But I think the biggest barrier to it would be that commerce just doesn't work like a modern strip mall where you walk into a small specialty shop, find yourself face to face with the owner with no witnesses, and walk out with all the inventory.

The greatest protection, and the one available to low end merchants, is simply never conducting business alone. Market is one day a week, and everybody's there, and everybody is keeping an eye on stuff in the neighboring stalls. Bring your kids, or hire some kids, purely to snoop on other merchants. Bazaar commerce is cutthroat but you can't possibly charm them all.

Richer, more established merchants do business by appointment. With signed contracts delivered by pages. A transaction may involve written letter of intent, written letter of appointment and inspection, cash in escrow with receipt, and finally delivery of the goods by the merchant's couriers. You may have to rely on third party inspectors. Maybe they refuse to meet face to face at all and will only grudgingly converse through a lattice to prevent you ever having line of sight for spells. If you try to just walk into their place of business without an appointment made through their factor, you'll find it locked. And guarded. A high-value transaction may take 3-7 days to conclude even if everyone involved is enthusiastic.

In both cases, shopping isn't convenient and it isn't really quick. Which is both somewhat historical, in service to theme, and by design to thwart people exactly like your mind-controlling bard.

[MaryAnn]

Originally Posted by patchwork

There have been some good ideas already. But I think the biggest barrier to it would be that commerce just doesn't work like a modern strip mall where you walk into a small specialty shop, find yourself face to face with the owner with no witnesses, and walk out with all the inventory.

The greatest protection, and the one available to low end merchants, is simply never conducting business alone. Market is one day a week, and everybody's there, and everybody is keeping an eye on stuff in the neighboring stalls. Bring your kids, or hire some kids, purely to snoop on other merchants. Bazaar commerce is cutthroat but you can't possibly charm them all.

Richer, more established merchants do business by appointment. With signed contracts delivered by pages. A transaction may involve written letter of intent, written letter of appointment and inspection, cash in escrow with receipt, and finally delivery of the goods by the merchant's couriers. You may have to rely on third party inspectors. Maybe they refuse to meet face to face at all and will only grudgingly converse through a lattice to prevent you ever having line of sight for spells. If you try to just walk into their place of business without an appointment made through their factor, you'll find it locked. And guarded. A high-value transaction may take 3-7 days to conclude even if everyone involved is enthusiastic.

In both cases, shopping isn't convenient and it isn't really quick. Which is both somewhat historical, in service to theme, and by design to thwart people exactly like your mind-controlling bard.

This. I run a business which runs on the dezens and most of the time all sides need to sign up NDA and LOI just to start the negotiations.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

This is probably the key to it - it's not that mind control doesn't exist, any more than necromancy doesn't exist, it's just that it's not the sort of magic that it is socially acceptable to teach, and that to be caught teaching or practicing it gets you hunted down by whoever the setting's magic police are (wardens, aurors whatever) or lynched by an angry mob.

It does depend, a bit, on how you use it. I've never encountered moral objections to fear spells, for example. I've used D&D Charm Person to get an opponent to surrender, and since we honoured the surrender and let them go afterwards, they weren't upset.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It does depend, a bit, on how you use it. I've never encountered moral objections to fear spells, for example. I've used D&D Charm Person to get an opponent to surrender, and since we honoured the surrender and let them go afterwards, they weren't upset.

As I said upthread, from a moral standpoint a lot depends on exactly how you use the spell. Using it like a discount Sleep/Hold Person (removing the foe from the field of battle without killing him/her) is markedly less morally problematic than using it to get them to kill themselves or (worse, in my opinion) their allies. Using it to defraud a merchant in some way (from getting a good deal to basically taking everything you can carry) is going to be somewhere between "safely remove from battle" and "kill/convert," IMO... but such discussions are probably better suited to the other thread.

[benz72]

Has anyone considered or tried making use of mind controlling spells have predictable and unpleasant side effects?
e.g. yes you can go rifling through that guys memories, now go ahead and try parsing current reality, your own memories and the ones you've lifted out of his head while under stress... hope you don't hallucinate at a critical moment.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by benz72

Has anyone considered or tried making use of mind controlling spells have predictable and unpleasant side effects?
e.g. yes you can go rifling through that guys memories, now go ahead and try parsing current reality, your own memories and the ones you've lifted out of his head while under stress... hope you don't hallucinate at a critical moment.

I feel like that can really work well in other media, but in roleplaying I'd feel even more inclined to not allow mind control for PCs if it worked like this.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Well, sure, Kale: we can always invent a spell that will do that. ...
But why would that stop at merchants? Wouldn't the authorities want key officials protected? Wouldn't the military want their officers protected? Heck, wouldn't the criminals want to be protected?

