The Gaming Den

How is using a candle of invocation to chain gate noble dijinn for wishes different from casting planer binding over and over and over again? It seems to be harder than just chain binding efreeti.

Candles of Invocation cost 8,400gp, CL 17

Scrolls of planer binding cost 1,650gp, CL 11

• +Scroll of magic circle against evil which costs 375gp, CL5
  +Scroll of dimensional anchor which costs 700gp, CL7

First things first, you are never going to be able to buy a candle of invocation unless you know a 17th level cleric with craft wondrous item who is either Chaotic Good or Chaotic Evil; There is a little over 7.4% chance of having the right guy (level + alignment) in a metropolis, and you get 4 chances per metropolis. There is a non zero chance may find one in a treasure pile though from 6th level on as it is a medium wondrous item, but there are a hundreds of possible items to roll on that list and only one of them is the candle of invocation.

Granting 3 wishes is something noble dijinn and efreeti can just do as a standard action (SLA grant 3 wishes 1/day). so in core only games you don't have to negotiate or pay them when you gate them for wishes, and you don't need to pay to get creatures to agree to give you wishes either when ensnared in a planer binding spell; OR like me you play a Tome game so you always must negotiate payment for wishes.

In fact the only thing that's different, besides the price, is that planer binding allows a save to be resist being trapped, which is what you expect because it is both lower level and cheaper to purchase than anything with gate, and you have to have a specific type of candle of invocation (either chaotic good or chaotic evil) to get wishes at all.

The point is that you are expected to buy the Candles at MagicMart and since the candles cast gate you can just command the outsider to grant wishes without negotiation or payment.

Firstly, your McMagic Mart needs an alignment specific 17+ level cleric or it cannot provide the candel.

Secondly, I thought you and Frank fixed the part about getting something for nothing. You and frank rewrote the calling rules back in the book of fiends, and y'all wrote...

Y'all totally wrote:Things you can ask a creature to do

• Use a single use of one of its abilities

... as a thing that required negotiation of payment fer services rendered that applies as equally to planer binding as to gate.

And furthermore, originally you didn't have negotiate or pay one red copper piece to any creature in a planer binding, oh you could but it was an extra and did not even assure you of even getting the service.

Thirdly, I'm just come out and say that gate is broke as fuck in core 3.X, just like wish in 3.5; however I'm not so sure about it being broke in Tome.

For the purpose of breaking 3.5, the candle is "better" because it kicks in at a lower level. Because you can totally buy it from a magic mart that got it from the one 17th level cleric who sells them to every magic mart in the world.

For the purposes of Tome, specific beats general, and so you can Planar Bind for one wish, or you can gate for 3 wishes, because Gate can either let you make an agreement, or take complete control for CL rounds.

In either case, Gate is a problem that Planar Binding isn't. In one it's a problem of a different kind, in the other, it makes the game unplayable much earlier.

Yeah, the candle is broken for reasons beyond early entry to the Wish Economy.

Access to gate at low-mid levels is absolutely broken. You can use it to control a solar or a half-celestial brass wyrm. Ignore the Wish Economy for a moment and think about what a party can do with that kind of firepower.

Yeah, that opens up the unlimited self replicating horde of Great Wyrm Copper Dragons. The solution seems to be to make Gate have a fat XP or super expensive spell component cost that bumps a scroll of it up above the 15,000 gp limit, and allow a save for the called creature to ignore you.

Hicks wrote:Yeah, that opens up the unlimited self replicating horde of Great Wyrm Copper Dragons. The solution seems to be to make Gate have a fat XP or super expensive spell component cost that bumps a scroll of it up above the 15,000 gp limit, and allow a save for the called creature to ignore you.

Considering that every single thing that Gate does is broken, rewriting the spell completely would be easier.

Planar Binding Scrolls don't let low level players enter the wish economy, because low level characters don't have a bargaining position against an Efreet or similar creature. I mean, sure, it might give you a wish, and it might not, but it's probably going to end up like Simon the Wanderer (NSFW). As a character actually high enough level to cast the spell, you can plausibly kill the Efreet in the trap and start over again, meaning that the Efreet has no bargaining position and has to cave in to your ridiculous demands.

Gate is broken on many levels. And one of the ways it is broken is that because the creature in question does not have any choice about using or even delaying its abilities, getting access to Gate at any level instantly puts you into the Wish Economy.

-Username17

On an odd sidenote, why would the cleric even sell the candle to the magic mart? By the time he has that sort of power, what does he care about an under ten thousand gold piece sale? Since it's a one-time-use, it's not like it's the sort of treasure you find on the BBEG that no one can use and gets sold.

Which suggests a caster level restriction on the wish economy. I think that solves the scroll hole, incidentally.

Maybe candles like that are made in an arbitrary fashion- ie, their purpose is not simply mechanical, but the effects are just a result of whatever ritual they are used in.

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Maybe candles like that are made in an arbitrary fashion- ie, their purpose is not simply mechanical, but the effects are just a result of whatever ritual they are used in.

Except there are no such restrictions. I'm just trying to figure out what RAW reason there'd be, unless you had some contrived reason that involved a bunch of non-casters needing to cast Gate at the same time, or something.

RobbyPants wrote:

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Maybe candles like that are made in an arbitrary fashion- ie, their purpose is not simply mechanical, but the effects are just a result of whatever ritual they are used in.

Except there are no such restrictions. I'm just trying to figure out what RAW reason there'd be, unless you had some contrived reason that involved a bunch of non-casters needing to cast Gate at the same time, or something.

