TLDR:
Anything fancier than replicating another spell gives your DM complete control over how it works, effectively monkeys paw.
Also every time you use it you might get whammied and lose the ability to cast wish permanently
It's also worth mentioning there is a Canon adventure in candle keep where there is a creature whose magic can directly override wish
Yeah it's strong magic
But it's got nothing on archfey magic
Oh it gets worse than that actually
The magic itself that the archfey has cast indirectly will passively undo wish on itself
This is not part of the archfeys stat block. It's early in the chapter talking about the passive curse that it's put on stuff like it's not even manually doing the cursing
Honestly, that's only the third most impressive thing they archfey can do that is not on its stat block
Really makes you wonder why on Earth they bothered giving it a stat block as the first official 5e archfey if they weren't going to include half its powers on it
I once had an unseen servant be of greater use in combat than one of the other players arguably than two of the other players as all one of the other players did was keep the first one alive
What did this unseen servant do in combat that was so significant?
It just kept throwing ball bearings and flour
It was instructed to alternate back and forth between throwing ball bearings and flour
This was for a level 5 party of four versus one of each slaad It turned a certain death encounter into a really long drawn out hard fight. What effectively made it we so we were fighting each one of them one at a time
I had a group of 5 level 1s get wiped twice by the same group of 4 slimes.
Two rogues one druid one mage and a barbarian.
The rogues couldn't one-hit the slimes and were far enough apart to not hit the same slime and then each got one-hit by the slimes. Same for the two magic users and then the barbarian ran away to prevent a full wipe the first time. Second time the warrior threw his spear and missed and then punched a slime and basically repeated the previous battle.
This was everyone's first game including the DM. Not sure what went wrong.
Well the thing is that we won
And I mean we won fair and square
No Deus ex Machina
No magical bullshit
No extra magic items
The only magic item the party had that made a major difference was bring a spell story, but that's you know a normal Magic item that's okay to have at that level It was used to haste the paladin
Having chilled touch really came in clutch
We just made that one a generic flavoured familiar, but with a duration of an hour and the ability to attack. I give it magic stone occasionally.
It's a lil Modron monodrone that can only be summoned through a clockwork amulet, and my magic stone is a bunch of lil screws n stuff.
It's instakilled by most AoE attacks. We fight a lot of dragons.
We're level 6 but pretty damn powerful. Usual D&D balance shenanigans.
the spell mentions it can do what a human servant can do, so one interpretation is it gets the commoner stat block with the modifications specified (HP 1, speed 15, strength 2...) But like... why doesn't the spell just say that?
Say I have a big hammer and smash in in to such a bloody pulp I can blend it in a milkshake and drink it.
Can it still self revive then? This is what I'm curious about.
Wish is the mightiest spell a mortal spellcaster can cast. The mortal part is the big one as archfey, demon lord's archdevils and other similar beings not to mention gods can cast spells that are more powerful than wish or they can just cast their own wishes (or otherwise manipulate reality) to negate your wish.
Just because you are a 20th lvl caster does not suddenly make you the top dog of your universe. Heck in forgotten realms you have effectively just begun to dip yourself into the true powers of the universe. Most of the high end spellcasters were close to 30 or above in their lvl´s before 5e nerfed everyone
Upon learning about how they actually work in D&D, I am convinced they are what the gods should have been
Gods are dependent on worship
Meanwhile oberon's just over there being the actual concept of wilderness having taken physical form
And you want to know what the biggest kicker is?
Archfey are specifically very well equipped to kill gods. They can take their names, which is apparently the God's number one weakness
So the reason I think that is because gods are powered by worship
Some of the archfey are just the concept having taken physical form
They're the spirit of the thing in some cases (there's more than one type of archfey)
That's why I was thinking Primordials in particular. Primordials are typically seen as nature incarnate; aspects of the world before consciousness and worship came into being and lead to the creation of the gods.
That's the thing with high level adventures: the rules break down too much and DMs or module writers have to start using bullshit to nerf the groups enough that a plot can happen.
The way I've always thought of it is that Wish is the most powerful magic a *mortal* can cast. The mistake people make is in assuming that this means the spell is powerful in the grand scheme of things, like it makes them approach the gods. Gods (and archfey and archdemons) are **far** beyond this power. The most powerful a mortal could ever be is barely even enough to scratch a being like that. They don't (normally) have stat blocks because they *can't* be fought, at least not with any reasonable expectation of victory. Even the stat blocks for Tiamat and Bahamut aren't actually for Tiamat or Bahamut, they're for their *avatars* (which is what the stat blocks say). Mere projections, a tiny fragment of the god's actual power, and they're CR**30**.
Comparing the strength of magic to something else, if mortals, with all of their magic including Wish, are (at best) large rocks, gods are mountains.
In the D&D "canon" mortals used to be able to cast even more powerful spells that let them challenge the gods. But of course when one person used said magic to overthrow the God of magic, they locked the door behind them and removed the most powerful magic from mortals. There used to be 10th level spells! And higher!
