I recently joined an evil campaign and it starts off with a group of us coming along a lamp... blah blah blah. Short story we all get wishes at the end of our journey.
I am playing a Saint Sword Ronin. I'm still having problems with trying to find out what I really want as a wish.
What are some of your stories about wishes and how did you utilize it?
I am thinking about having a template as a wish. I know not very evil.
While Wishes are a great way to get mechanical advantage, I find it far more interesting (both as a player and a DM) to try to guess what your character would wish for. That means, it'd be very useful if we knew a bit of his backstory as well as his class.
He might wish for a stronghold of his own, where he'd rule as an iron-fisted overlord and wage petty wars on his neighbours. Mechanicaly, this would provide a homebase for the party, a steady source of income in the form of taxes, and plot hooks for kingdom-related adventures.
Or he might wish to be the best swordman alive, wihc could be template-like, adding a big bonust to strenght and a lesser one to dexterity, maybe with some feats slapped on at your DM's accord.
Or he might wish to be untouchable, which I'd represent mechanically with a big deflection bonus to AC and touch AC, but he'd be unable to benefit from friendly touch spells either.
Or he might wish woe upon his previous lord and those who witnessed his fall from honor, which would provide no mechanical benefit, but might be deeply satisfiying to the character.
Or he might wish for a powerful blade (I'd stat it like a magus' black blade aproximately), which might give incredible martial prowress, but come with a dreadful curse (this seems to be a comon theme in Japanese stories, so you'd keep with the J flavour)
Or, or, or...
As you can see, I like flavourful wishes over plainly mechanical ones, but that depends on your group and your playstyle. Also, I personally find wishes, specially those coming from genies and/or demons to come with a downside, both as a "be careful what you wish for" cautionary tale, and as a mechanism to balance the power of the wish without scaling every challenge up.
Hope you find this useful, best of luck with your wish.
Wish for world peace. That would be the reeally evil thing to do :D
... Also, I personally find wishes, specially those coming from genies and/or demons to come with a downside, both as a "be careful what you wish for" cautionary tale, and as a mechanism to balance the power of the wish without scaling every challenge up.
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Yeah, this is why your typical PC will never make a dangerous wish unless under the direst circumstances. It even makes sense in character - I would expect in Golarion for there to be a wealth of tales about those who tried to attain great power/wealth/etc with a wish only to have the whole thing blow up in their face. In the real world there are plenty of those tales, and in the real world wishes aren't real. When they are...yeah no, most people would know full well what can happen. A lot of them would be stupid or desperate enough to try anyway, but PCs are rarely desperate, and PCs who are stupid have rather short life expectancies. Especially when a lot of them are only a couple of months away from unimaginable power anyway because of how quickly PCs level up. Most of the time the PC is better off ticking up a stat to an even number because that's actually the best way of achieving the PC's goals. The dangerous option for wishes is schmuck bait most of the time the way a large chunk of GMs play it.
If you actually want to see PCs use their wishes for things other than plusses and standard action resurrections, you need to take them aside and assure them out of character that so long as they don't make a blatant power grab their wishes aren't going to get horrifically subverted. They might not get exactly what they want, but they aren't going to rue making the wish. Otherwise the PCs would have to be really stupid to go for a powerful wish, so really stupid PCs are going to be the ones making powerful wishes most of the time. Then you stop seeing stupid PCs, or you only see stupid PCs that follow the advice of their smarter companions because if the PC makes a stupid decision they will greatly suffer for a long time as a result.
As for the OP - ask your GM how they run wishes. If your GM is going to subvert it for giggles or the wish giver is going to intentionally misinterpret it just go with the +1 to an ability score. Anything else is probably only going to cause pain, tears and regret in the long term.
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Ask for a pair of girly panties, before some evil dude asks for world domination!
Ask for a pair of girly panties, before some evil dude asks for world domination!
Do I look like Oolong to you?
While Wishes are a great way to get mechanical advantage, I find it far more interesting (both as a player and a DM) to try to guess what your character would wish for. That means, it'd be very useful if we knew a bit of his backstory as well as his class.
...
As you can see, I like flavourful wishes over plainly mechanical ones, but that depends on your group and your playstyle. Also, I personally find wishes, specially those coming from genies and/or demons to come with a downside, both as a "be careful what you wish for" cautionary tale, and as a mechanism to balance the power of the wish without scaling every challenge up.
Hope you find this useful, best of luck with your wish.
The back story is quite simple. I am a Suli Samurai of the saint swords. Once I came of age and my Suli properties started to show my kin and brothers at arms shunned me and kicked me out of the order. So I walk the earth for coin searching for Genie's and Jinn to find which one tainted my royal bloodline.
He aspires to be the fastest word in the east while trying to be the strongest.
While strongholds are ideal zi was thinking more mechanically.
Strongest: Mighty Template
Fastest: Have the capabilities of a Quickling (The Flame that burns twice as bright only lives half as long)
Immortality: The ability to further my skills and track down the Genie if it would take a lifetime.
Become Power Hungry and become a unshackled genie with the power and cunning to kill hunt down all other genies.
As for the OP - ask your GM how they run wishes. If your GM is going to subvert it for giggles or the wish giver is going to intentionally misinterpret it just go with the +1 to an ability score. Anything else is probably only going to cause pain, tears and regret in the long term.
Im pretty sure at this point the wish will come at a heavy price, outside if we can survive to even get the wish as for the journey requires us taking down 10 kingdoms through multiple planes of existence.
We can all tell we are just tools to be used and discarded but only being level 4 we can only play along for now.
If something very bad happens to you during your journey, you can use the wish to undo it. Otherwise, the safest wish would be for a +1 inherent bonus to your primary ability score, phrased in character as "I wish to be smarter", "I with to be stronger", etc.
Alternatively, if the journey ends with powerful enemies in pursuit of you, you may want to use your wish to get as far away from there as possible (since a Wish can teleport you from virtually anywhere to anywhere else).
After being captured, beaten, and insulted by the eldest daughter and heir of our campaign world's most prominent drow noble house, I traded knowledge of a powerful artifact's location to the matron mother for my wish: the daughter's everlasting servitude as my personal slave. The matron mother didn't even hesitate. The incredibly useful drow mystic theurge went from being the second most powerful drow in her society to being among the lowest--a slave to a non-drow--a fate considered by her society to be worse than death; she wasn't even considered a true drow by her former comrades any more. Total excommunication.
She couldn't even commit suicide, as the wish would still bind her to me in undeath.
I've never been so...satisfied...with a roleplaying game's outcome as when I got my revenge upon her that day.
After being captured, beaten, and insulted by the eldest daughter and heir of our campaign world's most prominent drow noble house, I traded knowledge of a powerful artifact's location to the matron mother for my wish: the daughter's everlasting servitude as my personal slave. The matron mother didn't even hesitate. The incredibly useful drow mystic theurge went from being the second most powerful drow in her society to being among the lowest--a slave to a non-drow--a fate considered by her society to be worse than death; she wasn't even considered a true drow by her former comrades any more. Total excommunication.
She couldn't even commit suicide, as the wish would still bind her to me in undeath.
I've never been so...satisfied...with a roleplaying game's outcome as when I got my revenge upon her that day.
That is downright beautiful.