RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I have a lawful evil cleric player who wants to summon a Pit Fiend using greater planar ally (1 day per caster lever – extremely hazardous task). As devils don’t accept American Express, what type of infernal payment do you think a lord of the Hells should ask for?
GPA text spoilerified for your convenience:
By casting this spell, you request your deity to send you an outsider (of 6 HD or less) of the deity's choice. If you serve no particular deity, the spell is a general plea answered by a creature sharing your philosophical alignment. If you know an individual creature's name, you may request that individual by speaking the name during the spell (though you might get a different creature anyway).
You may ask the creature to perform one task in exchange for a payment from you. Tasks might range from the simple to the complex. You must be able to communicate with the creature called in order to bargain for its services.
The creature called requires a payment for its services. This payment can take a variety of forms, from donating gold or magic items to an allied temple, to a gift given directly to the creature, to some other action on your part that matches the creature's alignment and goals. Regardless, this payment must be made before the creature agrees to perform any services. The bargaining takes at least 1 round, so any actions by the creature begin in the round after it arrives.
A task taking up to 1 minute per caster level requires a payment of 100 gp per HD of the creature called. For a task taking up to 1 hour per caster level, the creature requires a payment of 500 gp per HD. A long-term task, one requiring up to 1 day per caster level, requires a payment of 1,000 gp per HD.
A nonhazardous task requires only half the indicated payment, while an especially hazardous task might require a greater gift. Few if any creatures will accept a task that seems suicidal (remember, a called creature actually dies when it is killed, unlike a summoned creature). However, if the task is strongly aligned with the creature's ethos, it may halve or even waive the payment.
At the end of its task, or when the duration bargained for expires, the creature returns to its home plane (after reporting back to you, if appropriate and possible).
Director of Brand Strategy
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I believe Pit Fiends have way more than 6 HD. But if it felt like helping you out, I think it would want something large enough to be the driving force behind the rest of the campaign. Perhaps it wants the PC to lead an incursion into one of the good aligned planes, like Heaven or Elysium to perform some act of eeeevil. That's sure to make the evil PC and any good PCs (probably neutral too) clash quite a bit. And interparty tension is always fun.
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Souls.
Converts to Asmodeus/Diabolism, accomplished however one wants (riding in to *save* a village full of Erastil worshippers in the name of Asmodeus, and sticking around to heal hurts and teach discipline and how 'Hell has a plan to save this world!' and stuff could be ideal, particularly if the threat you save the village from is one that you unleashed yourself, somehow...).
The eradication of those who resist such conversion (or 'save' people by converting them to other namby-pamby faiths, such as Iomedae or Shelyn).
The 'destruction' of a particular good (particularly CG) clergyman or holy champion, not by killing the fool, but by utterly discrediting him (framing him for some heinous crime, such as selling off political rivals into slavery, or knocking up the beloved daughter of some local leader, despite a so-called 'vow of chastity') in the eyes of his faith / followers.
Combining these things together, you could be tasked to approach a particular village with a shrine to Cayden or something, and arrange for something awful to happen to the town, and for the doddering kindly priest of Cayden to be 'proven' responsible. (The drunken ne'er-do-well botched the burial services, skipping consecration entirely because he was hungover, and now the dead are rising to take revenge on the townsfolk who have dishonored their ancestors! Good thing that Asmodean dude showed up and commanded them back to their graves! Strange that the Cayden-priest seemed not just drunk, but almost like he had been drugged...) The drugged Cayden priest is discredited, his shrine is despoiled by zombies of 'angry ancestors' and the Devil sweeps in to deliver a stern lecture that shames the villagers for disrepecting the dead, and convinces the zombies to shamble back to their graves. (Made simpler because he animated them in the first place.) The priest of Cayden's mind is addled by whatever drugs have been slipped into his ceremonial wine, and the villagers are a step closer to renouncing the old fool and accepting that the disciplined, no-nonsense and responsible 'very serious grown-up people' who saved the village might deserve more consideration. Dress it up with a series of pre-arranged crimes and incidents around town in advance of your public arrival (using an ally or cohort or even yourself in disguise or under cover of stealth or invisibility), only to unmask the criminals during your visit to the town, to drive home the importance of law and order, and swift, cruel-but-fair punishment of those who would wreak havoc and upset the lives of their neighbors. Instill valuable lessons that bring a tear to the eye of a Pit Fiend like 'my property is worth more than your life' and 'an eye for an eye' and 'spare the horsewhip, spoil the child.'
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The first rule of Pit Fiend Fight Club, is that you don't talk about Pit Fiend Fight Club...
"So here's the deal, squishy bag of meat and presumption. There's this Balor who has been pissing me off. Call him here, now. We're gonna throw down. Make sure that I win. If we both survive the fight, and he doesn't, I'll grant that favor. Hold back even a little, let me get too beat up, and the deal is off."
