Fair enough with the traveling merchant.
Charm in current state is powerful, is it OVERpowered though? I'm not sure.
Back in the days people just didn't know how to use it well. People were also a lot more scared to die than today because CR wasn't as trivial as it is today and getting res was far from trivial as well (travel was harder so you really had to sweet talk those clerics). Taking an exp death 55+ wasn't something a lot of people were too keen about really.
So basically less people even attempted charm soloing, arguably the hardest and most rewarding soloing path, let alone get good at it. I think literally 90%+ of level 60 druids never ever casted a single charm spell in their career back in the days (I'm talking 2001 and earlier).
Maybe charm breaks less on p99, but it makes this way of approaching EQ enjoyable, that's a Good Thing. One of the qualities of EQ has always been the "There's more than one way to do it" factor.
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