The evil wish...

This thread is dedicated to mis/use about the AD&D wish spell. Basically, it makes whatever you say true, with certain limits. Of course, if you phrase things uncautiously…
I’ll start with one of Pratchett’s. A person wished to live forever. They were teleported to the beginning of time, so that they could live from the beginning of time to the end of time, neatly encompassing forever.

Is this a " dungeons n’ dragons " thing ? My best friend played that until he moved away :: tears start to roll:: … Anyway if it is I think i’vce heard of it before, he got me to play once ot twice

Yes, it’s the grandest opportunity for wanton cruelty every handed to a Dungeon Master by a player. Players have a love/hate relationship with wishes. It’s potentially the most powerful spell in the basic rules, and can theoretically do almost anything…but it also presents a nearly irresistable opportunity for perverse creativity on the part of the DM, arbiter of the wish. It’s not original to D&D, though. Most “wish” stories–genies, monkey paws, what have you–include a “be careful what you wish for” moral (especially those pesky monkey paws). The force granting the wish is often aware, and has no reason to like the wisher, so it twists the meaning of the wish into something nasty.

A summary of the Monkey’s Paw story runs like this:
A couple uses the Monkey’s Paw to wish for money; their son dies in an accident, and they receive a life insurance payment. They use the Monkey’s Paw to wish for their son back…and he returns from the grave in a rather unpleasant state. They use the third wish to send him back.

A notable twisting of a wish I came up with in a campaign I was DMing was on an occasion when a certain fighter with a ring of wishes injudiciously wished a foe dead. I shifted the wisher forward in time to the instant after his target died of old age. When you consider that the target was a young elf at the time of the wish, you begin to see how deep the kimchee around the fighter was.

I only twisted wishes granted by items or NPCs. If a mage was prepared to accept the side effects and cast the actual spell, I played it straight (within reasonable limits).

I hate the whole cliche of giving the players a wish and then twisting it. Why? What’s the point? If you don’t want the players to have a wish, don’t give one to them.

I dislike it because D&D is not supposed to be about the players vs. the DM, but in this case it is - can they outsmart the DM? Can he really screw them despite their best efforts? Why would any right-thinking player even TRY to beat this idiotic scenario, considering how many times it’s been done to death?

I also dislike it because it completely takes everyone out of the game. Characters who’ve never been offered a wish before suddenly develop the notion to phrase their wish as a three-page contract in legalese to prevent themselves being screwed? I doubt it.

It’s just a tired old convention that I wish (HAR HAR) people could get past.

I dunno how it’s done it pencil and paper D&Ding but I liked how they did in in Baldur’s gate 2. If the person making the wish has a low wisdom score the wish screws up. High and it doesn’t.

I largely agree with legomancer, though I think the interpretation loophole is really meant as an out for the DM where the wish would be disruptive to the game Literalism and twisting should, therefore, never be applied “fairly”, or uniformly. Their threat should serve to keep would-be wishers honest.

I would allow for two occasions where wishes might reasonably appear in a game.

  1. As a “MacGuffin”. Since wishes potentially represent pretty much unfiltered, godlike power, an object, spell, whatever, that grants them (even a limited number) makes for a treasure that pretty much any being would desire, and would go to tremendous lengths to get. Their twistability serves as a regulator which the DM can use as an out if the “wrong” party gets a hold of one.

  2. As a deus ex machina to save lost characters or redeem their failures, should that serve the DM’s purposes.

I certainly think that true, all-powerful wishes should be considered “secrets of the ancients” or the property of gods, and despensed only in the form of objects that can be lost or regulated. The idea of a wish spell, usable like any other, even when limited to the highest spell levels, seems to me like nothing but trouble. Maybe if a magic-user could only use one, ever. Perhaps at the cost of his life…

Frankly as a GM/DM I wouldn’t screw with the wish if it were used with game-balance in mind. Wanna revive a recently killed character? No prob. Wanna gain a level or up a stat by a point? No prob. Wanna get that low-level artifact you’ve been lusting after? Most likely no prob.

On the other hand, you wanna wish for Godhood??! The entire contents of the Major Artifacts section of the DM’s Guide? To be ruler of the world? You’re in for a battle, pal.

I made it clear to my players that “house rules” were if you followed the guidelines above (and you could always ask me if you were concerned about whether I’d consider a potential wish as upsetting game balance) you were safe. If you wanted to gamble, great: try for something exotic and see if you can outsmart me. (One did: asked for Godhood and phrased it in such a way that I couldn’t make him “God of Toadstools” or something. I made him go and write up the tenents of his faith and he couldn’t play the character as a PC any more (or the other Gods would intervene), but he got quite the little cult going before the game eventually broke up and had the fun of intervening when anyone prayed and rolled 100 on percentile dice.)

Fenris

Whoa, Fenris, you allowed Wishes for an artifact or level? That’s way more than I would ever dream of allowing.

In the campaigns I’ve played, the standard rule is that the DM has a limited time (usually ten to 30 seconds) to try to figure out how to corrupt a Wish, whereas the players have (usually) unlimited time to figure out their phrasing. This helps to balance out the “screw the players” aspect. Of course, the DM’s inclination to warp the Wish depends strongly on what the players are trying to get out of it.

Also, I always figured that there are three types of Wishes. First, there’s the Wish from a spell or item. This is neutral, and will be granted in the easiest possible manner. Wish for a million gold pieces, and you’ll get a million grains of gold dust.

Then, there’s the Wish granted by a malevolent creature, such as an effreet trapped in a bottle and constrained to serve. In this case, the Wish has the worst possible consequences for the Wisher. Wish for a million gold pieces, and they’re all normal size and value… And materialize directly above your head.

Finally, there’s the ever-rare Wish from a benevolent source. Maybe your paladin has just completed his Holy Quest, and his genuinely grateful deity wants to reward him. In that case, within limits of reasonableness, the Wish actually doesn’t get corrupted, and if the player tries for too much, the deity or whatever just says “no”, and maybe gives him another try. In any event, though, you aren’t going to be seeing these often.

I always wanted to DM a session in which the players are all members of a thieves/assassins guild when a dying NPC wanders in, gaspingly claims there’s a “Ring of …ishes” in such-and-such keep and then dies. The party of course heads out, scheming and plotting against each other in a grusome game of AD&D/Diplomacy, until the final survivor crawls past the final deathtrap over the bodies of his former team-mates and puts on the ring only to be instantly crushed in a tuna avalanche.

Moral: don’t wish for a Ring of Fishes.

Chronos, the guidelines you describe are very similar to the ones I use, except that I add that it’s generally a bad idea to try wishing someone dead–there’s too much chance of breaking game balance. I make these guidelines clear before I ever make a wish available. If someone chooses to ignore them, so be it.

I have also been known to put limitations (we call them “crocks” in the IFGS) on wish items that won’t allow them to be used in certain ways, or will only allow them to be used under special conditions. Common crocks include “cannot be used to cause harm” and “can only be used when the owner is in mortal danger”. These reflect the purpose the creator of the item had in mind at its creation–magic as powerful and dangerous as a wish item should always have a purpose; no one would go to the trouble of making one just to toss it aside.