Talk:Algernon's Cloak/@comment-89.164.61.255-20130113103008/@comment-72.86.190.226-20141209211804

It's the best because it completely unbalances the game. It's the proverbial Bioware *oops*.

There are very few NPCs that cannot be charmed (i.e. all human and demihumans are suitable candidates) so one could presumably enlist a huge army of guards, the occasional mage or cleric (whatever is available within the level being used) none of which cause a division of the available experience for kills. This includes all the standard companions which do NOT need to actually join the party to be used as allies in battle. A full exploitation of this anomaly means one could enlist all companions, temporarily dispatch them and then charm them into battle as needed. A VERY lame exploit IMO.

The default duration is supposed to be either 10 or 20 rounds depending on game version but the cloak version of the charm seems to last much longer than that. It's obvious that this was NOT was intended by the designers, significantly altering the challenge that was scripted, hence a bug that has been patched by community-made fix efforts to perform as it is supposed to.