Because I'd rather an evil spellcaster prefer to call a demon to do his bidding, rather than bind an angel and force it to commit atrocities for s*~#s and giggles.I'm actually more of the opposite on this one. I've played in a campaign where an evil lich bound and forced an angel to do terrible things. The resulting fight had us free the angel and after he helped us fight the lich, we went on a quest to redeem the angel back to his celestial glory. So I think that we shouldn't limit evil creatures to evil people, since it would close off cool storylines like the one I played through.but again, since binding an angle is technically a GOOD spell, your depraved EEEEEvil aligned caster can't summon it.
@ Ross
scroll isn't an elegant option because the aligned caster actually knows the spell but can't use it for this purpose; got it.
Isn't this more an issue with aligned spells than planar binding however? Evil cleric can't ward itself from demons or undead, sounds a bit off "fantasy logic"
Not a problems for arcane casters.
but again, since binding an angle is technically a GOOD spell, your depraved EEEEEvil aligned caster can't summon it.
stress on aligned caster
... but how many aligned arcane casters are there actually?
If there aren't any and they're the only one to get planar binding, is its really an issue?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that wizards and sorcerers could cast good spells if they were evil aligned?
Arcane spellcasters don't have their spellcasting ability impaired by alignment. They can still have alignments.
(Clerics can sometimes end up with planar binding via things like subdomains. This is a corner case that could be rectified by giving them planar ally instead. That is not what I am trying to talk about.)
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Re: binding angels to do horrible things.
I think serious work should be put into providing some guidelines for how the "home team" for each callable species would react.
If you were to summon an archon, and force it to do evil, that might make them sit up and actually send in a much, much, MUCH more powerful force of archons to utterly destroy you, and make an example to all the other would be archon-binders. Because they just don't tolerate that sort of thing. And when they want to make an example, you better get out of the way.
Meanwhile, if you were to summon a demon and force it to do some Good deeds, afterwards the other demons would just make fun of the one you summoned.
Because Evil doesn't really care about accidentally doing some Good, but Good really cares about not doing Evil.
Exactly.
Re: binding angels to do horrible things.
I think serious work should be put into providing some guidelines for how the "home team" for each callable species would react.
If you were to summon an archon, and force it to do evil, that might make them sit up and actually send in a much, much, MUCH more powerful force of archons to utterly destroy you, and make an example to all the other would be archon-binders. Because they just don't tolerate that sort of thing. And when they want to make an example, you better get out of the way.
Meanwhile, if you were to summon a demon and force it to do some Good deeds, afterwards the other demons would just make fun of the one you summoned.
Because Evil doesn't really care about accidentally doing some Good, but Good really cares about not doing Evil.
Again, though, that could be really dependent on the setting. Compare devils in Forgotten Realms and devils in Golarion. In FR, devils squabble like it's the Italian city-states during the Renaissance. So, devils probably wouldn't care if you abused a devil since it means power and leverage over that devil. However, in Golarion, devils are a united front under the banner of Asmodeus and if you do that same thing to a devil, they will find you and end your summoning for good.
And I could even see the same for the forces of good. I could see Archons actually punishing the victim for being weak-willed into bending to a mortal. So I think that part should be left to the GM to decide, since demons uniting against a summoner is as valid as demons laughing at the victim.
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Why does turning into a rat give you water breathing?
Core p. 212. "If the form grants a burrow or swim speed, you maintain the ability to breathe if you are swimming or burrowing."
Bestiary p. 132, Rat entry, "Speed 15 ft., climb 15 ft., swim 15 ft."
It's just one of the things that the attempt to make shapeshifting into a buff that makes you look like a creature, but not have many of it's actual features (since actual creature stats were 'too good' for PCs to have, eliminating actual fantasy shapeshifting from the game because it was 'unbalanced' for a PC to be able to use monster stats), did that looks a little funky.
Attempting to 'fix' the problem of some creatures having stats that might be 'too good' for a druid to bring to the PC side of things, you've now got a fantasy shapeshifting mechanic that doesn't actually turn you into a rat, but a rat-shaped thing that doesn't necessarily have rat stats (and might have abilities that an actual rat doesn't possess, like water breathing).
