Time travel with a staff of wishes

[Modran]

Hello Playgrounders,

Recently, in one of our biweekly session, we encoutered a Large blue dragon that manage to one shot my Halfling wizard with his breath weapon (read failing fortitude save on system shock)

On his turn, the cleric of Farhlanghn, who had previously procured a +3 staff of 3 wishes (with 2 charges remaining), decided to use one of those wishes to travel back in time for 30 seconds, hence granting me a second chance at survival and effectively restarting the encounter from scratch.

The DM set us up as we were before the encounter and told us that nothing had happened, and that the cleric of Farhlanghn just collapse, losing consciousness. We proceeded to elimanate the dragon on the second try without to much effort (and no metagaming, surprisingly).

What I'm interested in, is knowing what you guys would rule about how many charges of wish are still in the staff, because the wish was never technicaly used.

Thank you all for your time.

[hamishspence]

I'd rule- "it counts as used"- even the Munchkin d20 books, which specialize in munchkinly exploits, has that rule for an item of time travel -

Time Warp generators, from Star Munchkin, which are bought as a feat, and can be used once per day:

"You have Time Warp generators permanently grafted onto your pelvis. When you gyrate these miniscule, inexplicable quantum tachyon generators through a complex, four dimensional pattern (it starts with just a jump to the left...) you can generate a powerful temporal eddy that slingshots you backwards in time"

[Urpriest]

The psionic power that does this (though with a shorter time interval) gets used up even when you go back to before it was used. Wish should be no different.

I'm a little confused as to why it's a +3 staff, but that's neither here nor there.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The psionic power that does this (though with a shorter time interval) gets used up even when you go back to before it was used. Wish should be no different.

I'm a little confused as to why it's a +3 staff, but that's neither here nor there.

A lot of magic staves are built into +X staves

[Infernalbargain]

It depends on whether they brought the staff with them when they travelled back in time (at which point they will now have two staves, one with 3 charges one with 2), or if they didn't they now have a staff with 3 charges. You broke rule #0 of story telling: thou shalt not allow time travel. With this precedent, there is no in game reason to stop them from just spamming to automatically solve all problems. You can't even make them burn it because if they're smart, they'll just time travel instead. Just talk with them OOC and ask them to not abuse it.

[Glimbur]

For future reference, one of the listed abilities of wish is
Undo misfortune. A wish can undo a single recent event. The wish forces a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish could undo an opponent’s successful save, a foe’s successful critical hit (either the attack roll or the critical roll), a friend’s failed save, and so on. The reroll, however, may be as bad as or worse than the original roll. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.

As for how many charges are left, the correct answer is 21. Why? It's magic, I ain't gotta explain it.

[maysarahs]

The op said it originally had 2 charges in it. If I were DM, I'd consider the misfortune undone, and a charge used. I would explain it as the wish magic had to sustain the time moving backwards so for a brief "period of time" the staff existed outside of time. To anyone counting, the staff is now 30 seconds older. Long story short; it now has 1 charge left.

[MukkTB]

1 charge left by RAW. Either 1 charge left by RAI or the game goes to hell via time travel.

+ the Clock Roaches might come eat you.

[Psyren]

I say no charges left.

Why?

One of the listed uses of Wish (helpfully quoted earlier) is to Undo Misfortune, by letting you replay the previous round or force a reroll.

But this guy went back 30 seconds instead, aka 5 rounds, restarting the encounter. This is not only beyond Wish's stated uses, it's also well beyond what even another 9th-level power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeRegression.htm) can do and therefore falls squarely into DM-screw area. If all it did was use up an extra charge, I would count yourselves lucky.

However, I am assuming that the "30 seconds" stated here really does translate to 5 rounds, rather than 5 turns. If the latter (i.e. the fight just started when the OP was toasted), then it would only use one charge.

[JoeYounger]

I say no charges left.

Why?

One of the listed uses of Wish (helpfully quoted earlier) is to Undo Misfortune, by letting you replay the previous round or force a reroll.

