Hey.
Ok, I don't know if you've read my previous posts, or my summary of the game so far...
Anyway, long story short, it's a game set in a world where there's a major curse that's stopped people (and monsters) from leveling.
We recently found out that the curse was cast by an epic elven necromancer 3000 years ago, focused on a necklace, and according to him, could only be broken by a king of men, striking it with the knowledge that he would be giving up his life to break the curse.
I've lost a very nice level 1 bard, but my new level 1 Diviner is faced with a very interesting choice.
We stumbled upon a VERY powerful mace, which in turn let us beat down a heavy doorway that closed an ancient abandoned dwarven city.
Inside there, we've found a variety of stuff, including the royal treasury, which our detection magic tells us has around 50 magic items inside it, but our mace cannot break the door down and it can only be opened with the Scepter of the dwarven king (which also opens other doors and enables some magic items) which was lost to a goblin raid centuries ago.
We've also found a lot of small stuff, some nice stuff and one gamechanger.
My character found a brass lamp, containing an Efreeti, who is rather grateful to have been found after 3000 years of lying around hidden under a floortile in a library, and is rather cooperative.
In addition, he has made my character the offer of giving her three wishes if she sets him free.
Using some shenanigangs, we've gotten the dwarves to accept our human rangers claim to the kingdom of men (since the mace he wields belonged to an ancient human king, and there's nobody around to dispute his claim) and he married the queen of the dwarves in an attempt to make a new kingdom of men and dwarves in the newly opened city.
Now, this is where it gets tricky.
My wizard will definitely want to break the curse, now that she knows about it and the necklace. She MIGHT also make the wish that she personally were exempt from it, but the GM assures me that this would be one of those 'wish can't really do that unless it attaches several annoying strings to it'.
Most likely, she'd want to wish that the necklace were right here with her, so that it could be broken. (possibly by our king of men) But that might not work.
She'd also want to wish for entry to the dwarven vault, most easily by wishing she had the lost scepter.
Thirdly, some of the rest of the group will want to use one of the wishes to bring back the dead Bard. (who was an entertaining and nice person, whom they miss)
Fourthly, my wizard has only spotty memory of her past, she will want to fix that, possibly with a wish, and fifthly, she might want something completely different (immortality? Flight? Transformation into something else? A spellbook with lots of cool spells?)
Anyway, any suggestions or advice would be welcome.
Wish for a fully charged Ring of Three Wishes! :D
-Nearyn
Wish to know where the cursed necklace is.
Wish to become a king of men. Note that this means there need be only two other men present to qualify.
Wish that the bard is returned to life once your wizard dies as a king of men that breaks that cursed necklace.
Note, I'm not gonna try to metagame to cheat.
The wizard doesn't want to die, she's not going to die herself to break the curse....at least not unless it's utterly the only possibility.
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Find a conveniently stupid and selfless Paladin. Wish that he were a King among men. Convince him to break the curse.
Note, I'm not gonna try to metagame to cheat.
The wizard doesn't want to die, she's not going to die herself to break the curse....at least not unless it's utterly the only possibility.
Often times wishes made in selflessness are fulfilled in the spirit rather than the letter. Especially ones that tie into the GMs' designs. If your character makes her wishes that are aimed towards following the plot and being selfless, what do you think the GM is going to be more lenient towards?
Now if your wizard is not particularly inclined to selflessness, I would revise the trio to the following:
1.) wish to know where the necklace is. This is a wish version of discern location, very doable 'by the book' and it seems is rather necessary to the campaign. This also keeps the wish granter's paws off of mucking with fulfilling the request.
2.) wish to know where the lost scepter of the dwarven king is. This may or may not be a waste depending on your group, but from the sound of it everyone is stuck at 1st level in the campaign.
3.) I'd guess that you are on the right track with using the third wish to restore your wizard's memory of her past. This might be best used as her first wish. See what she learns from this before making the other two, as her memories may include knowledge of one or the other.
Better to ask with wishes on how to help your quest than to ask for the item itself to shorten the whole planned storyline.
If the GM really wanted an efreeti to solve the ordeals so easily, he would not have placed a wish-granting opportunity in the game.
Bringing the bard back is a generous thing.
Hopefully you have the original body intact.
Takes 2 wishes if the body was destroyed.
The bard will also suffer a permanent loss of level.
The wish does not specify the spontaneous creation of matter (mundane and magical) as one of its 'normal' functions.
It does however say:
You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment, at the GM's discretion.)
