Bestiary: Monster Behaviour models


General Discussion (Prerelease)


As a fork from the AC = Video Game Defense thread, I'd like to open a new thread to discuss the behaviour of animal and near animal intelligence mosters.

There is some debate within the thread as to prey selection methods for magical predators. Specifically, the hydra, who is relatively insulated from all but the most determined of foes who are dedicated to assaulting the hydra with physical force, with fast healing and the ability to sprout additional heads. While some think that this consumes some resource of the hydra, there is nothing within the description of the hydra or statistics which make this likely. Therefore, there is some debate as to what a hydra would consider a valid threat.

Although it is the opinion of some that the hydra, and similar magical predators, would naturally select amongst opponents based on apparent frailty, there are compelling Earth analogues that would indicate that the monster would attack based on territorial selection (i.e. closest opponent within the hydra's perceived territorial or ambush zone, like a hippo or crocodile). Perhaps it might be a good idea to discuss monster behaviours which we might like to see codified within the Bestiary for animals and animal-like creatures.

Additionally, there was another thread where a CR15 monster, one of the Inevitables, was discussed as a melee opponent. As this particular opponent also has fast healing, and is an intelligent outsider, there was some debate as to the construct's actual behaviour in a melee fight. Eventually, it was resolved that dimension door away to fast heal back to full would be a valid response to a melee threat. But it would be nice to see some discussion within the bestiary of how certain special abilities make monsters behave in general.

Dark Archive

Ooh, neat topic!

I would very much like to see Intimidate placed on various animals skill lists. Most predators, and many herbivores (rams, stags, etc.) have threat displays meant to discourage actual combat, because animals don't have Clerics, and if one gets hurt in a pointless confrontation, it has a very real chance of dying of infection (and / or becoming more susceptible to predation and / or unable to feed itself).

Even such 'dumb' creatures as insects will hiss and present fangs or upraised legs to discourage something from messing with it (tarantulas, in particular, have dramatic threat displays!).

[On a side note, insects and arachnids having a zero Intelligence is something I'd like to see ditched. Bugs are trainable. Bees can count to four and communicate directions to each other. Spiders are affected by mind-affecting chemicals (awesome videos available of spiders making webs on various psychoactive drugs). Give them an Int 1, and then we can have all those spider-training Drow and Duergar and stuff, without coming up with silly 'exceptions.']

It would be neat to see this incorporated into the skill sets of appropriate animals.


I have posted a link to this thread in the main Paizo Pathfinder Bestiary thread on these forums. (*link to PPB thread*)


I certainly agree that Vermin should get an Int of 1 or 2, and the special ability Vermin Mind (Ex): Immune to charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects. Limiting vermin to Int 1 means they cannot be trained to hunt, guard, or to bear a rider in combat. It takes a minimum of 2 tricks even to allow any animal to attack more than humanoids and other animals, which on Int 1 would limit a vermin to one other trick. I also agree that animals need Intimidate as a class skill.

I can see also a general guide of playing NPCs at given stat ranges. What does it mean that a Kraken has an Int of 21? How does that make it behave? Misrunning a Kraken can be remarkably easy if you assume it acts like a big animal. I would almost be inclined to include sub rules for anything with SLAs, and specific rules for common special abilities. When would a pyrohydra bite, versus use the fire breath?

Finally, how do monsters react when situations seem to be going poorly for them? PCs change the way they approach the encounter when they are low on resources, so it is natural to assume that monsters would do so as well, or when the abilities they have are being nullified. Coherent rules on what going poorly means for a wide variety of opponent types is also useful. A troll has an entirely different metric for what is dangerous than an ogre would.

Dark Archive

Good catch on the Int 1 problem with training Vermin. I obviously didn't look at the training rules closely enough! (I'm kinda used to GURPS, which had animals range from Int 1 to Int 6 (for chimps and dolphins and stuff), as opposed to pigeonholing them all into Int 2, whether coldly-alien-far-too-clever octopus or lump-on-a-log toad.)

TreeLynx wrote:
Finally, how do monsters react when situations seem to be going poorly for them? PCs change the way they approach the encounter when they are low on resources, so it is natural to assume that monsters would do so as well, or when the abilities they have are being nullified. Coherent rules on what going poorly means for a wide variety of opponent types is also useful. A troll has an entirely different metric for what is dangerous than an ogre would.

That sort of stuff would be neat to see in the monster write-up.

