The capabilities of Wish

[j_spencer93]

I am curious on what i should allow my players to wish for if they ever come across a wish.
A fire monk character actually has asked if he could wish for his fire abilities to turn to hell fire?
Templates?
Different body parts?

[jedipotter]

It's open to the DM Whims.

The spell does list a couple limits, but then it also says a wish can ''do anything''.


As a DM I always make Wishes have a cost....like a karma back fire. But it is not always a ''bad'' cost.

I'd say yes to hell fire, but have the cost be something like ''must drain soul to fuel it''. If they are evil, it's not much of a cost....but it's still a cost to keep track of and all.

Templates...no, they are a bit too odd and messed up. Maybe i'd allow the simple +1 templates....maybe a couple of the +2.

Different body parts is just fine...

[j_spencer93]

those are the top 3 things i can see being wished for. ALso i have a player who wants to catch a genie (idk why) to get its wishes lol

[jedipotter]

I like to make wishes fun. So they can bend the rules...just a bit. With the draw back, of course.

[j_spencer93]

well the hellfire wish will be coming up, almost guaranteed. He wants to wish all fire damage he does is hellfire (as in hellfire warlock fire, which i am changing all instances of hellfire to).
He is already going disciple of mephistophelese so it sealing his soul or something doesn't really count as a drawback.

[jedipotter]

well the hellfire wish will be coming up, almost guaranteed. He wants to wish all fire damage he does is hellfire (as in hellfire warlock fire, which i am changing all instances of hellfire to).
He is already going disciple of mephistophelese so it sealing his soul or something doesn't really count as a drawback.

Well, if you use the ability, it all ready has a Constitutions damage limitation. You could add in a Willing Deformity from the list. Or something else.

And stealing a soul can still be a draw back....depending on how you do it. A good person of a level equal to yours soul for one blast of hellfire per level, for example....

[DarkSonic1337]

If they're casting wish themselves and staying within the listed uses of wish I would let them have it no twists. They're just using controlled magic for a controlled outcome.

If they're casting wish themselves and doing something of comparable power to the listed uses, I also just let them have it.

If they're casting wish themselves and doing something greater than the listed uses I'd make it just fizzle.

If they're having wish cast for them I consider how the being casting the wish would interpret the wish, and also how much he'd want to twist it. Maybe he doesn't mention a cost that comes with their wish, maybe he's super literal, but most importantly he takes advantage of different possible means to grant the wish.


That's what I'd do as a DM personally.

[WeaselGuy]

Heh... my group came across a genie's lamp in our campaign a while back. That night, we were playing with 3 characters + the DM, so it worked out pretty well with the standard "Ooh, a genie, 3 wishes, 3 people, 1 wish per person", with 2/3 of us being "min/maxers" (me and J) and my wife being "ooh, what should I get??".

Our DM let me and J spend probably about half an hour coming up with a near legal draft of our carefully worded wishes, while my wife looked up something in the DMG that she wanted and said something to the effect of "I wish for my very own set of Nostul's Pigments (or whatever those paints are that let you draw stuff into existence), only I want the bottles and the brush to be indestructible, and the paint to never run out". DM said "sure, why not".

At the conclusion of both my and J's legal conference, we read our cards and the DM made us both roll Wisdom and Intelligence checks to see if our characters would actually have been able to come up with what we wrote, and adjudicated accordingly. Coincidentally, this is what ended up leading to my kobold taking a flying leap off a high tower without a form of flight or feather fall :smallannoyed:

[JDL]

Wish specifies that any use outside of the listed abilities must be in line with the power of the listed abilities.

Asking for a template? Give them a Wish that duplicates the effects of a Polymorph Any Object to turn them into the creature requested. Since the stats of an average creature are 11,11,11,10,10,10 use these as the base stats for the creature if there's not one listed in a splatbook (since Polymorph doesn't usually allow templates as a valid form). Duration is as per the rules, if permanent it can still be dispelled too.

Different body parts? Sure, though I'd only let them use these for additional attacks if they invest in the Multiattack feat. They shouldn't get any additional benefits from the added body parts such as extra ring slots either. It's a purely cosmetic enhancement.

Adding hellfire to an attack? I'd probably give it the same limitations as a Hellfire Warlock has:


Each time you use this ability, you take 1 point of Constitution damage. Because the diabolical forces behind the power of hellfire demand part of your essence in exchange for this granted power, if you do not have a Constitution score or are somehow immune to Constitution damage, you cannot use this ability.

[j_spencer93]

well it wouldn't be adding hellfire, it would be changing all of his fire damage to hellfire.

his natural phaethon fire to hellfire
fiery fist to hellfire
fire bloodline to hellfire

you get the point.

