"A Wizard Did It" for noncasters

[Arturick]

"I shoot eye lasers, fly, can summon extradimensional servants to destroy my enemies, raise the dead, teleport across the planet and into other planes of existence, shoot fire out of my fingertips and enslave the minds of mortal men."

(Devil's Advocate Mode Activated)  This brings up one of the central issues of the (now way too old) "3.X = Caster Supremacy" vs. "4E = Everyone Using Equivalent Powers on a 2D Field" argument.  Awesome Sword Guy has traditionally been easily victimized by "enslave the minds of mortal men," and mind enslaving is a horrific ability to factor into "game balance."  Likewise, there was a long, raging debate over whether Astral Constructs (and various things Summonable) are objectively better than Fighters.

Would you, if designing a game from the ground up, remove the ability to Dominate whatever happens to show up in the dungeon in favor of something like an "Enslaved Minion" class feature that can be objectively balanced against the abilities of the martial classes?

[Rakoa]

Would you, if designing a game from the ground up, remove the ability to Dominate whatever happens to show up in the dungeon in favor of something like an "Enslaved Minion" class feature that can be objectively balanced against the abilities of the martial classes?

Interesting question. Abilities like Dominate Person and Dominate Monster are powerful things to play around with. All it takes is one bad Will save, and the monster/NPC/other player is now either good as dead or fighting for you, and for a very long time. Even with the second saving throw for actions against ones nature, it is pretty easy to take the target out of the fight with a command and deal with them later. The limitations, as you mentioned, do exist. Constructs and other things like undead are immune to such abilities. Does this make them better than Fighters? Possibly.

To answer your question, the powers granted by Dominate are so powerful as to be, in my opinion, reserved for specialized prestige classes and very powerful magical items, not something the average Wizard would have access to just because. But that's just my opinion.

[Amechra]

I think that Dominate effects should be highly restricted, while Charm effects are perfectly OK (though I am saddened by the lack of effects that do the opposite of Charm effects... you know, turning a crowd against a guy, or whatevs.)

Then again, one of my favorite tricks is "I need concentration? Alright, I Dominate myself." But then again, I seem to have a rather odd way of looking at how the mind works...