Help with Gate

[Ambrus]

True enough, but it wasn't actually something I was particularly opposed to. I don't imagine a celestial gold dragon is ever particularly happy about being hauled onto the material plane to fight for a mortal, and I preferred for my character to pay off his 'debt' right away, rather than waiting around to see what fate an annoyed extraplanar ancient dragon might choose to visit upon him.

Fair enough, though it seems to me that the dragon could have simply suggested it to your cleric. No need to resort to a geas/quest if your good cleric was already willing to join the dragon for a spiritual retreat on the celestial plane. Forcing the issue with a geas seems heavy handed, unecessary and conflicts with the RAW. A lawful dragon who feels the need to use high level magic to force people to do what they'd do anyways has some serious control issues.

Your cleric should have responded to the dragon by asking "Are you coming on to me?"

Celestial dragons give good template.

 

[Nail]

Why stop at one template? You could have piled on a whole slew of templates, pumping that CR up into the 40s.

As I2K aptly points out, the real problem with Gate is the HD limit. HD does NOT necessarily correlate with CR.

I've seen how Piratecat uses Gate in his games (essentially "straight up RAW"), and I'm always amazed his PCs and NPC don't use it more than they do. What's the downside, given an immediate task and a low enough HD called creature?