DMDM's Guide to the Diabolist: The Devil at the Table

[Douglas Muir 406]

Another installment on the Guide, this time about how not to make the other players hate you.

Doug M.

* * * * *

This Guide assumes that you're going to call up monsters. Once you're high enough level to start casting Lesser Planar Binding, you're going to call up lots and lots of devils. The class supports it -- this is the ONLY Paizo PrC that gives bonuses to conjuring and binding things -- so you're going to do it.

This means you're going to have a LOT of creatures working for you. At 10th level, it would be totally plausible for you to have your imp companion, a brute squad of four bearded devils, and a zebub devil flying ahead to scout. In game terms, that means a LOT of action economy. That's great! You'll be running seven different creatures, so you can do seven different things. Sounds great, right? Well, yes and no.

If you're in a tabletop game... well, you know how some people don't like playing with summoners, because the guy who is playing the summoner is really getting to play two characters, and so is taking up twice as much time as everyone else? This is like that, only potentially oh so much worse. If you're playing as many creatures as the rest of the party combined, you may be taking up as much game time as the rest of the party combined. The other players and the DM are going to get sick of this toute suite. So if you don't want to be That Guy, here are some suggestions.

Talk to the DM first. If you make it clear where you're going with the character, your DM will be a lot more likely to let you give it a try. (DMs generally dislike being surprised.) Getting DM buy-in is always a good idea.

Start slow. In theory, once you can start casting LPB you can very quickly have a squad of half a dozen devils working for you. In practice, start with one for a while. Not only will that get the DM and the other players used to having new pieces on the board, it'll also give you a chance to ease into the organizational and tactical challenges -- see below.

Be organized. If you have four bearded devils, have a short character sheet for each one in front of you. Alice, Barney, Chuck and Dingo -- track their hits, track their status, know what their AC and bonuses are as well as you know your own. If the game uses miniatures, bring miniatures. If all your creatures are acting on different initiatives, blow a few bucks on one of those initiative trackers and volunteer to be Initiative Person. (Trust me, your DM will appreciate this.)

Be decisive. Have a default plan. Round one, the zebub throws grease and then flies to safety, two barbazus charge while two others flank with the fighter and the rogue, the imp pulls out the fireball wand. Round two, while the other players are acting, you are thinking about what to do next. You're not texting, you're not flipping through a splatbook -- you're planning. So when your turn comes, bam bam bam, you can rattle off what each of your creatures is doing.

Understand that this means your decisions won't always be optimal. If you're one of those players who always has to get the maximum mileage out of every feat and every spell, who always has to place the miniature in exactly the right square, who NEEDS to have every possible bonus? Do not play this class. It's not going to be a happy experience. Lots of creatures means you need to play fast means sometimes you'll miss stuff. Alice and Barney will move just out of range of the cleric's healbomb channel. Chuck will neglect to take an AoO he was entitled to. Dingo will forget that the bard's Inspire Courage is still giving him an attack bonus. The zebub devil may simply disappear for a couple of rounds, forgotten. You either play fast and a little sloppy, or you try to play optimally and take twenty minutes to complete one turn and everybody hates you. Play fast.

(One way to make this fun: when you play suboptimally, roleplay it. Alice and Barney? they don't think they need a stupid mortal cleric's pathetic healing magic. Chuck? is sulking because he wants to go back to Hell, so he let the enemy get away. And the zebub devil found a rat in a corner and spent the last three rounds giggling and slowly pulling it to pieces.)

Make it work for the other players too. Don't hog the glory -- share it. Make sure one of your creatures is always a flank buddy for the rogue and the fighter. If there's another squish caster in the party, make sure she always has a meat shield. If your creatures have useful skills or SLAs, use them for the party. If the party antipaladin just acquired a castle, offer her some bound devils to help guard it while she's out committing crimes. In general, act like your conjured creatures are party resources, not yours.

Here's a trick: if you're not decisively certain what to do with one of your creatures? Ask other players. "Alice goes here, Barney teleports next to the caster, Chuck... hey, do you need another hitter on that giant? Chuck could charge him." Boom, you're turning your turn into their turn as well. Don't overdo this -- you don't want the whole party voting on every move -- but if you do it at least once per combat, it will help reinforce that these creatures are there for everyone, not just you.

[williamoak]

Ok, another thing that might be worth mentionning:

-Once you have your "horde" up, let other players run your bound creatures in combat, or run them in groups. Allow other players to share in the fun, dont just make them benefit.

I've had GMs rule you cant have more that 1 companion "in action" (be it familiar, construct, cohort, etc) at a time. So this is an iffy way to work.

[Zhangar]

This is excellent advice. One of the big challenges of playing a summoner style character (my most recent was a samsaran conjurer/Magaambyan Arcanist) is to be effective without horribly bogging the game down.

The worst instance of this is if you bring along things with giant piles of spell-like powers. You'll need to make snap decisions pretty often there, or have a turn that takes a painfully long amount of time.

I usually limited myself to one bound creature at a time for actual combat; I normally used other bound creatures off screen (ex. we had a castle. I bound a number of elementals as defenders of the keep. I didn't bring them along for fights, but since the keep had a pretty bad-ass defense force, we didn't have to worry about it while out in the field. The GM was fine with that.) I also usually asked the party if they wanted me to bring something important (which would be getting paid!) in. More often then not they asked me not to.

And yeah, when you bring stuff in, it helps a lot if the party has some investment in it. For example, people are a bit more invested in what your 10 lantern archons blasting people to ash if your bard friend cast some buffs for your posse of flying laser turrets.

[Ross Byers]

Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

(One way to make this fun: when you play suboptimally, roleplay it. Alice and Barney? they don't think they need a stupid mortal cleric's pathetic healing magic. Chuck? is sulking because he wants to go back to Hell, so he let the enemy get away. And the zebub devil found a rat in a corner and spent the last three rounds giggling and slowly pulling it to pieces.)

I'm fond of pointing out that 'loyalty spells' like charm person necessarily make the affected creature a little dumb. By which I mean if you don't have a mental block around why this guy is suddenly your best friend, you'll pretty rapidly figure out you're enchanted and the hwole thing goes to hell.

The same thing applies to summoned and bound creatures: they are forced to do your bidding by the spell, which means magic is auditing their thoughts and/or actions. Which means they aren't acting 100% normal. Which means that maybe the spell's influence is making them a little dumb, because if their brains worked perfectly, they'd turn around and murder you. The amount of impairment might vary from casting to casting, creature to creature, and moment to moment, but it is a great explanation for how a creature suddenly forgot it has a handy SLA.