[Tome] Wish Factories

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 5:56 am

Unless you do something to make him dislike you. Yeah, once you've diplomacyed someone to helpful they stay helpful. Unless you're using the ToP ability that changes peoples attitudes.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:00 am

Previn wrote:
Hicks wrote:Ok, this has gotten out of hand. Wish factory wishes are not and furthermore cannot be twisted because twistable wishes are not even allowed as an effect an Efreet can grant. The menu in the guide is the same from the Book of Fiends where both wish and calling magic in general were overhauled, and represents the entierty of outputs a wish from a bound Efreet can grant.
The Efreet grants the wish. It is the one casting it. It can twist it however it likes, even if he effects would normally be ok. Cast in point; you could demand the Efreet uses a wish to give you a 15,000 gp item. The Efreet makes the wish with an added claus that it be cursed.

It's not the wish doing the twisting it's the Efreet.

honestly, since we're talking tome here, the efreet adding cursed when I wish for my magic sword of asswhupping is being helpful. hell, if it's just putting cursed on the gold I'm wishing for, that's double awesome sauce.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 3:29 pm

darkmaster wrote:Actually they're fairly well defined terms.

Friendly: Wishes you well; Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate
Helpful: Will take risks to help you; Protect, back up, heal, aid

See, not nebulous at all really. Unless the connotations of nebulous have been changed to mean clear and well defined.

Yes, they are very nebulous, even with those 'clarifications' from diplomacy.

What limited help do they offer? How far will they stick their necks out? Do they still deny their basic nature?

From a demon's perspective it may be helping you by giving you a quick death, rather than dragging it out for years like it was ordered to do. From it's view point it's taking a risk to help you out. Likewise said Efreet may help you out by giving you a cursed magical item. You've got something you didn't have before, the curse is only a minor annoyance, and heck, you can use your next wish to get rid of the curse right?

Now, you can go on and on about 'gyxain bullshit' all you want, but you can't point out anything that says I'm wrong and you're right (and I'll shoot right back at you about player entitlement).

Welcome to the Magic Tea Party.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 3:58 pm

SRD wrote:Helpful: Will take risks to help you; Protect, back up, heal, aid

Previn, your whining about vague wording is defeated by the fact that there are a concrete list of examples of things it will do right there in the text. Now, you can argue that "giving you a quick death instead of years of torture" belongs among, "protect, back up, heal, and aid," but I'm pretty sure everyone here will call you retarded and they will be right.

The diplomacy rules are shit and parts of them are ill-defined. But the idea that helpful creatures will actually help you is pretty god damn well-established by the text provided.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 4:39 pm

DSMatticus wrote:Now, you can argue that "giving you a quick death instead of years of torture" belongs among, "protect, back up, heal, and aid," but I'm pretty sure everyone here will call you retarded and they will be right.

The demon protects you by causing every hit against you to instead be taken by an orphan somewhere in the world. He's very clearly helping you, never mind the piles of dead orphans.

The demon backs you up by gating in a horde of other demons, which is great until you've suddenly got a bunch of extra demons running around....

The demon heals you by drawing HP from all of your allies in a vampiric touch like method.

Look! It's explicitly helpful as defined by diplomacy in every case! I love magic tea party! Let's play some more!

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 4:49 pm

Two of those do not actually even begin to fucking help you. Demons have an int score, and are in fact capable of understanding what helps you and what hurts you. Given that, they are capable of recognizing that summoning a bunch of demons who may then try to kill you or undo everything you're trying to accomplish is not actually helping you. And leeching health from your allies to heal you is also not helping you accomplish anything, because it doesn't introduce any resources, it just moves them around, and the demon has not actually provided any help at all. Nevermind the fact that the demon is also capable of understanding what your goals are, and understands that certain actions are counter-intuitive to those goals, and that by doing certain things it is actually hurting you.

