The most important rule implies otherwise. Remember GM Fiat runs both ways. Sometimes you just want to make that battleaxe wielding orc's crits magically disappear so the party doesn't get TPK'd by bad dice. Sometimes you want to go "Your teleport fails."Minor nitpick. You never need these things.
Depends on how you define "need", the first is very reasonably a case of simply not having people play through the first few sessions of a campaign and then simply die because I rolled a few nat 20's. When the alternative is potentially very unfun, I consider it to qualify as need. The second one is virtually expected if any kind of hostile takeover has occurred. While people don't necessarily expect realism in a game, most expect reasonable rational actors.
It totally breaks the rules because Wish had limits as a spell, and thus wouldn't be able to kill God's unless when I get level 9 spell wish I can kill gods. This is utter BS to me as a player, I am glad I don't play in these types of games.
Nope 'cause Supreme Wish is not a spell but an Epic Surnatural Abilities that Dehemm The Wishmaster has... ;)
You want his stat block ? :D
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Well, sure if there is no wish perversion, I agree that there might not even be an entire genie society as the first genie would have just gotten absolute power and eradicated all other genies.But I was more stating that if wish perversion existed then genies would likely treat wish using like we treat scientific advancement. IE experimentation. So through many generations of cooperative genie effort they would have expanded their knowledge of what wishes can safely grant. Which would likely be a reason genies don't obliterate each other(they need each other).
I just think it is dumb to say that anyone would encounter a regular genie.
If a monster had multiple supernatural abilities that said,
Even if they weren't already added on the base creature's chart, they would definitely have used them on themselves.
"Scientific research" as we mean it started in 1600 with Galileo.
a) In a LE non-modern society people will not commonly share research results. Some of the tricks to make safe wishes and thwart wishes granted to other beings will be shared, but not all of them.
Knowing that a wish can do safely x but not y will be a individual or at best a family secret
b) "experimenting" with wishes to find the boundaries of safety wishing is extremely dangerous. Do a Goggle search to see how many researched got radiation related diseases between the people experimenting with radioactive materials, from the Curies to Fermi.
c)
"1. Permanently increase someone's ability score up to +5."
maximum of +3 unless you chain wish with another efreeti
2. Permanently increase someone's size.
"and then search for a mate, a home where you can live, and so on. No, thanks."
3. Permanently grant other unspecified abilities.
servant "I wish for my master to be capable of casting Detect good"
Efreeti "granted"
1 level human cleric that was an efreeti "whaat?" just before burning alive.
next test (another efreeti)
servant "I wish for my master to have the spell like ability of casting Protection from good"
Efreeti "granted"
Imp that was an efreeti "noooo!"
Playing with nitroglycerine.
Sure they could get some bonus and some power but with what they could risk with a bad wish they would be very, very careful. You don't risk a unlimited lifespan for something that you can get with a few hundred years of training.
The people that will do that so easily is usually the same people that will be too greedy and be burned by bad wishes.
From "The City of Brass" (PA 23) and Wishcraft (PA 24) the genies are well aware that chaining wishes damage reality and will not do it.
Especially in a city with about 2 million efreeti.
The backlash will exterminate the race.
Moment of prescience for CHA check to negotiate (grant me 3 wishes in exchange for trigger object)
PRD: Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to.
That is all it would take to avoid you from even getting the wishes.
PS:You still have not dealt with the commune spell, and the longitude latitude issue.
PRD: Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to.
That is all it would take to avoid you from even getting the wishes.
PS:You still have not dealt with the commune spell, and the longitude latitude issue.
Did you read sympathy?
Creatures of the specified kind or alignment feel elated and pleased to be in the area or desire to touch or possess the object. The compulsion to stay in the area or touch the object is overpowering. If the save is successful, the creature is released from the enchantment, but a subsequent save must be made 1d6 × 10 minutes later. If this save fails, the affected creature attempts to return to the area or object.
They really want to have that item.
P.S. After the first day, mind blank, RAW handles commune. Greater teleport/planeshift takes care of the lat/long attempt. Or a mobile base of some sort. Or sleeping in rope tricks/other extra dimensional spaces. Moving around also thwarts commune, as the information is outdated at best.
Moment of prescience for CHA check to negotiate (grant me 3 wishes in exchange for trigger object)
PRD: Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to.
That is all it would take to avoid you from even getting the wishes.
PS:You still have not dealt with the commune spell, and the longitude latitude issue.
Deities lacking in omniscience and the last line of the Commune spell are actually making that very unreliable.
But hey - Do your thing on another plane. I'm curious as to how the Efreet will map out things like the Astral Plane. :)
And again - Dominate Monster eliminates the CHA check.
That would give it a second will + 4 since being bossed into using is wish is against its nature. That also assumes a miniumum of a 17th level caster which places you higher on the easy to find list, but I do admit it greatly increases your chances of pulling it off the first time.
... mind blank, RAW handles ...
Mind Blank protect from Epic Abilities or Spell by RAW ? :)
PRD: Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to.
That is all it would take to avoid you from even getting the wishes.
PS:You still have not dealt with the commune spell, and the longitude latitude issue.
Did you read sympathy?
Creatures of the specified kind or alignment feel elated and pleased to be in the area or desire to touch or possess the object. The compulsion to stay in the area or touch the object is overpowering. If the save is successful, the creature is released from the enchantment, but a subsequent save must be made 1d6 × 10 minutes later. If this save fails, the affected creature attempts to return to the area or object.They really want to have that item.
P.S. After the first day, mind blank, RAW handles commune. Greater teleport/planeshift takes care of the lat/long attempt. Or a mobile base of some sort. Or sleeping in rope tricks/other extra dimensional spaces. Moving around also thwarts commune, as the information is outdated at best.
That does not make the request reasonable. Commune is still not taken care of. There is no way to cover for every possible yes/no question a person can think of.
I have to go soon so we can continue this later. I may have to add some houserule stipulations to the efreet simply because I don't like using "because I said so" as a DM.
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PS:You still have not dealt with the commune spell, and the longitude latitude issue.
That is very easy: do the calling in a Mage's magnificent mansion.
1) it will not exist next day, so whatever they remember of the location is false. You can even try to get something similar to the house of a enemy of yours. So if they try some combo of plane shift/teleport they could end in his house with a result of 1-12 on the d20 for "false destination".
