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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bbjore" data-source="post: 6063193" data-attributes="member: 27539">This is one of the better uses of wish I've heard of in a long time. It makes wish not about a simple grab for more wealth or a generic desire to be awesome. It really speaks to the true desire of a character. If they hate another individual so much that they're willing to cast such an epic spell just to bring their foe equally epic misery, it says a lot about motivation.In this case, wish really becomes about fulfilling a wish, and less about metagame steps to help your PC become more awesome, or just make it easier to accomplish what you want.I think there's a lot to be said for splitting wish up into an "anyspell" spell, a fabrication type spell, and an actual Wish spell, for something a PC would actually wish for. What if the limiter was that wish would only work once for any individual when cast by the same person? I think if each PC only got one or two wishes throughout the entire campaign, the nature of what they wished for would change substantially.Wishing for gold or a single magic item would be rare, and unhindered by a lot of balance concerns, wishes could be more powerful and special. They'd be things like, "I wish that BBEG that's been pissing us off for the last 20 levels no longer had a face" (a wish one of my PCs would readily make), "I wish so and so's children, children's children, and so on, all die horrible and violent deaths until there is none of his line walk the earth" or "I wish my friend who has been banished to hell is free..." Those are wishes worthy of the name.For Wish is to be a Wish, it needs to be suitably epic, and I think giving each PC only a single wish would go a long way towards ensuring that it is only used for worthy requests. And if it isn't? Well then, that's a valuable lesson to all involved, and very true to the storytelling trope wish has held since it first found its way into humanity's stories. Imagine a young or inexperienced player having a PC finally learn wish, and then frivolously spending it on something like unimaginable wealth. Three levels later their PC has been murdered by their second in command, they're a lemure in Baator, and the other players at the table are all laughing and saying, "I bet you "wish" you still had your wish left so you could use it as a bargaining chip to convince one of us to wish you back." That's storytelling gold. On the other hand, I have a PC, who if he spent his wish to make sure his immortal and eternal foe no longer had a face (and hence no mouth to speak his lies). If that PC ended up as a lemure in Baator without a remaining wish. That lemure would grin and think, "wish well spent."</blockquote>

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