I dare you to try and fail harder. I don't think you can do it.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 6:07 pm

The other demons are not bad because they attack you, they are bad because they murder entire towns for shits and giggles, exactly like the orphan thing.

And your teammates are not actually part of you, so it is helping you to steal life from them. It's mostly not hurting or helping, but in certain situations, like when it's likely that one person on a team of four is going to die in a fight, the Demon would be remiss to not make sure it's someone else.

Demons who want to help you should absolutely throw your teammate in front of the disintegrate to save you, because that is both helping you, and also shitty demons not giving a fuck about your teammates when they aren't helping you.

Likewise, literal Genie wishes are still a problem if the Genie likes you, because Genies are really fucking literal, and get confused.

Now, the DM should just as the player what they want, look at the PCs int score (or the int score of someone else who the PC consults for wish wording) and give you the wish you actually want because you character knows genies are literal, and fucking takes care of that. But that doesn't mean literal wish giving isn't true just because they are helpful, because helpful really is subject to helpful within their normal nature.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 6:23 pm

There's also the fact that you're probably actually asking for something specific, so the Efreet isn't going with some sort of nebulous 'help you' goal, but an actual specific thing that you want. Sure, if you ask for, "a magic sword," you might get, "an evil magic sword," but that's not the same as getting, "a sword that inflicts a bunch of curses on the wielder."

the_taken · Post by **the_taken** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 6:55 pm

I just started playing Clerics. I don't know why I never looked at them in depth before, but I noticed a significant difference between Planar Binding and Planar Ally. What I see is that a Wizard can diplomazine, bully or bribe a genie as appropriate, getting away with cheap Wishes. A Cleric (using Planar Ally) gets a helpful Genie for free, but they have to pay through the nose to get those Wishes.

To get an Efreet to use it's Wish granting ability, the caster must pay him or her at least 1,000 gp (assuming the DM doesn't increase the Efreet's HD) or 3,000 gp if it's one Wish per request of help. This isn't much of an issue, since you can Wish for wealth and get 25,000 gp, which is another 20 Wishes or something like that. In 3.5. You can also negotiate with the genie to convince it that helping you aligns with it's goals (he gets one of his Wishes? Hot damn!), so you get a 50% to 100% discount.

Of course, I'm playing a Pathfinder game. Path Failure's Wishes don't make magic items, and don't give wealth. They also cost a spell caster 25,000 gp in expensive material components to cast, completely flipping over getting money for extra Wishes. Material components shouldn't be an issue for a genie's spell like ability (unless my DM takes the omission of MC rules from the spell-like abilities description as meaning that they now suddenly do cost that kinda stuff.)

So my question is, how do I use chain Wishing to create a wealth engine in Pathfailure if it is costing me 2,250/4,250 gp to get my Wishes that don't grant me money?

Edit: derp. I missed the [Tome] tag on the thread title.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:06 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:There's also the fact that you're probably actually asking for something specific, so the Efreet isn't going with some sort of nebulous 'help you' goal, but an actual specific thing that you want. Sure, if you ask for, "a magic sword," you might get, "an evil magic sword," but that's not the same as getting, "a sword that inflicts a bunch of curses on the wielder."

You ask for a magic sword. The Efreet teleports you to the bottom of the ocean where there is a sword exactly like what you wanted.

You ask for a magic sword. The Efreet makes one exactly like you wanted appear in your hand, the previous owner wants it back and he's more powerful than you.

It's like the twisted wishes game.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:14 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:There's also the fact that you're probably actually asking for something specific, so the Efreet isn't going with some sort of nebulous 'help you' goal, but an actual specific thing that you want. Sure, if you ask for, "a magic sword," you might get, "an evil magic sword," but that's not the same as getting, "a sword that inflicts a bunch of curses on the wielder."

