Kinder, gentler Prime and Planar binding/Gate

[User3]

I was thinking that the Prime needed a rule that says: creatures cannot be summoned or called from the Prime. That would explain why all the demons in hell want to like hang out in the Prime, and why they can’t Planar bind PCs when they get pissed.

Second rule: Calling and Summoning spells do not function unless they are cast on the Prime, or call creatures native to the plane on which they are cast. This prevents the demon sorcerer from summoning an angel every time he feels hungry, or sent angelic hosts against the PCs every time he attacks them in Hell.

Extraplanar spaces count as part of the plane to which they are attached, but they do not have access to any other plane.

Basically, this should clean up some of the dumb Gate/Planar binding rules.

[User3]

Eh... the whole prime only thing isn't really a fix to gate cheese. Because it just means that the other guy just waits until you go on some planar quest and then screws you over with gate.

The real solution to the gate cheese is that you can never summon people or things by name at all. You can summon "a solar" but not "timmy the solar". There that problem is fixed.

Also summoning spells with alignment tags shouldnt' be castable at all if you dont' match that alignment. An evil wizard shouldn't be able to bind a solar at all. To have the connection necessary to bring in a solar, you should need to be good. Otherwise you just lack the insight into Celestia to properly find and call a being like that.

The rest of the abuses with these spells are just best dealt with roleplaying. Eliminate all die rolls in the interaction and treat it as a pure RP encounter. Sure, you can summon a planetar and ask him to do stuff for you, but you can also go to Elminster and ask him to do stuff for you too. It should be little different.

That prevents basically all the problems with planar binding/gate.

[Username17]

That prevents basically all the problems with planar binding/gate.

Because noone is going to write down "Lawful Evil" on their character sheet so that they can trade Wish for Wish for free with Efreeti? Because there's no particular downside to the player or Efreet in getting on the mutual wish granting train ride. If people have to write down "Lawful Evil" to break the game, the game is still broken.

And player characters are lawful evil.

I fail to see how you've fixed much of anything.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

An evil wizard should not be able to capture a solar and extort power from it in exchange for it's freedom?

-Des

[User3]

1086819175[/unixtime]]
Because noone is going to write down "Lawful Evil" on their character sheet so that they can trade Wish for Wish for free with Efreeti? Because there's no particular downside to the player or Efreet in getting on the mutual wish granting train ride. If people have to write down "Lawful Evil" to break the game, the game is still broken.

Right, so you try to get wishes from an efreeti, and what's the efreeti going to ask for in return? The moment you force roleplaying constraints, now you've actually gotta offer something. Evil people don't just help people for nothing, it's what makes them evil. And oh yeah.. that and efreeti love to twist wishes, because they're so damn evil.

If you have efreeti giving free wishes that they don't totally twist around, then you aren't roleplaying them properly.

[User3]

1086819305[/unixtime]]An evil wizard should not be able to capture a solar and extort power from it in exchange for it's freedom?

Not by just sitting on his ass in his sanctum, no. If he wants to actually go to Celestia and physically capture one then fine, but he shouldn't be able to win just by sitting on his ass in some leather chair within the safety of his own home anymore than a solar should be able to do the same to him.

Otherwise you run into solars gating in balors just to kill them. And that's bad shit. You shouldn't be able to call or gate enemies, at all.

[Username17]

Right, so you try to get wishes from an efreeti, and what's the efreeti going to ask for in return? The moment you force roleplaying constraints, now you've actually gotta offer something.

Wishing for stuff it wants? It can't grant its own wishes, but you can agree to make specific wishes for things it wants for it.

It can't grant "I wish I had a million dollars" to itself, but it can grant "I wish that Efreet had a million dollars" to you.

Efreet come with their own roleplaying hook for why they would give you nigh unlimited power. In fact, they would be stupid not to take your offer, since it costs them nothing.

-Username17

[User3]

Well, you've just got to play Efreeti as the uncontrollable evil force, like in the Wishmaster movie. Sure, he could just grant the wishes without twisting em around, get his three wishes and just plain win, but that'd require him to actually be nice, but he just can't help it. He's just an evil bastard.

