use of miracle/wish in combat

[King of Nowhere]

recently my campaign reached its climax, and there were some very difficult combats as the party had to face the most powerful enemies available in the setting.
sensing the epic scope of the fights, they decided to pull the stops and use miracle and wish heavily in combat.

And by that I don't mean "one of the standard uses". that would be easy. no, i mean asking to cause specific stuff. among it
- revive an ally that was killed in the last round (that I shouldn't have allowed for wish, as it is definitely stronger than listed uses. on the other hand, there is a 5th level spell that does it in some splatbook, so it should be allowed. even if that spell is not available in my campaign.)
- negate a specific ability of an enemy (a golem that could activate a time stop effect as an immediate action once every three round)
- dispel an antimagic field (on one hand, that's above the power of disjunction. on the other hand, amf is a 6th level spell, c'mon, a 9th level and 5000xp cost should be able to deny a 6th level effect)
- restore to full functionality all the pieces of a party member's gear that had failed the save against disjunction (that perhaps too strong, I should have let them reroll the saves at most)
and probably one or two more that I missed

While I allowed all those effects, and they probably were reasonable for the xp cost, I still feel like they cheapened the fights. some parts of them became less strategical planning, and more haggling between the dm and the player to decide what's reasonable and what isn't. I'm all for houseruling and homebrewing, but not in the middle of combat when the specific effect you're trying to establish will alter dramatically the whole campaign. it's even harder for those enemies that have access to those spells themselves, to decide if and how much they should be allowed to screw the party

So, I wanted to hear your experiences with it, and how you handle it.

I'm thinking, if I run again a game to high levels, that I'll make any casting of miracle/wish to get an effect not specificallly on the list to have a casting time of 10 minutes, so it cannot be used in combat

[Bronk]

Well, assuming 3.5 wishes here, of the one's you listed...



- revive an ally that was killed in the last round (that I shouldn't have allowed for wish, as it is definitely stronger than listed uses. on the other hand, there is a 5th level spell that does it in some splatbook, so it should be allowed. even if that spell is not available in my campaign.)

"Revive the Dead" is on the safe list.



- negate a specific ability of an enemy (a golem that could activate a time stop effect as an immediate action once every three round)


This could have been accomplished by duplicating 'antimagic field' and having the person close with the golem. So, not a slam dunk, but could have been safe.



- dispel an antimagic field (on one hand, that's above the power of disjunction. on the other hand, amf is a 6th level spell, c'mon, a 9th level and 5000xp cost should be able to deny a 6th level effect)

This could have been accomplished by creating a lead sheet to cover the source of the antimagic field (or a summoned a giant lead over a creature), which would have been safe.



- restore to full functionality all the pieces of a party member's gear that had failed the save against disjunction (that perhaps too strong, I should have let them reroll the saves at most)

"Undo Misfortune" to undo a single recent event is on the safe list.

So, I think you generally made the right call every time. They wished for something, presumably paid whatever costs, and got good results. If it were me - and I had a while to think about each usage of wish and miracle - I'd try to be a bit creative with the results when the players aren't using their imaginations enough, like with stopping that golem. I know my limitations though, and that's hard for me to do when I'm busy DMing. I generally don't like to twist wishes anyway though, unless it makes the game more fun. I guess what I want to say is that it sounds like your players are having a great time, and you're DMing style sounds pretty great too.

For advice... I'd suggest that when your players cast miracle or wish, ask them how they think it would play out. Letting them discuss how to make the wish safe or why their deity would grant a specific request will give you extra time to think about it, and if they happen to come up with something plausible, you can use that with minor alterations. That should raise the stakes a bit.

[King of Nowhere]

This could have been accomplished by duplicating 'antimagic field' and having the person close with the golem. So, not a slam dunk, but could have been safe.



the golem in question was the diamond golem (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572486-High-level-pc-like-golems&highlight=diamond+golem), a low epic homebrew golem that has tons of abilities, but relatively few hit points.
the plan to take it out consisted in removing its time stop ability and have the barbarian (who took runescarred berserker and quicken spell to get quickened true strike) charge it with full power attack.
so, using antimagic field would not have worked, because it would have negated most of the barbarian's buffs. he would not have been able to destroy the golem.





"Undo Misfortune" to undo a single recent event is on the safe list.

undo misfortune forces a reroll. the new roll may be as bad as the original. an unwilling opponent may resist that with a will save. on that regard, what I allowed was a much powerful effect.

on the other hand, I assumed that disjoined items still retain all the material components, and may have some residual magic left, so it was more of a "repair" effect than "undo damage" effect.

