Careful what you WISH for... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Careful what you WISH for... [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Yamu
09-30-06, 10:49 AM I'm sure this topic was already done a few times before I got here, but since I couldn't dig up any examples from the recent past...

Wish. Favorite spell of overreaching players and ahygenic, pointy-toothed DM's alike. But still, all abuses aside... who doesn't like a good Wish story? Sure, maybe the DM's an insufferable wisacre who lives to make you suffer, or your players are just out to break the bank and screw-all with the rest of the campaign, but in general, there is no single more consistent generator of 'look back and laugh' moments I can think of than this spell. I've always been fascinated with the way a well-thought-out, well-adjudicated Wish can spice up a session (or even twist the course of an entire campaign,) and I was just wondering what kind of out-of-the-ordinary Wish stories of player ingenuity or DM dickery you guys could provide.

I'll get the ball rolling: It's a little primitive, and it wasn't great DM'ing, but one of my personal favorites was during my first campaign, ran for some housemates of mine back in High School. As we were all like family, and I was DM'ing under extreme duress, the tone of the player/DM relationship settled into one of snark and good-natured cruelty shortly after the start of the campaign. For 18 levels things went on like this, me making their chaotic evil characters fear for their lives with little more than well-used gnome illusionists and making sure that every town guardsman was Colombo fused with Robocop, them abusing Psionics in every way possible and killing innkeepers with fenceposts to see if candy popped out. At the end of the campaign, after they had whined until I let them skip over most of the adventure and then two-shotted the BBEG (actually, BBGG, in this case) using methods I still shudder to think I let them get away with, one of the characters became incredibly, almost unwholesomely adamant that he be able to use the Ring of Three Wishes from the BBGG's stash to fill the vaults there with an endless amount of gold. Not SOME gold. Not even the ridiculous amount of gold you CAN produce perfectly legally with three Wish spells at your disposal. It had to be endless amount of gold.

I can't say I'm all that proud of myself, and I'd like to hope I've made some very serious strides as a DM since then, but to this day I still treasure the look on their faces when the ten-ton vault door blew off it's hinges in a gout of flame and the endless amount of Gold Dragons started pouring out. :)

That one was weak though. Top it! You know you want to...
User5127
09-30-06, 12:14 PM well they want a vault full of endless gold then fine! the vault gets teleported to the core of the earth (90% of the gold of the planet is there since its a heavy metal). it its liquid hot state everything takes roughly 100d6 damage/round, they all suffocate as normal and the also take 100d6 blunt damage as the sheer gravitational forces crushe everything around them. (then because they had the audacity to contradict ME the DM!!!) the wish spell would then prevent all forms of teleportation away from the core of the earth.

another take! infinite gold huh? ok, when ever they remove ANY gold from the room it immediatly teleports (unpreventable) back into the room. but i don't tell them thats where the gold is going, as far as the know they just keep taking it out and it keeps disapearing, and there is always more back in the room! muahha

i like the second one better cause its like FINE and he's why you all suck. burn!
Prime32
09-30-06, 02:00 PM Unless the vault is infinitely large, an endless amount of gold would stream out, crushing/drowning the PCs and flooding the Material Plane to an infinite depth :banghead:
Dark Brandon
09-30-06, 03:29 PM I've always found Wish to be more problematic in this sense, causing strife between GM and players, especially when the terms are not clear simply because the two sides don't agree on what the wording clarifies.

Just for example, in one game we had a character who wanted to be immune to fire damage, so the GM turned him into a fire elemental. The player argued he didn't say he wanted to BE fire, just wanted to be immune to it. It broke down quickly into the DM saying "If you don't like the way I DM fine another DM", and the player stating "Enjoy DMing a game with no players then". (Note: this game was based on elementals and thus being a fire elemental was a seriously BAD thing). The player made the comment, "If you didn't want us to use it why even bother putting it in, especially if you knew it was gonna cause problems"?

While I understand that a wish is a difficult thing to manage in a situation, I have also seen the fruits of DM's who for some reason think continually that D&D is "DM vs. Players", rather than reaching a comprimise and in D&D it should never be that way.

