The Wish Clause(TM)

[Xeriar]

Originally posted by jasper
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).

Read Alladin, seriously. The way people talk about wish here it's hard to believe that story inspired it...

Though you can argue that the form Wish takes in 3e is actually a lesser form ("I am a genie of the ring, not of the Lamp.")

 

[Umbran]

Re: This is silly!

But what's within the power of a wish? Ah, there's the rub!

It's pretty reasonably outlined in the spell description. A rational DM can figure it out.

Dealing with DMs who don't bother to read or stick to the spell description, or who house-rule it, are beyond the scope of this particular discussion.

In the end everything is in the hands of the DM. He can twist your wish, sure. But he can also claim your character just ate botulism-tainted stew, and died during the night.

 

[Drakron]

Read Alladin, seriously. The way people talk about wish here it's hard to believe that story inspired it...

Though you can argue that the form Wish takes in 3e is actually a lesser form ("I am a genie of the ring, not of the Lamp.")

You mean 1001 nights ... I belive the original versions are quite ... "adult" in nature.

Anyway, there is a diference, he was asking a genie for wishes ... not casting the spell wish and hoping that its granted.

Also you will notice that are several type of genies, some are quite evil and those would love to twist a wish so to screw over who asked him.

 

[nharwell]

From my gaming experience, I've learned to simply politely refuse any time a gamemaster offers one of my characters a wish. 90% of the time, the GM is "gunning" for the player. It's impossible to word a wish so that the GM can't twist it. And, as someone mentioned above, what's considered "greedy" is completely GM-dependent.

To be honest, the only gamemasters I've ever had who'd I trust using a wish in their games would never give me one, except as some sort of plot device. And that's the way I treat it in my games as well.

 

[Fade]

A sensible wizard powerful enough to cast Wish would spend a year or two carefully creating an artificial language that contains no ambiguity whatsoever. With INT 20+ you should be able to do this, and since no-one will ever use it (except when he casts the spell) ambiguities and double-meanings will not creap in.