Why is Enchantment evil in #ttrpg ? I cover some of the reasons here.
https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/why-is-enchantment-evil
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@Jackgiantkiller
Interesting piece. I have always considered enchantment evil ever since I read the intro adventure in the D&D Basic Set. So easy agree there.

Until you mentioned the World of Darkness. Granted that a good portion of the game deals in grey morality. But it leaves me thinking about how some of my characters have used the Dominate power. Say for instance that someone is attacking you. So you Dominate them to stop and leave. Yes, it clearly violates their will, but what are the alternatives? Fight them and cause physical harm? I'm pretty sure that that violates more than just their free will. Perhaps if you could physically restrain them or knock them out, that is generally considered pretty humane, but how is that any different? Basically it'd be the same as your Hideous Laughter exception.

One could certainly argue that even that level of violence is still wrong on some level, but I don't think less so than Dominating them to stop fighting. So if we're going to consider this level of harm to be immoral, then we're going to have to examine a whole lot of other things in a similar light.

And to be honest I do do that level of examination in real life, but I would find it tedious in role playing. But that's just my taste. In the end I think that powers like Dominate can be used in a sufficiently moral way (the best of available options) if not in a "pure" way. Perhaps if my character had a Humanity score of 9 or 10, but that's not what I'm playing Vampire for.

But looking at your examples at the end of the article, they cover a lot of ground there, and would need to be looked at pretty separately. Controlling somebody's body while they remain cognizant of that is bad sure, but so is restraining them, or "legally" arresting them, and that is often seen as "good enough", depending on circumstances and what you are making them do.

Changing someone's decisions either directly or through say memory alteration I see as no less immoral than when someone does so verbally (say with a con artist), or through some other trick. It's just faster. And if you accept that premise, then you just have to examine the morality of dishonesty, and it becomes less about enchantment specifically. One can then think of things like cops going undercover in order to bring down criminals. Heck, if you really want, there's a whole TV series called Leverage about a group that uses elaborate con jobs to bring down powerful bad guys.

So in the end, unless you want to take the pure angle of never doing any sort of harm whatsoever ever, that really enchantment is just another form of power that can be used morally or not. I'll grant that because of how much easier it makes controlling people, that the temptation to abuse it is even greater than with non-magical means, but I don't see that as any argument against its use any more than how technology makes doing immoral things easier, or any other form of magic for that matter.

Interesting; reading your article and then replying to it caused me to re-examine my whole position on the matter, and I went from completely agreeing with your thesis to not. That makes it a very useful piece in my opinion. Good job. (Not trying to shut down the discussion by that BTW.)