One suggestion I saw was having a vault explode, killing the players and flooding the material world with gold, and another was kill the PCs by sending them to the earths core. Well, who's really suffering there? Players can roll up a new character in 10 min, a DM on the other hand will have to come up with a new campaign, enemies, BBEG...ect...Besides that, what have you proved by doing that? How has this enhanced your game or made the game fun for you or your players? Players in general arn't gonna learn that being "greedy" is bad...because it's a game.

One option would have been to let them have a vault, and within a few days/weeks depending on how they were spending their gold their vault may no longer be a secret, just as a dragons horde attracks adventurers, so too would a vault attract thieves, dragons even gods (I believe mammon is a demon who enjoys money).
Prub
09-30-06, 03:54 PM why such the drawbacks on wishes you ask? Well by looking at almost every story of Djinns and wishes it is always how the Djinn gives them thier wish but not they way they had thought it would work. That is the inherent way wishes work A god would not think on the same level as a normal person so hence being imune to fire to a god would not mean the same thing to a normal person, it may make perfect sense to a god to change form to something that is imune to fire .

I feel wishes are subject to interperitation of who ever is granting the wish. If they are not specific then who knows what will happen.

IE .. I wish to be the richest man in the world.

There are a ton of ways to fullfill this wish.. you could be the ONLY man in the world hence being the richest. Same as the only person, or you could go the Twilight Zone way (think the guy who wants to read ) you could become the richest but then become unable to spend it because it is locked up where no one can get to it including yourself.

This is not just a hack and slash game why do we have things like this? to make people think .. to add another element to the game I think wishes are way overpowered yet they are a blast to work and see how they will word thier wish and how you can give it to them but still not give it the way they expected.

I think the person over reacted about thier situation and should have shown a bit more tact when thinking of a wish. Yet the DM also over reacted when confronted according to your example.
User5127
09-30-06, 04:00 PM I just base really screwed up wishes when the players argue with me that they are right. its kinda like, well, i'm willing to comprimise with you on giving you tons of gold for your wish, but when you refuse the amount and demand infinite, then i get nasty and give it to you.

90% of the time i'm more benign with my wish granting simply because i want my own wishes to work for one and two if its to much i ask them to make more wishes (just like a +5 inherent bonus = 5 wishes) so that it balances out. if the aren't happy with some kinda balance then they are asking to much from a single (or multiple wish) and therefore it will become corrupted when it gets granted. or fizzle.
Dark Brandon
10-01-06, 02:43 AM why such the drawbacks on wishes you ask? Well by looking at almost every story of Djinns and wishes it is always how the Djinn gives them thier wish but not they way they had thought it would work. That is the inherent way wishes work A god would not think on the same level as a normal person so hence being imune to fire to a god would not mean the same thing to a normal person, it may make perfect sense to a god to change form to something that is imune to fire.

IC it can make fine sense, but I'm also saying to take into concideration OOC ramifications, since it is a game. I agree the game shouldn't be hack and slash, but it shouldn't be "I'm the DM, watch me screw over my players because I can". You can make players think but in truth there is nothing they can't wish for that someone can't twist into something perverse. It's easy enough to do, and doesn't take much effort. At best you'll have the players go home and write a 10pg wish complete with articles, and sub-articles. Then you as a DM grant the wish but attempt to screw it over and the player points out that in article A Subsection 10, it clearly states you cannot do what you just did, and now the GM is slightly more frustrated....

At this point you have an object that the players won't use, so at that point why bother even putting it in the game? User has a good point, I think the twisting of the wording should depend on the players and what they are asking.
Thane26425
10-01-06, 11:18 AM I DMed a group of nuetrals and evils for a short time, mainly subbing for a friend. They delighted in rubbing me the wrong way whenever possible. Anyway, one of them wished for a powerful and evil weapon. I gave it to him and he used it very evilly. What he didn't count on was in the next session was the Balor and his buddies showing up to reclaim its prized blade.

