Why Is Planar Binding So Popular And Good?

[Bartmanhomer]

I'm just curious, why is planar binding so popular and good? I read so many post and thread about it in this sub-forum.

[Eladrinblade]

Because outsiders are very powerful, and you can get many at once by casting the spells multiple times. Ally is expensive, as it requires you to pay the outsiders, while binding can be horribly cheesed to get basically free slaves (only taking time).

[chaos_redefined]

Do you acknowledge that Leadership is a powerful feat?

Imagine if you could cast a spell to get Leadership as a feat for the next couple of days.

Although... morality-wise, it's usually not good. Not sure on that one.

[Bartmanhomer]

Do you acknowledge that Leadership is a powerful feat?

Imagine if you could cast a spell to get Leadership as a feat for the next couple of days.

Although... morality-wise, it's usually not good. Not sure on that one.

Yes I heard about Leadership feat which I post a thread about how broken Leadership great is a few months back.

[Seina]

Another good thing about planar binding is getting easy access to a creatures spell casting relatively easily. I've bound outsiders between adventures to heal wounds or provide some other spells I needed. It tends to be easy to compel an angel to burn some spell slots restoring your party as opposed to following you on an adventure as well.

Morality aside it's a nice resource multiplier if you've got the time and the capability to use it.

[Selion]

Because DMs are lazy and are prone to forfeit the dire consequences stated in the spell description if players try to abuse its use :P

[tiercel]

As others have said, without particular cheese the spell can give you a lot of flexibility (and that flexibility only increases as the number of monster books you have access to / the skill modifier for your Knowledge (Planes) rises).

With cheese, "infinite free wishes." Though that is, admittedly, just begging for the DM to Monkey's Paw you. (As is any in-the-DM's-opinion abuse of the Planar Binding line.)

Even "regular" use is potentially asking for trouble given that you are putting a creature in a magical headlock by using Binding and not Ally. Right in the spell text it warns "The creature might later seek revenge.... Note that a clever recipient can subvert some instructions." Since the spell pretty explicitly warns "your DM may mess with you for casting this spell, and depending on the situation, even should," it's a situation where -- more than usually so -- you want to understand how the DM will adjudicate the spell BEFORE you start sticking magical folks in traps and making demands.

[Selion]

I don't think it's popular. I'm usually literally the only guy who uses that spell in all of my games.

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In terms of CR, at level 11 I can bind a CR13 creature. So just by going with CR I'm already stronger than my entire party with that one minion.

At level 15 I can bind a CR20 creature. So just by going with CR I'm already stronger than my entire party can ever be in this non-epic game with that one minion.

I can bind multiple minions. Two CR20 creatures. 3 CR20 creatures. Why do I need a party again?

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For mundanes

2 minions > optimized mundane with buffs > 1 minion with buffs > optimized mundane > 1 minion > all of your unoptimized mundanes combined.

Mundanes have no utility spells. They can literally only do combat, and now you're doing that better than them without sacrificing your utility spells. Will mundanes feel worthless in this scenario? y/n

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For spellcasters, a lot of outsiders have at-will stuff.

Like the Bone Devil. At-will Wall of Ice, Fly, and Dimensional Anchor. Compared to the party spellcaster this guy is BFCing all day everyday without ever running out of spell slots, and I have my spellcaster's actions too. Compared that to a normal spellcaster.

Wizard + Bone Devil will outperform Wizard because of action economy.

There's also Paeliryon with at-will mind blank, meteor swarm, hold monster, polymorph, etc.

And you have like 20 books of outsiders to choose from.

This would be right if the binded outsider were completely under your control.
If you give an unreasonable offer he will refuse, no matter what result you scored with dice. A DM may consider "follow any order I give you" an unreasonable offer.
Other orders may be twisted: protect me for a week is different from "attack my enemies", it's maybe more similar to "close me in a extraplanar prison for a week".
"Attack my enemies" depends on what the outsider consider an enemy. Maybe a near kingdom has to be considered as an enemy, so it would be right starting a war to follow strictly your contract.
"help me retrieving this artifact" doesn't imply that the powerful outsider will travel with you, maybe he thinks of you as an hindrance and wants to act alone.
The only way to prevent such a behavior (and subsequent vengeance) is treating the outsider with fairness.

[Mechalich]

Check the link in my signature for official quotes that say planar binding is slavery.

Even without the full-on slavery interpretation, there are enough outsiders floating around in the giant pile of sourcebooks that planar binding only loses a modest amount of efficacy when you restrict it use to 'binding only things that fundamentally desire to do the thing I'm going to ask them to do.' This is admittedly easier if your character happens to be on the evil side of the alignment spectrum, simply because the relevant monster books have more fiends in them than celestials, but it remains doable regardless.

