Planar binding = unlimited wishes?

[nameless]

There is no legitimate way. To say that something like a few wishes (which are a nearly unlimited resource for an efreet at 3/day every day for its entire life, none of which is can use for itself) has any relevant cost or danger is stretching it. To say that the demand is impossible or unreasonable makes ANY demand of any planar bound creature impossible or unreasonable, where you might as well have just found a hostile creature and convinced it to help you, rather than use the only spell printed that allows you to purposely extract service from outsiders.

The best thing to do is make a house rule or three, but give the players a few wishes since they didn't break any rules to get them.

1. You could change efreets to limited wish rather than wish. That actually solves a lot of problems with the amount of wishing that would probably be going on in the plane of fire.

2. Give planar binding some material component costs, sort of like planar ally. Instead of giving the money to the creature, the amount of material component spent determines how long the binding lasts (minutes, hours, or days+).

3. House rule that any ongoing spell effects end when the called creature returns home. House rule that any equipment the called creature had when it arrived disappears when the creature dies or returns home. That at least means players can't bind outsiders with magic weapons and take them, or get permanent spells got free. Not every use of planar binding is an abuse, it's fair to give them some utility out of the spells.

 

[Artoomis]

There is no legitimate way. To say that something like a few wishes (which are a nearly unlimited resource for an efreet at 3/day every day for its entire life, none of which is can use for itself) has any relevant cost ...

Actaulaly they do have a cost. A concept exists of "opportunuity cost," that is, failing to take advantage of teh value of something.

In this case the Wish has the same value regardless of the actual cost to the Efreet. Perhaps this is why Efreets are so rich - they sell wishes?

In any case, the opportunity cost is very real.

In any case, the idea of asking the players why this is not done routinely is a great one.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Is there any service that the PCs can request that won't result in the Efreeti coming back for revenge?

Oh, I would assume that the Efreeti is more than glad to grant even the oddest Wishes of the characters ... it's his "in".

Remember, these are evil outsiders. IIRC, in Arabic mythology, the evil genies are pretty much what the judeo-christian mythological elements in D&D are the Demons/Devils.

See: Faust

--fje

 

[IcyCool]

Is there any service that the PCs can request that won't result in the Efreeti coming back for revenge?

A noble efreet being forced into servitude? Nope, I don't see any reason why that evil being wouldn't seek revenge of some sort. If a deal was struck, and the Efreet received proper compensation, then he'd probably be all over that.

Also, see my point about the Inevitables that deal with abusers of wish.

 

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

"As soon as you sujmmon the Efreet, it dissappears in a puff of smoke. Why?

Because being an above-average Wisdom creature that has a legendary hatred of servitude, it already got a humanoid to wish the efreet would be immune to those spells. Said humanoid got a wish in return, of course.

Neat idea, though. You have heard of a list of efreets who haven't taken such precautions. And of course you might be able to research a binding spell that would work, but you'd need the texts some an ancient lost library to have much chance of success. Also, you might be able to find the legendary brass mirror, which allows you to try to contact an efreet that needs a wish-for-a-wish kind of deal from a humanoid, so you could get your ability boosts that way.

Would you like to start a quest to find any of those items?"

Put another way, Efreet aren't dumb, and people have had the wish spell for a while. Since efreet hate servitude, they'd have the smarts and resources to protect themselves from the common summoning/binding spells.

And now it's a potential adventure!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The first thing frankly is to look at the player and tell them not to be a dick.

On the one hand, I agree with that sentiment. On the other, I try not to make moral judgments against people for pursuing actions that are legitimate based on the rules.

If they want to persue this particular course of action they can, but to do so means that you will no longer play nice.

After which allow me to point out a few things regarding efreeti in addition to the Plane Shift thing that's been mentioned already.

Alignment: Lawful Evil.
Organization: ... Band (6-15)
Size: Large
Change Size: as enlarge or reduce person, except it can also affect the efreeti.
Spell-like Abilities: ... 3/day Invisibility.

...oh, and Plane Shift can affect an unwilling target.

Here's a question: what does casting Wish three times do to inconvenience an efreeti other than take up 18 seconds of his time? In other words, if I were to summon an efreeti and make him cast wish for me, why would that make him more angry than if I were to summon him for any other reason? And along that line of argumentation, doesn't that mean that any use of Planar Binding will precipitate the invasion of a planar hit squad bent on revenge?

