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What is the best use of one? What was the worst Most Epic? Most Lame?
Mine was during a 2E, FR campaign. I was playing a Spell Filcher travelling with some humans where we got randomly transported somewhere. Travelling through the catacombs we found ourselves surronded and attacked by mummies. I got knocked into a sarchophagus where I started rummaging around for something that could help. I found a deck of cards and in my desperation drew 3 cards (Got a keep, Money and 2 wishes.)
Wish 1:
'I wish all undead within a 1 mile radius to be unfailingly loyal to me and me alone...'
Note 1: Most GMs I play with believed that if you said AND it counted as an additional wish usage. Which was fine, I was desperate.
Note 2: Turns out we were underneath Mount Waterdeep. And theres ALOT of undead in Waterdeep.
How do you as GM deal with wishes in the game? Do you twist the words? Answer literally? Have gods answer them and let thier alignment dictate the results?
I don't generally play that high of a level, but I wanted to bump this.
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Years back, I was running a Greyhawk campaign. The players were moderately high level (14-ish I believe) and during one of their tomb raiding binges, they found a ring that raidiated very strong (if non-specific) magic. the party wizard did the usual and attempted his identify check...but blew the roll with a 1. In a moment of frustration, he (in character) said 'dammit! I wish I knew what this ring did!"
...and that day I learned the true value of a DM screen as the players pelted me with dice, cards, and empty soda cans as I ran for the door....
quote=Mr. Quick ] ...and that day I learned the true value of a DM screen as the players pelted me with dice, cards, and empty soda cans as I ran for the door....
LOL!!!!!
and it had only one wish left, right?
quote=Mr. Quick ] ...and that day I learned the true value of a DM screen as the players pelted me with dice, cards, and empty soda cans as I ran for the door....
LOL!!!!!
and it had only one wish left, right?yeah, forgot to add that bit.
We were playing a 3.5 D&D game and a god granted the fighter, Fodder, a wish......he wished for a never ending variety sandwich. NO JOKE!
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I was running a game in high school when the group came across a deck of many things. They each drew a card, and one of them was the wish card.
They wished that everyone in the party could use a wish at will. I decided to give them the rope to hang themselves with and gave them their wish but at the price that they would pass out for 24 hours every time they used the wish.
Not long after that, the group was ambushed by an Effreti. The spell caster was taken out by a finger of death. The front line fighter was out cold from wishing the party was invisible earlier. The moment was very tense.
Then one of the character's said, "I wish my friends and I had never started this adventure." All but one of the PCs disapeared. The two PCs had been fighting constantly, so the remaining PC was not part of the wish. The last player gave up and ran out of the room crying. I never saw him again.
I love wishes though. They provide so many memorable opportunities.
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Years back, I was running a Greyhawk campaign. The players were moderately high level (14-ish I believe) and during one of their tomb raiding binges, they found a ring that raidiated very strong (if non-specific) magic. the party wizard did the usual and attempted his identify check...but blew the roll with a 1. In a moment of frustration, he (in character) said 'dammit! I wish I knew what this ring did!"
...and that day I learned the true value of a DM screen as the players pelted me with dice, cards, and empty soda cans as I ran for the door....
Oh Snap! That happened to us. Even worse when the ring HAD multiple wishes. After that point whenever we find a mysterious ring and cant figure out what it does, one of us would say, 'I wish to know what this ring DOES.'
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We had a pretty painful wish once. The group was on a tight timeline while pushing through a hard dungeon, they were feeling mostly burnt on spells and such but knew they had a tough fight ahead of them when they caught up to the enemy they were pursuing.
Their fighter came upon an item that offered them a wish, the party got all excited thinking they could use it to allow themselves to effectively rest without real time passing. Getting ready for it they turned their eyes to the fighter who wished he had a better weapon.
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And he was never heard from again....We had a pretty painful wish once. The group was on a tight timeline while pushing through a hard dungeon, they were feeling mostly burnt on spells and such but knew they had a tough fight ahead of them when they caught up to the enemy they were pursuing.
