Abusing monster abilities

[lukelightning]

In my experience it't not hard to convince a pit fiend to "light up the entire city"

 

[I'm A Banana]

It might light ONE stick or heal one person....but sticking around for seven days instead of helping the greater good? I'm not seeing it. Spell gives the DM oodles of wiggle room to say 'no'.

I am more interested in what happens if the DM says "yes." "No" doesn't make things very interesting in improv.

I like the idea of an extraplanar force conscripted to do some good work for the town or army via planar ally and related spells. That high-level cleric is spreading Good by lighting his town, giving the thieves and muggers less places to hide, making people feel safer knowing that they're being watched over by celestial beings themselves.

 

[gizmo33]

Using a summon spell doesn't work.

The OP used Lesser Planar Ally as an example, and that's "conjuration (calling)" which I think doesn't have that same issue.

 

[Nightfall]

Get myself a bunch of Infernal Sentinels, tell them that Chardun wants to purge humanity from the world, and blamo, charduni influx into new planes!

 

[WizarDru]

I am more interested in what happens if the DM says "yes." "No" doesn't make things very interesting in improv.

I like the idea of an extraplanar force conscripted to do some good work for the town or army via planar ally and related spells. That high-level cleric is spreading Good by lighting his town, giving the thieves and muggers less places to hide, making people feel safer knowing that they're being watched over by celestial beings themselves.

It has some interesting possibilities, but like hong's chickens, it creates a lot of problems to consider. Some DMs and players might enjoy all that extra leg work, but I personally wouldn't. Because by saying 'yes' to this instance, you're also saying 'yes' to 'why am I the first one doing this' and to 'does this work for bad guys, too?' and to a host of other issues that you need to know the answer to, first.

For example, it would be fun but somewhat frustrating (and ultimately fruitless) if a servant of good summons a lantern archon and has him light the city if the next night, a servant of evil summons a Babau the next night and destroys ever single thing the archon did, and then kills the archon for good measure.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I just realized that a 7th level cleric can call a lantern archon with lesser planar ally and permanently light up a city for the cheap cost of 100 XP and 500 gp (1000 gp for a long duration, but 1/2 cost because it's non hazardous). Lantern archons can use continual flame at will, with no cost because it's a spell-like ability, so you just get the lantern archon to stick around for 7 days, using that ability 100,800 times on 100,800 stones or sticks. Each will shed light as bright as a torch.

It's a little more expensive, but if you can get 8 formian workers (4000 gp for 7 days), they can cast cure serious wounds once a round, making a handy field hospital. If you're battling an army, I think this would be a handy tool.

Or hell, a lantern archon can just cast aid over and over again, granting d8+3 temp hit points for 3 minutes. Have it zip along behind your line of soldiers, aiding one each round. You could aid 29 guys this way, with the 30 round being spent flying back to the start of the line.

What other sort of ways do you know to abuse the abilities of monsters?

Strictly by the rules that might be legal. IMO, spell-like abilities that normally cost XP or material components would cost the creature a little bit of XP; even without a great XP measurement tool, the creature would have to stop eventually.

Even failing that, the creature is bound to get tired. (In game rules, fighting doesn't make you tired if you don't get hit, but realistically it would, just like doing math equations, singing for hours or "telling the laws of reality to sit down and shut up"). I also doubt the creature could cast the spell every round realistically out of combat. Its got to spend time opening bags of torches, unless you want peasants to do that, and then it costs some. Plus the creature will get angry at that treatment.

There was a post at the WotC Eberron boards a while back about a balor taking over the setting, simply because it can cast Dominate Monster and Teleport Without Error at will. It could go all over the place and literally create armies (Dominate Monster's ridiculously long duration is part of the problem, but so is TwO). Because Eberron has few high level good-aligned NPCs, it would have fewer restrictions on pulling this off than, say, in FR. Of course, it still wouldn't work because

1) Getting a demon to Eberron is hard work. This is an event that will eventually make it into songs and the history books.

