Gigigidge's page

In response to earlier comments about how this law won't affect critical things like receiving health care, this:

http://www.indystar.com/story/behind-closed-doors/2015/03/09/eskenazi-healt h-opposes-religious-freedom-bill/24502571/

No, this isn't the super-secret-squirrel assessment delineating in detail how the law will force hospitals to leave gay people to die in dark corners of waiting rooms just because they are gay. But maybe, just maybe, the certainty that some people have that this law will have "no effect" on critical services is a just a bit premature...

Tyrannon wrote:

I agree with the vast majority who have said to use common sense.

I'm unclear on how 7 out of 16 people qualifies as "the vast majority."

Is "common sense math" different from regular math?

Use Common Sense = Claxon, LazarX, Ton Foil Yamakah, Hendelbolaf, Vod Canockers, Gerrinson, and you (7).
Fix By Rule = Mech E, LoneKnave, CWheezy, Rynjin, Chengar Qodarth, Caedwyr, ShadeofRed, Snorter, and myself (9).

I never stated as such, but you can add me to the "fix by rule" group.

Although in the meantime, I just do my best to house rule this kind of stuff using ideas like common sense to keep the game fun and playable for everyone at the table, DM and players alike. (And of course what your table finds fun might vary!)

P.S. I’m pretty sure DrDeth would be in the "fix by rule" group as well.

While DrDeth is condescending to people using the rules as written to do powerful things, simulacrum is a spell I have to ban because it is amazingly, super broken.

I had players for coliseum morpheon spend money on simulacrums of two pit fiends, and it took me a couple tries to remove spells and whatnot. Even with nerfed spells, their poison, aura, and incredible physical stats make them better than any level 13 fighter

** spoiler omitted **...

CWheezy, it looks like you went with the interpretation that the spell description gives the GM the latitude to remove abilities that are not appropriate for a pit fiend with 10 HD, and you still thought the creature was overpowered.

However, if you take the approach that the spell allows the creature to keep all abilities not directly dependent on HD, it's even more powerful:

Comparing the Paizo and 3.5 versions of the spell, it looks like Paizo mostly used the 3.5 wording with a few restrictions dropped.

But the dropping of those restrictions aren't why using the most permissive interpretation of RAW makes the spell so powerful. 3.5 very much had RAW support for the HD-reduction mechanic in the form of Savage Species, which not only spelled out abilities available at each HD, but natural armor bonuses, ability score changes, etc. However, outside of a few templates, the Pathfinder system has very little (no?) RAW support for creating creatures with fewer HD than the base creature, except for a few special cases like dragons. Some people therefore conclude that creatures should always keep all their abilities, so even a 5 HD Simulacrum Efreeti should be able to grant three wishes a day. And any GM who rules otherwise is in violation of RAW.

My problem with using this interpretation of the spell is that it's almost impossible to create a world that has any internal logical consistency. Just to start with, as you point out, once the party faces the first 13th level wizard BBEG, how would the party ever win? Unless I make him the dumbest 13th level wizard ever, he'd have at least one (if not more) Simulacrum Pit Fiends available.

And if you allow blood money without any house rules, I honestly can't see how any wizard 13th level our higher wouldn't have a small army of pit fiends, balors, solars, etc. on call--after all, at that point the only limit on the number you can have is the time it takes to make them.

Joex The Pale wrote:

Perhaps I am missing the obvious, but why kill the Efreet/Djinn in the first place? If you've bargained a good bargain with them, wouldn't they be kindly disposed to help you out again, whereas word getting out (and it would eventually) that there's a wacko caster summoning and murdering their brethren would lead to no end of trouble.

Why would the caster kill his bound genie?

I think the idea is that you succeed on your charisma check to succeed at a pretty bad deal and them eliminate them before word gets back (using chicanery to get people to think you were mostly un-involved and/or everyone's ally).

That is my impression from Anzyr's posts on the subject.

With genies it's not that big a deal.

With fiends, for example, it might be.

But I dunno - it probably heavily depends on campaign worlds and alignment/personality interpretations.

I'd agree with this as well.

But won't the clerks in the City of Brass notice when nobody shows up to defend/justify the wish granted?

If the campaign world has such a system in place, the answer is going to be yes, with all that entails for the character.

My requested service is usually something to the effect of "Serve me unquestioningly for the next 8 days". That gives you more then enough time to planar bind another Efreeti to help you get +5 inherent bonuses to all stats. After that you tip off some Jann about some Efreeti slavers in the area, send your Efreet minions on some pointless errand in that area, sit back, relax and have a bowl of popcorn.