And Pathfinder fixed the thing about the Str 6 gnome druid turning into a bear, because the polymorph spells give strength adjustments, not flat values like the 3.5 spells. (Synthesist summoners ignored this, and it is part of what makes them broken.)
Which was my point. A relatively minor 'problem' (stat dumping druid getting a Str out of whack with her point buy) was 'fixed' (at the cost of making a low-strength druid or wizard turn into a feeble bear-shaped creature that is really in no way actually a bear, making it less 'shapeshifting' and more 'minor buff with a cool cosmetic effect'), like it was some sort of crazy game-breaker, while the dozen or so actual problem spells, which could break the world, like simulacrum and gate and wish, not so much.
I disagree. Monster should have unique and awesome powers, both to reflect their places in folklore (genies grant wishes. It's what they do.)
They don't, in folklore, grant wish *spells.* Indeed, many of the things that their 'wishes' do grant, such as entire castles appearing, or peasants becoming royalty, or vast treasuries full of gold and gems, or create flying carpets, is explicitly beyond the power of the wish spell, making it a complete failure at replicating folklore 'genie wishes' anyway.
But genie wishes shouldn't be wish spells in any event. Aladdin never wished for a +1 inherent bonus to strength, or to duplicate an 8th level or lower sorcerer/wizard spell that wasn't one of his opposition spells (which, not being a sorcerer/wizard, he didn't have anyway).
Genie 'wishes' should be actual services that the genie can perform with the abilities that they already have (which, like with the djinni, should include a fair number of conjuration (creation) effects, like enduring versions of major creation, heroes feasts, create food and water, etc.). Just like the word 'evil' being a game term that could represent alignment, descriptor or type, or 'level' being a game term that could represent character level, class level, spell level, etc. there's no reason why a genies 'wish' *has* to be a wish spell, which, as I already mentioned, does a crappy job of replicating the wishes of genie folklore (some of which, for balance reasons, wouldn't be available in any case).
I think the right answer is to cut the rope. The problematic effects are always the open-ended ones: planar binding, simulacrum, 3.X polymorph, command undead (and Command Undead), even wish itself, if you go off script.
And, except for wish, all of those spells you listed are problems because creature stats are 'too good for PCs.' It isn't that the spells are necessarily too open-ended, it's that some monsters, designed in a vacuum, isolated from any thoughts of them existing beyond the three rounds they will appear on-screen, have powers that, if used with a pair of brain cells to rub together, would totally mess up the setting.
Spells like summon monster and the assorted polymorph spells give curated access to powers deemed safe. As do class abilities like animal companions. Heck, even the create undead spells only give access to a fixed list (even if it is one that is assumed for NPCs instead of PCs).
And yet more symptoms squashed, because the creature stats were 'too good.' My animal companion bear can never be the size of a bear-in-the-woods I just ran into (even if it would be statistically weaker than a tiger, even at size large, and my companion wolf can be larger than a monster wolf!).
Command undead has to allow a daily save, because too many undead can create endless hordes of undead and are (particularly if incorporeal) effectively unstoppable by many creatures up to twice their CR.
A simple guideline that 'sometimes people killed by X return as X,' instead of a hard and fast rule that '*always* people killed by X return as X exactly Y rounds later,' and all the power goes back to the GM, who can rule that a shadow got loose and killed fifty villagers, and not a single one of them generated a new shadow. I guess Pharasma snatched them up too quickly or something. Who knew she's actually good at her job?
(Vampires taking so much longer to create spawn, might have a somewhat more reliable method, but perhaps still not a *guaranteed* one, leading to much angst among the emo brethren of the night as their favored would-be 'children' sometimes 'stay dead'...)
To wit, it isn't broken that trolls have regneration, because they're monsters, they still die quickly. It gives them an identity as a monster and makes a troll something different than a bigger ogre. On the other hand, PCs shouldn't be able to get regeneration cheaply. Giant form i is a 7th level spell. That's probably a safe point for PCs to get access.
