# Planar binding = unlimited wishes?



## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 7, 2006)

One of my players just informed me of a cheeseball way of enhancing his ability scores: planar binding.  This 6th level spell can be used to call an efreeti, who can grant 3 wishes.  Assuming that the party is already 11th or 12th level, an efreeti isn't exactly a scary monster for them, so they can threaten it with death if it doesn't make with the wishes post-haste.  The wishes are used to increase ability scores in the manner that Wish is able to do.  At the point where more than 3 wishes are needed, a second efreeti can be called.

Assume the caster makes a calling diagram and has a dimensional anchor spell ready to go, not that efreet have dimensional travel abilities.  An efreeti isn't likely to make the Cha check off the bat, and if he does, he's screwed anyway.  Aside from the old "perverting the wording of the wishes" shtick, which my players are unlikely to slip up on due to extreme paranoia, is there any reason why this shouldn't work, per the RAW.  It seems that for no XP outlay and at 11th level, the party can add +5 to each ability score of each party member.

Certainly I can bring down the ban-hammer on it, but I like to find legitimate ways of disallowing things before I start house-ruling stuff.


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## Stalker0 (Nov 7, 2006)

Screw up the wishes. You say your players are paranoid, but I find the more legal text they throw in the easier it can be to find a loophole and take them down. You have a very angry efreeti whose being forced to cast wishes, you better believe he will make the party regret ever calling one of his kind.

Examples:

Player: I want a +3 to my strength score.
Wish: Player is now a bear

Player: I want a +3 to my strength score, but I don't want to be changed into any other creature, I just want my strength to go up.
Wish: You get a bull's strength on you. It lasts for 10 minutes, but you get a +4 to your strength score!!

Player: I want a +3 inherent bonus to my strength score, I don't want to be changed into any other creature, and I want it to last forever.
Wish: You gain a +3 to your strength score, and you now have an imprisonment spell cast on you. You are stuck in a hell dimension forever.


Normally, I wouldn't screw players like this with the actual wish spell. But if they want to cheese the system, make them pay


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## frankthedm (Nov 7, 2006)

Remember that wishes must be cast one right after another to stack. Unless you have 2 caster compleling service at one time, the time it takes to bargain would prevent those bonuses from stacking up.

The Charisma happens after the "offer". So the wish first, then charisma check.

I will say one thing. If the conjurer is respectful, courteous and offer valuables in fair compensation for a wish [see PHB goods and services for spellcasting costs], the efreeti might provide a normal _wish_. 

_Planar Binding
Conjuration (Calling) [see text for lesser planar binding]
Level: Sor/Wiz 6 
Components: V, S 
Targets: Up to three elementals or outsiders, totaling no more than 12 HD, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart when they appear 

This spell functions like lesser planar binding, except that you may call a single creature of 12 HD or less, or up to three creatures of the same kind whose Hit Dice total no more than 12. Each creature gets a save, makes an independent attempt to escape, and must be individually persuaded to aid you. 

Planar Binding, Lesser
Conjuration (Calling) [see text]
Level: Sor/Wiz 5 
Components: V, S 
Casting Time: 10 minutes  
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels); see text 
Target: One elemental or outsider with 6 HD or less 
Duration: Instantaneous 
Saving Throw: Will negates 
Spell Resistance: No and Yes; see text 

Casting this spell attempts a dangerous act: to lure a creature from another plane to a specifically prepared trap, which must lie within the spell’s range. The called creature is held in the trap until it agrees to perform one service in return for its freedom. 

To create the trap, you must use a magic circle spell, focused inward. The kind of creature to be bound must be known and stated. If you wish to call a specific individual, you must use that individual’s proper name in casting the spell. 

The target creature is allowed a Will saving throw. If the saving throw succeeds, the creature resists the spell. If the saving throw fails, the creature is immediately drawn to the trap (spell resistance does not keep it from being called). The creature can escape from the trap with by successfully pitting its spell resistance against your caster level check, by dimensional travel, or with a successful Charisma check (DC 15 + ½ your caster level + your Cha modifier). It can try each method once per day. If it breaks loose, it can flee or attack you. A dimensional anchor cast on the creature prevents its escape via dimensional travel. You can also employ a calling diagram (see magic circle against evil) to make the trap more secure. 

If the creature does not break free of the trap, you can keep it bound for as long as you dare. You can attempt to compel the creature to perform a service by describing the service and perhaps offering some sort of reward. You make a Charisma check opposed by the creature’s Charisma check. The check is assigned a bonus of +0 to +6 based on the nature of the service and the reward. If the creature wins the opposed check, it refuses service. New offers, bribes, and the like can be made or the old ones reoffered every 24 hours. This process can be repeated until the creature promises to serve, until it breaks free, or until you decide to get rid of it by means of some other spell. Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to. If you roll a 1 on the Charisma check, the creature breaks free of the binding and can escape or attack you. 

Once the requested service is completed, the creature need only so inform you to be instantly sent back whence it came. The creature might later seek revenge. If you assign some open-ended task that the creature cannot complete though its own actions the spell remains in effect for a maximum of one day per caster level, and the creature gains an immediate chance to break free. Note that a clever recipient can subvert some instructions. 

When you use a calling spell to call an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, it is a spell of that type. _


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## Fieari (Nov 7, 2006)

I'd stick with "Trying to get a malevolent entity to grant a wish will involve perversion of intent".

Do not, under any circumstances, let them say "I wish to increase my strength by 1" or any numerical value.  This has only a meta meaning, and cannot be stated in game.  A wizard casting this himself could word it this way, but that's because he's the one doing the casting.  He doesn't have to worry about wording as long as he stays within the safe limits.

Any other phraseology can be perverted, and I recomend you do so.  If you're stuck for how to pervert it as correctly stated (and I'm of the belief that the english language is ambiguous enough that NOTHING can be stated perfectly; see Syntactic ambiguity), look for ways the efreeti could possibly have "misheard" the request.  Remember, it's not the players casting the spell, it's the efreeti.  And YOU, the DM, control the efreeti.  Even if the efreeti is compelled to obey, what if the efreeti misheard "strength" for "stench"?  A matter of accents, you see.  That sort of thing.  "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you meant..."

Also, as aluded to in the posts above, have the efreeti do MORE than asked for.  Or get to the result via a laborous route (like becomming a bear) or for a short period of time.

Even so, don't let them get away with this sort of thing.  I'll bet there's a King of efreeti somewhere that might get pissed off that his servants are being used in this way...

And if it takes multiple efreeti to do this feat, I'd bet an uprising would be leveled against them sooner, rather than later.


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## frankthedm (Nov 7, 2006)

One more thing. _If_ this works, then the players better expect to see _many _ of thier foes with +5 inherant bonuses to all stats.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 7, 2006)

The planar binding says, "The called creature is held in the trap until it agrees to perform *one service* in return for its freedom."  Granting one wish is one service.  Granting three wishes is three services.  Note that inherent bonuses do not stack, so to have greater than a +1 inherent bonus, "Two to five wish spells cast in immediate succession ..."  Calling up a second efreeti will certainly not be in immediate succession.  In fact, even if you allow 3 wishes per efreeti, I would say that the PC stating the wish in between would not count as immediate succession.

No can do, by the RAW.  You can, however, get +1 inherent to each ability for "free".  You really need to follow-up on that, though, as "The creature might later seek revenge."


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 7, 2006)

Fieari said:
			
		

> I'd stick with "Trying to get a malevolent entity to grant a wish will involve perversion of intent".
> 
> Do not, under any circumstances, let them say "I wish to increase my strength by 1" or any numerical value.  This has only a meta meaning, and cannot be stated in game.  A wizard casting this himself could word it this way, but that's because he's the one doing the casting.  He doesn't have to worry about wording as long as he stays within the safe limits.
> 
> ...



See, the thing is, at the level at which you get planar binding, you can easily knock off an efreeti, probably in one round.  So you can say, with perfect honesty, "you will grant me your three wishes.  If I don't like the outcome of any of them, you will die.  Since this is a calling spell, that means you die permanently."

Efreet aren't the nicest outsiders, but they're not suicidal.  Twisting the intent just means that he gets a Cone of Cold to the head, followed by a bunch of nasty swords and things.  If the relative power levels between the party and the genie were different, this wouldn't be an issue.  I suspect the problem is giving a Wish (much less 3 of them) to a 10 HD outsider.


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## Fieari (Nov 7, 2006)

Infiniti2000 said:
			
		

> No can do, by the RAW.  You can, however, get +1 inherent to each ability for "free".  You really need to follow-up on that, though, as "The creature might later seek revenge."



I'd like to emphasize that if the efreeti really is that much weaker than the PCs, the revenge shouldn't be coming back later and trying to kill them, since that's too easily solved, but rather looking for other people to get revenge on them instead, and/or going around messing up their plans (impersonating them, trashing their reputation, impersonating allies of theirs and sending them off on wild goose chases, messing with their stuff in secret, messing with their friends)... that sort of thing.

Make the efreeti a wily little {illegitamate son}.  A potential BBEG, for that matter.


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## darthkilmor (Nov 7, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> <snip> an efreeti isn't exactly a scary monster for them, so they can threaten it with death if it doesn't make with the wishes post-haste.
> <snip>*not* that efreet have dimensional travel abilities. <snip>




So the premise is , "do what we want or we'll kill you" ? Efreeti can simply say "Go for it. My Lord Xceecatyqqwxxo will be most displeased." If they kill him, do as below.
OR
Give them the first three wishes. when they boggle about how it worked, and are busy thinking up all the free stuff they want, have a couple dozens genies plane shift in and start heading over to their locality. Hopefully you can ilicit a "teleport, teleport, anywhere but here!!" out of your offending wizard. Let them find out the hard way why every 12th lvl + wizard doesn't have beefed up stats.

And, Efreeti can plane shift.


Or just say "make an K:The Planes check. You dont think this would be a very good idea. In fact, you're pretty sure it would be a very bad idea."


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## AntiStateQuixote (Nov 7, 2006)

Fieari said:
			
		

> Even so, don't let them get away with this sort of thing.  I'll bet there's a King of efreeti somewhere that might get pissed off that his servants are being used in this way...
> 
> And if it takes multiple efreeti to do this feat, I'd bet an uprising would be leveled against them sooner, rather than later.



This would be my solution . . . let them have the _wishes_.  I doubt they could get more than a few ability scores boosted (figure 1 wizard casting two, maybe three planar bindings per day) this way before King Efreet and his fiery badboys bring bloody burning doom down on the mortals who had the audacity to try to enslave the efreeti race.

