We can disagree on whether or not it's a problem. I don't think it is, you do. That's fine.
The spell as written is cast in 1 standard action. It's effect AS WRITTEN is to duplicate a spell. It is doing the duplicating, at a substantial cost.
Opinions aside, the actual spell is pretty clear. Alternate readings are fine as houserules or even potential errata. But the spell works as written.
The answer to this is obvious and would stand up to any "reasonable person" test.
Those arguing for adding the cast time of a spell to the already specified cast time of Wish are just arguing for arguments sake.
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"I can always lie about being laid"
means:
1) You lie down in many places having sex.
2) You tell a falsehood by claiming you've had sex.
both are grammatically correct.
You can read this as wish allows you to duplicate the spell, as it you are able to duplicate the spell as it is, or you can read it that the casting of wish itself duplicates the spell.
One is broken, one isn't.
Ciretose both are broken but in different ways. Yours is broken in a logical sense - since you choose the effect once the spell is cast, and then it turns into a spell which has not yet been finished casting; this make it very very weird and a bit of a paradox. It can be handwaved away but it's still kinda broken.
The other way is broken balance-wise but makes more sense from a logical perspective.
I don't see it as being broken if you are going to spend 25000 gold on a simulacrum or planar ally. The material component cost of those spells is much less than that. You are saying that the most powerful spell in the game is broken... it's the most powerful spell in the game, of course it is powerful. Nobody would use wish to cast simulacrum, planar ally, or many of the other long casting time spells. Spending 25000 gold to cast resurrection is just stupid. Almost every time I have seen wish cast was to permanently increase ability scores or to pull out a situational spell from any class that all of a sudden was needed.
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@Ilja - I agree with your earlier post, but I don't think there is anything at all broken with my reading.
The 25k you are spending is so that you can have one slot give you access to pretty much any spell in the game under 8th level, in addition to all of the other effects it gives you.
It is no paradox at all. You wish you could cast "x" spell, and then you are able to cast "X" spell.
My friend died. I wish I could cast resurrection, even though it isn't a spell I memorized or even normally have access to.
Now I am able to cast resurrection. Wish granted.
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Or instead of spending 25000 gold on a wish, you can spend 10,910 gold to hire a cleric to cast it for you. If you aren't near a cleric that can cast it, you tear off your dead friend's foot, then teleport to a big city where you can find a high level cleric. Using wish to duplicate spells is highly inefficient due to the 25000 gold price tag. Even though it costs 1 standard action to use, it still isn't a good idea to duplicate the majority of spells with it as you are wasting gold.
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Or instead of spending 25000 gold on a wish, you can spend 10,910 gold to hire a cleric to cast it for you. If you aren't near a cleric that can cast it, you tear off your dead friend's foot, then teleport to a big city where you can find a high level cleric. Using wish to duplicate spells is highly inefficient due to the 25000 gold price tag. Even though it costs 1 standard action to use, it still isn't a good idea to duplicate the majority of spells with it as you are wasting gold.
Can you hire a cleric to Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools, Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 7th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools, Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 7th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools, Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 6th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools.
All of which only requires one spell slot? So if, at a given time, you need a spell you didn't memorize, or can't memorize, you can have it?
In addition to all of the other things wish can do.
Is wish the most efficient way to do it? No. If you aren't able to teleport to a big city to find a cleric because the BBEG is going to kill the MacGuffin in 10 minutes...
Wish is the emergency, not the go to spell.
But then again, you can just create a demiplane as a standard action by your reading...
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How are any of those spells broken as a standard action using a 9th level slot and 25k? Ignore Blood Money.
If it is only Blood Money causing a problem, then that is what needs to be addressed, not every spell Blood Money interacts with now and in the future.
It allows you to quicken spells that were not able to be quickened by design, both to a standard action and with a rod to a swift action.
The fact that Blood Money allows you to basically do it for "free" is just icing.