A pack of Goblins might end up not entirely realizing that they are being obliterated, until a certain critical mass is realized and enough of them are running away screaming that they *all* start running away screaming.

A pack of Hobgoblins might press on in the absence of clear orders from their leaders until they realize that their situation is hopeless, and then start grabbing hostages and attempting a fighting retreat (a leader's orders might override that, prompting them to pull back sooner, or stand their ground).

An Ogre might be having such a good time that he might not realize that his companions are all down and he's the last one left. Or he might realize how hopeless things have gotten and sit down and start blubbering about how unfair the situation is, blaming the pathetic hyumanz for spoiling their good time, when the Ogres only wanted to 'play with them'...

A Gnoll who has taken a serious hit, on the other hand, or who sees an equal or tougher member of his pack fall, is likely to high-tail it out of there, with no tears shed for his fallen companions.

Obviously every encounter may have it's own guidelines (this particular pack of Ogres has been terrorized into submission by a covey of shapeshifting Hags who often disguise themselves as humans and elves to blend into local communities, and will run howling for mercy at the first sign of 'big mojo,' these particular Goblins are all hopped up on goofballs, and will never retreat, being trapped in an alchemically-induced state of frenzy by the Adept who is using them as a big distraction), but each species should have their own hints as to how they tend to react in combat and to unfavorable turns (or whether or not they like to take prisoners, for when it goes the other way and they start trouncing the adventurers...).


To a certain extent, I think some DMs are already using some portion of this in their encounter design.

When I created a goblin/blue PC campaign, based around using humans as opponents and advanced kytons, wights and formians as the big bads, I know I spent as much time determining combat tactics for the hive minded formians, wights mixed in with mortal units, and insectile bugbear tactics as actually statting out the fights. I know my PCs got more enjoyment out of the game as a result.

Sovereign Court

To repeat what I said in the other thread on behaviour, one thing that does make sense to me is that large scary animal* brutes that harm people are likely to be relatively uncommon (because of the amount of area they need to get the prey they need) and, therefore, relatively likely to encounter adventurers over enough time (because that's what adventurers do). Thus, their behaviour is unlikely to be entirely stupid as they wouldn't have survived long if it was. As a side note, there aren't enough human-driven animal extinctions in most RPGs.

As a more general corollary, stupid things can have instinctive tactics that turn out to be pretty good; their problem is that they can't learn or develop new ones easily, not that simple tactics can't be effective. Of course, it can be used against them, particularly if there's preparation/planning time.

*Animals, amongst other properties, being things that breed and die and obey moderately normal population statistics.


TreeLynx wrote:

As a fork from the AC = Video Game Defense thread, I'd like to open a new thread to discuss the behaviour of animal and near animal intelligence mosters.

There is some debate within the thread as to prey selection methods for magical predators. Specifically, the hydra, who is relatively insulated from all but the most determined of foes who are dedicated to assaulting the hydra with physical force, with fast healing and the ability to sprout additional heads. While some think that this consumes some resource of the hydra, there is nothing within the description of the hydra or statistics which make this likely. Therefore, there is some debate as to what a hydra would consider a valid threat.

Although it is the opinion of some that the hydra, and similar magical predators, would naturally select amongst opponents based on apparent frailty, there are compelling Earth analogues that would indicate that the monster would attack based on territorial selection (i.e. closest opponent within the hydra's perceived territorial or ambush zone, like a hippo or crocodile). Perhaps it might be a good idea to discuss monster behaviours which we might like to see codified within the Bestiary for animals and animal-like creatures.

Additionally, there was another thread where a CR15 monster, one of the Inevitables, was discussed as a melee opponent. As this particular opponent also has fast healing, and is an intelligent outsider, there was some debate as to the construct's actual behaviour in a melee fight. Eventually, it was resolved that dimension door away to fast heal back to full would be a valid response to a melee threat. But it would be nice to see some discussion within the bestiary of how certain special abilities make monsters behave in general.

I hope you dont mind me throwing in a couple of observations.

Lets start with the hydra's fast healing. This is a very difficult subject to discuss, based upon the fact that hydra are not real. there for, much of what follows is the ramblings of my imagaination tempered with a little bit of real world science.

