How Come There Is No "Wish" Spell?

[Drammattex]

Okay. So... what does the genie's ability look like?

Short of actually statting it out...

I might rule that a freed genie is bound to grant three wishes to the creature that freed it. The genie would also be bound to warn the receiver that the greater his ambition/greed, the lesser would be his happiness upon receiving his wish (hence the old addage "Be careful what you wish for; it just might come true").

If the character wished for material wealth or magic items - perhaps amounting to one level greater than a standard character of his level - no biggie. Wish granted.

But the greedier one's wishes (i.e. the more the player pushes the DM into giving his character unreasonable and game-breaking stuff), the freer the genie is to twist the wish into conditions that the character would be unahppy with... no matter how well he words it.

This treats wish as a boon granted by the genie as appreciation for his freedom.

Another way to work it, and the way I'd probably use, is to treat the wish like a prophecy. As in, in most cases, it's not instant. Or perhaps just in the BIG wishes a character makes.

For example, if a character says "I want to be king," the genie says "Your wish is granted." Now the character is "on the road" to becoming king. All it is is a story seed for the DM to work around and move the character in that direction. If the character dies along the way, that just shows that reality is flexible and subject to change... or perhaps the character will be remembered as a king of his kind. Similarly, if a character said "I want to defeat so-and-so in battle," then the DM can work up a story where such a thing may occur or may appear to occur.

I like wish this way because it literally allows anything to happen, and isn't limited by a certain set of mechanics. The DM and players are free to work around it as a cool story idea.

Anyhow, short of creating mechanics for it, those are some ways I might work the genie's ability. But I would add that it would be a very rare occurence that I left bottles with trapped genies lying around for the players to pick up.

 

[Mostlyjoe]

Wish is just so badly abused. Too cheep a buff for little exp. Too cheep a plot buster. Wish should be an artifact or a 1 time gift from a god. Not something Epic level casters can bandy about.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

IMO this is a good change. A "wish" spell that PCs could regularly cast didn't belong in the game. It made wishes to mundane, and too predicable. Same goes for clerical miracles.

Wishes themselves need to be in the game, as strange, unruly magicks that PCs might encounter in more powerful beings, or artifact magic items. Those wishes should be left for the DM to adjudicate, and shouldn't be limited by mere game mechanics -- as D&D wishes were in the old days.

 

[Imp]

I agree with the prevailing wisdom here as I see it, that wish effects are good for fantasy games, but they shouldn't be the sort of things even an archmage can do daily. I also agree that a top-level "anyspell" effect would be a good thing to have (to the extent that it fits 4e's magic system – who knows) and I also very much like JohnSnow's "geas an outsider" concept. Good stuff.

 

[Klaus]

Okay. So... what does the genie's ability look like?

Maybe like so:

Grant Wish - In return for a service rendered (such as freeing the genie from imprisonment in a lamp), a genie may grant the nongenie 1 to 3 wishes. The wishes can theoritically be of anything, but the greater the ambition, the higher the cost it eventually taxes of the nongenie, storywise. A wish for a reasonable ammount of treasure (as much as is compatible with the genie's level) shouldn't come with any strings attached. But a wish for "phenomenal cosmic power" should severely hinder the character (like, for instance, turning him into a genie and imprisoning him inside his own lamp).

 

[CleverNickName]

I removed wish and its kin (limited wish, miracle, rings of 3 wishes, etc.) from my games a long time ago. It wasn't because I felt they were too difficult to balance; it was because I wanted them to be extremely rare and dangerous things.

My games tend to lean toward the gothic horror end of the spectrum. Thus, if a character were granted a wish, the story would turn out more like "The Monkey's Paw" and less like "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp."

But that's just my table.

 

[Thundershield]

If there is one thing you can easily houserule in, it's the wish spell. It's defined by having no rules.

Had to quote this simply for the truth of it.

Wish was, in all its incarnations, a plot device. It was, granted, a dangerous plot device as it could be in the hands of players and much as in the hands of GMs, but ultimately the effects of the spell were defined by what the GM could or could not permit within the context of the story, plot, and/or campaign.

Removing Wish as a "common spell" seems logical to me. No Wizard should be casting something "that embodies the ultimate expression of magical power" as casually as he whips up a Fly spell. However, by that I'm not saying I want Wish gone from my games.

No, if I - as a GM - feel that a Wish would be in place here, as a reward for the players for fulfilling some great prophecy or binding the magic of powerful leylines or somesuch legendary stuff, I'll lean over to the players and say: "As you look to the sky and you feel as if it is looking back at you, you know you may demand one wish and it will come true, for good or bad, to some or possibly its full extend."

Tadaa, instant plot device.

Wish isn't gone. If anything, it's gone back to its 2nd Edition version - unfettered by rules and free for the GM to implement as needed.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Good riddance.

I wish I had a million gold peices.
"A rain of molten gold descends on you, turning you to ash. Then it sinks into the ground and vanishes, along with any hope of you being ressurected."
I wish Bob were alive again.
"Bob wakes up as a 0-level commoner."
I wish we were teleported to a safe place.
"You're inside the king's wall safe, the safest place in the kingdom. Since it's only a 1' cube, though, you all die horribly."
I wish all the villagers were back.
"The villagers all rise from their graves as vampires."

And my personal favorite:
I wish I knew what this ring did.
*poof* "I used to be a Ring of 1 Wish."

Nice, and there was that one from an article in an old Dragon mag (said by an efreeti):


"So, you wish to raze all of your ability scores…?"

 

[Jhulae]

Well, at least that's the news, on the front page, with the following link

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3871371&postcount=25

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.

Oh noes! DnD r teh ruin!

Um.. None of *my* wizards aspired to get a spell that sucked 5k exp from them. That's the antithesis of gaining power, as it's the one spell sure to keep you at the same level if you keep casting it.

Not going to miss it, as it seemed to be used mostly for the stat boosts anyway which seem less necessary in 4th Edition.

 

[Lanefan]

Wish as a spell needs to be about 3 levels higher than any other spell in the game. That said, I'd like to see it remain as one of those spells that can be searched out and found if required (and at a staggering monetary cost). I don't want to see it as something PCs can cast on a relative whim; fortunately, none of my games have ever reached that kind of level.

'Course, any in-party abuse can easily enough be overcome by a simple meta-rule saying the same caster cannot cast one wish within a week/month/year of another.

I was not at all impressed with how 3e handled Wish. It should be the one spell that *can* do things other spells cannot do, if worded properly; 3e - as others have pointed out - made it into not much more than a 9th-level Anyspell. More balanced, perhaps, but...*yawn*... *Limited* Wish should be the Anyspell version; full Wish should be able to go way beyond those borders.

And of course if the PCs get too greedy or silly the DM is well within rights to impose some smackdown. I had to do this when a character (played by my SO, no less!) got a Wish from a device and decided to wish there was no evil in the world, or something similar. So, her PC got plane-shifted to his very-Goodly deity's home plane...

My favourites, though, are the Wishes - given by stray devices - the characters don't know they have until they randomly say "I wish xxx" sometime...and it comes out real! Always lots of fun...

Lanefan