And if they cry about it point out that they were the ones that were trying to break the game, not you.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 7, 2006)

Fieari said:
			
		

> I'd like to emphasize that if the efreeti really is that much weaker than the PCs, the revenge shouldn't be coming back later and trying to kill them, since that's too easily solved, but rather looking for other people to get revenge on them instead, and/or going around messing up their plans (impersonating them, trashing their reputation, impersonating allies of theirs and sending them off on wild goose chases, messing with their stuff in secret, messing with their friends)... that sort of thing.
> 
> Make the efreeti a wily little {illegitamate son}.  A potential BBEG, for that matter.



You know, efreet aren't capable of getting to the material plane under their own power, so it might be difficult to cause trouble.  But assuming they do manage to get there and start mucking around with their reputations, I can just see my players' reactions.

"Oh, hey, someone's working against us.  [Commune] it's those efreet that we made cast all those Wish spells.  [Scry] [Teleport] [repeat]  Problem solved, and we get XP.  Yay!


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## AuraSeer (Nov 7, 2006)

FTR, note that efreeti do have a dimensional travel abilities. All genies can _plane shift_ at will, to the Astral plane, the Prime Material, or any of the Elementals. (This is easy to overlook; it's under the general Genie heading.) But _dimensional anchor_ probably stops that anyhow.

The easiest way to prevent cheap wishing is by using the line in _planar binding_ that says, "impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to." The DM can declare that asking an Efreet to grant wishes under duress is unreasonable. Perhaps, for cultural reasons, Efreet take _wish_es extremely seriously, and flatly refuse to give them out except on their own volition. Binding an efreet to grant a wish would be like binding a paladin to sell his grandmother into slavery; he'll fight to the death first.

If you don't like that idea, then you can revert to the old standby of Turnabout Is Fair Play. That's a bit more complicated, but it has an air of poetic justice that I quite like.

It starts with a mental picture. Imagine that ordinary human NPCs are being magically kidnapped from the middle of a large city in your game world. Every so often a citizen suddenly vanishes without trace, is gone for a day or two, and then just as suddenly reappears in the spot he left. All these victims tell the same story about extraplanar spellcasters who imprisoned them, threatened them with death, and forced them to work as slaves for a short time. 

A few people never come back at all. Magical divinations reveal that they attempted to resist their captors, and were slain.

If this started happening in a major human city, the authorities would be understandably upset about it. What is their most probable response? They hire some adventurers, of course!

Your players may get a couple of wishes out of their first couple of kidnappings, but they're in for a rude shock when a party of genie adventurers _scry_ them and _teleport_ into their base in the middle of the night. A couple of raging Efreeti Brb10 are quite a handful, especially when backed up by their buddies of other classes.

In order to avoid being a total bastard, you may want to give your PCs warning of this ahead of time. Tell the wizard's player that he has heard of Bad Things happening to people who abuse outsiders-- all of them end up dead under mysterious circumstances. If he insists on going ahead with the scheme anyway, he deserves the beatdown that he's gonna get.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 7, 2006)

darthkilmor said:
			
		

> And, Efreeti can plane shift.



Whoops.  Missed that because it's not in spell-like abilities.  (why not?)




> Or just say "make an K:The Planes check. You dont think this would be a very good idea. In fact, you're pretty sure it would be a very bad idea."



Yeah, I suppose that revenge is probably the best way to go.  Lots of nasty, firey revenge.


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## Wolfwood2 (Nov 7, 2006)

I know you aren't looking for house rules, but the smallest possible house rule you could make to change this would be to alter it to:

"1/day - grant up to three *limited* wishes (to non-genies only)"

A limited wish will still do a heck of a lot and be pretty powerful, without being quite as game-breaking as a full wish.  And one could easily say that Efreets themselves don't usually bother making the distinction when they say "wish", because it makes them seem more powerful.

EDIT: And let me say that as a player, I would far prefer the "limited wish" solution to a bunch of stuff about revenge-crazed Efreeti to correct what is really an out of game problem.  I mean, if Efreeti revenge is the problem then why not just offer a Efreet a really sweet deal?  Obviously there are circumstances under which an Efreeti *should * offer a mortal three wishes per day, or why give them the ability?


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## Felix (Nov 7, 2006)

Disregarding balance, I think the PCs have found a sound and valid way to obtain +3 to all their stats, if not +5.

However, there are two kinds of consequences:

If the conjurer was polite and offered wealth and riches equal to the value of the wishes, then I imagine the efreeti would be more than happy to oblige him. This route reduces emmensely the amount of wealth the PCs own and so everything is happy here.

If the conjurer threatens execution, then he will earn emnity from that efreeti and likely the efreeti he associates with. Note that these will be _noble_ efreeti, and I can't imagine any of them being pleased at being put in that circumstance. Word will get around and the conjurer will find himself the object of attention of the City of Brass.

Either by making the PCs much poorer or by the PCs incurring wrath, the situation is fine and the consequences balanced; I'd allow them to add inherent bonuses to their abilities without any malicious Wish-perverting or House Ruling.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 7, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Disregarding balance, I think the PCs have found a sound and valid way to obtain +3 to all their stats, if not +5.



 No, definitely not.  How do you refute my post above?  It's at most +1 to all stats.


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## zeb.hillard (Nov 7, 2006)

Sample situation:

Bob the efreet enjoys his time at home, doing efreetish things.  One day, Bob is summoned to a strange plane he only visits occasionally, and he be imprisoned by the will of an upstart arcanist who forces him to comply with a series of powerful wishes to enhance his captor.  Bob willingly complies under the condition that he will not be harmed, he even acts cordially and assists the arcanist with proper phrasings for his wish, so that no harm comes to his captor.

Bob then is sent back home, where he instantly plane-shifts to a location he had set up for just this occasion.  He appears in front of a young man, the fifteenth of his line, and speaks with him.

"I, the almighty Efreet Bob, have come to collect my dues from your lineage.  The riches and splendor I have granted you finally have come to cost.  Adventurer's have exacted a terrible price from me, and I need you to speak several desires you have that will bring them ill."

The noble, who has lived his entire life knowing that one day the honorable efreet Bob may come to ask something of him, does so willingly and promtly.  His life was forged by this efreet so that they both could live in safety, and he will not want to see that end.

He wraps his tiny little human hands around one of the efreet's fingers and proclaims "I have captured you, mighty Bob!  He who possesses a name no mortal can pronounce nor hear, due to it's sheer majestic magnitude!  I wish for you to end the lives of those that wronged you, destroy them in mean and vicious ways that will make their mothers weep and their children strike their name from their books of lineage...make atrocities linked with their name, and force them to rue the very day they thought to trifle with your power!"

And then...the adventurer's?  Well...quite bad things happened to them...since the efreet has the choice to interpret the wish any way he wants....


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## pallandrome (Nov 7, 2006)

Yeah, if a genie with the ability to grant wishes can't mess with the players, who can?


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## Hypersmurf (Nov 7, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> Whoops.  Missed that because it's not in spell-like abilities.  (why not?)




For the same reason that you won't find the description of 'Protective Aura' or 'Tongues' under Astral Deva, Planetar, or Solar; nor will you find the description of 'Blindsight' under Black Pudding or Gelatinous Cube; nor will you find the description of 'Summon Mephit' under Air Mephit or Dust Mephit.

It's already defined under the main entry... in this case, 'Genie'.

-Hyp.


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## Wolfwood2 (Nov 7, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> If the conjurer was polite and offered wealth and riches equal to the value of the wishes, then I imagine the efreeti would be more than happy to oblige him. This route reduces emmensely the amount of wealth the PCs own and so everything is happy here.




But what is the value of the wishes?  Essentially it's the value of the Efreeti's time, plus mark-up.  Only meta-game considerations say that it needs to be valued equivalently to the cost of a wizard casting a wish.  Why should the Efreet charge enormously more than for the use of any of his other 3/day spell-like abilties.

Whereas my "limited wish" solution fixes the problem, while still allowing the efreeti to do the "grant three wishes for a mortal" thing they are *supposed* to be doing.

I say again that there should be circumstances under which efreeti are using their 3/day wishes at the behest of human beings.  Otherwise what's the point of giving them those abilities, with that limitation, in the first place?



			
				zeb-hillard said:
			
		

> He wraps his tiny little human hands around one of the efreet's fingers and proclaims "I have captured you, mighty Bob! He who possesses a name no mortal can pronounce nor hear, due to it's sheer majestic magnitude! I wish for you to end the lives of those that wronged you, destroy them in mean and vicious ways that will make their mothers weep and their children strike their name from their books of lineage...make atrocities linked with their name, and force them to rue the very day they thought to trifle with your power!"
> 
> And then...the adventurer's? Well...quite bad things happened to them...since the efreet has the choice to interpret the wish any way he wants....




Whenever I hear little DM-lesson fantasies like this, I have a fantasy of my own.  I have a fantasy of being a player who just bulls ahead and lets the DM destroy my PC.  And then afterwards, I'd ask him,

"But who really lost more here, oh DM?  I can make a new character in an hour or so, and it will be fun and interesting to do that.  You, on the other hand, have to deal with the disruption in your campaign and ending the story we were collectively telling on a sour note.  You have to be the one to worry about fitting my new character in and abandoning all the plot threads from my old character.  All because you refused to address an out of game problem, out of game.  So good luck with that."


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## Jack Simth (Nov 7, 2006)

Fieari said:
			
		

> I'd like to emphasize that if the efreeti really is that much weaker than the PCs, the revenge shouldn't be coming back later and trying to kill them, since that's too easily solved, but rather looking for other people to get revenge on them instead, and/or going around messing up their plans (impersonating them, trashing their reputation, impersonating allies of theirs and sending them off on wild goose chases, messing with their stuff in secret, messing with their friends)... that sort of thing.
> 
> Make the efreeti a wily little {illegitamate son}.  A potential BBEG, for that matter.




BBEG: What are you doing inside my sanctum?
Efreeti: Well, I heard we have an enemy in common.... got a few little chores that need doing?  Wish and it will be so..... three today, three tomorrow, three the next..... for, oh, about a week, provided you can get our mutual enemies killed by then.


The one you have to watch out for?  

PC: Sorry for the rough call.  I hear competition is stiff in the city of brass.  Everyone's looking for an edge.  Now, I know all y'all have the ability to grant little weakling mortals like me three wishes on a daily basis.  Now, you can't use them for yourself... at least, not directly.  Now, here's the deal: You either tell me you aren't interested, and our deal is concluded, or, you grant me three wishes, which I'll use to Wish up 25,000 standard gold coins of the realm each time, into different piles.  Once I've got the gold from your Wishes to my satisfaction, I'll give you back two of the piles, keeping only one third of the total as a handling fee.  50,000 gp ought to be quite handy in the constant vying for status, no?  Oh, and purely up to you, if you want me to do this again some other time, you can leave me your name, and I'll be sure to Call you again at a later date.

