Help with minions for planar binding spells!

[Olive]

As an aside, after looking through the incantation rules in both Urban Arcana and Unearthed Arcana, I think an incantation is probably a much better game mechanic for summoning up powerful monsters than the planar ally spells.

Sorry to post again in my own thread, but this is a great idea. At the very least, it might help solve the age old problem of how to have low level cultists summon fiends without being massively powerful spellcasters...

Also, how those spells could go wrong. As writen, it's massively hard for them to mess up. Sep wrote a long rant on it once which was very interesting. But fantesy literature is full of demons runnign amock. And GR's 3.0 version of Legions of Hell had a little piece of fluff about it. The only way I can see it happenign under core rules is a failed scroll casting. Mongoose's Demonology was an interesting attempt, but WAY too random for me to introduce to my game. an incantation might be exactly the trick! I see the MSRD has one that replicates the planar binding spells, so maybe that can be adapted.

 

[demiurge1138]

Most of your minions are either straight outsiders, or outsiders with a template attached. Might I suggest a "normal" creature with a template that makes it an outsider? For example, a half-celestial pegasus might help you with the problem of not enough good creatures, and a half-fiend ogre could produce some good muscle for the group.

Oh! You could always throw in a formian or two, and at the HD cap, the nasty winged warrior from FF is avaliable.

Hope I could help.
Demiurge out.

 

[Olive]

Most of your minions are either straight outsiders, or outsiders with a template attached. Might I suggest a "normal" creature with a template that makes it an outsider? For example, a half-celestial pegasus might help you with the problem of not enough good creatures, and a half-fiend ogre could produce some good muscle for the group.

Oh! You could always throw in a formian or two, and at the HD cap, the nasty winged warrior from FF is avaliable.

Those are good ideas, especially the pegasus.

It does lead to a question: what would a formain want in payment if compulsion fails? Or indeed a half-celestial pegasus.

Are there half-axomatic or anarchic tempaltes out there? half-slaad? half-formian or inevitable?

Edit: I've started the Rogue's Gallery thread

 

[Spatula]

Those are good ideas, especially the pegasus.

It does lead to a question: what would a formain want in payment if compulsion fails?

Prime development land? Magic weapons or tools to help expand the hive's real estate? Actual physical help in expanding the hive (for example, by removing a troublesome monster in the hive's path - although this would require planar travel).

 

[Zappo]

More detail please!

Of course. First of all, the big problem of this party was that the ruler of a Good nation had been replaced by an evil sorcerer impostor, who was leading the Good army of this Good nation to its certain doom. Now, the party was Evil, and couldn't care less about this, but if the sorcerer succeeded he would also have caused the destruction of the world, pretty much. Evil or not, that's not something you want to happen. Only the party knew the truth, and they couldn't tell some Good heroes to deal with it, because they would be attacked on sight (the party included a half-fiend and a half-red dragon among other things), let alone believed. So: we have to stop a Good army to save the world, but since we're Evil we can use whatever mean we like.

[will continue after the lecture ]

 

[Garnfellow]

Well, after reviewing my own planar binding list last night, I see 3.5 has really had a big impact. Here are the only creatures left that would work with lesser planar binding:

Anoke, Ekona, Mesat, Soros, and Tasem, commonly known as the Spirits of the Thesean Square (Spined Devils)

The Thesean Square encodes the names of five minor spirits from the Iron City of Dis, and thus allows them to be commanded:

T A S E M
A N O K E
S O R O S
E N O K E
M E S A T
​

These nasty little creatures serve as spies and messengers to the Prime Minister of the Iron City. Their physical form is that of a small, winged gargoyle covered with spikes, and they have mastery of flight.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I used Planar Ally once in a 3.0 game to summon a Planetar. However, it meant the enemy used one to counter-summon, as it were, and the party eventually lost and had to flee. My character was killed in combat, and thus I never had to deal with the open ended quest that had been the price of summoning...

Still, it was fun to be able to play a Planetar for just over a session.

