Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
In context of that to which I was replying, "coerced" applies inevitably.
You think too highly of your context:
Quote Originally Posted by Segev
That's an argument that makes planar binding literally never work. Planar binding cannot make them agree to "unreasonable demands." If the very casting of planar binding - which "[yanks] someone out of their home" so you can "[demand] they do whatever you say under pain of" some threat (death, imprisonment, pain, etc.) makes the request itself unreasonable, then planar binding literally never works to get you the service it spends a lot of text discussing the negotiation of.

A request can be reasonable even if the means used to make it are not. "Please prepare a delicious lunch for me to eat," is a reasonable request (especially on the scale of services planar binding is usually used to secure). You can just ask somebody you meet to do this, or you could kidnap them and drag them, blindfolded, to your secret underground kitchen and then make that request. The reasonableness of the request itself is unchanged.

In fact, the incentive to agree to it has increased: you've proven that you're willing and able to put this person under your power and imprison them in a location of your choosing; the fact that you're clearly not letting them go until they make for you that tasty meal is going to make the reasonableness of the request compared to the unreasonableness of the alternative strongly encourage them to just comply so they can go the heck home.
Hardly respectful, that context.

Don't get me wrong, it would work fine for imps and quasits and such who are used to "requests" being accompanied with threats to their continued existence--heck, they probably expect it--but it won't work so well on others.

Furthermore, you forget that your context also changes the nature of the request. It goes from "make a tasty meal" to "make a tasty meal and negotiate with a terrorist." You throw extra baggage onto the request depending on how you go about asking. And who. Asking the Glabrezu is "make a tasty meal that can put this mortal in my debt and allow me to corrupt him," whereas asking the Efreeti is "lower myself to something far beneath my station--to the level of a cockroach or a slime mold or a gnome--and make a tasty meal and, in doing so, encourage others to bind my fellow genies in the future." One of these requests is reasonable, the other is not.

There is nothing in planar binding that forbids civility on the part of the caster. There is nothing in planar binding that forces the caster to hold the called creature until it has agreed to the demand. But the very fact that a theoretical caster would assume such, and treat all bindings in the same agressive style without regard to the type of creature he was binding, speaks to the caster's unreasonableness.