Concentration and AOO

[enrious]

Here's a problem I've generally had with taking the player's exact words when making a Wish -

Usually, the character's intelligence/wisdom is different from a player's.

That 18 INT wizard making a wish is limited to a 14 INT player saying the words.

Doesn't seem right to me; a 18 INT wizard would have a greater chance of composing the right words than a 14 INT player.

$.02

 

[Voadam]

quote from prodawg


A NPC offered the players a wish for before for completing a quest. This player (a cleric) wished for "if he drops below 0 hp of dies, his body is to be transported to his church, true resurrection be cast on him so he suffers no exp lose from death." This is clearly two wishes. Plus he cannot get a true resurrection (level 9 divine spell) from a wish. So I ruled that only the first part is fulfilled. He was not aware of this until he died. The bottom line is that he died with a lose of level. Now my question is this, given the circumstances, did I make the right decision?
Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I thank you for taking time to read this post and respond. Thanks.

Prodawg,

If it had been a wish scroll or a ring of wishes or an evil efreet or devil granting the wish, then using the words of the players is appropriate. Here, however, the NPC wizard offered the PC a wish as a reward. The PC asks for X, Y, and Z, (contingency, teleport and true ressurection) and the wish can only do X and Y (contingency word of recall/teleport). The wizard, I am assuming, is casting the spell and therefore phrasing the wish. The at least int 19 wizard will presumably know the limits of his spell. He should have advised the PC that what he was asking for would be beyond the power of a wish. He should advise him of that before casting the not fully effective wish. Otherwise, the wizard is deliberately setting up the PC with false expectations of the beneficial magic set upon him. I would not run a grateful archmage that way. If the wizard had a ring of wishes and gave it to the party and left before they cast the wishes, that would be different.

 

[Voadam]

Enrious,

I would advise against letting character stats overrule poor player decisions and control of the character. Would you be advising the high int wizard how to figure things out in other situations? The game is for the players to play, there are challenges for the players to think through and overcome through their decisions and their verbal interactions.

The stats have enough mechanical applications and relevance to not impose restrictions or benefits upon the player in how they play their character.

The converse of having backup decisions for the high int charcters would be imposing bad decisions on low int characters which I would strongly advise against.

I'm for having their stats influence the effects of their actions (a high charisma helping out a bit when talking to NPCs) but not overriding their good or bad decisions.

 

[Magus_Jerel]

The wizard, I am assuming, is casting the spell and therefore phrasing the wish. The at least int 19 wizard will presumably know the limits of his spell. He should have advised the PC that what he was asking for would be beyond the power of a wish. He should advise him of that before casting the not fully effective wish. Otherwise, the wizard is deliberately setting up the PC with false expectations of the beneficial magic set upon him. I would not run a grateful archmage that way.

Hmmm - several problems here...

1. We don't know if the wizard actually DOES know the limits of the spell. He might be the one using the "ring of wishes" or scrolls.

2. If He doesn't know - he can't advise in the first place; or anticipate that the wish would not be fully effective.

3. A neutral or evil character may go ahead and allow the PC to have false expectations. A good one might; depending on the situation involved.

4. Maybe the character isn't an archmage at all... don't know the context of the situation.

 

[BHarlick]

On Wishes...

In the old 3-books-in-a-box days of my DnDing, we used to rule that wishes had to be one non-compounded sentence. So, no using conjuctioning or dependant clauses to try to get more than you should out of a wish. Our ruthless GMs would just ignore everything after an "and." Made for some interesting wishes.

--Bruce

 

[prodawg]

I thank you all for taking time to respond. Some of you are right, perhaps I should have warned players about their wishes. However, I did not because I wanted to see what they would wish for. Plus the players were aware of the limitations of wish and how dangerous it was to wish for something beyond what is described in PHB. We paused for about 10 min and the players consulted their PHB in great detail. This is more of less the powerful NPC sitting them down and explaining the spell to them. The spell that was cast was slightly weaker than a full blown wish because I told the players that they cannot wish for a stat boost. Other than that, it was similar to a regular wish spell by the books.
As for my players wish, I interpreted it as a conditional statement rather than contingency the spell. That's why I let the first part fly.

 

[Sodalis]

Actually Eric, you said that other stat boosts, anything goes, but dont et the monetary cost exceed 15000 GP.

the wish reward was plopped into our laps without much notice, except maybe for the rogue's Prc. And I got the wish to you immediately- and you read it and smiled. Then you spent the next 10 minutes, as you so generously gave us to look up the spell, to say, hurry, morning is coming,a nd he is ina hurry- time's wasting, you have to give him your wishes before sunrise... hurry...

Since i had alredy written down my wish and turned it into you, I dont think i could have revised it. plus, you read it and smiled at me, without a response- until after the fact.

As for the other thread, don't take it too personally, I just posted it to rant about what a crappy day I was having- and was not in any way directing towards you.

If I was, I would have titled it "I GOT THE SHAFT"

[edit][ I didnt know it was a house rule, I just thought it was mangled interpretation of the rules. When I gt the "oficial" rules from PC, that was when i brought it to your attention...

I have played a barb for the past two years- and just switched over to cleric two months ago- and I still know --><-- much about spells and such-

 

[prodawg]

I did not take offense at all. When I was asking you guys to hurry up, I was doing so with a smile. You know not to take me too seriously. If there was a misunderstanding, I appologize. As for the wish, I said no stat boost, otherwise same as wish.

 

[TwoSix]

Found the shiny object!