The spell is unpopular with GMs not simply because it's broken - which it is - but because GMs tend to hate minion usage generally. Minions bog down the game, given certain players extra assets that require additional management, and mess with encounter design. They are just generally annoying, and that holds for pretty much everything from animal companions to familiars to zombies. Minions that appear spontaneously - which requires the GM to go and hunt down a stat block and some sort of viable mini - make it worse. It's the same reason that Leadership is often banned not simply because it's OP (which it is when compared to most other feats, though not to spellcasting), but because it generates a giant pile of extra stuff that has to be tracked.

[Erloas]

I'm just curious, why is planar binding so popular and good? I read so many post and thread about it in this sub-forum.

Pretty much every case I've seen saying how good it is gets there simply by their DMs allowing it to be that good. It would be painfully easy to subvert virtually every set of commands I've seen anyone say they would give the outsider. Of course so much of that would eventually come down to "how many times is the player and DM going to go back and forth with the DM subverting the players commands, player adjusting their commands and trying again, etc. etc." Eventually the DM is going to essentially ban it because it's not worth the trouble or the player is going to give up trying, or, as seems to be the case the DM gives up and just lets the player do what they want. No one wants to play 'Lawyers and Contracts' so the spell is either not used or super powerful, or alternatively used very limitedly and then doesn't really get any notice.

[Endarire]

Planar Binding is SLAVERY.

[SLOTHRPG95]

No one wants to play 'Lawyers and Contracts'

Well, maybe MOST people don't want to do so.

[Eldest]

I'm going to go at this from another viewpoint, it's a really neat, relatively iconic ability that mages get. Conjure a fiend (or other outsider/elemental) and bind them to your will, meddle with forces you shouldn't mess with, all that stuff, and that is actually a fairly unique ability afaik throughout 3.5. Sure, you can raise the undead or create constructs, even make an army of dominated people, there are plenty of options for minionmancy, but I can't think of another option for getting an outsider in your service long term. So a fairly unique, flavorful ability would lend itself to some popularity.

And, live everyone else has said, it's a really powerful spell. That doesn't hurt.

[Mechalich]

There is no lawyer and contract. Planar Binding is slavery, and if the DM tries to subvert, the player learns with every failure until he gets good enough to the point the DM just can't subvert because a laundry list of restrictions is easier than subverting said laundry list, at which point there is no longer any subversion, at which point the DM rage quits, make up house rules that require wisdom or intelligence rolls to come up with that list, or bans the spell outright.

Subversion is for fun, not a balance point. if you use it as a balance point you will be heavily disappointed by the result.

Even with Planar Binding as slavery, the 'slaves' in question usually have another master, whatever being higher up in the exemplar hierarchy holds their leash, and sufficient abuse of Planar Binding can get you on the s-list of the archons/baatezu/inevitables/etc. And the full force of a suitably riled faction of infinitely numerous outsiders can crush you no matter how powerful you happen to be. This is why it remains advisable to summon outsiders to perform tasks they would want to do anyway (and demons are generally always happy to destroy anything that isn't specifically a demon cult directly worshiping them specifically, so finding beatsticks using planar binding is exceedingly easy) and to at least offer the bound entity some kind of fig leaf.

That being said, it takes a lot to invoke the true wrath of outsider factions, and even extensive use of planar binding for adventuring purposes is highly unlikely to rise to that level. Binding hundreds demons to form a vast demon army now...then you run the risk of stealing away a platoon that Demogorgon needed for an assault he was planning.

[Selion]

Even with Planar Binding as slavery, the 'slaves' in question usually have another master, whatever being higher up in the exemplar hierarchy holds their leash, and sufficient abuse of Planar Binding can get you on the s-list of the archons/baatezu/inevitables/etc. And the full force of a suitably riled faction of infinitely numerous outsiders can crush you no matter how powerful you happen to be. This is why it remains advisable to summon outsiders to perform tasks they would want to do anyway (and demons are generally always happy to destroy anything that isn't specifically a demon cult directly worshiping them specifically, so finding beatsticks using planar binding is exceedingly easy) and to at least offer the bound entity some kind of fig leaf.

That being said, it takes a lot to invoke the true wrath of outsider factions, and even extensive use of planar binding for adventuring purposes is highly unlikely to rise to that level. Binding hundreds demons to form a vast demon army now...then you run the risk of stealing away a platoon that Demogorgon needed for an assault he was planning.