2) it is a extradimensonal space, so the location of the "building" has no reference with the outside. Only the entrance has some reference with the outside world and only as long as the spell last. Substantially it is the equivalent of a temporary demiplane.
Unless the commune ask for the longitude/latitude of the entrance the reply will be always "no" to "the location where efreti John was called is est of the meridian X" and variants.
A kind deity would reply "irrelevant" or something similar.
Alternate solution:
Call it in a location of the astral plane. Limitless and without coordinates.
You can even add the two: magnificent mansion on the astral plane.
The combo to find the culprit and to hide from the searchers are almost unlimited. There is no way to be sure to have covered all the bases for the binder but there are no unlimited resources from the searchers to try all the methods.
To return to the basic argument.
Using planar binding to get wishes from an efreeti is well within the rules and while wish perversion can get you, the bound efreeti, while bound, is not a a real risk for the caster capable of summoning him (barring total carelessness on the binder part).
The risk is in retaliation after releasing the efreeti (relatively low risk if you do it once and you aren't a jerk with the efreeti).
If you go for the kill efreeti, chain bind them to get a large number of wishes the risk increase exponentially with each new binding.
A way to make people pause before abusing wishes would be the having bound efreeti make a counter offer when first asked to grant wishes:
"Ok, I will grant you 2 wishes for the baubles you are offering me/in exchange of being released/whatever, but I require that the third wish (the first to be cast) will be used to cancel the wishes I have granted 3 days ago"
It will have 2 results;
1) the binder will realize that mistreating the efreeti will incur the risk of his wishes being negated next time the genie grant a wish (I would rule that the removal will not be 100% sure, a 50% rate of success on cancelling each wish granted would be acceptable).
2) the player will realize that playing with genies is dangerous.
Even more important is that the player will get those information not from a DM fiat but from the words of the summoned creature, so from a in game event in wick his character is participating.
Instead of using a hammer you use finesse.
BTW: Nightwish,plenty of people in this thread saying that efreeti would be the first to abuse the wishes. I don't know how you can call that "Nobody said all efreet have that. We've said that it is a distinct possibility for any given efreet to have access to such due to their society and world view."
I you call that it is "a distinct possibility" the common accepted meaning is that there is a good chance that it happen.
As efreeti are a LE, competitive race, if a significant percentage of the population(and significant can be as low as 1% or even lower when it start) is seizing an advantage the other members will try not to be left behind and will try the same trick.
So the rare exemplar would be the efreeti that is not enhanced by servant wishes if you allow genies to be indirectly enhanced by the wishes they cast.
Mind Blank protect from Epic Abilities or Spell by RAW ? :)
The subject is protected from all devices and spells that gather information about the target through divination magic (such as detect evil, locate creature, scry, and see invisible).
Commune School divination; Level cleric 5 ... “Unclear” is a legitimate answer, because powerful beings of the Outer Planes are not necessarily omniscient. ... The spell, at best, provides information to aid character decisions. The entities contacted structure their answers to further their own purposes.
Commune is not an epic ability or an epic spell. Things I can see you reasonably getting out of commune.. "Did a human kill Bob the efreeti?" "Did a wizard kill Bob the efreeti?" "Is Bob the efreeti dead?"
In the case of my example, the answer to all 3 is No.
That does not make the request reasonable. Commune is still not taken care of. There is no way to cover for every possible yes/no question a person can think of.
What is a reasonable request then? Reasonable by definition. He wants the item. I offer to give it to him in trade for an ability that costs him nothing which he can complete during the next 18 seconds (standard action per wish).
Another fix as Diego pointed out, is performing the whole shebang inside of a Mage's magnificent mansion. I'd say that since you can change the layout of it each time, it leads to a different extradimensional space each time as well, making each locating attempt start from scratch. Since you can cast both the trap the soul and sympathy in advance, you can easily prep one night, then upon the next morning, cast your mage's mansion, and then begin the preparations.
Everyone thinks that commune is the deal-breaker on all this. Commune by the description at best will provide information to aid a decision. I read this to mean the questions that will be answered are more along the lines of, "Will killing the BBEG help the material plane?" or "If I planar bind an efreet and force it to grant me wishes, will you be displeased with me?" not "Is the BBEG deathly allergic to anything?" (If yes) "Is it peanuts?" "Shellfish?" and so on.
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"Scientific research" as we mean it started in 1600 with Galileo.
I could name 30 Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Brits, Phoenicians, etc etc That you just offended [if they weren't dead] and they were well before the common era we all assume we play in.
Sorry, but you are mostly wrong.
Scientific research based on gathering data, analysing them, making an hypothesis and then testing it and then repeating the cycle was born in the late XVI century. Then there is the distribution of the information part, that is a important part of modern scientific research and was very limited before the XVI century.
Galileo was not the inventor of the scientific method but he is a good turning point for reference.
Most of the people you could cite, while they were geniuses, were not following what is the modern research methodology. More often than not they skipped the "test the hypothesis" part.
The only possible exception would be the mathematical research.
Note too that you "could name 30 Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Brits, Phoenicians, etc etc " in more than 2 millenniums.
I am sure you could cite at least as much people in the period 1575-1625 without gret problems.
That is the difference between having a semi isolated genius and the scientific method.
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That is very easy: do the calling in a Mage's magnificent mansion.
1) it will not exist next day, so whatever they remember of the location is false. You can even try to get something similar to the house of a enemy of yours. So if they try some combo of plane shift/teleport they could end in his house with a result of 1-12 on the d20 for "false destination".
2) it is a extradimensonal space, so the location of the "building" has no reference with the outside. Only the entrance has some reference with the outside world and only as long as the spell last. Substantially it is the equivalent of a temporary demiplane.
Unless the commune ask for the longitude/latitude of the entrance the reply will be always "no" to "the location where efreti John was called is est of the meridian X" and variants.
A kind deity would reply "irrelevant" or something similar.Alternate solution:
Call it in a location of the astral plane. Limitless and without coordinates.You can even add the two: magnificent mansion on the astral plane.
The combo to find the culprit and to hide from the searchers are almost unlimited. There is no way to be sure to have covered all the bases for the binder but there are no unlimited resources from the searchers to try all the methods.