Or instead of spending 25000 gold on a wish, you can spend 10,910 gold to hire a cleric to cast it for you. If you aren't near a cleric that can cast it, you tear off your dead friend's foot, then teleport to a big city where you can find a high level cleric. Using wish to duplicate spells is highly inefficient due to the 25000 gold price tag. Even though it costs 1 standard action to use, it still isn't a good idea to duplicate the majority of spells with it as you are wasting gold.Can you hire a cleric to Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools, Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 7th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools, Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 7th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools, Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 6th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools.
All of which only requires one spell slot? So if, at a given time, you need a spell you didn't memorize, or can't memorize, you can have it?
In addition to all of the other things wish can do.
Is wish the most efficient way to do it? No. If you aren't able to teleport to a big city to find a cleric because the BBEG is going to kill the MacGuffin in 10 minutes...
Wish is the emergency, not the go to spell.
But then again, you can just create a demiplane as a standard action by your reading...
You can create a demi plane with 1 standard action. Why is this such a problem to you?
You realize resurrection is a 1 minute cast time right? Your emergency situation doesn't work under your interpretation. You are arguing over the least used portion of the wish spell. Very rarely would someone pay 25000 gold to cast a lower level spell. Virtually everyone uses it only to increase ability scores since it is so expensive to cast. You would be better served by teleporting out and finding spellcasters actually able to cast the spells you need.
If you are in a big city, you have access to just about any spell you want WITHOUT spending 25000 gold for it.
How are any of those spells broken as a standard action using a 9th level slot and 25k? Ignore Blood Money.
If it is only Blood Money causing a problem, then that is what needs to be addressed, not every spell Blood Money interacts with now and in the future.
It allows you to quicken spells that were not able to be quickened by design, both to a standard action and with a rod to a swift action.
The fact that Blood Money allows you to basically do it for "free" is just icing.
Leave off on blood money. It is its own problem and has nothing to do with how the wish spell works.
Price check on greater rod of metamagic quicken. This is not a cheap option. Its an option sure, but that >100k could have been spent on all kinds of other things for a player that could have kept them out of needing the emergency wish spell in the first place. Funny thing, players with lots of cash to burn become more powerful - whether they spend it on metamgic rods, full plate +5, bane everything weapons, etc.
Regarding the examples you consider 'broken'.
Create demi-plane: So a player can create a demi-plane in 1 standard action. What of it? What is broken about this? Are they using it to escape a monster? Teleport or plane shift would have been just as effective and a lot cheaper.
Planar Binding: Summon Monster IX is more powerful (and with that same metamagic rod just as quick). And costs nothing. Lets also not ignore that with a planar binding to get any use of the creature you then need to bargain with it. If done in combat the creature is most likely going to laugh at you and watch you die from whatever you are fighting. And if not in combat, why was it you needed to cast it quickened again? Why is it you are in a hurry? Really the casting time on planar binding could be immediate and it would make no difference. The real time consumption in this spell is convincing the creature to serve you and not come hunt you down and kill you later. And none of that is part of the spell casting.
Simulacrum: Fighting something twice your level? Making a simulacrum of it isn't going to help you. Fighting something twice your level means you are already dead - and something half its strength won't stand up to it. Making a clone of yourself to cast an extra fireball every round? You'd be better of casting a maximized/empowered/heightened fireball through your wish. (Or just casting an actual simulacrum spell the day before).
Do you have a scenario in which these standard action (quickened with rod) castings actually makes such a significant difference that it can be declared as broken?
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You do realize 10 minutes is more than 1 minute, right?That one minute is a 10th of the time you have remaining. If you're under that much of a time crunch it's not exactly in your best interests to waste a good portion of your remaining "Stop the bad guy from destroying/taking over the world" time to save a friend you can bring back to life 11 minutes from now if you succeed.
If you need your friend to accomplish the goal, it would be.
But I know, you always have time to teleport away...
IF you need your friend.
If not...
Regardless of this tangent we have drifted off on...
