Unusual Wishes

[Yllidor]

I suppose the subject doesn't come up much, because, frankly, by the time characters have access to wishes the campaign is probably pretty much over.

Nonetheless, I am interested in certain non-standard uses of wishes, and curious to know what other people might allow and why.

Sample unusual wishes: wishing for an instant change in the character resulting in a permanent new ability like: darkvision, low-light vision, scent, fast healing, a bonus feat, a climbing speed, a swimming speed, a flying speed, a natural armor bonus, an immunity to some type of damage or attack (fire, or poison, or disease, ...), damage reduction (1/- or 2/piercing or what have you), etc.

Which bonuses of these sorts would you think should, or should not, be allowed, and why? What other unusual abilities do you think should be considered, allowed or not allowed, and why?

This topic may have been done to death, if so, I apologize; when I search for "uses" and "wishes" at the paizo site I get a vast number of hits, which don't appear to cover this subject. If anyone knows of another thread where this is discussed, please link to that other thread.

Thanks for any responses,

Yllidor

[Havelock]

For things that can be simulated with spells you can actually make it a spell with Permanency on it. In fact, the Wish spell's description includes the ability to duplicate other spells.

Remember the old saying: Be careful what you wish for.

[StabbittyDoom]

I think most would argue that anything outside of the "standard" list is ripe for pseudo-correct execution.
So a character who wishes for darkvision may end up with daylight sensitivity as well, for example. One with fast healing may become resistant to magical healing. One who gains a climbing speed may lose some base speed. Someone who becomes immune to fire starts taking double damage from cold.
The list goes on, but this is usually how this sort of thing is handled.
One thing I'd note, though, is that if something is worth <= ~7k when made as an item it should be okay to just let them have that. They are paying 25k after all and making an item slot-less would still give them 12,500gp of item budget. The reason I put the number as less than that is to reflect the fact that an item can also be lost, stolen, broken, suppressed, etc. A wish effect is a permanent change in reality and is presumed to be whatever type of ability the wished-for thing normally is (many of which are Ex and can't be suppressed, and even Su requires anti-magic to suppress).
With this in mind, someone wishing for darkvision or low-light vision should (IMO) just get it. Someone wishing for a climb speed might get a climb speed of 10ft. Someone asking for immunity to fire should still get a major drawback, though, as that's expensive. I'd give someone asking for fast healing a rating of 2 (which isn't that useful at that level, but still kinda nice).

Anywho, in the end what you do with wish is completely up to you.

Game on!

EDIT: Typos. And ninjas.

[Doskious Steele]

StabbittyDoom wrote:

I think most would argue that anything outside of the "standard" list is ripe for pseudo-correct execution.

So a character who wishes for darkvision may end up with daylight sensitivity as well, for example. One with fast healing may become resistant to magical healing. One who gains a climbing speed may lose some base speed. Someone who becomes immune to fire starts taking double damage from cold.
The list goes on, but this is usually how this sort of thing is handled.
One thing I'd note, though, is that if something is worth <= ~7k when made as an item it should be okay to just let them have that. They are paying 25k after all and making an item slot-less would still give them 12,500gp of item budget. The reason I put the number as less than that is to reflect the fact that an item can also be lost, stolen, broken, suppressed, etc. A wish effect is a permanent change in reality and is presumed to be whatever type of ability the wished-for thing normally is (many of which are Ex and can't be suppressed, and even Su requires anti-magic to suppress).
With this in mind, someone wishing for darkvision or low-light vision should (IMO) just get it. Someone wishing for a climb speed might get a climb speed of 10ft. Someone asking for immunity to fire should still get a major drawback, though, as that's expensive. I'd give someone asking for fast healing a rating of 2 (which isn't that useful at that level, but still kinda nice).

Anywho, in the end what you do with wish is completely up to you.

Game on!

EDIT: Typos. And ninjas.

