Yahzi
2010-12-01, 07:06 AM
I am looking at Planar Binding in D&D 3.0, and I am a bit confused. It appears that binding a Balor is only a little harder than binding a Dretch.
Assuming an 11th lvl wizard with a CHR of 16, a Circlet of Persuasion, and a Cloak of Charisma +6, that gives you a +8 on your Charisma check against the the Dretch's +0 - but a Balor only gets a +3.
If you used Dimensional Anchor and a Magic Circle calling Diagram, the demon can only break out on a natural 20. He gets to try once per day, and once if you demand "service." Also, if you roll a 1 while making your demand he auto-breaks.
So. Some questions.
1) Is the only downside to binding a Balor over a Dretch the 10% possibility that the thing will break lose and you'll have to fight it?
2) Can you take 10 while presenting your demand to the demon? I would spend weeks writing out my demand and practicing reading it. This would reduce the danger to a 5% per day (although you still have a good chance of having to go 3-4 days).
3) Once you do bind it, you only get 11 days of service. Which is totally enough time to attack your enemy and kill everyone he knows, but it makes it unreasonably hard to keep a demon around as defense. Most players won't consider risking 10-20% chance of fighting a balor every 11 days a good deal. What time period would make you keep one around indefinitely?
Which leads to another problem: the short-term nature of buffs and bindings gives the power to the attacker. If you can buff up and then ambush someone, you'll win. Shouldn't it be the other way around - defenders should have the advantage?
What if Extend Spell didn't double the length, but increased it a category each time you applied it.
Rounds per level -> Minutes per level
Minutes -> 10 minutes
10 minutes -> hours
hours -> days
days -> weeks
weeks -> months (but never more than a year and a day)
You have to cap it at a year and a day because that's the cool Fantasy thing to do.
This would mean that casting Strength as a 6th level spell would make it last for a year and a day (7th under 3.5), which seems like a fair use of a 6th level spell.
It also means you could bind a demon for a year at 15th level, which seems like an appropriate use of an 8th level spell. Of course you could have a lot of demons bound this way (assuming you knew that many names) but it takes a couple of days to bind a demon and you can't spend all your time binding - you need time to Conquer and Pillage, too.
Anyway, please tell me what experiences you've had in actual games with Planar Binding, as opposed to the usual bbs stuff about efreets.
Follow-up question: did anybody else notice that Balors got a lot more dangerous in 3.5? Is that because of splat-book power creep - will my Core-only 3.0 players find 3.0 Balors a good challenge, or will they still be just pushovers?
Assuming an 11th lvl wizard with a CHR of 16, a Circlet of Persuasion, and a Cloak of Charisma +6, that gives you a +8 on your Charisma check against the the Dretch's +0 - but a Balor only gets a +3.
If you used Dimensional Anchor and a Magic Circle calling Diagram, the demon can only break out on a natural 20. He gets to try once per day, and once if you demand "service." Also, if you roll a 1 while making your demand he auto-breaks.
So. Some questions.
1) Is the only downside to binding a Balor over a Dretch the 10% possibility that the thing will break lose and you'll have to fight it?
2) Can you take 10 while presenting your demand to the demon? I would spend weeks writing out my demand and practicing reading it. This would reduce the danger to a 5% per day (although you still have a good chance of having to go 3-4 days).
3) Once you do bind it, you only get 11 days of service. Which is totally enough time to attack your enemy and kill everyone he knows, but it makes it unreasonably hard to keep a demon around as defense. Most players won't consider risking 10-20% chance of fighting a balor every 11 days a good deal. What time period would make you keep one around indefinitely?
Which leads to another problem: the short-term nature of buffs and bindings gives the power to the attacker. If you can buff up and then ambush someone, you'll win. Shouldn't it be the other way around - defenders should have the advantage?
What if Extend Spell didn't double the length, but increased it a category each time you applied it.
Rounds per level -> Minutes per level
Minutes -> 10 minutes
10 minutes -> hours
hours -> days
days -> weeks
weeks -> months (but never more than a year and a day)
You have to cap it at a year and a day because that's the cool Fantasy thing to do.
This would mean that casting Strength as a 6th level spell would make it last for a year and a day (7th under 3.5), which seems like a fair use of a 6th level spell.
It also means you could bind a demon for a year at 15th level, which seems like an appropriate use of an 8th level spell. Of course you could have a lot of demons bound this way (assuming you knew that many names) but it takes a couple of days to bind a demon and you can't spend all your time binding - you need time to Conquer and Pillage, too.
Anyway, please tell me what experiences you've had in actual games with Planar Binding, as opposed to the usual bbs stuff about efreets.
Follow-up question: did anybody else notice that Balors got a lot more dangerous in 3.5? Is that because of splat-book power creep - will my Core-only 3.0 players find 3.0 Balors a good challenge, or will they still be just pushovers?