Could lead to an arms race between the enchanters and the enchanter-detector/deterrent charms manufacturers.

Obviously, this would nerf the whole concept of mind control spells. Seems something of a Rube Goldberg approach to something that can be solved in several less setting-warping ways.

Yes, although you can dial in the level of nerf by how effective the charms are. Maybe they aren't fullproof and just give a bonus to resistance, maybe there are advanced secret techniques to spoof them? Maybe the PCs come up with a plan to make a merchant's protection set off false alarms until he stops paying attention to it? Could lead to fun heist scenarios if that's the direction you want to take your campaign.

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

The thing about mind-control magic is that infinite resources will be thrown into developing detection methods, counter-measures and access restrictions.

^This exactly, although since we are talking about magic the rules will be arbitrary which lets the world-builder dial in the difficulty.

Originally Posted by benz72

Has anyone considered or tried making use of mind controlling spells have predictable and unpleasant side effects?
e.g. yes you can go rifling through that guys memories, now go ahead and try parsing current reality, your own memories and the ones you've lifted out of his head while under stress... hope you don't hallucinate at a critical moment.

Could be an interesting take to balance out the inherent power of the spell without having the global magical countermeasures arms race I mentioned above. Combine that with the "forbidden spell" restriction where trying to learn such magic gets you in trouble and you have a great clandestine action campaign option.

[bocephus]

In all this thread I was surprised that no one pointed out that in D&D the access to these spells scales with level, and that also means who your interacting with will equally scale.

In D&D terms I have always considered negotiating with a merchant an activity equivalent to fighting unless there was already a relationship. So any RandomX merchant would automatically get a roll at advantage.

Then there is the what do they have?
Example, the level 1-3 PCs pretty much much only ever go into the general store or maybe a wandering tinker. PCs want rations, rope, pitons, and bags. These aren't people that trade in magic items, They are spending as much time trying to feed themselves as they are surviving encounters with Kobolds and bears.

They don't have much, if any, in the way of magical gear (depending on the GM/setting). They also have less bonuses/increases to aid success in the casting.
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level 4-6 Now they are becoming important and have a little coin to rub together. They might venture into a magic shop, but only for the cheapest of goods, and probably only the most basic of shops, but these are magic users that are trafficking in their own goods and maybe stuff that's been traded.

They have resistances, and level increases of their own that give bonuses to resist.

This is probably the sweet spot for a PC to be able to have access to people with the some ~valuable goods but still have a chance to be able to succeed, especially if they have min/maxed for these skills/spells. Equally at this level its real easy for the local guard etc to chase them down and string them up (or corral them into some mostly suicidal quest in order to not be strung up, I have been know to make use of the "come back in 30 days with my Mcguffin and you'll get the antidote to what you just drank" if I have PCs that have been misbehaving).
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Level 7ish and up, this is where PCs start interacting with those "high level" NPCs that have access to the real stuff. Likewise these are probably equivalent to lvl 13-15 NPCs at this point, with all the resistances and gear that would go along with it.

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In GURPS terms first thing I keep seeing that makes little sense to me is the idea that non magical merchants would be dealing in Magic items. That just makes little sense as a rule. In my Medieval Fantasy world settings, 97% of magic items worth more than say $100 come from shops that are run by enchanters/alchemists/herbalists. It just makes sense to cut out the middle man and since you need a place to work anyway why wouldn't it be your shop (or attached to your shop). Yes there are basic things that might just happen to be sitting on a shelf in a General store, or being carried by a tinker but they arent going to display that (for several reasons not the least of which is this thread). A "low level merchant" that advertises the fact that he has something special is sort of like leaving for the holidays and not locking your house. It might work out ok, but if it doesnt no one will be surprised.

Access to the spell, sort of speaks to your way of playing. I prefer to start my PCs around 125 points, maybe 150. There is positively ZERO chance someone would try to maximize the mind college enough to get to spells potent enough to alter a merchants behavior for any length of time. I'm not even sure you could make a playable char with those point values that could even attempt it with the standard magic system.
By the time they do get access to those spells/abilities its not worth trying to cheat a tinker for pennies, and still very dangerous to try a cheat an Enchanter in his own shop to get a discount or steal something that has real value to the PC.

[Mark Caliber]

Having NOT read any of the responses to this VERY long thread, forgive me if I repeat an earlier suggestion.

As an accountant, I'd recommend accounting.

Any inventory system and an accounting ledger will show discrepancies.

So mages employing such larcenous behavior will be 'noted.'

Consequences can span from being blackballed (refusal of future services) in the future to wanted posters being posted throughout town with a reward for the capture/death of these outlandish thieves! (Depending on the scope and severity of the fraud and thefts involved).