D&D General Wishing Away The Adventure

[Reynard]

Inspired by the High Level Adventures thread, but focused on a particular thing.

There seems to be a concern that high level PCs, or even lower level ones in possession of a wish, would use a wish to just not go on the adventure. If the quest is that they retrieve the Sword of Awesome from the Tomb of Badness, they will just wish the sword into their hand. Or otherwise use powerful magic to circumvent play.

Has anyone ever actually done this, or seen it in play? Is it a valid concern? Why would players choose to avoid playing?

 

[billd91]

Inspired by the High Level Adventures thread, but focused on a particular thing.

There seems to be a concern that high level PCs, or even lower level ones in possession of a wish, would use a wish to just not go on the adventure. If the quest is that they retrieve the Sword of Awesome from the Tomb of Badness, they will just wish the sword into their hand. Or otherwise use powerful magic to circumvent play.

Has anyone ever actually done this, or seen it in play? Is it a valid concern? Why would players choose to avoid playing?

To win at D&D? Oh, sorry, to pwn the DM with their L33T skillz.

 

[Retreater]

Yes.
There's a player I've been gaming with since the 90s who hilariously, predictably finds any way to avoid the adventure.
Recent example...
GM: "There's a monster coming."
Player: "This looks dangerous. I'm going to Teleport back to town!"
GM: "So ... uh ... what are you going to do for the rest of the night?"
Player: "I'll just sit here and watch you guys play. At least my character is safe."
GM: "So ... it's kind of a part of the social contract that you are playing with everyone else. This is a team game."
Player: "Well, next time I'll bring them with me on the Teleport."

 

[billd91]

Yes.
There's a player I've been gaming with since the 90s who hilariously, predictably finds any way to avoid the adventure.
Recent example...
GM: "There's a monster coming."
Player: "This looks dangerous. I'm going to Teleport back to town!"
GM: "So ... uh ... what are you going to do for the rest of the night?"
Player: "I'll just sit here and watch you guys play. At least my character is safe."
GM: "So ... it's kind of a part of the social contract that you are playing with everyone else. This is a team game."
Player: "Well, next time I'll bring them with me on the Teleport."

Excellent argument for individual XP awards.

 

[billd91]

To win at D&D? Oh, sorry, to pwn the DM with their L33T skillz.

A bit less flippantly, I think there are some players who really do think that shortcutting parts of the adventure, rather than playing them out, is them showing off their cleverness. In such cases, if the rest of the players go along with it, I'm OK with it. They don't benefit from anything they might have learned/gained from it either. So, there is that.
Depending on their methods, I won't necessarily make it easy for them. "Oh, you want to teleport to a site you've only seen once via scrying? Let's roll for being on target. You do know that you have only a little over 25% chance of actually being on target, right? Right?" And then if they get mishaps, I'll gleefully roll the 3d10 force damage as many times as I need to.

And I do think there are players who will do this not just to be clever, but also to grief the DM. That's unfortunate and, I think, generally immature. And that's probably why I don't usually see it past high school/college in player age.

 

[Oofta]

If people do something unexpected, I just have to figure out what the logical results would be. One of the reasons I don't have an issue with high level play is likely because I don't plan out story arcs ahead of time, I just figure out actors and motivations. I think up likely encounters and give them some thought but if people don't go into the Tomb of Badness to get the Sword of Awesome I'll just figure out what that means. Perhaps the guardians in the ToB come after the sword, wreaking havoc on the PC's home town. Maybe they put a price on the sword and every high level monster in the world is now after it. Maybe the lich in the ToB uses their wish to teleport whoever is holding the sword into a prison.

There are plenty of options as long as you don't assume the PCs will automatically go from point A to point B resulting in C. It also doesn't really have much to do with the wish spell or high level play. PCs are always doing something unexpected.

On a side note, I'd assume that a spell like inner sanctum that stops teleportation and planeshift would also prevent the sword from being teleported away. The 25% chance to lose access to wish is still there of course.

 

[Oofta]

A bit less flippantly, I think there are some players who really do think that shortcutting parts of the adventure, rather than playing them out, is them showing off their cleverness. In such cases, if the rest of the players go along with it, I'm OK with it. They don't benefit from anything they might have learned/gained from it either. So, there is that.
Depending on their methods, I won't necessarily make it easy for them. "Oh, you want to teleport to a site you've only seen once via scrying? Let's roll for being on target. You do know that you have only a little over 25% chance of actually being on target, right? Right?" And then if they get mishaps, I'll gleefully roll the 3d10 force damage as many times as I need to.

And I do think there are players who will do this not just to be clever, but also to grief the DM. That's unfortunate and, I think, generally immature. And that's probably why I don't usually see it past high school/college in player age.

A lot of issues seem to go away when the DM actually enforces consequences to spells in my experience.

 

[aco175]

I have seen it, but not to this extent. A small example if that I had a bridge with some bandits extracting a toll to cross. The idea was that there was going to be a fight and some roleplay to learn some side quest stuff, but the PCs just paid it and said- Begone.

 

[Reynard]

If people do something unexpected, I just have to figure out what the logical results would be. One of the reasons I don't have an issue with high level play is likely because I don't plan out story arcs ahead of time, I just figure out actors and motivations. I think up likely encounters and give them some thought but if people don't go into the Tomb of Badness to get the Sword of Awesome I'll just figure out what that means. Perhaps the guardians in the ToB come after the sword, wreaking havoc on the PC's home town. Maybe they put a price on the sword and every high level monster in the world is now after it. Maybe the lich in the ToB uses their wish to teleport whoever is holding the sword into a prison.

There are plenty of options as long as you don't assume the PCs will automatically go from point A to point B resulting in C. It also doesn't really have much to do with the wish spell or high level play. PCs are always doing something unexpected.

On a side note, I'd assume that a spell like inner sanctum that stops teleportation and planeshift would also prevent the sword from being teleported away. The 25% chance to lose access to wish is still there of course.

I'm not really talking about the problem of players doing something unexpected. I am talking about this theoretical instance of players using wish (or other powerful magics0 to bypass the adventure while still attaining the goal. I can't say I have actually seen it occur, but people do seem concerned about it in other threads and on certain YouTube channels. That's why i asked if it was real first.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not really talking about the problem of players doing something unexpected. I am talking about this theoretical instance of players using wish (or other powerful magics0 to bypass the adventure while still attaining the goal. I can't say I have actually seen it occur, but people do seem concerned about it in other threads and on certain YouTube channels. That's why i asked if it was real first.

I've never seen it. Then again I rarely see wish used in 5E other than to replicate other spells.