+1

[Umbral Reaver]

And there's a reason why I have seen players, as soon as they identify a ring of wishes, melt the ring down for its material worth as quickly as possible.

[Jaelithe]

Umbral Reaver wrote:

And there's a reason why I have seen players, as soon as they identify a ring of wishes, melt the ring down for its material worth as quickly as possible.

Sounds like they know their DM all too well.

[Umbral Reaver]

They even insisted on doing so in my game if they ever ran into a source of wishes, despite me telling them I wouldn't be a jerk about it. A lot of players have been burned by bad DMs and wish.

[Lyrax]

I don't mind it if a character uses up a wish on darkvision or something like that. A character who wishes for immunity to fire in my games might gain the fire subtype. This includes a vulnerability to cold.

Wish should be a good spell, and very powerful. But there's a reason it isn't called "give me whatever I want for free".

[Yllidor]

Havelock: Using Permanency as a model is pretty restrictive since so few spells can be made Permanent; while it might work quite well for the spells covered by Permanency, one still has to figure out how to adjudicate things that aren't covered.

StabbittyDoom: I think I like your basic approach, though I would have to review the item creation rules to consider where one might grant more latitude, and where one might want to grant less latitude.

One note: I do think that while having an ability intrinsic to oneself is useful, there are also benefits to having abilities extrinsic to oneself. For example, given an amulet of darkvision, it could be shared by a party of adventurers so that whoever had guard duty at night would have darkvision. Equally, if a character with an intrinsic ability dies that ability is destroyed. If it is extrinsic it would become part of his estate and could be passed on to his heirs. So while you focused on the benefits of making an ability intrinsic I note in passing that there is a real benefit to making an ability extrinsic. As a result I think that I might allow the equivalent of a 12,500 gp item made as a slotless item and worth 25,000 gp to be turned into an intrinsic ability of a character via Wish, rather than just a 7,000 gp item.

Umbral Reaver: Well, I would hope that wishes would not be so out of bounds that either the players were afraid of them, nor that the GM was determined to make them worthless.

Lyrax: Fire subtype seems like it might be a reasonable solution to a wish for Fire Immunity.

I appreciate the contributions to date. I agree that wishes should not be the be all and end all of a campaign. Equally, I think it should be possible to use them to beneficial effect. I am just trying to get some specific suggestions on how to do this in specific cases. What should be allowed and why? What shouldn't be allowed and why? I know that in my campaign it comes down to my decision, but there are a lot of cases where I am not sure, and so I am interested in other people's positions on these sorts of cases.

Even with StabbittyDoom's approach, some things there are not rules for, like what is the gp value of an item that grants a feat, and so it is hard to adjudicate whether or not a Wish for a feat should be granted (on StabbittyDoom's approach). What other approaches might be used to determine the reasonableness of granting a wish, depending on what is wished for?

Anyway, I do appreciate all comments to date.

Yllidor

[EWHM]

One of the most popular wishes I've seen players make is for 'health and long life', and the most common 'wish parser' (i.e. the wish interpreter when the granter doesn't hate you) interprets this as immediately putting you on the aging table of the longest-lived race in the campaign that a PC could have started as without paying level adjustment (usually, that's an elf of some description). If you're already on that table, it will grant you a 10 year reprieve from aging OR reduce your physical age by 10 years if you're older than the middle of the mature adult category. I don't even bill you in 'Wealth by level' for such wishes. They rarely have any actual game effect, and they're most typically made by players who actually identify with their characters as more than a playing piece on a cosmic chessboard.

I'd also let you (loosely under the 'change fate' aspect) do things like retrain up to 4 feats (8 if you're a fighter). Of course, I've already got retraining rules in effect in my game, so this'd represent an instant retraining that normally would've happened over 4 winters (I use the winter as the traditional time that people do such training in homage to Pendragon's 'Winter Phase'). You could also do the same with skills (there you could retrain up to 4 skill points per level). Not being an especially punitive sort (I save that for my encounters and the tactics of my more intelligent evildoers), I'd even let you blow a wish to retrain an ill-considered level (i.e., to convert, say, a level in some prestige class to something else if you found it not quite what you'd expected)---although I've never had a player ask for such as yet. I'd not count any of these uses against your wealth by level either.