How do you say no to that in character... other than inventing things for it, that is?

Edit: Oh, and if he fights you?  Don't kill him.  Dismiss him.  Quickened Dispel Magic, if needed, to remove the Dimensional Anchor you put in place.


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## GwydapLlew (Nov 7, 2006)

My take on this situation is ... meh?

In the legends, genies are constantly summoned and bound to perform services, fulfill wishes and make the binder's life easier. Why should it be any different in D&D?

If a character starts to abuse the situation, then the various Genie rulers will certainly notice - that is one of the risks the sha'ir class (from al-Quadim) takes when he uses his class features. Eventually the efreet will arrange for the offender to be removed, and all that time and energy will be for naught.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 7, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> Whenever I hear little DM-lesson fantasies like this, I have a fantasy of my own.  I have a fantasy of being a player who just bulls ahead and lets the DM destroy my PC.  And then afterwards, I'd ask him,
> 
> "But who really lost more here, oh DM?  I can make a new character in an hour or so, and it will be fun and interesting to do that.  You, on the other hand, have to deal with the disruption in your campaign and ending the story we were collectively telling on a sour note.  You have to be the one to worry about fitting my new character in and abandoning all the plot threads from my old character.  All because you refused to address an out of game problem, out of game.  So good luck with that."



And you went into the situation cynically hoping that I would simply put up with this exploit for the sake of my game.  You have demonstrated that you have an awful opinion of your fellow gamers and are essentially just trying to have fun at everyone's expense.  See, the thing is, you can't just roll up a new character.  That's because you're getting the black die.  Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, jerk.

I don't think my players would pull something this juvenile.  Which is why I'm looking for a nice fair way to dissuade them of the idea.


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## Wolfwood2 (Nov 7, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> And you went into the situation cynically hoping that I would simply put up with this exploit for the sake of my game.  You have demonstrated that you have an awful opinion of your fellow gamers and are essentially just trying to have fun at everyone's expense.  See, the thing is, you can't just roll up a new character.  That's because you're getting the black die.  Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, jerk.




Hah, and then I take back control of the fantasy and all the other players get up and follow me out, giving the DM the finger on the way, because it was the DM who was the jerk.  Win!    

Seriously, my point is that if you put it entirely in terms of in-game difficulty with the request, the the players are liable to take it as a challenge rather than a OOG request.  I mean, when you put the key that can save the kingdom inside the keep of the invincible overlord, guarded by three five-headed dragons, that's not a signal that the PCs shouldn't try to get the key.

It's a signal that the PCs should be very _clever_ in getting the key.  It's a challenge, and it's no shame to them to take up the challenge.



> I don't think my players would pull something this juvenile.  Which is why I'm looking for a nice fair way to dissuade them of the idea.




"Please don't do that."  The 'please' makes it nice and not having the NPCs do it either makes it fair.

Or you could just ask them, "I don't know, that seems like a problem in the game.  Why don't you tell me why people don't do that," and then let them explain it.


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## Artoomis (Nov 7, 2006)

Infiniti2000 said:
			
		

> No, definitely not.  How do you refute my post above?  It's at most +1 to all stats.




No...  If you are willing to pay full price, then you could bargain with FIVE djinn to get them to cast the wishes one right after the other.

Seems okay to me.  It will only cost about 144,000 gp per stat, right?  

That's about the total wealth of of a 14th level character.  Seems fair enough.


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## Artoomis (Nov 7, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> But what is the value of the wishes?  Essentially it's the value of the Efreeti's time, plus mark-up.  Only meta-game considerations say that it needs to be valued equivalently to the cost of a wizard casting a wish.  Why should the Efreet charge enormously more than for the use of any of his other 3/day spell-like abilties...





Because he is not stupid and knows their value, perhaps?


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 7, 2006)

> Whereas my "limited wish" solution fixes the problem...



 IMO, using the rule for conjuration (summoning) as a house rule for conjuration (calling) fixes the problem.

"A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have, and it refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilities that would cost XP if they were spells."


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Nov 8, 2006)

I'd simply say, with utmost frankness to my players, that the reasons for it being a bad idea are entirely RP reasons and that I, myself, don't want to turn the campaign into:  "Genie Wars, the RPG".

I usually find it most effective to address the fourth wall at this point and just avoid it altogether.  The people I play with aren't jerks, I'm not a jerk, we can all agree that a genie from a race of genies ... the genies have probably figured out how to keep this from becoming a problem.  Usually its a horror story.  Wishmaster, etc.  

Same method I use to keep CN from being a problem and to keep people from playing Evil characters.  Sure, we can go around and around spending our game nights playing out how a nation or city gets revenge on evil characters or play through the party getting tired of the CN crazy guy ... but why.  

I'd say it's probably like the slippery slope of the Dark Side.  Efreet have those Wishes so they can seduce mortals into their own plans.  Probably, Efreet sit around rubbing their hands together waiting for somebody to call them up for wishes.  And that, more than "we could kill this genie in one round!" aught to scare the characters/players into not doing it.  Calling up timeless evil to make deals for personal power is pretty much the definition of Really Bad Idea.

--fje


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## Sejs (Nov 8, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> One of my players just informed me of a cheeseball way of enhancing his ability scores: planar binding.




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


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## Storyteller01 (Nov 8, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> One of my players just informed me of a cheeseball way of enhancing his ability scores: planar binding.  This 6th level spell can be used to call an efreeti, who can grant 3 wishes.  Assuming that the party is already 11th or 12th level, an efreeti isn't exactly a scary monster for them, so they can threaten it with death if it doesn't make with the wishes post-haste.  The wishes are used to increase ability scores in the manner that Wish is able to do.  At the point where more than 3 wishes are needed, a second efreeti can be called.





Efreeti are lawful evil and usually bound to a pasha or noble, however tenuously. When they make their 'request' tell them "I have swore my service and life to my pasha. Granting these wishes will only enable you to harm him (you figure out the details for this, but the 'if you'll hurt me you'll hurt him' senario is a good start). I will not grant your request."

Or...

'By order of my pasha, I may only grant wishes to those he finds worthy. Would you care to speak with him?'

And as far as I can tell it's legit. You're playing the character as per it's alignment, making it an impossible or unreasonable command for the efreeti. You threaten death, but what will his boss (who probably has access to the necessary resurrection spells for outsiders) do to him if he grants them?


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## Storyteller01 (Nov 8, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

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





Not in the case of the genie. 

Per the SRD (emphasis mine):
_A genie can enter any of the elemental planes, the Astral Plane, or the Material Plane. This ability transports the genie and up to eight other creatures, provided they all link hands with the genie. It is otherwise similar to the spell of the same name (caster level 13th). _


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## Storyteller01 (Nov 8, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> But what is the value of the wishes?  Essentially it's the value of the Efreeti's time, plus mark-up.  Only meta-game considerations say that it needs to be valued equivalently to the cost of a wizard casting a wish.  Why should the Efreet charge enormously more than for the use of any of his other 3/day spell-like abilties.





The same reason you mark up anything... 

People will pay that much for it.


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## Felix (Nov 8, 2006)

I2k said:
			
		

> No, definitely not. How do you refute my post above? It's at most +1 to all stats.



If the genie can cast _Wish_ 3 times a day, and he does it in 3 successive rounds, then wouldn't that render a +3 bonus to a stat?

EDIT:

Lesser Planar Binding
"Once the requested service is completed, the creature need only so inform you to be instantly sent back whence it came."

Note that IF you consider the act of _Wishing_ an inherent bonus to be one act, and also argue that it is not possible within the negotiating stage of Planar Binding to contract for multiple acts, then this sentence makes it _possible_ for the genie to perform one act (the first of three _Wishes_) and yet remain present, allowing it to perform two other acts (two more _Wishes_) upon the conjurer. Note that the genie is not sent back when the act is completed, but when the conjurer is informed of its completion.

Why the genie might want to do so does not matter; what matters is that it is _possible_ for the genie to do it.

And so I submit that it is _possible_ to gain more than a +1 to a stat from a Planar Bound genie.

Does that satisfy?


			
				Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> But what is the value of the wishes?



How should I know? It's the value agreed upon by the genie and the conjurer; it will depend upon the respective barganing abilities of those characters. The point is, the _Wish_ holds great value for the PC. The genie will know this, and thereby be able to demand a great deal in return for his services.

The actual amount of the "great deal" is not a meta-construct; it's what's determined in the negotiating phase of the Planar Binding spell. It's an in-character development.

The metagame aspect is that the PC will be forced to either consent to the amount demanded by the genie, or resort to threatening the genie's life. If he chooses to pay, the PC's resources are reduced by the value of the bonus to the ability score: Balanced. If he chooses to threaten, the PC's life will become the subject of frequent assualts, thereby increasing the danger to his person in an amount relative to the benefit he has recieved: Balanced.

There's no need for house-ruling or Wish-perversion; there are automatic balancing mechanisms that will take care of the problem for you Dr. Awk.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 8, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Does that satisfy?



 No, because I disagree with the following:


			
				Felix said:
			
		

> If the genie can cast _Wish_ 3 times a day, and he does it in 3 successive rounds, then wouldn't that render a +3 bonus to a stat?



 It's "up to" 3 wishes, not 3 wishes.  It's up to the DM at that point to limit it.  But, let's not limit it to less than 3.  The next problem is that planar binding is "one service."  Assuredly, that's rather ambiguous, but I suggest that it's reasonable that one wish == one service.  Three wishes == three services.  This means it will require some amount of time between services and thus you cannot gain 3 successive wishes.



> ...
> Why the genie might want to do so does not matter; what matters is that it is _possible_ for the genie to do it.
> 
> And so I submit that it is _possible_ to gain more than a +1 to a stat from a Planar Bound genie.



 But if the three wishes are separate services, don't you think that the bargaining (or whatever) in between would negate the "immediate succession" requirements for inherent bonuses?


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## Felix (Nov 8, 2006)

> But if the three wishes are separate services, don't you think that the bargaining (or whatever) in between would negate the "immediate succession" requirements for inherent bonuses?



You said that the maximum possible inherent bonus from a genie's 3 wishes was +1.

Is it, or is it not, _possible_ for the genie to simply _decide_ to use his 3 _Wishes_ in succession in order to provide a +3 inherent bonus?

The argument over whether or not the genie _will_ do it is something else, and specious if it is not first possible for him to do it.

So:

Is it possible for a Planar Bound genie to use 3 _Wishes_ to grant a +3 inherent bonus? Yes or no?