If the curses are magic, how did you not get a magic sword? Inflicting a bunch of curses doesn't sound like something a non-magic sword would do.

violence in the media · Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:15 pm

Previn, why are you being such a douche about this? This is the exact sort of attitude that ruins wishes in the game and pisses players off.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:23 pm

It is also decidedly not helpful. I mean really? What sentient being doesn't realize that drowning or getting you killed by someone stronger isn't in any way shape or form helpful.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:50 pm

If you wish for "a magic sword" then you get a magic sword, and literal genie doesn't know you want a beneficial magic sword, because he's literal genie, he thinks that if you really wanted a beneficial magic sword, you would have specified, or that if you wanted a sword that did something cool, you'd have asked for it. So he gets a magic sword, and it might be a cursed sword, because that would be magic.

It's not about him being helpful, it's about him being literal.

Just like Demons, who are helpful in evil ways involving children dying to keep you alive, because they are evil.

Now, you should assume your high knowledge planes high int Wizard knows this and actually phrases his wish appropriately.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 7:54 pm

Players shouldn't be wishing for a magic sword at all. The fact that some do just shows that wishes are too easy to get and too limited in power.

Open-ended wishes are good because they lead to interesting wishes like "I wish [insert important historical event] never happened", "I wish for every demon in the Abyss to become Good", and "I wish Bill Murray would sign on for Ghostbusters III".

Okay, maybe there's easier ways to accomplish that last one. But the point is that Wish should be a way to grab the reality by the balls and force it to conform to your will. PCs should be using it to do the impossible on a grand scale, not getting crappy magic swords and lame +5 bonuses.

Twisting wishes works in that context. It isn't just about screwing you over, it's about the unintended consequences of rearranging the universe to suit your whim.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 8:24 pm

No, see, a helpful Efreet, being an extremely intelligent creature knows a cursed weapon is unhelpful, and seeing as they want to help you, they will not give you a cursed sword. Now they may give you a sword that only gives you a +1/3 your level (since we're talking about tome) enhancement, which is helpful, if somewhat boring and out of date by level 11.

So a literal Genie might give you a cursed sword because you didn't say you wanted a sword that was magic and not cursed, that Genie would be a prick, because you also didn't say you did want your sword to be cursed.

But a HELPFUL literal Genie wouldn't give you a cursed sword unless you specifically asked for it because a helpful genie wants to help you.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 8:32 pm

Previn wrote:
darkmaster wrote:Actually they're fairly well defined terms.

Friendly: Wishes you well; Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate
Helpful: Will take risks to help you; Protect, back up, heal, aid

See, not nebulous at all really. Unless the connotations of nebulous have been changed to mean clear and well defined.
Yes, they are very nebulous, even with those 'clarifications' from diplomacy.

What limited help do they offer? How far will they stick their necks out? Do they still deny their basic nature?

From a demon's perspective it may be helping you by giving you a quick death, rather than dragging it out for years like it was ordered to do. From it's view point it's taking a risk to help you out. Likewise said Efreet may help you out by giving you a cursed magical item. You've got something you didn't have before, the curse is only a minor annoyance, and heck, you can use your next wish to get rid of the curse right?

Now, you can go on and on about 'gyxain bullshit' all you want, but you can't point out anything that says I'm wrong and you're right (and I'll shoot right back at you about player entitlement).

Welcome to the Magic Tea Party.

What? You're making a contract with a creature (and paying it lots of gold) that alignment wise (oh boy here we go) is bound by or at least pays strong lip service to laws and customs. Under Tome "Word is Bond" law rules, the Efreeti would never, ever fuck a paying customer over like this. If you must, you could use a Diplomacy check or take Profession (Litigation) or whatever the hell that one pre-req for Barrister of the Nine is to make a binding verbal contract. Shit, that's the point of the Barrister of the Nine PrC, innit? Making contracts and then screwing people with them? Besides, you could always fish for Noble Djinni (Chaotic Good, CR 10) to do it, too. You'd just need Magic Circle Against Good from somewhere.

You're also using "this is wrong because fluff I believe in prove me wrong" as your argument and evidence, which is pants-on-head retarded. So go fuck yourself.

