Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

Skarg · 06-09-2019, 11:04 AM

These are good sorts of questions for the GM to consider and answer for him/herself if anyone (PCs or NPCs) are going to be allowed to farm wishes. It has implications for the campaign, in terms of how many wishes are liable to be in circulation, who has them, who may likely/reasonably have used them to jack up their attributes, or not. Etc.

The rules are open to a variety of interpretations, and I'd say the GM can and should consider making wish farming be as difficult or dangerous as he likes. The main point of fairness, it seems to me, would be to let players of Wizard PCs who may be learning about the details of Summon Demon (certainly before they study the spell) to be given fair warning about his rulings and changes made to the spell, demons, and/or wish rules, if they diverge from what the book seems to say.

It does look to me like, even if the GM rules conservatively, it can be made fairly safe to farm wishes. A demon attack isn't that dangerous if a powerful/wealthy wizard and friends prepare for it and can attack it and cast spells on it, unless they don't know they need to and the pentagram part means it can ignore multiple pentagrams and that you don't know there's a problem until the demon attacks. (Especially if the demon is allowed to see all your guards and then "attacks" by teleporting away and starting to kill nearby unprepared people you might care about, or something.)

Otherwise, a demon attack can be dealt with in various ways.

Demons were originally harder to deal with due to higher IQ and the old way the battle of wills worked, but even then people figured out how powerful wizards could farm wizards.

Also, the new RAW death rules seem to really nerf the effect, since unless the demon manages to grab the wizard's body and teleport away with it, they'd have an hour to get the body back to ST 0 to prevent it even losing 5 attributes for having died. Combined with the high success rate for farming wishes, it looks like a guild organized to farm wishes could be very successful at it.

It looks to me like GMs who don't want that should house rule some ways it won't tend to work out well. There have been a few discussions of such ideas in the house rules subforum.

As for your specific questions:

* I would say yes you should count automatic success/failure by one side as deciding the outcome of a contest here. It helps make outcomes less certain.

* I think you're right that the wizard and demon should be unblocked by pentagrams. Basically the demon should be able to attack the wizard for the wizard to be able to attempt to compel a wish.

* As written, it seems to me spells affect demons normally (and the new rules give them lower IQ, making them more vulnerable to some spells), though a GM might rule the part about them attacking people who cast spells on them is part of their magical nature and overrules spells used to attempt to control them.

06-09-2019, 11:04 AM	#5
Skarg Join Date: May 2015	Re: Wish farming These are good sorts of questions for the GM to consider and answer for him/herself if anyone (PCs or NPCs) are going to be allowed to farm wishes. It has implications for the campaign, in terms of how many wishes are liable to be in circulation, who has them, who may likely/reasonably have used them to jack up their attributes, or not. Etc. The rules are open to a variety of interpretations, and I'd say the GM can and should consider making wish farming be as difficult or dangerous as he likes. The main point of fairness, it seems to me, would be to let players of Wizard PCs who may be learning about the details of Summon Demon (certainly before they study the spell) to be given fair warning about his rulings and changes made to the spell, demons, and/or wish rules, if they diverge from what the book seems to say. It does look to me like, even if the GM rules conservatively, it can be made fairly safe to farm wishes. A demon attack isn't that dangerous if a powerful/wealthy wizard and friends prepare for it and can attack it and cast spells on it, unless they don't know they need to and the pentagram part means it can ignore multiple pentagrams and that you don't know there's a problem until the demon attacks. (Especially if the demon is allowed to see all your guards and then "attacks" by teleporting away and starting to kill nearby unprepared people you might care about, or something.) Otherwise, a demon attack can be dealt with in various ways. Demons were originally harder to deal with due to higher IQ and the old way the battle of wills worked, but even then people figured out how powerful wizards could farm wizards. Also, the new RAW death rules seem to really nerf the effect, since unless the demon manages to grab the wizard's body and teleport away with it, they'd have an hour to get the body back to ST 0 to prevent it even losing 5 attributes for having died. Combined with the high success rate for farming wishes, it looks like a guild organized to farm wishes could be very successful at it. It looks to me like GMs who don't want that should house rule some ways it won't tend to work out well. There have been a few discussions of such ideas in the house rules subforum. As for your specific questions: * I would say yes you should count automatic success/failure by one side as deciding the outcome of a contest here. It helps make outcomes less certain. * I think you're right that the wizard and demon should be unblocked by pentagrams. Basically the demon should be able to attack the wizard for the wizard to be able to attempt to compel a wish. * As written, it seems to me spells affect demons normally (and the new rules give them lower IQ, making them more vulnerable to some spells), though a GM might rule the part about them attacking people who cast spells on them is part of their magical nature and overrules spells used to attempt to control them.