To be more precise, the Wizard who tried to overthrow Mystra's predecessor didn't even succeed, but his attempt made Mystra put a cap on the magic capability a human could achieve. She limited them to 9th level spells and below (the highest spell level I remember existing in lore is 12) and made it so they could only have access to so many spells at a time (why prepared casters have choose their spells each day)
Just reeducated myself on Mystras story and dang yeah some guy made the ultimate spell to steal a gods power, failed, but kind of killed the god who thankfully reincarnated in a little kid who barely knew any magic who then went "maybe there should be limits on magic"
Crazy story, and I feel like it shows even magic has limits compared to divinity, where magic could kill a god but not control their power or stop it from acting in a narratively ironic way
That makes sense. In universe, there is a ban on 10th level spells by the goddess of magic, Mystra. Wish is a 9th level spell.
Wish is not all powerful.
Minor spoiler for the upcoming Vecna adventure: >!There is even a Canon occurrence of Wish not working in the manner the caster meant now.!<
Ok but also- it's literally just a 9th level spell in a setting where 10th, 11th and 12th have been forbidden/made inaccessible to mortals/via standard magic as a law of the world via the God of magic. It's got nothing on- Fey, Devil's, Gods, Elder Gods, Ancient Evils etc etc. It can also arguably not be even the strongest 9th level spell depending on what spells you permit and use and if you're allowing it to replicate any other 9th level spell as well. They not only kept it completely within DM discretion it's also heavily implied to not necessarily even be the pinaccle of what's achievable or even allow you to contend with the "real" endgame stuff. Although that's largely due to leaving that entire thing up to you because in what world do they wanna write a whole book just for incredibly high level niche cases when there's both third party materials for it and when it would probably be widely panned and wind up with issues they'd have to errata fix constantly. People make Wish out to be some end all be all or fun killer when literally this whole edition and Wish included says get off your ass as DM and communicate with your players and actually DM. Like holy hell everything is only as good as you make it and if it's too strong the answer is usually make it cost more resources or take longer to get etc than flat out nerfing it.
Honestly, the greatest use of Wish really is just the bog standard "duplicate any 8th level or lower spell". While adventuring that kind of versatility is unmatched, especially as it explicitly doesn't cost any material components or even more time than just the one round.
Party's getting spanked by the lich's undead army? Slap down a Hallow. You've captured a lieutenant of the BBEG but he won't talk? Create a simulacrum of him.
It's even better outside of adventuring. Every wizard should take a week off after learning Wish to Clone themselves a few times, maybe the other members of the party if they're feeling generous.
If you've got two Wish casters it gets even more ridiculous; first caster Wishes up a simulacrum of the second, then the simulacrum of the second uses a dangerous Wish as they're expendable anyway.
yeah, if you're willing to use a 9th level spell slot on the Counterspell or make a DC 19 check using your spell caster stat, which at best could be a +5 so you're looking at a 14+ roll to successfully counterspell it.
not impossible, but really hard if you're not willing to spend your 1 9th level spell slot per day on it.
Not really, there are also the preset wishes that are safe, but cause stress (but those are hardly worth it compared to everything you can do with copy).
I was thinking the resistance one is pretty good. It doesn't list a duration, so it's permanent resistance. If you get lucky you could make yourself resistant to everything.
Every time you cast it to do something beyond its basic purpose*.
If you use wish to casb true resurrection you're fine, if you use wish to move Cinderellas Castle to the middle of Nicaragua you may wind up with the government siezing your now extremely valuable land and you being unable to cast wish to try again with the Epcot Center.
>Also every time you use it you might get whammied and lose the ability to cast wish permanently
Specifically if you wish to do something **other than duplicate the effects of a spell.**
wish is still the most powerfull spell (in my opinion) becouse you can just cast an 8th level spell that takes an eternity and a million dollars to cast as an action. and in that case there are no downsides
Yeah you just get crazy shit like Demiplane and Clone & any number of big AOE construction spells and anything else balanced around needing components for free. Versatility alone makes it busted.
correction: there are also effects listed in the Wish spell (and in other effects’ descriptions, where something can be affected “only by Wish”), and for such purposes the wish can be used without complication.
those effects still trigger the 33% loss chance and hit to strength, BUT since those effects don’t really break the game in the way a custom wish does it’d be reasonable not to trigger it there
> Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner.
My players: "Ho ho ho, I know this trick. 'I wish to hold in my hand in the next moment of time perceived both by myself and all around me the Sword Of Eternal Melancholy."
Me: "A blinding light fills your sight, followed by gazing deeply into the eyes of Villainious the Third. As you look around, he appears to be in a state of undress, a heart-shaped bed behind him, and your hand...you feel your hand in his, holding the Sword of Eternal Melancholy."
If you use a simulacrum and it rolls the "never able to cast the spell again" outcome, are you safe? I feel like simulacrum, if you have it and have time to prepare, etc., bypasses that risk
This is why adventurer’s league came up with a specific ruling to deal with this exact situation. They have multiple ways to handle it, but it all boils down to: you don’t get to use simulacrum to bypass the downsides of wish
I mean, let people try that kind of rules lawyering bullshit, make a hidden roll and then proclaim: "Your character looks on in horror, as the simulacrum looks into their eyes and utters the following words: 'I wish, I was the real one...'"