In my opinion Fast Healing must occure in one of two ways, either a latant magicial effect that speeds up a naturally occuring process, or the hydra has some sort of perminant connection to the positive energy plane. This distinction is important because it gives us an answer as to if hydra use up 'resources.' Before i go any further, may i just point out, that there many details about many animials and creatures which the Monster manual does not cover, such as there being 'lesbian' dolpins. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

So, why does the mechanism by which the hydra heals matter. Well, because healing from many wounds requires the creation of new tissue. You do not get something from nothing, even in DnD. A direct channel to the positive energy plane, would provide the energy needed for such healing, without cost to the creature. While a magicial effect that speeds the process of healing requires energy and materials from the hydra's own reserves. Both problems have some problems, such as with the increased rate hyposis, you can say 'well, if it can speed up it healing, why can't it speed up all it body and cast haste as a spell like ability.' , however it is possible to say that it is a distinct process, perhapes given a little evolution such a process would allow it to do just that.

The positive energy hyposis is i feel much more deeply troubled by its issues however. If the connection is a constant stream of positive energy, enough to heal the creature, why does the hydra now leak positive energy, giving it an aura of channeled positive energy? why does the hydra not live forever, if all damage to its cells and tissues is almost instantly healed? Why does the hydra need to eat at all?

It is these things that led me to the conclusion that the hydra must heal using energy reserves. suspect that these reserves are fairly high, in the hundreds of hit points. But i would suspect that most hydra's behaviour has evolved to prevent them from dipping into this while hunting, as to do so would likely cost the hydra more energy than it gains from feeding on a prey animal.

Moving onto the broader subject of behaviour. This is a fascinating subject which I devoted four years of my life too and would gladly devote another four twenty years to if could. I would love to see space devoted to discussion of how monsters in game respond, and how different kinds of encounters with such a creature effect the CR of the creature.
For instance, the moral of a hunting hydra is going to be different to a hydra who is defending its nest to the death. Their for its CR should also likely be different :)

PS: while on the subject of hydra, would it please be possible to get them improved init and some ranks in hide. Almost everything about them screams ambush preditor but they can't mechanicially do it. *Shakes fist at the uncaring sky.*


Zombieneighbours wrote:


I hope you dont mind me throwing in a couple of observations.

Lets start with the hydra's fast healing. This is a very difficult subject to discuss, based upon the fact that hydra are not real. there for, much of what follows is...

Not at all, as I was hoping to get your perspective on it, and have an opportunity to discuss it further.

If, as you postulate, the hydra is eating into it's energy reserves to grow new heads and fast heal, then it would be a reasonable assumption, based off of the new head die-off mechanism, to hypothesize what sort of threat-response buffer it has. Since it can gain up to double the number of heads it had before, and these last for a day before it loses the ability to keep them, it is reasonable to assume that the hydra has sufficient reserves to fast heal for approximately 2 days. 10 rounds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 48 hours. Base 288,000 hp energy reserve, plus extra per head. Since it is a magical beast, and magic allows it to violate all sorts of real world rules, that means it has to be beyond hyperefficient. The hydra would be running on fusion or zero-point energy in the real world, and burn as hot as the sun, and consume amounts of fuel which would be absurd. Since obviously the hydra is not designed to be an all-consuming, ravenous, wide ranging rampaging beast, since it is too slow and has a limited habitat, then it means per 1 day worth of food, the hydra gains 144,000 hp. Only something which can consistently overcome the hydra's hyperefficient metabolism, or meaningfully threaten its central nervous system, would scare it sufficiently to flee, as food within the hydra's territory can easily replenish the buffer.

What I imagine of hydra behaviour almost reminds me of hippos mixed with alligators. Hippos are surprisingly deadly, dangerous, territorial herbivores. They know they are the biggest, baddest non-hunter in the marsh, and they like to make sure that nobody gets any ideas about taking anything from them. I'd imagine the hydra has a similar territorial streak, especially if it's metabolism isn't pure ridiculousness.


With that kind of metabolism, it may be noshing on just about anything within reach while it wanders about or waits for food to arrive. With its bite strength, it can easily get through the hardness of wood, and a 10header can get through stone.

Consider that it can make full attacks after charging, so it can feasibly graze with all heads while on the move. Perhaps the inherent positive energy in living creatures (lets avoid the plants = living creatures argument for a moment) serves as a nice caffinated boost, which is why they are so agressively predatorial. They might be omnivores out of neccessity, with carnivore a preference.

Just a thought.