So doing a wish involving bypassing the defenses of the vault without the scepter, or to outright have the necklace or scepter may not be so safe to wish for.
The wizard that wants a magic items or regaining memory or immortality is again beyond the "normal" functions.
I believe we have enough of the bard's body left to only need one wish. As per the resurrection, which we would be duplicating, we only need a piece of it. I think the clause about two wishes is for the cases when you don't have any of it on hand. (though reading wish and resurrection seems to be slightly at odds when it comes to that, on one hand, wish is just duplicating resurrection, which should work just like resurrection, but the clause in wish about needing two spells gives me pause)
We've discussed some of this, and while we are generally of the mind that wishes generally within the same sort of frame of power as the suggestions would work in an Aladdin-like fashion, we do intend to have them inflict unintended consequences if they go over those limits.
My GM has said for example that wishing for limited immortality (not aging, not dying of old age) would probably work, but with some inconvenient side effects, trying to wish for more (say, active regeneration or something along with it) would inflict some sort of dire drawback.
But stuff like, getting her memory back, should be fine with no drawback.
In addition, the Efreeti will try to fulfill the wishes with the minimum expenditure of magic, so if I wish for the scepter, the magic of the wish would be used to locate it, and he might then use his plane shift ability to go fetch it. (so it's a bit more powerful than a regular wish, in that the efreeti will try to see it out himself if that's what's required)
1. I would wish for your memory back.
2. I would wish for the Knowledge of where to find the necklace and what is guarding it/protecting it.
3. The 3rd I might try something fun and risky. After all, if you are completely safe then have you really made a wish come true? lol. The 3rd I would go for the Immortality...
I wish to live for forever at the age I am now, forever youthful, with no negative effects such as Undeath, becoming a construct, ect.
Possibly talk to your GM about coming up with a fun drawback. After all. In the mechanical sense... wishing for immortality doest make your character any more powerful. Its simply a RP wish. Powerful in the RP sense but worthless in the game. So if you have a drawback... make it fun.
A. You could be given a Portrait of yourself that ages instead of you. If you ever look upon the painting you will instantly incure the years it has absorbed for you.
B. Your given a pouch of divine food. The pouch refills once a day. As long as you eat the food you will be forever youthful. However all other foods and earthly joys seem less now. The world is just a bit more gray now that you have tasted the divine. If you ever stop eating the food you start to regain your zest for mortal things... but you start to rapidly age (1 Day = 1 Year of age). This is reversed as soon as you take up the food again. You aren't depressed. Just less ethusiastic about life... feeling as if you are missing something.
C. You will be imortal but can never find love. If you do something tragic always happens to your love (Fall from a height, an object unexpectantly falls on them, ect)
D. You are immortal. But every death around you causes the soul to be absorbed by you. These souls follow you... advising, taunting, and basicly being pest. If you killed them they might be angry. The power hungry might be intrigued and wish to help you. The innocent who died of old age and where unlucky to be near you are sad and wish to find final rest. You can quite them with by exerting your will but they will always return. This is your curse and blessing. You should gain some knowledge bonuses over time along with maybe a reroll every now and then.
Wish for a compass that always points to the scepter.
Then for a compass to points to the necklace.
Alternatively you could wish to be taken to another plane where the curse doesn't exist, ask for a level up or two, then go back, bam, you're a super human compared to others.
Thanks for the advice.
If anyone's interested, here's what I wound up wishing for.
It's perhaps a bit under-optimized, but my character found out that she could wish for an item to appear so long as it was on the same plane, but if it was on a different plane, the wish would fizzle, she could however wish to know exactly where it is, anywhere in all the worlds, and then, if it were on another plane, she could wish to go there.
Obviously, this is overanalysis, but that's the sort of girl she is.
So wish 1.
1: I wish I knew where the amulet was (she specified further exactly what amulet) = Found out it was on this plane.
2. I wish The amulet appeared right here in front of me. = It did
At that point the King in our party immediately struck it with his super-mace, causing it to explode in a shower of sparks. He fell down dead and just then, the queen entered, inconsolable at the loss of her husband, she proceeded to attack my wizard, unarmed. I cast color spray to take her out, then used the final wish.
3. I wish that the scepter and Crown of the dwarves appeared in my hands. = They did.
Then when the queen recovered, I explained my actions, the fact that the king sacrificed himself willingly and then offered her the dwarven crown and scepter as a peace offering, which she accepted.
All in all, a pretty nice session.
At this point, we level up to level 2, retroactively change from 10 point buy to 15 point buy and start using hero points.
Sneakers!