There is a short story I read in college, in one of the textbooks on fantasy literature, that is all about wishes. This man is cursed with the ability to grant wishes but they are all granted literally. One I recall was a man who wanted to have pretty women forever, or something along those lines, so he was turned into a living statue and people sacrificed young women in front of him from then on. Can't think of the name though. What was interesting was that the correct way to handle this was to ask what one should wish for. The man had to answer honestly and could then grant said wish, which also released him from his burden. Never had a player smart enough to do that though, which isn't all that bad since it would really have put me on the spot.
Lt_Murgen
10-04-06, 09:40 PM I'll share this story, and let everyone decide on their own. Personally, despite being ticked off at the time, 20 years later it is one of my favorite moments.

We were a party of 7-8th level adventurers who had the (mis)fortune of finding a ring of three wishes. In true Indiana Jones fashion, when we removed it from its pedestal, we awoke the Tarrasque. We WERE warned, repeatedly.

Grabbing the ring, one player said "I wish the tarrasque would die!" The DM replied that the creature howls in pain and large portions of its flesh rot away, revealing its musculature. A feral red glow took over its eyes. We had made it undead.

The second player grabbed the ring and wished "I wish the undead tarrasque would just go away." The DM replied that it did indeed vanish, but we could still feel its pounding thud as it chased after us. We had made it invisible.

With an invisible, undead tarrasque about to eat us, the third player wished that the invisible, undead tarrasque be immediatly teleported into the heart of the nearest volcano. This worked, but only because the Dm took pity on us.

A second player grabbed the ring and wished "I wish the tarrasque would just go away and never bother us again."
Psionx
10-04-06, 09:47 PM well they want a vault full of endless gold then fine! the vault gets teleported to the core of the earth (90% of the gold of the planet is there since its a heavy metal). it its liquid hot state everything takes roughly 100d6 damage/round, they all suffocate as normal and the also take 100d6 blunt damage as the sheer gravitational forces crushe everything around them. (then because they had the audacity to contradict ME the DM!!!) the wish spell would then prevent all forms of teleportation away from the core of the earth.

another take! infinite gold huh? ok, when ever they remove ANY gold from the room it immediatly teleports (unpreventable) back into the room. but i don't tell them thats where the gold is going, as far as the know they just keep taking it out and it keeps disapearing, and there is always more back in the room! muahha

i like the second one better cause its like FINE and he's why you all suck. burn!
I use the gold to make walls of iron as its component and sell those by using fabricate to shape it into cubes.
Psionx
10-04-06, 10:00 PM I wish for the ability to create walls of iron (as the spell with the following exceptions) usable at will with no material or XP component, no somatic or verbal components, instead of iron it creates darksteel.
EDIT: for more fun I changed it to darksteel
Darksteel:
This metal is rumored to be indestructible by means other than magic. Weapons fashioned from darksteel have can bypass hardness when sundering weapons or attacking objects, ignoring hardness less than 30. Armor made from adamantine grants its wearer damage reduction of 2/- if it’s light armor, 3/- if it’s medium armor, and 4/- if it’s heavy armor. Items made from darksteel are considered masterwork items due to the skill required to make darksteel into these items.
Darksteel armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from darksteel are decreased by 15%, maximum Dexterity bonus is increased by 3, and armor check penalties are lessened by 4 (to a minimum of 0). An item made from darksteel weighs one third as much as the same item made from other metals. Donning armor made from darksteel takes 2 rounds less than normal.
Darksteel has 60 hitpoints per inch and hardness 30.
Darksteel Cost Modifiers

Ammunition + 90 gp
Light Armor + 7,500 gp
Medium Armor + 15,000 gp
Heavy Armor + 22,500 gp
Weapon + 4,500 gp
Shield + 3,000 gp

took adamantium and mithral and fused them to make a lighter, stronger, and more expensive material that is obviously better
Illithid_Tentacles
10-08-06, 10:35 PM I agree with Dark Brandon; Wish is NOT, nor should it ever be, a "**** the players free" card. That leads to lawerism, or simply refusal to use the spell at all.

