The Wish Clause(TM)

[Thalantor]

I've seen this piece of text sparsely over the last few years, but always lost it as if the very existence of it defies the will of a thousand combined DM's.

What I'm talking about is a large piece of text or document - made up by some English Prof's as it seems - that can be put in front of any Wish cast thus making it, by its wording, virtually impossible for a DM to screw a player casting a Wish over if he was so inclined.

The last time I saw it, it was in a post about a player asking for a pair of white dragon arms almost a year ago.

Now, i call myself pretty competent in my Google Skills, but i just can''t seem to find it for the life of me.

Can any of you help? I'd be most thankful.

 

[jasper]

YOU want an untwisted WISH. Then DON'T be Greedy.
The longer and more verbage you make a WISH. The more a DM must twist it.
ex of good wishes from the same guy
I wish the ranger was alive. Boom Done. This after everyone either was killed, negs or single digits in a combat.
I wish that combat didn't happen. Rewind to last room. This after a bad combat, and stupid decisions on most of players. They paniced.



Ex of bad wish same game different player. He wrote it out.
I wish I had the dragon hoard, the dragon dead, that no relatives of the dragon know and would take revenge, that I will be renegerate etc etc and still play a pc.
I said choose one otherwise it wouldn't work. He complained that a wish is all powerful just look all the stories. (hmm most of stories don't have the hero being SUPER GREEDY).
So I made him say out loud.
He need a potty break. Read wanted to practice.
He came back. Took him ninety seconds. oops. I rule he became the supreme god of the plane. Created his own plane with him a copy of my material plane with him. Then decide since he was in charge I couldn't dm since he could over rule me. And most of the other players decide their characters on his plane would kill themselves. He forbit that. They look at him and said they would gladly give him copies of their pcs if he would pay for photocopy and tell them how it turn out. (in other words go play with yourself jerk).
He decided that he needed tap back and ask for some armour and an free death with no penalities.

Depending on how greedy a player gets is how twisted I get. Regardless of the edition.

 

[Thalantor]

Yup

And I completely agree with you on this. Just wanted to clear up that that wasn't the reason I wanted to find that clause. (I am a DM myself.) It's just that I remember it being hilarious, and thus wanted to find it again.

 

[Tsyr]

Not quite the same thing, but whenever I've managed to get a <ITEM> of 3 Wishes (All of 2 or 3 times in my life) I always make the first wish "I wish that this wish, and all further wishes made by me, are interperated as I intend, not as I say". It's probably got several loopholes, but it works against my DM...

 

[Umbran]

If it works against your DM, fine. But I can see one massive loophole there.

If you say the wish is supposed to "work as I intend, not as I say", that opens the door for the DM to ignore your words entirely. He may look at your intents as of late, and use that instead of your words. Did you intend to eat dinner, but haven't gotten around to it? *POOF!* You've now eaten dinner.

I'm not one to go out of my way to hose wish-makers. But trying to sleaze out of the small danger I do pose is asking for trouble. Make your wish clean and simple and within the power of the spell, and you're fine. Make it clean and simple, and just outside the power of the spell, and you'll get close to what you want. Being an egregious wise-acre to try to avoid any danger from meddling with powers beyond your puny mortal comprehesion, and you are painting a target on your forehead

 

[Thalantor]

I wish..

I wish for a bump.

*Bump*

Wow, it works!


Come on peeps, help this poor feller out. Pwease?

 

[Mark]

Bump

You now have used two wishes...

Can't help. I've heard of this, and believe I have seen it sometime back, but I do not recall where. IIRC, it was worded in such a way that it negated any good it could do by being overly-elaborate. Maybe it's not the same one...

 

[jonesy]

What I'm talking about is a large piece of text or document - made up by some English Prof's as it seems - that can be put in front of any Wish cast thus making it, by its wording, virtually impossible for a DM to screw a player casting a Wish over if he was so inclined.

Something like that wouldn't work for our gaming group. We have
the wish spell houseruled so that following the 'I wish that' you
can only add max 5 words to the sentence.

 

[Sixchan]

This reminds me of a game I used to play.

Some years back, when I had my group over, but we weren't playing D&D, we'd play the 'wish game'. What would happen is that the first person would make a wish, then the next person would twist the words of the wish to kill (or effectively kill, such as causing imprisonment) the whisher. Then the person could either make another wish, or lengthen the last wish in an attempt to make it untwistable.

For example:
John: "I wish for a million Gold Pieces!"
David: "Your wish is granted. Suddenly, a million gold pieces appear above your head, and crush you for 1 hitpoint of damage each. You Are Dead."
"I wish I had a million gold pieces right in front of me!"
Scott: "Okay. One Million gold pieces is a lot of coinage, and unfortunately, the coins at the bottom of the pile can't support the ones at the top. All the pieces slide down into you, drowning you in currency. You Are Dead."
"I wish...I had a harem with more women than I could count."

And so on.

I was lots of fun, and made for some spectacular deaths.

 

[der_kluge]

Easy - then you give the NPC with the 8 Wis the wish, and have him stand in a field and wish for a million gold pieces. Then, the rest of the party reaps the rewards!