This is another case of introducing roleplaying to the equation. You can't trust an efreet because they care more about screwing you over than they do with making any kinds of deals. Teleporting the gold you wished for to the center of your stomach and watching you explode from it is more reward to them than getting gold themselves. After all, what do they need gold for anyway? They could just take your treasure after you're dead. And they feel better about themselves when they've twisted your wish.

Just because a human is likely to use an ability in a certain way, you can't really be sure an efreet would do the same thing.

The efreet is essentially a fairy tale style creature. And creatures like that have to have totally alien personalities. They aren't interested in mortal concerns but in other things. In the case of the efreet, he practically lives to screw people over with wishes. That is after all why he has the ability in the first place.

[Username17]

Well, you've just got to play Efreeti as the uncontrollable evil force, like in the Wishmaster movie. Sure, he could just grant the wishes without twisting em around, get his three wishes and just plain win, but that'd require him to actually be nice, but he just can't help it. He's just an evil bastard.

And this works for Djinni Nobles and Solars because...?

Honestly, "Because I'm the DM and I'll hit you with my penis if you try to break the game" is not a statement that really solves anything. Having the DM be a adversary who will attempt to screw the players if they try to win just means that they'll win D&D less. If you force people to make the perfect wish, sometimes they are going to do that.

Sometimes you'll grant the wish and Brian will be on the other end of the phone and he'll turn himself into a Gawd with an iron-clad no-loopholes legal wish. And then the game falls apart.

Seriously, you can't balance the game that way. All you can do is explode the party after they get way too powerful - and that's no fun for anyone.

-Username17

[User3]

Well, if you treat planar binding as a straight roleplaying encounter the efreet/solar/djinni whatever can always just tell the guy to piss off, and not do anything for him. So if the efreet can't have his fun twisting the wish, he's just going to say "nah, sorry can't do it. How bout rewording your wish."

The solar for instance, can just cast wish for himself. He doesn't need anyone to "trade" wishes.

As for the djinni, well you got me there. The djinni is a real problem. I don't think non-evil aligned wish granters should exist at all. Because they screw with plots all the time.

And lets face it... the wish granters are the fringe case of planar binding. Sure, you can do weird stuff with them, but they have to be dealt with separately anyway. For other monsters that you're likely to call, treating it as a roleplaying encounter solves almost everything.

[User3]

1086840996[/unixtime]]
As for the djinni, well you got me there. The djinni is a real problem. I don't think non-evil aligned wish granters should exist at all. Because they screw with plots all the time.

I'm perfectly happy to get rid of all of them, really. But then in general I don't like game mechanics that actively encourage the DM to be a dick to the players, and evil wish granters are like the #1 or #2 offender on this list. Just get rid of them altogether, or else place this at a game mechanic level and not a player vs. DM level -- you tell the DM the desired effect, you roll knowledge Arcana/Diplomacy/whatever to see if you come up with the correct way to phrase it/convince the creature to grant what you want/whatever, and if you blow the roll then something goes wrong in a ghastly but hopefully entertaining way.

We don't demand that players know every nuance of how to swing a sword at an ogre and then ruthlessly screw them over when they forget to mention that they stab with the flat of the blade parallel to the ground instead of perpendicular; I'm not sure what's gained by insisting that players (some of whom are inevitably going to be playing characters much, much smarter than they are) nail down the exact phrasing of a wish, except, possibly, acrimony.

[User3]

Effreet should also "grant" the ability to cast the spell Wish, just like an Imbue with Spell Ability.

If players had to actually pay the XP cost, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

[Username17]

If players had to actually pay the XP cost, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

True, we'd be having the entirely different discussion about the Djinn ability to make permanent healing salves by the thousand lot. Or the discussion about how XP costs don't really balance anything. Or the discussion about how there aren't any Level 7-12 adventures that you can't completely whup on if you have half a dozen Hound Archons at your back. Or the discussion about how Wish specifically is so badly written that it looks like a monkey just gargled feces on a page until it kind of resembled letters...

