I am working on converting both my adventure Beneath the Fallen Tower and the Redoubt of Hades from GURPS (because I don’t have a license) to BFRPG (in particul;ar my publisher’s variant Odysseys and Overlords) and OSE. BFRPG is very easy to pick up; it was designed as a quick and cheap starter game that anyone could immediately pick up and play. Old School Essentials is an elegant and accurate re-framing of B/X D&D. A circumstance I have discovered is that while my games feature a lot of summonable creatures, infernal, celestial, and elder entities, BX has no such thing.
Literally, in addition to the menagerie a couple of the druids are porting in, the Necromancers accompanied by the spirits of their ancestors, and the earth priest with his pet elemental, there is a character with elder thing power investiture from an otherworldly sorcerer that keeps rolling insanely good reaction rolls, a wildly talented bureaucrat who summoned a celestial demonslayer, and another player who has a hellhound, demonic servant, and ‘Spirtitual adviser’. It is a lot.
Neither old school game system has any spells for summoning, which makes things less of a headache for the DM, and generally kept these editions from triggering Satanic Panic responses, but they do have devices for summoning elementals and both djinn and efreet. Therefore, I propose items for summoning other extradimensional entities, perhaps graded for the HD of what they summon, 1d12 HD, with lemures, larvae, or manes at the low end, and a demon lordling at the high end, and an extra chance for getting something higher level.
Brazier of Extraplanar Summoning
This iron or bronze brazier, incised with runes and chased with enamels or silver inlay , is inscribed with the name of a being from a nearby dimension. Any item of this type is good for summoning that singular being, for a period of up to one hour, and can be used no more than 6 times per owner. For any given brazier, roll 1d12, and on a roll of 12, roll an additional d8. The total number rolled is the HD of the creature that can be summoned by performing a ritual with the brazier as the central feature, involving candles and diagrams on the floor. The creature summoned may be of any alignment, and this can be determined by random die roll. The summonee must perform a service for the summoner, but may make a save vs spells (minus the summoner’s wisdom bonus, if any) to resist. Braziers are worth 1000 GP per HD summonable.
Now, you can find game stats for any sort of extradimensional being in most advanced rulebooks, and in a variety of blogs ( such as Hereticwerks where I got the Ymid from), but if you want to keep B/X formatting, I can recommend New Big Dragon’s Fifty Fiends (available on Drivethrurpg for only a buck!)
And for that matter, you can get a bunch of neat pictures of demons from me too!
(Or from Jeremy Hart )
And now that demons are in play, what about patrons? DCC did this excellently, but here I have
20 answers to the question: What does your warlock’s patron want in exchange for power?
1 to spread chaos! Go out there and blow shit up!
2 to be entertained. They are bored, and find your actions interesting…until they don’t.
3 to be amused. They find the supplicant ridiculous, even pathetic.
4 to annoy a rival, by showing them up with their own fancy minions.
5 to annoy a rival, by encouraging the destruction of their (equally) nefarious plan.
6 to spread their own influence; use of their powers tags an area with their signature, the entity with the most tags wins something, as if our world was a boardgame to them.
7 to manifest themselves in our world; the more their power is used, the greater their ability to enter our plane.
8 to void excess energy that is causing them etheric indigestion.
9 to silence your yapping. You are annoying, but not yet worth the bother of destroying.
10 to alleviate the irritation of the sense of debt; the entity cannot tolerate supplication without response; it itches.
11 to appease their sense of vanity. They desire worship.
12 to appease their curiosity. Whatever will the minion do with a little power.
13 to appease their hunger. Blood and Souls!
14 to appease their hunger. Only creatures empowered by and flavored like them can fulfill their hideous appetites
15 to appease their unnatural lust. Only creatures empowered and flavored like them can fulfill their hideous appetites.
16 to better observe our plane. Buying a pair of eyes is cheaper than actually manifesting.
17 to relieve their aching loneliness. Being immortal makes it hard to keep friends.
18 to pay a gambling debt. The being is making the pact because of an unfortunate forfeiture on a wager.
19 to pay back a favor. The summoning and binding spells are vestiges of an ancient promise made to someone who liberated the being from imprisonment, and then forgot that they were still active.
20 to be left alone. Power is cast out to deflect contact.
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