I wish my opponent automatically fails their next Saving Throw

[Pippin]

Limited Wish gives the enemy a -7 penalty on their next saving throw for 300 XP. Keeping this in mind, would it be insane to Wish they'd automatically fail it (as in a natural 1) for 5,000 XP?

Alternatively, is there a consensus on the limits of Wish?

[Krobar]

If you really want to blow 5000 xp I would let you wish for that. But I wouldn't let you word it that way.

It would be more like "I wish for the next creature at whom I cast an offensive spell to be unable to resist or avoid that spell's effects in any way."

[NomGarret]

Sure. As a DM, it's the kind of solution that will work fine the first time but if you keep retrying it as an exploit, npcs will find a way around it. Faced with an automatic fail, I would certainly pop a mild poison and lose a point of dex for a while rather than disintegrate.

[PaucaTerrorem]

Just remember; however you want to abuse high level spells, the DM can abuse them better.

[Chronos]

Note that this is not something on the "safe list" for Wish, so the DM is perfectly within his rights to pervert your Wish, or to fulfill it only partially, or to just fail the casting entirely. Some DMs might allow it, but it's always risky to hand your DM that much power.

[Evolved Shrimp]

Limited Wish gives the enemy a -7 penalty on their next saving throw for 300 XP. Keeping this in mind, would it be insane to Wish they'd automatically fail it (as in a natural 1) for 5,000 XP?

Interesting idea… It begs the question of relative power, though. We’re talking about a magical effect that alters the properties (luck, in this case) of another being. This seems the kind of thing that would allow for both spell resistance and a saving throw.

Would you accept that as part of the wish? It would seem to kind of defeat the entire purpose. If you don’t accept that, we’d be talking about an effect that allows, say, a level 20 wizard to nerf, say, a level 60 wizard without any opportunity for the target to defend itself. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. (And if that would be possible, couldn’t you simply wish for the more powerful being to die?)

[ace rooster]

Well you could, but they would get a will save to resist the wish. Limited wish has 'none' in it's save entry, but wish does not. It also allows will saves for it's other custom effects like moving unwilling targets and forcing a reroll.

It could be useful if you really wanted something to fail a fort save with a high cost of use, such as a poison that inflicts a true dominate effect. Coupled with mind fog this could be useful.

[Yogibear41]

Maybe, but I'd be more inclined to say they just get a huge penalty, so that if they roll a natural 20 they still pass the save.

[goto124]

Is it possible to Wish that the opponent automatically gets affected by whatever spell you wanted them to fail their save against?

What situation is this for?

[ryu]

Interesting idea… It begs the question of relative power, though. We’re talking about a magical effect that alters the properties (luck, in this case) of another being. This seems the kind of thing that would allow for both spell resistance and a saving throw.

Would you accept that as part of the wish? It would seem to kind of defeat the entire purpose. If you don’t accept that, we’d be talking about an effect that allows, say, a level 20 wizard to nerf, say, a level 60 wizard without any opportunity for the target to defend itself. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. (And if that would be possible, couldn’t you simply wish for the more powerful being to die?)

Level 60 wizard you say? No this wish would be irrelevant to that fight. This is because the level 60 wizard can and will kill the lower level wizard without any dice being rolled, with contingent epic effects, before said being is even born. The thing to keep in mind here is that a character that level is something I openly expect to be able to kill deities. Not avatars. Deities. Hell even in canon sources wizards statted out in the mid thirties come hilariously close on more than a few occasions.

[AvatarVecna]

Interesting idea… It begs the question of relative power, though. We’re talking about a magical effect that alters the properties (luck, in this case) of another being. This seems the kind of thing that would allow for both spell resistance and a saving throw.

Would you accept that as part of the wish? It would seem to kind of defeat the entire purpose. If you don’t accept that, we’d be talking about an effect that allows, say, a level 20 wizard to nerf, say, a level 60 wizard without any opportunity for the target to defend itself. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. (And if that would be possible, couldn’t you simply wish for the more powerful being to die?)

Yeah, no. A Wizard 20 has some pretty powerful tricks, and can even take a good stab at killing deities. A Wizard 60 has all the same tricks, though, and learned them 40 levels ago; Wizard 60 is curbstomping deity-level beings on a regular basis. Even if we assume tha your spell is targeting the actual Wizard 60, counterspelling, Spell Immunity, Spell Turning, Contingency: Teleport (out of range of the saving-throw-causing spell that follows the wish), Contingency: Empowered Maximized Time Stop (and then buff or Wish-buff your way to immunity to everything). And those are just the handful of overpowered methods I could think of off the top of my head.

[Pippin]

If you really want to blow 5000 xp I would let you wish for that. But I wouldn't let you word it that way.

It would be more like "I wish for the next creature at whom I cast an offensive spell to be unable to resist or avoid that spell's effects in any way."

Sure. As a DM, it's the kind of solution that will work fine the first time but if you keep retrying it as an exploit, npcs will find a way around it. Faced with an automatic fail, I would certainly pop a mild poison and lose a point of dex for a while rather than disintegrate.
Okay. Would your answer change if I managed to cast Wish without paying the XP cost?