On the minor abilities list---I'd interpret a lot of those as just permanent spells when permanency would be eligible. If you were smart enough to ask, or if the 'wish parser' is actually favorably inclined to you, I'd divide the 25k by the normal cost of the permanency for the spell in question. Then I'd make the permanency refresh itself if destroyed one day later that many times minus one. So, for example, if you asked for permanent darkvision, which has a normal cost of 5k, it would renew itself if dispelled on the next day up to 4 times.

[Malachi Tarchannen]

I had a particularly strategic player with a single wish in his ring who saved it up for the moment right before the party was to join a massive war.

His wish: I want to know every move the enemy is planning to make.

The result: I teleported him to the middle of the enemy general's warroom during their planning session.

<evil grin>

[DivineAspect]

Yllidor wrote:

I suppose the subject doesn't come up much, because, frankly, by the time characters have access to wishes the campaign is probably pretty much over.

Nonetheless, I am interested in certain non-standard uses of wishes, and curious to know what other people might allow and why.

Sample unusual wishes: wishing for an instant change in the character resulting in a permanent new ability like: darkvision, low-light vision, scent, fast healing, a bonus feat, a climbing speed, a swimming speed, a flying speed, a natural armor bonus, an immunity to some type of damage or attack (fire, or poison, or disease, ...), damage reduction (1/- or 2/piercing or what have you), etc.

Which bonuses of these sorts would you think should, or should not, be allowed, and why? What other unusual abilities do you think should be considered, allowed or not allowed, and why?

Thanks for any responses,

Yllidor

Let them wish to transform into other creature types which have those abilties. It'll be fine. Don't screw them on the transformation, instead wait for the consequences to emerge normally.

If someone wants to be a wererat, they will infect people. Or have rat children who will infect people.

If someone wants to be an outsider, they are going to be very surprised when they are affected by Protection from, or get trapped in Magic Circles, or worse yet get dismissed.

[StabbittyDoom]

DivineAspect wrote:

If someone wants to be an outsider, they are going to be very surprised when they are affected by Protection from, or get trapped in Magic Circles, or worse yet get dismissed.

I'm pretty sure prot-from only works against summoned outsiders (which the PC would not be) and magic circle can only trap and outsider if meticulously prepared and completely unbroken (even a single straw could break it).

Though banishment would still work.
Of course, none of these work against (native) outsiders, such as Rakshasa, Oni, Janni, Aasimars, Tieflings, etc. At least, not any more than they do against non-outsiders.

[Spes Magna Mark]

BitD, still playing 1E, my dwarf fighter/thief got a wish. He wished for the ability to speak with animals limited to wolves. Why? Because getting to talk with wolves is cool. Wish granted.

Another adventure. Same character. The party found a ring with three wishes. The party used the wishes to reroute a river, changing the desert environment around a bandit-infested ruin. The party also used a wish to repair the ruin's outer wall. Forget what the third one was used for.

The party then slaughtered the remaining bandits and set up a puppet government to skim profits from the new trade route that popped up due to the river's course changing.

Good times.

Mark L. Chance | Spes Magna Games

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

I don't know why so many GMs insist on being jerks about Wishes. Gain a Wish from a demon or devil, yeah there's going to be monkey paw repercussions. But gain it from a ring, genie or spell then it seems that letting PCs get cool stuff at high levels should be totally allowed.

To the GMs out there, please don't punish your PCs for wanting to do cool stuff. They don't play the game to be punished.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

There's punishing someone and there's just giving them exactly what they ask for which is often worse.

If the wish is being granted by a third party, letting that party interpret the wish and grant it the way they want is fine. There's also a matter of the wish-granter being too much of a jerk and the wisher just wishing for them to do something suicidally unpleasant.

