Gaulic Ogre

While the passionate fanbase made the show as successful as it is, the series owes its success to two aspects - it had a main character that was much more accessible to an audience in comparison to contemporary shows, and the late ‘90′s were a vacuum for representation.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a benchmark in fiction is less of a masterpiece and more of a fresco of spaghetti and sauce thrown at the wall of an outlet mall. There’s merit to what it was as a product of its time and why the fanbase, especially those a part of the LGBTQ+ community, became so passionate about it; and it’s because of this that I argue that the fanbase made the show bigger than it ever should have been. And while I won’t comment on the quality of representation, I’d also argue that if you swapped Buffy with something like “Lost Girl”, the show’s popularity would explode in the same way; Buffy is culturally significant because a community was starved for something to see themselves in. As it is with a lot of television out of the late ‘90′s / early ‘00′s, it’s not something that aged well (see also: Friends), but in the interest of fairness, that’s more of an indictment of the industry at the time than any one show in particular. Representation in general is a lot better than it was and that’s a progressive endeavor in and of itself. 

It boils down to sentience and cognition.

Here’s the question and a very brief primer - 

If a creature is of a different mind, how can it understand the magic you use?

While animals and beasts are usually the targets of these discussions, there are many more creatures where magical effects get muddled. In Pathfinder and older systems of Dungeons and Dragons, certain creatures were given the classification of “mindless”, usually represented by an Intelligence of “-” in the stat block; creatures under this umbrella include oozes, undead, plants, “vermin” (another umbrella including giant insects and swarms) and constructs. Mind affecting magic, such as the many different schools of illusions and certain enchantments, doesn’t work on any of these creatures. Older systems made you dig for the fact that an illusion wouldn’t work on an “ogre spider”, but 5E will have exceptions to effects in spell descriptions.

So why doesn’t specific magic work on specific creatures? Depends on the context.

-In the case of animals and beasts, it goes without saying that there is an obvious disconnect between the cognition of humans and animals. As an example, we can understand how the mind of a dog works from a scientific standpoint and dogs certainly have some semblance of intelligence, but any approach to reasoning with an animal is based on what is understood about their behaviors, reactions, and ability to perceive. In general, humans don’t know or understand the full extent of a dog’s cognition. So if a wizard uses an illusion to produce a treat in their hand and produces it to a dog, the dog would be wondering why this person wants their palm licked; not only does the dog not understand what the wizard’s intent is, the dog’s senses would also allow them to discern the ACTUAL treats are somewhere else on the wizard’s person. All this to say that we might be able to fool the senses of an animal but not necessarily its mind, and not solely because we’re “smarter” than the animal. Humans can perceive 3 types of colors; a mantis shrimp can perceive 16. How the fuck can a human mind produce a pattern to fool something that can see colors that we don’t have names for?

-Plants, giant insects, and oozes operate on instinct and a basic desire to consume, reproduce, and survive. Harder to say in the case of oozes since they’re anomalies produced by magical energies and also fictional, but I digress. These creatures, while capable of problem solving and adaptation, don’t posses a cognition or a sentience that we can recognize or “negotiate” with. It is in this group that you also encounter the concept of hive minds or gestalt consciousness via “creatures” such as swarms. A collection of minds acting in flawless unison is a frightening concept to some, and while apostrophe or “alien” on its own, it could be believed that in order for such a thing to exist there must be no individuality in the minds that make up the greater one.

-Undead and constructs are typically creatures that are animated by magical forces of some sort, so their purpose is dictated by the force or person that gave them “life”. There are certainly some intelligent undead and instances of hive minds in this group, but at its basest form, an undead creature is animated by negative energy, another umbrella term to embody the distilled dark side of the many different sentient creatures that exist. This in turn makes the general portrayal of undead creatures one of impending doom, malevolent or unrepentant consciousness, and insatiable hunger (among other things). Constructs take form as something designed for a specific purpose. They are the closest thing to computers or “virtual intelligence” that a fantasy setting can conjure short of homebrews. With all that in mind for both constructs or undead, there is no mind for someone to fool as they were created through certain intent and won’t deviate from their “purpose”.

These are my own notes, of course, but maybe the best way to answer the initial question is this -

How well do you understand the mind of those you wish to fool, bewilder, or bewitch?

An ambush character has two rules you have to adhere to -

1. They have only one concept at the core of their characterization which drives their actions.

2. They can never develop beyond their core concept.

However, both of these rules can be broken if the player characters give them agency to do so.

Examples of ambush characters I use -

-A sentient buffalo who can speak the common tongue who is constantly searching for someone named “Dave”. The buffalo sounds like Tommy Chong.

-A dedicated salesman who has every personal resource put in to mobility so he can run away from the crowds that he pisses off with his sales pitches as well as keep an exact pace with people who he thinks he can make a sale to. His sense of direction is shoddy.

-A demon in the body of a squirrel who can only be appeased with meatloaf. The demon possesses weaker versions of his magical abilities.

-A man of great endurance and no fighting skills attempts to overcome large groups of “harmless” animals because he believes they are protecting his family heirlooms. He will always be ill-equipped for this task (e.g. using a greatsword and a helmet as protection against a colony of bats, or taking on a clowder of cats with a butterfly net) and the animals will always chase him off.

In the entirety of using this mechanic, I’ve only had one ambush character “evolve” because of the party’s influence. This was an annoying and overbearing glory hog of a mercenary “lord” who was maxed out in Charisma and diplomatic abilities; he was meant to be a roast of power games / “munchkins”, and was put at odds with the party because he successfully took credit for their deeds though he was already a local hero. The party eventually hired him and his cronies to take part in a big battle, his part of which was a suicide mission which they took part in anyway. The mercenary lord and his group were killed in the fight, but the lord’s body was recovered by the dragonborn that killed him. He appeared later in the game as a half-dragon monstrosity that served as a boss monster near the end of the story.