The spell description does not say you have to cast the spell. The casting time for wish does not say "see text". Nothing suggests that you must cast the spell in question. There is no explicit nor implicit statement in the spell description or otherwise that supports the notion that you must cast the spell duplicated by wish. It is how I have run it. It's how I have seen it run and I have never seen it called into question until now. In fact, my local venture captain was telling a story once about how in Eyes of the Ten someone at his table died and then someone used limited wish to duplicate a raise dead spell using blood money. Even in PFS it is run the same. This game is over 10 years old and it has always worked this way.
I have never played Legacy of Fire, but I feel like there must be at least some example in that AP where Wish is used duplicate a spell with a casting time longer then 1 standard action. If any has read or played the AP see if you remember there being such an example.
We were talking about efficient uses of time.
The rest should be pretty obvious now that I've reminded you of the subject we were speaking on.
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I am really saying that when you duplicate a spell, you duplicate the entire spell, yes.
Wish allows you to duplicate spells. Just like it says.
I'll wait until after Gen Con for the Devs to rule, as if being able to cast spells that take hours such as Simulacrum, Planar Binding, create demiplane, Greater Create Undead, etc...as a swift action isn't a problem for you, then what more can be said on the matter to convince otherwise.
It isn't like the Devs specifically wrote quicken to exclude such spells for a reason.
See you all in the FAQ :)
Seems pretty cut and dry to me. Every other line of the spell (from range, to target, to effect and area and so forth) says see text. Casting time says 1 standard action.
Wish can then be used to duplicate spells with longer casting times without extending its casting time.
Don't hold your breath on that FAQ. Devs only seem to answer questions that have a history of questions about them. Not every topic that is FAQ'd gets answered. The development team is very busy and can't respond to every corner case that ends up in the FAQ queue. Hope you find the answer you are looking for at gencon. But only accepting an official answer is pretty stubborn on your part. The point of these forums is to work out rules interpretations without involving developers. There would be no reason for a public message board otherwise. They could just post an email address and say "send questions here".
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Honestly, I don't see how "duplicate a spell" is either more or less likely from the written to wording to mean "duplicate the casting of a spell" or "duplicate the effects of a spell".
The way spells are written, the action of casting them is tied to them very closely - it's in the spell descriptions we find casting time and components.
I don't think this is nearly as clear by the RAW as some try to make it seem.
Honestly, I don't see how "duplicate a spell" is either more or less likely from the written to wording to mean "duplicate the casting of a spell" or "duplicate the effects of a spell".
The way spells are written, the action of casting them is tied to them very closely - it's in the spell descriptions we find casting time and components.
I don't think this is nearly as clear by the RAW as some try to make it seem.
It really is incredibly clear. When I want to know how long it takes to cast a spell, where else would you look but the line entitled "Casting time". Hard though it may be to believe, this line tells you how long it takes to cast a particular spell, and if the time it takes to cast is variable it would say "See text". Since Wish lacks a "See text" I think we can trust the 1 standard action in the spot marked "Casting time" is well.... the "Casting time".
Also, sincere props to Anzyr for posting the thread.
He is being an honest broker asking an honest question. Too rare a quality on this messageboard.
What? I do that all the time!
Tooting your own horn however, is a nice and common quality here.
I had always ruled it under original casting time (same as using an item to duplicate long casting spells like scry), simply because a lot of those lengthy spells conceptually require that time. My players have managed to get me to the point where I run it with the standard action, based on the fact that I don't care enough one way or another and they've not yet abused my sense of propriety with it. If the developers came on and ordained it one way or another, I'd go with it without an issue.
Blood money seems to be a bad spell.
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Tooting your own horn however, is a nice and common quality here.
I had always ruled it under original casting time (same as using an item to duplicate long casting spells like scry), simply because a lot of those lengthy spells conceptually require that time. My players have managed to get me to the point where I run it with the standard action, based on the fact that I don't care enough one way or another and they've not yet abused my sense of propriety with it. If the developers came on and ordained it one way or another, I'd go with it without an issue.
Blood money seems to be a bad spell.
I think Blood Money is a very "cool" spell. I like the idea of blood money very, very much.
And as far as I can tell it works find on spells that are one round or less to cast.
And I agree with the rest of what you wrote as well.
Now back to hiding this thread until the Devs rule :)