We have a Mage in our group who plans on using a wish later in the game to grant him a BAB equal to his hit dice, I have no idea what the GM might do, but I'm curious to get everyones opinion on it?
Also post some of the craziest wishes you've done/seen
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When he casts the Wish spell, pay special attention to the wording.
"I want a BAB equal to my HD!"
"Okay, you now have as many Badly Assorted Bumblebees as you have Horny Dingos. BAB equal to your HD!"
Now, if he say "I wish to be as skilled as a fighter in combat!" I'd give him the base-attack bonus of a fighter, but only after initiative has been rolled, and not in surprise rounds, constests of melee/ranged skill, or for the purpose of qualifying for feats/prestige classes. If he multiclasses after he casts the spell, follow the normal multiclass rules.
Not from a game session, but I told my friends I could twist wishes...
"I wish for laser vision!"
"To bad you're wearing reflective glasses..."
"I wish my skin was hard as rock!"
"You can't move."
To understand the way I twisted this wish, you must first know the wisher is male, and a teenager.
"I wish I had super-strength!"
"You rip it off."
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If your GM's a bastard he'll turn him into a fighter of equal level.
With the same stats.
If I were the GM and I knew that this was an attempt at a power grab by the player, the wish would be granted thusly:
The granter of the wish would congratulate the wizard on using wish to emulate transformation.
If I wanted to be a real jerk, I'd make it only last for CL rounds. If I wanted to give him a blessed with suck, I'd make it permanent and un-dispelable.
I've seen some DM's screw over every wish to the point where the wish spell and all wish items might as well not exist. Maybe it would be better just to say, "I don't like how wish affects the game so it does not exist."
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I don't know, I think that wishes being completely mutable makes it more interesting (as long as your dm is not just twisting it to be an a@&!%&&). I think that if there is an Epic handbook they should make a prestige class, Something like a Cosmic Lawyer, that focuses specifically on getting from wishes what you actually want.
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What I usually do is allow it to be used for any of the normally uses described in the entry, and anything "Greater" is treated as its namesake. It's a wish.
Unless a god or some other powerful being decides to grant the wish themselves, the "great" effect simply fails. The more powerful the wish is, the more likely the gods will simply say "no" to avoid having another god react negatively to it. In the cases where the god says "no" I would just have it trigger the nearest safe effect.
If the player continues casting obnoxious wishes, a god of trickery decides to respond with an effect whose main purpose is to provide themselves with entertainment. This is where the "evil DM" effects come in.
Hell to the no. Considering a wish is typically equal to a +1 inherent bonus to a stat giving up a potential +10 to BAB is beyond game-breakingly powerful. This is just asking for a DM to screw over the PC.
Permanent Mage's Transformation seems to be the most likely perversion.
"Great News Comrades! I'm now a sub-par warrior with no combat feats or spells!"
Of course the next wish the PC is going to use is going to be a "Uhh can I undo that last wish... please!"
We have a Mage in our group who plans on using a wish later in the game to grant him a BAB equal to his hit dice, I have no idea what the GM might do, but I'm curious to get everyones opinion on it?
I'd give him +1 inherent bonus to his BAB - just as if he'd wished to be the 'most intelligent man in the world', he'd get +1 inherent bonus to Intelligence.
In either case he didn't get exactly what he asked for, but wishes aren't capable of what he's asking - or at least single ones are not.
I think the thing that people should remember about all the classical wish stories is that the being granting the wishes was usually a faerie or genie or somesuch and basically there to screw the poor victim over. The Wish spell, OTOH, cast by the wizard himself, should usually fall in-line with his actual intentions, more or less.
Now, if you go soliciting Wishes from Efreeti, THEY'LL happily screw you over.
I wish for a melted cheese sandwich, a cookie and a warm cup of milk. (Wishing for the people with TOO much time and money.)
I think I would vote for the, you get +1 BAB for this casting. Cast again for an other, etc.
I once managed to wish my self into being a dragon. A second wish guarantied that she stayed with the party till quest completed. (I still say I worded that such that the wanderlust and what not wouldn't have been a problem.)
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My vote: he gets a choice: he can either stick within the "safety limits" or try to "push the spell".
quote from the Wish spell:
"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 the player has the option of getting what he is asking for within the confines of the spell (a +1 inherent bonus to BAB, though he shouldn't know that beforehand) or risking all for more power (in which case the GM is justified in throwing a permanent Transformation on the little munchkin).
I haven't had this much fun since redesigned the Deck of Many Things.
From what it SOUNDS LIKE said player is trying to make a power grab and over reaching the safe bounds of Wish, in other words, asking for trouble. If it had been me I would have asked for +1 to +5 inherent bonus to my BAB. If that makes any sense from the perspective of the character.