I don't consider troll regeneration to be a problematic ability. Like the druid with bear stats, it's just a very cool ability that will affect a single element of the game, combat (and can rarely if ever keep up with CR appropriate incoming damage, making it more of a DPS check than anything).
Back in earlier editions, when a troll could rip off it's hand, throw it to the ground, and some time later there's a whole 'nuther troll there (and his hand has regrown as well), *that* would be crazy, and neither balanced for a monster to have, nor balanced for a PC to have.
(Even then, if a GM wants a monster with a similar mechanic, the newly generated trolls or wraiths or oozes could have finite lifespans, so that the hacked off troll-spawn is a threat for X rounds, but then withers and dies.)
I'm not sure why Shadows are always the example here. They don't present a bigger self-replicating threat than vampires, for instance.
You lost me here. Incorporeal attackers who can function by day, enter homes uninvited, can move through walls, water, etc., are not repulsed by holy symbols or garlic, can move faster and fly, and, most relevantly, create spawn 1440 times faster (1d4 rounds, instead of 1d4 *days*).
Existentially, shadows are *many, many* times a bigger threat than vampires. (Wraiths and Spectres also have the sunlight powerless limitation, making them only a single many times more dangerous than vampires.) :)
And I think if demons and devils and the like were being redesigned today, they'd get dimension door instead of greater teleport.
Sensible. That's what their ability was primarily used for anyway, to bip around (or into, or out of) a fight, not to zap across the planet on courier / assassination missions.
(As for Korvosan imps, or other things like villagers being able to drive off a golem in Savage Tide, I try to remind myself that stat blocks are for on-screen action, with the PCs there. They aren't simulationist in an absolute sense. I have to put it aside the same way I have to put aside that two Huge giants, when fighting each other, are limited to 5-foot steps, even though they should be able to treat each other the same way two humans would.)
Eh. Larger creatures should have a 'step' equal to their space, or something. That, and how emanations, etc. operate from creatures larger than a standard Medium spellcaster, is mostly just stuff that slipped by, IMO.
Rules for situations like that would be neat, not just for dragons casting anti-magic field, but for PCs who end up larger than normal for whatever reason, but I imagine that giving Large creatures a 10 ft. '5 ft. step' is pretty low on the priority list.
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Re: binding angels to do horrible things.
I think serious work should be put into providing some guidelines for how the "home team" for each callable species would react.
If you were to summon an archon, and force it to do evil, that might make them sit up and actually send in a much, much, MUCH more powerful force of archons to utterly destroy you, and make an example to all the other would be archon-binders. Because they just don't tolerate that sort of thing. And when they want to make an example, you better get out of the way.
Meanwhile, if you were to summon a demon and force it to do some Good deeds, afterwards the other demons would just make fun of the one you summoned.
Because Evil doesn't really care about accidentally doing some Good, but Good really cares about not doing Evil.
Again, though, that could be really dependent on the setting. Compare devils in Forgotten Realms and devils in Golarion. In FR, devils squabble like it's the Italian city-states during the Renaissance. So, devils probably wouldn't care if you abused a devil since it means power and leverage over that devil. However, in Golarion, devils are a united front under the banner of Asmodeus and if you do that same thing to a devil, they will find you and end your summoning for good.
And I could even see the same for the forces of good. I could see Archons actually punishing the victim for being weak-willed into bending to a mortal. So I think that part should be left to the GM to decide, since demons uniting against a summoner is as valid as demons laughing at the victim.
Sure, it's setting-dependent. But on the whole, I think my principle makes sense.
Devils don't really want people to not-call them; it's much harder to tempt binders if they never dial H for Hell.
What they might take offence at though, is binders who are too good at it. Like, consistently getting away with an actually safe contract that doesn't eventually deliver the caller to Hell.
Bottom line for me is, to treat Planar Binding properly takes a book, not a spell description. Sounds like a great future publication. Until then, we have the half-hearted measures that the spells are, and which require a lot of GM fiat - so much that no-one around here has even TRIED to use them.
Bottom line for me is, to treat Planar Binding properly takes a book, not a spell description.
Too true. One could easily devise an entire magic system where every spell involved binding an outsider to do the work.
