Wishes

[zarakstan]

I was just wondering in 3.5 how lax/serious you are about wishes and what kind of wishes you have allowed in the past.

[Kaihaku]

I once resurrected over 5000 dwarf NPCs with a Miracle... I think the DM was very lax in that situation, more so than I probably would have been, but the Gods were in favor of my request so he rolled a percentile die and decided to go for it.

[zarakstan]

Woah . . . 5000!

One wish I gave once was to have the person be able to ignore the affects of aging as long as he killed a monster of an appropriate challenge every week.

[Elfin]

I'm rather lax about wishes, as long as they don't break the game; while it can be fun occasionally to add in a twist it's not that fun to keep screwing players. I'm more prone to just say "the wish can't do that" than to fulfill it in unexpected ways. As long as the players are actively trying to be specific in their request, I won't find a loophole and punish them for it. As long as they're being reasonable, I'll be.

[zarakstan]

I feel the same way I can't think how I would tell my players they just used 5,000 xp for nothing . . .

[jmbrown]

I hate wish so much it hurts. One of my buddies in an old game group wished for a gate he could summon ("call" to be specific) creatures from for experience. I granted it not knowing the implications of such a wish and quickly regretted it.

One session the player had a cold so everything he said was muffled. He went to the gate to summon something and sneezed something that sounded like "balor" (we have a rule where everything said at the table is in character). My eyes lit up and I immediately place a balor right next to him.

Balor wins initiative, quicken telekinesis to trip the wizard and summons another balor. The second balor power word stuns the wizard. On the second round the first balor uses blasphemy and dismisses the wizard from his pocket dimension.

At the end of the session I asked my friend how he felt. He gave me this hard look and said "If I wish for my dimension back what are you going to do?" I told him "teleport you back to the gate which is now being used as a staging ground for an invasion of the prime material plane. I mean, you asked for your "dimension back" so I'll give it back..."

Everyone at the table including him loved the twist because it gave a new adventure for their level 19 characters to do.

[jindra34]

I'm ruthless with wishes that go outside the bounds of the ones stated in the rule books. To the point where players likely fight a herd of tarrasques than step outside of them (about 90% of them resulted in at least one player dieing, and several of the rest had a save or be screwed effect). And being specific realy does not help that much, I'm an expert at corrupting wishes.

[truemane]

The first thing I do is not allow Wish or Miracle to be memorized as regular spells. I usually place Wishes and Miracles on scrolls as treasure but not allow them to be scribed.

And in most of my game worlds the rule is that when you make a Wish it is granted by the 'nearest' wish-granting being.

So, if you want your wish to granted according to its EXACT wording, find yourself a Temple of a Lawful Deity and go to it. Or, you could always ingratiate yourself to a Good Deity with a quest or donation and THEN make the Wish, expecting its good graces to allow some flexibility in what you say vs. what actually happens. Or, failing that, just make the wish and hope that whoever's nearby granting wishes is sympathetic to your cause. But if some evil demigod is hanging around, look out...

I found this to the be the best way to handle them. I got tired of wishes turning into legal documents and got equally tired of finding ways to pervert the player's intentions. This way, players have to take care with wishes and treat them with the importance they deserve, and allow an in-game way for them to get what they want with a little leg-work.

[Elfin]

I like that. I think that's the way I'll do wishes from now on.

[Altima]

I draw the line when players use Wish to create an epic level version without the XP penalties.

Freakin' PCs.

Otherwise, it's a lovely way for me to stretch my RFED muscles.

On the other hand, 9th level spells *should* be near-insane.

Plus Wishes make the *best* adventuring hooks at high levels.

[Roderick_BR]

I'm rather lax about wishes, as long as they don't break the game; while it can be fun occasionally to add in a twist it's not that fun to keep screwing players. I'm more prone to just say "the wish can't do that" than to fulfill it in unexpected ways. As long as the players are actively trying to be specific in their request, I won't find a loophole and punish them for it. As long as they're being reasonable, I'll be.

I do the same. Interestingly worded wishes, an non-game breaking wishes are fine. Things too absurd, I just tell my players it won't work. Never had players intenionally try to break my games, so I never had to twist wishes too badly.

The first thing I do is not allow Wish or Miracle to be memorized as regular spells. I usually place Wishes and Miracles on scrolls as treasure but not allow them to be scribed.

And in most of my game worlds the rule is that when you make a Wish it is granted by the 'nearest' wish-granting being.

So, if you want your wish to granted according to its EXACT wording, find yourself a Temple of a Lawful Deity and go to it. Or, you could always ingratiate yourself to a Good Deity with a quest or donation and THEN make the Wish, expecting its good graces to allow some flexibility in what you say vs. what actually happens. Or, failing that, just make the wish and hope that whoever's nearby granting wishes is sympathetic to your cause. But if some evil demigod is hanging around, look out...(...)

I like that. One option I've been doing is to remove Limited Wish from the game, then use the Wish/Miracle with only the "reproduce lower level spells" effect. Anything world changing, can only be granted by powerful beings.

