Probably the final installment of this Guide. (This thing ended up being WAY longer than I thought when I started.) I'll turn it into a google doc next week sometime, as time allows.
Doug M.
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Diabolist races
Let’s not overcomplicate this. You want a good casting stat and decent Cha. That eliminates anyone who takes a hit to Cha – sorry, dwarves and standard tieflings. For witch and wizard diabolists, the good core races in order are human (stat bump, feat, skills), elf (int bump, spell penetration), half-elf (stat bump, de facto feat, two favored classes), and half-orc (stat bump). For sorcerers, the list goes human, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling. Minor but helpful alternate racial traits include eye for talent, dual talent, and focused study (human), sacred tattoo and skilled (half-orc), and academician, explorer, gift of tongues, and pyromaniac (gnome). If you’re an elf or gnome and have a feat to spare, consider Breadth of Knowledge – a fine feat for any character, but especially handy for making those Knowledge (Planes) checks.
Of the noncore races, the dhampir makes a respectable sorcerer or oracle and some of the variant tieflings have potential (grimspawn, beastbrood). Drow have good Cha, a bit of spell resistance and the pleasantly flavorful blasphemous covenant alternate racial trait. Several of the variant aasimars can make fine diabolists, particularly the idyllkin, angelkin, and the peri-blooded, and the aasimar alternate racial traits of celestial crusader and exalted resistance are potentially very useful to a diabolist.
Diabolist Class Abilities
Imp Companion -- Already discussed.
Infernal Charisma -– At 1st level, a diabolist gains a +2 bonus on all Charisma checks made when interacting with devils. This bonus increases to +4 at 4th level and to +6 at 7th level. This is just fantastically useful if you’re going to use the Planar Binding spells regularly. Are you a mopey little wizard with a 10 Cha? By 12th level you can be a Wiz 5/Diabolist 7 and devils will act like your Cha is 22. And that’s before buffs! This class ability makes devils listen to you and do what you say, and it’s a big part of why this class is so particularly great for wizards.
Channel Hellfire -- At 2nd level, a diabolist can alter spells that deal energy damage to instead deal hellfire damage. You can do this as a free action a number of times per day equal to her Charisma modifier (minimum 1). Hellfire is a special energy type that does half fire damage, half unholy damage. Unholy = no damage to evil creatures, normal to neutral creatures, and double damage to good-aligned creatures. So if you throw a six HD fireball at a paladin, but swap in Hellfire at the last moment (free action!), the champion of goodness takes 9 HD of damage. Obviously this is very situational – your target has to be Good, and you have to know it – but when it works, it’s awesome.
Infernal Bargain -- At 2nd level, a diabolist making use of planar ally (or a similar spell) can make an opposed Charisma check against a called (but not summoned) devil. If you succeed, the devil reduces the price it demands to serve by half. This is a sop to those poor divine casters who have to use Planar Ally instead of Planar Binding. It moves Planar Ally from being a not very good spell to being a mediocre-to-okay one. It only works against devils, so don't bother trying to play a diabolist cleric who's a LN worshipper of Abadar or something.
Augment Summoning -- At 3rd level, you gain the Augment Summoning feat even if you don’t meet the prerequisites. This is nice, but you’re usually going to be calling creatures, not summoning them. Still, this does encourage you to keep an occasional Summon Monster spell for when you suddenly need low-level mooks or creatures to test a corridor for traps.
Heresy -- Also at 3rd level, you gain a +2 bonus on all checks made to research specific devils' true names or sigils. This bonus increases to +4 at 9th level. If your campaign allows for this sort of thing (and it should), this is a nice little sweetener; you definitely want to pick up a true name or two. Only works on devils, alas.
Hellish Soul –- “At 5th level, a diabolist has been deemed useful enough to the cause of Hell to be allowed a brief respite from damnation. If killed by any means outside of the will of Asmodeus, the archdevils, or another influential force in Hell, the diabolist can be resurrected as normal.” Basically this undoes the mechanical issue with the “Damned” status you picked up back at level 1. Breathe easy.
Infernal Transport (Sp) –- At 6th level, you can transport yourself through Hell in a burst of brimstone. You may use this ability twice per day as per dimension door, or expend both uses to travel as if using teleport. You cannot use this ability to enter or leave areas warded against evil creatures. –- Yes, you get to “bamf” like Nightcrawler. By the time you get this (minimum level 11th) it’s not nearly as amazing as it would have been at lower levels, but it’s still a nice tactical ace in the hole. Note that while a spell-like ability does provoke AoOs, it doesn’t have verbal or somatic components, so you can use it to escape from grapples. It also lets you teleport along with your conjured creatures. And it’s a handy escape hole if things go terribly wrong. You summon something powerful, roll a 1 on your Charisma check, it breaks out of your magic circle, crits your barbarian cohort and comes after you with blood on its talons and death in its eyes? Bamf.
