The Gaming Den

I must missing something obvious, but where does it say that the efreeti is neutral when summoned? Because I'd think that in that situation would be more logical for him to be unfriendly, if not hostile, and this mean a DC 35, or even 50 to make it friendly.

Not that this make diplomacy rules any less stupid.

I believe we're going by bribery rules in Tome.

Yes, yes we are. Summoned Efreeti have a starting disposition of Neutral.

• You can Befriend them by increasing their disposition to friendly or helpful, and with a friendly or helpful amount of swag will grant your wishes, because they like you.
• You can Bribe them by promising them crazy amounts of swag in exchange for granting your wishes, because they are greedy.
• You can Bluff them by promising them pile of worthless garbage in exchange for granting your wishes, because they are greedy and gullible.
• You can Intimidate them by promising them you won't hurt them in exchange for granting your wishes, because they are scared shitless of you.

A point of order is needed: Called creatures get paid for their services after those services have been rendered, not before. Every way described above of getting a service means that the called creature wants to do that service because it believes that it is in it's best interest to do the service.

Both Bluff and Intimidate are not conducive for running wish factory, and a not discussed in the guide as they will eventually lead to multitudes of Efreeti/Fire Elemental teleport death squads sent from the Sultan of the City of Brass to burn down your wish factory, your minions, and assassinate you. So unless you want to fight an inter-planer war, don't do this.

Previn wrote:You know what would be even better? Level 1 commoner slaves. Efreet gets all the wishes for stuff he wants, and the slave gets to live, possible in relative opulence.

Which leads me to another random thought; As soon as a wizard starts up his wish factory, the Efreets have their level 1 slaves start dropping the wishes against them in retaliation. I can't even begin to think how much bad wrong stuff would go down on that 11th level wizard that he could not possible hope to deal with.

More to the point, Efreet can grant wishes to any non genie creature. I would imagine casting Summon Monster spells and instructing the resultant creatures to wish for things would be popular in the City of Brass.

why do genies grant wishes

OgreBattle wrote:why do genies grant wishes

Do you want one reason, or one thousand and one?

Mythologically, if the genie consistently grants wishes to whoever has their lamp, then they got stuffed in there by a high level character who bullied them into serving whoever has the lamp.

They were probably dickish nobles in genie land before this.

OgreBattle wrote:why do genies grant wishes

Personal motivations vary. The slave of the lamp is specifically bound to serve whoever holds the lamp, but other genies offer wishes for other reasons, such as gratitude (for releasing them from imprisonment, usually), generosity (some are genuinely nice), boredom, malice... they're all over the map.

In the larger sense, genies grant wishes because mythologically they are magically powerful beings without being inherently moral or immoral, so the wisher isn't unsympathetically damned (for dealing with actual devils) or particularly safe (it would be out of character for angels to make your wishes go hilariously wrong).

Genie are basically a metaphor for nobility: powerful and dickish, but really useful if you had some arbitrary way to control them.