[Umbral Reaver]

Malachi Tarchannen wrote:

I had a particularly strategic player with a single wish in his ring who saved it up for the moment right before the party was to join a massive war.

His wish: I want to know every move the enemy is planning to make.

The result: I teleported him to the middle of the enemy general's warroom during their planning session.

<evil grin>

This is why we can't have nice things.

[StabbittyDoom]

Umbral Reaver wrote:

Malachi Tarchannen wrote:

I had a particularly strategic player with a single wish in his ring who saved it up for the moment right before the party was to join a massive war.

His wish: I want to know every move the enemy is planning to make.

The result: I teleported him to the middle of the enemy general's warroom during their planning session.

<evil grin>

This is why we can't have nice things.

Yeah, I would've just given him the plans as they were at that time then roll a percentage of how much the plan changes.

1d100 ⇒ 31
Not bad. Most of the details will be right, but a lot of the minor details would change.

[Umbral Reaver]

I would have granted the use of a high level divination spell, which is totally within the normal use of wish. Greater scrying on the war room, maybe with tongues thrown in for free.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

StabbittyDoom wrote:

Umbral Reaver wrote:

Malachi Tarchannen wrote:

I had a particularly strategic player with a single wish in his ring who saved it up for the moment right before the party was to join a massive war.

His wish: I want to know every move the enemy is planning to make.

The result: I teleported him to the middle of the enemy general's warroom during their planning session.

<evil grin>

This is why we can't have nice things.

Yeah, I would've just given him the plans as they were at that time then roll a percentage of how much the plan changes.

1d100
Not bad. Most of the details will be right, but a lot of the minor details would change.

The question here is, who's the enemy?

Is it the opposing king?

Here's your info: He plans to kill your ruler and make his faithful mistress the countess of this new portion of his dominion, thus taking care of the trouble of her being pregnant and what to do with an heir on the left-hand side of the bed. The war plans he's leaving to his generals and the political realities to his learned councilors. He also plans to have red wine with dinner tonight, even if it is fish, because he's king and you get to do these sorts of things when you're king.

Is your enemy the entire opposing nation?

You need to make a Will saving throw to keep from having your head exploding as you suddenly know the immediate plans for the next month of a nation of a million people.

Or your enemy might not be who you think it is at all, and you discover the thoughts of the person who's been poisoning the mind of the rival king against you. That would be a real eye opener. Especially since you wished to know your enemy's plans, not your enemy's identity....

[Umbral Reaver]

If you want to mess up wishes and have it be fun as well, you need to be creative and not a jerk. Jerk DMs lose players and give remaining players bad perceptions about how spells work and make them reluctant to interact with anything that might involve a wish.

You could have a chaotic genie grant a wish. The character states the wish, and the genie says, "That's not a very interesting wish. How about we spice it up a bit?" :P

[StabbittyDoom]

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

StabbittyDoom wrote:

Umbral Reaver wrote:

Malachi Tarchannen wrote:

I had a particularly strategic player with a single wish in his ring who saved it up for the moment right before the party was to join a massive war.

His wish: I want to know every move the enemy is planning to make.

The result: I teleported him to the middle of the enemy general's warroom during their planning session.

<evil grin>

This is why we can't have nice things.

Yeah, I would've just given him the plans as they were at that time then roll a percentage of how much the plan changes.

1d100
Not bad. Most of the details will be right, but a lot of the minor details would change.

The question here is, who's the enemy?

Is it the opposing king?

Here's your info: He plans to kill your ruler and make his faithful mistress the countess of this new portion of his dominion, thus taking care of the trouble of her being pregnant and what to do with an heir on the left-hand side of the bed. The war plans he's leaving to his generals and the political realities to his learned councilors. He also plans to have red wine with dinner tonight, even if it is fish, because he's king and you get to do these sorts of things when you're king.

