| Jacenat |
So because he has some time between chapters 2 and 3 of our RotR AP, our sorcerer (level 7) decided he want to do something funny (I am all for that btw, just want to make it balanced).
1) Magic Circle against evil (scroll he bought)
2) lesser Planar Binding: Shadow Mastiff
3) lesser Gaeas on the Shadow Mastiff ("You have to respond to 50 <arbitrary finite number over 20> questions truthfully. For yes, sit, for now you lay down within 5 seconds.")
4) Compelling the service of "For one year, you must stay at my side and you must attack every creature I designate without interfering with any other creature, including my own."
5) "As reward for this service I promise you many possibilities to hunt and kill in the darkest corners of the world."
Now provided all rolls (to cast the scrolls above his level, to succeed the gaeas and a charisma roll +6 for the creature because of the lousy reward) succeed: Would this creature essentially behave like a pet and complete the service aside from any subverting? He essentially has 7 tries/days to succeed before the Magic Circle dissipates.
I argued that this would be an unreasonable demand because the reward offered is miniscule for the service. I cited Planar Ally (which would value this service at about 300.000 gp ... while the sorcerer can mabye afford another 5.000gp, if at all) for this. The players response was that "There is no reward necessary. This is what the CHA check is for." and technically Planar Binding does argument that, but I feel it goes against the spirit of the spell.
But because I really do not want to shut him down in this quest (this is funny after all), I gave the condition of modified CHA checks. The creature gets additional +1 to his CHA checks for each magnitude you are off from a comparative compensation. So if he only promises that the creature can "hunt and kill in the darkest corners of the world", I would value this as 0 gp (since it's what the creature does anyway). If he throws in 1.000 gp, he can set the modifier to a cumulative +8 for the creature (still possible to succeed).
I already feel this is very generous because
1) I my interpretation the service can not be completed by actions of the creature and thus is considered "open ended".
2) A 6d10 HD creature with a bunch of SUs is clearly to powerful for a level 7 sorcerer to have as permanent pet.
3) He investet "only" ~4.000 in the scrolls, which strikes me as very cheap.
Is my reaction too negative? Am I shutting this down prematurely? Should I not let the creature respond to this service since it's unreasonable? Anything other you want to comment on this?