It has been said that if a pit lord falls slave of a mortal higher infernal rankings will blame the demon more than the mortal, but there no need choosing one if you can punish both

[King of Nowhere]

The spell is unpopular with GMs not simply because it's broken - which it is - but because GMs tend to hate minion usage generally. Minions bog down the game, given certain players extra assets that require additional management, and mess with encounter design. They are just generally annoying, and that holds for pretty much everything from animal companions to familiars to zombies. Minions that appear spontaneously - which requires the GM to go and hunt down a stat block and some sort of viable mini - make it worse. It's the same reason that Leadership is often banned not simply because it's OP (which it is when compared to most other feats, though not to spellcasting), but because it generates a giant pile of extra stuff that has to be tracked.

Also add that the main balance points - bound creature may intentionally screw up commands, and/or seek revenge later - are entirely up to the DM, which means the DM can ignore them, and make the spell completely broken, or he may randomly enforce them, and look like a jerkass. I mean, if you say that the fiend attacks your party, and it is a level appropriate encounter, then the party will just welcome the bunch of extra xp and loot. If the fiend brought enough help to kill the party, it's a "rock fall, everyone dies" scenario. It's a bad spot to be put.

No one wants to play 'Lawyers and Contracts'

You should use the same initial for both words to keep up with the theme. Lawyers and legalities? Courthouses and contracts? Prosecutors and proceedings? Defendants and debatings? Attourneys and aquittances?

[SLOTHRPG95]

There is no lawyer and contract. Planar Binding is slavery, and if the DM tries to subvert, the player learns with every failure until he gets good enough to the point the DM just can't subvert because a laundry list of restrictions is easier than subverting said laundry list, at which point there is no longer any subversion, at which point the DM rage quits, make up house rules that require wisdom or intelligence rolls to come up with that list, or bans the spell outright.

So, I know from earlier threads that you mostly/exclusively bind demons and disorganized, low-INT outsiders. But if you're binding an Archon, do you think that they won't have their own riders and terms and conditions? And if you want to try and force them to drop the boilerplate terms and conditions of service, that they won't consider that unreasonable? "I'm sorry, but I'm not authorized to come to agreement without the standard terms and conditions. I'm just a trumpet archon, that's way above my pay grade. These come directly from the Hebdomad."

[tiercel]

There is no lawyer and contract. Planar Binding is slavery, and if the DM tries to subvert, the player learns with every failure until he gets good enough to the point the DM just can't subvert because a laundry list of restrictions is easier than subverting said laundry list, at which point there is no longer any subversion, at which point the DM rage quits, make up house rules that require wisdom or intelligence rolls to come up with that list, or bans the spell outright.

Subversion is for fun, not a balance point. if you use it as a balance point you will be heavily disappointed by the result.

“the DM just can’t subvert”

If a player said or even clearly was thinking that in one of my games? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. I’m the DM! How the rules work in the game I’m running is literally up to me; there’s nothing I can’t do in-game. The text of the spell literally gives me grounds to have NPCs subvert and revenge, so I’m not even Rule Zeroing my way into this one.

Having said that, if I have a balance issue with use of this spell, then yeah, I’m gonna have a talk with my player about it, and in-game Spellcraft and Knowledge (the planes) will reveal likely consequences, so we don’t get into ridiculous magic-lawyer drama.

My usual balance point comes from asking a player “are you SURE you want the spell to work like that?” Because, frankly, BBEGs are higher level and have been around longer, and if an “exploit” is going to work for a PC then it will already have been working, for some time, for BBEGs.

But I’m a DM, not a computer program. RAW “hacks” don’t work on me, because I don’t run RAW games (and I’m not sure one actually can, really) — and if I were trying to run as RAW as possible, I’d probably have to be running a Tippyverse campaign. (And... I don’t.)

[Erloas]

There is no lawyer and contract. Planar Binding is slavery, and if the DM tries to subvert, the player learns with every failure until he gets good enough to the point the DM just can't subvert because a laundry list of restrictions is easier than subverting said laundry list, at which point there is no longer any subversion, at which point the DM rage quits, make up house rules that require wisdom or intelligence rolls to come up with that list, or bans the spell outright.

Are you saying that slaves have never caused problems for their owners?

Yes, the player can work through a lot of easy exploits, but each attempt puts them at risk. Any even moderately intelligent outsider is going to wait until an opportune time to subvert their orders or do it in ways that aren't obvious. So if you're relying on them for something critical that is most likely going to be when they act, the time when you have the least opportunity to react and when you're going to be in the most trouble.