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## Sejs (Nov 8, 2006)

Storyteller01 said:
			
		

> Not in the case of the genie.
> 
> Per the SRD (emphasis mine):
> _A genie can enter any of the elemental planes, the Astral Plane, or the Material Plane. This ability transports the genie and up to eight other creatures, provided they all link hands with the genie. It is otherwise similar to the spell of the same name (caster level 13th). _



That's not exactly a preclusion, more a complication.

Grapple the to-be planar kidnap victim.  Establishing a pin would seem sufficient to meet the linked hand requirement.


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## FreeTheSlaves (Nov 8, 2006)

It does appear that by the rules there are some grounds for allowing a player to do this. I could argue the rules but really my objection is just that a hard to get reward is being gained far too easy. In some respects planar binding it is a bit like polymorph in that its power is limited by whatever monster books are available.

My response would be two fold. 

Firstly, outside the game I would inform the players that activities that in my opinion would allow the aquisition of significant power many levels (i.e. more than 2 levels) before they are suitable, will ruin the campaign. So that's the bottom line. Getting infinite wishes at level <15 is simply just fatal to the campaign and their favourite characters in that campaign.

Secondly, I think that this sort of reward would be more suitable for around 18th level+. So I would make it so. I would do something like have an Efreet Raja control it's subjects and particularly their granted wishes, ensuring that they are used to ultimately benefit Efreetidom. If an Efreet's wishes are not used appropriately the offending Efreet is scried, divined, summoned and punished. The co-offending mortals then get a lovely gate spell opening next to them and an EL18 punitive party of Efreetikind falling upon their heads. Planar knowledge, sages and bards can all warn of this for the conjuror that indulges in the most rudimentary research practices.

Basically, the players and the characters will be warned of my approach, and the activity will still be allowed but at a more appropriate level.


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## Moorcrys (Nov 8, 2006)

Couldn't the efreeti simply grant the three wishes to be released from service, return to its fiery domain, wait a day, and then ask a non-genie ally to use its three wishes the following day to undo the three wishes it made the day before? Or plane shift to some farmer tending his fields in the middle of nowhere and threaten untold pain or even future fulfillment of that farmer's wishes to undo the wishes the efreet made the previous day? I mean if the PCs are going to be snarky about it, why can't the efreet?

As weak as the efreet may be to the PCs, there are a lot of beings a whole lot weaker than the efreet who can be manipulated or simply threatened into undoing the PCs actions that were not made in good faith... so the PCs get a day or so of bumped stats. And an enemy. And some guy in the middle of nowhere gets his hoe turned into a beautiful stepford wife and a stawpile into a mound of gold for helping out a wronged and miffed evil extra-planar being of fire. Meh.

There need be no genie warfare...


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## IcyCool (Nov 8, 2006)

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._


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## Wolfwood2 (Nov 8, 2006)

Moorcrys said:
			
		

> Couldn't the efreeti simply grant the three wishes to be released from service, return to its fiery domain, wait a day, and then ask a non-genie ally to use its three wishes the following day to undo the three wishes it made the day before? Or plane shift to some farmer tending his fields in the middle of nowhere and threaten untold pain or even future fulfillment of that farmer's wishes to undo the wishes the efreet made the previous day? I mean if the PCs are going to be snarky about it, why can't the efreet?




I don't know, why is the efreeti being such a dick about it?  Is he under some sort of compulsion to thwart the PCs or what?

I would think that an efreeti would be happy to have use of his wishes as the service requested.  It's a heck of a lot safer than "go fight that giant monster" and he can get it over and done with a lot quicker too.  Throw in some minor magic item as a bonus, and it's a pretty sweet deal for him.

Seriously, would you expect the same reaction from the efreeti if the PCs called it up and asked it to fight a monster?  How about to serve as their butler for a day when they're having a feast, to impress the neighboring king?  What about to spend an hour conversing with the party wizard about the elemental planes so that he can increase his Knowledge: Planes ranks?  All of these things are way more of a hassle and time drain than using his wishes.

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


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## nameless (Nov 8, 2006)

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.


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## Artoomis (Nov 8, 2006)

nameless said:
			
		

> 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.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Nov 8, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> 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


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## IcyCool (Nov 8, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> 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.


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## Owen K.C. Stephens (Nov 8, 2006)

"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!


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 8, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> 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.
> 
> ...



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.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 8, 2006)

IcyCool said:
			
		

> 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.


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## IcyCool (Nov 8, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

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




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


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Nov 8, 2006)

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


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## IcyCool (Nov 8, 2006)

Found it.

Fiend Folio, Quarut, CR 17.



			
				Fiend Folio said:
			
		

> 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.


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## Sejs (Nov 8, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> 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?




 It's not so much the reason why its summoned that'd irk the genie - it's the fact that normally when you bind a creature you negotiate with it, paying it something that it wants in exchange for the value of its service.  In this case, the party's just talking about binding the efreet and telling it to make with the wishes or we'll @#$%ing kill you.  

That's what would warrant the hit squad.  The extortion and the hubris.


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## Felix (Nov 8, 2006)

Sejs said:
			
		

> it's the fact that normally when you bind a creature you negotiate with it, paying it something that it wants in exchange for the value of its service.



Which is something that HeapThaumaturgist is largely ignoring in post #49.

IF you _Wish_ for a manual +5, and IF it is strictly permissable by the rules, THEN the genie is going to want an equivalent amount of compensation. This will reduce the PC's resources by as much as he is increasing it with the Manual.

So why, _why_ would you search for reasons to send extraplanar hit-squads after PCs that legitimately use the spells at their disposal?


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## Quartz (Nov 8, 2006)

Can I suggest a simpler solution? Simply dock the player 5000 XP per _Wish_; the Effreet is using the character's sould to power the Wish.


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## Old Drew Id (Nov 8, 2006)

As long as the PC's pay fair prices for the wishes, this would work and would not be a problem. 

As soon as they tried the "do it or we kill you" tactic, I'd allow it to work the first time they tried it. But...

The next morning, when they go to prepare the spell again, they find that the spell is no longer on their known spells list. During the night, an efreet wished for them to be forever unable to cast that spell. 

The PC's were clever, and they got three wishes out of the deal. My campaign ought to be able to handle that without crashing. Let the game world responded accordingly. No need for drawn-out interplanar revenge plots, etc. The efreet just makes sure they don't do it again, and moves on. Probably happens to him every couple of years anyway, and this is his standard response. 

If they try to overcome the limitation and go after it again, then the efreet will actually get upset and take further steps. Again, he would do as they wish the first day, but then the next morning they would all wake up cursed, polymorphed, in the Abyss, all of the above, etc. At that point it's not the PC's being clever, it's the players trying to abuse the system.


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## Artoomis (Nov 8, 2006)

Old Drew Id said:
			
		

> As long as the PC's pay fair prices for the wishes, this would work and would not be a problem.
> 
> As soon as they tried the "do it or we kill you" tactic, I'd allow it to work the first time they tried it. But...
> 
> ...





Cool

Do they have a Bard in the party?  Perhaps he's heard of a story like this?


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## thorian (Nov 8, 2006)

Infinite wishes are easily obtainable without resorting to worrying about the semantics of planar binding.  As soon as a character has 8400gp, he has essentially unlimited, free wishes at his disposal.  Here is how it goes:

1)  Purchase a _candle of invocation_.
2)  Use the ability of the _candle of invocation_ to cast a _gate_ spell, and call an efreeti.
3)  As part of the _gate_ spell, command the efreeti to use his three wishes to wish for the following:  1 – a _candle of invocation_, 2 – whatever you want, 3 – whatever you want.

If you want multiple wishes all at once, just make wishes 2 and 3 for a _candle of invocation_, and gate in two efreeti for six wishes.  You can repeat this ad infinitum.


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## Nail (Nov 9, 2006)

Old Drew Id said:
			
		

> The next morning, when they go to prepare the spell again, they find that the spell is no longer on their known spells list. During the night, an efreet wished for them to be forever unable to cast that spell.



The affected PC should get a saving throw to avoid the effect of the effreet's wish.  If not, then be prepared to have the PC's wish the BBEG dead...no save.


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## Nail (Nov 9, 2006)

...and: Why does the efreet get to _wish_ for a greater effect than what's written in the spell description, but doesn't have to deal with:



			
				SRD-Spells-Wish said:
			
		

> You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)


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## SteveC (Nov 9, 2006)

Here's how I would handle this. When the character summons the efreet, I'd have it appear with great reverance. When asked to provide three wishes "or else!" Here's what I'd have it say:

_"Nope, sorry, doesn't work that way. Here's the deal, and by giving you a rundown on how this works, I'm giving you something for free. This is the last time that will happen: everything else you ask of me comes with a price.

So you're right, you have the power to kill me here and now. By being able to summon and bind me this effectively, that's self-evidently true.

However, if you do that, many people you're close to and hold dear will die. My fellow efreeti will retaliate against those who are closest to you, and, quite obviously, least able to protect themselves. If you try this again, they'll come after you. Not directly, mind you, but sideways. By that I mean, from the looks of you, all of you need to sleep and take care of other...mortal functions, shall we say. You'll die in a very embaressing and painful way.

But I see you're starting to get upset, so allow me to explain the why of all of this. You see, you're not the first person to think of this. In fact, just about everyone knows the legends of our kind and how we grant wishes to mortals. When that kind of information gets out, everyone wants to get in on the act. Wealth? Powerful magic? Just for the asking? Everybody wants to sign up for that deal. Everybody that includes people who are your enemies at the moment I might point out. You think that "evil overlord" you're looking for didn't think of summoning me to give him just the same sort of help? Well he did--they all do.

So the thing is, if we didn't get together and protect ourselves as a group, we'd just be answering summons for wishes all day long. More than that, some people who are able to summon us aren't as nice as you are. I mean you actually gave me the choice of helping you out without actually trying to kill me first! Many people we deal with, both on your plane and on others, aren't so nice. So that's why we act this way: out of self preservation and protection.

So here's the deal: I can offer you wishes, advice, guidance...you name it. The thing is, it comes with a price. If I don't charge you that price, even if I happen to like you, I get into very serious trouble with the powers that be. How do you think that some of us happen to end up in lamps for hundreds of years?

So if you're interested in my help, tell me what you want and I'll give you the price list. If you can meet the price, well, we can do business. Heck, I can even throw in a way for you to get in touch with me for free if you become a good enough customer. What's it going to be?"_

The ball's in their court at that point. If you think about it, this is the only real reason why creatures who can grant wishes aren't all locked up in the BBEG's tower making him impossible to kill...

