D&D General Can a Wish spell move a moon to cause an eclipse?

Or it never ends for the caster. No matter where they go the moon follows, casting the region around them into shadow.
Doesn't sound bad enough IMO. Especially if they have a shadow monk and Gloomstalker ranger for allies.


But if it rains down Meteor Swarms around them every few minutes as the moon breaks up sounds pretty good. Even if they teleport, the moon follows and drops more rocks.
 

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Doesn't sound bad enough IMO. Especially if they have a shadow monk and Gloomstalker ranger for allies.


But if it rains down Meteor Swarms around them every few minutes as the moon breaks up sounds pretty good. Even if they teleport, the moon follows and drops more rocks.
They get targeted by an alliance of lycanthropes, because the moon moving around is throwing off their cycles.
 

They get targeted by an alliance of lycanthropes, because the moon moving around is throwing off their cycles.
Astrologers as well. Although astronomers would probably pretty cool with it, as they can set up and do observations in the area of totality when the wizard is not traveling.

And speaking of astrologers, it would make productions of Hair difficult if the wizard is moving through your area...

🎶 "When the moooooon is in the seventh house... I mean eighth house... I mean... 🎶

...Darn it wizard, stop moving!"
 

Or it never ends for the caster. No matter where they go the moon follows, casting the region around them into shadow.
And that caster gets polite visit from vampires with nice presentation about benefits of vampiric immortality. Caster like that would be every vampires best friend. Lychantropes hate him, vampires adore him, time to play some Underworld inspired high level d&d.
 

It should also be mentioned that it's a NPC that's causing an eclipse, and they're the type who probably don't care about any consequences of the Wish that don't affect them.

So some of the things like "flaws in the ritual" are certainly things that PCs could exploit in stopping them.
Then I'd definitely go with the option of moving the caster forward in time and to the next eclipse. Now the PCs have to figure out when and where that will be, and make preparations to travel there and stop the evil wizard.
 

I'd be fine with it personally. Eclipses are common enough on the planet and Wish is Wish. Big stuff like this is its ballpark

Now, the problem is, yeah, you might arrange an eclipse, but not only have you pissed off all the gods involved, you may also may throw the seasons a bit out of whack, and there's a big difference between 'arrange an eclipse' and 'arrange an eclipse right here right now'. You might just wish for an eclipse, and that eclipse might be happening on the other side of the planet
 

Well, kind of....

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"That's no moon!"

Johnathan
 

To toss out another idea.

The ritual isn't complete until the eclipse ends.
And it doesn't end until the wizard dies (noticeable with DC 20 arcane check).

Meanwhile, the whole world is slowly freezing (ticking clock)
 

Overall I love the thoughtfulness of your post. Just a great overview of the potentialities and consequences and ways to approach this, so applause for that.

I do find the section above a BIT dispiriting and sad. Absolutely it's a challenge, but I do think that with a table of friends willing to give each other reasonable benefit of the doubt, you can find a better outcome than the three bad ones you outline.

As a DM I lean toward letting Wish do truly awesome things, but not being a "win the campaign" button. And I think if I talk to my players about that rationale they will generally understand and be on board with that.
I just have a pretty dim view of mechanics specifically designed around creating and fostering, rather than removing or at least mitigating, DM-player "arms race" types of behavior. I find that wish in specific is an extremely potent locus of such things: players dream of the incredible, world-altering power, and DMs have been specifically encouraged to approach it in a very antagonistic way.

Like, here's the 5.5e text for the relevant use of the spell (underline added for emphasis; bold in original):

Reshape Reality. You may wish for something not included in any of the other effects. To do so, state your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might be achieved only in part, or you might suffer an unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a Legendary magic item or an Artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner. If your wish is granted and its effects have consequences for a whole community, region, or world, you are likely to attract powerful foes. If your wish would affect a god, the god's divine servants might instantly intervene to prevent it or to encourage you to craft the wish in a particular way. If your wish would undo the multiverse itself, threaten the City of Sigil, or affect the Lady of Pain in any way, you see an image of her in your mind for a moment; she shakes her head, and your wish fails.​

Notice some of the ways the text explicitly promotes a "monkey's paw" type of result. It specifically boosts outright deleting a character from the game as an acceptable "wish went wrong" consequence. It also encourages some pretty openly unfair "interpretations" of what the player said. Wishing for a particular artifact simply is not the same as wishing to be in that artifact's presence. The whole point of the wish spell is, ultimately, to be a monkey's paw kind of thing, a "phenomenal power always bites you in the butt" situation.

Now, if you and your players go into it seeing it as a negotiation and setting down your own rules and negotiation policies, that's perfectly fine. But, IMO, there are other and better ways to frame this, ways that don't explicitly encourage DMs to be punitive and that discourage players from considering inappropriate bargaining positions to begin with. As an example, a move I love from Dungeon World--one which I have taken away from the Wizard class alone and made accessible to anyone, even non-spellcasters, if they can justify why they'd be able to do it. (I haven't had a Wizard player in a long time, so if I did, I'd offer them recompense of some kind to make up for taking away one of the baseline class moves.)

Ritual​

When you draw on a place of power to create a magical effect, tell the GM what you’re trying to achieve. Ritual effects are always possible, but the GM will give you one to four of the following conditions:​
  • It’s going to take days/weeks/months.
  • First you must __________.
  • You’ll need help from __________.
  • It will require a lot of money
  • The best you can do is a lesser version, unreliable and limited
  • You and your allies will risk danger from __________.
  • You’ll have to disenchant __________ to do it.
Notice here: I as GM am not allowed to say an effect simply isn't possible at all. But, conversely, I am explicitly given the option of "well...you can't do ALL of that, but you can do part" or something similar. I could also pick a cost that the party might be unwilling to pay. This sets up a reasonable negotiation situation: the players want to pick something that won't be liable to cost them something they aren't willing to give up, while the GM (due to other GM-binding rules) must come to the table wanting to "fill the characters' lives with adventure", meaning, just shutting down ideas because they aren't your personal preference is not an acceptable behavior. Both sides go into the negotiation having a good idea of the expectations, and those expectations are fair and, very notably, do not push either party toward negative/disruptive choices.

I find that wish is almost a study in how to NOT do a creativity-boosting option. It's so difficult to get to (since few campaigns reach level 17+), so players expect it to do great things....while DMs expect to keep a tight lid on it. It's written with explicit encouragement of decidedly anti-player, harmful-to-the-gameplay-experience consequences for DMs to inflict on impertinent players, all while giving players almost total freedom other than the looming threat of experience-harming consequences if they aim too high.

It is good--excellent, even--that you have a group where everyone is already on board with finding a good, productive outcome. My problem is that the rules do very nearly everything they can to make that harder for both the DM and the players. I know this isn't exactly the most popular opinion right now, but I very much prefer rules that work consistently and that actively encourage the types of behavior the designers want to see, rather than both (a) encouraging behaviors that aren't great (like actively antagonistic DM behavior), and (b) focusing only on punishing those behaviors you don't want to see. I find many games are riddled with perverse incentives, and 5e, while not the worst example of this, has lots and lots of it, on both the player end and the DM end.
 

Cynical answer: yes, if NPC's are doing it.
My answer for the PCs: If it makes the plot more fun and it's an interesting way for the players to solve some challenge in front of them, then hell yeah it works! If it trivializes or circumvents something fun that the DM had planned, then I'd figure out some excuse for why it doesn't work as planned or semi-works with interesting side effects or whatever
 

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