[PId6]

"I wish to receive 10,000 XP."

[Sanguine]

"I wish to receive 10,000 XP."

Granted, here are 10,000 windows XP disks.

[Milskidasith]

Another way of doing I think would work it is that Miracle is, you know, actually getting your Deity to intervene and not just a divine Wish like spell. Memorize it and use it to cast greater teleport? Your deity may be OK with it, but be a little annoyed, or flat out say "hell no, stop wasting my time and hire a wage mage." Use it to do something that's against the deity, and instead you get a bunch of really annoyed outsiders killing you. Use it to actually greatly aid the Deity, or when it's really necessary, and your god is more sympathetic. So yeah... make it an actual miracle granted to the strongest of the god's followers.

[quick_comment]

If a wish is reasonable (and you know when its reasonable), then I grant it. That is, if it is in line with the power of an 8th level spell effect, or one of the other listed effects, it happens, no shennagians.

If you wish for a 9th level spell, or equivalent effect, I might grant it if thematically or cinematically appropriate. (For instance, a fire elemental savant using wish to summon a fire creature, emulating gate)

Anything more, and its almost sure to explode in your face.

[Talic]

I evaluate a wish. If I can accomplish what it wants with any spell that meets wish's guidelines, or a similar power effect, I grant it in spirit and letter.

If the spirit of the wish is too powerful, I look for a way to partially fulfill it, or accomplish it to a lesser degree, following the intent of the wish as much as possible.

If the wish is intended to break the game or create an imbalance, then I seek to pervert the intent of the wish to provide a monkey's paw wish.

[PId6]

Granted, here are 10,000 windows XP disks.

Meh, still better than Vista.

[sofawall]

I never use wish as written. Wishes are miracles granted by a deity of magic.

Any wish/miracle is a request to a god. If it's small, you'll likely get it, maybe even something better. If it's too much, the god may get offended/annoyed and ignore/smite you. If it's trivial, the god will be annoyed, with consequences to follow.

Of course, if you ask for something in line with what the deity likes, well, that's a good chance of awesome, right there.

[Milskidasith]

I think along the same terms of Sofawall, but I'd like to add one thing: If you are a level 17 cleric of X, then saving your life is almost definitely going to be in line with the deities best interests, since, well, level 17 characters are fairly close to being godlike themselves.

[Talic]

Meh, still better than Vista.

Depends. Vista is a much bigger resource hog, but it's capable of processing more advanced graphics applications. If your PC is awesome, Vista can be a worthwhile addition. I have mine set up to tri-boot. I can select between Linux, XP, and Vista.

[tyckspoon]

I usually start by looking at whether or not the XP cost of the Wish is being paid, and if so how and by who. If you're casting the Wish yourself and paying the full 5,000 XP, you get whatever the spirit of your Wish was and generally full or almost full completion. I take the XP cost to mean that you personally are driving the power of the Wish, and unless your name happens to be Arnold Rimmer you're not going to pervert your own Wish. So go ahead and Wish to be immortal, if you're willing to burn 5,000 XP on it you get it (plus a Timeless Body effect as per the Druid/Monk class feature, as remaining in good physical health is generally part of the spirit of an immortality Wish.)

If you bought the Wish with gold, as in a Ring of Three Wishes or a Luckblade, then your Wishes still generally aren't perverted but they are less effective at fulfilling desires outside the 'safe' list. If you want immortality from the Ring, it may take two or even all three Wishes- the first one gives you Timeless Body, the second one extends any age categories you haven't yet reached by half, the third one removes the limit on your Venerable category altogether. Or maybe you want to be a different race; the first Wish turns you into that race with a Shapechange-like effect that has a duration of Permanent, and the second Wish makes that effect Instantaneous so it can't be stripped with a Dispel or Disjunction (the third Wish may be needed if you want to become something notably more powerful than your current race.)

Wishes granted for free/really cheap, as spell-likes or supernatural abilities, are the most limited. They stick to the safe list entirely; if you ask for something outside that, it just does nothing (make up your own reason; I go with the XP component being the source of Wish's reality-altering power, and if you bypass that you just get a really versatile 9th-level spell.) The exception is things like a Pit Fiend's once-a-year Wish; if you want to make use of that, keep in mind that the Pit Fiend, not you, is the agent of the Wish, and asking Devils for favors is usually a bad idea.

[Sanguine]

What about Noble Djiin?

[quick_comment]

asking Devils for favors is usually a bad idea.

Even mindraped devils?

[Jade_Tarem]

I've never subscribed to the school of thought where Wish/Miracle can't be used to do anything that couldn't be accomplished by a fifteenth level cleric.

There's a pretty simple method for dealing with Wish use vs. Wish abuse. Just decide when the player casts a wish which cosmic force/deity is going to handle it.

"I wish something exciting would happen," is just DM gold. This wish will be handled by the Powers of Chaos in your campaign, and they'll use it to shunt pure chaos into the world, just for a moment, and now any crazy thing can happen with little or no justification, perhaps even starting an all new adventure. That said, I've never heard of a player wishing for this outside of Baldur's Gate II.

