Hook Mountain: Bargaining with the Pit Fiend

[Douglas Muir 406]

Knowing my PCs, they'll try it.

I would rule that "repent" would not work -- the fiend can't change its own nature. But what if a PC asks for some sort of deal? "Serve me for seven years!" "Agree never to harm a halfling, either directly or by inaction."

The fiend is lawful, so I'd say it would /tend/ to be bound by its word -- though it would of course twist and pervert the deal as much as possible, etc. And I'd rule it wouldn't be bound to do stuff that would be obviously impossible, profoundly against its nature, or simply game-breaking. That still leaves a lot of room for maneuver, though.

(A related question: how does the fiend get rid of those negative levels?)

Thoughts?

Doug M.

[Blue_Hill]

My players asked "big monetary gain" for reward. Pit fiend send reward right away, he filled the pools with copper coins and most of them were merged together so almost no gain. Party realized that they did word their request badly and we fine with it.

If your players aren't very clear about their details of their deal you can alter it as you like. "Serve me seven years"=Serve him seven years when pit fiend decides it's good for it. I would also wait that pit fiend can recover so players might think twice about asking it to come Golarion to help them.

[Old Drake]

If they want to be served by a Pit Fiend, well, let them. But once word gets around, they will start having trouble shopping in most of the world and good aligned temples will not want to deal with them. Powerful as a Devil may be, the incidental costs are huge outside of Cheliax.

The Halfling deal might seem sweet, but he would never agree. It would practically force him to spend the rest of his live traveling the world and saving Halflings. Although he may well decide that wiping out humans (at least in some regions) would protect Halflings. I can also see problems when he comes across two Halflings fighting one another.

Negative levels depend on what system you play. In Pathfinder I think a greater restoration will do it. Under 3.5 you probably need a Wish or Miracle, possibly followed by Greater Restoration.

As for turning the Devil, I believe I remember a Paizo adventure where a celestial was evil, so redeeming the Devil would theoretically be possible. Practically, with ten thousand years of hate against mortals build up, I think it's doomed for failure. This Devil is probably the least receptive to redemption any group will ever meet.

[hida_jiremi]

My party managed to figure out that the pit fiend must have been physically brought to the material plane with a calling; if he had just been summoned, he wouldn't have been so scared of dying. Since that sort of spell usually requires some sort of offer of payment, they decided to extort it from him in exchange for setting him free and him explaining how the dam worked. The fiend figured he got off lucky by offering them some trinkets that he sealed up in an old tomb 10 millennia ago and might or might not still be there. I actually put together a little mini-dungeon for the party to deal with after the end of "Hook Mountain Massacre" for them to retrieve the devil's treasures. ^_^