Wish question

[Patlin]

I don't recall, but I'm sure most of my friends had read "The Monkey's Paw."

 

[ARandomGod]

My love affair with 1e wishes (I mostly skipped 2e) ended abruptly when the Dm read over my carefully phrased wish, decided he couldn't twist it but couldn't grant it, and then had the ring explode taking my finger with it.
...
The general gist of things was that I wanted to summon the enemies of the cult we were fighting to the final battle, so that they would help us destroy them. Problem was I thought the cult was a newish thing, while in reality it had been in existence for thousands of years. They had made enemies of huge numbers of beings, including some gods, and the DM said they wouldn't even fit in the available space.

See, that sounds like a perfectly valid twisting of the wish right there. The GM could either have a number of enemies appear that would fill the available space, lowest level enemies first, and have the party need to hold their breath while attempting to get out of the suffocating crush... or he could have the enemies appear in groups over time. The enemies could be puzzled, helpful, angry, (Angry GODS), embarrased, asleep, long since dead and turned into powerful undead who, while still holding enimity also incidentally want your soul/life essence... etc.

He could also simply summon them to the final battle, which isn't going to happen for several years yet.

Can't twist that wish indeed. He just didn't try hard enough. And having the ring explode>? Unfair play.

 

[Patlin]

Can't twist that wish indeed. He just didn't try hard enough. And having the ring explode>? Unfair play.

When I said the "general gist" I meant it wasn't the exact language. The game was more than 17 years ago, and the wish exceedingly carefully crafted. It contained phrases about "appearing immediately" and "attacking with their most effective attack." I'm not going to be able to recreate it precicely, and I would ask you to take on faith that the DM was generally an excellent twister of words and that I went to extraordinary effort to craft a wish that was difficult to twist. He might still have succeeded eventually, but I was one of 8 players and I was holding up the climatic battle of the campaign for everybody. I did think it was unfair, but he definitely had some valid reasons for what he did.

And the DM did mention an Archmage in the middle of using the privvy....

 

[Fieari]

I like the cavat in the 3.x wording of Wish that says that if you can't twist the words of an abusive request, you can simply make it a partial fufilment instead, no twisting required. But yeah, the list of safe Wishes is awesome, and I'm glad it was included.

 

[KarinsDad]

I did think it was unfair, but he definitely had some valid reasons for what he did.

Yeah, he didn't want to ruin his well crafted scenario. I hate when DMs do that.