Is your enemy the entire opposing nation?

You need to make a Will saving throw to keep from having your head exploding as you suddenly know the immediate plans for the next month of a nation of a million people.

Or your enemy might not be who you think it is at all, and you discover the thoughts of the person who's been poisoning the mind of the rival king against you. That would be a real eye opener. Especially since you wished to know your enemy's plans, not your enemy's identity....

I always treat the wish as using the meaning that the caster believes the word has. Thus, in this case, "enemy" is whoever the caster was referring to at the time, whether or not they are really the enemy.

[EWHM]

Messing up wishes is IMO, for wishes that are granted by hostile powers or for wishes that are beyond the power envelope explicitly specified in example wishes (e.g. things like intrinsic bonuses to ability scores, spell emulation, undoing misfortune, etc). Forcing the players to lawyer it out on relatively ordinary, not particularly greedy wishes isn't within my concept of good gamemastery. Consider this:
In a world where wishes are a known quantity, does it not stand to reason that there would be a body of knowledge on just exactly how to phrase a wish? In fact, your knowledge of such is PROBABLY in your knowledge:arcana and I'd be willing to bet that there are an awful lot of 'form letter' versions around. You think the Elmonsters of the world make up entirely new wording, clauses, and magical legalese every time they cast a wish? No, they probably have premade documents with fancy names like 'The Magister's Covenant' for precisely such eventualities. It is only when they're trying to get something truly unusual and pushing the limits of power of the wish, or from a wish parser that is inherently hostile to them that you are likely to see wish twisting.

[Pathos]

"I wish for sapphire blue eyes!"

A blue haze briefly covers your eyes before it goes completely dark

"?!?!?"

DM: Well, what? You didn't want blue sapphire eyes?

[StabbittyDoom]

Pathos wrote:

"I wish for sapphire blue eyes!"

A blue haze briefly covers your eyes before it goes completely dark

"?!?!?"

DM: Well, what? You didn't want blue sapphire eyes?

Perfect example of the DM screwing someone solely to be a dick :)

[EWHM]

StabbittyDoom wrote:

Pathos wrote:

"I wish for sapphire blue eyes!"

A blue haze briefly covers your eyes before it goes completely dark

"?!?!?"

DM: Well, what? You didn't want blue sapphire eyes?

Perfect example of the DM screwing someone solely to be a dick :)

Hehe, yep. And note that the PC in question isn't even asking for something with a tangible game effect. If you screw with every wish your PC's attempt, you're training them to lawyer up and get greedy. Really smart pc's will start using divinations to predict the outcomes of their lawyer-tailored wishes.

I've often cautioned people on these boards on builds and playstyles to know your GM, because certain builds and styles draw a very large amount of DM aggro for the benefits that they give you. On the flip side, this sort of thing will give you a disproportionate amount of player aggro (frankly, I think that'd piss my players off far more than a TPK, which they accept as a distinct possibility when they choose to get in over their heads---I'm a pretty heavily simulationist GM with a strong but not total aversion to both railroading and fudging, which is part of my implicit contract with my players). As a GM, you're kind of like an elected dictator---like a PM in a parliamentary system really. Your decisions are final, but you're always subject to a vote of no confidence.

[Pathos]

EWHM wrote:

Hehe, yep. And note that the PC in question isn't even asking for something with a tangible game effect. If you screw with every wish your PC's attempt, you're training them to lawyer up and get greedy. Really smart pc's will start using divinations to predict the outcomes of their lawyer-tailored wishes.

But... but.. it IS a tangible game effect. His eyes are north at least 2k gp. :oP

[EWHM]

Pathos wrote:

EWHM wrote:

Hehe, yep. And note that the PC in question isn't even asking for something with a tangible game effect. If you screw with every wish your PC's attempt, you're training them to lawyer up and get greedy. Really smart pc's will start using divinations to predict the outcomes of their lawyer-tailored wishes.

