Gigigidge's page

I want to start by saying I love that Unchained gave us at least two options for replacing the big 6, and my personal favorite of the two is the Automatic Bonus Progression system (although I'm not 100% sold on the way the weapons & armor component works, but I'll give it a chance before I decide).

However, I'm not sure how the Automatic Bonus Progression system should work for NPCs to consistently keep something close to the current PC/NPC balance of power.

1. Just having 50% items and no progression on the table, NPCs will never get basic bonuses, which would seem to shift the balance of power to the PCs.

2. Back-of-the-envelope math, it seems like NPCs who use the same table progression as PCs would gain quite a bit under these rules relative to where they stand today. For example, a standard 10th level NPC would have, just earned at 10th level, the equivalent of a ring of protection +2 and a cloak of resistance +3, worth about 17K, or almost twice his NPC gear value per table 14-9 in the CRB. This would seem to shift the balance of power to the NPCs.

3. Using PC level - 2 (or 1, or 3, or 6, etc.) gets closer , but unless you use different adjustments at different levels, it changes the balance of power at different points, since NPC wealth currently scales more slowly than actual wealth.

1 is probably the closest to RAW, although 2 could be if you took "character" to mean both PCs and NPCs, but as indicated above, those both change the PC/NPC balance of power. However, I'd be leaning towards option 3 (which is admittedly a house rule, since there's no text to support it in Unchained) or even an Option 4—create a modified version of the table to most closely follow the progression that would be allowed based on the current NPC gear value table (again, admittedly a house rule).

My question, though, before I assume I need to "fix" the PC/NPC balance of power "problem" somehow, is there official errata or an FAQ addressing this (so possibly no need for "fix")? Or am I missing something in how this is supposed to work (so possibly no need to address a PC/NPC balance of power "problem")?

Re-posting this from another thread because it doesn't really belong in that thread and I am honestly curious how it would work.

The idea is that you could planar bind multiple genies, force them to grant you wishes that would get you to an inherent bonus of +5 to an ability score, but then kill them before they are released from the binding and return to their home plane.

Since you need at least two genies to get to +5, how would you arrange it so that both of the genies died and you still get your +5? Since by the rules, the wishes must be granted in consecutive rounds, the best scenario I see here is:

Setup: Both genies are bound, with dimensional lock in place. Both genies are asked to give +3 inherit ability score increases when requested (note the timing has to be part of the agreement, even if it's simple "On my command"), and both are successfully compelled
Round 1: 1st genie grants 1st ability score increase
Round 2: 1st genie grants 2nd ability score increase
Round 3: 1st genie is killed by party; wizard orders 2nd genie to give 3rd ability score increase; 2nd genie refuses because it has become an unreasonable command, since he now has every reason to believe he will be dead after the 2nd wish is granted

You can argue what happens in round three isn't per the rules, but the spell specifically requires "unreasonable commands" to be refused. Now, what constitutes an "unreasonable command" is a matter of DM judgement, but it certainly seems a very reasonable GM ruling to decide that a genie would find it "unreasonable" to trust the honor of a group that just proved itself to be dishonorable murderers. Furthermore, the genie would not consider the command "reasonable" until it knew that it would be returned to it's home plane "immediately" when the last wish was granted, because there is no way he trusts you to keep your word.

Now you may find it more reasonable to believe the genie will simply grant the wishes and trust the dishonorable murderers to keep their word to him when the party clearly betrayed one of his own kind (or simply grant them out of fear and hope the party is merciful), but neither interpretation is "more correcter" than the other as far as the rules go. It's a matter of how a GM feels NPCs should react to the actions of the PCs, and here is where I think you and I might disagree.

I should point out that for some GMs, an "unreasonable command" could even be mortals asking the genie to grant the wishes in the first place, since it encourages mortals to continue to do so and leads to the continual enslavement of geniekind. Also, if you think a genie wish works exactly like the wish spell and requires a 25,000 gp material component, a genie may find it completely unreasonable to grant the wishes as well if they have to provide the component themselves.