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I believe Pit Fiends have way more than 6 HD. But if it felt like helping you out, I think it would want something large enough to be the driving force behind the rest of the campaign. Perhaps it wants the PC to lead an incursion into one of the good aligned planes, like Heaven or Elysium to perform some act of eeeevil. That's sure to make the evil PC and any good PCs (probably neutral too) clash quite a bit. And interparty tension is always fun.
It is actually an all evil party - so all he'll get from the other guys is a moderate round of applause.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Yoda8myhead, he's talking about greater planar ally (up to 16 HD), but pasted the text from lesser planar ally (since that's where the details of the ritual are)
And as for what the Pit fiend wants... I've always found virgins a pretty good bargaining chip xD
True dat.
He's being using a questionable ability of the heal spell to "revirginise" his sacrifices since 11th level.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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The first rule of Pit Fiend Fight Club, is that you don't talk about Pit Fiend Fight Club...
"So here's the deal, squishy bag of meat and presumption. There's this Balor who has been pissing me off. Call him here, now. We're gonna throw down. Make sure that I win. If we both survive the fight, and he doesn't, I'll grant that favor. Hold back even a little, let me get too beat up, and the deal is off."
Hmmm... maybe an alternative where Mr. Cleric does all the fighting and the Pit Fiend brings a bag of popcorn to enjoy while watching.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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If they're an all-evil party and you won't get moral outrage at having to do a pit fiend's bidding, I'd try to set the party member against whatever motivates the rest of the party. A LE pit fiend would be all about turning people against each other to put forward his own agenda.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Hmmm... maybe an alternative where Mr. Cleric does all the fighting and the Pit Fiend brings a bag of popcorn to enjoy while watching.If that's the case, make it a Solar. Angels get used far too infrequently as enemies.
I like that idea, mostly because it will make him wee his pants just a tiny, tiny bit. The problem is, he can't summon the Solar (as an evil cleric can't cast good-aligned spells) so how does he go about tracking down the angel in a very short space of time?
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Director of Brand Strategy
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I like that idea, mostly because it will make him wee his pants just a tiny, tiny bit. The problem is, he can't summon the Solar (as an evil cleric can't cast good-aligned spells) so how does he go about tracking down the angel in a very short space of time?Hmmm... maybe an alternative where Mr. Cleric does all the fighting and the Pit Fiend brings a bag of popcorn to enjoy while watching.If that's the case, make it a Solar. Angels get used far too infrequently as enemies.
Sounds like he needs to figure that out! He's the one summoning the pit fiend. Is it the pit fiend's fault mr. cleric can't uphold his end of the bargain?
Or the solar is dispatched to dispatch the evil cleric . . . for calling a smurfing pit fiend to the prime material plane.
Calling is a much bigger deal than just piddling ole summoning.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Sounds like he needs to figure that out! He's the one summoning the pit fiend. Is it the pit fiend's fault mr. cleric can't uphold his end of the bargain?
Note to self: It's never the pit fiend's fault.
I'm actually tempted to let him off a little easy here, perhaps just exchanging the Scepter of Tyrant's Eye artifact he's just wrested from Fzoul Chembryl's cold dead hands for service. The Pit Fiends will make a useful 'redshirt' against
that they'll go up against in the next adventure. Nothing says "pay attention" like a lord of the Nine Hells being split in twain within the first six seconds of the fight.
I dunno, I can't see a Pit Fiend being too happy about a bunch of characters offing one of the most influential LE mortals in the world... unless whoever said Pit Fiend works for has something against Fzoul/Bane, anyway.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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The most insidious thing the pit fiend could possibly ask for is "your service, when I call on you sometime later." That gives you as a DM plenty of time to think about it, plus leaves the player with a lingering sense of doom since they'll always have to wonder what form the debt will take and when it will be exacted...and the longer you wait to call in the debt, the more nervous they'll get about it. In fact, the ideal time to call it in is right after they think you've forgotten about it and are breathing a sigh of relief. Another way this can be ever so costly is for you as DM to wait until the player finds something (or someone!) they really care about and then have the pit fiend appear and demand it in payment. It could also give you an adventure/encounter hook you can plug in at any time you run out of ideas: perhaps the pit fiend demands assistance in offing some rival in the heirarchy of Hell. Pit fiends are lawful evil masterminds and what pleases them should be something long-term, or at least of long-term benefit, that should cause suffering to everyone involved except the pit fiend. Preferably also something involving betrayal or manipulation. Mere virgins or souls are playthings for erinyes or hamatulas... not the undisputed masters of Hell.
Another spin on it would be for the service required to be something apparently innocuous, only it creates a ripple effect that results in Serious Evil... something like, "go to X Stable and steal me a white horse" when the white horse belongs to a paladin champion, who was on his way to a major battle, and his absence at that battle results in a LE kingdom conquering a good nation, the death of the good king and subsequent execution of his family, and the paladin being forever discredited as a coward for not showing up at the battle... you get the idea. However, this kind of thing would work better if your PCs were good or neutral aligned, just to show them the dangers involved with bargaining with fiends.