--Steve


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## pawsplay (Nov 9, 2006)

The solution I favor is taking away that "to non-genies only" crap and simply giving them wish 3/day. Is there some reason a genie needs a human, a quasit, or a halfling to wish for something before it can snap its fingers and wield its mighty magic?  That would probably warrant a change in CR, of course.

It's interesting... efreet don't get to grant wishes to others, 3/day. They actually, 1/day, can grant three wishes (to non-genies). So it is correct that you could get a +3 inherent bonus, and incorrect you are limited to +1. 

What you actually want to do is to get granted three wishes, then granted three wishes by another efreet. Then you use them one after another, granting you a +5 inherent bonus and a fancy, expensive item of your choice.


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## Three_Haligonians (Nov 9, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> Whenever I hear little DM-lesson fantasies like this, I have a fantasy of my own.  I have a fantasy of being a player who just bulls ahead and lets the DM destroy my PC.  And then afterwards, I'd ask him,
> 
> "But who really lost more here, oh DM?  I can make a new character in an hour or so, and it will be fun and interesting to do that.  You, on the other hand, have to deal with the disruption in your campaign and ending the story we were collectively telling on a sour note.  You have to be the one to worry about fitting my new character in and abandoning all the plot threads from my old character.  All because you refused to address an out of game problem, out of game.  So good luck with that."





Ok, first of all, not everyone plays to "tell a collective story". Second of all, if this were about "punishing" the players for trying to break the system there doesn't need to be any big rigamarole... the DM can simply say a cinder block flies out of the sky and smacks the PC in the head - killing him instantly.

What is going on here, I believe, is that the OP is trying to figure out what the consequences of the PC's actions will be. When they do stuff, stuff happens back.  Just like a group of PC's who decide to kill eveyone in the tavern because they.. I don't know.. can't get free rooms. City Guards come to arrest them and it escalates from there because actions have reactions.

As to the actual point, I agree with the idea that if the PCs attempt to strike a deal with the efreet - they can get their wish (although I agree Infiniti2000, they can only get a +1 out of the deal). If they decide to go down the extortion road, well then, that's when the reaction comes in.

If they really push for +3 or more. Have the Efreet create whatever tome or manual they need (from the DMG). Follow the rules for creating magic items under the _wish_ spell entry and have the XP come out of the character. Chances are, they will drop a level or two which may fix your "but my PCs are too strong for an efreet to be a threat" problem.



			
				Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> "Oh, hey, someone's working against us. [Commune] it's those efreet that we made cast all those Wish spells. [Scry] [Teleport] [repeat] Problem solved, and we get XP. Yay!




See, this is the same thing as the tavern example from above. Eventually something -stronger- than the PCs is going to come looking for answers... or worse.


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## Moorcrys (Nov 9, 2006)

Wolfwood2 said:
			
		

> I don't know, why is the efreeti being such a dick about it?  Is he under some sort of compulsion to thwart the PCs or what?
> 
> I would think that an efreeti would be happy to have use of his wishes as the service requested.  It's a heck of a lot safer than "go fight that giant monster" and he can get it over and done with a lot quicker too.  Throw in some minor magic item as a bonus, and it's a pretty sweet deal for him.
> 
> ...




I guess the original post tipped me off... where the PCs threaten a lawful evil being with death unless he does what they say, with no compensation for his 'gift' other than his life. Seems like a pretty good reason for the efreet to be a 'dick' about it, don't you think?  

There are plenty of ways to negotiate for services from a powerful being, that isn't what this particular group seems to be interested in. And there is fair payment as well. This particular group seems to be interested in taking advantage of the rules to empower themselves -- in essence summoning and then threatening a bunch of wish-granting creatures that they know they're stronger than to get at least +3 inherent bonuses to all of their stats... without paying for it with experience or money. They're in essence using a lower level spell to gain multiple castings of a 9th level spell... higher since they do not pay the XP cost. And once they've gotten their stat boosts, will it stop there? Are you kidding? If I got away with that, I would have multiple planar binding spells on hand for any occasion, since I could bypass almost any obstace or have thousands of gold pieces or any number or magical items at my disposal simply by summoning an efreet and threatening it for wishes. It's a game breaker, and a loophole, and people are simply trying to come up with creative ways to close it without endless conflict and without you having to just say, "You can't do it because you can't do it."

So you either take it for granted that anyone of the appropriate level who has access to planar binding spells has access to unlimited wishes (or at the very least three per day), or you assume that intelligent beings who have knowledge of spells like this and who have a long history of having to deal with mortals trying to screw them in this way have devised many, many ways to protect themselves from such greedy tactics. I lean towards the latter assumption.


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## Felix (Nov 9, 2006)

Moorcrys said:
			
		

> Seems like a pretty good reason for the efreet to be a 'dick' about it, don't you think?



I believe that in his post Wolfwood was responding to suggestions for perverting _Wish_ regardless of the prize offered to the genie, and not in the specific case of the PCs threatening the genie's life.


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## Moorcrys (Nov 9, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> I believe that in his post Wolfwood was responding to suggestions for perverting _Wish_ regardless of the prize offered to the genie, and not in the specific case of the PCs threatening the genie's life.




He was actually responding to my post... and I was responding to the original. Or at least I'm the one he chose to quote.


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## Felix (Nov 9, 2006)

Moorcrys said:
			
		

> He was actually responding to my post... and I was responding to the original. Or at least I'm the one he chose to quote.



I went back and re-read; you have the right of it. 

And your addendum to that post clears it up fairly well: as long as the PCs make nice with the genie, the genie won't have reason to be a prick.


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 9, 2006)

I think if PCs wanted to do this in my game, the first time the Efreet would say "fair game, I'll grant you the wishes. But be warned and look up the history of azhad al-mahood and fritz behinger".

Looking up the names (or know:arcane or bardic knowledge or legend lore etc) will reveal that these are people who attempted to bind efreet after efreet to 'mine' them for wishes, and it raised the ire of the rulers of the efreet who exacted a terrible toll on them, their families, friends and pets.

Thus the PCs get three wishes for being clever and taking some risks with the spell, but have had fair warning that that when people have tried to abuse the ability in the past there have been no survivors.

Cheers


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## Thurbane (Nov 10, 2006)

I think it is fair to assume that if this is a valid tactic, then surely in the course of your camapign world's history, some other spellcasting NPCs had exactly the same idea. Perhaps some of them even got away with it.

But you can rest assured that the Efreeti and there allies would have long ago "wised up" to this kind of abuse, and put countermeasures in place...

Perhaps they have a pact with a group of powerful immortal beings on the Prime Material or other plane (Liches, Red Dragons, Demons, Githyanki etc.) that in return for an allotment of Wishes or other service each century, they can call of them to extinguish any spellcaster silly enough to try this "old chestnut".

To be fair to your players, give them a Knowledge: the PLanes, Arcana or History check to have heard about other casters who had the same idea, and were then never seen again...


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## Inconsequenti-AL (Nov 10, 2006)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> I think if PCs wanted to do this in my game, the first time the Efreet would say "fair game, I'll grant you the wishes. But be warned and look up the history of azhad al-mahood and fritz behinger".
> 
> Looking up the names (or know:arcane or bardic knowledge or legend lore etc) will reveal that these are people who attempted to bind efreet after efreet to 'mine' them for wishes, and it raised the ire of the rulers of the efreet who exacted a terrible toll on them, their families, friends and pets.
> 
> ...




I like this answer... 

Apart from the bold bit. The worst stuff always happens to the survivors.


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## Cheiromancer (Nov 10, 2006)

I like Plane Sailing's answer too.  And I might also exact a price sometime down the road; a valuable magic item or gem disappears, in it's place a note (written in molten lead on a sheet of asbestos paper) that says "For services rendered: remember azhad al-mahood and fritz behinger!"  The time when a PC dies would be a good time to collect the debt from any treasure he might currently possess; if he's dead, that could be the last time to collect.  If the party gets high enough level (or rich enough) to be able to get legitimate wishes, this could be another way of repaying the debt.

Actually this could be very useful in balancing treasure and magic items.  Side quests could also be demanded as payment; if used in moderation this could help drive the storyline along.


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## PallidPatience (Nov 10, 2006)

Also remember that, at your option, Planar Binding could work on the PCs if cast from another plane.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 10, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Is it possible for a Planar Bound genie to use 3 _Wishes_ to grant a +3 inherent bonus? Yes or no?



 Talking about a specious argument...it's possible for a genie to just show up, without planar binding, and just grant 3 wishes a day for the next 10 years.

Anything is possible.  Is that what you're looking to hear?  Yes, it's possible to gate in Orcus and ask him nicely for the Ruby Rod.  It's possible he would just give it to you and grant you all of his powers.

There, there's but a fraction of the power you can achieve in a gate spell, just because it's possible.


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## Felix (Nov 10, 2006)

> Talking about a specious argument...it's possible for a genie to just show up, without planar binding, and just grant 3 wishes a day for the next 10 years.



Specious? Hardly; it shows that there is nothing whatsoever that prevents the genie from doing so, were he willing. If it's possible for the genie to show up and grant 3 wishes, consecutively, then how can you claim it is impossible to persuade him to do so?

Not probable, maybe.
Not cheap, surely.
But also not impossible, which you claimed.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 10, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Specious? Hardly; it shows that there is nothing whatsoever that prevents the genie from doing so, were he willing.



 That's the whole point, though, isn't it?  He's not willing.  You can't change the parameters of the debate and then expect everyone to agree.

Yes, it's possible to get three wishes out of the efreeti, and you don't even need any spells or anything.  Just yell out loud and hope there's a friendly one nearby.  Probable? No.  But however infinitesimally improbable, it's still possible.  I call shenanigans on that line of thinking.



			
				Felix said:
			
		

> If it's possible for the genie to show up and grant 3 wishes, consecutively, then how can you claim it is impossible to persuade him to do so?



 Go back to why I said it's impossible, which is because of the method used: planar binding.  The wording is about services and IMO one wish == one service.

In other words, for you to just discount the service wording in the spell description, you might as well discount any other part of the spell that doesn't suit you.


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## Felix (Nov 10, 2006)

I2k said:
			
		

> He's not willing.



Cite the rule that says so and I'll beleive you. 

Planar Binding does not restrict further negotiations for other rewards. Like you said, if the genie were willing, he could grant wishes every day; would he not be willing for sufficient reward?



> IMO one wish == one service.



The ability says: 1/day—grant up to three wishes (to nongenies only).

He can't "grant three wishes", he can "grant up to three" once. His ability to grant wishes is _an_ ability to grant up to three. This peculiarity of the efreet's ability gives this ruling credence, even if you wish to disregard the fact that the genie would be able to do so, properly induced.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 10, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Cite the rule that says so and I'll beleive you.



