There are many spells and traits in the game that target a random enemy with a particular effect. For example, Wulfgarok’s spell devours a random enemy if its damage killed its target.
These effects can and often do target an enemy that is immune to the effect. This is fine, and expected.
Charm, however, is different. Instead of picking an entirely random enemy, it picks only from enemies that are not immune. There are 3 ways to be “immune” to Charm.
1- Having Bless status
2 - Having the Indestructible trait. This is currently exclusive to level 30 Immortals
3 - Having an Attack score of zero, whether through Entangle or any other reason
I didn’t raise this as a bug, as it appears to be intentional. Why does random Charm get this special treatment when other effects do not?
In fact having immunity to Charm makes a troop more likely to be damaged by it, since its neighbours will be randomly charmed rather than resisting the effect itself. This greatly diminishes the value of immunity to Charm, making it not such a great level 30 perk for immortals.
As an example, in Tower of Doom today, I had potion of bless and was fighting the double Lamia team. If they cast while my whole team is blessed, the message “No targets available” appears, indicating immune enemies are excluded by their random charm. If one of my troops loses Bless, it gets “randomly” targeted every time. Is this fair?
Conclusion incorrect: that message also appears if casting a targeted Charm (Viper, Lust) on an enemy who is immune to it.
Really? I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed this, but it’s something incredibly subtle to find.
…okay, I just tested with a 3x Lamia team and Root Trap, and after 40 casts, the first enemy (Entangled by Root Trap) was NEVER once charmed (vs. a statistical expectation of ~10 times), though I did also (in the same run) witness the same enemy being picked 3 times in a row (which is a 3/27 probability).
Similar but distinct, there’s always been something feeling slightly “off” (but not in a negative way) when using Guild Guardian troops like Finesse or Cunning, where the random troop doesn’t “feel” completely random, but seems to preferentially pick from non-targeted foes. Though I haven’t specifically tested for this either.
I had definitely noticed that charm will always target an available target, and never “fail” if there is a viable target. It’s something worth factoring in to your actions when playing against an enemy that can charm. If you expect them to cast on the next turn, you can try to keep all your troops blessed at the end of the turn, for example. This would mean not doing a skull attack or casting a spell, since those actions remove bless. Or, you could choose which troop you want to cast a spell with, so that you can affect which one gets charmed, if you need to cast one.
I had not noticed that entangled troops aren’t selected by charm. It kind of makes sense, if it’s set to only target viable options, but I would have expected it to charm for 0 damage, instead. Interesting to know, in case I ever need to counter charm, but it’s not likely to be a useful strategy, I suppose.
I suspect Charm was initially implemented to avoid targets with zero attack, since it would be ineffective.
Bless and Indestructible were later additions to the game, and I think random charm’s avoidance of troops with these immunities evolved out of avoiding zero attack, rather than being planned out that way.
Whatever the reason, it’s a definite inconsistency compared with other randomly applied effects in the game which can target immune enemies.