Wish and Ignoring Material Components.

[NNescio]

Wish allows the caster to duplicate any spell of 8th level of lower without needing to "to meet any requirements in that spell, including costly components." While the rules interaction is clear in the case of a spell like Revivify (Wish just duplicates it without the need for diamonds), how would it work for spells that specifically depend on an ongoing interaction with the material components, such as Contingency, Leomund's Secret Chest, Clone and Magic Jar?

I see four general possibilities:

1) Wish fails to work because there's nothing for it to act on (no Chest to secret away, no sealed vessel for the clone to grow in, no container to store the caster's soul, Contingency immediately ends because there's no statuette on the caster's person).

2) Wish fails unless the caster provides the necessary item for it to act on, but those items don't need to be of the same cost. Effectively, this interpretation deletes the "Components: X/Y/Z" line from a duplicated spell, but leaves the rest of the spell text intact (so any object the spell interacts with, component or not, must be provided by the caster, but since the cost of components is detailed under the deleted components section, the caster can just provide any object meeting the description without meeting the stipulated cost). So, a caster would need a chest (any chest, even a shoddy wooden one) to secret away, a sealed vessel (any sealed vessel, even a waxed barrel) for the Clone to grow in, a container (any container, like say a needle inside an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside an iron chest) to Magic Jar his soul, and so on.

3) Wish creates the necessary material components out of nothing. They just "happen". It's Wish, after all, and creating items out of nothing is within its powers (even if doing so is normally risky). So, Leomund chest pops out of nowhere for you to store your stuff in, for example.

4) Wish just works. It flat-out says the caster doesn't need to meet "any requirements" for the duplicated spell, component or no, and specific (the rules for Wish) beats general (the usual rules of the duplicated spell). Maybe the Clone just grows on the ground or floats in mid-air, Leomund Chest secrets away a volume of items that can fit in any chest (and you just use an action to call them back), Magic Jar no longer has the weakness of having a soul jar, etc. etc.

I find myself either leaning towards 2 for balance (yes, Wish pretty much shatters game balance, but still), or 3 for simplicity in adjudication. 4 notably is a total headache to adjudicate, and leads down to the rabbit hole of Wish-duplicated spells ignoring everything that can be read as "a requirement", like range and creature types.

So, members of the playground, how would you rule on this as DM, and for what reason?

[Azazel_Unbound]

I'm personally between 2 and 4, I think.

My rationale: If the caster does not have say a specific statuette, or a mound for a clone, the wish's power will go to extents of conjuring this as well.

To be fair, if you can cast spells at 9th lvl, these things can be world altering. (Hence wish)

[SharkForce]

i would go for a combination of 2 and 3. the wish will conjure up something for the spell to work on, but it won't be an expensive thing. you need a sealable container for clone? wish will make a sealable container. it won't be a fancy one, and you won't be able to use it for a regular clone spell, but it will be a sealable container. quite probably made from whatever is at hand (if there's a bunch of wood, it will basically make a tub out of wood. if there's rock, it'll carve a hole in the rock and put a lid of rock on it. etc) you need a chest for leomund's chest? wish will make one. it won't have gems or gold leaf or anything, but it will be a chest of the appropriate size which you can put stuff in (plus the miniature replica). be advised, it probably won't come with a lock, as that isn't required for the spell.

(i would also allow you to cast a wish spell that does make use of an existing object if one is at hand, though the object would need to fit basic physical requirements, just not wealth; if you want to shove your clone into a barrel, you can wish it. if you want to shove your clone into a tiny glass jar, no dice. unless you yourself are tiny).