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I would ask the player to say the wish in character. That eliminates the terms BAB and HD from his lexicon. Then go from there.
I would ask the player to say the wish in character. That eliminates the terms BAB and HD from his lexicon. Then go from there.
+1
One of the things that I loved from the game Baldur's Gate II was how they handled wishes. Granted, you were limited to the conversation tree for your options. However, every character had the same options, but each option had multiple different outcomes. The outcome was based on your Wisdom score. The higher your Wisdom, the more likely you were to see through the genie's (who granted all wishes regardless of source) attempts to pervert your intent.
For example, one of the options was "I want to be more experienced."
A high WIS character simply gained experience points without complication. A low WIS character summoned an iron golem to kill. If you managed to kill it, you gained the experience.
It went like this for all of the options. Since then, I never dumped WIS on my mages.
So, I say all that to say this: since not all players are good improv actors and therefore their roleplaying might be lacking, have the player give an honest attempt then set a DC based on how far that is within the bounds of what you think Wish can do. Then have them make a Int/Wis/Cha check (whichever is not their casting stat) to see if they did it right. Success gets them what they want, minor failure gets them close, and major failure gets a twisted result.
Hmmm, I can spend 25k gold to entice a DM to screw me over? What a bargain!
Really though, when it comes to Wish granting permanent combat effects, the precedent is 1 Wish = +1 to hit. I would consider that the safe limit.
This mage is asking for potentially 10x this effect at 20th level. Even better, it's not a typed bonus, so reading a book for another +inherent bonus is completely possible.
IMHO, this shouldn't be doable unless it was on duration. 1hour/level, or 1day/level if you're feeling generous. For context, Transformation is 6th level and a more powerful effect, but it's 1round/level.
No transformation is not a more powerful effect. Getting small boosts to stats and BAB are generally not worth giving up spells. A member of the warrior class is a significant reduction in party power and that's basically what the transformed mage is turning into.
Further the safe precedent for an ability score is +1 to a stat. While in some cases that can result in a +1 to hit, the actual effect is roughly +.5 to hit if you use it on your strength stat.
+1 to BAB is different that +1 to hit because a +1 to BAB can potentially result in more iterative attacks and/or give access to better feats.
I'd probably limit maximum safe effect to a +1 insight bonus to hit rather than a +1 inherent to BAB.
+1 to the "He is reaching way beyond the bounds of a normal wish and had better be very careful" I might give him a Wisdom check to hint that he is reaching too far.
As for crazy wish stories, I had a plot line where I gave each character a single wish granted by the gods. One of the players wished for "Safety for me and my friends". It was very vague, and also extremely selfless compared to the other wish so I felt inclined to grant it without trying to twist things. I rolled a 1d4+1, and it came up 5. The next 5 times someone in the party would have died, they ended up stablized at -1. The players were completely unaware of this, but soon figured out what was going after several characters avoided moments of certain death. The really fun part was that the players had no idea how many charges they had left.
I liked what someone said about the +1 to hit....but maybe make them earn it a bit more.
Create a Manual of XXX that is just like a Manual of Gainful Exercise +1, except it affects Base Attack Bonus. Call it the Manual of Martial Manuevers.
I wish for a melted cheese sandwich, a cookie and a warm cup of milk. (Wishing for the people with TOO much time and money.)
Sounds like a candidate for a new low level wish spell, "Wishtidigitation"
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One of the things that I loved from the game Baldur's Gate II was how they handled wishes. Granted, you were limited to the conversation tree for your options. However, every character had the same options, but each option had multiple different outcomes. The outcome was based on your Wisdom score. The higher your Wisdom, the more likely you were to see through the genie's (who granted all wishes regardless of source) attempts to pervert your intent.
For example, one of the options was "I want to be more experienced."
A high WIS character simply gained experience points without complication. A low WIS character summoned an iron golem to kill. If you managed to kill it, you gained the experience.It went like this for all of the options. Since then, I never dumped WIS on my mages.
This is something I can really get behind. I think that 1.) said Wizard should have a chance to realize before hand if the Wish would have a terrible side effect. In character, they would know about how risky it should be, unless thye are low Wis. It really plays off of the arrogance that Arcanists, especially high level ones should have. And also starts to really show the difference between a high level Cleric's Miracle and a Wizard's Wish.
2.) Wish really encourages bad GMing. The DM shouldn't be against the players, but that is what Wish really seems to inspire. If not a Wis check, the DM should warn the caster that they may be pushing it to far, because said caster would probaly understand that in game. Part of learning the Wish spell would be understanding how the fundimentals of the spell altering reality worked, and how much may be too much.
