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Can't handle a wish?
Dragonfolk2000
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Registered User new member
If a wish (whether spell or bestowed upon by a deck of many things) ever comes up at my table the GMs have already figured out how to handle any abuse of power by just twisting the words. A power gamer who knows how to word his wishes can still break the campaign but a poorly worded wish can break the character.
Case in point: "I wish Tiamat was dead." There are three ways I would handle that particular wish. The character did not specify which Tiamat (there has to be more than one being out there named Tiamat, it's an infinate universe after all) so the wrong Tiamat could die.
Second is that Tiamat is a god (I think) so a wish shouldn't be able to kill this character. Some dieties and creatures have had ages to perfect their immortality so they could have put in place spells and contingencies to prevent such a simple solution from killing them. The character still expends experience (if done through traditional methods) to cast the spell. The spell still went off, but the effects were negated.
Third way is to time travel the wisher to the distant future, long after Tiamat and all other dieties have died in some sort of apocalypse. Oh, and the character can't get back. Time for the player to make a new character. Harsh? He shouldn't have tried to break your game.
Wishes can still be used to not ruin the game. One point happened in a game that I was not running. Someone fumbled their attack roll and their vorpal sword went through the healer's neck. Someone nearby who happened to have a wish from a Luck Blade used his wish to save the healer's life. This does not break the game nor is it a selfish use of the wish.
Wishes are not bad, but wishes used selfishly should cause problems for the wisher. If a party is using wishes too much to solve their problems, go ahead and twist the words around. As my favorite GM always says "I always give my players enough rope to hang themselves."
Case in point: "I wish Tiamat was dead." There are three ways I would handle that particular wish. The character did not specify which Tiamat (there has to be more than one being out there named Tiamat, it's an infinate universe after all) so the wrong Tiamat could die.
Second is that Tiamat is a god (I think) so a wish shouldn't be able to kill this character. Some dieties and creatures have had ages to perfect their immortality so they could have put in place spells and contingencies to prevent such a simple solution from killing them. The character still expends experience (if done through traditional methods) to cast the spell. The spell still went off, but the effects were negated.
Third way is to time travel the wisher to the distant future, long after Tiamat and all other dieties have died in some sort of apocalypse. Oh, and the character can't get back. Time for the player to make a new character. Harsh? He shouldn't have tried to break your game.
Wishes can still be used to not ruin the game. One point happened in a game that I was not running. Someone fumbled their attack roll and their vorpal sword went through the healer's neck. Someone nearby who happened to have a wish from a Luck Blade used his wish to save the healer's life. This does not break the game nor is it a selfish use of the wish.
Wishes are not bad, but wishes used selfishly should cause problems for the wisher. If a party is using wishes too much to solve their problems, go ahead and twist the words around. As my favorite GM always says "I always give my players enough rope to hang themselves."
Dragonfolk2000 on
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1. To screw over players in a monkey-paw-esque scenario of doom
2. To play a high powered fantastical campaign where anything can and does happen
If you're not aiming for either of these, you shouldn't be using wishes.
This. I ran with a DM who only has bad outcomes for his wishes.
Examples:
"I wish [so-and-so] was dead"
"Okay, [so-and-so] is now a vampire."
"I wish for 100,000 gold coins"
"100,000 gold coins fall from the sky and bury you, killing you instantly."
There are plenty of ways to be creative with a wish.
If so and so wishes some super powerful being dead, god or not, it's likely that super powerful being has contingencies against accidental death.
Ala, a clone suspended with spells to be triggered upon death of the actual body.
Have the being die, but then come back to life.
Now with a special enmity against the person who wished them dead, etc.
I've been in a few higher level games where a deck of many things has popped up.
In MOST cases, at least one player in the group has been totally screwed over, and lost the character.
Most good groups will use "solutions to next dilemma, wish, etc" to counter averse effects to themselves and other characters.
But like I said, almost always does 1 or 2 characters get wiped out.
Sometimes the majority of the party is wiped.
The more a player or character tries to screw with the game, setting, universe or campaign, the more within their rights the DM/GM is to try to abuse their wording. The more reasonable, selfless or character/setting/situation appropriate it is, the more willing the DM should be to play ball and work things out, perhaps even better than the wording might've originally intended.
Especially for wishes that require some kind of personal sacrifice (massive amounts of gold/materials, exp, other losses).
That said, I also think that the Players and DM should be essentially 'on the same page/team', so I'd hope that there wouldn't be players in the party actively trying to subvert the DM's campaign for a few giggles, possibly at the expense of said DM's time and effort preparing and building the campaign/world setting, and the other players who may or may not agree with their actions. A disruptive player/asshat is just that, and while a wish may be an easy way to fulfill whatever juevenille power fantasies they might desire to bring to light, they aren't intrinsicly bad.
Then again, in high school a friend once commented that I was the only person he knew that he'd trust with absolute power, so maybe I'm a statistical outlier.
1. Time travel police force. People who start screwing up time willy-nilly get hunted down. This is going to happen to the players almost right away.
2. Butterfly Effect is always running. Players who cause problems in the past may find a post-apocalyptic present awaiting them.
3. Every action they make that's not in their present time spawns a temporal anomaly. When it's a small action, it's a small anomaly that just gets blown away by the breeze. Big changes can result in some pretty ridiculous stuff (people shooting laser weapons and flying like birds) and could potentially manifest as monsters. This, among other reasons, is why the Time Police from (1.) exist.
Because, I mean, the best thing you could do with a wish before 3.0 was give it to your worst enemy. After 3.0, there are pretty strictly-defined limits.
I think a good thing to remember is that someone or something is responding to a wish, and re-writing reality for you. What is it's motivation to do so?
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Well, if you are doing the wishing via the spell you are casting and paying the XP, you are the one re-writing reality. Thus, I'm a bit more generous with the interpretation when that goes down.
The Pathfinder article was more about djinn granting wishes. Thus, you get more Monkey's Paw wishes if you are a jerk, and much more considerate wishes when you treat them well. IIRC, it also had some wishes that were no-noes that djinn wouldn't/couldn't grant because it was abusive to the fabric of reality.
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After the first one, they will be expecting this and wish for "a bag of holding containing X Astral Diamonds to appear in contact with the ground in that square there."
As such, I find that one of the best ways to deal with material object wishes is to have the material not be created ex nihilo but rather taken from someone or something that would reasonably have the item(s) in question.
So, those astral diamonds? Taken from Bahamut's personal hoard. And, naturally, he has the ability to scry for them (he is still a Dragon, after all).
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