When you're dealing with the commune spell, it all comes down to which questions you ask and just how much omniscience and omnipotence the DM assigns to the gods in his/her world. The gods may not be completely omnipotent or omniscient, but they are far, far more so than any mortal spellcaster, and they are far, far less easily fooled by the chicanery of mortal magic (hence why I surmised earlier that it is entirely possible that a god could ignore Mind Blank as if it weren't even cast). How much or how little power the gods possess is pretty much up to the DM. The gods aren't statted out in Pathfinder for a reason (unless they've come out with stats somewhere that I haven't seen, which is entirely possible), and the spells in the rulebooks assume mortal, or at least non-deific agency on the part of both the casters and all other interested parties. That reason may be that they simply haven't gotten around to it or that they're waiting for the Epic ruleset to take form, but I'm inclined to believe they simply want to leave them open-ended so the DMs can give them as major or minor of roles as they wish.
BTW: Nightwish,plenty of people in this thread saying that efreeti would be the first to abuse the wishes. I don't know how you can call that "Nobody said all efreet have that. We've said that it is a distinct possibility for any given efreet to have access to such due to their society and world view."
Well, if somebody has said that, it certainly wasn't me. I assumed you were directing that at me, since I've been the target of a lot of your hyperbole in this thread already. So if it wasn't directed at me, I apologize. At any rate, my argument was that efreet are pretty unlikely to get abusive and overdo the wish-slave thing, for the reasons laid out in the article in "The Final Wish" that I've referenced a number of times. But it still isn't unreasonable to assume that a race that is so commonly targeted by such spells as the efreet are just as likely as not to adopt at least some measure of protection against calling and binding.
I you call that it is "a distinct possibility" the common accepted meaning is that there is a good chance that it happen.
There's a world of difference between saying there is a good chance that any given efreet has used wishcraft to protect himself against callings and bindings, and saying that all efreet are likely to have wished themselves into invulnerable supermen. In fact, their expertise in wishcraft is the very reason why the latter scenario would not happen. They are far more keenly aware of the consequences of wish abuse (even without wish perversion) than any human.
As efreeti are a LE, competitive race, if a significant percentage of the population(and significant can be as low as 1% or even lower when it start) is seizing an advantage the other members will try not to be left behind and will try the same trick.
Only within reason. If you haven't already read the aforementioned article from "The Final Wish," I highly recommend you do so. It will make things much clearer.
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That does not make the request reasonable. Commune is still not taken care of. There is no way to cover for every possible yes/no question a person can think of.
Even if a deity can't know directly who is the conjurer and what he has done thanks to mind blank and other magics, he is still a creature with a wast intellect, a number of faithful that will tell him what happened around the world (while not RAW it is a good rule of thumb to assume that a deity know what his faithful know) and a long experience.
If he is sufficiently interested he could make some very accurate guess.
Unless the culprit was a lich that always live under mind blank and has never interacted with a faithful of the deity it is almost guaranteed that the deity has im in that famous list of the high level individuals of the world.
The big problem of commune is if we are speaking of 1 world only or we are speaking of the multiuniverse.
As the D&D game happen within a multiuniverse, and Golarion is only 1 planet in a system with several inhabited planets and even a race of lichs un-living in spaceships there is a infinite haystack in wick you need to find your culprit.
That don't make it unusable, but still it is not the "resolve all" spell [and it should not, we are bickering about a 6th level spell doing too much and we will end with a level 5 spell doing even more. Bad ;-) ].
Mind blank even foils limited wish, miracle, and wish spells when they are used in such a way as to gain information about the target
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That does not make the request reasonable. Commune is still not taken care of. There is no way to cover for every possible yes/no question a person can think of.Even if a deity can't know directly who is the conjurer and what he has done thanks to mind blank and other magics, he is still a creature with a wast intellect, a number of faithful that will tell him what happened around the world (while not RAW it is a good rule of thumb to assume that a deity know what all his faithful know) and a long experience.
If he is sufficiently interested he could make some very accurate guess.
Unless the culprit was a lich that always live under mind blank and has never interacted with a faithful of the deity it is almost guaranteed that the deity has im in that famous list of the high level individuals of the world.
The big problem of commune is if we are speaking of 1 world only or we are speaking of the multiuniverse.
As the D&D game happen within a multiuniverse, and Golarion is only 1 planet in a system with several inhabited planets and even a race of lichs un-living in spaceships there is a infinite haystack in wick you need to find your culprit.
That don't make it unusable, but still it is not the "resolve all" spell [and it should not, we are bickering about a 6th level spell doing too much and we will end with a level 5 spell doing even more. Bad ;-) ].
Mind blank even foils limited wish, miracle, and wish spells when they are used in such a way as to gain information about the target
That does not make the request reasonable. Commune is still not taken care of. There is no way to cover for every possible yes/no question a person can think of.
I believe that there is a way to show that this statement should be enough to end all the arguments regarding perfect protections. There's gotta be some way to tie this into Godel's incompleteness theorem.
That is very easy: do the calling in a Mage's magnificent mansion.
1) it will not exist next day, so whatever they remember of the location is false. You can even try to get something similar to the house of a enemy of yours. So if they try some combo of plane shift/teleport they could end in his house with a result of 1-12 on the d20 for "false destination".
2) it is a extradimensonal space, so the location of the "building" has no reference with the outside. Only the entrance has some reference with the outside world and only as long as the spell last. Substantially it is the equivalent of a temporary demiplane.
Unless the commune ask for the longitude/latitude of the entrance the reply will be always "no" to "the location where efreti John was called is est of the meridian X" and variants.
A kind deity would reply "irrelevant" or something similar.
Find entrance, then throw a lot of dispels at it. Mansion beaten.
Call it in a location of the astral plane.
Astral plane is a very dangerous place because of its timelessness. Also, you are acting under the presumption that the entire Astral Plane is actually accessible and is simply connected. Since the material plane is finite*, the boundaries between the material and astral plane must be finite in scope. Now once on the astral plane, it was brought up in the interplanetary travel thread that greater teleport actually has finite range because of the fact that it is incapable of teleporting far enough to even make it to an adjacent planet, this implies that only a finite portion of the astral plane is explorable by mortals. Even all this aside, if the astral plane is not simply connected (read the wiki article to learn what that means), then it is possible for all points on an infinite plane to be within a finite distance from each other. You just don't want to travel it without magical assistance lest you suffer from extreme penalties to survival to avoid getting lost (as in walking on calibi-yau manifolds will be a cake walk compared to this).