I'm not sure I like having to contrive a story as to why efreet hate to grant wishes and see the demand of such as a capital offence, since it seems to be no skin off their backs. Sure, they like to pervert wishes, but that's part of why they like to grant them. If you're clever, you may be able to outwit the genie.

I do, however, like the requirement that the wishes be made with no reference to in-game terminology. It's hard to wish for an innate bonus to your ability scores if the words "innate bonus" and "ability scores" are removed from the lexicon. Of course, that would just change the wishes to "I wish for a scroll of the Wish spell". The pile of scrolls that would accrue from multiple castings would be sufficient to raise everyone's scores, and since the risk of scroll mishaps is so low, it's probably worth it.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

What's the type of Inevitable that hunts down and destroys those who abuse the Wish spell? I remember them being pretty damn powerful. And they really don't like those who fiddle with reality. I'd gather that Efreet would know about them, and fear them.

Edit - Moorcrys's idea is fantastic as well. It neatly wraps up the whole, "Why doesn't everyone do this?" question.

Ooh. This has potential. Anyone know what book that's in?

Edit: Never mind. Found it in Fiend Folio.

 

[IcyCool]

Ooh. This has potential. Anyone know what book that's in?

Fiend Folio or MM2. I'll check in a few minutes.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I dunno if an Efreet could actually cast a Wish to create a magical item ... hrm.

The cost for creating a magical item is 2x the XP cost + 5,000xp ... the 5,000xp is waived for the SLA, but would any additional XP costs be associated with it?

Heck, I'd be summoning up genies all day to pop out 200,000gp magical items. Why wish for inherent bonuses to ability scores when you can just have him squeeze out a Manual of Bodily Health +5? One wish, POW. Ordinarily doing that would require 56,000xp.

EDIT: Just went through the SRD ... doesn't say this isn't possible. The SLA text says that an SLA "never" has an XP cost, even if the spell would. The Efreeti description doesn't say anything about limitations to the Wish spell that it grants.

Thus ... skip the bucket of Wish scrolls to get +5 Inherent Bonus to a score, just wish for a single Manual of X +5 of the score you want. Both give Inherent bonuses, one only requires a single Wish. It's also hard to pervert a wish for a simple item, beyond having that item be something from the hoard of an ancient red dragon. This, additionally, opens up even more powergame options because you can just Wish up character wealth items entirely out of proportion with what's available. "Make my +1 Longsword a +5 Keen Adamantine longsword." etc etc.

As I've said, though, the Genie either A) As OKS said, has protected himself from being summoned at all in the first place or B) WANTS to be summoned and WANTS to grant wishes so that he and his kind can pervert those wishes, get mortals addicted to "free" power, and build their power-base on the material plane.

Heck, thinking about it, it's probably not the Efreet they should worry about getting "revenge" on them so much as concerned citizens groups of higher-level NPCs saying: "Whoa, that's not happening again." and putting the party down for summoning up demons for power ... how many adventures revolve around going in and putting down some demon-summoning evil wizard who is now little more than a fleshpuppet for some extra-planar badnik?

Which, again, I'd step to the 4th Wall and say: "I don't want the campaign turning into one revolving around the ramifications of using this one spell in this one manner ... it's possible, but let's not do that so we can continue on. If I were to say it works carte blanche exactly how you want with no ramifications at all it would be unfair to all involved."

Within the "rules" the best way to go about it is to say that your average Efreet has Greater Spell Immunity: Planar Binding wished up and the spell just fails outright. Legit, rulesy, neatly packaged, game continues.

--fje

 

[IcyCool]

Found it.

Fiend Folio, Quarut, CR 17.

Quaruts are amoung the most powerful Inevitables in existence. They protect two of the most precious and tenuous things of all: Time and Space. They use their uncanny sense of both temporal and spatial awareness to know when transgressions that disrupt the time-space continuum are taking place, and then they hunt down the perpetrators.

Quaruts are concerned about spellcasters who use such powerful magic as limited wish, miracle, temporal stasis, time stop, and wish. In the eyes of a Quarut, the use of these spells plays havoc with the universe and risks all beings. However, despite their displeasure with spellcasters that use these spells and abilities, Quaruts employ most of these spells with impunity.

Sounds like these guys would be keeping their "eyes" on a race of creatures that can cast wish 3/day.