I used to buff my "stole" members in BG too. I don't find this bad, it is pretty logical. The spells say "Friendly", a charmed creatures is friendly, so... It is not the best for the combat, so you must be smart.
no. it's not the same thing here. here, you don't get a choice. if you are usign a CC buff, all confused enemies AUTOMATICALLY get your cc buff.
no, that's plain stupid. the idea of friendly aoe spells is the caster can choose to target who gets them, that's what makes them friendly.
the OP is absolutely correct, and there is no game in all of crpg history that treated confused enemies as actual party members before this game.
it needs fixin'.
Of course I agree with "confused" enemies being still enemies, but the op is talking about Dominated and Charmed enemies too. In these cases, they MUST be buffed by your AoE spells.
I get where your coming from when you say Dominated or charmed enemies should still be buffed. If this was the "real world" i guess it would act that way, but it isnt, its a game. On top of that most CC effects only last about 8-12 secs where the buffs are considerably longer in comparison.
So it has to come down to balance and continuity in the game.
Either your party has no way of choosing who gets buffed or they are making a conscious decision to do so.
The fact that there abilities that effect them are Friendly only, this presumes that they do have some choice in the matter.
So, if its a simple choice, perhaps just making it an option in the menu to allow it or not would solve the problem.
If its not a choice, and as you say confused enemies are still enemies. But Dominated and charmed are not. Then there are a few things to consider.
To put this into perspective, I know this isnt DND, but POE is really trying to make there own DND rule set basically. but as far as the rules for Domination go in DND.
"Despite this condition, the dominated creature's allies remain allies, and its enemies remain enemies."
Charmed is en entire different problem, as the DND rules dont apply to this game as its basically the same as Domination but with the effected enemies having a debuff.
If they ARE allies in every sense of the word, do we take how it works to the extreme.
Does the Chanters chants buff end early on them and stop effecting them as soon as the Dominated statue wares off, my chanter isnt going to be improving the enemies moral any more.
Does the prist buffs stop to, would my "god" want to buff my enemies, Etc
Now I know your not suggesting that, you feel that Confused shouldn't be affected by buffs but charmed and dominated should as there your allies.
In my opinion when it come down to it POE is just a game and it needs to have continuity between similar skills so as not to over complicate things.
So either we leave it as it is or change all of it
Im looking forward to other opinions on the matter but my suggested Fix would be if there is a Target spell you can buff them if you like. But AOE should be a toggle-able option in the menu if nothing else.