 Besides the word "trap" sprinkled throughout the spell description like pepperoni on a pizza, try:

*Saving Throw:  	Will negates*



			
				Felix said:
			
		

> Planar Binding does not restrict further negotiations for other rewards. Like you said, if the genie were willing, he could grant wishes every day; would he not be willing for sufficient reward?



 If you want me to agree with you that requiring a reward is another method for negating the 3 free wishes, okay.  That's not what this discussion is about though.  Can the caster gain even a single FREE wish, i.e. not paid for with a reward?



			
				Felix said:
			
		

> The ability says: 1/day—grant up to three wishes (to nongenies only).
> 
> He can't "grant three wishes", he can "grant up to three" once. His ability to grant wishes is _an_ ability to grant up to three. This peculiarity of the efreet's ability gives this ruling credence, ...



 So, whatever number (0, 1, 2, or 3) the genie chooses/has available, is equal to a single service?  I can see the logic in that claim.  So, can the caller compel all three wishes?  How does he do that?  Do all efreet have 3 available or maybe some have only 2?


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## Felix (Nov 10, 2006)

> Besides the word "trap" sprinkled throughout the spell description like pepperoni on a pizza, try:
> 
> Saving Throw: Will negates



Do you suggest that because the efreet can resist the spell and reject any offers, he necessarily must?

The efreet may be induced to be willing to grant the PCs 3 wishes. And if he may, then +1 is not the maximum bonus to a stat PCs can obtain, which you claimed.



			
				Infiniti2000 said:
			
		

> If you want me to agree with you that requiring a reward is another method for negating the 3 free wishes, okay.  That's not what this discussion is about though.  Can the caster gain even a single FREE wish, i.e. not paid for with a reward?



I was under the impression that this discussion was over whether or not a caster could get a +3 to his ability scores by means of Planar Binding.



			
				I2k said:
			
		

> Felix said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The post you responded to, post #15, specified that the PCs would either have to use threats (which would have their own particular kind of price tag) or a monetary exchange. Both of those are valid inducements to make the efreet willing to use all 3 of his wishes, whether or not the efreet agrees. I never did claim that the exchange would be _costless_.


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## Felix (Nov 10, 2006)

Infiniti2000 said:
			
		

> So, whatever number (0, 1, 2, or 3) the genie chooses/has available, is equal to a single service?  I can see the logic in that claim.  So, can the caller compel all three wishes?  How does he do that?  Do all efreet have 3 available or maybe some have only 2?



It seems that efreet either have 3 available or none. If their 1/day ability has not been used that day, they may grant up to three wishes. If their 1/day ability has been used, they have none.

How does the caster do that? "Grant me three wishes." might work. Depends upon the DM and the negotiation with the efreet.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 10, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Do you suggest that because the efreet can resist the spell ...he necessarily must?



 Yes.  I do not agree that an efreeti would choose to fail the saving throw.  Thus, he is never willing.



			
				Felix said:
			
		

> I was under the impression that this discussion was over whether or not a caster could get a +3 to his ability scores by means of Planar Binding.



 I reread all of Dr. Awkward's posts and you're right.  He never once mentioned not spending material wealth, just not XP.  My apologies.


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## Felix (Nov 10, 2006)

Infiniti2000 said:
			
		

> Yes.  I do not agree that an efreeti would choose to fail the saving throw.  Thus, he is never willing.



Perhaps we should specify exactly _what_ he would never be willing to do, but since:



> I reread all of Dr. Awkward's posts and you're right.  He never once mentioned not spending material wealth, just not XP.  My apologies.



I suppose we arn't really disagreeing upon anything substantial.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 10, 2006)

Three_Haligonians said:
			
		

> What is going on here, I believe, is that the OP is trying to figure out what the consequences of the PC's actions will be. When they do stuff, stuff happens back.  Just like a group of PC's who decide to kill eveyone in the tavern because they.. I don't know.. can't get free rooms. City Guards come to arrest them and it escalates from there because actions have reactions.




That's pretty much it in a nutshell.  The group is largely on the Chaotic Neutral side, with a few tending toward evil, and they're just hitting that "drunk with power" phase that usually comes along around 7th to 10th level.  With city guards, it would be a pretty easy scenario to resolve.  PCs wreck the place, guards come, PCs defeat guards, guards call in the "special forces" of high-level characters that sit around waiting for this stuff to happen, PCs get handed their asses.  It's the circle of life...

However, this sort of scenario isn't quite as easy to follow the chain of causation on.

Now, given that Gate makes it an even easier prospect to have an efreet do your bidding, there must be a reason that high-level casters don't just pump their ability scores and wish for all the magic items in the book.  What's a few thousand XP compared to the mighty machine of doom you'll become, eh?

I figure, that there must be some entity, like the Claviger of Wyre, that enforces on behalf of efreet.  Something of near-godlike power, capable of chewing up and spitting out any non-epic character, and quite a few epic ones.  The efreet made a pact with this creature ages ago, and it responds to violations of the rules.  The rules, of course, being that the efreet decide who gets wishes, and that these wishes serve their own ends.

Such a creature must exist, or there'd be no end to the free wishes by high-level characters.


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## Artoomis (Nov 10, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> ...Such a creature must exist, or there'd be no end to the free wishes by high-level characters.




More likely a certain amount of abuse of individual efreets is permitted, (maybe it’s embarrassing to admit you got trapped into giving out a wish or three) but anything excessive and you get visited by the efreet enforcer squad.

Calling in creatures from other planes and *forcing* them to do your bidding should have more than a small element of danger and personal risk.

edit:  Doing this repeatedly should raise the risk level astronomically high.


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## Lonely Tylenol (Nov 10, 2006)

Inconsequenti-AL said:
			
		

> I like this answer...
> 
> Apart from the bold bit. The worst stuff always happens to the survivors.



I was thinking something like:

"They found him a broken man, pushed through gateways of horror far beyond any human had ever passed.  His life's work was destroyed utterly and completely, reduced to ash and scattered among the spheres.  His family were put through such torments as only demons can conceive.  He was discovered in his tower, alone in one of the empty rooms.  His eyes and mouth had been removed.  Not by blade or violence; his face was smooth, as though those organs had never been present at all.  He wore nothing but a shirt stitched of the skin of his best companion and lifelong friend, and he scrabbled at the floor, blindly and vainly trying to pick up and reattach his fingers and toes."

Efreet are, after all, Evil.


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## Inconsequenti-AL (Nov 10, 2006)

Dr. Awkward said:
			
		

> I was thinking something like:
> 
> "They found him a broken man, pushed through gateways of horror far beyond any human had ever passed.  His life's work was destroyed utterly and completely, reduced to ash and scattered among the spheres.  His family were put through such torments as only demons can conceive.  He was discovered in his tower, alone in one of the empty rooms.  His eyes and mouth had been removed.  Not by blade or violence; his face was smooth, as though those organs had never been present at all.  He wore nothing but a shirt stitched of the skin of his best companion and lifelong friend, and he scrabbled at the floor, blindly and vainly trying to pick up and reattach his fingers and toes."
> 
> Efreet are, after all, Evil.




Sounds like just the ticket... do like the smooth face - it's a good and unpleasant look. And the final finger and toe removal finishes it off nicely!

I guess when they found that out, they might not be so happy about the 3 'free' wishes they'd just grabbed themselves?


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## Sejs (Nov 10, 2006)

Artoomis said:
			
		

> (maybe it’s embarrassing to admit you got trapped into giving out a wish or three)




I could definitely see that as being the case.  It's pretty much in-line with the genie mythological roots, too.  Wishes were generally given out in one of a small number of situations:

1) You somehow coerce one into giving you a wish, which they absolutely friggin' _hate_ and will do what they can to screw you on the deal,

2) You do one a really big favor such as releasing it from eons of imprisonment, and they grant you a wish out of boundless thanks,

3) They grant you one just to give you enough rope to hang yourself with, again screwing you, because they're mean, capricious bastards.


Another interesting thing, and something that may be worth considering - classically when you made a wish often times the manifestation of said wish didn't happen right then and there, it took a little while to sort of build up.  Particularly true of the ones you get shafted on.  Genie would grant 'em, poof away the moment the 3rd wish was made, and afterward the wishmaker realizes just how hosed he's been.  Lesson learned, credits roll, see you next week.


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 10, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> I suppose we arn't really disagreeing upon anything substantial.



 Probably not.   Note that now the OP is talking about "free wishes" which is what my entire premise was predicated on.

Basically, the way planar binding works is that you always force the target(s) of the spell into servitude.  Because of the saving throw, the target(s) are definitely not willing.  I can't imagine a scenario (except an RP one with perhaps a prearranged deal setup) where the target choose to fail.  Thus, the target is never willing.

Given that, you must either force him to obey with threats or by paying off the service.  Obviously, if you're paying it's quite simply to make whatever you obtain balanced, whether it's a few rounds of fighting, buffing, healing, wishes or anything.  I have no problem with that, and bargaining for multiple wishes at once would be okay in my book.

However, threatening the efreeti's life in exchange for up to three free wishes is a different scenario.


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## marune (Nov 11, 2006)

Not related to the OP but the Planar Binding spell; it's not a bit strange for a Good Wizard to use such a spell to bring a Good Outsider ? (IIRC, that would give the spell a Good descriptor).


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## nameless (Nov 11, 2006)

Infiniti2000 said:
			
		

> Probably not.   Note that now the OP is talking about "free wishes" which is what my entire premise was predicated on.
> 
> Basically, the way planar binding works is that you always force the target(s) of the spell into servitude.  Because of the saving throw, the target(s) are definitely not willing.  I can't imagine a scenario (except an RP one with perhaps a prearranged deal setup) where the target choose to fail.  Thus, the target is never willing.
> 
> ...



You don't HAVE to offer anything. You don't have to offer threats or money, the spell has the built-in rule that you need to succeed on an opposed Cha check to get the outsider to serve you. It further says that you can get a bonus on the check depending on what you offer to sweeten the deal. So you aren't necessarily reasoning with the efreet at all, you bind it with the sheer power of your magic and you compel it with sheer force of will.

Compare all of the previous "dealmaking scenarios" with what a simple 4th level spell can do in this situation: Charm Monster. Assuming you can charm the efreet, which is at least 50% likely to work without any special preparations, why wouldn't it then give you wishes? Even though wish is a very powerful ability to a mortal, it's not much to an efreet, where literally everybody he knows can grant more wishes than they know what to do with.

It's not fair to make the players pay as much money or xp to get the wish as they would have otherwise, because that makes planar binding pointless. Unless it confers an advantage of some sort on the caster, the players might as well just learn and cast disintegrate an extra time that day.