It would be more like "I wish for the next creature at whom I cast an offensive spell to be unable to resist or avoid that spell's effects in any way."
This one sounds even stronger, though. My statement targeted 1 creature and thus was likely to allow SR. Yours is something more personal, so it wouldn't allow anything. It also gives you more freedom as you can change your mind as to who the victim will be by your next turn. It also disallows SR while mine is only addressing the saving throw.


Just remember; however you want to abuse high level spells, the DM can abuse them better.

Note that this is not something on the "safe list" for Wish, so the DM is perfectly within his rights to pervert your Wish, or to fulfill it only partially, or to just fail the casting entirely. Some DMs might allow it, but it's always risky to hand your DM that much power.
I have to agree here, that's the scary part :smallsigh:


Interesting idea… It begs the question of relative power, though. We’re talking about a magical effect that alters the properties (luck, in this case) of another being. This seems the kind of thing that would allow for both spell resistance and a saving throw.

Would you accept that as part of the wish? It would seem to kind of defeat the entire purpose. If you don’t accept that, we’d be talking about an effect that allows, say, a level 20 wizard to nerf, say, a level 60 wizard without any opportunity for the target to defend itself. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. (And if that would be possible, couldn’t you simply wish for the more powerful being to die?)
I don't think we should address the wizard vs. wizard topic, because there would be many other things to consider as well, like the Celerity mess, other protections like Absorption, etc.


Well you could, but they would get a will save to resist the wish. Limited wish has 'none' in it's save entry, but wish does not. It also allows will saves for it's other custom effects like moving unwilling targets and forcing a reroll.
Are you sure it'd allow a Will saving throw as well? It reads "See text" but I'm essentially mimicking a more powerful version of Limited Wish that doesn't seem to allow one. Also, allowing a Will saving throw kind of defeats the purpose of casting Wish in the first place.


Is it possible to Wish that the opponent automatically gets affected by whatever spell you wanted them to fail their save against?

What situation is this for?
Well the spell does require 5,000 XP after all. Whether I manage to avoid that cost or not shouldn't matter :smallbiggrin:

[ryu]

Yeah, no. A Wizard 20 has some pretty powerful tricks, and can even take a good stab at killing deities. A Wizard 60 has all the same tricks, though, and learned them 40 levels ago; Wizard 60 is curbstomping deity-level beings on a regular basis. Even if we assume tha your spell is targeting the actual Wizard 60, counterspelling, Spell Immunity, Spell Turning, Contingency: Teleport (out of range of the saving-throw-causing spell that follows the wish), Contingency: Empowered Maximized Time Stop (and then buff or Wish-buff your way to immunity to everything). And those are just the handful of overpowered methods I could think of off the top of my head.

I would just like to take this moment to point out that literally everything he just listed makes no use of epic magic or requires any special divination or other foreknowledge. Do not mess with epic wizards. Seriously. You are wasting your time.

[NichG]

Relevancy of level depends on optimization level. In general, wizards don't get much from class levels, just from spell levels. So Lv21 is important since it gets you Epic Spells. After that, if you're playing high op and using epic spellcasting, the difference between Lv21 and Lv2001 shouldn't matter since you can basically just use epic spellcasting to set your numbers to arbitrary values for arbitrary lengths of time. If you aren't using epic spellcasting, the only relevant advantage the Lv60 wizard has is a larger number of quickened spells per round. Arguably, if the DM is open to custom Wishes, even epic spellcasting isn't really needed - there's no reason you couldn't've Wished to be immune to the Wishes of others or something like that, if the DM lets that kind of thing fly.

At low op, there's more of a gap, but at low op the Lv60 wizard is not going to be pulling off complex networks of contingent/etc/etc stuff, because then it wouldn't be low op.

And if you're playing TO, then any level beyond Lv1 is basically irrelevant because you're Pun-Pun already.

[ryu]

Is there even such a thing as low OP that deep into epic? Statistically most low OP never even reach 20 to my knowledge. Going into epic at all is even rarer I'd imagine.

[AvatarVecna]

Relevancy of level depends on optimization level. In general, wizards don't get much from class levels, just from spell levels. So Lv21 is important since it gets you Epic Spells. After that, if you're playing high op and using epic spellcasting, the difference between Lv21 and Lv2001 shouldn't matter since you can basically just use epic spellcasting to set your numbers to arbitrary values for arbitrary lengths of time. If you aren't using epic spellcasting, the only relevant advantage the Lv60 wizard has is a larger number of quickened spells per round. Arguably, if the DM is open to custom Wishes, even epic spellcasting isn't really needed - there's no reason you couldn't've Wished to be immune to the Wishes of others or something like that, if the DM lets that kind of thing fly.

At low op, there's more of a gap, but at low op the Lv60 wizard is not going to be pulling off complex networks of contingent/etc/etc stuff, because then it wouldn't be low op.

And if you're playing TO, then any level beyond Lv1 is basically irrelevant because you're Pun-Pun already.