Mind blank even foils limited wish, miracle, and wish spells when they are used in such a way as to gain information about the target
Strictly speaking, CoP does not gain information regarding the target, it merely shares information acquired by a deity with the caster.
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I am in a campaign where we are about to go on a very difficult mission and have a few days of down time. I am currently playing a 16th level wizard (for the sake of ease assume I have access to all wizard spells). As our situation is dire and my GM likes to through very difficult fights at us I am considering using planar binding to get two efreeti to serve me. Assuming I succeed and that the two have to grant me all of their wishes for two days (12 wishes in total) I was hoping for some advice on how to request two things.
The first is I wish to raise the intelligence of my wizard. The second I would like to gain some information (safely, and quickly) about the demi-plane we are about to attack.
For the first the best I have come up with so far is 'I wish to be significantly more intelligent than I am currently, with no harmful or unwanted changes to my mind or person'
For the second I have no idea. All of my scrying spells have failed, and this has me worried about going in blindly.
So any advice would be appreciated. Also feel free to rip into my wish just like a good efreeti would.
One more thing, I have considered using touch of idiocy on the efreeti before they grant me my wishes. I have to think dumber efreeti would be less effective at distorting my wishes. Thoughts?
First off, I'd advise not trying to enslave the efreeti, but making it mutually beneficial to you and to them. It costs the efreeti absolutely nothing to grant wishes, but they cannot use those wishes themselves; so you must strike an "Aladdin's Deal" with them. This deal is so blatantly in favor to them that only out of out-of-game spite (from the GM) will the Genie have reason to pervert or distort your wishes.
Or in other words, "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar".
Simply summon the Efreeti and ask for a moment of his time, and explain you wish to offer an opportunity for mutual gain. If the genie does not want to listen to your offer, thank him for his time, and let him return home (declare his service fulfilled and he vanishes back to his plane). Repeat until you find an efreeti who's not dumb as a rock (can spare 1 minute for you to explain yourself).
Explain that you want wishes, but you'd like a trustworthy partnership, not servitude. You will happily make a wish on his behalf for two out of the three wishes, and that you would like to offer this genie the right of your wishes, and ask the genie his or her name. This way you can call on this specific genie to grant you wishes; giving the efreeti a leg up on its peers (he has his own little wish-minion/partner).
Explain you want two unperverted wishes, and if both are satisfactory then you will make the third wish to grant the genie something it wants. If you're afraid the genie will try something terrible, perhaps negotiate some guidelines, but this is probably not needed, since the genie should want to continue getting wishes from you as well.
So you get 2 wishes, genie gets 1 wish (which you make for him/her), both are happy and you can continue summoning this genie by reciting his/her name during future summonings. To get +5 inherent modifiers to each ability score, simply request the assistance of multiple genies for a period of time; perhaps even having the first genie introduce you to a few close efreeti friends of his/hers; such as the genie's lover, sons or daughters, or direct family members.
I had a group of players in my tabletop game do this. It works pretty good. The entire party ended up with +5 inherent modifiers to all six ability scores with a couple weeks of downtime, which they also used for crafting magic items, building a school and a guild, and tending to the sick in a community (and other personal things, such as hanging with their families for a while). Afterwords, they resumed adventuring proper, and had a few efreeti friends.
Find entrance, then throw a lot of dispels at it. Mansion beaten.
And how, pray-tell do you plan on finding the entrance of the mansion? You're falling back to the same "Well the efreeti will find where their buddy is and SWAT team the wizard!" argument. How do they find the entrance? If no one is outside, they can't scry on it. They can scry on their buddy, and see that hes in a mansion, maybe even deduce that its a MMM. Great. Now what, they Commune/Contact other Plane to find where "that mansion with our efreet buddy is"? Those both take 10 minutes. With my plan, I'm done by then, mansion has been dismissed, and any attempts for info on it won't work, since it is no longer there.
My plan takes negotiation time (debatable, but with sympathy, should go quickly) + 3 rounds. There's a very good chance I'd be done before they've realized Bob didn't pop over to one of his slaves to have his wishes used up.
Worst case scenario, is that when I call Bob, he's already used up his wishes for the day. (Greater Scrying on him should let me ensure that his wishes are unused when I call for him). If this is the case, since my Trap the soul is already setup for bob I have to keep him hidden for a day. Now that I think about it, the best way to do this might be in a portable hole. (Plenty of ways to get air for me to breathe for creating the magic circle) and then, if Bob has used up his wishes for the day, I can leave the hole, pick it up, and toss it into a MMM or rope trick. Bob no longer can be accessed by anything, and can provide no useful info on where he is other than extradimensional space. Once a day is up, take Bob out, and have a chat with him to get my wishes.
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That is very easy: do the calling in a Mage's magnificent mansion.
Find entrance, then throw a lot of dispels at it. Mansion beaten.
You must find the entrance before the spell end. And while there is still someone in.
But first of all you need to ask the right question trying to locate the entrance of the building. And have commune/contact other planes always ready.
Call it in a location of the astral plane.
Astral plane is a very dangerous place because of its timelessness. Also, you are acting under the presumption that the entire Astral Plane is actually accessible and is simply connected. Since the material plane is finite*, the boundaries between the material and astral plane must be finite in scope.
Now once on the astral plane, it was brought up in the interplanetary travel thread that greater teleport actually has finite range because of the fact that it is incapable of teleporting far enough to even make it to an adjacent planet, this implies that only a finite portion of the astral plane is explorable by mortals. Even all this aside, if the astral plane is not simply connected (read the wiki article to learn what that means), then it is possible for all points on an infinite plane to be within a finite distance from each other. You just don't want to travel it without magical assistance lest you suffer from extreme penalties to survival to avoid getting lost (as in walking on calibi-yau manifolds will be a cake walk compared to this).
No timelessness in the Astral Plane in PF. That is 1st and 2nd edition (not even 3rd as far as I recall) [as least as standard supplements go, so what wiki, from who?].
Edit: there is a quarter page on the Gamemastery guide.
So: Timelessnes: while on the astral plane you don't need to eat, sleep, ecc. ecc. So what is the great danger? [note that there is nothing about "when you get to another plane you must catch up with the missed food and so on", it say "they resume functioning", nothing more.