Cheiromancer's idea is the best way to handle it. You don't punish the players for good thinking by taking something away from them when they should be gaining. But if the genie, in good faith, grants them their 3 wishes and tells them that bad things happen if any mortal binds a genie twice in the same 1,001 nights (or something equally mythic), the players are happy that their plan works, but you effectively stop campaign-altering abuse from taking place. Everybody wins.


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## LostSoul (Nov 11, 2006)

If you want the efreet to be all nice, you should Diplomacy him first.

Anyway, I would let it work the first time, because the players are smart and they worked out a loophole.  Then I'd say that it would unbalance the game and probably shouldn't happen again.


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## Jack Simth (Nov 11, 2006)

skeptic said:
			
		

> Not related to the OP but the Planar Binding spell; it's not a bit strange for a Good Wizard to use such a spell to bring a Good Outsider ? (IIRC, that would give the spell a Good descriptor).



It would.  "When you use a calling spell to call an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, it is a spell of that type."

The problem being, of course, that to hold it, you need a Magic Circle Against [X] spell.  And Magic Circle Against Good is an [Evil] spell, Magic Circle Against Evil is a [Good] spell, Magic Circle Against Law is a [Chaotic] spell, and Magic Circle Against Chaos is a [Lawful] spell.... sure, if you're Calling an Archon, well, they all have the Lawful and Good subtypes - so Magic Circle Against Chaos, and you're Good, but you're not okay, as the Archon has clear proof that you serve Chaos (he's stuck in a [Chaotic] spell, after all).  That Planetar you were planning on using Greater Planar Binding to fetch a caster that can do a True Ressurection for the Cleric, on the other hand, is "Always good (any)" - in order to Bind it, you're basically stuck with Magic Circle Against Good to hold it (well, if your DM rolls the law-chaos axis, you've got a 2 in 3 chance of having something that will hold it....).  Which means you're casting an [Evil] spell, to force a [Good] creature to do your bidding.  Is it any wonder these things come out hostile?

Okay, Elementals are usually neutral, and any of the Magic Circle spells will work.... so you haven't done anything direcly opposing their alignment.  But still, you trap them and they bargain for their freedom (which is, ultimately, what they get by giving in).

Now, RAW doesn't address what happens if you skip the trap.....but if you do, you're only casting a spell that's in tune with what you're Calling up.  So the NG Sorcerer with Magic Circle Against Evil is *probably* going to be okay if he attempts to hire the Planetar, rather than coercing (skips the Magic Circle, skips the Calling Diagram, skips the Dimensional Anchor - and the Planetar is in no way trapped - and my just go back to whatever it was it was doing).

Oh, but if you're going the Planar Binding route?  Pick up Moment of Prescience as soon as you can - bargaining is an opposed Charisma check, which Moment of Prescience covers.


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## Felix (Nov 11, 2006)

nameless said:
			
		

> It's not fair to make the players pay as much money or xp to get the wish as they would have otherwise



It is not clear that it would cost them an equal amount of money to get the wish, merely that it would cost _something_ in the negotiation.


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## Perun (Nov 11, 2006)

A player of mine thought of this some time ago, but he still hasn't had the opportunity to do (or try) it.

As a DM, I'm against it. From a DM's metagaming point of view, calling outsiders is, generally, a province of wizards (a sorcerer or another class can do it, but the wizard is the ultimate master of calling) -- the one core class that can relatively safely put an 18 in its primary stat (even with a relatively low point-buy method). Allowing such characters to even further boost their ability (thus further increasing his spells per day and spell DCs) makes them difficult to run (I've played with such a wizard in one long-term campaign, creatures of appropriate (or even higher) CR didn't have a chance of resisting his spells, and those high-CR-ed that could were pretty much immune to spells and effects of the rest of the party).

From a consistency point of view, why haven't the efreet become the calling stock of the planes? They're a mid-CR creature with a high-level ability, and every wizard worth his salt would start calling them as soon as he hit mid-levels.

The efreet are LE, organised, and intelligent. IMO, they're perfectly aware of the risks their ability puts them in. They would take precautions. The elemental plane of fire has a lowly, slow-minded, non-genie creature inferior to the efreet -- fire mephit. I'd think that's all an efreeti needs.

The problem (if a DM recognises it as such) can also, be fixed with house-rules (naturally ). As was suggested, replacing_wish_ with _limited wish_ is one such house-rule, although I'd make _limited wish_ a province of _common_ efreet, and only the noble efreet (analogous to djinn nobles) would be able to grant _wishes_.

Another house rule (one which I use IMCs) is that an outsider can only be permanently distroyed on its home plane. If you "kill" a called creature outside of its home plane, its essence instantly transported to its home plane, where it will, eventually, reform. The length of the process is dependant on the power of the outsider -- more powerful ones (like balors, tulani, or ultroloths) take longer to create, someties as long as a century. Most of the time, this will not be an issue, since the average campaign lasts far shorter than a decade it might take an efreeti to reform, but in certain campaigns, even the knowledge of the process might beenough to give players (characters?) a pause.

Regards.


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## boolean (Nov 11, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> Cite the rule that says so and I'll beleive you.




From the Efreet description in the Monster Manual:

"Efreet are infamous for their hatred of servitude, desire for revenge, cruel nature, and ability to beguile and mislead."

So, if the Efreet feels that it has been exploited or abused, it *will* get its revenge.


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## Votan (Nov 11, 2006)

boolean said:
			
		

> From the Efreet description in the Monster Manual:
> 
> "Efreet are infamous for their hatred of servitude, desire for revenge, cruel nature, and ability to beguile and mislead."
> 
> So, if the Efreet feels that it has been exploited or abused, it *will* get its revenge.




This is an excellent point.  In general, as a race of beings, you figure that they'd have found a way to get around planar binding.  Heck, it might be where the infamous hatred of servitude first showed up.


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## Felix (Nov 11, 2006)

boolean said:
			
		

> From the Efreet description in the Monster Manual:
> 
> "Efreet are infamous for their hatred of servitude, desire for revenge, cruel nature, and ability to beguile and mislead."
> 
> So, if the Efreet feels that it has been exploited or abused, it *will* get its revenge.



*sigh*

If you offer them 100,000gp in return for the wishes, will they grant them to you or not? The point of that question was to show that it is not necessarily always the case that they will refuse to grant wishes, which was the claim I was responding to. It does not mean that they can't be surly about it.

Get it?


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## Derren (Nov 11, 2006)

Felix said:
			
		

> *sigh*
> 
> If you offer them 100,000gp in return for the wishes, will they grant them to you or not? The point of that question was to show that it is not necessarily always the case that they will refuse to grant wishes, which was the claim I was responding to. It does not mean that they can't be surly about it.
> 
> Get it?




Or even better, offer to use one wish on whatever the Effret wants. As it can't use those wishes for himself this is a rather good deal and you don't loose anything.


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## Pickford (Jan 23, 2013)

I may be weighing in late, but I found this thread compelling.

A few points in the PCs favor:

1) Planar Binding - "Casting this spell atttempts a dangerous act: To lure a creature from another plane to a specifically prepared trap, which must lie within the spell's range. The called creature is held in the trap until it agrees to perform one service in return for it's freedom." (PHB pg. 262) - This means the creature is screwed if it wants to be obstinant it just stays in a trap on another plane slowly dying from lack of nutrition.

2) "The kind of creature to be bound must be known and stated. If you wish to call a specific individual, you must use that individual's proper name in casting the spell." (also PHB pg. 262) My note: This spell can only target outsiders or elementals, so PCs CAN NOT be planar bound, unless it's a druid or monk or shapechanged wizard at the time.

3) The target gets a will save to have the spell fail entirely (never summoned), and once 'in' the trap can escape through 3 methods: A) Spell Resistance (disabled if a diagram is used, PHB pg. 250), B) Dimensional Travel (negated through a dimensional anchor, PHB pg. 250), or C) Opposed Charisma check (allowed only once a day and made 'much' more difficult via the diagram) which factors in 1/2 the CL and the Charisma bonus of the player. "If the creature does not break free of the trap, you can keep it bound for as long as you dare."

4) "You can attempt to compel the creature to perform a service by describing the service and perhaps offering some sort of reward. You make a Charisma check opposed by the creature's Charisma check. The DM assigns your check a bonus of +0 to +6 based on the nature of the service and the reward." - My input: In otherwords, the PC can say 'You monster provide me with exactly this outcome which I desire and you will be set free instantly. If the outcome is 'not' as I desire you remain bound, possibly for eternity. Your call.' The point being, sure it's 'possible' to refuse...once or twice...but against someone with high charisma eventually the monster will lose an opposed check.

5) Impossible or Unreasonable demands: An impossible demand is something the monster can't do, an unreasonable demand? Suicide comes to mind. i.e. Kill yourself, Go stand in that prismatic wall and let down your SR/deliberately fail your save....

Wishes? Both possible and reasonable when the alternative is eternal imprisonment or death. Very reasonable in those circumstances. For everyone who's suggesting giving the caller a genie without any wishes left for the day....planar binding can last 'indefinitely'. I suspect any PC willing to go to these lengths would simply nettle the genie to do it the next day...or the next...and so on.

6) For the poster indicating 3 wishes is 3 different tasks...not if you say that the task it to grant you 3 wishes. Similar to saying the task is to guard location X for 100 days....1 day doesn't equal 1 task.

7) For the people thinking the genie will plane shift back for revenge: Only if they get VERY lucky. Plane Shift (PHB 262) - "Precise accuracy as to a particular arrival location on the intended plane is nigh impossible. From the Material Plane, you can reach any other plane, though you appear 5 to 500 miles (5d%) from your intended destination." So yeah, basically no chance of finding the PC specifically for revenge. But hey, let's say they get 5 miles from the PC, miraculously, and manage to say 'Now I'm going to plane shift you!!!' The spell gives both SR and a will save, the highest possible save for a mage (Granted, all this assumes that somehow the Genie totally gets the drop on the PC who doesn't react to interrupt the ability through damage, or doing something horrible to the monster...very unlikely)

And if worse comes to worse, for 'one' of the wishes, the player asks what the Genie's true name is. Now they leave the monster with a parting thought: If you ever consider getting revenge, I will bring you back and bind you for eternity within a gem. (Or better, burn some wishes to alter the Genie and put a geas on him preventing him from seeking revenge directly or indirectly....MAGIC!)

(Oooh, or  better, geas him to return the next day and provide you with more wishes!) Note: PC isn't using wish to get more wishes, but using Geas to get more wishes (or some other compulsion).