The ritual I devised lets the summoned persist till the contract is fulfilled. Bodyguard duty gives them the chance to collect the souls of assassins, and carve the beings summoning name on every skull. If they can convince the summoner to name their kid the same name, the contract can become inherited. A vain summoner might never realize that their soul wasn't that important. In the case of some demon summoners, they were already headed for the pit.
Bottom line for me is, to treat Planar Binding properly takes a book, not a spell description.Too true. One could easily devise an entire magic system where every spell involved binding an outsider to do the work.
Early editions of Chaosium's Stormbringer RPG (later called Elric) is just that.
The Beast Shape spells give you package of powers to work with. However you ONLY get the powers that the form you're emulating would normally have. Polymorphing into a rat does not give you waterbreakthing because that's not something that you will find in in the bestiary description of rat.
If the form grants a swim or burrow speed, you maintain the ability to breathe if you are swimming or burrowing.
Rats have a swim speed, beast shape grants you that swim speed. Ergo, you can breathe underwater if polymorphed into a rat.
Nor do you get the ability scores of the creature. You get a flat adjustment to your native scores from the spell you're using.
He doesn't say that's how it works. He says that's how it worked in 3.X, and that the patch to polymorph effects failed to fix problems with summoned/bound critters.
The Beast Shape spells give you package of powers to work with. However you ONLY get the powers that the form you're emulating would normally have. Polymorphing into a rat does not give you waterbreakthing because that's not something that you will find in in the bestiary description of rat.If the form grants a swim or burrow speed, you maintain the ability to breathe if you are swimming or burrowing.Rats have a swim speed, beast shape grants you that swim speed. Ergo, you can breathe underwater if polymorphed into a rat.
Nor do you get the ability scores of the creature. You get a flat adjustment to your native scores from the spell you're using.He doesn't say that's how it works. He says that's how it worked in 3.X, and that the patch to polymorph effects failed to fix problems with summoned/bound critters.
Dolphins have a swim speed and don't breath underwater. They come up for air.
Breathing underwater isn't the same as water breathing. Scuba gear lets you breath air underwater.
I suppose that 'maintain the ability to breathe' could be saying that you retain the ability to breathe air, but then that sentence becomes essentially meaningless.
The spell doesn't create scuba gear. There is no air to breathe underwater. (Or while burrowing while in the form of an earth elemental.)
Without such a line, it becomes impossible to polymorph into something that has gills but not lungs: none of the beast shape spells grant the aquatic subtype, water breathing, hold breath, or anything similar.
Or to put it more simply, either I can breathe underwater while polymorphed into a rat (or dolphin), or I can't breathe underwater (but can breathe air!) while polymorphed into a shark.
Either interpretation has problems.
Now I see. You can still breath while swimming, as the creature. That doesn't preclude coming up for air, if the creature does that. What it grants you is the ability to hold your breath between coming up for air, if the creature breathes air. This may go against the RAW slightly, in which case this discussion should be moved to a changing or breaking the rules topic.
This may go against the RAW slightly, in which case this discussion should be moved to a changing or breaking the rules topic.
It's easy to patch at the table: I don't think I'd keep playing with anyone who thought it was a good idea to bring the game to a halt to argue that his druid should be able to hide at the bottom of a pond forever in rat form, or likewise for someone insisting that the big bad can't escape underwater in shark form because he can't really breathe water. I think that's really the intent: You can breathe as well underwater or underground as the creature you are imitating.
I was just trying to clear up for LazarX what Set was actually saying.
Why does turning into a rat give you water breathing?Core p. 212. "If the form grants a burrow or
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Quote:I disagree. Monster should have unique and awesome powers, both to reflect their places in folklore (genies grant wishes. It's what they do.)
They don't, in folklore, grant wish *spells.* Indeed, many of the things that their 'wishes' do grant, such as entire castles appearing, or peasants becoming royalty, or vast treasuries full of gold and gems, or create flying carpets, is explicitly beyond the power of the wish spell, making it a complete failure at replicating folklore 'genie wishes' anyway.