Supid wording, and abusive wishes (e.g. infinite gold), yes, those are punishable, but something like immunity to fire is NOT unreasonable for a freaking 9th level spell! Complete immunity to normal fire and negating the first 15 or 20 points of fire damage from a magical source would be perfectly reasonable, as far as I'm concerned.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Yamu 09-30-06, 10:49 AM	I'm sure this topic was already done a few times before I got here, but since I couldn't dig up any examples from the recent past... Wish. Favorite spell of overreaching players and ahygenic, pointy-toothed DM's alike. But still, all abuses aside... who doesn't like a good Wish story? Sure, maybe the DM's an insufferable wisacre who lives to make you suffer, or your players are just out to break the bank and screw-all with the rest of the campaign, but in general, there is no single more consistent generator of 'look back and laugh' moments I can think of than this spell. I've always been fascinated with the way a well-thought-out, well-adjudicated Wish can spice up a session (or even twist the course of an entire campaign,) and I was just wondering what kind of out-of-the-ordinary Wish stories of player ingenuity or DM dickery you guys could provide. I'll get the ball rolling: It's a little primitive, and it wasn't great DM'ing, but one of my personal favorites was during my first campaign, ran for some housemates of mine back in High School. As we were all like family, and I was DM'ing under extreme duress, the tone of the player/DM relationship settled into one of snark and good-natured cruelty shortly after the start of the campaign. For 18 levels things went on like this, me making their chaotic evil characters fear for their lives with little more than well-used gnome illusionists and making sure that every town guardsman was Colombo fused with Robocop, them abusing Psionics in every way possible and killing innkeepers with fenceposts to see if candy popped out. At the end of the campaign, after they had whined until I let them skip over most of the adventure and then two-shotted the BBEG (actually, BBGG, in this case) using methods I still shudder to think I let them get away with, one of the characters became incredibly, almost unwholesomely adamant that he be able to use the Ring of Three Wishes from the BBGG's stash to fill the vaults there with an endless amount of gold. Not SOME gold. Not even the ridiculous amount of gold you CAN produce perfectly legally with three Wish spells at your disposal. It had to be endless amount of gold. I can't say I'm all that proud of myself, and I'd like to hope I've made some very serious strides as a DM since then, but to this day I still treasure the look on their faces when the ten-ton vault door blew off it's hinges in a gout of flame and the endless amount of Gold Dragons started pouring out. :) That one was weak though. Top it! You know you want to...
User5127 09-30-06, 12:14 PM	well they want a vault full of endless gold then fine! the vault gets teleported to the core of the earth (90% of the gold of the planet is there since its a heavy metal). it its liquid hot state everything takes roughly 100d6 damage/round, they all suffocate as normal and the also take 100d6 blunt damage as the sheer gravitational forces crushe everything around them. (then because they had the audacity to contradict ME the DM!!!) the wish spell would then prevent all forms of teleportation away from the core of the earth. another take! infinite gold huh? ok, when ever they remove ANY gold from the room it immediatly teleports (unpreventable) back into the room. but i don't tell them thats where the gold is going, as far as the know they just keep taking it out and it keeps disapearing, and there is always more back in the room! muahha i like the second one better cause its like FINE and he's why you all suck. burn!
Prime32 09-30-06, 02:00 PM	Unless the vault is infinitely large, an endless amount of gold would stream out, crushing/drowning the PCs and flooding the Material Plane to an infinite depth :banghead:
Dark Brandon 09-30-06, 03:29 PM	I've always found Wish to be more problematic in this sense, causing strife between GM and players, especially when the terms are not clear simply because the two sides don't agree on what the wording clarifies. Just for example, in one game we had a character who wanted to be immune to fire damage, so the GM turned him into a fire elemental. The player argued he didn't say he wanted to BE fire, just wanted to be immune to it. It broke down quickly into the DM saying "If you don't like the way I DM fine another DM", and the player stating "Enjoy DMing a game with no players then". (Note: this game was based on elementals and thus being a fire elemental was a seriously BAD thing). The player made the comment, "If you didn't want us to use it why even bother putting it in, especially if you knew it was gonna cause problems"? While I understand that a wish is a difficult thing to manage in a situation, I have also seen the fruits of