What it eats, omnivore or carnivore, while useful, just determines the circumstance you will encounter the creature. This is certainly important, and part of what I would like to see more of, but the key point is that anything with fast healing that can be considered to have an ecological niche (trolls, hydras, anything else not an outsider, construct or undead) can be considered to have a similar, absurdium-fueled metabolism. Which means, at its base, the only real threats are those which can seriously threaten the monsters metabolism, by doing more damage in a round than they can reasonably heal from within 2-3 rounds, or target a weakness that the creature knows can cause permanent damage. Otherwise, a PC would be considered a particularly annoying bit of food.

This does call into question though what the monster would do if it realized it ran into a really stubborn bit of food, that didn't seem to want to be edible. Like dealing with a turtle, really. Do you walk on by until it proves itself a threat, or continue to worry at the turtle until you figure out a way to crack the shell. That was certainly one of the questions raised by the thread, and certainly a valid one.


TreeLynx wrote:
Zombieneighbours wrote:


I hope you dont mind me throwing in a couple of observations.

Lets start with the hydra's fast healing. This is a very difficult subject to discuss, based upon the fact that hydra are not real. there for, much of what follows is...

Not at all, as I was hoping to get your perspective on it, and have an opportunity to discuss it further.

If, as you postulate, the hydra is eating into it's energy reserves to grow new heads and fast heal, then it would be a reasonable assumption, based off of the new head die-off mechanism, to hypothesize what sort of threat-response buffer it has. Since it can gain up to double the number of heads it had before, and these last for a day before it loses the ability to keep them, it is reasonable to assume that the hydra has sufficient reserves to fast heal for approximately 2 days. 10 rounds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 48 hours. Base 288,000 hp energy reserve, plus extra per head. Since it is a magical beast, and magic allows it to violate all sorts of real world rules, that means it has to be beyond hyperefficient. The hydra would be running on fusion or zero-point energy in the real world, and burn as hot as the sun, and consume amounts of fuel which would be absurd. Since obviously the hydra is not designed to be an all-consuming, ravenous, wide ranging rampaging beast, since it is too slow and has a limited habitat, then it means per 1 day worth of food, the hydra gains 144,000 hp. Only something which can consistently overcome the hydra's hyperefficient metabolism, or meaningfully threaten its central nervous system, would scare it sufficiently to flee, as food within the hydra's territory can easily replenish the buffer.

What I imagine of hydra behaviour almost reminds me of hippos mixed with alligators. Hippos are surprisingly deadly, dangerous, territorial herbivores. They know they are the biggest, baddest non-hunter in the marsh, and they like to make sure that nobody gets any ideas about taking anything from them. ...

Disclaimer: game systems and science bare little in common, so one is likely to suffer if they meet, inthis case its science as most of what i am saying here is a gross over simplification.

Hey again.

Firstly, i really do think your over estimating the size of its energy reserves. These must after all be stored i some, probably physicial way within the body. I think for a general rule of thumb 50 hp/point of con, would make a reasonable reserve for most magicial beast with fast healing (though i might well lower that to 25 in my games). So a nine headed hydra 1000 hitpoints. This is a far more manageable reserve to maintain. Also, the

Next point; something does not have to treaten the hydra with death, to make an individual hunt unworth while. For instance.

Say that you had no car and relied on public transport. You have just gotten a job in the next town over, so you take the train in the morning.

After the first day, you look at the pay and the amount you pay for travel and food at the cantine. If the amount you payed for tranceport and food that day equalled more than the money you earned that day, would you continue with that job.
It is the same in nature, if the cost of a hunt, is greater than the benifit, you will suffer as a result of persuing that hunt further. This is why cheetahs give up a hunt if they haven't caught their prey within a minite. An impala struggle to hurt a cheetah, in theory they can't out run a cheetah if the chase continues, but they can afford to push them selfs and keep going. The cheetah can't it risks damaging it self and the pay of from the hunt will be lost if it continues to chase.

Now, please do not assume that i am claiming that either the hydra or the cheetah is capable of reasoning this out. They almost certainly are not. Fortunately they don't need to be.

Lets take two hypotheticial examples of ancestoral hydra... One is a 'coward' backing away from any prey that fights back in a significiant way, while the others is 'brave' and will persue prey relentlessly, because it is unlikely to die.

Now over the year leading up to the mating season, these two males both hunt. The coward certainly gets fewer meals in this time, but consistantly but never expends more energy in aquiring a meal than it gets from a meal. The brave one gets a lot more meals, and while some of them are easy pickings, some are not. in total, the coward has been able to store energy over the year. So he can now in the mating season put more effort into his displays for a mate, fighting of other males entering his territory, mating and generally being successful.