So "trying again and again" to get the contract just perfect isn't a guarantee because you may very well have been killed long before you've worked out all the tricks. At very least you've had many tasks ruined.

[Selion]

"Your PC can't patch that because he doesn't have the experience" or something like that.

It's not a bad point.
If this is done iteratively the player is meta gaming. There are solutions to meta gaming, including forbidding actions, requiring int/wis checks, or even kicking out the player. Anyway the real question is: why the player has to call an all out war against the game setting just because he desperately wants a spell to work as he likes?
EDIT: BTW a good dm should try to get things interesting, so the correct answer to a single abuse is usually more plot. If abuses become the routine then the game is already screwed and there is not point in keeping it going, unless there is room to compromise

[SLOTHRPG95]

I don't think you can bind celestials/angels. Period. Unless you are exalted good as well.

By allowing themselves to be enslaved, they are enabling you to constantly enslave their kind. However if they refuse to get enslaved and die as a result over and over, the spellcasters will learn that it is pointless to try and enslave celestials/angels so they stop. Their death here has meaning.

Also i'm pretty sure good creatures will kill themselves rather than serve you, a slaver.

Evil creatures on the other hand, only care about their own life so they don't mind enabling slavery of their kind as long as they live.

If you're exalted good however, I don't see why they won't help you, but I do expect them to follow planar ally's rules for cost of service.

In short, don't enslave celestials/angels.

I'm not saying that celestials/angels are your best option for PB, but I think a non-exalted caster can definitely still bind them. If you're straight-up Evil, they might consider working for you at all to be an unreasonable command, but if you're bog-standard Good, or even Neutral, then there's no reason for them to not work for you within certain limits. This is true even of freedom-loving CG outsiders like the Eladrin. If you PB a Ghaele and tell it that you want it to help you free from slaves from a tyrant, but that if it refuses (wins its opposed CHA check), it's of course immediately free to go, I don't see why it'd consider this unreasonable. I don't think it'd even ask for anything in return.

[Jack_Simth]

Your "challenge" is short lived because every time you outsmart your players they just add one more thing to the laundry list of restrictions with their "contract". If you're not ok with that then you're better off banning the spell from the get-go rather than going through all of this only to end up with the players getting what they want anyways very shortly.

A note:
Once a listing of restrictions outweighs the 'main clause' in the contract, you're making an open-ended task that the outsider can't complete under it's own power - you're telling it not to do a big listing of somethings forever, after all: that task can never be completed. Which means, in the end, that you can't control the critter's actions after the contract is otherwise over.

Which would, of course, become a (briefly) interesting twist when the magically-enforced loyalty unexpectedly expires CL days into the definately-not-open-ended-because-of-a-specified-duration-that's-super-long task.

And, of course, it's explicitly "one service in return for its freedom" and has a note that "Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to." What qualifies as "one service", or what an "unreasonable command" is has no hard definition. Which, in turn, means it's up to the DM, and your mileage may vary - a lot - from table to table. One DM might let "Be my loyal servant for a week" count as "one service". Others might consider that as "do everything I say for a week" and put it in violation of "one service" (because you'll surely have the beast do more than one thing in that time). Some will just call 'em as they see 'em, others will use that bit of fuzziness to try and add some balance to the spell.

[tiercel]

Your "challenge" is short lived because every time you outsmart your players they just add one more thing to the laundry list of restrictions with their "contract". If you're not ok with that then you're better off banning the spell from the get-go rather than going through all of this only to end up with the players getting what they want anyways very shortly.

Er... did you read the rest of my post as well? I did say that if I had a balance issue, I’d have a talk with a player and not just play Contract Lawyer Oneupsmanship:

Having said that, if I have a balance issue with use of this spell, then yeah, I’m gonna have a talk with my player about it, and in-game Spellcraft and Knowledge (the planes) will reveal likely consequences, so we don’t get into ridiculous magic-lawyer drama.

Additionally, if the player wants X, and I don’t think X is reasonable in the game I’m DMing, even after discussing it with the player, I don’t care how the player writes a “contract”: either I’ve already ruled that Planar Binding cannot get anyone X in this game —OR— the PCs can deal with the consequences of, e.g., the BBEG already having X:

My usual balance point comes from asking a player “are you SURE you want the spell to work like that?” Because, frankly, BBEGs are higher level and have been around longer, and if an “exploit” is going to work for a PC then it will already have been working, for some time, for BBEGs.

Players don’t get what they want because their command of RAW overpowers mine. Players get what they want because it’s part of the story and/or because I agree that their interpretation of the rules is reasonable (and allowable for any character in the campaign with access to at least the same resources).

