How Come There Is No "Wish" Spell?

[DandD]

Wow. Why so little love for Wish?

I understand the arguments, but still... Wish seemed like an unlimited exercise in power and creativity, to me at least. I can see how it can be used as a maximising tool, but still, was it really all that bad?

Well, if you can understand the argument, why do you still wonder if it was really that bad?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Good night, and good riddance.

3e Wish may have been a lot of things, but as the 'ultimate spell' it failed miserably.

I prefer my plot devices to be unfettered by mechanics.

Right. I plan to add Wish back in--with no written rules. Finally it'll be Wish again.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Wish, to me, was always a spell that was more about role-playing than number-crunching. It required both the player and the DM to actually think about what'd happen instead of just rolling damage and saves - you had wild interpretations, unexpected meanings, limited with some suggestions and hard-and-fast rules in the spell description itself. It was a lot of fun.

It was a subgame in itself. The players take the role of legislators drafting a new law while the DM is a lawyer, trying to break it. Though he was also the judge so it was a broken subgame.

Like dungeon mapping and old school searching for secret doors it was a subgame I never enjoyed

 

[Nebulous]

Never used Wish, but I recall a player using it once in 1e from a ring or scroll. Don't care that it's gone except that it is the epitome (in theory) of what magic can accomplish in D&D. But it doesn't bother me at all that they've decided to remove it.

 

[Nifft]

Wow. Why so little love for Wish?

I understand the arguments, but still... Wish seemed like an unlimited exercise in power and creativity, to me at least. I can see how it can be used as a maximising tool, but still, was it really all that bad?

As a game concept of a wish granted by a magical being who had his own agenda and interpretations? It is still awesome.

As a spell? It sucked, good riddance, goodbye.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Grog]

Then 3E, with it's obsessive need to balance everything, ramped up the suggestions for exactly how much power wish had, by comparing it to what level of other spells it could cast. It essentially turned wish into a stronger form of anyspell. Questions of flavor were tossed aside in favor of making sure it was ABSOLUTELY BALANCED, and now 4E, which seems to be geared to making sure every last single thing is tested, tweaked, and market-researched to be "fun," has taken that to its logical conclusion and just thrown the spell out entirely.

I like the scare quotes around "fun," there.

Anyway, what you seem to be forgetting is that Wish had limitations even back in 1E. Aside from the express limitation of not being able to wish another creature dead, the rules encouraged the DM to screw over players who got too greedy by introducing unforseen consequences or interpreting the wording of the wish to give them something they didn't ask for. And since the definition of "too greedy" was left completely up to the DM, a player had no way of knowing ahead of time if what he was going to wish for would be deemed too greedy and result in his character getting permanently maimed, or something equally unpleasant.

Do you remember what some of the suggestions for acceptable wishes were? A player who was facing a werewolf and wished for a magic weapon to fight it with had a +1 sword appear in his hand, which would disappear after the fight was over. Wow. Now that's some power, there!

Simply put, Wish was never the ultimate spell that some people seem to think it was.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I'm not sad to see Wish go as a spell -- casting it several times a day is silly.

My genies will still have it, though.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Wow. Why so little love for Wish?

It's the full-caster's Falling Paladin. I'm sure that somewhere, someone has made it work, but every account I've ever seen has been an exercise in getting screwed.

I won't miss it.

 

[Wormwood]

My genies will still have it, though.

Agreed.

I'm certain that my devils will always have some sort of wish-granting ability.

But wish? Feh. Too limiting.

 

[Desdichado]

Is anybody sad there's no "wish"? The ultimate spell, the most powerful thing you can cast, the expression of supreme power that every wizard aspires to is... gone?

Sob.

Is anyone sad? You apparently.

But not me.