But... but.. it IS a tangible game effect. His eyes are north at least 2k gp. :oP

Ok Mr. Efreet, back to the City of Brass with you. Take your Codex with you :-)

[dunelord3001]

Lyrax wrote:

But there's a reason it isn't called "give me whatever I want for free".

Because it costs 25,000 gold.

[StabbittyDoom]

dunelord3001 wrote:

Lyrax wrote:

But there's a reason it isn't called "give me whatever I want for free".

Because it costs 25,000 gold.

Exactly. Hence my comparison to a slot-less item worth 25k (with a bit of a drop in allowance for convenience reasons).

[Ross Thompson]

I had a GM who (under 2ed) loved wishes. He pushed them on players every time there was the remotest justification for them.

(as an aside, he was also hugely keen on the Deck of Many Things, for exactly the same reasons)

And then, every single time, he interpreted the wish to be as annoying, dangerous and worthless as possible. If you just made a simple, off the cuff wish, he'd screw you over for not wording it precisely enough. If you spent the time to try and make it say exactly what you wanted in unambiguous language, he'd complain lawyering wishes pissed him off, and screw you over for it. If you decided that you didn't want a wish (because, in this universe, every single story involving wishes must surely be a cautionary tale), he'd assess a hefty XP penalty for poor roleplaying.

One time I wished for a cheese sandwich, figuring that the GM wouldn't screw me over with that one. Result? "Oh, you didn't say you wanted it not to be poisoned. Roll up a new character." I came to hate wishes with a passion, and was very pleased when 3ed specified specific limits for what a wish could and couldn't do.

Moral of the story: Let players get good things with their wishes, more often than not. If they wish for something wildly inappropriate, then take liberties with it, but don't make every single interaction with wishes be a negative experience.

[Umbral Reaver]

Ross Thompson wrote:

I had a GM who (under 2ed) loved wishes. He pushed them on players every time there was the remotest justification for them.

How did he not end up lynched for this kind of godawful DMing?

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Ross Thompson wrote:

I had a GM who (under 2ed) loved wishes. He pushed them on players every time there was the remotest justification for them.

(as an aside, he was also hugely keen on the Deck of Many Things, for exactly the same reasons)

And then, every single time, he interpreted the wish to be as annoying, dangerous and worthless as possible. If you just made a simple, off the cuff wish, he'd screw you over for not wording it precisely enough. If you spent the time to try and make it say exactly what you wanted in unambiguous language, he'd complain lawyering wishes pissed him off, and screw you over for it. If you decided that you didn't want a wish (because, in this universe, every single story involving wishes must surely be a cautionary tale), he'd assess a hefty XP penalty for poor roleplaying.

One time I wished for a cheese sandwich, figuring that the GM wouldn't screw me over with that one. Result? "Oh, you didn't say you wanted it not to be poisoned. Roll up a new character." I came to hate wishes with a passion, and was very pleased when 3ed specified specific limits for what a wish could and couldn't do.

Moral of the story: Let players get good things with their wishes, more often than not. If they wish for something wildly inappropriate, then take liberties with it, but don't make every single interaction with wishes be a negative experience.

I'm sorry, a poisoned cheese sandwich? This is the sort of thing that's just utterly random, and would get the devil or efreet who did it brought up for review for embarrassing the profession. There's creative misinterpretation and there's just making crap up.

Besides which, the no-saving-throw-one-bite-and-you-die-cheese-sandwich? The rest of the party should be preserving it carefully and selling it to the assassins guild for more than enough money to resurrect the dead character.

Personally, I love using wishes as a GM, and even troubles with them coming out wrong, but even the nastiest devil shouldn't be able to do more than have the cheese made from the hellish udders of hell cows and served up exactly as he would have one served in hell. Its his favorite cheese sandwich. What's not to like?

But one from a wizard's spell? That should just be "Create Food" with the spell basically reading the character's mind and giving him the sort of cheese sandwich he was thinking of.

