Wizard Spells that boost opposed charisma checks?

[magicalmagicman]

There's Moment of Prescience, Mask of the Ideal, and Eagle's Splendor, but I can't seem to find anything else. Heroism is only for skill checks.

Trying to build a charmer.

[Psyren]

Eagle's Splendor :smalltongue:

Try stuff that boosts any d20 roll, like Moment of Prescience. Also, look for stuff that lets you reroll, or better, roll twice take higher. Similarly, look for negative rerolls for your foe.

[magicalmagicman]

Eagle's Splendor :smalltongue:

Try stuff that boosts any d20 roll, like Moment of Prescience. Also, look for stuff that lets you reroll, or better, roll twice take higher. Similarly, look for negative rerolls for your foe.

Eagle's Splendor is so obvious I forgot to add it to the list XD

I got rerolls down, some topics on this forum gave me a nice list

[Crake]

I believe you can use limited wish to secure a natural 20 on your opposed charisma roll (by duplicating the spell surge of fortune), that'll certainly help.

[magicalmagicman]

I believe you can use limited wish to secure a natural 20 on your opposed charisma roll (by duplicating the spell surge of fortune), that'll certainly help.

Wow, nice. I might Wyrm Wizard this lol.

[RoboEmperor]

I believe you can use limited wish to secure a natural 20 on your opposed charisma roll (by duplicating the spell surge of fortune), that'll certainly help.

Holy ****, this spell single handedly removes the need for rerolls or charisma check boosters for planar binding.

I am angry at you Crake! For not mentioning this spell in my countless other planar binding threads D : <

Time to make some builds revolving around this spell! Hell yes I am going to wyrm wizard this!

[Crake]

I want to at least give a little personal anecdote from my table before you guys go running off and using that spell haha :smalltongue:

At my table, a bonus to a check needs to last for the entire duration that the check was designed for, so for example, if you want to do a craft check, you can't use guidance of the avatar, because it only lasts for 1 minute (unless you're using fabricate, in which case, go ahead). Similarly, the natural 20 bonus on surge of fortune only lasts for 1 round, so unless you can get your negotiating done in one round, it wouldn't work for planar binding.

Now, that said, for charm person/monster, the opposed charisma check to have someone do something they wouldn't normally do could easily come in the form of a simple request, which would certainly fall under this perview, but a planar binding negotiation (unless the request was a very simple one) wouldn't work with surge of fortune at my table.

Now, of course, that's entirely up to your DM, so ymmv, but just something to consider for game balance and verisimilitude as both a player and a DM.

[RoboEmperor]

At my table, a bonus to a check needs to last for the entire duration that the check was designed for, so for example, if you want to do a craft check, you can't use guidance of the avatar, because it only lasts for 1 minute (unless you're using fabricate, in which case, go ahead). Similarly, the natural 20 bonus on surge of fortune only lasts for 1 round, so unless you can get your negotiating done in one round, it wouldn't work for planar binding.

I don't see a problem with this. 6 second speech is more than enough to persuade a creature.

I quote Planar Ally: "The bargaining takes at least 1 round, so any actions by the creature begin in the round after it arrives."

Meaning negotiations can be done in one round, and the power of this spell guides you to be completely perfect in everything you do, I don't see why not. This is D&D we're talking about, and you just rolled a natural 20.

[Psyren]

I don't see a problem with this. 6 second speech is more than enough to persuade a creature.

I quote Planar Ally: "The bargaining takes at least 1 round, so any actions by the creature begin in the round after it arrives."

Meaning negotiations can be done in one round, and the power of this spell guides you to be completely perfect in everything you do, I don't see why not. This is D&D we're talking about, and you just rolled a natural 20.

Did you mean to quote Planar Binding here instead? Ally has no Charisma check, the thing that shows up already wants to help you (because your god sent it.) Binding has such a check, but the spell is vague on how long that takes.

[RoboEmperor]

Did you mean to quote Planar Binding here instead? Ally has no Charisma check, the thing that shows up already wants to help you (because your god sent it.) Binding has such a check, but the spell is vague on how long that takes.

The spell is vague which is why I turned to Planar Ally, since it is my understanding Planar Ally can be 100% duplicated by Planar Binding as long as you bind a creature with the same alignment and views as you do and pay them.

