By your logic wishing for inherent bonuses probably should be off the table since the corresponding item cost more than casting a wish spell. 26,620 vs 27500 so why are we buying tomes since their are cheaper wishing methods. Heck its a 4,400 GP savings to wish your stat to +5 over buying the tome.Someone with the means would generally pay for spellcasting services over buying the tome, in order to get inherent bonuses. The tomes exist because 9th level casters are rare, and the tomes are cheaper than buying scrolls of wish or [/I]miracle[/I].
The entire reason he gave for a wish for youth and beauty being corrupted was the cost of a magic item that did the same thing. Note however this is a minor artifact that a group controls creation of therefore setting the price as they wish. 50000 was the lowest paid according to lore, so I was showing precedent that the cost of an item isn't flat reason to have the spell suddenly turn the player into a Renaissance Marble Sculpture.
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The entire reason he gave for a wish for youth and beauty being corrupted was the cost of a magic item that did the same thing. Note however this is a minor artifact that a group controls creation of therefore setting the price as they wish. 50000 was the lowest paid according to lore, so I was showing precedent that the cost of an item isn't flat reason to have the spell suddenly turn the player into a Renaissance Marble Sculpture.
Hmm, in most campaigns which are over in a relatively short period of time (<5 years), de-ageing abilities aren't really all that powerful. I'd allow a wish to reset someone's physical age to young, while not delaying their actual maximum age. So the target might be in the body of a hot 23 year old when they fall over dead from old age to the surprise of onlookers.
I mean, does anyone ever fist-pump the air when they get Timeless Body as their level advances?
Again, reincarnate can reset you to young for realsies, so it clearly doesn't require a 9th level effect to do. (As long as you don't mind some side effects.)
Sun Orchid elixir is for when you want to keep your original body, be a younger physical age, delay death by old age, and retain your mental bonuses from the later age categories. Plus it probably tastes awesome. I wouldn't allow a wish to quite do all of those things.
1. No but as Pratt pointed out you can get damn close with a 6th level druid spell so not really far out of how the magic works. IE this spell requires you to be dead and is only close in appearance so I doubt we are really pushing too much.
2. The reason for both the cost and the nuts is because of supply and demand. These people hoard the secret of the elixir and can charge what they want. And like Ryric pointed out there probably aren't huge supplies of wizards just sitting around casting wish for hire. We don't know if wish can accomplish the same task safely, why because the Devs haven't written anything about wish being used in such a way.
As for safe use we can see that a 6th level druid spell is close, so it wouldn't be difficult to consider that a 7th level could do what we want. And before you point it out yes we currently don't have a spell with such an effect on a living body, but i wouldn't be far out of line for it and hell I guess you could kill yourself and have the Cyclical Reincarnation cast on the body for even cheaper than wish.
Contingency + Cyclic reincarnation (which you could duplicate with Wish) is a legal way to effectively reset your age.
Simply Wishing for youth really doesn't seem that egregious in terms of the bounds of the spells power.
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One social issue I could see with cyclic reincarnation is that the target technically did die. Some countries might have inheritance and succession rules designed to pass things on, even if the previous person is restored to life. Especially given that some resurrection effects can happen years down the line. Sun Orchid elixir gets around this potential legal snarl.
If you have trouble imagining a scenario where laws like this come into play, imagine a kingdom where one of the kings uses the reincarnation trick to rule far past his natural lifespan, and the kingdom becomes increasingly stagnant and dystopian. Finally the old codger dies for real, and his great great great grandson inherits the throne, and creates a law to prevent the very thing that just happened.
...and then a civil war breaks out, because some people liked the stability of having one ruler that whole time, and others want freedom and change...
My headcanon for most D&D-like settings is that a ruler is legally dead when the time during which Raise Dead would work on him has expired. If he is brought back by any means other than Reincarnation during that time, he is considered to still be alive. If he is reincarnated, he is considered to have legally died, and his new form is welcomed into the family as though he were a newborn bastard.
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I'd be inclined (as long as you abide by my earlier comments on the being granting it) to allow a wish for youth to work safely. It doesn't seem out of place for a 9th level spell attained at 17th or 16th level to make you young again. Sun Elixir can be used by anyone and wish requires a very rare, very high level caster. In addition to which 3 more levels give or take and a wizard can take immortality as a discovery at 20th level. Not to mention all the other abilities that grant similar effects.
Speaking of the Sun Orchid elixir. Why hasn't good Old Razimir Wished for eternal youth yet. Might be because of the crazy though.
How do we know that Razmir is still aging and/or does not have a young looking body?
Razmir needs a miracle to become immortal, not a wish...
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If you want something campaign-destroying or way out of line "I wish all dragons were extinct!" then the gloves come off and the spell tries to fulfill the letter of your request using its limited powers. The more disruptive your wish, the more ironic your outcome is likely to be.Granted. There are no more "all" dragons in the world. (Never mind that there weren't any before, either.)
As I see it, if the magical power will not suffice to accomplish the intended task it's going to look for a way to fulfill the stated task using the least power. Hostile sources will always look to either use the minimum power or to produce the worst outcome for the recipient.
Like the cheeky angel manga where two girls find a genie in a book and the tomboy wishes to be "a man amongst men" only the genie doesn't have enough power to turn her into a boy so it alters the memories of the two girls (and no one else including her parents) to think she used to be a boy leaving them convinced it somehow misinterpreted the wish to turn "him" into a girl.
@Loren
I don't think there are any save or die spells any more they all do damage instead until you get to mythic and the augmented disintigration which explicitly can reduce someone to ash regardless of remaining hp.