Now if these treats of coward and brave are linked to genes, you have selectable genetic characteristics. Form there, natural selection does the rest.


Zombieneighbours wrote:


Now over the year leading up to the mating season, these two males both hunt. The coward certainly gets fewer meals in this time, but consistantly but never expends more energy in aquiring a meal than it gets from a meal. The brave one gets a lot more meals, and while some of them are easy pickings, some are not. in total, the coward has been able to store energy over the year. So he can now in the mating season put more effort into his displays for a mate, fighting of other males entering his territory, mating and generally being successful.

Now if these treats of coward and brave are linked to genes, you have selectable genetic characteristics. Form there, natural selection does the rest.

Sure, I took a graduate level genetics course, and a fair bit of other advanced biology, although I did not study animal behavior. I understand the mechanisms behind inheritance, selection, mutation, etc. Since we also know very little about hydra mate selection criterion, or whether or not they bud, etcetera, we could bloviate about this all day, without acomplishing overmuch.

The number I chose was certainly large, but the number itself is suggested by the head die-off mechanism. Since the heads directly tie into the fast healing mechanism, I might estimate daily per head HP at 14,400. Essentially, though, the actual number is unimportant. I think we are both in agreement that a hydra would flee from a credible threat, or food that gives it a significant problem. What we disagree about is what consititutes an unacceptable caloric risk. I think we both agree that real-world analouges are impossible to find, and arguing about the caloric hunt profile of cheetah, raptor (eagle/hawk/owl, not dino), lion, tiger or other large caloric use predator is not a credible comparison to a hydra. We can't extract basal metabolic use from a hydra when it isn't taking damage, except within the context of the head die-off mechanism. Certainly real-world reptiles are patently absurd comparisons.

Can we at least agree that Ms. Hydra is territorial, possibly an ambush predator, scavenger or omnivore, would be considered threatened by anything which would pose a threat to it's central nervous system, and, at least for the sake of interesting encounter design, skew them heavily towards fight, with regards to fight or flight response, more like the hippo than the cheetah. We can disagree about how credible it is, but if hydras scared easy, they would not be high CR challenges.


TreeLynx wrote:
Zombieneighbours wrote:


Now over the year leading up to the mating season, these two males both hunt. The coward certainly gets fewer meals in this time, but consistantly but never expends more energy in aquiring a meal than it gets from a meal. The brave one gets a lot more meals, and while some of them are easy pickings, some are not. in total, the coward has been able to store energy over the year. So he can now in the mating season put more effort into his displays for a mate, fighting of other males entering his territory, mating and generally being successful.

Now if these treats of coward and brave are linked to genes, you have selectable genetic characteristics. Form there, natural selection does the rest.

Sure, I took a graduate level genetics course, and a fair bit of other advanced biology, although I did not study animal behavior. I understand the mechanisms behind inheritance, selection, mutation, etc. Since we also know very little about hydra mate selection criterion, or whether or not they bud, etcetera, we could bloviate about this all day, without acomplishing overmuch.

The number I chose was certainly large, but the number itself is suggested by the head die-off mechanism. Since the heads directly tie into the fast healing mechanism, I might estimate daily per head HP at 14,400. Essentially, though, the actual number is unimportant. I think we are both in agreement that a hydra would flee from a credible threat, or food that gives it a significant problem. What we disagree about is what consititutes an unacceptable caloric risk. I think we both agree that real-world analouges are impossible to find, and arguing about the caloric hunt profile of cheetah, raptor (eagle/hawk/owl, not dino), lion, tiger or other large caloric use predator is not a credible comparison to a hydra. We can't extract basal metabolic use from a hydra when it isn't taking damage, except within the context of the head die-off mechanism. Certainly real-world reptiles are patently absurd...

I am kind of tired. I think that yes we do have some general agreement yes.

On a slight side note, oh my god, how much of a train wrech did CoL manage to get him self into with the origin thread of this?


I haven't read all the responses so if this has already been brought up I apologize.

I just wanted to say that I think that including suggested behaviors is a fine idea to the point that it might even be factored into the CR were it not to cause the creature to fight up to its statistical potential. However I would hope that it made extremely clear that behaviour models are suggestions only and not to taken as actual rules. I say this for the safety of players everywhere, because the minute someone says to me, monster X can't attack me because the book says they prefer the taste of fighters the bestiary will cease to be a useful reference and become a projectile. Someone think of the players.