Planar Ally says description of service + duration of service + payment of service + consent can all be taken place in 6 seconds so there is no reason to think why the same can't be potentially achieved with planar binding. I say potentially because there are many 1st party cases where the negotiation lasts several hours, but since in this case we rolled a natural 20...

In any case though, what Crake suggested here is a house rule so it's not that big of a deal, and if a DM doesn't like Surge of Fortune, no amount of rule-lawyering will change his mind.

[Xethik]

Dragonblood Affinity works on ability checks, if I recall. Or is that one Sorcerer only? AFB.

[Crake]

The spell is vague which is why I turned to Planar Ally, since it is my understanding Planar Ally can be 100% duplicated by Planar Binding as long as you bind a creature with the same alignment and views as you do and pay them.

Planar Ally says description of service + duration of service + payment of service + consent can all be taken place in 6 seconds so there is no reason to think why the same can't be potentially achieved with planar binding. I say potentially because there are many 1st party cases where the negotiation lasts several hours, but since in this case we rolled a natural 20...

In any case though, what Crake suggested here is a house rule so it's not that big of a deal, and if a DM doesn't like Surge of Fortune, no amount of rule-lawyering will change his mind.

I did mention that simple requests may be able to be done in 1 round, but more complex requests that may require negotiation may not be doable in a single round. If your DM is anything like me (which he may not be to be totally fair), he will be searching more for the verisimilitude than thinking "I don't like that spell". If you can word your demand in such a way that it can be stated in 6 seconds and have no ambiguity that may require the creature to ask questions to clarify, or require further details to make the request not easily circumventable, then I would allow it, but otherwise, especially with fiends, if you're stating your request in 1 round, I would want to hear your exact request, and despite you getting a natural 20 on your charisma check, you may not get the result you want.

[Psyren]

I don't think Planar Binding is all that similar to Planar Ally anyway. One is an emissary from your deity who's basically under orders to help you out, with the fee going to the church or some other cause in line with their wishes. The other is an elaborate trap you use to coerce an outsider to your service. I don't see why the latter would be anywhere near as smooth/fast as the former.

[RoboEmperor]

I don't think Planar Binding is all that similar to Planar Ally anyway. One is an emissary from your deity who's basically under orders to help you out, with the fee going to the church or some other cause in line with their wishes. The other is an elaborate trap you use to coerce an outsider to your service. I don't see why the latter would be anywhere near as smooth/fast as the former.

Consider this scenario: A cleric who usually uses Planar Ally, switches to Planar Binding to avoid the XP cost. He calls the same creatures and does everything you're supposed to do in Planar Ally. Why would this be a problem? Maybe you call a planetar of a different deity, Iunno, this could be circumvented by calling creatures by name, but in any case, in this specific example, I don't see why Planar Binding can't emulate Planar Ally.

@Crake.
One could argue that the Surge of Fortune gives you knowledge of the exact words/speech to persuade the creature, so even though actually saying the words take longer than 6 seconds, because the spell gave you perfect knowledge, the length of the negotiation is irrelevant.

One could also say that your 6 second speech put the creature in such a helping and amiable mood that you being not as good orally later is a non-factor.

There's literally infinite ways you can interpret things like this in d&d, so it really just comes down to whether the DM wants this to happen or not. Its similar to certain DMs saying you need to train with your teacher for a month to gain the benefits of level up because it doesn't make sense to him. Players can give infinite counter reasoning saying d&d's learning curve is step-by-step instead of gradual, so you're supposed to gain the benefits of the level up throughout the entire course of gaining XP, but to simplify things you get all of it instantly, etc., and the DM can disagree with that with infinite reasons too.

If I was in your game, I'd say something like "Serve me as my loyal minion for 1day/CL and I'll let you go".

[Psyren]

Consider this scenario: A cleric who usually uses Planar Ally, switches to Planar Binding to avoid the XP cost. He calls the same creatures and does everything you're supposed to do in Planar Ally. Why would this be a problem? Maybe you call a planetar of a different deity, Iunno, this could be circumvented by calling creatures by name, but in any case, in this specific example, I don't see why Planar Binding can't emulate Planar Ally.