3.) If the character does get to overpowered, or uses the Wish in ways you had not intended, it is better to start adding a bad side later on, and showing the players in game not to stretch their luck than to just screw them every time they want to try something that is up to the GM. In said example about BaB = to HD, if they start just overshadowing everyone, it is better to then start impossing some restrictions or even curse-like effects.
Maybe to power that BaB, they have to continue to kill things, and the longer it goes, the list of killable targets starts to deminish. At first it may just be anything. Then it becomes only living things. Then it becomes only younger things, then only intellegent things, then only the nonevil, . . . until the Wizard either has to give it up of slay a young commoner each day.
On the other hand, if all they do is use it to make their touch attacks more reliable, why punish them for essentually bying a pricy magic item equivalent.
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In Legacy of Fire, there's articles about wishcraft and the like.
They speak about how overpowered wishes can warp the fabric of reality and thus the genies - caretakers of the power of wishcraft - will sense wish abuse and hunt down those who abuse wishes (even if they find the perfect wording and don't get screwed by the wish itself).
It all reflects my stance very nicely: In the case of wishes, I tailor my level of bastardlyness to the level of powergaming/ruleslawyerism/munchkinism perpetrated by the players. Meaning that the standard applications can be hand-waved (I even waive the material component for basic stuff on par with the stuff from miracle), but if you go overboard, you will suffer for it.
the boost to the stat will also increase damage output though. An increase to just to hit will help on the same point some (in that you are hitting more) but not as much as the boost to Str (which helps hit more and deals more damage per hit).
I could see an inherent bonus to hit up to +5 as normal for the skills.
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If anyone would like to look at it for reference, here's an article on wishes I did about twenty years ago for Dragon.
Actually my first published work, so enjoy. Most of the stuff in it is still relevant for the current edition.
The PC has to term his wishes in words and phrases that the character is actually aware of.
"I wish for more BAB" would either fail out right or practically requires the DM to invent "bab" and give "more" of it to the PC.
Characters don't know what bab is. They don't know what attack bonus is. They don't know what armor class is.
They do know about missing often or hitting more often or about being better at dodging or blocking or however you choose to phrase it.
Wishing to be better at something is a good thing and well within the bounds of the spell.
Wishing to be the best of anything or at anything is really begging the DM to bend you over a barrel. Greedy wishes beget wicked (and inventive) DM responses.
-S
Actually my first published work, so enjoy. Most of the stuff in it is still relevant for the current edition.
that was a fun read, thanks!
makes me nostalgic for the-random-tables-for-all-occasions from 1E.I don't know about the craziest wish ever, but I can tell you the *dumbest* wish I ever made, way back in the 1E days:
so after many levels, I used a wish to get psionics.
my DM was a decent sort and told me that I couldn't get them outright, but I could roll again or I could make another wish.
I chose to roll.
the dice came up at 18% and boy was I mad.
If your GM's a bastard he'll turn him into a fighter of equal level.
With the same stats.
Am I really a bastard? That's what I would have done. :(
I have done the same in regards to the person requesting the wish "in character" and writing it on a piece of paper, so if a debate does ensue as a result of the wish, then at least you have a record of what is requested.
Also wishing for a full BAB equal to your HD, when written in character, as others stated, may have an entirely different meaning when interpreted.
In addition, wishes can offer opportunities to place the character and his or her companions in a difficult situation, or quest, to obtain an item of great power for the ability requested. As a note, wishes do not have to be immediate, and may take years to finally be realized.
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I wish for a melted cheese sandwich, a cookie and a warm cup of milk. (Wishing for the people with TOO much time and money.)
Sounds like a candidate for a new low level wish spell, "Wishtidigitation"
Prestidigitation is the 0-level wish spell.
Think about it. Prestidigitation lets the caster improvise a magical effect subject to the limitations of the spell level. In theory, you could extrapolate what the limitations of such improvisation would be like at each level, building up to limited wish at 7th and wish at 9th.
I wish for a melted cheese sandwich, a cookie and a warm cup of milk. (Wishing for the people with TOO much time and money.)
Sounds like a candidate for a new low level wish spell, "Wishtidigitation"
Prestidigitation is the 0-level wish spell.
Think about it. Prestidigitation lets the caster improvise a magical effect subject to the limitations of the spell level. In theory, you could extrapolate what the limitations of such improvisation would be like at each level, building up to limited wish at 7th and wish at 9th.
This is how I've always seen it as well. It's even Universal like Wish and Ltd Wish.
EDIT: I also always thought there should be a 7th level Cleric spell called Minor Miracle.
