Nasty trick with Planar Binding spells!

[Old Drew Id]

Nice find. I had thought that fiendish and celestial did this as well, but I was mistaken.

No, but half-fiend or half-celestial do turn the base creature into an outsider, and without bumping up the HD.

 

[Cheiromancer]

No, but half-fiend or half-celestial do turn the base creature into an outsider, and without bumping up the HD.

I use the house rule that +1 CR = +2 HD. Making something half-celestial is not cost-effective!

Too bad the normal form of pseudonatural isn't OGC. I can get the low-down on the epic pseudonatural template by clicking on http://www.d20srd.org/, but to get the other one I have to find Complete Arcane in the stack.

 

[Solarious]

I'd be more concerned about what a pseudonatural creature would ask for in return for service.

Faces, maybe?

 

[Hypersmurf]

I'd be more concerned about what a pseudonatural creature would ask for in return for service.

Doorknobs. And suspenders.

Every pair of suspenders in the city. And all the doorknobs, except the ones from public bathhouses or cobblers' shops.

-Hyp.

 

[Piratecat]

For instance, there are no flumphs.

Your game makes baby Piratecat cry.

 

[Wik]

You know, this reminds me. A year or so ago, I was playing a Tiefling Mage in Dawnforge, and I built him around the concept of being a summoner who was forcibly bonded to the dark form of magic (he wanted the light form, even though he was lawful evil). He hated Tieflings, and hated fiends.

So, he focused his summoning around Pseudonatural creatures. I used the template, and made up my own summoning lists (a la Unearthed Arcana). My summoning lists were filled with pseudonatural dogs, apes, griffons, and the like. It also had aberrations (like Grell, although we had to take it off the list when it WIPED OUT two encounters in a row).

Long story short, the pseudonatural template offered much more "bang for the buck" as opposed to the typical "celestial" templates found on normal summoning lists. Me and the GM had to do a lot of altering to make my concept work, while still being balanced.

Were I the GM in the game, I would probably bar this form of spell-use. Nice thinking, though.

 

[lukelightning]

No, but half-fiend or half-celestial do turn the base creature into an outsider, and without bumping up the HD.

Ah, I forgot that these templates make things into outsiders. DMs should probably be more reluctant to allow binding of half-fiends and -celestials than pseudonatural things. These templates add flight and special abilities (e.g. holy smite) to the base creature which are better than the pseudonatural template.

And pseudonatural isn't that powerful of a template; after all the alienest PrC can summon them no problem. They are marginally better than fiendish and celestial things. Remember that their true strike abililty is a standard action to use, so that means there is a whole round in which the creature is not attacking, and in my experience summoned creatures only survive a couple rounds at most.

 

[Nifft]

That is a super-cool trick, and using it might make the 3.5e Alienist playable.

Thanks, -- N

 

[The_Old_one]

I like it. I'll be filing that one in my 'nifty ideas for bad guys' mental folder.

Just imagine the looks on the players' faces when the dragon they're fighting in the midst of the royal coronation ceremony suddenly erupts into a horrific mass of tentacles and cancerous growths

 

[Slife]

A similar trick is using Gate from other planes to summon things from the material plane.