Most important on that one, I felt kinda bad for having given the high cleric of vecna a wisdom score of 45 and the capacity to spam (quickened) disjunctions, so I wanted to give the party an easy way to recover from damage. and this happened after the fight anyway.



This could have been accomplished by creating a lead sheet to cover the source of the antimagic field (or a summoned a giant lead over a creature), which would have been safe.

the target of this was a greater wyrm gold dragon. antimagic field negated the party's buffs (the dragon was already debuffed and coouldn't get buffs back because of action economy, so he wasn't losing much). without magic armors, any member of the party that dared to get close would have been power attacked to death easily afterwards. and the dragon had high dex, combat reflexes, improved trip and large-and-in-charge, so just attacking it once was unlikely. the wizard had tried disjunction three times, never rolled well on the % dice.
with AMF negated, the rogue used an activated item to teleport in melee with the dragon, and the barbarian full attacked. the wizard readied to counterspell anything the dragon may try to cast, and the cleric readied to spam healing. surrounded and with no way to escape, the dragon dies two turns later.

summoning a giant lead over it would have prevented attacking it, so definitely not the same thing :smallwink:

Incidentally, the dragon was supposed to be the final villain; he grew concerned over the increasing power of humanoids, and was trying to unify dragons to destroy the humanoids. to that end, he beautifully manipulated the war with the vecna front so that both sides would take huge casualties without winning, weakening the humans. he manipulated events so that the players would be forced to destroy the golem army of a third, neutral humanoid power (the diamond golem was the strongest encounter of that faction). he even managed to plant a spy and betrayer as the party's supposed cohort. He also positioned himself so that he would be able to entirely rob two of those three powerful humanoid factions. And I planted just enough hints of his plan that the players would be surprised by it, but would be all "oh, in retrospect it made sense". And it worked wonderfully.
And then, when a meeting of dragon elders was called to decide how dragons should react to world events, with the pcs attending to plead for the dragons to join the fight against vecna, he revealed himself, revealed his plan, called the other dragons to action, and attacked the party with two more augmented great wyrm cronies. I expected that the party would be forced to flee, and the dragons would split between anti-humanoid and pro-humanoid and not-care-about-humanoid, and possibly the cleric of vecna would offer a truce to ally against the new dragon threat...
instead, the party stood, and fougth, and defeated three augmented great wyrm dragons. and they were still in decent shape at the end of the fight.

I decided to end the campaign there because it was the sensible consequence and I run out of high level opponents anyway. the dragons didn't form a front against humanoids. especially with the party showing mercy towards the other accomplices - plus having good relations with dragons in the past - they decided that perhaps in the world there could be space for everyone. vecna's allies, already low on morale after several battles lost, decided that if the three most powerful exhisting dragons failed to take the party, they had no chance, and they surrendered. alone, vecna's church was in no shape to continue warring against the huge front the players had created. with no followers left, and having taken great humiliation in the eyes of the people, vecna died for lack of prayers.


Looking back, it went well. I gave them powerful, prepared villains that were capable of trashing the party and difficult to attack head-on, and they figured ways around that. I've always found it a huge let-down when the enemies go down too easily, as good heroes require good villains. the fights were good.
but it was a bit spoiled from my side because when the party tried to use miracle/wish unconventionally, I felt I either was letting them win, or I was arbitrarily preventing them from winning.

[Mr Adventurer]

This could have been accomplished by creating a lead sheet to cover the source of the antimagic field (or a summoned a giant lead over a creature), which would have been safe..

Why lead? Seems suboptimal.

[Biggus]

the golem in question was the diamond golem (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572486-High-level-pc-like-golems&highlight=diamond+golem), a low epic homebrew golem that has tons of abilities, but relatively few hit points.
the plan to take it out consisted in removing its time stop ability and have the barbarian (who took runescarred berserker and quicken spell to get quickened true strike) charge it with full power attack.
so, using antimagic field would not have worked, because it would have negated most of the barbarian's buffs. he would not have been able to destroy the golem.


There a 7th-level spell Antimagic Ray (SpC) which targets a single creature, presumably that would have worked?

[Bronk]

the golem in question was the diamond golem...
the plan to take it out consisted in removing its time stop ability and have the barbarian (who took runescarred berserker and quicken spell to get quickened true strike) charge it with full power attack.
so, using antimagic field would not have worked, because it would have negated most of the barbarian's buffs. he would not have been able to destroy the golem.

I like Biggus' idea about the antimagic ray, but also the antimagic field spell could have been cast on someone, maybe even a familiar, who could have circled around the back of the thing so the field just barely overlapped, allowing the berserker to complete his attack.



undo misfortune forces a reroll. the new roll may be as bad as the original.