If you are a mathematician you know that are infinite points of contact between 2 objects even if they are both finite. Beside that most spells put you within the astral plane, not at the border of it.
Plane shift to a location in the deep astral. Plane shift back to your planet. You get an error both way but you still get well in range of where you want to be on Gloralion and you don't care where you are in the astral.
Strictly speaking, CoP does not gain information regarding the target, it merely shares information acquired by a deity with the caster.
Strictly speaking you are using the "one spell rules them all" for divinations.
And a 5th level spells for that.The chances of getting the right answers are guidelines, not hard rules. And the chance of pissing off the creature you contact when playing your forty question game exist. It is not a good idea to cast it for every problems as you seem to think.
The CHA/INT decrease for a failed attempt isn't a form of damage, more a negative enhancement, so restoration will not work and your associates will have some trouble dispelling an effect from a greater deity.
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Galileo was not the inventor of the scientific method but he is a good turning point for reference.
Yes but not the reasons most people think. Galileo was actually treated with kid gloves during his trial because he'd worked up enough publicity that excessive punishment was not going to fly public relations wise.
It's a popular view that Gailileo was brought up on trial to suppress his science and that he was a martyr for science, a view actively purported by Galileo himself.
The truth is a bit more complex. Galileo was advised to publish his book as theory not fact, an advisement he disregarded offending the Pope in the process who had extended him quite a bit of maneuvering room to do so.
When asked at his trial to produce actual science to back up his claims he wasn't able to do so... because the science would not exist until the precise observations of Tycho Brahe were married to the forumulae of Johannes Kepler, generations in the future. Gailileo's main contribution was not to science, but to set Religon and Science at war with each other in a way they had not been before.
Thyco Brahe 1546-1601
Kepler 1571-1630Galileo 1564-1642
Kepler was a correspondent of Galileo. Kepler laws were published in 1608, 1609 and 1619. "generations in the future" indeed.
Galileo was not treated with kid gloves. He had published his theories as such and initially he had little trouble even because he was living in the Venetian Republic. He had even the appreciation of papa Paolo V and several Gesuites. His troubles started with Urbano VIII.
If you do a bit of research you will find that his books were approved for the print by the Catholic Church (it was indispensable in Italy at the time).
Beside the work on the heliocentric theory that you seem to know, Galileo did a lot of physics researches and developed working microscopes. And so on and so on. Maybe you should do a little research.
If you are a mathematician you know that are infinite points of contact between 2 objects even if they are both finite.
Yes, but they will be contained within a finite region. Think of a sphere intersecting another sphere, infinite points of contact, but all within a finite distance of each other.
Beside that most spells put you within the astral plane, not at the border of it.
If it does so, then you can't specify where you're plane shifting to on the astral plane, so even willing communication of location is impossible (so no "hey I'll meet up with you on the astral plane").
So: Timelessnes: while on the astral plane you don't need to eat, sleep, ecc. ecc. So what is the great danger? [note that there is nothing about "when you get to another plane you must catch up with the missed food and so on", it say "they resume functioning", nothing more.
The danger of a timeless plane is that once an individual leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging occur retroactively.
Timelessness is still bad news.
Strictly speaking you are using the "one spell rules them all" for divinations.
Not really, there's a lot of stuff that it can't answer. It can't answer "who did that?" unless everyone has a unique name. Also this kind of search method is very unwieldy for any practical purpose. At level 20 you get 10 questions. Even if you ask a greater deity, you have about 27% chance that he'll answer all 10 questions truthfully. 7% chance for 20 questions. That means you'll need to ask those questions at least several dozen times for it to be something that you can rely on. In the meantime, you'll eventually fail one of those checks and be out of it for 5 weeks. GPS isn't something a single wizard can do in any reasonable amount of time. An organization maybe a few days. This is assuming that they can uniquely identify the person / thing that they are looking for.
And how, pray-tell do you plan on finding the entrance of the mansion?
See my early post on use Contact other Plane for a binary pinpoint procedure (covers areas in logarithmic time).
Now what, they Commune/Contact other Plane to find where "that mansion with our efreet buddy is"? Those both take 10 minutes. With my plan, I'm done by then, mansion has been dismissed, and any attempts for info on it won't work, since it is no longer there
Now we change the question to "where was the mansion?". Now they have your location within a finite radius and it doesn't take long for logarithmic search time to beat linear travel distance, even if you have a few hours head start. A determined organization of people with CoP will be able to find you. You might be able to dodge for a few days, but the math is going to win out eventually. Granted the resources that need to be spent are enormous, but they do not need epic involvement.
Don't forget that there's the almighty Wishmaster that even the gods don't mess with in case you actually get away with nearly exponentially increasing wishes each day.
Now what, they Commune/Contact other Plane to find where "that mansion with our efreet buddy is"? Those both take 10 minutes. With my plan, I'm done by then, mansion has been dismissed, and any attempts for info on it won't work, since it is no longer thereNow we change the question to "where was the mansion?". Now they have your location within a finite radius and it doesn't take long for logarithmic search time to beat linear travel distance, even if you have a few hours head start. A determined organization of people with CoP will be able to find you. You might be able to dodge for a few days, but the math is going to win out eventually. Granted the resources that need to be spent are enormous, but they do not need epic involvement.
Don't forget that there's the almighty Wishmaster that even the gods don't mess with in case you actually get away with nearly exponentially increasing wishes each day.
Really? You're ruling that CoP will provide you the location a spell was cast after it is already resolved and gone? Since you're allowing that. Why don't they just CoP for the names of all future beings that will try to bind and extract wishes from an efreet and then they can have their wish slaves wish those people dead before they are ever close to a threat?
How about I cast CoP for the name of an efreet who will not screw me on wishes and will freely give them? Since its so good, surely it can do that.
Snide remarks aside, its pretty trivial for a wizard to change planes, do this in another plane, then come back. Just tag on an extra 2 7th level spells. Pick a new plane for each casting, good luck nailing me on a specific one. Yay, you know that I cast MMM from demiplane #12341234123. You think I'm ever going to go back to that one?
Edit: Found it, tag on another 5th level spell, planar adaptation. Just to cover the "but you'll freeze/suffocate!" argument.