Their fighter came upon an item that offered them a wish, the party got all excited thinking they could use it to allow themselves to effectively rest without real time passing. Getting ready for it they turned their eyes to the fighter who wished he had a better weapon.
As an aside, about a session later the group was getting swarmed and needed a moment of safety to turn the tide back after that same fighter was dropped by the enemy. It certainly didn't take the other players too long to decide they didn't really mind the idea of casting blade barrier on top of his body to protect themselves.
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And he was never heard from again....We had a pretty painful wish once. The group was on a tight timeline while pushing through a hard dungeon, they were feeling mostly burnt on spells and such but knew they had a tough fight ahead of them when they caught up to the enemy they were pursuing.
Their fighter came upon an item that offered them a wish, the party got all excited thinking they could use it to allow themselves to effectively rest without real time passing. Getting ready for it they turned their eyes to the fighter who wished he had a better weapon.
+1
ROFLMAO
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Funny moment with wishes.
Our party had to stop a stampeding herd of horses. The Party Ranger flew over the lead horse and tried to land on it's back.
GM: Roll to see if you hit.
Player: *rolls a 1*
the GM rolls scatter and the player misses AHEAD of the horse.
We catch up to the Rangers grease spot (gear messed up as well) and I remember I had a wish I hadn't used.
Our GM was great for twisting wishes and we had to be careful because we got EXACTLY what we wished for.
I tried to figure out a way for the character to come back with all his gear...
Me: I wish the Ranger was back the way he was before he died.
*Crickets and groans*
GM; Okay, Ranger, you find yourself flying over the lead horse. Roll to see if you can land on his back.
Player: *rolls a 1, again*
GM: Rolls scatter. Yep, right back in front of the Horse.
I unknowingly used a gem of corrupting wishes in 3.5. I wished to power up my bow to kill the final enemy of our campaign. DM decided since the bow was an artifact the wish couldn't destroy it, but instead he made the weather turn foul to impair ranged attacks.
Of course, then the gem started to explode. I had some indication it could do that, so I threw it at the dragon and did 696 damage. I died in the blast, but hey. The big loss was our friend who'd spent over an hour making a colossal dragon out of clay for the battle mat.
One of our players once tried to use a wish to get a permanent boost to his speed. This is what he said...
"I wish I was faster."
He transformed into a cheetah and became an NPC animal.
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DM_Blake posted something awhile back in regards to wishes. It was very profound and has stuck with me ever since. I'm reposting his words for your consideration. Here's his original post word for word.
When I was young, dumb, and full of maliciousness (hey, what did you think I was going to say?), I lacked the wisdom to think for myself. I had parents to guide me, teachers to guide me, sensei to guide me, etc. I just memorized stuff in school and regurgitated it on tests.
And I played D&D.
There, I had other DMs to serve as role-models for when I became a DM myself. And all those guys came from the Screw-The-Player school of wish fulfillment. Or unfulfullment.
So that's what I learned, and that's how I DMed wishes.
Until I learned to think for myself.
Once that happened, I swiftly came to the conclusion that magic is a kind of energy. And like all other energy known to man, it follows a few immutable rules. Here's one such rule:
In 1837, Karl Friedrich Mohr gave one of the earliest general statements of the doctrine of the conservation of energy in the words: "besides the 54 known chemical elements there is in the physical world one agent only, and this is called Kraft [energy or work]. It may appear, according to circumstances, as motion, chemical affinity, cohesion, electricity, light and magnetism; and from any one of these forms it can be transformed into any of the others."
Beutiful, isn't it?
If Herr Mohr had been kind enough to add "and magic" in that second sentence, right before the semicolon, he could have been describing D&D. Well, maybe he could have.
So I put those words there, and began treating magic like any other energy. Herr Mohr would have been so proud; I think if he had been alive 150 years after he wrote those words, he most probably would have liked D&D and my interpretation of his Kraft.
Since magic behaves this way, that means wishes behave this way (if you've read this far, you might have wondered whether I forgot that this thread was about wishes).