[King of Nowhere]

Your "challenge" is short lived because every time you outsmart your players they just add one more thing to the laundry list of restrictions with their "contract".

Yes, in an infinite time they will definitely work out all the problems. Say, maybe ten years from now they'll stop being tpk-ed because of bad dealings with planar binding.
At this point I'll just flat-out ban the spell. Or i'll have every single npc they deal with have similar planar bound allies.
Assuming we did not disband the group long before because of all the bad feelings caused by this, of course.

But really, that's a bad way of approaching the problem, both from the DM and the player's perspective. The game is not a contest between DM and players. The DM says "for the sake of table balance, do not abuse this stuff", if the players tries to abuse it anyway, the player is at fault. And the DM must either accept it and change the power level of the whole table, or must wave the banhammer decisively.

[magic9mushroom]

I won't address the question of why it's popular; it's never been used in a game I've either played in or DMed.

Why it's good: it gives you minions for long durations, and outsiders have cool abilities.

Why it's problematically good: most of its intended limiters either don't work in practice* or are reliant on DM judgement.

*The saving throw isn't hugely relevant because there's no cost to the spell other than the expended slot and it's a downtime spell. The calling diagram requirement to not have it attack you is too easy because the Spellcraft DC is too low and you're for some reason allowed to take 20. The Charisma check is too easy to pass without paying (lack of penalties besides "unreasonable commands") and there are ways around needing to pass it (e.g. using Dominate Monster on the called creature, or killing it and reanimating its corpse, because it's helpless within a calling diagram).

There are three limiters that actually work: "unreasonable commands" which is vague and requires a DM judgement, "might later seek revenge" which is vague and requires a DM judgement, or the DM declaring your alignment has changed to Evil (because either you're victimising non-evil beings, or calling evil beings and therefore casting [Evil] spells) and turning your character into an NPC - which, you guessed it, is vague and requires a DM judgement.

[Mechalich]

I won't address the question of why it's popular; it's never been used in a game I've either played in or DMed.

It's an interesting question of what portion of games where Planar Binding is available does it get used, rather than the total space of all possible games. First of all, even Lesser Planar Binding is a level 5 spell, so barring significant levels of cheese it doesn't come online until level 9 at the earliest, and probably no more than a third of all possible games, if that, even hit that level, and out of those games only a small subset of parties will have a party member capable of casting the spell right away - which demands a single-class wizard or a carefully built member of one of the other tier 1 classes (a cleric with the right domains for example). Some parties simply won't have a straight-classes wizard at all. If you have a sorcerer there's no access until level 11, and planar binding's not exactly a traditional sorcerer pick (even though it's a good choice for them) and the spell just isn't on the spell list of some other full caster classes like PF's Witch.

I suspect Planar Binding is quite popular among the subset of players who play Tier I classes with moderate and higher levels of optimization (and to some extent just choosing to put it in your spellbook is moderate optimization), but that this is a fairly small subset overall (at best only ~10% of characters are likely to be wizards). Making a functional summoning based build takes a lot of player investment and a considerable amount of GM forbearance, something that is also true of necromancers and really anyone attempting to use some serious minionomancy and at a lot of tables neither side is interested in pursuing this approach.

[rel]

Planar binding is good because it gives you access to monster powers and extra bodies. Two of the most powerful tricks you can get in D&D.

Its popular, at least in my circles because it is fun and useful.

Fun is straight forward. Of all the spells in D&D, planar binding feels a lot more magical than most others. It takes preparations, research, time, effort. There are risks, there is bargaining with terrible creatures from beyond and the promise of vast power.

Few times do you feel more like a genuine wizard than when your evil vizier stumbles out of his summoning room / murder chamber early in the morning, his goatee still un-oiled, gloating to fellow PC Connan the Brobarian about how he just traded wishes with an ancient fire spirit that tragically couldn't cast them without help.


On the usefulness side, the spell can easily solve meta issues in game and believably remove world issues no one want's to deal with.

Even if we've all agreed to play a low tier railroad game to let some module writer tell us their epic and definitely not cliche story we will still want to adjust things just a little.
And in the more normal old school rambling hex crawl type game it is practically required.

Need a spell no one has to further the plot or fix an unlucky PC?
Need to get back up to WBL after whoever happens to be GMing today forgot to give loot for a while?
Someone wants to play an esoteric monster and we need a reason to have it show up and join the party?
Want to quickly finish a quest or story arc that everyone is tired of?
want to do all the quests but can't justify the world standing still while you adventure?
Planar Binding is a fairly solid solution.