And Radiant: the actual wish goes through in anywhere from literal (fix hand = fixed hand, want to live = get to live) to dumbshit broken (make people understand my dumb religion = gain Expert access in Seduction Sphere)

(Meet girl I like again = able to repeatedly travel back in time + Time Stop, end suffering = become God)

It's what you give up for the wish that gets you (and in D&D terms, is a straight vertical power up). Being Meguca is suffering, but QB isn't quite the right example for this sort of thing.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 8:48 pm

Previn wrote:
darkmaster wrote:Actually they're fairly well defined terms.

Friendly: Wishes you well; Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate
Helpful: Will take risks to help you; Protect, back up, heal, aid

See, not nebulous at all really. Unless the connotations of nebulous have been changed to mean clear and well defined.
Yes, they are very nebulous, even with those 'clarifications' from diplomacy.

What limited help do they offer? How far will they stick their necks out? Do they still deny their basic nature?

From a demon's perspective it may be helping you by giving you a quick death, rather than dragging it out for years like it was ordered to do. From it's view point it's taking a risk to help you out. Likewise said Efreet may help you out by giving you a cursed magical item. You've got something you didn't have before, the curse is only a minor annoyance, and heck, you can use your next wish to get rid of the curse right?

Now, you can go on and on about 'gyxain bullshit' all you want, but you can't point out anything that says I'm wrong and you're right (and I'll shoot right back at you about player entitlement).

Welcome to the Magic Tea Party.

Previn, yes, it's evil. That doesn't mean it has no concept of friendship, or understand the usual concept of helping a friend.

Fuck off with your "Evil has no friends" bullshit.

Previn wrote:You ask for a magic sword. The Efreet teleports you to the bottom of the ocean where there is a sword exactly like what you wanted.

You ask for a magic sword. The Efreet makes one exactly like you wanted appear in your hand, the previous owner wants it back and he's more powerful than you.

It's like the twisted wishes game.

....wow, this is quite a week. Two fucktards prove to me they should go on ignore and it's only Thursday.

darkmaster wrote:No, see, a helpful Efreet, being an extremely intelligent creature knows a cursed weapon is unhelpful,

Tome. Cursed weapons (as in the quality) are actually pretty awesome. Though I suppose there's nothing saying that a cursed sword is a Cursed sword.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 9:41 pm

Previn wrote:You ask for a magic sword. The Efreet teleports you to the bottom of the ocean where there is a sword exactly like what you wanted.

You ask for a magic sword. The Efreet makes one exactly like you wanted appear in your hand, the previous owner wants it back and he's more powerful than you.

It's like the twisted wishes game.

Red_Rob wrote:If the curses are magic, how did you not get a magic sword? Inflicting a bunch of curses doesn't sound like something a non-magic sword would do.

You two are idiots.

An Efreet is certainly intelligent enough to realize that none of those things are what you actually asked for, and one that has a Friendly or Helpful demeanor is by definition not out to fuck you over; they aren't going to do those things, because they know those aren't what you want, and they actually do want to help you.[/i]

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:13 pm

darkmaster wrote:No, see, a helpful Efreet, being an extremely intelligent creature knows a cursed weapon is unhelpful, and seeing as they want to help you, they will not give you a cursed sword. Now they may give you a sword that only gives you a +1/3 your level (since we're talking about tome) enhancement, which is helpful, if somewhat boring and out of date by level 11.

So a literal Genie might give you a cursed sword because you didn't say you wanted a sword that was magic and not cursed, that Genie would be a prick, because you also didn't say you did want your sword to be cursed.

But a HELPFUL literal Genie wouldn't give you a cursed sword unless you specifically asked for it because a helpful genie wants to help you.

It's a literal helpful genie. It doesn't know what you want the sword for, maybe you need a magic sword to blow up in a ritual, in which case, it doesn't matter if it's cursed.

