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Dealing with Outsiders

Source Ultimate Magic pg. 102
All outsiders love that which makes them strong. They seek to promote those qualities that offer them the greatest power, and covet their own survival. As beings—some might even call them concepts—of thought, will, and power, outsiders reward those who help them make their core concepts immortal. In short:

Aeons are dedicated to their often obscure and contradictory goals.
Agathions love the defense of good without regard for law and chaos.
Angels love beauty and things that destroy evil.
Archons love pure souls and order.
Azatas love beauty and freedom.
Daemons love death and oblivion.
Demons love suffering.
Devils love souls of any sort.
Elementals love power.
Inevitables and axiomites hate chaos and are focused on their goals.
Proteans love chaos and want to return the multiverse to its original chaotic state.
Qlippoth hate all intelligent life, as it is the engine of sin, and want it destroyed.

The reward outsiders offer may be actual aid, grudging service, or even just agreeing not to devour the binder’s soul. Regardless, it is always—always—in the binder’s best interest to make the summoning as painless as possible for the target, or else to overawe the summoned creature with the threat of utter destruction or millennia of endless pain. Attempting to treat outsiders as equals and the pact as a mere negotiating tool almost always ends in disaster. More specifics for each type of outsider are described below.

Offering appropriate gifts to the summoned creature can provide the caster a +2 bonus on the opposed Charisma check to keep it on the Material Plane. Indeed, if the gift is sweet enough, the outsider may choose not to break the strictures of the summoning, even if it has the opportunity to do so. All gifts, whether or not they are good enough to please the outsider, disappear at the spell’s conclusion. Only the worst sorts of gifts are rejected; such a rejection indicates that the summoned creature feels gravely insulted.

Anathematic Substances

Source Ultimate Magic pg. 102
All outsiders have vulnerabilities, and those who deal with them must know what these vulnerabilities are. Some binders even use weapons composed of anathematic substances to create or draw their magic circles, or may even grind such valuable weapons up to create the powder to make the circles.

For every 5,000 gp of an anathematic substance used, the caster gains a +1 bonus on the opposed Charisma check to bargain with the outsider. This destroys the substance.

Anarchic: Infused with the power of chaos, anarchic weapons are anathema to many lawful outsiders, even those who are not specifically vulnerable to the weapons.

Axiomatic: Empowered by law, axiomatic weapons are harmful to chaotic outsiders, dealing extra damage even if the outsider is not particularly vulnerable to its effect.

Alchemical Silver: While a weapon made of alchemical silver reduces damage by 1, with a minimum of 1 point of damage, it may be more effective than other weapons against certain outsiders. It has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 8.

Cold Iron: Effective against daemons, demons, and fey, cold iron has been drawn from deep beneath forbidding mountains and forged with the least heat possible. Because of the delicacy and difficulty of the process, a weapon made of cold iron costs twice as much to make, and every magical enhancement increases its price significantly. It has 30 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 10.

Holy: A holy weapon is any weapon imbued with holy power, which allows it to bypass damage reduction for specific evil creatures and inflict an additional 2d6 points of damage on those monsters. Evil outsiders that do not have a specific vulnerability to holy weapons still take that additional damage if the weapon overcomes the creature’s damage reduction.

Mithral: Most outsiders react to mithral in the same way that they do to actual silver.

Silver: Long revered for its purity and ability to harm lycanthropes and devils, silver is also used to trap certain kinds of good outsiders.

Unholy: The opposite of the holy weapon, an unholy weapon inflicts its damage on good-aligned outsiders, but is in other respects the same.

Archives of Nethys

Rules Index | GM Screen

Dealing with Outsiders

Anathematic Substances