2) There are a few high level NPCs, many of which are unnamed, probably too scattered or retired to adventure on a regular basis. Having kids tends to slow you down that way ... you don't want to deprive them of their parental unit, after all. Even evil NPCs won't stand by while a demon takes over the world - only demonic cultists would likely aid it. Dragons fall into the same category as high level NPCs, as they're intelligent as well as powerful.

3) Groups of lower level NPCs could take it down using strategy. This includes nations.

4) It couldn't possibly use its tactics at greatest efficiency. It has to spend time doing things like figuring out "who would make a good general?" and how to recruit troops and so forth. It has to move to Dominate troops (unless it arranges a line of troops to just walk past it slowly, and even that would take time to organize), and then a chunk of them will make their Will save upon getting their first orders.

3.0 had the crazy psionic template, which had two problems:

1) The creature could manifest powers whose level was equal to its Hit Dice +2. I'm sure that was a typo for HD/2. Really.

2) The creature could manifest that power at will with no restrictions (eg XP, or even stat - monsters didn't suffer from MAD to nearly the same extent as 3.0 classed psions did).

Naturally someone figured out a psionic donkey could manifest Clairtangent Strike (you can Remote View any creature and then strike it for one point of damage, no save of course) and Fission (split into two). It could do both at will, so it could create a population of donkeys that could splat a creature at least eight times per round (at one damage each). Unless the creature had resistance or fast healing/regeneration, it would eventually die. In fact, the rules for Fission were so poorly stated that each duplicate could then create however many dupliates it wanted, so the number of psionic donkeys would infinitely increase. Naturally this couldn't actually happen ... so replace the donkey with another creature with Int 6 or higher. If the creature had more Hit Dice and Twin Power, it could mess things up with Clairtangent Strike even worse. (The power was called something else, by the way, but Clairtangent was in the name.)

The Hullathoin is a crazy one. It can create a bloodfiend locust swarm an unlimited number of times, until it could fill a planet with them. Each locust swarm inflicts negative levels when it hits something ... and there's no attack roll, so virtually anything living is vulnerable.

 

[lukelightning]

I say let the archon make a lot of light. After all, to cast planar ally the cleric has to spend a bunch of XP.

 

[Slife]

Using a summon spell doesn't work. Check the description of Conjuration(summoning) spells in the Magic Overview section:

"When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire. A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have, and it refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilities that would cost XP if they were spells."

If you summon an archon and have it create continual flames, all those flames are going away as soon as your summon monster spell expires.

But it's an instantaneous spell. The magic's already over.

If you argue that it's reverted despite being instantaneous, you're also arguing that as soon as a summoned monster vanishes all the damage it did through SLAs is gone too.

According to the rules only SPELLS cast by the summoned monster expire, not SLAs, so it should still work.

 

[Wolfwood2]

But it's an instantaneous spell. The magic's already over.

No, it's Permanent in duration. Subject to Dispel Magic and everything.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It has some interesting possibilities, but like hong's chickens, it creates a lot of problems to consider. Some DMs and players might enjoy all that extra leg work, but I personally wouldn't. Because by saying 'yes' to this instance, you're also saying 'yes' to 'why am I the first one doing this' and to 'does this work for bad guys, too?' and to a host of other issues that you need to know the answer to, first.

For example, it would be fun but somewhat frustrating (and ultimately fruitless) if a servant of good summons a lantern archon and has him light the city if the next night, a servant of evil summons a Babau the next night and destroys ever single thing the archon did, and then kills the archon for good measure.

I'm thinking more in a world-building sense (like the OP was) than in a sense that this could happen tomorrow in my game. Heck, even if it does, I don't see myself denying it. "You want to waste the gold lighting the city? Okay, that's cool, spend it how you want, man...I mean, I'd probably pick up the +2 sword to fight the demon lord, but it's your coin."

In a world-building sense, if this has been going on since the proverbial dawn of the spell, the world could be a very intriguing set-up, with extraplanar entities all over the place, serving loyally at great churches (who would need a lot of tithes and taxes to pay for all these extraplanar hirelings)....it's kind of appealing, actually.