It would be on the players to buff the guy first. Otherwise... it could duplicate Limited Wish, which has a clause that allows it to undo the effects of spells. It only gives two examples, but the list is open ended and you could rule that disjunction counts.



Most important on that one, I felt kinda bad for having given the high cleric of vecna a wisdom score of 45 and the capacity to spam (quickened) disjunctions, so I wanted to give the party an easy way to recover from damage.

Whoa, ouch!



the target of this was a greater wyrm gold dragon. antimagic field negated the party's buffs (the dragon was already debuffed and coouldn't get buffs back because of action economy, so he wasn't losing much). without magic armors, any member of the party that dared to get close would have been power attacked to death easily afterwards.

Under normal circumstances, only part of the dragon would have been inside the antimagic field, and the players could have attacked the other parts without losing their magic. Sort of like this image of a dragon in a similar situation: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0627.html



summoning a giant lead over it would have prevented attacking it, so definitely not the same thing :smallwink:

Maybe it would have been blinded for a bit? :)



Incidentally, the dragon was supposed to be the final villain; he grew concerned over the increasing power of humanoids, and was trying to unify dragons to destroy the humanoids. to that end, he beautifully manipulated the war with the vecna front so that both sides would take huge casualties without winning, weakening the humans. he manipulated events so that the players would be forced to destroy the golem army of a third, neutral humanoid power (the diamond golem was the strongest encounter of that faction). he even managed to plant a spy and betrayer as the party's supposed cohort. He also positioned himself so that he would be able to entirely rob two of those three powerful humanoid factions. And I planted just enough hints of his plan that the players would be surprised by it, but would be all "oh, in retrospect it made sense". And it worked wonderfully.
And then, when a meeting of dragon elders was called to decide how dragons should react to world events, with the pcs attending to plead for the dragons to join the fight against vecna, he revealed himself, revealed his plan, called the other dragons to action, and attacked the party with two more augmented great wyrm cronies. I expected that the party would be forced to flee, and the dragons would split between anti-humanoid and pro-humanoid and not-care-about-humanoid, and possibly the cleric of vecna would offer a truce to ally against the new dragon threat...
instead, the party stood, and fougth, and defeated three augmented great wyrm dragons. and they were still in decent shape at the end of the fight.

I decided to end the campaign there because it was the sensible consequence and I run out of high level opponents anyway. the dragons didn't form a front against humanoids. especially with the party showing mercy towards the other accomplices - plus having good relations with dragons in the past - they decided that perhaps in the world there could be space for everyone. vecna's allies, already low on morale after several battles lost, decided that if the three most powerful exhisting dragons failed to take the party, they had no chance, and they surrendered. alone, vecna's church was in no shape to continue warring against the huge front the players had created. with no followers left, and having taken great humiliation in the eyes of the people, vecna died for lack of prayers.


Looking back, it went well. I gave them powerful, prepared villains that were capable of trashing the party and difficult to attack head-on, and they figured ways around that. I've always found it a huge let-down when the enemies go down too easily, as good heroes require good villains. the fights were good.
but it was a bit spoiled from my side because when the party tried to use miracle/wish unconventionally, I felt I either was letting them win, or I was arbitrarily preventing them from winning.

That sounds like you pulled off a fun, complicated ending. Cool!


Why lead? Seems suboptimal.

I was riffing on the 'wizard wearing a magically shrunken lead hat' trope, the one where a wizard wearing the hat enters an antimagic field, magic is negated, but that unshrinks the hat, and the wizard, now inside a big lead cone that blocks the effects of the spell, has his magic back.

[Mr Adventurer]

I was riffing on the 'wizard wearing a magically shrunken lead hat' trope, the one where a wizard wearing the hat enters an antimagic field, magic is negated, but that unshrinks the hat, and the wizard, now inside a big lead cone that blocks the effects of the spell, has his magic back.

Aha. I guess my question then is why it is lead in the Antimagic hat trick, too.

[bean illus]

I would dm rule that 'During combat only the options listed in the wish spell shall be used. Due to time, stress, and the complicated nuance of wish magic, only options the caster is fluent in are available during combat.
Custom wishes must be made out of combat'.

So, call out what spell you're copying, and make due with that.

[Bronk]

Aha. I guess my question then is why it is lead in the Antimagic hat trick, too.

I'm not sure... Lead blocks scrying and a lot of divinations, so maybe it's a 'just in case' metal that happens to be cheap.

I also searched around a bit, and it might be that lead is just the metal I've noticed used the most. Some lists include other metals.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517714-Anti-Antimagic-Tactics

[Quertus]

AFB, but, since all of these wishes could have resulted in a safe effect (which, in some cases, wouldn't have been exactly what the party intended, or may have involved more prep work to utilize), I'm not seeing this as a huge problem to give them what they wished for.

