Limiting Infinite Free Wishes with Knowledge

[gogogome]

Lets say in this campaign, there are 0 non-hostile civilization, so wealth means nothing.

You can only wish for things you know.

For you to know of an item, you must have seen it, or you have all of the non-material-prerequisites for crafting it (spells, feat, and CL). This means no wishing for scrolls of gate, unless you've seen someone cast gate or you can cast gate yourself, and no wishing efreetis for gate.

For you to know of a creature, you must have skill points equal to its hd in the appropriate knowledge skill.

With these restrictions in place. How strong are free wishes?

Try to break this so I have an idea.

Think in terms of worst case scenarios. You aren't going to happen upon a candle of invocation. You gotta obtain it or learn of its existence somehow.

I think the earliest a party can have access to free wishes is level 11, so start there in terms of breaking the system. I mean we all know once the PCs have access to gate they can chain-gate the world to its end.

[Extra Anchovies]

The spellcraft DC to identify a spell is 15+spell level, so we already have a means of determining whether a character knows of a certain spell - if a character can identify Protection from Arrows when it's cast, they obviously know of Protection from Arrows.


Lets say in this campaign, there are 0 non-hostile civilization, so wealth means nothing.

You can only wish for things you know.

For you to know of an item, you must have seen it, or you have all of the non-material-prerequisites for crafting it (spells, feat, and CL). This means no wishing for scrolls of gate, unless you've seen someone cast gate or you can cast gate yourself, and no wishing efreetis for gate.

A wizard who knows that the spell Wish exists and that scrolls exist would know that scrolls of Wish are possible. That's basic reasoning, without needing to have seen a scroll of wish or seen a casting of wish in person.


For you to know of a creature, you must have skill points equal to its hd in the appropriate knowledge skill.

Identifying a monster is already DC 10+monster's HD, as per the PHB.


With these restrictions in place. How strong are free wishes?

Try to break this so I have an idea.

Think in terms of worst case scenarios. You aren't going to happen upon a candle of invocation. You gotta obtain it or learn of its existence somehow.

I think the earliest a party can have access to free wishes is level 11, so start there in terms of breaking the system. I mean we all know once the PCs have access to gate they can chain-gate the world to its end.

Free wishes are quite strong without being able to make custom items at all - wish can replicate most other spells, which is useful to say the least. Even if the free wishes aren't available through a combat-viable method, they can still be used for stacking dozens of long-duration buffs on the whole party, and for duplicating magic items that you already have on hand, which would be useful if you have fewer vests of resistance than there are party members.

[Bucky]

Let's fast forward to about level 9. Assume we're a wizard. We can take the Craft Wand spell as a feat. We know Divination. We can craft Wands of Divination. So we can wish for a pile of Wands of Divination.

Now that we have unlimited questions, we can start with the effect we want to achieve (e.g. "scroll that I can use to kill a Bone Devil in a single casting with no save", "Item that's like my bracers of armor but with a larger version of the same effect") and play 20-questions to figure out whether such an item exists and, if so, where. Then we cast Scrying to look at it. Now that we've seen it, we can wish for as many of it as we want.