Hellfire Ray (Sp) -- At 8th level, a diabolist may use hellfire ray twice per day. Another ability that’s merely okay by the time you get it, but let’s not turn our noses up at the chance to do 22d6 of damage to a good-aligned enemy with a ranged touch attack.
Master Conjurer -– “At 10th level, when a diabolist calls a devil whose name she knows, she may cast the calling spell as a standard action and bargain with it as a move action. She adds half her Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate modifier on the bargaining Charisma check (if any).” This implies that you’re skipping the whole magic circle and dimensional anchor thing and cutting straight to business. You call, make a Cha check, and either win or lose. If you lose, well, you might have a small problem on your hands, especially if you were casting Greater Planar Binding. OTOH, if you win… well, at 15th level a Summon Monster VIII will summon monsters that are CR 10 or 11. With this, you can use a Greater Planar spell – same level, same casting time – to call a CR 16 cornugon.
Obviously this is extremely situational: you must know the devil’s name, you must have the spell ready or on a scroll, and you have to be in a situation where you need the devil right now instead of 20 minutes from now. But if it ever all came together, it could be quite something.
Planar Ally versus Planar Binding
There are two sorts of spells used to call outsiders: Planar Ally (a divine spell, used by clerics and oracles) and Planar Binding (an arcane spell, used by sorcerers, summoners, wizards, and witches). How do these two spells compare?
Planar Binding is a Much Better Spell than Planar Ally.
With Planar Ally, you get an outsider who has been sent by your god. The outsider arrives friendly or helpful, is willing to work with you, and is not going to seek revenge unless you do something grossly stupid or offensive. That’s the good news. Now come the problems. Problem #1: you don’t get the outsider you call for! You get whatever outsider the god sends you. Problem #2: you can ONLY ever get an outsider of your god’s alignment (or, if you don’t have a god, your own alignment).
Those are bad enough. But then we have the kicker: “The creature called requires a payment for its services… this payment must be made before the creature agrees to perform any services.” How much? “A task taking up to 1 minute per caster level requires a payment of 100 gp per HD of the creature called. For a task taking up to 1 hour per caster level, the creature requires a payment of 500 gp per HD. A long-term task, one requiring up to 1 day per caster level, requires a payment of 1,000 gp per HD.”
Let that sink in: if you want the outsider to accompany you into the dungeon today, it’s 500 gp/HD. Or more, “if the task is especially hazardous”. And it's RAW that you have to have the cash on hand; the gods don't take credit, apparently.
To be fair, there is a discount clause: “if the task is strongly aligned with the creature's ethos, it may halve or even waive the payment.” But “strongly aligned with the creature’s ethos” is a pretty stringent requirement, one that clearly goes well beyond “be my bodyguard” or “help me kill the monsters and take their stuff”. It’s not entirely clear what “ethos” means here, but I’d say it means you have to match some combination of the creature’s alignment, its personality, and the goals of your deity.
By way of comparison, Planar Binding lets you reach across the multiverse to summon any non-native outsider you think you can handle. You can get the outsider YOU want, alignment not an issue. You don’t have to settle for whatever chump servant your deity happens to have hanging around. And once you call it and bind it, its services are completely, thank you very much, free of charge.
The system tries to balance this by having creatures called with Planar Binding arrive cranky; by making you jump through a mini-game involving magic circles and opposed charisma checks; and by opening up the possibility that these guys may seek revenge on you later. It’s not enough. With a bit of planning and forethought, and some of the tips in this Guide, you can make Planar Binding safe and reliable up to 95% of the time. You can turn Planar Binding into a multi-utility spell with very broad application, to the point where you’re building your character around it. (In fact, this Guide is in large part about doing just that.) That's just never going to be the case with Planar Ally.
To be fair, at higher levels the balance tips back -- a little. Creature power increases exponentially with HD, so 16,000 gp for a 16 HD creature is a much better deal than 4,000 gp for a 4 HD creature. And then of course, when you’re 16th level, 8,000 gp/day is much easier to find. But even at high levels, the greater flexibility of Planar Binding still gives it the edge. Even putting the money issue aside, it’s better to be able to summon any outsider of your choice (though hostile) then to have access to only outsiders of a particular alignment and not of your choice (though friendly).
Finally, let’s note that there are two workarounds to paying the piper. Infernal Bargain (see above) lets you cut the cost in half with an opposed Cha check; “follow me around the dungeon today” drops to 250 gp/HD, which probably starts being an okay deal around CR 12 or so. And the Agonize spell (3rd level) lets you cut the price by an additional 20% to 60%. Of course, that’s at the cost of annoying the creature and making it your enemy, thus neutralizing Planar Ally’s biggest advantage. Honestly, there’s really no way to make this spell shine.
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Okay, there it is. Questions and comments welcome!