The RAW magic item creation rules leave much to be desired. Strictly speaking there is absolutely no reason for any item more expensive than +1 Armor to be created for the market at all, because when crafting your time to finish and creation costs are linearly related to the final sales price. So there is exactly zero incentive for you to ever make a +2 shield, because you make the same money and take the same time and use the same materials making and selling four +1 shields.

And it isn't just that making and selling lower level items makes you the same amount of money at the end of the month as making and selling big ticket items. The smaller items are more likely to sell, require less capital investment, can be finished by apprentices that literally pay the higher level caster money for the privilege of working under him instead of requiring the personal attention of the powerful caster, and are more agile with funds. And to top it all off: making magical anything has a sale price of twenty pounds of gold per day it took to make it - so if you make anything more expensive than a +1 sword you can't even send the proceeds by Lantern Archon courier to the bank and are going to need some sort of mule train just to carry the money.

Awesome items like the Ring of Blink I can imagine being in circulation because someone made it to outfit a powerful ninja and then that ninja passed on or got a Ring of Ghost Form or something. But use items like the candle? There is literally no conceivable reason for there to be a market supply for that shit.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: But use items like the candle? There is literally no conceivable reason for there to be a market supply for that shit.

It could be surplus of some kind (i.e. it was created for use in a war, but the war ended before it was needed). Of course, that doesn't work for a retarded item like a Candle of Invocation that is worth more than the retail value.

FrankTrollman wrote: The RAW magic item creation rules leave much to be desired. Strictly speaking there is absolutely no reason for any item more expensive than +1 Armor to be created for the market at all, because when crafting your time to finish and creation costs are linearly related to the final sales price. So there is exactly zero incentive for you to ever make a +2 shield, because you make the same money and take the same time and use the same materials making and selling four +1 shields.

I would assume that most of those items are made on commission, so you don't just make a +1 or +2 shield for the hell of it, you make one because you have a potential buyer who has commissioned you to do so. In that case, taking larger jobs is probably better because it makes it means you're working for a longer period before you have to go looking for work again.

Magic item crafters are likely not always employed by someone and contrary to what 3E would have people believe, the magemart just isn't a valid form of business. The inventory costs alone would be huge and so inviting to thieves that it wouldn't even be worth it. You can't afford to sit there with 500,000 gp in merchandise and expect not to be a huge target for thieves.

It's a lot easier to just make the stuff on commission. And even though you probably get more requests for +1 shields than +2 shields, if someone comes to you wanting a +2 shield, you're still going to do it.

Pretty much you're a construction company that gets paid by the hour regardless of what you're building. You'd rather have a long lengthy government project so you have more work rather than sporatic short personal contracts where you're always looking for new work.

Where does the magemart idea even come from? I can't recall an example of it in fiction, off the top of my head, at least one that wasn't a joke or a trap.

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Where does the magemart idea even come from? I can't recall an example of it in fiction, off the top of my head, at least one that wasn't a joke or a trap.

The 3E DMG implies that you can buy any magic item you want, and the Magic Item Compendium straight up says that DMs should allow players to buy what they want.

It doesn't specifically say magemart, but taht's the basic assumption since it doesn't say you're waiting for the item to be crafted.

In 4E you can craft any magic item in an hour so commissioned items are much more doable.

Hmm, I'm wondering where they got it, because the magemart concept was around when I was roleplaying before 3e...

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Hmm, I'm wondering where they got it, because the magemart concept was around when I was roleplaying before 3e...

There have been gp price tags on items since 1E. This was mainly as a measure of relative value, and the book-presented default was that you couldn't generally buy those for cash...but things and people being what they are, many gamers saw "this has a price, you can buy it". And if you can buy it, obviously there must be a place you buy it from.

Of course, it was taken to ridiculous lengths in the MIC, which shows the iconics doing a shopping scene in a store and trying on various kinds of magic boots.

I think the general setting assumption currently is that major cities have magemarts- and they're run by a guy high-level enough to make the magic items they contain. So theft is not a serious issue because people who try suffer induced human combustion.

Non-major cities will mostly have some magic items discreetly tucked away behind the counter in a normal store, at least if the old 3.0E encounter suggestions are any indication.

I remember a Rifts game where someone actually fell for the "we keep our magic weapons out back". If you got blackjacked, it was your own damn fault.

PoliteNewb wrote:There have been gp price tags on items since 1E.

Technically speaking 1E had GP Sale Values. Thus there is no implied notion of availability. The table is purely the demand given a supply of one.

tzor wrote:

PoliteNewb wrote:There have been gp price tags on items since 1E.

Technically speaking 1E had GP Sale Values. Thus there is no implied notion of availability. The table is purely the demand given a supply of one.

Yeah, I think I said that?

PN wrote: This was mainly as a measure of relative value, and the book-presented default was that you couldn't generally buy those for cash.

name_here wrote:I think the general setting assumption currently is that major cities have magemarts- and they're run by a guy high-level enough to make the magic items they contain. So theft is not a serious issue because people who try suffer induced human combustion.

Non-major cities will mostly have some magic items discreetly tucked away behind the counter in a normal store, at least if the old 3.0E encounter suggestions are any indication.

Core 3.x DnD specifically has a chart in the DMG that tells you how big of a magic or non-magic item you can buy in a 3.x DnD setting depending on the size of the city. It's based on GP value and not caster level of the items, so any rule that limits the availability of magic items is specifically a houserule. (The rule is on page 137 in the 3.5 DMG, table 5-2, with additional rules for how much total can be bought in that community of items under that limit)

For example, in a small town of 2001-5000 people you can buy a scroll of greater planar binding with a caster level of 15. In fact, if they had enough gold they could buy 100 of them before the town was exhausted.

Those are some rich peasants.