[BWR]

Back in the day Wish was explicitly a DM fiat spell. It could do pretty much anything the DM wanted it to. If a player wanted something the DM felt was unreasonable, the spell either failed (if you were lucky) or was fulfilled in some unfortunate way that left you wishing (hah) you hadn't made that wish. That's basically how I rule it in 3.x too. If I think the Wish is acceptable, even if it's beyond the printed limits of the spell, it works just fine. If I think it's unreasonable, even if it's within the printed limits of the spell, something bad happens as well or it simply fails.

So that's all the advice I can give. If you think the wish is ok and won't mess up your game too much mechanically, story-wise or causing friction at the table, I don't really see any reason to not let it work as intended. If it would become a problem, feel free to throw in some drawbacks to balance it out.

[Karl Aegis]

So he wants to light his hand on fire and not be immune to that fire. That sounds like a good way to melt your hands off.

[JDL]

well it wouldn't be adding hellfire, it would be changing all of his fire damage to hellfire.

his natural phaethon fire to hellfire
fiery fist to hellfire
fire bloodline to hellfire

you get the point.

Yeah, I get it. Hellfire is also able to bypass the immunity to fire that you find most high level stuff has. I'd still go with my ruling, saying that he can choose to add 2d6 hellfire to any attack at the cost of 1 con damage per use, exactly as per the Hellfire Warlock ability. He's essentially getting a prestige class ability for the cost of a wish, which is fairly balanced in my opinion.

[Crake]

Templates...no, they are a bit too odd and messed up. Maybe i'd allow the simple +1 templates....maybe a couple of the +2.

Different body parts is just fine...

Wish is actually one of the ways listed in savage species as a way to acquire templates/races. It's not a guarenteed method of success, and you still get the LA associated with it, so there's nothing particularly wrong with it.

[j_spencer93]

Yeah, I get it. Hellfire is also able to bypass the immunity to fire that you find most high level stuff has. I'd still go with my ruling, saying that he can choose to add 2d6 hellfire to any attack at the cost of 1 con damage per use, exactly as per the Hellfire Warlock ability. He's essentially getting a prestige class ability for the cost of a wish, which is fairly balanced in my opinion.

oh i didn't mean any disrespect, just meant he didn't want to add it but change all of his fire to it (fits fluff wise with his character) but the EX: hellfire ability might be what we go with.

[JDL]

Cheers, and sorry if I came across as snarky, the hazards of the internet and all that. I'm just genuinely trying to be helpful instead of perverting the person's wishes.

For example: "Alright, your hands are now permanent conduits for hellfire flames. Good luck wiping your ass."

[Bronk]

Wish is actually one of the ways listed in savage species as a way to acquire templates/races. It's not a guarenteed method of success, and you still get the LA associated with it, so there's nothing particularly wrong with it.

Yeah, you turn into the wished for creature automatically, but the wish caster has to make a spellcraft check for each special ability and power to see if you get it. I've always thought that was neat, but that would it difficult to get everything you want from a genie or other wish granting monster.

Polymorph any object would be a safe wish too, although you'd miss out on everything except for extraordinary abilities.

j_spencer93, if you're worried about safe wishes, you should nail down where the wishes are coming from. For example, monsters that grant wishes as a supernatural ability don't cost any XP, so someone could safely wish for any magic item, when normally you'd have to pay 5000XP for the wish, then triple the XP cost of making the item on top of that. You can get around this by having the wish be from a scroll, ring, luckblade, wish-fern, or other item that either has a fixed XP amount in it or has a caster level.

For the hellfire guy... maybe he could turn into a 'living spell' version of hellfire? That could get boring fast, living as an amorphous blob of fire, and then he'd have to figure out how to change back...

[RoboEmperor]

1. Wish is just a spell. You just do what it says on the description. One of the books (DMG I think) says use wish solely like this unless used as a plot device.
2. The "more powerful" stuff is just a DM's plot stuff. There is no spell that allows you to raise a massive island and fill it with an army of some sort of super shadow monsters that have a modified at-will ice assassin that can clone everyone in the area all at once. But with wish, now there is a spell that allows the above.

[LTwerewolf]

There's a feat called searing spell. Yes it's for spells, not eldritch blasts, but you can use it as a model. It's really not that bad. Burning a wish on it certainly won't break games even without a massive drawback.

[j_spencer93]

lol he isn't a warlock. h is a monk/elder phaethon/then going disciple of mephistopheles. Actually if i can get it to make sense in game i might have mephistopheles perform the wish or a minion of his