PDA

View Full Version : Running encounters with Efreet



Epinephrine
2009-11-04, 03:55 PM
So, I'm looking ahead in a campaign I'm running, and wondering about something - a group of enemies has on their side an Efreeti, but their stats don't have any inherent bonuses. If an Efreeti can grant wishes, why on earth wouldn't anyone have any bonuses? You'd think that over time they'd all have +3 inherent bonuses to everything, clones in reserve, etc.

That aside (assume that there are RP reasons, like the Efreet not wanting to share too much power, or something), I'm wondering a few things about how to play it out.

1) How does granting a wish work, in terms of actions?
I assume that the ability to grant a wish (or wishes) is a standard action, since it is a spell like-ability. The Efreeti can apparently thus use a single action to grant three wishes to an non-genie individual. What action does it take to use said wishes? Does using the wishes provoke attacks of opportunity, or are the wishes all made at once, then granted by the action of the Efreeti?

2) If you were a relatively smart group, how would you go about using wishes in combat? The adventure suggests that they reserve the wishes to resurrect fallen comrades or to heal up piles of damage/conditions, but I am looking for other ideas. I don't want to slaughter the party, but at the same time, I don't want to use horribly unoptimal choices when they are facing their most dangerous foes so far.

Also, CR 8 seems very low for an Efreeti (or CR 10 for a Malik) in an evil party to whom it will grant wishes (at least, in the event of a serious attack).

jiriku
2009-11-04, 04:21 PM
The SRD version of the noble djinn and the efreet both specify that the wishes can be granted to nongenies only. Thus, no inherent bonuses for the efreeti, although his allies are fair game if they're mortals.

Let's assume, for the sake of fairness, that efreeti are racially inclined to twist wishes, so that even their ertswhile allies must wish conservatively to avoid a twisted wish. No fair wishing for all your enemies to die instantly with no save.

A fair thing to do would be to limit NPC wishing to the list of "safe" effects given for the wish spell. What I would do in combat is use wishes to duplicate the effects of other powerful spells that my side normally isn't capable of casting.

Defensive effects like mind blank, iron body, and prismatic wall are good. There are some pretty hot offensive spells you could wish for like maze, irresistable dance, power word stun, and symbol of insanity, but honestly, i'm not terribly fond of those spells because few players enjoy spending ninety minutes watch their friends play a game while they sit on the sidelines.

Lamech
2009-11-04, 04:35 PM
Even if you limit to the safe effects a quick wish an ally could make would be "get us to location X and send the attackers to location Y" X being a nice safehouse and Y being someplace lethal, the sun or some such; now the party gets will saves, but three will save or dies against the whole party? The sanest thing to do IMO would be to have the Efrrit's wishes be unrealible for anyone and everyone (it is not actually the wish spell), so neither the NPC group nor the player group can exploit them.

Dimers
2009-11-04, 04:51 PM
You could rule that the wishes cost 5000 xp each, just like in the spell description. For the efreet or the allies -- either way works fine. :smallamused:

Doug Lampert
2009-11-04, 06:05 PM
You could rule that the wishes cost 5000 xp each, just like in the spell description. For the efreet or the allies -- either way works fine. :smallamused:

It's explicit in the rules that spell-likes don't pay that cost, and the Efreet's ability is spell-like. So IMAO you need a reason that this spell-like is different or your PCs will be confused if they ever figure out what's happening here and encounter a BtB spell-like later.

My house rule for this was that spell-like wishes (and any other spell-like of a spell with an XP component or expensive material component) drew on the power of "something" to make up for the missing component, normally the race's patron deity. And that the "something" got annoyed by cheezy misuse of it's gifts. You DON'T want somthing annoyed at you when its got the power to grant a whole race wishes.

This stopped Efreets from trading +1 inherents with one of the many OTHER monsters with spell-like wishes limited to "can't be given to us", and it prevents candle of invocation cheeze by the PCs.

Efreet wishes are there as a "get out of jail free" card, not to be sold of given to allies; demonic wishes are to be used for temptation and corruption, not to buff allies; solar's wishes are for just rewards to great heroes, not to be given away to anyone with greater planar binding or whatever.

This COULD also be used as a justification for claiming the bad-guys are limited or do have to pay the 5,000 XP this time, they're missusing the ability, but they're paying for it so the "something" doesn't care.

Epinephrine
2009-11-05, 12:55 PM
Defensive effects like mind blank, iron body, and prismatic wall are good. There are some pretty hot offensive spells you could wish for like maze, irresistable dance, power word stun, and symbol of insanity, but honestly, i'm not terribly fond of those spells because few players enjoy spending ninety minutes watch their friends play a game while they sit on the sidelines.

Right, that's part of the problem - I want the wishes to be potent, but I try to avoid spells like Maze etc. that just pluck characters out of the game.

The characters will be 17th-18th level, so they'll have some real power themselves too; they aren't very optimal though, so their raw spellpower is a bit blunted (a bard (thus 6th level bardic spells) and an eldritch disciple (casting as a 16th level favoured soul/12th level warlock)).

The opponents are a pair of 15th level monks, a 17th level cleric of Vecna, who has taken an interest in the party and likely been scrying them in case they choose to interfere, a Cornugon (CL16) and the Malik (7th level fighter/noble Efreeti for CR 17) who rides a Cauchemar. Chucking a few 8th level spells isn't absurd in this case, though I do wonder about how many wishes should be used in advance.


Efreet wishes are there as a "get out of jail free" card, not to be sold of given to allies
This is good, and would prevent them having simply used the wishes constantly to attain power - if the Efreeti doesn't trust them too much, but will grant wishes to help overcome danger that threatens the Efreeti, it would make sense that they don't all have permanent boosts from granted wishes. He may never have granted them wishes before, but an attack on or by a party of 17th-18th level foes might seem worth pulling out the wishes.

In terms of mechanics - do the three wishes need to be uttered all at once, and then granted by the Efreeti? (it says 1/day, can grant up to three wishes). Or does he grant the ability to make three wishes, which can then be made as desired? I'm concerned as well about actions involved - if they require no actions to activate it gives a real action advantage to the enemies, but I'm not sure exactly how to make it work.

Otodetu
2009-11-05, 01:43 PM
I would suggest removing the wish ability, never understood why it had it besides the whole "genie in the lamp" flavour ting...

jiriku
2009-11-05, 02:38 PM
RAW says all at once as part of a single standard action. Popular fiction says the wishes are always granted separately and sequentially. I'd go with option 2.

Telonius
2009-11-05, 04:06 PM
To question 2: Efreets are mean, and they're in demand. They can demand quite a large price for their Wishes, even for allies. If the ally dies because they didn't want to pay ... well, too bad. There are thousands of other adventurers who would love to have a wish-granting genie on their side. As long as the Efreet is able to get away (wishes granted in self-preservation would certainly be sensible), who cares what happens to the other chumps in the party?