Which means that wishes themselves do not go out of their way to waste extra energy just to screw over the wisher. Therefore, when you make your own wish, the wish is fulfilled in the simplest way that I (the DM) can imagine.
I take that rule to heart. You make the wish, I think about it for a moment and ask myself how the magical energy of magic can fulfill this wish while obeying the doctrine of Conservation of Energy. It must expend enough magical energy to fulfill the wish, but no more.
If you wish for a million gold pieces, it won't create the gold our of thin air; it will simply move it. And it won't move it from a dragon hoard half way around the world if there is a closer source; greater distance requires greater energy. And it won't (probably) take it from multiple sources because that is likely to result in energy flowing in different, and in many cases, opposite directions, which is very much against conservation of energy; so if there is a single source of a million gold pieces it will take that, even if there are multiple smaller sources that are closer. And it won't place it all over your head and let it fall on you to crush you (yes, I met a DM who bragged of doing that very thing to a player) because then it will have to lift that 20,000 pounds of gold into the air against the force of gravity; wasting energy rather than conserving it. Etc.
Yes, someone who used to own that million gold might come looking for it, but that is beyond the purview of the wish (unless the wisher had explicitly stated otherwise).
On the other hand, if you are offered a wish by a cruel and malicious sentient being, and you merely state your intent and that being actually casts the Wish spell, it's entirely possible that such a being might alter the wording in such a way as to screw you over. If you're crazy enough to take that risk, then you get what you deserve.
If wishes were horses... in most D&D campaigns beggars would be trampled.
I have always hated the "screw the player" concept of wishes that is so prevalent in most campaigns. I don't do that. If a PC wishes for something my approach is to attempt to satisfy the PC's desires within the limits of what a wish can do. I don't apply capricious grammar rules to the wording and I don't try to see how to turn the innocent request into a clever but diabolical response. I don't see the point of that sort of thing.
I rarely play high enough characters to have chances for wishes, but I have had a few. My oldest character got three wishes over his career, one from a deck of many things, one from a genie/avatar being and one from a magical device that was a reward for a quest.
His first wish was to gain intelligence, he received a +2 permanent intelligence boost.
His second wish was to have a ring of Air Elemental Command. He received the ring.
His third wish was to complete the Rod of Seven Parts he was gathering as part of a long-term quest. The rod appeared in his hand, and promptly split into seven parts which were teleported to various locations around the world, which is one of the things that can happen to a complete rod of seven parts in old 2e D&D.
Was. Not. Pleased.
I had another character who received a wish and wished for a flaming sword (this was before all the magic enchantment standardization). The GM essentially turned him into Green Lantern with a sword, and ruined him for campaigning forever. I guess these days that GM would play HeroClix or SuperHero RPG or something. I just wanted my character to have a flaming sword.
Otherwise I don't recall any wishes any character of mine ever had, and that's probably for the best.
In my current campaign (two players with two characters each) they each got a wish for completing the Demon Within adventure.
Now they have an airship and an asteroid (reachable through a ritual or interplanetary teleport) as their personal hideouts. :)
Not something I'd give through a regular wish, but the Leonal was feeling generous.^^
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In my current campaign (two players with two characters each) they each got a wish for completing the Demon Within adventure.
Now they have an airship and an asteroid (reachable through a ritual or interplanetary teleport) as their personal hideouts. :)
Not something I'd give through a regular wish, but the Leonal was feeling generous.^^
Thats pretty cool!
DM_Blake posted something awhile back in regards to wishes. It was very profound and has stuck with me ever since. I'm reposting his words for your consideration. Here's his original post word for word.
[Goodliest things.]
+5
The first DM I played D&D under subscribed to the school of "this world is so full of Dangerous that you can die for sleeping under the wrong constellation" (I made that up; it never happened, but could have). Wishes, where he was concerned, were only for legal consultants. It would have taken a full blown contract to get a simple +1 longsword out of a wish without wreaking havoc on your party.
I hate that garbage.
