Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > The Fantasy Trip

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 06-09-2019, 07:59 AM   #1
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Wish farming

What if a high IQ wizard summons a demon, fails the IQ contest to gain a wish, and casts Word of Command: Surrender?

The RAW says the a demon immediately attacks if you cast a spell on it. Does that counteract the word of command?

Are demons immune to control spells of any sort, like Control Person, Geas, and Word of Command (or should they be)?

What about The Little Death?

These spells seem very useful for "lesser wish farming" and seem to take the danger out of trying to gain a wish...
zot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-09-2019, 09:02 AM   #2
amenditman
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Florida Peninsula, Earth, Sol Sytem
Default Re: Wish farming

I don't believe the RAW is specific on these points. Therefor, up to the GM to establish limits as they desire.
__________________
The first rule of GMing
"If you make it, players will break it"
amenditman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-09-2019, 09:44 AM   #3
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Wish farming

Also, "the pentagram does not protect the wizard against the battle of wills required to earn a wish, because the wizard himself initiated the contact" doesn't make sense to me. In the old TFT, failing a battle of wills caused the death of the wizard but now it just causes the demon to attack.

The only way I can think of to sort of make this work is to require that both the wizard and the demon be on the "same side" of a pentagram for a wizard to demand a wish...
zot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-09-2019, 09:46 AM   #4
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Wish farming

Also, the contest rules don't address failure. Are 16, 17, and 18 automatic failures in a contest? If so, what if an IQ 20 wizard rolls a 16 and the demon rolls a 12? Does the wizard get a wish?
zot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-09-2019, 11:04 AM   #5
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default 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.
Skarg is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-10-2019, 04:14 AM   #6
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Wish farming

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
* 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.
In the session I ran last night, that was essentially the ruling I made -- the magical nature of demons, combined with their extreme reaction to having spells cast on them particularly precludes magical control. So this rules out Control Person, Geas, Possession (although that does have a nice irony to it), and Word of Command, Persuasion, etc. Any other one-shot disable / kill spells, like The Little Death don't work. I'd say that the Death Spell would work though, if you happen to have a high enough ST at the time of casting because, well, at least there's some fairness in that.

As an in-world justification for this, there is the fact that you can't use wishes in the process of trying to gain a wish. I think this can just be extended to immunity from control and one-shot-disable spells, like having a limited, permanent spell shield. Reading just a little bit into the RAW, when you try to gain a wish you (and your group) are surrounded by an "anti-wish" field starting just before you make the IQ roll and lasting for as long as the demon is present. I'd allow a wish to be used on the DX roll to summon a demon because you haven't technically committed to what you are going to do with the demon.

Heck, why not just give who have demons a 1 minute long spell shield when someone is trying to gain a wish, anyway? Spell Shield is a legitimate magical effect, it makes sense to me that demons might have it or at least that it might be a property of the anti-wish field. I think this would not only restore wish farming to its proper level of danger but it would give heroes a chance to step in and do something a wizard couldn't do -- fight an angry demon right after the wizard messed up!

I should mention that although this is challenging, it wouldn't affect the characters farming techniques from last night because Spell Shield doesn't protect against 2 7-hex dragons. You get a character experienced enough and a lesser demon really doesn't pose much of a threat, even if it has a Spell Shield...

Anyone can keep one lesser wish in their pocket for 1 talent point, but a proliferation of lesser wishes does make things way less challenging. We ran a test session of wish farming to see how it difficult it was with two 40-point PCs with no magical items and the Lesser Demons didn't present much of a threat at all.

Last edited by zot; 06-10-2019 at 04:22 AM.
zot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-11-2019, 07:32 AM   #7
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Wish farming

Quote:
Originally Posted by zot View Post
Also, "the pentagram does not protect the wizard against the battle of wills required to earn a wish, because the wizard himself initiated the contact" doesn't make sense to me.
One new-compatible phrasing version could be "The wizard can demand a wish by winning a battle of wills, but initiating that battle breaks the wizard's pentagram, thus freeing the demon to attack if the wizard fails to win the battle." Or, y'know, go back to the old version, because it's much scarier :)
Anaraxes is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-11-2019, 07:39 AM   #8
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Wish farming

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
One new-compatible phrasing version could be "The wizard can demand a wish by winning a battle of wills, but initiating that battle breaks the wizard's pentagram, thus freeing the demon to attack if the wizard fails to win the battle." Or, y'know, go back to the old version, because it's much scarier :)
Good point -- I hadn't though of just having it break the pentagram, like a failed roll would!
zot is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-11-2019, 10:57 AM   #9
Shostak
 
Shostak's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
Default Re: Wish farming

My solution is to keep demon IQ (20 and 16) from the original ITL, making the contest of wills far more dangerous. Plus, there is always the chance the Pentagram was drawn improperly.
Shostak is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-11-2019, 12:36 PM   #10
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Wish farming

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
My solution is to keep demon IQ (20 and 16) from the original ITL, making the contest of wills far more dangerous. Plus, there is always the chance the Pentagram was drawn improperly.

That's strange. I've only been playing about with Legacy at low levels so hadn't realised they'd changed the Demons. I wonder why they changed the IQ to 11? I'm also tempted to stick with the IQ20 original, which was much more dangerous to mess about with.
Chris Rice is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 08:59 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.