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    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Mar 2017

    Default Giving the Deck of Many Things to controlled followers negates almost all downsides

    I've been thinking about The Deck of Many Things recently and just arrived at the conclusion that you can actually gain literally all but a few of it's benefits while suffering absolutely none of the negative effects by simply asking a series of creatures under your control such as a Familiar ( Which you can create and again and again and by the way can't even be imprisoned since you'll just cast the spell again, removing the last familiar and making an new one ), Planar Bound creatures, a bunch of successively summoned or dominated beings, whatever mental slaves you have access to for any reason, one at the time to draw one card from the deck for you. And before you wonder about it, since none of those cards restore mental control or give agency to creatures where it hasn't been already, they obey your commands as always.

    Balance - Who cares? Your controlled creature is now a different alignment.

    Comet - Yep, you lose a level, but nothing you couldn't do naturally.

    Donjon, Euryale, Flames, Fool, Idiot, Rogue, Ruin, Skull, Talons, The Void - Sorry, Minion.

    The Fates - "Hey, in case you get that one, I will tell you what to ask for."

    Gem - "Gimme"

    Jester - We lost 10,000exp. Oh well.

    Key - Well, in case the creature isn't proficient with what we're proficient with, we still gain the item either way. Worst case scenario hand it to a party member, unless you just specifically control creatures who use weapons that you want.

    Knight - The servant of my servant is..... you guessed it.

    Moon - That's mine too.

    Star - This would probably the only actual potential significant benefit we lose by using this method.

    Sun - While we don't get the 50,000 experience, we do get the wondrous item.

    Throne - The castle of my servant is.... you guessed it. Officially sign my inheritance right here, will you?

    Vizier - I tell it what to ask.


    The only real non-issue here is possibly the longevity of The Fates and Moon in case you want to reserve them, which is very easily circumvented with a familiar that, in the event of getting it, gets retracted into his pocket plane and brought out when needed, or long-term planar bound creatures, or an undead you can just re-assert control over every 24 hours, and just literally stuff it in a bag of holding or something and bring out when needed, since it's not a breathing creature. It would also be extremely easy to do this with even any other creature using various Control Extension and containment methods, but there's no need to cover the "advanced" material here, since we already have a bunch of perfectly good options.
    Last edited by Renduaz; 2017-08-09 at 09:33 PM.