Demon corrupted wishes

[Latrans]

I’m GMing a game and fairly soon players will be encountering a demon that wants to trick them into making a corrupted wish posing a a benevolent Djinni captured by said demon. I suspect stat bonus is a likely but corruptions for other possible wishes are welcome.

Big things I DO NOT want:
Instant character death
Forced shift to evil alignment or other means of taking away player agency on character personify
Fluff only negative effects

I’m strongly considering a slow burn so effect may not be readily apparent. (Read: I’m going to come back and post the specific wish here after its made to get more specific means of having the twist show up.)

Thanks in advance.

[Sysryke]

Whatever is asked for, make it mechanically incompatible with the receiver. Not totally, but make use of the granted wish, block using another feature at the same time, or drain a resource cost. And/or consider randomized side effects. Demons are agents of chaos too.

[Theaitetos]

Since it's a demon, and not a devil, I would avoid any "legalistic" tricks. Demons want carnage & destruction, so it might work to set up a fight over whatever the wish grants them by taking said thing from a powerful person/group:

"You want gold? Here, take these 1,000,000 gp directly from the vault of the Red Mantis Assassins - I left a >>Thank You<< note in your name." >:-D

[avr]

Stat boosts - physical boosts might burn up your life force so that you start aging quickly, maybe very quickly. Any boosts might result in recurrent magical sicknesses or curses. Countering the effects of the wish should end the side effects and vice versa.

Other wishes might be magic stolen from others and result in those others pursuing the PCs. Or haunts from those others if taking the magic resulted in their death.

[Soul]

Here you go, I've even got your demon for you.

Glabrezu

From the Treacherous Wishcraft ability:

Glabrezu tricks:

Treacherous Wishcraft
Source PCS:DR

When a glabrezu grants a wish to a mortal, the glabrezu can grant the wish to the mortal without fulfilling it in the most destructive way possible. By granting the mortal the wish in this manner, the glabrezu can also cause one of the following effects to automatically affect the wisher (no save).

Curse: The wisher becomes affected by the effects of bestow curse, heightened to 9th level.
Mark of Treachery: The wisher gains a mark of treachery somewhere on her body. This mark appears as a fist-sized tattoo that combines the seven-pointed spiral of the sign of the Abyss and the glabrezu’s name (not its true name) written in Abyssal in a circle within the sign. This mark can only be removed by a miracle or wish, and only then if the caster makes a DC 30 caster level check. As long as the wisher is marked, the glabrezu can observe the world through the marked person’s senses and can communicate telepathically with her. At any point thereafter, the glabrezu can demand a service of the marked person—this allows the glabrezu to affect that person with a geas/quest to carry out the service if the person agrees to do the service. Agreeing to this causes the mark to fade. If the marked person refuses, she is immediately affected by a destruction spell (CL 14th, DC 22) and the glabrezu can demand the service again 1 round later. A mark of treachery persists through death and any resurrections that follow.
Psychosis: The wisher immediately becomes chaotic evil and gains psychosis.

tldr: If you elect not to grant them the wish in the worst way they could imagien, you can give them a curse, force them to agree to do a service (or potentially die, but you can lessen this penalty as you're the gm), or simply make them become a chaotic evil plant controlled by the demon/gm/player with insider information that wants nothing more than to kill or convert his former friends without them knowing what he's doing.

[Latrans]

So they managed to reach the demon a little faster than expected and they did fall for the trap and made their wish.

They wished for a Belt of Physical Might +6 (str & con) for the teifling front liner who immediately put it on.

Now, a big thing to note is said teifling is of demon ancestry so it gives an interesting options there.

[KingGramJohnson]

One time, I was GMing for a party and they had made a horrible mistake by going into a dragon's lair and trying to kill it for its hoard. They gave it a good try. They did not "win", but they did plan things out well enough to hurt the dragon enough for it to run off, and a party member died. They realized that now they had an angry Red Dragon who knew who they were, and would heal up and hunt them.

They decided (against the advice of the GM), that the best way to fix it would be to take the money from the hoard and pay for a wish to travel back in time. They visited this wizard acquaintance they had and asked him to send them back in time so they could avoid the dragon.

I used this wizard NPC as an opportunity to once again advise them NOT to mess with time. The wizard told them that it was possible but dangerous, ill-advised, and could change them. They decided to do it anyway.

So, the wizard granted them their wish. But now they had Aeons angry at them (possibly worse than a dragon), and they had been corrupted, and that affected them and lasted for the rest of the campaign. They highly regretted it.

I say all that to say this: maybe the demon corrupts them with the wish. So, maybe the wish itself is fine, but it messes with the receiver's mind, body, or soul. Just an idea. Check out the corruptions, they're neat, have some upsides, but some harsh downsides.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/corruption/

[Sysryke]

If you don't want to take away the character from the player via alignment change, which I believe you said was a no go, you have plenty of other choices.

Use of the belt could start to change the teifling physically. No benefits beyond what the belt does, but the character begins to manifest more and more external demonic traits over time, until he's "fixed" or is indistinguishable from a true demon. Obvious social penalties, problems with divines and locals ensue. He might even develop an aura of evil, even if he's not. Goodly or lawful helpful spell may not work on him anymore.

Alternatively, depending on his class, level, and features, when wearing the belt and undertaking any actions that exploit his new Str and Con, other class features he has that require focus, tactical thinking, or subtlety become penalized, and eventually inaccessable.

Either way, basically he's cursed.

The above ideas about the item being stolen from some other big bad are also a viable way to go.

[Mudfoot]

The belt grants strength and constitution. What else grants strength and constitution? Oh yes, rage, that's what. Your tiefling is going to go berserk now and again. And he'll definitely go berserk if anyone suggests he takes the belt off. Or insults his ancestry. Or his politics, religion, or taste in women.

Don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

[Reksew_Trebla]

Latrans wrote:

So they managed to reach the demon a little faster than expected and they did fall for the trap and made their wish.

They wished for a Belt of Physical Might +6 (str & con) for the teifling front liner who immediately put it on.

Now, a big thing to note is said teifling is of demon ancestry so it gives an interesting options there.

Belt of Weakness.

[Smallfoot]

Mudfoot wrote:

The belt grants strength and constitution. What else grants strength and constitution? Oh yes, rage, that's what. Your tiefling is going to go berserk now and again. And he'll definitely go berserk if anyone suggests he takes the belt off. Or insults his ancestry. Or his politics, religion, or taste in women.

Don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

Nice!

I'm a little tightly focused on doing right by the players here, so I think I'd play it this way: Each time the character might get angry, there's a small but increasing chance that he'll go into a rage. If it's not in combat, failures will start relatively small. At first he bellows and breaks things. Then he attacks bare-handed, doing nonlethal damage. Next he draws a weapon. By this point, he's got to make a will save to stop before he kills the person he thinks has offended him. He will absolutely attack anyone who tries to stop or disarm him, although again a will save before he kills someone is in order. He's also got a chance to go berserk in normal combat. When that happens, he's going to treat everyone in sight as an enemy. I might give him a will save after a successful attack on one of his allies. Hmm. If he saves, is he fatigued or exhausted?

[Mudfoot]

That sounds about right. I wouldn't go past Fatigued, and maybe not even that: the belt of providing the extra energy for the rage. There might be psychological effects afterwards instead.