You also didn't answer why they're already looking for me. Bob only just disappeared. How do you know he wasn't summoned? Gated? Put into an efreeti bottle? What special magical effect do efreeti have to suddenly know that Bob was called by planar binding by a wizard planning to squeeze wishes out of him, and that he didn't just plane shift out on his own to take care of some business? This is my biggest issue with the "they will find you" side of the discussion.
Also, how do they know to ask about a MMM spell, instead of a rope trick? What if they ask, and I actually used a portable hole? What if I just planeshifted to a plane similar to the ones typically used for portable holes? I'd love to hear what your 10 questions are.(Even though wishing doesn't come through at CL 20)
Regardless of if you want to use Commune or Contact Other Plane, mind blank protects.
The subject is protected from all devices and spells that gather information about the target through divination magic.
Commune is a divination spell. Contact other plane is a divination spell. Both of which are being used to gather information about the mind blanked wizard. Both of which fail, by RAW. Unless you can convince me that casting contact other plane, to get information on a mind blanked person, isn't using a divination spell to get that info, my opinion on this won't change.
If this is going to turn into a discussion of quantum physics, please warn me ahead of time so that I can have plenty of aspirin on hand. Astro- and Binary physics are bad enough!
I haven't gone into any physics what-so-ever. This is entirely mathematical.
Commune is a divination spell. Contact other plane is a divination spell. Both of which are being used to gather information about the mind blanked wizard. Both of which fail, by RAW. Unless you can convince me that casting contact other plane, to get information on a mind blanked person, isn't using a divination spell to get that info, my opinion on this won't change.
I've already gone over this one. Also mind blank only protects you, not your mansion.
You also didn't answer why they're already looking for me. Bob only just disappeared.
I wouldn't start the GPS after a single efreet. When abuse starts, that's when the Wishmaster comes. I am merely demonstrating the capacity, which you claimed didn't exist.
What special magical effect do efreeti have to suddenly know that Bob was called by planar binding by a wizard planning to squeeze wishes out of him, and that he didn't just plane shift out on his own to take care of some business
The power of the DM knowing when things are getting abusive. I'd allow one or two uses of the SLA before issues occur. It's mostly keeping some kind of internal logic to the universe. After all, you're not the only level 17 wizard to ever have existed, so why hasn't this been done before? Because people with 30 int know the repercussions.
Snide remarks aside, its pretty trivial for a wizard to change planes, do this in another plane, then come back. Just tag on an extra 2 7th level spells. Pick a new plane for each casting, good luck nailing me on a specific one. Yay, you know that I cast MMM from demiplane #12341234123. You think I'm ever going to go back to that one?
First off, where are you getting this never ending casting? You have to rest eventually which requires at least 2 hours. That's around 200 questions from a single person. That's around 10^27 square miles covered by a single guy. Add in another guy, that'll be 10^54 square miles. Have a task force equivalent to the CIA and that number will simply get to be astronomical, so even checking 12341234123 planes won't be too hard.
Even though wishing doesn't come through at CL 20)
Losing a few questions from CL doesn't matter when you're dealing with logarithmic search capabilities. Hell, it could even be 1 question per casting and things will be trivial.
Commune is a divination spell. Contact other plane is a divination spell. Both of which are being used to gather information about the mind blanked wizard. Both of which fail, by RAW. Unless you can convince me that casting contact other plane, to get information on a mind blanked person, isn't using a divination spell to get that info, my opinion on this won't change.I've already gone over this one. Also mind blank only protects you, not your mansion.
By the time you are asking about a mansion, it no longer exists. You also didn't address why I can't use CoP to just find a efreet who will grant me free wishes in exchange for some permanencies.
You also didn't answer why they're already looking for me. Bob only just disappeared.I wouldn't start the GPS after a single efreet. When abuse starts, that's when the Wishmaster comes. I am merely demonstrating the capacity, which you claimed didn't exist.
You are saying "GM Fiat, rocks fall, efreet kill you." Why even pretend you're not?
What special magical effect do efreeti have to suddenly know that Bob was called by planar binding by a wizard planning to squeeze wishes out of him, and that he didn't just plane shift out on his own to take care of some businessThe power of the DM knowing when things are getting abusive. I'd allow one or two uses of the SLA before issues occur. It's mostly keeping some kind of internal logic to the universe. After all, you're not the only level 17 wizard to ever have existed, so why hasn't this been done before? Because people with 30 int know the repercussions.
Again, this goes to "rocks fall, you die." You've not given me a credible reason to why the efreeti can track this example wizard down, other than a basic "I wouldn't allow it and would kill the character."
Snide remarks aside, its pretty trivial for a wizard to change planes, do this in another plane, then come back. Just tag on an extra 2 7th level spells. Pick a new plane for each casting, good luck nailing me on a specific one. Yay, you know that I cast MMM from demiplane #12341234123. You think I'm ever going to go back to that one?First off, where are you getting this never ending casting? You have to rest eventually which requires at least 2 hours. That's around 200 questions from a single person. That's around 10^27 square miles covered by a single guy. Add in another guy, that'll be 10^54 square miles. Have a task force equivalent to the CIA and that number will simply get to be astronomical, so even checking 12341234123 planes won't be too hard.
I asked for you to define what questions the efreeti are asking. So far you've gotten "where was the mage's mansion cast?" Congrats, you found demiplane whatever where I caught efreet #3. How do you get from there, to my rope trick where I'm sleeping? Or maybe I'm in a portable hole? Or maybe, its a divination spell, and thus cannot provide info on me.
As far as "never ending casting" I was thinking resting between each efreet encounter. Plane shift to random demiplane wherever. Rope trick, do my efreet catching, then plane shift somewhere else, cast MMM and go to bed. Plenty of leftover spells for the day to put up defenses as well.
Even though wishing doesn't come through at CL 20)Losing a few questions from CL doesn't matter when you're dealing with logarithmic search capabilities. Hell, it could even be 1 question per casting and things will be trivial.
You still haven't provided what questions are actually going to locate where I currently am at, or even where I originally caught the efreet.
All questions are answered with “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “never,” “irrelevant,” or some other one-word answer.
Please, give me an example of the questions asked, that will lead to the wizards current location, given the information of 5 random normal efreeti have gone missing over a period of 5 days. I'd love to see how that works out. I've given you examples of what the wizard would do, provide examples of the efreetis actions, other than "they can do it because I say so".