Thanks for answering, Anzyr.

So your solution isn't something I'm missing mechanically about how planar binding works. You solve the scenario by making sure it doesn't happen in the first place. And your solution puts us back to what "one service" and a "reasonable command" would be, and here we would just agree to disagree, I think.

Which is fine. The rules allow either of our interpretations to be correct, and as always neither one is badwrongfun as long as each of us and the groups we're playing with are having, you know, fun.

If an outsider doesn't want to do something, the GM assigns a bonus to their Charisma check between +0 and +6. It says impossible or unreasonable commands are never agreed to. Unreasonable by definition means without reason, irrational, lacking in rational faculty.

The American Heritage Dictionary definition of unreasonable:

1. Not governed by reason: an unreasonable attitude
2. Exceeding reasonable limits; immoderate: unreasonable demands

The American Heritage Dictionary definition of immoderate:

1. Exceeding normal or appropriate bounds; extreme. immoderate spending; immoderate laughter

So, barring a clarification from the developers on the RAI, the rules are ambiguous because the RAW is ambiguous (possibly deliberately so) and a GM is free to define "unreasonable" as either "not goverened by reason" or "immoderate", or both.

And to reiterate something from earlier, neither way of defining this is badwrongfun, so long as the group is actually, you know, having fun. (I should make something like this my signature...)

And to ace: my apololgies for jumping back on this shark in this thread, but I did feel it worth pointing out that the wording for planar binding is in fact quite ambiguous about what a bound outsider might be willing to agree to, and does leave a fair amount of interpretation for the GM if he wants to take it.

aceDiamond: First, thanks for the compliment earlier.

As for the reason for this post:

Does this thread need to dissolve into another clarification on the ruling on Planar Binding again? We're dealing with high level play being mechanically sound or broken. The exact wording of this spell should be enforced by GM reading more than anything else. And only because it brings in a new NPC/character.

I think people bring this spell up because this is an area where play styles can change the utility of the spell dramatically. If you assume that players can serially bind creatures, compel them into service, then release them when the service is over with few if any repercussions, the spell is indeed quite powerful. If the repercussions are potentially much riskier, you'll probably use it as a last resort, if you use it at all.

How it applies to the higher level math: at the higher levels, you can get up to a +3 inherent bonus* to an ability at almost no cost by binding an Efreeti and forcing it to use all three wishes consecutively. If you are building for maximum optimization and the repercussions would be assumed to be easily manageable (if there are any at all), there is no reason, really, not to do it.

*As I read RAW/RAI for using wish to increase an ability score, the wishes must be cast consecutively, and an Efreeti only has 3 wishes a day, so +3 is the best you can do, and if you assume a surviving Efreeti is a potential threat, the best you can do is a +2, since you would have to kill it before it cast the third wish.

It's one thing to talk about keeping your saves up being a treadmill, but if the system automatically normalizes everything, then leveling up is... ONLY a treadmill. I get that not everyone likes to have to choose between their vegetables and candy, but that's the nature of the beast when it comes to allowing customization.

This.

The system allows you to build a 20th level melee character who the BBEG can only miss on a roll of 1 and a 20th level melee character who the BBEG can only hit on a roll of 20. It also allows you to build a very large number of things in-between, with all the variation that implies in abilities, tactics, strategies, and narrative options for the DM and players alike. After all, if the system allowed for virtually no customization, not only would you get RJs treadmill over the life of the class (the numbers get bigger, but nothing ever changes about how the class plays), but all characters of the same class would always follow the same tactics because they would all be running on the same treadmill.

Does that mean you get both parties of "balanced" characters who will take four rounds to kill the BBEG in a straight-up fight but who will have a decent chance of surviving even if ambushed and parties of "glass cannons" that can take out the BBEG in one round in a straight-up fight but have a very high probability of being TPK'd if ambushed? Sure. And that's just fine. The different groups have chosen different strategies for dealing with risks and rewards, and neither of those choices is badwrongfun. (On a side note, you can have parties of "RP heavy" characters who accept the risks of being either not well-balanced or well-optimized for combat, and who might struggle with killing the BBEG in eight rounds and be lucky to survive an ambush at all, and as long as that's their choice, it isn't badwrongfun either.)

In other words, the wide variety of choices allow for a wide variety of playstyles, and there's inherently no badwrongfun way to build characters or play the game unless you aren't, you know, actually having fun.

P.S. Having said that, there are some things I would change about the mechanics of the game, but I don't think anything I would like to see changed would eliminate the option to play "rocket tag".