How common were wishes in AD&D1?

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I think in 25 years of gaming I've seen a wish used once. As a player, I was too scared of being screwed by the DM to use a wish; as a DM, I was either to stingy, or too obviously planning to screw up a player's wish to actually use them.

Used up rings of three wishes make for great treasure, though.


Speaking of wishes, there's a great Larry Niven fantasy short story called "The Wishing Game" about a Djinni and his wishes ... and the whole point of the wishing game is to leave the wisher with exactly what he wished for but much worse off. Great reading if you plan to use wishes. It's anthologized in Playgrounds of the Mind, but it might be in other sources, too.

 

[Lanefan]

In the game as written, they're certainly intended to be somewhat available...for a cost, or by excellent luck...if only to help undo the various "only a wish can fix this" effects.

What I do as DM sometimes is have a character "pick up" a wish without knowing it, either carried or bestowed by some item, or as a wild magic effect, whatever. Then, I quietly pay very careful attention to what that player/character says from there on, and if the words "I wish..." ever come out, the next words that follow happen, for better or worse...

I also have them available to be cast (for a large cost and sometimes a long wait); my PCs these days are getting wealthy enough that the wait is becoming a bigger nuisance than the cost, particularly since one of their main sources for such things just died...

But I think only three or four times in my current campaign has a party found or been granted a wish in the field and used it knowing what it was; the most recent occurrence being last Saturday. (and the first such being in early 1996...)

Lanefan

 

[T. Foster]

I think in OD&D (for which the G and D series were written), wishes were in general much more common than they are in AD&D.

OD&D Fun Fact for the day: in a random treasure rolled using the magic item tables in OD&D vol. II, you're actually more likely to get an item containing wishes (either a Ring of Three Wishes, Ring of Many Wishes (4-24), or Sword +1, Wishes Included (2-8 Wishes)) than you are to get a Potion of Healing!

 

[MerricB]

OD&D Fun Fact for the day: in a random treasure rolled using the magic item tables in OD&D vol. II, you're actually more likely to get an item containing wishes (either a Ring of Three Wishes, Ring of Many Wishes (4-24), or Sword +1, Wishes Included (2-8 Wishes)) than you are to get a Potion of Healing!

Cool. That's great.

Cheers!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

We seemed to find a wish or three in just about every campaign we played in. Pinpointing them is a little tough, although one good story comes to mind:

We had a (1st edition) bard in the party who we presumed could probably figure out magic items powers via his bard-ly abilities, so it was standard to ask him what stuff did.

He'd take the other players magic item when offered, say "I wish for eternal happiness" and then hand it back and say, "Well, it isn't that."

Until it was.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

OD&D Fun Fact for the day: in a random treasure rolled using the magic item tables in OD&D vol. II, you're actually more likely to get an item containing wishes (either a Ring of Three Wishes, Ring of Many Wishes (4-24), or Sword +1, Wishes Included (2-8 Wishes)) than you are to get a Potion of Healing!

And now we finally learn the real reason diaglo prefers OD&D!

 

[tx7321]

IMO Tough to DM (whats the limit, and should the outcome be favorable, how imp. is the wording going to be etc.), and risky to use as a player (whats the DM going to do). I've seen wishes used maybe a dozen times since I started playing. And its always one of those things that stops the flow of the game as they were so rare.
I had no idea wishes were common in D&D. Were they weaker?

 

[heirodule]

See! And now everybody mocks the idea of savepoints in D&D.

But they were always there!

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I saw a few back in the day, but never an MU who could cast one. An amusing story: At one time in a campaign there seemed to be a reasonable chance that we might get a Wish. (From a Djinn, I think.) So one of the players wrote out a wish - 3 or 4 pages long in legalese - and announced that his charactecter was carrying a copy just in case. As it was a party helpful wish the rest of us were all for it. Comes the time and we're granted a wish by the (Djinn) and the player pulls out the sheaf of papers and hands it to the GM, who'd forgotten about it. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but couldn't find a way to screw us out of it without obviously cheating, so we actually got it as stated. (Not that it was a game breaker anyway, we didn't want to ruin our fun, but the GM was so looking forward to twisting it to scew us over!)

 

[Zendragon]

wishes were not too common in my campaign. Each wish was granted by a higher power, either good or evil. Sometimes the evil ones would require a favor or some kind of repayment. I remember a character who got 1 wish granted around 6th level and never used it. Retired as 19th level Ranger.