DM's who for some reason think continually that D&D is "DM vs. Players", rather than reaching a comprimise and in D&D it should never be that way. One suggestion I saw was having a vault explode, killing the players and flooding the material world with gold, and another was kill the PCs by sending them to the earths core. Well, who's really suffering there? Players can roll up a new character in 10 min, a DM on the other hand will have to come up with a new campaign, enemies, BBEG...ect...Besides that, what have you proved by doing that? How has this enhanced your game or made the game fun for you or your players? Players in general arn't gonna learn that being "greedy" is bad...because it's a game. One option would have been to let them have a vault, and within a few days/weeks depending on how they were spending their gold their vault may no longer be a secret, just as a dragons horde attracks adventurers, so too would a vault attract thieves, dragons even gods (I believe mammon is a demon who enjoys money).
Prub 09-30-06, 03:54 PM	why such the drawbacks on wishes you ask? Well by looking at almost every story of Djinns and wishes it is always how the Djinn gives them thier wish but not they way they had thought it would work. That is the inherent way wishes work A god would not think on the same level as a normal person so hence being imune to fire to a god would not mean the same thing to a normal person, it may make perfect sense to a god to change form to something that is imune to fire . I feel wishes are subject to interperitation of who ever is granting the wish. If they are not specific then who knows what will happen. IE .. I wish to be the richest man in the world. There are a ton of ways to fullfill this wish.. you could be the ONLY man in the world hence being the richest. Same as the only person, or you could go the Twilight Zone way (think the guy who wants to read ) you could become the richest but then become unable to spend it because it is locked up where no one can get to it including yourself. This is not just a hack and slash game why do we have things like this? to make people think .. to add another element to the game I think wishes are way overpowered yet they are a blast to work and see how they will word thier wish and how you can give it to them but still not give it the way they expected. I think the person over reacted about thier situation and should have shown a bit more tact when thinking of a wish. Yet the DM also over reacted when confronted according to your example.
User5127 09-30-06, 04:00 PM	I just base really screwed up wishes when the players argue with me that they are right. its kinda like, well, i'm willing to comprimise with you on giving you tons of gold for your wish, but when you refuse the amount and demand infinite, then i get nasty and give it to you. 90% of the time i'm more benign with my wish granting simply because i want my own wishes to work for one and two if its to much i ask them to make more wishes (just like a +5 inherent bonus = 5 wishes) so that it balances out. if the aren't happy with some kinda balance then they are asking to much from a single (or multiple wish) and therefore it will become corrupted when it gets granted. or fizzle.
Dark Brandon 10-01-06, 02:43 AM	why such the drawbacks on wishes you ask? Well by looking at almost every story of Djinns and wishes it is always how the Djinn gives them thier wish but not they way they had thought it would work. That is the inherent way wishes work A god would not think on the same level as a normal person so hence being imune to fire to a god would not mean the same thing to a normal person, it may make perfect sense to a god to change form to something that is imune to fire. IC it can make fine sense, but I'm also saying to take into concideration OOC ramifications, since it is a game. I agree the game shouldn't be hack and slash, but it shouldn't be "I'm the DM, watch me screw over my players because I can". You can make players think but in truth there is nothing they can't wish for that someone can't twist into something perverse. It's easy enough to do, and doesn't take much effort. At best you'll have the players go home and write a 10pg wish complete with articles, and sub-articles. Then you as a DM grant the wish but attempt to screw it over and the player points out that in article A Subsection 10, it clearly states you cannot do what you just did, and now the GM is slightly more frustrated.... At this point you have an object that the players won't use, so at that point why bother even putting it in the game? User has a good point, I think the twisting of the wording should depend on the players and what they are asking.