That would give it a second will + 4 since being bossed into using is wish is against its nature. That also assumes a miniumum of a 17th level caster which places you higher on the easy to find list, but I do admit it greatly increases your chances of pulling it off the first time.Yes, it needs 17th level. As does Soul Bind. And thats ONLY to avoid specific interpretations. Still not bad for free wishes, considering what you pay for your own!
But seriously - so it has a second save. So what? As stated before, there are many, many ways of debuffing stats and saves, especially with a creature at your mercy. Considering his base will save is +9, and you can easily reach a DC of 29 prior spell focus, and prior inherent bonuses, and PRIOR DEBUFFING, my money is still on the wizard.
And still, there are numerous smaller tricks like Sympathy or/and Charm Monster, though those can fall victim to DM interpretation far more easily.
If I just keep creating counters of course someone will eventually find a way past me, but I still don't think there is any one player than can get a fool-proof plan up on the first go around.
PS:You still have not dealt with the commune spell, and the longitude latitude issue.
That is very easy: do the calling in a Mage's magnificent mansion.
I was going to suggest doing it at someone else's home so the trail leads there, but your idea works also.
Mind Blank protect from Epic Abilities or Spell by RAW ? :)The subject is protected from all devices and spells that gather information about the target through divination magic (such as detect evil, locate creature, scry, and see invisible).Commune School divination; Level cleric 5 ... “Unclear” is a legitimate answer, because powerful beings of the Outer Planes are not necessarily omniscient. ... The spell, at best, provides information to aid character decisions. The entities contacted structure their answers to further their own purposes.Commune is not an epic ability or an epic spell. Things I can see you reasonably getting out of commune.. "Did a human kill Bob the efreeti?" "Did a wizard kill Bob the efreeti?" "Is Bob the efreeti dead?"
In the case of my example, the answer to all 3 is No.
That does not make the request reasonable. Commune is still not taken care of. There is no way to cover for every possible yes/no question a person can think of.What is a reasonable request then? Reasonable by definition. He wants the item. I offer to give it to him in trade for an ability that costs him nothing which he can complete during the next 18 seconds (standard action per wish).
As for the commune thing you are must have missed a few posts. My idea was to never mentioned the mind blanked caster, only the Efreet.
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Beside that most spells put you within the astral plane, not at the border of it.
If it does so, then you can't specify where you're plane shifting to on the astral plane, so even willing communication of location is impossible (so no "hey I'll meet up with you on the astral plane").
Read plane shift, please.
If you know a location and aim for it you get 5*1d100 miles from it."hey I'll meet up with you on the astral plane at the rock were we fought that lich 3 years ago". You bot know the aspect of the rock and can aim for it.
If you simply use plane shift to go into another plane without aiming at any location you get to a random point of the plane,
So: Timelessnes: while on the astral plane you don't need to eat, sleep, ecc. ecc. So what is the great danger? [note that there is nothing about "when you get to another plane you must catch up with the missed food and so on", it say "they resume functioning", nothing more.
The danger of a timeless plane is that once an individual leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging occur retroactively.
Timelessness is still bad news.
So what is PRD (sorry, I don't know all the acronym here)?
I cited my sources, the Gamemastery Guide, under page 191, astral plane, don't cite any problem with food. And it speak of the Pathfinder cosmology.
Nor the Pathfinder Core Rulebook cite any problem with Timelesness (it don't cite it at all).
As the Gamemastery Guide is one of the more recent surcebooks I would say it is the most valid reference, unless it has been superseded by a later book.
And how, pray-tell do you plan on finding the entrance of the mansion?
And how, pray-tell do you plan on finding the entrance of the mansion?
You cling to your binary solution to a non binary problem.
First question: find the plane - non binary problem, so you will still have to whittle down the planes none at a time.
As Mage's magnificent mansion isn't on any plane but is a extradimensional space you are struck.
You can circumvent it searching for the entrance of the location, as that is on some plane or demiplane.
Then you have to find the planet where it is or, if it is on another plane, if it is in the, generally infinite, domain of some deity on that plane or in the "basic" plane (based on the sourcebook I have read it isn't clear if the Golarion deities have abodes on the "common" outer planes or if each of them has a separate outer plane, so maybe you can skip this passage).
Then, when you know the planet/domain you can try your binary search est of/west of.
If it was on some unnamed rock in space or a spaceship, good luck finding it.
Even accepting you "Timelessnes work this way", another simple solution.
I will cast it while on the plane of water. Avoiding a flooded mansion isn't so difficult. Good luck efreeti SWAT team. Especially when they have to contact a divinity that has some kind of rulership there.
So what is PRD (sorry, I don't know all the acronym here)?
The PRD is the pathfinder version of 3.5's SRD. It has all the rules availible online, and is used here as a source of rules for debates. I often find it easier to use than opening a book up when I am DM'ing.
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So what is PRD (sorry, I don't know all the acronym here)?
The PRD is the pathfinder version of 3.5's SRD. It has all the rules availible online, and is used here as a source of rules for debates. I often find it easier to use than opening a book up when I am DM'ing.
TY, I still think that the most recent product stand as a source, but I would look it.
As for the commune thing you are must have missed a few posts. My idea was to never mentioned the mind blanked caster, only the Efreet.
Yes, but you need to be very careful with your questions to get the answers without problems with MB.
With enough efreeti power behind if you will find the efreeti after a time.
At that point you need to see if the efreeti has enough informations to help your search.
It is like modern investigations. You don't have infinite resources for the search and the quality of informations degrade with time from the fact.
Someone chain wishing will be found, someone doing it occasionally has a good chance to escape unscathed. There is even the risk to get the wrong conjuror and stop the search for a time.
...Why don't we just summon Noble Djinni instead?
They're Chaotic Good. If it's for the vanquishing of evil, or the good of good, they should be much easier to negotiate with. You may want to apologize for having taken them away from their busy schedule, but if you're asking them to take ten minutes out of their day to do something that's very much for the greater good they would probably help.
So what is PRD (sorry, I don't know all the acronym here)?
The PRD is the pathfinder version of 3.5's SRD. It has all the rules availible online, and is used here as a source of rules for debates. I often find it easier to use than opening a book up when I am DM'ing.