The idea to simply transport the wisher to a future point in time when wishing an opponent dead was a recommendation I got from Gary Gygax.
I've never seen a reason not to follow that piece of advice.
That might have been an acceptable answer in the old days but these days I would only use that approach with a hostile provider.
The simplest route for a wish is to emulate another spell and in this case it can. Wishing for someone to be dead is simply a 9th level destruction spell unless they are immune to destruction.
The way I look at it, unless it's a direct confrontation and you're wishing your opponent dead (in which case simulating another spell should be fine), it's one of those wishes that kind of breaks the unwritten rules of wishes. A lowly PC who lucks into a wish who then wishes for Queen Abrogail II to be dead from two countries over makes the wish provider (whichever powers-that-be they are) hostile. The more outlandish the wish, the more the wisher arrogates themselves god-like power, the more the wish should twist.
But then, I've been a fan of the Twilight Zone and "The Monkey's Paw" adn the twists both of them employ for years.
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I remember one story I read where there were 3 monkey statues. One granted 2 random wishes of the person wish and then granted the 3rd wish to the next person to use it in place of one of theirs. One required 3 people to all make one wish then granted all 3 wishes to each person. The last one was the standard 3 wishes to one person and then the person they hate gets twice as much e.g you wish for a million gold they get 2 million gold, or knowing some of my players you wish to be beaten half to death, they get beaten half to death twice know your responsible then run into you after you've just been beaten half to death.
@Loren
I don't think there are any save or die spells any more they all do damage instead until you get to mythic and the augmented disintigration which explicitly can reduce someone to ash regardless of remaining hp.
Phantasmal Killer is still around, but it has a bunch of resistable descriptors, requires two saving throws, allows spell resistance, and can be turned around on you under the right/wrong circumstances.
Power Word: Kill is also still around, but besides spell resistance, it only kills living things with up to 100 HP left.
The last one was the standard 3 wishes to one person and then the person they hate gets twice as much e.g you wish for a million gold they get 2 million gold, or knowing some of my players you wish to be beaten half to death
Heh. Sound like the premise of a joke.
"A pair of feuding noblemen agree to a duel. They head to the seaside one morning, but before they begin their fight they notice a strange oil lamp half-buried in the sand...."
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The idea to simply transport the wisher to a future point in time when wishing an opponent dead was a recommendation I got from Gary Gygax.
I've never seen a reason not to follow that piece of advice.
That might have been an acceptable answer in the old days but these days I would only use that approach with a hostile provider.
The simplest route for a wish is to emulate another spell and in this case it can. Wishing for someone to be dead is simply a 9th level destruction spell unless they are immune to destruction.
The way I look at it, unless it's a direct confrontation and you're wishing your opponent dead (in which case simulating another spell should be fine), it's one of those wishes that kind of breaks the unwritten rules of wishes. A lowly PC who lucks into a wish who then wishes for Queen Abrogail II to be dead from two countries over makes the wish provider (whichever powers-that-be they are) hostile. The more outlandish the wish, the more the wisher arrogates themselves god-like power, the more the wish should twist.
But then, I've been a fan of the Twilight Zone and "The Monkey's Paw" adn the twists both of them employ for years.
By the time the PC gets a wish, wishing someone dead is a poor choice.
PC: "I wish the queen dead."
GM: "OK. Her court theurge casts raise dead then divines the source of the queen's ailment, and now an army is descending on you."
PC: "Wait, I mean I wish the queen dead beyond resurrection."
GM: "OK. The queen is now a lich, and the country is now on the road to becoming New Geb. Nice job breaking it, hero."
Or just avert the trope and let chaos ensue--rabid factions of would-be usurpers and Starscreams tear the country apart because the queen just dropped dead out of nowhere.
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The idea to simply transport the wisher to a future point in time when wishing an opponent dead was a recommendation I got from Gary Gygax.
I've never seen a reason not to follow that piece of advice.
That might have been an acceptable answer in the old days but these days I would only use that approach with a hostile provider.
The simplest route for a wish is to emulate another spell and in this case it can. Wishing for someone to be dead is simply a 9th level destruction spell unless they are immune to destruction.
The way I look at it, unless it's a direct confrontation and you're wishing your opponent dead (in which case simulating another spell should be fine), it's one of those wishes that kind of breaks the unwritten rules of wishes. A lowly PC who lucks into a wish who then wishes for Queen Abrogail II to be dead from two countries over makes the wish provider (whichever powers-that-be they are) hostile. The more outlandish the wish, the more the wisher arrogates themselves god-like power, the more the wish should twist.
But then, I've been a fan of the Twilight Zone and "The Monkey's Paw" adn the twists both of them employ for years.
By the time the PC gets a wish, wishing someone dead is a poor choice.
PC: "I wish the queen dead."
GM: "OK. Her court theurge casts raise dead then divines the source of the queen's ailment, and now an army is descending on you."
PC: "Wait, I mean I wish the queen dead beyond resurrection."
GM: "OK. The queen is now a lich, and the country is now on the road to becoming New Geb. Nice job breaking it, hero."Or just avert the trope and let chaos ensue--rabid factions of would-be usurpers and Starscreams tear the country apart because the queen just dropped dead out of nowhere.
The genie eyes you and say's "I don't come with an undo function you wished she was dead you don't get to change that wish when it isn't what you want."
New homebrew idea: The Undo Genie, who when trapped/befriended/etc. can undo a character's previous idiotic wish.
The genie eyes you and say's "I don't come with an undo function you wished she was dead you don't get to change that wish when it isn't what you want."
I just took it as a second wish.
Which means that the armies are still descending.