Gross, Horrible Story

[Voadam]

I has a player once who acquired a wish....and should have given more thought to the wording of his wish.

He wished that "Nothing can touch me". His intent was to be immune to weapon blows.... what he got was a slow death since he couldn't touch either water or food.

Another group I played with, hearing such tales, got a wish and decided to contemplate the wish between sessions. What I got the next session was a bloody 23 page legal document.
The wish itself (not overly complex) was maybe a 1/4 page. The other 22 3/4 pages was text to close every possible loophole with rider clause after rider clause. And it read like it was written by a cabal of lawyers to boot....

I warned one of my players who was thinking of doing that that the wishes in my game only worked on the first thing wished for, so any clauses and provisos are just verbage without effect on the wish. That gave him some pause and discouraged the 18 page contract syndrome.

 

[Desdichado]

He wished that "Nothing can touch me". His intent was to be immune to weapon blows.... what he got was a slow death since he couldn't touch either water or food.

It should only have taken a few minutes to die by asphyxiation.

 

[Darkness]

I'd discard any lengthy out-of-game legal document made up by the player(s) and instead ask the character to make a Wis check to word the wish in a way that's in his best interest. (Others might want to use Int, but I think Wis is more appropriate.) I'd even let him take 10 if he thinks about it for a long time.

DC depends on circumstances.

*edit* Hm. Or maybe I wouldn't, if it's more about role-playing than rules-lawyering to get the biggest bonuses. Maybe I'd also give synergy bonuses to the Wis check for having ranks in certain appropriate skills.

 

[Gomez]

I wonder if the asked for *stuff* instead of being dumped on the elf would have appeared inside the elf's lower intestine?

 

[kirinke]

And these threads are why I will never use a wish spell or be anywhere around when somebody uses a wish spell. If one of my characters ever finds a deck of many things, they will cash it in and buy stuff, laughing at easy money.

 

[Saeviomagy]

And these threads are why I will never use a wish spell or be anywhere around when somebody uses a wish spell.

Personally, if any of these people were my DM, then my first wish/miracle would be "I wish we were all in a first level campaign again".

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Stories like Grumpy Celts remind me of why it's fun to be behind the DM screen.

And it reminds me why I never leave.

Ah, poorly worded wishes- and downright stupid ones. Back in high school, I ran a planescape campaign (my first experience DMing a D&D campaign, I was 16), in which one of the PC's, a Wild Mage (trouble right there) ended up apprenticed to an Abyss-dwelling lich of unspeakable cruelty, perverse humor, and a fetish for excessive use of illusions and wish spells when no one expected it. One day, he granted the young (7th level) apprentice a wish. Not believing that this was happening, the incredulous player looked at me and said-

"I want to fight a Balor with a weapon that can hit it."

I fell out of my chair with laughter.

That session came to a screeching halt, as somewhere in the abyss, a demonic general scraped a Drow up from between it's fingernails...

 

[Darkness]

Personally, if any of these people were my DM, then my first wish/miracle would be "I wish we were all in a first level campaign again".

Point. Personally, I only really care about the PC's wording if it's an excessive or somehow abusive wish.

 

[Roman]

I also don't purposefully misinterpret wishes in the game. If the wish is too powerful, than it is only partially fulfilled instead of being misinterpreted. That said, I think I too would not be able to resist if a player came to me with a wish like the one that started this thread, but after laughing my head off I would probably ask him/her if he/she was sure about this particular wish...

 

[KenM]

Not a wish gone wrong, but a wrongly worded divine intervention request. The player asked his god " I want to be reborn outside the caves where my friends are with all my old weapons and equipment."
so when the rest of us came out od the caves, we found this newborn baby crying with all this adult sized adventuring gear and weapons, and what was left of a female that had a very bad deliverly.