using wish against the party - what does a dm wish for?

[carborundum]

Antimagic is another one I was thinking of too - is it big enough to foil immediate/ contingent featherfalls? It's not that rat-bastich at all, I like it

A half-fiend dino would fit beautifully since they're on the Isle of Dread (my Savage Tide campaign has taken another sidetrek) - and a half-dragon pterodactyl or quetzalcoatluswould be a nice surprise too.Hmmm - might stat that up just for kicks, using one of the Pathfinder "Oriental" dragons from Bestiary 3 as a base. A wish gone wrong would be amusing - the party cast a pile of buffs and the cultist wishes for invulnerability to his enemies, promptly turning into a boulder. The glabrezu teleports away. The end. Added bonus - it gives the party incentive and precedent to be careful when they start their own wishes -)

Frank - it's weird you should say that. This (elite, advanced) Glabrezu Blackguard 3 Barbarian 1 calls himself the Blood Tempest and has Horrid Wilting instead of Reverse Gravity. That's just spooky.

The continuous true seeing is only within 120 feet though (I think) and the party are still at 300 foot range. The invisible, greater-blink snipers have peeled off more than 60 feet from the main contingent of the party. They'll get their own surprise if the true seeing comes into play. Muhahaha!


Great ideas here - I love it!

 

[frankthedm]

But what really makes this wish unique is that it's a DM's wish. A DM doesn't need to wish for a half-fiend, some demons, or a horrid wilting.

The NPC should be using the same rules for the wish they receive as the wish a PC receives. Wish has specific capabilities in the ruleset. Its not a blank check. The ability is not "Once per month, a glabrezu can create DM's Fiat for a mortal humanoid." It is one wish.

 

[Rhun]

The NPC should be using the same rules for the wish they receive as the wish a PC receives. Wish has specific capabilities in the ruleset. Its not a blank check. The ability is not "Once per month, a glabrezu can create DM's Fiat for a mortal humanoid." It is one wish.

I really wish (pun intended) that they'd get rid of the name Wish for the spell. I think it leads to confusion. "Alter Reality" is a much better name for the spell.

 

[Noumenon]

Wish has specific capabilities in the ruleset.

However, I don't think the spell should be just a better version of shadow conjuration either. A lot of the wishes I described (like "I wish I could be at the portal opening ceremony instead of here") could be implemented in terms of the legal restrictions on the spell (in this case, teleport), but they need to be flavored in terms of "I want the universe to give me my heart's request," or it doesn't feel like a wish.

Also, the universe of all possible spells is so big that it's hard to know what you can and cannot do. I would phrase the wish as I did as a starting point, and then go searching for spells that do similar things. Like "I wish the enemies believed in Grpltrgzrk like I do" could be an effect something like geas, mass dominate person (if that's a spell, I don't know, that's my point), mass charm monster. But again, it has to come with some kind of twisted or extra effect or you've taken an interesting 9th level spell and directly converted it into a boring 6th level spell. Especially for a DM who can just say "Bam! One of the cultists is now a cleric who knows geas", there's no point in that.

 

[Shin Okada]

The NPC should be using the same rules for the wish they receive as the wish a PC receives. Wish has specific capabilities in the ruleset. Its not a blank check. The ability is not "Once per month, a glabrezu can create DM's Fiat for a mortal humanoid." It is one wish.

Yes, but it also says

You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

And PHB version of the spell description is longer and has more suggestion and example about this.

IMHO, the cultist wishes something too great and meeting terrible end will be far much interesting than the Wish simply copying a L8 spell.

Maybe, instead of a powerful demon, he could be turned into a strong yet dumb and ugly monster.

As long as the result makes a reasonable challenge and the DM gives appropriate XPs for overcoming it, almost anything will be OK.


How about letting him wish for "Magical power strong enough to defeat my foes." and turning him into some Living Spell?

 

[Grogg of the North]

It seems that the demon is granting this wish so that the cultist can repel the adventurers. So wishing for powerful allies or the strength to overcome the adventurers seems like a good story wish.

If he wishes them away, I'd say a large vortex of eldritch energy opens; sucking all things into it. The party is sent to a random plane. The DMG has a nice table for that. Now, the party has to find a way back to the prime. But the wish has lasting effects and all planar magic misfires for them. Plane shift, even with the tuning forks, sends them to a different plane than intended. Even trying to travel by the plane of shadow or the astral plane is risky. The party's goal is to now get home and have this "curse" removed from them.

When they eventually do return to the prime, they discover that the wish was poorly worded and that the vortex never closed. It is now slowly consuming the entire prime material plane and its up to them to close the portal. Perhaps the only way to do this is to find the same demon that granted the first wish and have him grant the adventure's a wish to close the vortex and restore the prime.

 

[carborundum]

LOL - that might be fun! I could break out the Manual of the Planes and some old Planescape stuff, and hit them with all sorts of weirdness

Good preparation for the planar part of the campaign at level 16 or so. Hmmmmmmmm, bears more thinking about ...