[Lyrax]

"I wish that you would interpret my words in a way that benefits me and does not harm me in any way, either directly or indirectly."
That's my favorite non-wish. Or something like that.

[Spes Magna Mark]

Ross Thompson wrote:

One time I wished for a cheese sandwich, figuring that the GM wouldn't screw me over with that one. Result? "Oh, you didn't say you wanted it not to be poisoned. Roll up a new character."

"What's wrong? You didn't say you didn't want to get punched in the nards. Get up off the floor and keep running the game."

Mark L. Chance | Spes Magna Games

[Mogre]

Teleporting the character to the invading General's Tent is very clever. I might not make him fall on top of it, but blend in. He would have a chance to steal the battle plans or at least get some troop movement for his ordeal so his wish wasn't wasted.

A posion sandwich I can only descrbe as stupid. I don't like saying that because everybody has different points of view, but that is just awful.

It would depend on the wish, really. I wouldn't fault a novice character either, for a 9th level spell, you deserve an extraordinary event.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Homer: "I'll make a wish that can't backfire. I wish for a turkey sandwich, on rye bread, with lettuce and mustard, and, AND I don't want any zombie turkeys, I don't want to turn into a turkey myself, and I don't want any other weird surprises. You got it?"

[a turkey sandwich materializes and Homer takes a bite]

Homer: "Hey! Not bad... Nice, hot mustard... Good bread... The turkey's a little dry... THE TURKEY'S A LITTLE DRY! Oh, foe, the cursed teeth! What demon from the depths of hell created thee! "

[Malachi Tarchannen]

Mogre wrote:

Teleporting the character to the invading General's Tent is very clever. I might not make him fall on top of it, but blend in. He would have a chance to steal the battle plans or at least get some troop movement for his ordeal so his wish wasn't wasted.

That was the basic idea, Mogre. Y'all would have to know this player; he could have been a colonel in the military. Actually, I thought pretty hard about just filling his head with knowledge, but I wanted to go for something "colorful." Wishes in my campaign aren't auto-screw-the-players; but there are usually some risks. That translates into a minor twist of some kind, like the ending of an O'Henry story.

Yes, the player was miffed at me initially, but he quickly realized that no one knew his character was there. So, over the course of time, he gained all the knowledge he needed, and when the generals left the tent, he grabbed their map on his way out. :) Now, he still had the problems of continued sneaking out of the camp and getting back to the rest of his party--who were already working on Locate Create and other divinations to discover what happened to him--but it all ended nicely for him, even if it was stressful at times.

In short, he got his wish and a couple of other prizes along the way, but he could have ended his life with something as simple as a sneeze while hiding out in a corner of that tent.

[Major__Tom]

Going back as far as early 1st ed - actually, back to the three book set of D&D rules that started it all, there was always one common theme - the wish will do what is asked with as little power used as possible.

So the choice - giving the player a high level scrying spell of the general's tent, or just teleporting him in there, made a lot of sense.

As DMs, you shouldn't screw players over for the heck of it, but if it is worded improperly, they should pay for it.

Best example - 2E, fighting a great red wyrm with a 18 level party - the wyrm was fleeing, and was going to get away. The other wizard in the party had a wish on a ring he'd been saving. He put it on, and said "I wish that dragon was right here, now", and pointed at the floor. Our DM rightly interpreted that as what his PC was doing, and we had the dragon back - right there. Fortunately, we had a couple of nasty fighters far enough away not to be under the dragon, and eventually won that battle, but that wish is still talked about after 20 years.

[Lord Twig]

I had a DM back in 1st edition that liked to twist wishes around, but it was usually because players asked for something they really shouldn't.

One player in his game made a wish that he would "be immortal and never die". DM said, "Okay, your immortal!" The player was a bit surprised, but the game when on no different than before.