You know, one of those discussions that always come up any time anyone talks about the fact that D&D doesn't have a satisfactory system for permanent, or even long lasting, magic. The entire concept of spell balance is based on you having to save it in case you get attacked while you sleep. If you can actually be benefitting from your spell slots from yesterday, or last month, that entire system is a shamocracy.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

But at least those are issues you can plausibly solve by either RP, or by saying this is incredibly lame and boring. The wish problem is insolvable.

[RandomCasualty]

1086934447[/unixtime]]
You know, one of those discussions that always come up any time anyone talks about the fact that D&D doesn't have a satisfactory system for permanent, or even long lasting, magic. The entire concept of spell balance is based on you having to save it in case you get attacked while you sleep. If you can actually be benefitting from your spell slots from yesterday, or last month, that entire system is a shamocracy.

Yeah, the spell system for long term spells definitely needs a fix. Spells slots really do only a few things. The only beneficial thing spell slots do is limit the amount of options a wizard has at one time. But as a balancing tool for long term spells, they absolutely suck, because a spell slot really isn't worth nothing in the long term.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Well, are there any games that have workable, meaningful rules for long-term and permanent magic?

What if we tied it to ability drain? Perhaps the wizard loses a permanent point of Str, Dex or Con in exchange for these spells. That'd make damned sure noone ever used it lightly.

-Desdan

[Crissa]

Why can't some long-term spells work like spell-slots? As in, a spell slot is any ready or active spell...

...That'd make those spells which are instantaneous mean more, and give a simple mechanic for 'you slay the wizard! All the people come back to life!'

But RC, I have no idea what your idea was supposed to do. I liked K's, though. More planar effects. Make the planes more different.

-Crissa

[The_Hanged_Man]

1086982745[/unixtime]]Well, are there any games that have workable, meaningful rules for long-term and permanent magic?

What if we tied it to ability drain? Perhaps the wizard loses a permanent point of Str, Dex or Con in exchange for these spells. That'd make damned sure noone ever used it lightly.

-Desdan

I'm starting to hate talking about Shadowrun, but remember all the resources that got tied up in making and binding magic items in Shadowrun?

The ability loss is basically how 1E and 2E worked, you lost a point of con to make a magic item. Which meant no one ever made a magic item. That seems like overkill to make a metal wall to me.

What I probably would do if any player tried to abuse these rules is make a spell slot be dedicated to the effect each day that the effect lasts. IOW, if you cast fabricate to make something really outrageously cool, you blow that spell slot. If you want that thing around the next day, you tie up a 5th level slot.

Kind of like Crissa's idea.

[RandomCasualty]

1086987762[/unixtime]]
But RC, I have no idea what your idea was supposed to do.

Basically my idea is firstly to remove the kinds of offensive planar binding (that is binding an enemy and screwing him over). Everyone you bind you are asking for help. Next, when you actually deal with binding, it's no longer a check, it's a straight roleplayed encounter. In other words, you don't get away with any more binding something than you do if you actually went up to something and asked it to help you. It's not going to do you any special favors and it certainly won't be your slave.

So often most of the abuses from planar binding comes from the assumption that it'll do anything you want it to, like use its own gating power to summon an army. Eliminate that, and for the most part you eliminate problems with planar binding/gating.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I always help people who pull me away from what I was doing in my normal, day-to-day life without my permission and demand things from me on the threat of not being able to leave a ten-foot diameter area until I do.

Why would you possibly be resentful under those circumstances?

-Desdan

[Draco_Argentum]

1086996935[/unixtime]]Next, when you actually deal with binding, it's no longer a check, it's a straight roleplayed encounter.

This is an RPG, there are mechanics for diplomacy etc. WW has them too so don't bother trying to claim D&D is for rollplayers or something similarly lame.

[RandomCasualty]

1087020869[/unixtime]]
This is an RPG, there are mechanics for diplomacy etc. WW has them too so don't bother trying to claim D&D is for rollplayers or something similarly lame.

Yes, but like any roleplying encounter it should be treated as such. Not a "charisma check" If you succeed you get whatever you want. The offer should have to be reasonable before the creature even considers it. that's all I'm saying.