D&D 5E I need to increase my strength with a wish, what should i say?

[Guest 6801328]

"I want to be as strong as an ox."

Foolproof.

The more interesting way to interpret wishes, IMO, is not to thwart the specific outcome by twisting the language but by adding unexpected complications (as alluded to by a poster above). It's not, "Ok, poof!, you're as strong as an ox!" Instead, nothing happens immediately but very soon there's an encounter that leads to the desired outcome...again, with complications. So minutes later a peddler comes down the road offering to sell a potion that will grant great strength permanently. Does it? Are there any other side effects? Is this actually a red herring and the real fulfillment of the wish is yet to come?

Ideally the heroes (the characters, if not the players) should be left wondering, "Was it really my Wish that did it? Or was it going to happen anyway?"

Think of the well-known story about a man who encounters the Grim Reaper, who looks surprised to see him. Terrified that this is an omen of his death he breaks records traveling to a distant city that same night. In the morning the Grim Reaper finds him and says, "Ah, here you are. I knew I was supposed to gather you here this morning, so I was surprised to see you so far away yesterday."

Although that isn't a "Wish" story, it's the same kind of cause & effect conundrum that good wish fulfillment can generate.

 

[MarkB]

The answer is, of course, "I wish I was strong enough I could pick up the Tarrasque and throw it into the sun"

Either you win, or the Tarrasque becomes hilariously light

And, in fact, the whole world becomes extremely, blindingly light due to the sun having been brought within easy throwing distance.

 

[Savage Wombat]

My players never worried about having a wish twisted because they were more worried about saving the wish for a real campaign-ender of an emergency.

 

[Sunseeker]

My players never worried about having a wish twisted because they were more worried about saving the wish for a real campaign-ender of an emergency.

That is I think, probably the most generous thing I've seen regarding wishes. Typically my experience has been that wishes are "here and now" sort of things and that choosing to "wait and think on it" or "can I have a gem that holds this wish until I really need it?" gets met with a big fat no.

I think one of the things that results in bad wishes and annoying twisting is, again IME, being forced to make that wish RIGHT NOW. Neither the player nor the DM really gets time to think about what they should wish for and what would be an interesting outcome.

 

[Arnwolf]

I am up front with my players. I tell them in advance that Wish is purely a plot device for me. I will twist the words of a wish to further the story line and add drama to the game. I also don't use the limit of how many times the spell can be cast like they did in 5E. I'll make the spell effective, but have some unexpected consequence that will have to be dealt with. I am firmly in the camp that wished should be tricky, but fun in the literary tradition.

 

[Warbringer]

As the guy that was born in a manger would say: wish unto others as they would wish onto you.

 

[Celebrim]

My players never worried about having a wish twisted because they were more worried about saving the wish for a real campaign-ender of an emergency.

In my opinion as a DM, that's the whole purpose of giving PC's access to wishes. Sometimes your friend happens to fall through a portal to the negative elemental plane and would be lost forever, except... you've got that wish item you found 3 levels ago.

Those sorts of wishes in my game never go wrong, because that's precisely what the wish was meant to provide for - an in narrative reason that the PC's have protection from plot.

A wish to be stronger is a terribly short sighted use of a wish. You are taking a item that can be used to absolutely alter reality, and using it to give you a relative advantage in combat. That's a complete misunderstanding of what usually kills a character, and complete misunderstanding of the relative importance of a wish. Raise dead can save you from death. You can burn XP to craft an item. Wish can do things to recover from Bad Things Have Happened that pretty much no other spell can do.

 

[Celebrim]

World changing wishes with unexpected consequences are exceedingly more fun than what I just read.

Not in my opinion.

World changing wishes with unexpected consequences are usually only fun for the person who gets to decide what the world changing unexpected consequences actually are. Maximizing the fun of one member of the group at the expense of everyone else is in the long term a fail strategy.

And to avert that, it tends to result in a group where the DM doesn't give out wish items, and the players are afraid to use them.

 

[Sunseeker]

Not in my opinion.

World changing wishes with unexpected consequences are usually only fun for the person who gets to decide what the world changing unexpected consequences actually are. Maximizing the fun of one member of the group at the expense of everyone else is in the long term a fail strategy.

And to avert that, it tends to result in a group where the DM doesn't give out wish items, and the players are afraid to use them.

Why is it at the expense of everyone else? By most of these wishes the rest of the group should be unaffected.

Are wishes a regular thing in your games? I don't usually give out but one or two in a year and that's one or two total, not one or two per player.

 

[Celebrim]

Why is it at the expense of everyone else? By most of these wishes the rest of the group should be unaffected.

In which case, the wish is not world changing. But by being at the expense of everyone else, I mean that its mostly the DM having fun and exercising their creativity. The player isn't actually exercising their creativity unless the effect of the wish is reliable and predictable, and whether they enjoy an unpredictable wish or not, it's not the same as getting what you wanted.

Are wishes a regular thing in your games? I don't usually give out but one or two in a year and that's one or two total, not one or two per player.

No, they aren't very regular in my game, because I rarely play at high level where wishes become a necessary resource. The current party does have a 'wish' type item, that they've had since very low level (4th?) that provides a 1/day Limited Wish, but the item ('The Ancient Monkey Skull') is cursed (in that whomever uses it must make a saving throw or suffer a Bestow Curse type effect), so it doesn't get much use because it's a big gamble - at this level its basically a 50/50 shot of trading one bad problem for another one. It's kind of like knowing that your wish will be twisted, but you have a chance to have a not twisted wish if you make a saving throw. I generally would not make full wishes available until the group is above 10th level, because wish can easily become a 'Win Button' with regards to lesser problems.

At low level, I tend to provide powerful items with big drawbacks, and less powerful items that provide access to the sort 'recover from disaster' abilities that wish would otherwise have to be used to provide. There is no sense giving out a wish, when giving out access to a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th level spell would provide the same benefit. There is no sense in having someone wish for strength, when you could just give out Gauntlets of Ogre Power or a Girdle of Giant Strength in the treasure to accomplish the same thing.

Beyond that, from low levels, the party has access to a lot of different mitigation effects in the mechanics that provide Protection from Bad Stuff. For example, every PC has Destiny Points, which are basically "Protection from Bad Luck", which they can use to reroll fumbles, failed saving throws, mitigate critical hits made on them, reroll Healing skill checks, and generally manipulate other 'Everything is on the Line' dice throws.

I also have Divine Intervention as a thing that does happen in the campaign and doesn't require DM fiat, so when a player is out of options they have a small chance of being able to successfully call on a deity they've piously served (or whom they've otherwise impressed) to intervene in life or death situations. This happens about once a year, and while a deities intervention isn't guaranteed to save your butt (the exact power level of the intervention depends on a dice throw, the PC's charisma, and the character's level), it generally does and has saved the lives of several PC's over the course of the campaign. One of the PC's has a 'The God's Really Like Me' advantage, and has received divine intervention twice, once in a spectacular fashion.