I short time later the party came across a naked man lying on the road, writhing in agony. His face and body was melted and he couldn't talk, but was obviously begging for help. Before anyone else could do anything the newly immortal character walked up and, being a heartless SOB, stuck his sword in him.

At the end of the adventure the party faced off with a big, black dragon. The new immortal took a huge blast of acid to the face and would have died, but instead was teleported away, leaving his equipment behind.

He found himself naked, on a road, with 1 hit point. Lying in agony and with no way to heal himself he saw a group of people approaching. He tried to talk, but was so badly damage that all he could do was moan. One of the men in the group pulled his sword, walked up to him and ran him through.

But again, the character didn't die, he found himself pulling his sword from the man he had killed at the beginning of the adventure. He went on to fight his way through the dungeon until facing the black dragon where he was acid burned and teleported back on to the road. Over and over again.

Yea immortality! Roll up a new character!

[Phasics]

I love the classic wish

I wish the BBEG was dead , the player thinking its a quick way to win and get all the loot.

GM: there is a flash of light around you and the scenery changes, you have been moved forward 2000 years in time to when the BBEG has died of old age, you are effectliey gone from the campagin.
time to roll a new char ;)

you take your chacnes when you make a wish spell, if you don't take the time to work out fool proof wording then you've only got yourself to blame.

Rule of thumb as long as said wish won't make you significantly more powerful than others in the group or cut out a significant portion of the campagin your playing it'll probably work.

Here's a wish spell from an epic campagin I was playing in.

breif backstory, we were trying to become gods, we'd each started making our own planet, someone had made his planet start grwoign to full size before the rest of us were ready which triggered all the planets to grow.

we each fell on to our own planet.

mine had living crystal entities who shared a joined mind.

a massive meteor sized object was randomly falling towards each planet and killing everything on the surface.

my planet was next with me on it.

I wished to be linked to the crystaline mind to increase my magical powers to a point where I might be able to stop the meteor hitting.

It kinda worked, instead of just being joined by mind, the crsytal entities started growing from my body as well hehehe

but it did give me the extra kick to my reverse gravity spell to slow the meteor so it landed hard instead of smashing into the surface.

I kinda like when wishes kinda work with but carry an unintended conseqence.

[revloc02]

Yes I am necro-ing this thread because it seems the most appropriate place to ask this question:

In your opinion how many feats is a wish worth?

E.g. "I wish for two immediate, additional, permanent feats of my choice?"

[Umbral Reaver]

One feat, as if permanency'd. Beware of dispel/disjunction?

[doc the grey]

Yllidor wrote:

I suppose the subject doesn't come up much, because, frankly, by the time characters have access to wishes the campaign is probably pretty much over.

Nonetheless, I am interested in certain non-standard uses of wishes, and curious to know what other people might allow and why.

Sample unusual wishes: wishing for an instant change in the character resulting in a permanent new ability like: darkvision, low-light vision, scent, fast healing, a bonus feat, a climbing speed, a swimming speed, a flying speed, a natural armor bonus, an immunity to some type of damage or attack (fire, or poison, or disease, ...), damage reduction (1/- or 2/piercing or what have you), etc.

Which bonuses of these sorts would you think should, or should not, be allowed, and why? What other unusual abilities do you think should be considered, allowed or not allowed, and why?

This topic may have been done to death, if so, I apologize; when I search for "uses" and "wishes" at the paizo site I get a vast number of hits, which don't appear to cover this subject. If anyone knows of another thread where this is discussed, please link to that other thread.

Thanks for any responses,

Yllidor

Weirdest wish I have ever heard of came from a guy I met a few years back through some friends of mine when I was just picking up the game. He had a game when he was back in college where his party made it to the end boss but found themselves unable to beat the guy and unhappy I believe with how much damage he was causing so one of the guys hastily makes the wish to go back in time to the very first adventure they had but at their current level with all their gear. Wish was granted suffice it to say they had an easier time clearing those first few adventures this time and had some awkward moments involving already knowing what the scholars were talking about.