In theory, you could extrapolate what the limitations of such improvisation would be like at each level, building up to limited wish at 7th and wish at 9th.
sniff, sniff... what is that smell? is it a PrC cooking? =)
It might be fun to introduce a prestige caster class that specializes in less powerful kinds of wishes along these lines. shadowcraft mage (races of stone)is somewhat like this - allowing improvised casting of evocation and some conjuration spells, but this would be much more versatile. and potentially much more broken, so the mechanics would be important to nail down. maybe a difficult spellcraft (or wishcraft) check with the possibility of failure, mishaps, etc. very limited number of castings per day. will have to look into the Legacy of Fire article for ideas.but in any case wishes are fun and it is a bit of a shame that they are so rare. having less powerful versions and more regular access would likely change them from being essentially banned in many campaigns. IMO nothing fires up the imagination like having access to a wish.
Sounds like a candidate for a new low level wish spell, "Wishtidigitation"
Prestidigitation is the 0-level wish spell.
Think about it. Prestidigitation lets the caster improvise a magical effect subject to the limitations of the spell level. In theory, you could extrapolate what the limitations of such improvisation would be like at each level, building up to limited wish at 7th and wish at 9th.
Sigh...that was the joke...
I don't like to screw players with wishes.
But:
Magus use medium BAB, that means you are effectively asking for- at 20th level, 5 more BAB. This grants you +5 to attacks and an extra attack.
5 consecutive wishes can grant you +5 to an ability score which is basically 2.5 of a BAB. Sort of. (in terms of attack rolls, not extra attacks, but you get more damage too if used in strength or AC/reflex if dex..)
Personally I'd just inform the player that the wish was too powerful and he'd be better off asking for something else. A magical item perhaps? Or maybe get started on those inherent bonuses?
As for some fun wishes:
A group member once wished that the top half of a tower was moved separately from the bottom half of the tower, about 20 yards to the east.
The effect: toppled the tower, nearly killed the BBEG. We got him and his loot (But practically no xp for it, any of the traps, the BBEG or his minions and such).
It was an ingame success and a metagame bummer. :)
-S
I'd screw over the player pulling a stunt like this. Now if they wanted to be reasonable I'd allow a wish to grant +1 inherent bonus to BAB that is instantaneous and permanent. Multiple wishes can make it go up to maximum +5 with 5 wishes. They wouldn't be stackable and the BAB can not exceed 20. This to me seems in line with list of effects.
Seems fair if you consider that strength give +1 to and +1 damage per 2 points so +1 to hit per point balance out nicely I think. Quite expensive to get +5 to hit on wizard though but more worth the price if you were EK PRC. A +5 sword costs 50,000 GP and this gives you only half the bonus and doesn't count as magical 125,000 GP. Still better BAB means more iterative attacks and access to some feats.
I would make the players character say the wish ingame to avoid the term BAB. Depending on how clever or greedy the wish would end up, the player either gets something about as powerfull as another attack when using the full attack action, or maybe a +5 enhancement bonus on all attack rolls for a year and a day.
If the player insists on BAB = HD, he gets exactly what he wants one way or another, but he will lose something or gain a curse that forces him into using his BAB (like the confusion spell with a 50 % chance).
I have to mention though, that BAB isn´t just usefull for the attacks, it also helps the mage to defend against combat maneuvers.
I've seen some DM's screw over every wish to the point where the wish spell and all wish items might as well not exist. Maybe it would be better just to say, "I don't like how wish affects the game so it does not exist."
^This
As I've gotten older (and hopefully more mature), I've come to realize that the game is about having fun. Therefore, as a Player, I will deliberately attempt to keep any Wish from being a Game Breaker. As a DM, I try to reign the Player in while not giving him a good screwing over.
If you have a Wish, talk to the DM, figure it out. No one needs to get screwed on either side of the screen.
The problem with this wish is that the PC is trying to decide how powerful the wish will be. The PC is well within his rights to wish for greater attacking prowess, or something along those lines, but then it is up to the GM to decide how much of a boost the PC gets. Because, ultimately, the GM is the one who should decide how much of a boost would be an benefit without unbalancing the campaign.
Here's an idea that I have used in past high-level campaigns--
There were certain devils who offered their services as writers of wishes. Finding them wasn't easy, and the fees they charged were high and difficult to obtain, but the actual wish contracts that they wrote up were known throughout the multiverse for being so carefully crafted that the wishers got what they wanted. The devils, of course, also would let their clients know ahead of time if they were wishing for something beyond the power of a wish to grant, and would even warn them if they were straying into requests that were likely to be perverted. It makes for fun side quests, and gives the GM a chance to advise the players what might or might not be allowed in that game.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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My (spell granted) wishes work on a) In character wishing and b) conservation of energy.
In character
Conservation of energy
Now wishes coming from external sources (Djinn, Efreet, Pit Fiends, etc) have two problems, the speaker's intent and the power casting it. Better crank out the diplomacy checks before you make that wish.