Even at low-op. the Wizard 60 has a much higher intelligence (partly from level, partly from an Epic Headband of Dexterity) resulting in many more spells, they have more feats, meaning more possible metamagic combos, more quickened spells per round (via some epic feat I can't recall) and spells above level 9 prepared (via some other epic feat I can't recall). That's not even getting into the ridiculous bull**** you can pull off with Epic Spells, not to mention that it barely scratches the surface of the vast cash difference between the two: a Wizard 60 should have somewhere around 616 million gp worth of stuff. A use-activated "Ring of Infinite Wishes" at CL 60 with a 400k XP limit on Wishes (allowing for each Wish to create a magic item that would cost up to 395k XP to create, as well as literally any other use of Wish) would cost a total of 201,080,000 gp, not even a third of your total. I repeat: Infinite Wishes capable of fulfilling a low-op wizard's wildest dreams are fairly affordable, and well worth the price.Hell, 12 hours of Wishing for 25k gp would make his money back (if he wished to spend his time like that).

Low-Op Wizard 20 vs. Low-Op Wizard 60: 60 curbstomps 20 without even barely trying.

Mid-Op Wizard 20 vs. Low-Op Wizard 60: 20 wins if he can take 60 by surprise with the right trick...maybe.

High-Op Wizard 20 vs. Low-Op Wizard 60: 20 curbstomps 60 without even barely trying.

Mid-Op Wizard 20 vs. Mid-Op Wizard 60: 60 curbstomps 20 without even barely trying.

High-Op Wizard 20 vs. Mid-Op Wizard 60: 20 wins if he's paranoid and thinks ahead enough to figure out and bypass 60's defenses.

High-Op Wizard 20 vs. High-Op Wizard 60: 20 loses maybe, on account of 60 annihilating the country their family tree was planted in centuries ago. It's possible that this is a draw.

TO Wizard 20 vs. High-Op Wizard 60: TO 20 wins...in theory, anyway. At this point, high-op defenses are almost literally unbeatable, even with TO offense.

High-TO Wizard 20 vs. High-TO Wizard 60: Pun-Pun pimp-slaps both of them into nonexistence without even barely trying.

[NichG]

Is there even such a thing as low OP that deep into epic? Statistically most low OP never even reach 20 to my knowledge. Going into epic at all is even rarer I'd imagine.

I'd say low op tends to be more common than high op deep into epic. For high op, the players realize that it's just kind of ridiculous and they can do everything already anyhow, so more levels stops being interesting. But everyone has that moment when they're introduced to the game where they say 'hey, if Lv20 is cool, I bet Lv100 is even cooler!'. I don't think even the designers of the game were immune to that - I mean, just look at the stat blocks in Deities and Demigods - big numbers (but not really all that big), but with lots and lots of glaring holes.


Even at low-op. the Wizard 60 has a much higher intelligence (partly from level, partly from an Epic Headband of Dexterity) resulting in many more spells, they have more feats, meaning more possible metamagic combos, more quickened spells per round (via some epic feat I can't recall) and spells above level 9 prepared (via some other epic feat I can't recall).

Action economy is a much more stringent limit than spells per day. Having 300 spells prepared rather than 50 spells prepared doesn't really make a difference, because its not like they'd actually burn through all of them even in low-op. Even the wealth stops being relevant when you run out of things to spend it on - basically once you have 'free Wish at will', its sort of all the same from then on. In high op, Wish at will for no XP cost means you have infinite wealth and basically any rules-legal items you could want.

The really big advantage that the Lv60 guy has is the 'more quickened spells per round' thing. That's fairly hard to replicate for the Lv20 guy without screwy demiplane astral projection shenanigans, which are certainly in the High Op category.



(list of outcomes)


Yes, basically. I tend to think high op vs high op would be a draw because of astral projection, psionic save games (via ice assassins) and whatnot. You can pretty much make things so tangled that the GM and other players can't figure out who comes out on top even when they walk through it step by step. But TO still beats high-op in either direction, due to there being ways where you can give yourself the ability to arbitrarily rewrite the rules of the game. TO 20 just gives himself a custom ability that allows him to personally veto any game effect from firing before it completes.

[Krobar]

Okay. Would your answer change if I managed to cast Wish without paying the XP cost?


This one sounds even stronger, though. My statement targeted 1 creature and thus was likely to allow SR. Yours is something more personal, so it wouldn't allow anything. It also gives you more freedom as you can change your mind as to who the victim will be by your next turn. It also disallows SR while mine is only addressing the saving throw.




No. My answer wouldn't really change because if you abuse something in my game you can rest assured that I will revisit it back on you at the worst possible moment.

My version is a little more powerful because it can be cast well in advance. But in some ways it could be weaker. What if the next creature you cast an offensive spell at turns out to be a kobold and the spell is just a Magic Missile, or something equally paltry? You spent 5000 xp on that.

In the end I usually allow creative / powerful shenanigans because in a session or two later I'll do something equally harsh right back. And my players know this.