TY, I still think that the most recent product stand as a source, but I would look it.
The PRD is updated around the same time errata comes out so it is usually in line with the most current book. There is also a fan made site that gets updated even faster.
...Why don't we just summon Noble Djinni instead?
They're Chaotic Good. If it's for the vanquishing of evil, or the good of good, they should be much easier to negotiate with. You may want to apologize for having taken them away from their busy schedule, but if you're asking them to take ten minutes out of their day to do something that's very much for the greater good they would probably help.
I think the underlying assumption is that the binding is done due to greed, not because the caster wants to help anyone, but a good bluff check might get you a few free wishes without all the trouble. I would be careful to give a fake name if possible so that if they check your story they find someone else instead though.
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The PRD is updated around the same time errata comes out so it is usually in line with the most current book. There is also a fan made site that gets updated even faster.
Under Planar adventures:
Timeless: On planes with this trait, time still passes, but the effects of time are diminished. How the timeless trait affects certain activities or conditions such as hunger, thirst, aging, the effects of poison, and healing varies from plane to plane. The danger of a timeless plane is that once an individual leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging occur retroactively. If a plane is timeless with respect to magic, any spell cast with a noninstantaneous duration is permanent until dispelled.
but then
The Astral Plane is the space between the Inner and Outer Planes, and coterminous with all of the planes. When a character moves through a portal or projects her spirit to a different plane of existence, she travels through the Astral Plane. Even spells that allow instantaneous movement across a plane briefly touch the Astral Plane. The Astral Plane is a great, endless expanse of clear silvery sky, both above and below. Occasional bits of solid matter can be found here, but most of the Astral Plane is an endless, open domain.
The Astral Plane has the following traits:
• Subjective Directional Gravity
• Timeless: Age, hunger, thirst, afflictions (such as diseases, curses, and poisons), and natural healing don't function in the Astral Plane, though they resume functioning when the traveler leaves the Astral Plane.
• Mildly Neutral-Aligned
• Enhanced Magic: All spells and spell-like abilities used within the Astral Plane may be employed as if they were improved by the Quicken Spell or Quicken Spell-Like Ability feats. Already quickened spells and spell-like abilities are unaffected, as are spells from magic items. Spells so quickened are still prepared and cast at their unmodified level. As with the Quicken Spell feat, only one quickened spell or spell-like ability can be cast per round.
Wow to different effects on the same page. Maybe someone at Paizo should chose one. ("resume " is very different from "occur retroactively")
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Not that : plane shift to Astral plane, cast Magnificent mansion, enter mansion, writhe your summoning circle, cast your spells, get the wishes, leave MM and dispel it will require endless days. As long as you are in the Astral plane you even get free quickened spells.
If you are willing to accept to get the wishes immediately or leave and retry another week it will require only a few hours at most. So again, no troubles with timelesness.
...Why don't we just summon Noble Djinni instead?
I think the underlying assumption is that the binding is done due to greed, not because the caster wants to help anyone, but a good bluff check might get you a few free wishes without all the trouble. I would be careful to give a fake name if possible so that if they check your story they find someone else instead though.
They're Chaotic Good. If it's for the vanquishing of evil, or the good of good, they should be much easier to negotiate with. You may want to apologize for having taken them away from their busy schedule, but if you're asking them to take ten minutes out of their day to do something that's very much for the greater good they would probably help.
Chain binding would be almost certainly greed motivated.
As I already pointed out, a planar binding spell conjuring a evil outsider (like a efreeti) count as an evil spell.
Do it repeatedly and your alignment will shift even if your initial intentions were good (not that the guys suggesting conjure, force him to grant some wish and then kill him sound as playing good characters).
Oh. The OP said he was doing it to see about dealing with a significant threat to his city. I was just assuming the threat was evil.
I know that the only wizard I've ever played dealt with planar binding in a downright cordial way. He would be nice and happily explain the entire situation to the creature in question, and if the creature said no, he said 'Okay, sorry for wasting your time.' and sent them home with a complimentary gift basket of cheeses.
He also was the only wizard I've ever seen played who took diplomacy.
Oh. The OP said he was doing it to see about dealing with a significant threat to his city. I was just assuming the threat was evil.
I know that the only wizard I've ever played dealt with planar binding in a downright cordial way. He would be nice and happily explain the entire situation to the creature in question, and if the creature said no, he said 'Okay, sorry for wasting your time.' and sent them home with a complimentary gift basket of cheeses.
He also was the only wizard I've ever seen played who took diplomacy.
The OP was doing it for a good reason, but the thread has been kidnapped by the rest of us. :)
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I think this explain the different versions:
On planes with this trait, time still passes, but the effects of time are diminished. How the timeless trait affects certain activities or conditions such as hunger, thirst, aging, the effects of poison, and healing varies from plane to plane
So a "normal" timelesw plane has the retroactive effect, the Astra hasn't it.
The OP was doing it for a good reason, but the thread has been kidnapped by the rest of us. :)
Very true wraithstrike.
Ty again for the suggestion about the FAQ button in the thread I just started about this problem, but the point above has cleared it I think, so I have cancelled most of the content of that post.
The OP was doing it for a good reason, but the thread has been kidnapped by the rest of us. :)Oh. The OP said he was doing it to see about dealing with a significant threat to his city. I was just assuming the threat was evil.
I know that the only wizard I've ever played dealt with planar binding in a downright cordial way. He would be nice and happily explain the entire situation to the creature in question, and if the creature said no, he said 'Okay, sorry for wasting your time.' and sent them home with a complimentary gift basket of cheeses.
He also was the only wizard I've ever seen played who took diplomacy.
If I summon a Noble Djinni and asked really nice, do you think we could use a wish spell to rescue the thread? It seems like it's really important, and we can't just let Efreeti run around here all willy-nilly like they are now... :D
I considered saying to pull from noble djinni instead, why? Because they're good, so now you're casting big awesome GOOD aligned spells for... getting free wishes? Wait, huh? If I call and bind an evil creature to help me do good, shouldn't that be good? If I call and bind a good creature to help me do evil, shouldn't that be evil?
I'm not quite sure why planar binding an efreeti is evil while a djinni is good (other than the book says so). Its pretty easy to switch to pulling noble djinn instead (to avoid the alignment hit of casting evil spells)