That said, I've not really seen NPC foes utilize this level of Wish / Miracle, so I might just not be thinking things through to their logical conclusion.

Of course, my tables don't really use Disjunction, either. So our experiences might not be comparable.

[Mr Adventurer]

I'm not sure... Lead blocks scrying and a lot of divinations, so maybe it's a 'just in case' metal that happens to be cheap.

I also searched around a bit, and it might be that lead is just the metal I've noticed used the most. Some lists include other metals.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517714-Anti-Antimagic-Tactics

Can't see mention of it in the Scrying spell, either...

Edit: ah, it's in the sub-school. Weird.

[BWR]

My rule of thumb when it comes to Wish/Miracle is: if it overcomes an obstacle it's fine, if it solves an adventure it's not. The harder you push to change the universe, the harder it pushes back.

In addition to replicating existing spells, we have used W/M for:
- resurrecting the party in combat when all but the cleric were dead
- bringing back a ton of spells that had been disjoined the previous round
- penetrating various protections that kept a combatant hidden from nearly all spells
- altering local conditions to be more friendly to the party (e.g. remove hampered terrain, make it light, clear out poisonous gasses, remove wind that screws up ranged attacks, etc.)

There are a few others that escape my mind at the moment, but they were generally along these lines of altering reality in favor of the PCs without directly affecting enemies. Wishing someone was dead is going to grant a saving throw and have to pass spell resistance. Wishing that there was no water in the area where you are fighting aquatic monsters will work just fine. Wishing to remove all protections from a target will generally allow a save, while wishing to know what active spells an enemy has going and particular conditions you have fulfill to kill them will be automatically successful in most cases.

[King of Nowhere]

That said, I've not really seen NPC foes utilize this level of Wish / Miracle, so I might just not be thinking things through to their logical conclusion.


well, the "vecna" coalition included maybe 10 people with access to 9th level magic, and they've been planning that for 7 centuries. failure would mean complete eradication for the followers of vecna, while some of his allies - who were in mostly for a chance to bash old enemies - could surrend. Let's say that at least 5 of those people were committed enough that they'd spend 5000 xp without flinching.

the "dragon plot" side included two dragons with wish, and they've been planning that for 1 century. failure would mean death for the leaders. they too had every reason to burn 5000 xp. in fact, while the dragon was still pretending to be a friend of the players, he burned a wish in their favor to raise the barbarian who was felled the previous round. why wouldn't he do the same for his dragon fellows during the final fight? defeating the golem army and then pulling off the large betrayal ccertainly gave him enough xp for that.
(my semi-official explanation was that for the first dragon he was concerned about being counterspelled and losing the action for nothing, and with the second he was already encased in his own antimagic)

[Quertus]

well, the "vecna" coalition included maybe 10 people with access to 9th level magic, and they've been planning that for 7 centuries. failure would mean complete eradication for the followers of vecna, while some of his allies - who were in mostly for a chance to bash old enemies - could surrend. Let's say that at least 5 of those people were committed enough that they'd spend 5000 xp without flinching.

the "dragon plot" side included two dragons with wish, and they've been planning that for 1 century. failure would mean death for the leaders. they too had every reason to burn 5000 xp. in fact, while the dragon was still pretending to be a friend of the players, he burned a wish in their favor to raise the barbarian who was felled the previous round. why wouldn't he do the same for his dragon fellows during the final fight? defeating the golem army and then pulling off the large betrayal ccertainly gave him enough xp for that.
(my semi-official explanation was that for the first dragon he was concerned about being counterspelled and losing the action for nothing, and with the second he was already encased in his own antimagic)

Based on the Dragon XP tables, a Dragon with access to Wish could probably cast 10 or 20 with its reserves.

My point was, the only times I ever remember NPCs using Wish magic *during the game* (as opposed to a Wish gone wrong as a setup for an adventure) was one NPC wording the Wish that the party used to free her people, and another who got so frustrated with the party, that they Wished that they had never met us, retconning the encounter out of existence. So I might not have the personal experience to draw upon to fully grasp your concern.

PCs, OTOH, I've watched burn through wishes like candy. Good times.

Dragon in antimagic? Strong. Not wanting to waste actions (let alone XP) being counterspelled, especially when you are losing at action economy? Makes sense. But 3 dragons having used Wish beforehand to auto-win initiative, and then one or more casting Wish as their opening move? Really, I'm not sure Disjunction and Antimagic aren't stronger plays (unless they can word their Wish in a language that the PCs don't understand, and Wish for something crafty, like Nilbogism or something).