You can't actually call a specific creature in Planar Ally; your god chooses what you get. So already there's a big difference between the two spells.

Another big difference is that Ally lacks the "impossible demands or unreasonable commands" clause. It doesn't need it, because if your god is sending you something, then the expectation is that it's fully at your disposal. The only thing you're actually negotiating for is length of service.

[Crake]

Consider this scenario: A cleric who usually uses Planar Ally, switches to Planar Binding to avoid the XP cost. He calls the same creatures and does everything you're supposed to do in Planar Ally. Why would this be a problem? Maybe you call a planetar of a different deity, Iunno, this could be circumvented by calling creatures by name, but in any case, in this specific example, I don't see why Planar Binding can't emulate Planar Ally.

I actually allow a similar method, but you can't simply cast planar binding to achieve this. Firstly, the creature needs to trust you, and know you, because planar binding can easily be used against them if they willingly come, secondly you need to contact the creature well beforehand and arrange a mutually agreed upon time, so the creature isn't say, ripped away from the middle of whatever it may have been doing at the time. That's the major difference between planar binding and planar ally. Your deity sends a creature that is free, or able to come. If you planar ally a movanic deva, you can be relatively sure that nothing has been lost by bringing it over, but if you planar bind one, you may have just doomed someone bleeding out on the battlefield to death that the movanic deva was just about to save wiht a cure SLA. After all, you can specify a specific individual with planar ally, but there's no guarantee that they will come.


@Crake.
One could argue that the Surge of Fortune gives you knowledge of the exact words/speech to persuade the creature, so even though actually saying the words take longer than 6 seconds, because the spell gave you perfect knowledge, the length of the negotiation is irrelevant.

One could also say that your 6 second speech put the creature in such a helping and amiable mood that you being not as good orally later is a non-factor.

There's literally infinite ways you can interpret things like this in d&d, so it really just comes down to whether the DM wants this to happen or not. Its similar to certain DMs saying you need to train with your teacher for a month to gain the benefits of level up because it doesn't make sense to him.

You can make that argument, sure, and you could make the same argument for something like a week's craft check and guidance of the avatar giving you +20, but I'm just letting you know how we run it, and I think its a reasonable way to run it that others may also logically arrive at. Just a heads up more than anything else.

[RoboEmperor]

You can't actually call a specific creature in Planar Ally; your god chooses what you get. So already there's a big difference between the two spells.

Another big difference is that Ally lacks the "impossible demands or unreasonable commands" clause. It doesn't need it, because if your god is sending you something, then the expectation is that it's fully at your disposal. The only thing you're actually negotiating for is length of service.

If I use a Venn Diagram, I'd draw a huge circle for Planar Binding, and a tiny circle completely inside the huge circle for Planar Ally.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just saying just like how PaO can perfectly emulate Polymorph, Planar Binding can almost perfectly replicate Planar Ally with a little effort.

[Nifft]

Extract Gift can get you a beefy enhancement bonus.

Draconic Might can get you a +4 enhancement bonus which doesn't stack with Eagle's Splendor, so yeah.

Wish (x5) can get you a +5 Inherent bonus, but terms & conditions may apply.

Channel the Mishtai (and then roll a 3) for a +2 Insight bonus to Charisma checks. Obscure and unreliable, plus you need a feat to cast it. Yuck. From Magic of Incarnum, if you're interested.

You really want Craft Wondrous Item so you can make a nice Circlet of Persuasion.

You could also get a Bard to cast Snowsong near you (+4 Morale bonus to Cha) and then Inner Beauty on you (you must be Good; grants +4 Sacred bonus to Cha). Take Leadership; get a gnome Bard; name him Cyrano. His job is to help you look good.

[Psyren]

If I use a Venn Diagram, I'd draw a huge circle for Planar Binding, and a tiny circle completely inside the huge circle for Planar Ally.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just saying just like how PaO can perfectly emulate Polymorph, Planar Binding can almost perfectly replicate Planar Ally with a little effort.

PAO can do that because the spell explicitly says it can. PB does not say that about PA. You can maybe get the same creatures, if you took the right precautions, but that's about where the similarities end.