The Exchange

Love the concept of this thread. This is an idea that I'd particularly like to see incorporated into high level play as it would seriously downgrade the time required to plan out games.

Of course, you'd have to be careful not lock behaviours in stone as then it makes critters too predictable, particulalry if you have players that read monster manauals.

On to behaviour - for mundane animals, behaviour is usually driven by one of a few factors. The need to eat, and the need to reproduce. All other behaviours are usually secondary to this.

Territorial behaviour is the byproduct of either defending mating rites or defending food supply. Really big predators need lots of food on a daily basis to survive, they therefore have big territories and usually don't hunt in packs. If they do its usually with an Alpha system in place (male or female depending on species). Breeding seasons and harsh food climates change the way critters behave. Some things will completely ignore you normally or maybe give a warning. Meet them in breeding season though, and they're going to tear into you because their little homrones are going crazy and they're psyched up. All these factors can be considered when building encounters with animals. This can easily extrapolate into vermin and magical creatures as well.

Also there's the fear factor. Scaring something usually evokes either fight or flight. Obvoulsy the flight response isn't really going to give much of an encounter, so a good encounter for even a normally docile creature can come from stumbling upon it so suddenly it gets scared and attaks as a fear response.

Now, things like natural healing etc don't change this fact. However, they work to make a creature more visciously aggressive. A creature that fast heals will more readily attack rather than go through the warning/sizing up process as it is aware it can recover faster. This makes creatures like this far less predicatable in nature and therefore more dangerous. It might even make their mating process more savage and really drive the entire survival of the fittest process (If you havn't got the healing rate to survive the mating ritual, you weren't worth mating with as a purely survival process).

I try to play the animal and magical beasts in my games to these edicts. IT makes games more interesting for me as a DM (and a scientist with an ecological background). It also means my group know they don't have to kill everything on sight if they can work out why the creature is behaving the way it does. Plus it throws lots of love the way of the ranger and the druid.

Hope this was useful

Cheers


J. Cayne wrote:

I haven't read all the responses so if this has already been brought up I apologize.

I just wanted to say that I think that including suggested behaviors is a fine idea to the point that it might even be factored into the CR were it not to cause the creature to fight up to its statistical potential. However I would hope that it made extremely clear that behaviour models are suggestions only and not to taken as actual rules. I say this for the safety of players everywhere, because the minute someone says to me, monster X can't attack me because the book says they prefer the taste of fighters the bestiary will cease to be a useful reference and become a projectile. Someone think of the players.

I don't think anyone is saying that it should be enshrined in rules, merely a general guideline.


Zombieneighbours wrote:
I don't think anyone is saying that it should be enshrined in rules, merely a general guideline.

Absolutely. It gives a nod to the fact that animal intelligence creatures operate in certain ways, and hearkens back to Gygaxian realism, where every creature fits within the world in an internally logically consistent way.

While I am certainly not advocating for strict realism, I also would like creatures to have a certain internal logic. If something about the behaviour of a magical beast would imply that it could not survive 10 generations, then how it survives needs to be addressed. Mostly, I am looking for basic encounter guidelines, like what the monster will do when it is encountered, how it will likely react to taking damage, or someone trying to use Diplomacy, Intimidate or Animal Empathy on it. If I, as the DM, am an actor for the NPCs, I could use some guidance as to what my motivation might be.

Especially when we start talking about more complex creatures, like true dragons and outsiders, where indirect conflict, and discussion of the monster's motivation can be important. Take as two examples the Glabrezu, which has essentially the same ability to grant wishes, although limited, as the Efreeti, but has some suggestions as to how it would go about using that ability, whereas the Efreeti have none. Since there are several spells which allow direct interface with outsiders, "fluff" like this becomes very important, as it can have direct mechanical effect in the game. I have seen characters built altogether focussed around getting outsiders to use their SLAs for the PCs, and have played NPCs who likewise use outsiders to accomplish many of their goals. It becomes very useful, in this regard, to treat the Outsiders as not mere appendages of the character's spell use, but rather as independant characters in their own right.


I couldn't agree more with the general principle of this. In many way, i would like to see such elements expanded greatly, such as spells for infernalism and details of how it works in game to go alone side behaviour guides for evil outsiders.

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