Wishing for racial abilities

[Arravis]

It's simple...

it's simple... it takes a Spell Craft check to guess at the negatives. Now, a simple one time Spell Craft check might let you know that it's risky and it might have side-effects due to the ammount of anti-magic power required. It might take months or years of research to know all the consequences.

People tend to forget that wizards sit in libraries doing research for a reason. Again, look over the histories of your local gaming world. It's chuck-full of mages spending years researching before delving into extremely powerful magics. That isn't because they are unintelligent or just lazy, real research takes time, otherwise you ARE taking a risk. Players tend to be fast and furious, but with that comes a penalty. Nothing wrong with that, and it's one of the reasons they are a hero, but it does have a drawback.

-Arravis

 

[Arravis]

odd

for some reason, my post doesn't show on the main page

 

[Artoomis]

Nice note, Arravis, very nice way of looking at it.

 

[Arravis]

well...

It's for myself as much as anyone else. I'm just as guilty of forgetting that as are other players. There ARE sometimes unforseen consequences to magic. The spells don't always work as intended. I think this should be especially common of a newly researched spell or unusual wishes. It might take a few years to work out all the kinks out of that neat new spell you developed. Who knows how many years Fireball spent in development... or even better... the spell itself was an accident. Perhaps the guy who developed Fireball only wanted a fire big enough to blaze up his fireplace and got a bit more then he expected, lol. I do think the unexpected consequences should be 50/50, some good, some bad. They shouldn't always be bad either.

Unfortunately as a DM it's easy to fall into an adverserial role with your party, even if it's small and inoquous, it can still be bad.

 

[kreynolds]

Re: well...

Unfortunately as a DM it's easy to fall into an adverserial role with your party, even if it's small and inoquous, it can still be bad.

That's what I was saying. Your player's are half the game. Sometimes they get miffed, it happens. But sometimes, a DM can make a really bone-headed decision that just pisses them off.

 

[Noldor Elf]

Monkey's Paw Rule. When players get wishes, the gamemaster will make every attempt to pervert the wording of the wish into something harmful (usually by interpreting the wish as literally as possible). Legendarily true in D&D games. This often leads to players taking several minutes (and multiple breaths) to recite a once-simple wish, in order to close every possible loophole that could screw them. (Example: "I wish for a Girdle Of Storm Giant Strength that doesn't have a storm giant or anything else already in it and that doesn't already belong to someone else and that isn't cursed and that I will receive immediately and that will remain in my possession and not just vanish or disintegrate or whatever [inhale] and that..." ad nauseum.)

Is this really what wishes should sound like?

 

[Arravis]

Well...

Personally, I don't follow the "monkey's paw" rule, nor do I try to "scew over" my players. If I think the Wish might be risky I warn them (ie; Spell Craft check). I see Wish as having a finite amount of magic available to it, and that magic tries it's best to fulfil it's requirements. Sometimes though, the player will try to fill a 3 gallon jug with only 2 gallons of water... and 2 gallons of water will never fill the jug, but.. it tries it's best. IE, if you wish for the ability to detect all spell casting within 100 miles of you. Well, one wish isn't enough... there simply isn't enough magic... so it's able to only do it once a day... or perhaps it only detects spell casting within a 1 mile of you, or some other limitation. It unmaliciously tries to fulfil the requirements, but sometimes, it just can't.

Magic is the raw energy of the unviverse, it's inherently unpredictable. How the magic will adapt to try to meet your requirements can be interesting, wonderful or harmful. Ussually, just interesting . That's the way I see it.

I have no intention of trying to cheat the player of his hard earned XP, and I have no idea why you guys would think so, according to everything I've said. Magic IS risky, guys, thing's don't always work like you expect. That doesn't mean that the results won't always be bad, just means that there IS an inherent level of risk. And the more you ask of a wish the more you risk. It WILL try to do the best it can.. but things happen. (ie: if you play in FR, then you know about Karsus... do you think that when he wrote that spell, he thought the end result would be his death?)

 

[Victim]

Wish is a 9th level spell. 9th level spells do powerful things, so always attempting to pervert the intent of the wish is pretty mean.

Persistent Spell Resistance is a 9th level spell. So wishing for Persistent spell resistance would be kind of like wishing for an extra 9th level slot. However, the wish SR probably wouldn't scale so that's a downside; not that there will be much scaling at the level required. I think an extra 9th level slot is out of the range of one wish, but 2 back to back castings should do it.

 

[Artoomis]

To add to Arravis' last remoark:

Some players try to put 4 gallons in a 3-gallon jug, too. It just doesn't fit - so the DM has to decide what to do.

To answer Victim:

From the spell itself:

The character may wish for greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. Such a wish gives the opportunity to fulfill the character's request without fulfilling it completely. (The wish may pervert the character's intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

For the sake of space, I did not re-produce the whole list of what the spell can do normally here.

A racial ability is pretty clearly not in the list included with the spell, so you take your chances when wishing for it.

 

[General Starlight]

I'm not sure why so many follow the monkey paw philosophy to Wishes. My best guess is it seems to happen a lot in literature, or at times when there's an actual malevolent entity involved, like the devil or an Efreeti granting the Wishes who would love to screw you over. But when speaking of the Wish spell, the universe itself is not so malevolent, but nor is it particularly benevolent either.

The problem to watch out for is the principle of the path of least resistance (POLR), to which the universe notoriously adheres. A Wish will likely do its best to fulfill one's desires in the shortest, quickest, easiest way possible.

However, it is not easy to affect other living, unwilling creatures with magic that reaches out like that. So it is darn unlikely, when Wishing for a Girdle Of Storm Giant Strength, for example, it would come complete with angry storm giant, and making provisions in the wording of the Wish to prevent that isn't really required. Nor would most of the other wording in that example.

A near by grave or tomb, however, if it had such an item buried there that wasn't also magically guarded, would have little problem being whisked to the caster (perhaps with a dead body in it, but even that requires more work to move the extra mass, so probably not). The less the item is used or known about, the less it falls under the control of another. A long lost magic item would come probably sooner than one in your neighbor's attic trunk, even if they hadn't used it in years (due to stronger, more recent psyche residue). The sea floor is a great place for a Wish to pick up lost items no one has great claim over. It's hard for a Wish to interfere with the unwilling living, and some would say basically unfair. Fair or not really isn't the issue, IMHO, so much as it's so much easier for the Wish to avoid living creatures who might get a saving throw and screw it all over. Thus, lost, unowned, unguarded items are far easier to get and will always be tried first (POLR).

Other than that, the basic idea that Wishes are risky is valid enough, and the more you ask for, the more likely it won't work out so well. 'Greed Kills' seems almost a law of the universe, and the DM should give it a hand when the unreasonable is Wished for.

2 gallons of water in a 3 gallon container, make it snow. 4 gallons? Make a temporary extra dimensional pocket, like a rope trick (it's in there). There are always ways. Anyway, I think it's better if the DM just helped their players rather than try to screw them over. It was the DM who allowed them to get a Wish in the first place. If he didn't want them to have it, he shouldn't have given it to them

Jim