 

[Zappo]

[continue]

Enter the alienist summoner. I can't even remember all of his blunders; every fiend with a decent Intelligence rating either screwed him outright or at least got incredibly good conditions for the bargain.

- in order to try and stop the army from leaving the city where it was assembled, he called a balor in the city center, with the only order being "cause as much havoc as possible". The balor immediately summoned another balor. A not indifferent portion of the city was razed before the Good dragons in the army could intervene. The summoned balor was killed, but the called one escaped and not much later was contacted by the BBEG and given a better reward if he would kill the PCs. Further, the BBEG (obviously) used the attack as proof that the army's intervention was urgently needed. Any parallels with RL events are astonishingly coincidential. So they got a balor on their heels for nothing.

- to slow down the army, he called an erinyes and told her - again - to obstacle the army in whatever way she desired. As a reward, she asked the alienist to be called again when the spell's duration expired, and to have sex with him. Unfortunately, this creeped out the player too much and he didn't make good on the promise. But it wouldn't have mattered too much anyway, because...

- when he saw that the erinyes wasn't terribly effective in blocking an entire army, he summoned a succubus and gave her the same instructions. Confused on the difference between demon and devil, he didn't mention to the tanar'ri that there was a baatezu doing the same job at the same time. The two met, and after a short and small blood war episode there were none. More wasted magic.

- balor fest resumes. Another top tanar'ri is called, I can't remember the exact details but it ended up hunting the PCs for some reason. Party got nothing effective.

- another fiend is called, again can't remember the details but he was assembling a fiendish army for invasion around the end of the campaign. Party got nothing effective.

- yet another balor. This times, he wants a tough, 20-HD one. So I have a top servant of Lolth appear in drow form. A few minutes later, the alienist has sold the soul of one his comrades to the Spider Queen, and he has asked the balor to "stop that army before it reaches the stone circle". The army still had two weeks of marching before arrival, and with no details the fiend just did nothing for 13 days and then showed up with an entire drow army. Except that by that time the party had already managed to kill the BBEG and persuade the army to return home and defend their borders from the following BBEG instead. By this time, the alienist was dead, too. Party goes to the balor and says "uhm, we no longer need you to destroy that army". Balor grins and says "too bad". Huge battle ensues.

- last big act of the alienist (this was after summoning the Lolth balor, but before it came back) is to decide that tanar'ri are unreliable (duh) and that he's probably better off dealing with baatezu instead (!!!). So he calls for "the biggest pit fiend I can call". Enter Baalzephon of the Dark Eight. The rest of the party teleports away as soon as they hear the name. Shortly after, the alienist has been granted certain destruction of the puny mortal army if only he reads a certain scroll which the pit fiend has given him, in a certain place, at a certain time two days from now. The world has no idea of its luck when, one day after the summoning, a fire dragon incinerates the alienist and the scroll, which would have opened a permanent portal to Baator right in the middle of one of the most strategic positions of the continent.

That's why I think that planar bindings were good and balanced spells in 3E.

 

[Spatula]

Zappo, that's hilarious. You'd think the players would have learned after the second or third screwups that they were doing something wrong...

 

[Zappo]

Not really. Most of the party figured that it wasn't going to work, but they just didn't want to open their mouth while the deals were being made. Too dangerous. Sometimes they just ran away. Most notable was the Baalzephon scene:

Alienist: "I'm summoning the toughest Pit Fiend I can!!"
Zappo: "WHAT PUNY MORTAL DARES SUMMON BAALZEPHON..."
Cleric w/travel domain: "Teleport w/out error away"
Zappo: "...OF THE DARK EIG..."
Rest of the party: "We grab the cleric!"
Zappo: "...th. Uh, ok"

So it was only him doing the deals, or him and some wary and silent PCs. The problem is that all the deals always seemed to work at the beginning, and before finding out how much he screwed up, he had already done another. It was a spiral of madness. Very nice and fun Alienist character, but he harmed the party more than what he helped. He used to go around with a called kyton bodyguard (too stupid to try tricks) who unnerved everyone by grinning at them and always making "ching-ching" chain noises.