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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 281562" data-attributes="member: 5435">First of all, well said Edena! <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=":-)" />(Re: a list of suggested wishes)I would have allowed all these choices.  I think there's a fundamental difference of opinion here.In one camp, we have those who see wishes as merely advanced magical technology--any wizard with at least a 14 Int can eventually learn to cast them, after all, so wishes are just one of the powers that the wizard/sorcerer class is assumed to have access to at high levels.  From this perspective it is natural to place as many limits on it as possible.In the other camp (myself included) are those who see wishes as legendary gifts of great power.  If a player is expected to come across only one wish in their career, surely they should be allowed considerable leeway!  Even given that an archmage can cast wishes with impunity, I would be inclined to allow any wish seems to me less valuable than 5000 xp, and some that are more powerful... with the wish exacting whatever additional price seems appropriate.The main difference is this: are wishes under the DM's control or the player's control?  If access to wishes is under the DM's control anyway, then the DM need not worry that interesting uses of the spell will be abused.Even if they eventually come under the player's control, the DM could as I said exact an extra cost for the beefy wishes.  If the players complain about the double standard, simply explain that the wish granted them by the Djinni Sultan was semi-divine and capable of a much wider array of effects than their own spells.  Or simply introduce the concept of an "Epic Wish" which is entirely under your control and can grant boons that break the normal rules for that character.Regarding the more specific examples, I again claim that all of these are well within the power of even a normal wish.  A wish is supposed to be able to duplicate any arcane spell of lower level, right?  Therefore it can duplicate the Permanency spell.  Casting a Permanent Comprehend Languages on a player (for an extra 500xp, 7 spell levels total cast) seems eminently reasonable.  Many, many feats are less powerful than a permanent first-level spell.  What if the player wished to be a superb linguist, and the wish made Speak Language a class skill for them?  It's hardly a gamebreaker.So, to those of you who say "No, it's beyond the power of a wish", maybe you fear setting a precendent that can be abused?  It's better, I think, to grant all balanced wishes to the player and exact a hefty price for those that seem unbalanced.  When granting wishes, keep in mind:a) That wishes generally use whatever means expends the least magical power.b) Screwing with the wish usually requires more power than giving the character what they want.This includes things like retroactively rearranging their class levels, transforming the character into something grossly different, or banishing the character to an alternate reality/distant time.c) If a wish requires marginally more power than seems to be available to a 9th level spell, then exact an extra cost.  Why not, after all--the wish nominally sucks away 5000 xp but there's no reason that it couldn't suck away a little more!d) If a wish requires vastly more power than a 9th level spell, it's better for it to have a partial or temporary effect than to just have it fail. Nothing depresses a player more than having wasted a wish!To my mind, wishing for a hammer of thunderbolts, for example, requires the wish to expend something like a souped-up Discern Location and teleport effect which is really pushing the envelope.  If the Hammer is an attended item, it can't be teleported--so the playermight just be sent to it and its wielder.  Or more likely they'll just receive a quite accurate vision of where to find the hammer.If they wish for something more interesting, like the power of flight, then a permanent flight spell is borderline, but still would require less power than finding an appropriate magic item and giving it to them.  Rather, hit them with a polymorph any object spell, which will have permanent duration anyway if the change is just to grant wings to the character. Why not transform them into a sparrow?  Because this does more than what the character asked for, and because a more complete transformation would require more magic to be expended.Of couse, the "Monkey's Paw" wish can be a fun plot device too... but that's a pretty cruel trick!--Ben</blockquote>

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