Evil malkonvokers, help me brew it up

[daremetoidareyo]

The concept is simple, a malconvoker who summons celestials and uses intimidate and bluff in order to make them perform just like fiends. What fluff and changes are appropriate? This guy will be a new villain, sending all sort of archons to bedevil the PCs.

[Hipster Dixit]

Well, I really don't like the Malconvoker's original concept, but this version is pretty neat. Makes much more sense in my opinion. A conversion is pretty easy, just scroll the text and replace all the istances of "evil" with "good", the alignment required to "any nongood", and you're done. The malconvoker is a pretty potent class already so it does not need other fixes.

[Debihuman]

t's one thing to bluff an evil creature into extended service to do evil things, it's quite another to make a good creature "perform like fiends."

Now you are treading on alignment issues which should be more than a simple skill check. Suppose it does as asked, then when it goes back to its home plane it tells other celestial creatures what you made it do. I hope you are prepared for the consequences of having a boatload of angry celestial creatures on your trail.

Debby

[Dyhmas]

Debby has a good point. He'd need some serious protection against divination and other sorts of detection from good creatures. Not to mention some really angry paladin and cleric orders.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me it is unecessarily difficult to do things this way. It is much more efficient to just get a fiend to do your evil work.

I do second the thought that this idea is cool. Just not very practical...if at all.

Besides, the DCs to convince a celestial creature to commit evil acts would be huge, IMO.

-Dyhmas

EDIT: Altho it deviates a bit from the original idea, why not just make the villain an evil caster (or even a normal malconvoker) and give him some form of artifact wich grants him control over good outsiders. You could even add a sidequest later around the idea of destroying said artifact...I know it's not as cool, but at least you don't have to come up with a whole new class.

[Hipster Dixit]

Well, it could be made that summoned creatures do not remember anything of what they did while under the malconvoker's control. So the archon come back to their homeplane, and their mates ask him "Someone reported you slaughtered a hundred children in the last week, what do you say about it?"; and he is not able to provide any answer. This would probably lead to a clash inside the forces of good, which evil characters like very much.

Anyway, the problem you brought out also happens with planar binding. I bind an evil outsider, he does the task for me, come back to its home plane and returns with a bunch of friends to greet me. Binding a creature should always have risks, I agree, but not of a kind that makes you impossible to continue the campaign (an army of outsiders against 4 players). I don't see anything that would reasonably prevent someone to just apply the Malconvoker to evil characters. Also, D&D is reknown for having some little nonsense here and there... it is part of the fun ;)

[Gnorman]

It's an NPC. Just fiddle around with the alignment-related bits, and don't worry about it too much. Let the players worry about the moral implications - in fact, maybe that's how they beat the villain, by ratting him out to the celestial authorities.

[Durazno]

Would the class be called a Bonconvoker?

[bekeleven]

Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you (the summoning subschool), actually transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling), heal (healing), transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation), or create objects or effects on the spot (creation).

No need to worry. Those aren't real celestials, and they won't be going anywhere to report.