D&D 5E Paladin: watcha up to citizen who is on parole? Lore Master Wizard: Pain and mischief. Paladin: oh dear sweet Pelor no!

[Son of the Serpent]

So. Say its a given that the lore master wiz has wish and obviously that loremaster ability gained at level 14 a while back that (upon getting 9th level spells) essentially surpasses wish. And also has detect thoughts, encode thoughts, and a number of other thought and conjuration related spells. Taking alllll this into consideration what are the limits on acquiring knowledge including but not limited to what could be gained by wishing for it or using the 14th level arcane tradition feature that exceeds the limitation of wish in many ways? What is the limit of woshing for knowledge? What is the limit of uaing the arcane tradition feature for the same? What would be required spell-wise to set up a magical chain of effects that starts just granting wishes of the various people in the region in a randomized fashion (every day thousands of people make wishes without expecting them to be granted). Imagine the chaos. So many people would die. Economies would roll on their back if random people kept getting wishes granted (many contradicting other people's recently granted wishes). If this couod be accomplished nations would fall and millions would starve or die of sickness just due to the infrastructural chaos. Help me out en. Its for a good cause.

 

[TrueBagelMan]

Bagel

 

[Eltab]

What happens next to the Loremaster will be similar to the page from Marvel's original Secret Wars comic just after Dr. Doom subsumed the energy that Galactus was going to gain by "eating" his own homeworld-sized spaceship:
"All things conform to the will of Doom! I must discipline my mind lest chaos reign!"
Doom then succeeds on a Will check. Does the Loremaster? If not, his head will explode (maybe not just figuratively) because he suddenly knows everything.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

What happens next to the Loremaster will be similar to the page from Marvel's original Secret Wars comic just after Dr. Doom subsumed the energy that Galactus was going to gain by "eating" his own homeworld-sized spaceship:
"All things conform to the will of Doom! I must discipline my mind lest chaos reign!"
Doom then succeeds on a Will check. Does the Loremaster? If not, his head will explode (maybe not just figuratively) because he suddenly knows everything.

Well obviously the conceptual limit of knowledge acquisition is "omniscience" but thata not necessarily achievable and im wondering what the limit is according to what could actually be acheived with the resources ive described the loremaster having.

 

[MarkB]

Well, the limitation on wishing for more knowledge is that it's a non spell duplication usage of Wish, so every time you do it there's a 33% chance of you losing Wish forever. It's questionable whether Mastery of Magic would overcome this, but I'd tend to think not - the wording of the spell is pretty clear.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Well, the limitation on wishing for more knowledge is that it's a non spell duplication usage of Wish, so every time you do it there's a 33% chance of you losing Wish forever. It's questionable whether Mastery of Magic would overcome this, but I'd tend to think not - the wording of the spell is pretty clear.

Im not so sure that it is something that would require non spell dup wishes. Or at least not many.

One might assume that you probably could use some complex combination of wishes that use the spell dup function (and even more so mastery of magic) to arrive at a composite effect.

Like instead of wishing for knowledge you wish for a bunch of things in combination which would end up resulting in continually acquiring it.

I feel like there might be a way. Especially with master of magic.

 

[MarkB]

There's always the old Chain Simulacrum trick, in which you create a Simulacrum, which in turn creates a Simulacrum of itself, repeat ad infinitum until you get bored or die, each Simulacrum being commanded to be loyal to you, the original. It requires 12 hours per Sim, and they can't regain spell slots, so each one is only ever capable of casting one Wish, but if you just quietly keep at it for a year or so, you can wind up with hundreds of Sims all ready to unleash their Wishes on command - and since it's them casting the spell and not you, you don't need to worry about those pesky penalties for casting non-spell-duplication Wishes.

Spend the intervening time using illusion and/or divination magic to spy upon people praying in various temples and making careful notes, and you could build up a comprehensive list of all the most selfish things that people are praying for - then go ahead and grant them their Wishes once you're fully prepared.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

There's always the old Chain Simulacrum trick, in which you create a Simulacrum, which in turn creates a Simulacrum of itself, repeat ad infinitum until you get bored or die, each Simulacrum being commanded to be loyal to you, the original. It requires 12 hours per Sim, and they can't regain spell slots, so each one is only ever capable of casting one Wish, but if you just quietly keep at it for a year or so, you can wind up with hundreds of Sims all ready to unleash their Wishes on command - and since it's them casting the spell and not you, you don't need to worry about those pesky penalties for casting non-spell-duplication Wishes.

Spend the intervening time using illusion and/or divination magic to spy upon people praying in various temples and making careful notes, and you could build up a comprehensive list of all the most selfish things that people are praying for - then go ahead and grant them their Wishes once you're fully prepared.

I like this.

But i thought in 5e the Sims have literally no spells slots at all? Not just an inability to regain them. If they do get generated with a number of spells they can use (psuedo one use slots) how many of them do they get? Why would they only be able to create 1 wish a piece?

 

[jgsugden]

Using 3rd party materials comes with greater balance risks.

As for using magic to obtain knowledge - there are few limits, and there really should not be when you're talking about the highest tiers of magic. High level PCs have powerful magic. They can do amazing things. There are spells specifically designed to gather information. PCs should be able to use these magics to solve problems.

Why don't they use these magics to solve all the world's problems? There are not a lot of high level spellcasters capable ofthese magics, and the ones that exist tend to have a lot of things to keep them busy. Or, may just not want to bother solving problems for someone else - many that achieve these powers are selfish.

 

[MarkB]

I like this.

But i thought in 5e the Sims have literally no spells slots at all? Not just an inability to regain them. If they do get generated with a number of spells they can use (psuedo one use slots) how many of them do they get? Why would they only be able to create 1 wish a piece?

The Simulacrum has half the original's hit points, but otherwise has exactly the same game statistics, including spell slots. However, it cannot regain any spell slots that it expends. Since no character ever has more than a single 9th-level spell slot, they can each cast only one 9th-level spell, ever.

Note that the halved Hit Points thing may impose a technical limitation upon this trick since after a half-dozen or so 'generations' the created Sim will have 1 hit point, and a DM could reasonably rule that if a Sim with 1 hit point created another Sim, that Sim would have a hit point maximum of 0, and immediately die.