"I wish for [overpowered wish here]," is when you need to intercede. If, for some reason, the players like to play twist-the-wish with their DM, then that's alright, otherwise, the correct response is "Boccob takes notice of your sudden surge in power. All rumor to the contrary, he really does care about some things, and he uses a wish to undo your wish, restoring balance to the land." Frankly, your players should know better than to ask for a quintillion experience points, the loss of 5000xp should remind them of that.

There are good wishes though, that aren't in the list. And of course, some of what's on the list is alright. "I wish I were a lot faster/smarter/stronger," while not worded in such a way that it can't be twisted, is probably not worth foiling. Just give the player an ability score bump and let him be happy. Some good ones that I've heard:

Miracle: Used by a desperate cleric, who was the last standing member of his party and surrounded by a lot of enemies, to "turn the tide of this battle." The DM ruled that the god in question granted this by slapping a True Resurrection on everyone in the party, allowing them to win the day. That's probably more bang for his buck than the cleric could normally get out of a miracle, but it was dramatically appropriate, completely in character for both the cleric and the good-aligned god he was calling on, and allowed the group to keep adventuring, so this was basically a win all around.

Wish: Used by a sorcerer to "give [the BBEG] a compelling reason to abandon her plans." This was used as a plot point in the campaign - the PCs set out to convince the BBEG to quit instead of killing her outright by reinforcing the situations that arose from the wish.

Wish: Used by a loremaster to aquire the knowledge necessary of how to build a practical airship, which was also later used as both a plot point and an awesome ride.


So wishacle isn't the most horrible thing in the world. It just requires the players to be slightly reasonable and moderately intelligent at the same time.

[quick_comment]

Miracle: Used by a desperate cleric, who was the last standing member of his party and surrounded by a lot of enemies, to "turn the tide of this battle." The DM ruled that the god in question granted this by slapping a True Resurrection on everyone in the party, allowing them to win the day. That's probably more bang for his buck than the cleric could normally get out of a miracle, but it was dramatically appropriate, completely in character for both the cleric and the good-aligned god he was calling on, and allowed the group to keep adventuring, so this was basically a win all around.

This is explictly an option for a greater Miracle. Maybe not the true ressurection rather than raise dead, (I would probably just grant chained revenence), but its not totally out of line.


When I run a game, I have a rule. Just like putting one extradimension space in another results in a planar rift or whatever, any interaction whatsoever between wishes and gates/candles of invocations causes the wisher to permanently lose all spellcasting or manifesting abilities, just like using disjunction on an artifact.

[ondonaflash]

My cousin and I were discussing the wish spell in depth several months ago and we basically came to the conclusion that the Wish spell is meant for a very specific purpose: If you use wish it is with the intent that you skip, or undo a specific part of an adventure at the cost of experience. What that means, is that if you cast the spell, not only do you lose the experience in the spell cost, but you also lose the experience you would have gotten from encounters and xp gain. Wish should be used sparingly and with the intent that if the player uses it, then yes, the villain's plot is suddenly derailed, but your character lost the xp he'd get from fighting all those monsters, and the sub-villain you had concocted, and now the villain is wicked pissed and aware of your existence.

If they use Wish to make money, or a magic item it should come back to haunt them in some way, maybe the item has ego and if they had quested for it they would have gained the levels they needed to overcome it, but now they don't. The point of Wish was to be a "Get out of lame adventure free" card, and it should be treated thus, with all the consequences that entails.

You shouldn't allow them to wish for XP, its asking for punishment.

[sofawall]

Extradimensional spaces are not dangerous in and of themselves. Only Portable Holes and Bags of Holding are screwed with.

Which is odd, because the Handy Haversack and Rope Trick are all in Core, yet not mentioned, so it's not just a problem with other books coming later.

[Xenogears]

This is explictly an option for a greater Miracle. Maybe not the true ressurection rather than raise dead, (I would probably just grant chained revenence), but its not totally out of line.

Technically the example (If i remember right. also from 3.0 players handbook) was an entire army brought back for the rest of the fight. So changing it from tens of or even hundreds of thousands to probably 4-5 at most seems fair to make it permanent.

Edit:

Extradimensional spaces are not dangerous in and of themselves. Only Portable Holes and Bags of Holding are screwed with.

Which is odd, because the Handy Haversack and Rope Trick are all in Core, yet not mentioned, so it's not just a problem with other books coming later.

Some of them (I forget which) say that "Bringing an extradimensional space inside another extradimensional space is hazerdous) but doesn't list the hazard....

[Milskidasith]

The example just says raising fallen allies. It never mentions numbers.

[sofawall]

Some of them (I forget which) say that "Bringing an extradimensional space inside another extradimensional space is hazardous) but doesn't list the hazard....

Either Rope Trick or the Haversack, maybe both, but as it was never mentioned what the danger was (or mentioned in any other book about there even being one) I only invoke that to stop infinite carrying limits.

Hell, what am I saying, I don't invoke carrying limits on tiny 4 str pixies. I only care about encumbrance for flying. That's about it.