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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 3885524" data-attributes="member: 29398">Fair enough, and you're right: peoples' imagination-limits differ.  That said, I guess my limits are more based in real-world physics (if you're sinking in lava you're gonna burn to a crisp regardless of your h.p. total) while magic (expressed here by the Wish spell) opens up the boundless realms.  Thus, if someone cast a Wish that went "I wish I could swim in that lava like it was warm water" and then dove in, I'd have no problem with that whatsoever.  I would, however, have a problem if they expected to survive without taking such precautions. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />To an extent, this is true; but I think I'm willing to accept a bit more imbalance than the 3e-4e design norm provided people are generally having fun.Perhaps; though if the encounter *is* too weak or too overpowering I don't really care very much.  They'll smoke the weak encounter and go looking for something else, and they'll either run away from the overpowering encounter or die.  All I need to do is make sure that (most of the time) there's an escape avenue from the overpowering ones.Odd that this should come up now, as I've just finished writing a module for 1e that we're playtesting this week; and it has some encounters that are relative pushovers, and others that are the sort of thing that if you're not thinking, you'll die (and a few that even if you are thinking, you might die; this *is* old-school gaming, after all).  I wrote the module with no idea what sort of party would play it each time; that's not something I have much control over in any case.  But as the writer I've also no clue what sort of outlandish ideas the players will come up with, either to make things easier for themselves or harder.Other than wish, which I think *should* be able to do some very impressive things, all the spells you mention were broken by design flaws where they're broken at all.  Polymorph was broken by giving it "touch" range; it  should only be castable on self.  Shapechange isn't a problem provided all you can change into are normal non-magical animals.  Summoning spells got wrecked by taking away the random element; it's hard to maximize your monsters when you don't know what'll show up, or how many.  Animate dead is an excellent spell that never gets cast enough because of the whole "evil" stigma it carries...which of course makes it primo for the enemies to use!  And so on.That said, I'd prefer to see Wish as a spell be something that is higher level than the PCs can cast in the field.  If spells in 4e go to 30th level, make Wish 31st...but don't ditch it entirely. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lanefan</blockquote>

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