The safe uses of Wish

[rigsmal]

So wish (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm) is an open-ended spell, but it includes a list of effects that are well within its power to grant. From the SRD's spell description:


Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you.
Duplicate any other spell of 6th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you.
Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 7th level or lower even if it’s of a prohibited school.
Duplicate any other spell of 5th level or lower even if it’s of a prohibited school.
Undo the harmful effects of many other spells, such as geas/quest or insanity.
Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value.
Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item.
Grant a creature a +1 inherent bonus to an ability score. Two to five wish spells cast in immediate succession can grant a creature a +2 to +5 inherent bonus to an ability score (two wishes for a +2 inherent bonus, three for a +3 inherent bonus, and so on). Inherent bonuses are instantaneous, so they cannot be dispelled. Note: An inherent bonus may not exceed +5 for a single ability score, and inherent bonuses to a particular ability score do not stack, so only the best one applies.
Remove injuries and afflictions. A single wish can aid one creature per caster level, and all subjects are cured of the same kind of affliction. For example, you could heal all the damage you and your companions have taken, or remove all poison effects from everyone in the party, but not do both with the same wish. A wish can never restore the experience point loss from casting a spell or the level or Constitution loss from being raised from the dead.
Revive the dead. A wish can bring a dead creature back to life by duplicating a resurrection spell. A wish can revive a dead creature whose body has been destroyed, but the task takes two wishes, one to recreate the body and another to infuse the body with life again. A wish cannot prevent a character who was brought back to life from losing an experience level.
Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
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.
Furthermore, in the SRD's description of the tarrasque (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm), we have:


The tarrasque can be slain only by raising its nonlethal damage total to its full normal hit points +10 (or 868 hit points) and using a wish or miracle spell to keep it dead.
In Savage Species (pg. 150) it is given that wish can be used to transform the caster into any kind of creature permanently, gaining all (Ex), (Sp), and (Su) abilities while retaining mental abilities (at the DM's option, there may be a chance of not gaining certain abilities).

Is this it? My question is: What other explicitly-given uses of wish are there?

[Segev]

I was actually unaware of the Savage Species one. Interesting.

[Crake]

I was actually unaware of the Savage Species one. Interesting.

Technically savage species specifically calls out using wish to transform yourself into another creature as an unsafe wish. Even the rules given are just a set of example rules, and not hard RAW, it's supposed to be unsafe to use, so if you're able to max out your spellcraft to be able to auto-pass the spellcraft check, essentially making it a safe wish, then the DM should change the rules to something else that's back to being unsafe, whether that be simply increasing the DC altogether, or completely changing the way it works is up to the DM.

For reference, here's an exerpt:


Casting wish to become a new kind of creature, with full access to all extraordinary, spell-like, and supernatural abilities (see End Result, below), while retaining Intelligence, memory, and personality, falls under the “wishing for greater effects” rules in the spell description. While this is the quickest method of transformation and potentially the least expensive, it has substantial risks.
The DM may, for instance......

It then goes on to list an example of how the DM may make the wish have substantial risks. Remember that savage species was 3.0, where making a DC40 spellcraft check was supposed to be hard, but in this day and age, DC40 spellcraft is laughable, and thus should not be used as a gauge of "substantial risk"

[flappeercraft]

It is used to make an Adamantine Golem from ELH

[Zanos]

It then goes on to list an example of how the DM may make the wish have substantial risks. Remember that savage species was 3.0, where making a DC40 spellcraft check was supposed to be hard, but in this day and age, DC40 spellcraft is laughable, and thus should not be used as a gauge of "substantial risk"
Were attributes and skills significantly different in 3.0? DC 40 isn't really that hard when you can cast wish, since that's level 17. 20 ranks, and probably 30ish intelligence already gets you to a +30.

[Cruiser1]

In Savage Species (pg. 150) it is given that wish can be used to transform the caster into any kind of creature permanently, gaining all (Ex), (Sp), and (Su) abilities while retaining mental abilities (at the DM's option, there may be a chance of not gaining certain abilities). My question is: What other explicitly-given uses of wish are there?
Wish (and Miracle) can be used after casting Reincarnate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm) to get your old body and species back. This is somewhat similar to the Savage Species usage above, except it's limited to your original species, but at the same time it's safe and always works.

[Crake]

Were attributes and skills significantly different in 3.0? DC 40 isn't really that hard when you can cast wish, since that's level 17. 20 ranks, and probably 30ish intelligence already gets you to a +30.

+30 is still a decent chance to fail when you need to roll for each ability. For reference, the way it works is for each point above 20 you roll, you get a cumulative 5% chance to gain the ability you're rolling for. This is repeated for each special ability and SLA of the form you're transforming into. At +30, you will get a decent chance to guarantee a single ability, but if you're rolling 5+ times the chance you lose something starts to rack up quickly. And of course, things get worse when you're not a 17th level wizard. If you're casting wish from a scroll at an earlier level, or you're a sorcerer/cleric without 30 int your spellcraft check rapidly falls off, drastically increasing the odds of failure.

But in 3.5, you have so many means to boost skills to such outrageous numbers that getting the minimum +39 to guarantee hitting DC40 isn't particularly difficult, between spells like guidance of the avatar, divine insight, the extract gift spell from FCI

Just 20 ranks, +4 int (+2 base, +2 from fox's cunning), +8 from extact gift cast by a 17th level caster (assuming no CL boosts), +5 from a tome of ancient lore, and +2 synergy from knowledge arcana nets you exactly +39, and that's without even really trying, and that's for a non-int caster.

Keep in mind that ability scores were generally expected to be lower than what people play with these days. 25 point buy or even rolled stats were the norm, and starting with a 15 in your casting ability wasn't uncommon, so having 30 int isn't to be expected. Worst case scenario, the wizard might've rolled a 15 in int, put a single level up bonus into it for a 16, then have his +6 item for a total of 22 int. More likely though, a human wizard with 15 starting int would hit 19 by level 16 (just in time to cast 9th level spells), and a +6 item would hit 25 int. Maybe, if you were lucky, there would have been a tome of int, and you might've gotten a few bonuses, but a +5 tome is unlikely, since tomes don't stack, and the only time you're gonna get a monster drop 137.5k in a single item is if you're either SUPER lucky, or post level 17, so if you're lucky, 26-27 int, or super lucky, 28-29 int.

That said, you didn't take into account the arcana synergy bonus, so including that lands you at about +30 either way. Skill focus spellcraft for archmage entry wasn't exactly uncommon either, so +33, but again, max spellcraft wizard wasn't necessarily always going to be the caster either way.


Wish (and Miracle) can be used after casting Reincarnate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm) to get your old body and species back. This is somewhat similar to the Savage Species usage above, except it's limited to your original species, but at the same time it's safe and always works.

I would imagine that that would come under 'undoing the harmful effect of many other spells'. Sure, coming back from the dead isn't a harmful effect, but changing your form quite possibly could be seen as such, especially when the pathfinder witch's grand hex Forced Reincarnation exists :smalltongue:


Effect: The witch causes a creature within 30 feet to die and be immediately reincarnated into a new body. A Will save negates this effect. Those that fail are slain and immediately brought back to life with the spell reincarnate. Whether or not the save is successful, a creature cannot be the target of this hex again for 1 day.