But genie wishes shouldn't be wish spells in any event. Aladdin never wished for a +1 inherent bonus to strength, or to duplicate an 8th level or lower sorcerer/wizard spell that wasn't one of his opposition spells (which, not being a sorcerer/wizard, he didn't have anyway).
Genie 'wishes' should be actual services that the genie can perform with the abilities that they already have (which, like with the djinni, should include a fair number of conjuration (creation) effects, like enduring versions of major creation, heroes feasts, create food and water, etc.). Just like the word 'evil' being a game term that could represent alignment, descriptor or type, or 'level' being a game term that could represent character level, class level, spell level, etc. there's no reason why a genies 'wish' *has* to be a wish spell, which, as I already mentioned, does a crappy job of replicating the wishes of genie folklore (some of which, for balance reasons, wouldn't be available in any case).
That's one way to look at it. Another is that Dijin cannot grant wishes to themselves or other Dijin. Perhaps they abused this power and some Diety cursed them to have to grant wishes only to the mortals they once abused. Sphinx can answer any question with a riddle, but they won't know the answer till someone tells it to them.
I'm not sure what problem you're trying to address. I don't see how that fixes the problem I presented (planar binding getting new, weirder, loop-hole powers every time an Outsider is published), or the problem Set presented (monsters having powers that are unsafe for PCs being the root of the problem, as opposed to the ever-more-complicated fixes Pathfinder has applied to try to avoid giving PCs those powers.)
Supernatural powers may be similar to spells, but not identicle. In the Alladin cartoon, Genni tells Alladin he cannot wish for more wishes, to kill someone, to raise the dead, or for true love. In pathfinder, one of the safe wishes is to resurrect one person. Alladin's last wish was something Genni couldn't get for himself. It's remotely possible that someone hasn't seen the movie so the upshot is that creatures grant wishes with their own agenda. Getting wishes from devils is a bad idea.
This is how I would run a game. You can run non spell wishes as a con job if you want.
You can, and you should. But that doesn't solve the problem: that plugs the Efreet (or Glabrezu) wish machine, but not those from, say a noble djinni. A djinni is good aligned, and while it might twist a wish to allow itself to escape binding, or to blunt the full value of the wish, it doesn't have a reason to try to ruin you for having the audacity to ask. (Assuming, of course, that the requester is well-intentioned. If you wish for world domination, a djinni will mess you up just as bad as an efreeti would.)
Also, even a twisted wish can be quite powerful. Set's point was that mythologically, the wishes granted by genies were akin to 'deals with the devil' in more western myths. It doesn't necessarily have to be about world-altering magic (the kind wielded by Disney's Genie or D&D genies): it could just literally mean "I will do you three favors", promised by a supernatural being. Being bound into doing favors is what planar binding is all about. Why give wish as a SLA to genies with much lower CRs, when you could just add a line of flavor text about promising service to adventurers who free them from captivity or some worse servitude?
And even if you've solved wish this way, it doesn't fix problems like a bound Lantern Archon producing free everburning torches. Or how the difficulty of binding an Outsider has only minimal relation to how useful it is to actually have around. Or how there is no temptation to barter with dark forces you might not be able to control, because summoning an angel (or other Good-aligned outsider) is just as easy. Or how there is no level when you can usefully bind something like a lemure to your service, because it isn't relevant at the level you actually gain lesser planar binding (even though devil summoners should start with lemures and imps).
And it doesn't stop you from having to plug some new problem in the future when a designer puts together an Outsider with a powerful SLA that happens to have 6, 12, or 18 HD. A 3.5 example: Grigs had irresistable dance as an SLA, but no real offense. They deserved their low CR, because thrown against a party it made an encounter a lot like fighting pugwampi now: they party couldn't do much, but it also couldn't hurt them very much. But it had low HD. If it were an outsider instead of Fey, you could call one and put it against your enemies. It couldn't kill them alone, but it could shut them down while the party murdered everyone. (Look at the 3.5 summon nature's ally lists.)
Every new outsider presents a risk of doing that. My solution is whitelisted binding spells. At the risk of putting words in Set's mouth, his solution is to stop giving monsters abilities that would break the game if they show up on the PC's side of the table.