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Planar Binding - Does it award XP?
- Thread starter Ragmon
- Start date
Grue
First Post
<looks it up> Heh.... by RAW no. Page 37 DMG, "Do not award XP for creatures that enemies summon or otherwise add to their forces with magic powers." Planar binding is pretty clearly an otherwise 'magic powers' by RAW.
On a DM side of the screen, like everything else in the game it can be a judgement call dependent on circumstances of the encounter since XP awards are guidelines rather than hardline rules. It would be beyond a rat-bastard-dm move to tell a Party that 'Nope you're just getting the xp for killing that 13th level wizard and nothing for all those demons he had bound before the encounter began. Oh by the way, he doesn't have much treasure since he spent that binding all those critters that wiped half the party." It'd be hilarious up to the point my players lynched me.
If a critter is called and bound well before the encounter begins and it does add to the difficulty of the encounter then I would adjust the CR up (awarding more xp). If it's stationed by itself guarding a location I'd award xp according to its CR.
Not sure of the context of this question but I'll cover this base as well- if a PC binds a outsider and then has it attack the party, defeating it earns no xp award...it was neither an obstacle in the way of the party's goals nor a necessary expenditure of resources even if it provided any sort of threat or challenge.
On a DM side of the screen, like everything else in the game it can be a judgement call dependent on circumstances of the encounter since XP awards are guidelines rather than hardline rules. It would be beyond a rat-bastard-dm move to tell a Party that 'Nope you're just getting the xp for killing that 13th level wizard and nothing for all those demons he had bound before the encounter began. Oh by the way, he doesn't have much treasure since he spent that binding all those critters that wiped half the party." It'd be hilarious up to the point my players lynched me.
If a critter is called and bound well before the encounter begins and it does add to the difficulty of the encounter then I would adjust the CR up (awarding more xp). If it's stationed by itself guarding a location I'd award xp according to its CR.
Not sure of the context of this question but I'll cover this base as well- if a PC binds a outsider and then has it attack the party, defeating it earns no xp award...it was neither an obstacle in the way of the party's goals nor a necessary expenditure of resources even if it provided any sort of threat or challenge.
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GMforPowergamers
Legend
I had a DM that pulled that ALOT.
wizard summon/binds 3 or 4 monsters then retreats... we beat monsters and get 0xp becuse the real encounter got away... later turned into contigency teleport out, or chain contingency summon and teleport out... have a dozen encounter with little to no xp...
wizard summon/binds 3 or 4 monsters then retreats... we beat monsters and get 0xp becuse the real encounter got away... later turned into contigency teleport out, or chain contingency summon and teleport out... have a dozen encounter with little to no xp...
Grue
First Post
Pulling this sort of thing (alot) is a bit of a sucky move. If the wizard or whatnot used a summon to throw off pursuit and get away that is one thing (and I'd gauge the encounter on an ad hoc basis....was it a threat, did it expend resources, are they closer to their goals, did they learn something...etc). If the wizard jumps in, dumps summons on them, and then jumps out before the party has a chance to reply then I'd count the summons as an actual encounter rather than as part of the NPCs loadout (especially if the npc could recover spells in between). However, as a player I would make sure the party was prepped with a dimensional anchor after the first summon and run tactic.
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
...And a Circle of protection spell to nullify the summoned creatures.
Gotta agree, it depends how their used. If the summoner/binder is using them as augments, probably wouldn't count them as XP. But if it's a summon-and-scoot, or a long lost summons where the summoner will never be encountered, I'd give XP directly on what was faced.
Gotta agree, it depends how their used. If the summoner/binder is using them as augments, probably wouldn't count them as XP. But if it's a summon-and-scoot, or a long lost summons where the summoner will never be encountered, I'd give XP directly on what was faced.
Aha, thnx.
You mentioned context, no we didn't want to grind summoned creatures.
That and I asked the question, cause Planar Binding is Calling spell and not summoning, meaning that the creatures actually die if killed.
-We are a level 8 group of 3 (Gestalt, Pathfinder, tho we still use the PHB, DMG, and MM for 90% of the stuff).
- We are in an Epic Demonic Red Dragons lair... no encounter with it so far.
- Bam, 5 Vrocks and 1 Hezrou appears, it takes em a while to reach our location, the place is huge.
-We manage to kill them, thanks to some awesome Bard maneuvers, and the Barbarian finding a Deas-ex-machina-cursed intelligent-bloodsucking-life-stealing-viscous-great-axe.
- I managed to nauseate 2 Vrocs and the Hezrou for 4 rounds, barb killed 2 Vrocs and died on the 3rd, the nauseated ones were moving away. Barb gets up via aforementioned axe, kills everything else.
At this point, I have just about no more spells, barb died once, and the druid (who expanded his wild-shape looong before we even got to the lair did some damage too, but nothing to write home about), had no useful spells.
The XP that this encounter would be worth (8400 per PC) would be enough get us to level 9 and half way to level 10. the DM assured us he will count the XP into the Boss fight, the Epic Demonic Dragon who bound it, or maybe some lackey.