Thane26425 10-01-06, 11:18 AM	I DMed a group of nuetrals and evils for a short time, mainly subbing for a friend. They delighted in rubbing me the wrong way whenever possible. Anyway, one of them wished for a powerful and evil weapon. I gave it to him and he used it very evilly. What he didn't count on was in the next session was the Balor and his buddies showing up to reclaim its prized blade. There is a short story I read in college, in one of the textbooks on fantasy literature, that is all about wishes. This man is cursed with the ability to grant wishes but they are all granted literally. One I recall was a man who wanted to have pretty women forever, or something along those lines, so he was turned into a living statue and people sacrificed young women in front of him from then on. Can't think of the name though. What was interesting was that the correct way to handle this was to ask what one should wish for. The man had to answer honestly and could then grant said wish, which also released him from his burden. Never had a player smart enough to do that though, which isn't all that bad since it would really have put me on the spot.
Lt_Murgen 10-04-06, 09:40 PM	I'll share this story, and let everyone decide on their own. Personally, despite being ticked off at the time, 20 years later it is one of my favorite moments. We were a party of 7-8th level adventurers who had the (mis)fortune of finding a ring of three wishes. In true Indiana Jones fashion, when we removed it from its pedestal, we awoke the Tarrasque. We WERE warned, repeatedly. Grabbing the ring, one player said "I wish the tarrasque would die!" The DM replied that the creature howls in pain and large portions of its flesh rot away, revealing its musculature. A feral red glow took over its eyes. We had made it undead. The second player grabbed the ring and wished "I wish the undead tarrasque would just go away." The DM replied that it did indeed vanish, but we could still feel its pounding thud as it chased after us. We had made it invisible. With an invisible, undead tarrasque about to eat us, the third player wished that the invisible, undead tarrasque be immediatly teleported into the heart of the nearest volcano. This worked, but only because the Dm took pity on us. A second player grabbed the ring and wished "I wish the tarrasque would just go away and never bother us again."
Psionx 10-04-06, 09:47 PM	well they want a vault full of endless gold then fine! the vault gets teleported to the core of the earth (90% of the gold of the planet is there since its a heavy metal). it its liquid hot state everything takes roughly 100d6 damage/round, they all suffocate as normal and the also take 100d6 blunt damage as the sheer gravitational forces crushe everything around them. (then because they had the audacity to contradict ME the DM!!!) the wish spell would then prevent all forms of teleportation away from the core of the earth. another take! infinite gold huh? ok, when ever they remove ANY gold from the room it immediatly teleports (unpreventable) back into the room. but i don't tell them thats where the gold is going, as far as the know they just keep taking it out and it keeps disapearing, and there is always more back in the room! muahha i like the second one better cause its like FINE and he's why you all suck. burn! I use the gold to make walls of iron as its component and sell those by using fabricate to shape it into cubes.
Psionx 10-04-06, 10:00 PM	I wish for the ability to create walls of iron (as the spell with the following exceptions) usable at will with no material or XP component, no somatic or verbal components, instead of iron it creates darksteel. EDIT: for more fun I changed it to darksteel Darksteel: This metal is rumored to be indestructible by means other than magic. Weapons fashioned from darksteel have can bypass hardness when sundering weapons or attacking objects, ignoring hardness less than 30. Armor made from adamantine grants its wearer damage reduction of 2/- if it’s light armor, 3/- if it’s medium armor, and 4/- if it’s heavy armor. Items made from darksteel are considered masterwork items due to the skill required to make darksteel into these items. Darksteel armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from darksteel are decreased by 15%, maximum Dexterity bonus is increased by 3, and armor check penalties are lessened by 4 (to a minimum of 0). An item made from darksteel weighs one third as much as the same item made from other metals. Donning armor made from darksteel takes 2 rounds less than normal. Darksteel has 60 hitpoints per inch and hardness 30. Darksteel Cost Modifiers Ammunition + 90 gp Light Armor + 7,500 gp Medium Armor + 15,000 gp Heavy Armor + 22,500 gp Weapon + 4,500 gp Shield + 3,000 gp took adamantium and mithral and fused them to make a lighter, stronger, and more expensive material that is obviously better
Illithid_Tentacles 10-08-06, 10:35 PM	I agree with Dark Brandon; Wish is NOT, nor should it ever be, a "**** the players free" card. That leads to lawerism, or simply refusal to use the spell at all. Supid wording, and abusive wishes (e.g. infinite gold), yes, those are punishable, but something like immunity to fire is NOT unreasonable for a freaking 9th level spell! Complete immunity to normal fire and negating the first 15 or 20 points of fire damage from a magical source would be perfectly reasonable, as far as I'm concerned.