It might be that it doesn't know if you want a cursed sword or not, so it just doesn't give you a cursed sword, but if you don't specify uncursed, how is the genie supposed to know? It's a literal genie.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:27 pm

Kaelik wrote:if you don't specify uncursed, how is the genie supposed to know?

Ask?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:35 pm

Kaelik wrote:and literal genie doesn't know you want a beneficial magic sword, because he's literal genie

I don't see the extraordinary ability "stupidly literal" anywhere in the genie entry. As a matter of fact, I see an int of 12, a wisdom of 15, and a sense motive of +15.

The idea that they're too stupid to understand what people mean is out the window. But even more out the window is the idea that any creature in a society is too stupid to understand what is and isn't helpful to begin with. They have a functioning society where they do things for eachother. That means they are totally and completely capable of conveying and understanding what the other wants done, or else genie society would fall apart on the premise, "man, we're all a bunch of dumbasses who can't talk to eachother at all." And then out the even bigger window is the idea that any species in existence has a language which is fully descriptive, because there are literally an infinite number of possible riders given any specific sentence, and if your language revolves around ambiguously interpreting any unspecified riders it is completely impossible to meaningfully communicate with eachother.

And if you wish for a magic sword from a genie, it's genuinely smart enough to know that putting you at the bottom of the ocean is not helpful. So why the fuck would a helpful genie do something knowingly not helpful? That kind of defeats the exact definition of helpful.

So here, let's put it this way:
1) If your argument is that genies are stupid or bad at communication, you are wrong. They have above average intelligence and have great sense motives. They understand what people mean when they speak.
2) If your argument is that helpful genies deliberately do unhelpful things, stop talking.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:53 pm

More to the point, shouldn't efreet require payment in Wish economy goods rather than gold for their services? Why does a Djinn need gold?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 11:59 pm

Once again, it is a genie. People wish for things, they get those things. If you wish for a Magic Sword, then the Genie has to make a choice between flaming/cursing/ninja/blurring/exploding/frosting/nanny/ghost touch swords.

He can only give you one of those. He has to pick one. How the fuck does he know which one? A +15 Sense Motive is not detect thoughts. Helpful Genies are not telepathic, they just do things that are helpful. If you ask for a magic sword, he just gives you a magic sword, because the only logical assumption for your question is that you don't care in what way it is magic.

A wish doesn't give the genie the option to ask for clarification, it's just a wish, which is why you should assume any PC with an int of 12 can manage to get what they want from good wording, even when the player doesn't. But the mere existence of your preference for a shocking sword doesn't mean that the genie can read your mind.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:15 am

Kaelik wrote: He can only give you one of those. He has to pick one. How the fuck does he know which one? A +15 Sense Motive is not detect thoughts. Helpful Genies are not telepathic, they just do things that are helpful. If you ask for a magic sword, he just gives you a magic sword, because the only logical assumption for your question is that you don't care in what way it is magic.

You're arguing that "language is ambiguous, and the genie can't answer those ambiguities himself." But helpful hint: English requests are ambiguous, and if I ask a friend to "help me carry my stuff into my new apartment," he doesn't respond by breaking all my furniture into smaller pieces with an axe and carrying the splintered remains into my new place piece by piece. Because he's smart enough to understand that, given the context of the request, I probably want my furniture intact.

If your argument is that genies are worse at understanding requests than the average person on the street, you have a problem given that they are actually smarter and way better at understanding people given their stats. If a genie screws you over in the way you're describing, it necessarily implies stupidity or malignance. Stupidity is ruled out by genies not being stupid. Malignance is ruled out by making the genie helpful. Modus tollens, genie won't screw you over.

Now, you could intentionally construct poorly worded wishes or situations where a genie might actually genuinely misunderstand you. But "wishing for a magic sword" and genie thinking "cursed sword" is an unreasonable assumption on par with me saying "help me move my future," and my friend pulling out the axe or buying me a gym membership or something stupid. (Though, that last one sounds hilariously smart ass'd.)