8) For the person saying the wish might tax the player instead of the genie: Not in RAW. The genie doesn't pay any cost, and the PC isn't actually casting anything. That would be like having my casting a heal spell take away your spell slot, doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

9) Inherent bonuses are cast in succession (i.e. round by round) so if you just have the genie create scrolls of wish it could be done by the player over the course of two planar bindings. Note: If a DM tried to sub the same genie (somehow) a smart player would just kill it (permanently because it was called) and then do a third casting.

As a parting query: Why so much effort to punish incredibly creative play? More likely, you would have to do a knowledge check to know the creature the PC wants to summon even exists (i.e. Do you know what Genie's are?) and do you know they grant wishes? etc... If a PC can clear the hoops, they earned the reward.

Edit:Many have cited this whole meta-game idea of Genies as a race figuring out a way out of planar binding...to this I would say that is unlikely given that genies are notorious for being magical indentured servants in lore. i.e. Powerful people routinely make them slaves for things like the 3 wishes, it just happens.


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## MDK (Jan 23, 2013)

A very interesting thread! Here's my 2 cents:
First, the whole Can\t grant wishes to genies bit always struck me as very odd indeed, and got houseruled out ages ago.
As for the OP's question, assuming the PCs are nice about and willing to pay, I have no poblems with it, they can rinse and repeat as often as they please. I WOULD put the price at roughly 27500gp per statpoint (same as a statbooster book), and since a level 12 PC is assumed to have roughly 88000 gp this means they'd be able to get at most a +3 to a single stat, at the price of loosing most if not all of their other gear: Tim the Enchanter now has an inherent +3 to Int, his spellbook, and a spare set of underwear. And this is with me being nice and giving them full value for their equipment, too (actually I'd let them bargain for a 50% discount on the spell, and accept magic items as payment at the regular half-price sales value so they can feel pleased with themselves for driving a hard bargain). Meanwhile, Mr Genie earned a boatload of money in under 10 minutes (including bargaining time), and with any luck got to enjoy watching the mortals squirm as they try to decide what items to give up in payment, too. Win-win.

If the PCs are NOT nice about it, Mr Genie will grant their wishes, and first thing in the morning will spend one wish to UNDO his wishing from the previous day, and if they annoyed him enough, may choose to spend 1 or 2 more wishes to make their lives miserable (if I hadn't ruled they can grant their own wishes he'd be using a helper to let him do so anyway). If they REALLY made him angry, welll, there's always 3 more wishes tomorrow...
And yes, I'd give the party a few skill checks to realise this before they start their abusive actions, as well as the notion that this kind of extortion strictly for personal gain is neither Good nor even Neutral, and will be taken into account regarding their alignment.


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## Pickford (Jan 23, 2013)

MDK said:


> If the PCs are NOT nice about it, Mr Genie will grant their wishes, and first thing in the morning will spend one wish to UNDO his wishing from the previous day, and if they annoyed him enough, may choose to spend 1 or 2 more wishes to make their lives miserable (if I hadn't ruled they can grant their own wishes he'd be using a helper to let him do so anyway). If they REALLY made him angry, welll, there's always 3 more wishes tomorrow...
> And yes, I'd give the party a few skill checks to realise this before they start their abusive actions, as well as the notion that this kind of extortion strictly for personal gain is neither Good nor even Neutral, and will be taken into account regarding their alignment.




I suspect this is exactly the reason that Genie's cannot cast wish for Genie's. Anything that could cast a level 9 spell 3/day at level 12 would be a 'much' higher CR than 8.

Incidentally: For an automatic win planar binding any character with Moment of Prescience can add up to +25 to their opposed check making it essentially impossible for anything with an equal or lesser Charisma bonus to argue against them. i.e. Even if the bonus on making the Efreeti grant you it's 3 wishes a day is +0, it's impossible for him to refuse even if you only have a +2 Charisma bonus (matching his)

Edit: 

By the by, the prep time and investment on these spells is not insignificant:
1) Moment of Prescience: Luck 8, Sor/Wiz 8 (8th level spell); 1 standard action; Components: Verbal, Somatic.
2) Magic Circle against Evil: Clr 3, Good 3, Sor/Wiz 3; 3 hours 20 minutes to draw directed inward with a diagram (take 20 for prep); Components: Verbal, Somatic, Material (a little powdered silver to trace the circle)
3) Planar Binding: Sor/Wiz 6 or Planar Binding, Greater: Sor/Wiz 8; 10 minutes; Components: Verbal, Somatic.
4) Dimensional Anchor: Clr 4, Sor/Wiz 4; 1 standard action; Components: Verbal, Somatic

So if a Sor/Wiz (Note Clerics lack two of the key spells required to even do this) wants to get this to work for the 3 wishes, they have to expend a combined spell levels of at least 21 (1 3rd, 1 4th, 1 6th, and 1 8th level spell (possibly 2)) and as much as 31 spell levels (more than the value of 3 wishes! (i.e. 27)) in essentially immediate succession and it would take approximately 3 hours and 50 minutes of totally uninterrupted time. 

Not something you're doing every day and not something you can 'easily' do out in the wild or when there's a larger quest going on that involves either a serious time or life threat. (Though who knows how important it would be to get those wishes? Maybe that's what is needed to find the villain, save the village, etc...)

I suppose forgetting these costs exist is typical. Similar to people using identify on all the items in a horde, but forgetting that identify works on a single target and takes _1 hour_ per cast.

Incidentally, if your PC is truly paranoid, they can cast a Mordekainen's Private Sanctum first to prevent any divination and provide immunity to detect thoughts, and then shapechange, polymorph or alter self so they resemble someone else so even 'if' the Efreeti was inclined towards seeking revenge, they would never find the correct party.

To summarize: There are simply enough spells that a truly wily PC with the proper prep time can become totally invulnerable to retaliation by virtually anything, the question is...did they prepare?

Double edit:

Any Sor/Wiz worth their salt would have given themselves permanent see invisibility by the tiem they decide to start pulling these shenanigans. (10th level minimum)


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## MarkB (Jan 23, 2013)

I don't see Efreeti putting up with this sort of imposition for very long. The way I'd picture it is that, the day after the PCs cast their Binding, the Efreet (who's done some research in the meantime) appears in front of their deadliest nemesis, grins, and says "Good day, sir. I wish to offer my services and grant your three fondest wishes. My price is a small one - I ask only that the wishes involve these beings, whom I believe you know." (Shows him an image of the PCs).


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## MDK (Jan 23, 2013)

Pickford said:


> I suspect this is exactly the reason that Genie's cannot cast wish for Genie's. Anything that could cast a level 9 spell 3/day at level 12 would be a 'much' higher CR than 8.




Given how extremely easy this limitation is to circumvent, I kinda doubt balance was an issue here, although I'll readily admit I have no idea whatsoever what ELSE the reasoning may have been. 
I do stand with my point however that I'd simply allow the OP's scheme to work if the players pay up, and only get nasty if they don't. YMMV.


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## Pickford (Jan 25, 2013)

Well, in the example I gave the caster is in a different form so the Genie (who lacks true seeing) has no idea what they really look like. Heck, just for kicks you could make yourself look like a demon.Second, how is the Genie going to get an image of the characters? They can't benefit from their own wishes, and wouldn't be able to accurately use a wish to acquire the image of one of the 'many' people they have given wishes to in the past as they would lack the characters name or even an accurate description. Provided the disguise was good, they'd (at best) have an engraving of some random shmuck.Lastly....any Genie who offers up to three wishes to someone where the Genie is NOT guaranteed a quick trip home (ala Planar Binding for example) is putting themselves at the utter mercy of whoever they enlist. There would be 'nothing' to prevent someone from permanently enslaving the Genie using any of the three wishes granted rather than helping them. (Classic Aladdin's Lamp stuff)


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## GX.Sigma (Jan 25, 2013)

A few ideas:



Houserule: Change _planar binding_ to a Summoning spell instead of Calling. The genie wouldn't be able to grant wishes, and couldn't be threatened with death. 
Houserule: Remove the clause that says multiple castings of _wish _can increase the inherent bonus. Limit it to +1, period. 
DM Ruling: If you're forcing another creature to grant wishes using its own power, it can pervert your wish even if it's normally one of the 'safe' things to wish for. 
NPC Action: Whatever omnipotent entity actually _grants _wishes (presumably it's not the efreeti itself) will punish them for abusing it. I don't have a 1e PHB in front of me, but this is explicitly how it works in OSRIC. 
World-building: _Planar binding_ doesn't work on efreet, because they've already found a way around it.


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## MDK (Jan 25, 2013)

Pickford said:


> Well, in the example I gave the caster is in a different form so the Genie (who lacks true seeing) has no idea what they really look like. Heck, just for kicks you could make yourself look like a demon.Second, how is the Genie going to get an image of the characters? They can't benefit from their own wishes, and wouldn't be able to accurately use a wish to acquire the image of one of the 'many' people they have given wishes to in the past as they would lack the characters name or even an accurate description. Provided the disguise was good, they'd (at best) have an engraving of some random shmuck.Lastly....any Genie who offers up to three wishes to someone where the Genie is NOT guaranteed a quick trip home (ala Planar Binding for example) is putting themselves at the utter mercy of whoever they enlist. There would be 'nothing' to prevent someone from permanently enslaving the Genie using any of the three wishes granted rather than helping them. (Classic Aladdin's Lamp stuff)




There's quite a bit of divination magic that can get around the shapechaning etc, so while it's a bit of extra work, I still think the genie can have his revenge.  Obviously though, YMMV.


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## Blackbrrd (Jan 25, 2013)

The Genie who wants his revenge can offer three wishes to anyone who takes out the party? I don't think there is any harder currency than wishes.


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## Greenfield (Jan 25, 2013)

At our table this would draw a fairly sever "Dispel BS" from the DM.  

If the player insisted that it be played out, the Efreet would refuse unless offered a fair price for its services.  Or it would try to trick them (Efreet are Lawful Evil, so the DM should plan something appropriately nasty.)

As a last resort, if facing imminent destruction, ir would grant one _Wish_, as the spell only guarantees a single service.

It would pervert the _Wish_ if reasonably possible, and would seek revenge.  As in, the next time it's summoned it would offer an extra _Wish_ or similar service in exchange for the new "master" casting a _Wish_ to negate the previous one.  The cheese giveth and the cheese taketh away.

If possible I'd have that particular Efreet become an ongoing adversary, or perhaps have an organization of Djinn that deals with such abuses.

The thing to remember is that the PCs aren't the first people in the world to use magic, and any trick that overly clever players try to pull off has almost certainly been tried before.  So think big, bigger than the encounter, in terms of both time and space.

Once upon a time a PC found himself abruptly on the Plane of Air, bound to service of a Genie who had a Ring of Elf Summoning.  And the Genie wanted his wishes, no tricks and no nonsense!


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