A long, long time ago when I was in college (longer ago than I want to admit) our group had been playing a 2nd edition campaign for well over a year. We were in the midst of the "Companion Modules" which were high level "adventure paths" for 2nd edition.
Anyway, due to some odd circumstances the gawd of the paladin in the group was "sent away, banish or killed depending on who's version of the story you believe". To fill this void one of he group had to ascend and become a gawd. Naturally, the paladin took that roll.
Well, the game went on for awhile and the characters were quite powerfull. Their kingdom had been at war with an "Evil Empire" for many years. They were thrashing this Empire soundly using questionable techniques and strategy. This Empire was getting desperate as it was facing total destruction. The empire had given up on being able to hurt the players directly so they did the next best thing and went after their families.
The wizard in the group's family was taken and permanently killed (and alot of other pretty nasty things besides). They were beyond the power of the Wizard to restore with his own wish spell despite him trying it several times.
With no other way to "save" his family he turned to his friend and former party member who he had adventured with for 20+ years, the newly ascended gawd and asked him to return his family....
He said no....
Understand, there were certain restrictions on what the gawds could and could not do which had always been in place and the Paladin agreed to them when he choose to ascend. What the wizard was asking was strictly forbidden and being as lawful as he was the Paladin had to tell his friend no.
This did not set well with the Wizard. In fact, he basically lost it. He became enraged and swore he would kill his friend. To that end, he wished the gawd mortal so he could kill him.....
To this day, 20+ years later in my world, this is know as "The cracking of the world" or "The oops".
All sorts of bad things happened and adventuring groups have been trying to fix them for 20+ years =)
So I play an elf wizard in a mid-level campaign in a homebrew setting. About three or four sessions after I joined the group, we were in the desert and encountered Guh, "the fattest man you've ever seen", a human so large that he actually counted as Large. We trusted him at first, since the cleric rolled something like 34 on his Sense Motive, but soon it turned out that he was a cannibal and he ate the (liberated) slave girl that was traveling with us while we slept (DM later told us that he had rolled to see which of the sleeping characters would get eaten, and we got lucky).
So we started combat with him, he turned out to be faster than he looked, and midway through the encounter we had to shut down because it was like 1 am on a weeknight. I couldn't make it the following week but gave some marching orders to the DM, and ended up getting killed by falling into my Create Pit with the cannibal. DM took mercy (this being an offstage death and all) and brought back my wizard via divine intervention (or deus ex machina, as it were); as a side note, it turned out that Guh started out as good but had been cursed by a ring of cannibalism.
Later we underwent a series of trials to join a tribe of djinni (to buff/XP us for our upcoming battle with the big bad), and naturally won two wishes after it was over. My idea was to resurrect Guh, the fat fighter that had almost creamed the entire party a few weeks back (probably a few days, game time), since he was kind of an innocent guy that we had ended up killing. Around that same time we were looking for a tank to help us take on the big bad fire demon on his volcano, and who did the djinni produce to help us - Guh. What's even better is that two weeks later, DM found somebody to come and play him. So what started out as an NPC/encounter is now a vital PC member of the party, who has distinguished himself by (among other things) challenging an efreet to a one-on-one battle when it seemed like we were heading for a party wipe - and winning!
For the second wish, our Summoner laid out an elaborate wording that a floating tower be put back in its rightful place in the middle of a major city with an evil black dragon/deity (apparently the ultimate endgame of this campaign) back in its rightful place underneath it. Basically it was like Frodo got a wish halfway through Fellowship and wished Sauron would just go away. Needless to say, the backfire was huge. Because of the weird dark magic of the tower (or whatever, I don't really understand it myself) that wish ended up destroying half of the city in question, killing thousands of people instantly, and unleashing a medieval zombie apocalypse on the countryside. It just so happens that on a separate night I play a character that was supposed to quest to that city and was very near it when this happened. She ended up getting bitten by one of the zombies and failing her save, and would have turned into a zombie if she hadn't reached a temple (several days away) at the last minute.
So thanks for that, Pete.