But this guy went back 30 seconds instead, aka 5 rounds, restarting the encounter. This is not only beyond Wish's stated uses, it's also well beyond what even another 9th-level power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeRegression.htm) can do and therefore falls squarely into DM-screw area. If all it did was use up an extra charge, I would count yourselves lucky.

However, I am assuming that the "30 seconds" stated here really does translate to 5 rounds, rather than 5 turns. If the latter (i.e. the fight just started when the OP was toasted), then it would only use one charge.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Any DM I've even played under would take both charges, and probably drop the +3 down to a +2 as well. Wish going out of its boundries is srs bsns when it comes to ****ing players.

[Lord Vukodlak]

From the description of the combat, I think 30 seconds was actually one round.

[lunar2]

if 30 seconds as in 5 rounds, that's a "greater effect" that wish can occasionally pull off, and that's why the cleric was KO'd by the wish's effect. i think that using a wish to restart an encounter, and then having to get through the encounter without the use of the primary caster that activated the wish, is a fair trade-off. either way, one charge is gone. the item caused the temporal shift, so it's not affected by it. Rule #3 of wish granting "You can't wish for more wishes".

[RndmNumGen]

Regardless of the number of charges actually in the staff, if somebody tries using time loops to recharge their staff of wishing, I would send in the Hounds of Tindalos.

[ericgrau]

Rerolling a single misfortune is within the power of a wish spell, right in the spell description. Undoing 6 rounds of events, an entire encounter, is too much even for wish. Attempting it should have fallen in the realm of "attempting greater effects is dangerous". The psionic power time regression is 9th level, costs 1,000 xp and does 1 round.

But ya if you want precedent that power is also paid in spite of the time travel and any wish you use should be in line with existing spells/powers.

If I were DMing and creative enough to think up something on the fly, I might have allowed 6 rounds of time travel but with some seriously bad temporal mojo to go with it.

[Timlaff]

I am the DM of this situation.

No matter what happens to the staff, the player himself does not know what just happened, because he never lived that 30 seconds.

While he believes his staff is as it was before, because he is not aware of having traveled back in time. That is why the staff at perhaps two charges, perhaps one or none...

You imagine if it remains just one charge or less, I guess the player will go back to the seller to complain that he did not have two charges in his staff... haha

But I have my own ideas about it, of course, I did not have the players know, they will discover this during the game. :smallwink:

[NNescio]

I am the DM of this situation.

No matter what happens to the staff, the player himself does not know what just happened, because he never lived that 30 seconds.

While he believes his staff is as it was before, because he is not aware of having traveled back in time. That is why the staff at perhaps two charges, perhaps one or none...

You imagine if it remains just one charge or less, I guess the player will go back to the seller to complain that he did not have two charges in his staff... haha

But I have my own ideas about it, of course, I did not have the players know, they will discover this during the game. :smallwink:

This reminds me of a certain scene from Planescape: Torment...

[Modran]

Sorry guys, I may have created a bit of confusion while writing the OP.

It wasn't so much time travelling as much as Time rewinding.

If the PC would have went back in time, he would have watched the whole 2 rounds (yah 30 seconds was including the 2 round encounter and some rounds of travelling immediatly preceding the encounter) while trying himself to intervene so that I didn't die. And by the same assumption, the other PC would have seen 2 clerics of Farhlanghn, which would have been quite stressfull on their brain.

What happened is actually a rewind of time, for about 30 secondes (we do not count time in rounds outside of combat, so that is an approximation).
It certainly falls under the "Exceptionnal Wish power" clause, we are quite aware of that. Therefore, all of the PCs never actually lived through the first 2 round of encounter, nor did the staff, hence my thinking that it could still have 2 charges. But it is magic, and I don't pretend to understand it.:smallbiggrin:

Now, the idea was awesome (rp wise) considering that the cleric is totally dedicated to Farhlanghn, keeps trying to convert everyone he encounters, so that he can gain rank in Farhlanghn's clergy, and that time traveling, or rewinding would be something that Farhlanghn might be incline to consider.
That is why, in my opinion, it appealed to the DM (and probably the fact that the player will most probably not try this again)

Thank you all for your answers, you guys are awesome.