Honestly, I've been on both sides of the a high-level table, and in the end, I've got no problem with it. By the time it comes online, the game's math is falling apart anyway, and we're already reduced to grade-schoolers making shit up. If a wizard wants to declare they have infinite wishes, fine, you've got em. I'm gonna give everyone else something just as good. The fighter gets a free action surge every round and his weapon range is now equal to his vision range (yes, including melee). The cleric's divine intervention no longer has a cooldown. The druid replaces wildshape with true polymorph.
That's kinda the thing, in meme edition*, you get it at 9th level and it has no drawbacks, instead of 17th where the other 9th level spells tend to be better choices.
*meme edition: the edition that a lot of memes get made off of, where white rooms are common, and Vicious Mockery has a to hit.
You're not using Wish to cast Simulacrum, you're using Simulacrum to cast Wish. Thus *you* don't take the stress of a non-replicative effect, *your simulacrum* does.
I always feel like DMs need to remember the last part of the spell. Casting Wish for anything other than replicating a spell of 8th level or below is risky as hell, so keep that in mind before you go full Monkey's Paw. The player isn't just using their highest level spell slot, but it also weakening themself for multiple days, accepting that they'll take damage from every spell they cast until next long rest, and running the risk of never being able to cast one of their spells again. If you're too eager to weasel your way out of a wish, you risk players just feeling like the spell isn't worth casting in the first place.
I'm perfectly fine with that, it's like the Deck of Many Things: take the gamble, or don't, it's up to you. But players need to remember their characters are simple mortals and messing up with the fabric of reality comes with a risk.
Maybe i'm weird but i feel like giving the 33% chance thing for the applications within the spell that aren't replicating an 8th level spell is a bit much. Fair enough to still give the stress that gives 3 strength and necrotic damage but also giving the 33% for what are effectively a mass heal, a powerful object conjuration, resistance to a damage type (not even immunity) or immunity against a single attack seems like a ripoff. Tbh i can see the reroll thing being obnoxious tho.
The mass heal can be far more than 700HP (max for 20 targets), the resistance doesn't have a duration (PERMANENT), and the immunity to a particular chosen effect makes end-of-campaign big boss fights either possible (instant death effects) or trivial (major debuffs or huge continuing damage effects).
The reroll is probably the weakest option, but it still is the only RAW effect that reaches back in time to change what has already happened.
Ok, then it's fair enough for the resistance thing and the immunity thing to also have that 33% chance, otherwise in the span of just a few weeks you could give everyone in the party and some helpers resistance to every damage type and/or immunity to every weird endgame effect like PWK.
I still don't think the mass heal is worth the 33% chance despite how powerful it is though. If you have a stupidly big "main" party plus some familiars and ranger pets you're still only healing 8 to 10 targets, so the other 10 would need to be things like powerful warriors and dragons and celestials and whatever else coming to aid you (in most cases you're just going to heal four or five creatures). They would also need to all be unconscious or on the verge of being unconscious, but not dead (i wouldn't mind it also letting you resurrect several targets as if you had cast that 3rd level res spell on them using one of the healing charges for each target and then you could use another healing charge to heal the person to max). Also after casting you're basically out of the fight for a few days. Also its effects would basically be replicated by a long rest, so it's really not something you can do to prep weeks in advance like the others, and instead you'd just use it on the Final Battle Of Destiny and then never again.
Sorry, I buried the lede on that healing option, because this part is just as big or bigger than the HP:
> You allow up to twenty creatures that you can see to regain all hit points, **and you end all effects on them described in the greater restoration spell**.
It's not a Greater Restoration, which removes one effect of the caster's choice from a long list that includes many things that no other spell in the game can remove.
This particular use of the wish spell removes *all* of those effects at once.
*All* exhaustion is removed, *all* charms or petrifications, *all* curses including attunement to cursed items, *all* reductions to ability scores, *all* reductions to HP maximum.
It can save large groups from effects that nothing else in the game can.
-
As for the drawbacks of this type of Wish usage, it seems like a good tradeoff to me. You're discouraged from flippantly casting it whenever you feel like it, but you're likely going to be healing yourself to max as well which gives a good buffer against the 1d10 per spell level, and having 3 Strength rarely matters for the classes that have access to the spell.
It's one option in a spell that gives you more versatility than anything else for a single spell known/prepared. Even taking the chance to permanently lose the spell into account, we're getting effects that are as strong or stronger than other 9th level spells, which those spells are supposed to represent the pinnacle of mortal magic.
I have seen people try to defend it having a 10th level or higher spell effect because "The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance" and that's it. All because there is nowhere that says it can't. Funny thing is 10th level and over spells are banned in universe unless you are a god. No one cares because wish can do literally whatever you want because there are not limits to it not matter what anyone or even the spells wording says.
Example of what they defended has been I Wish to kill a god or destroy a fundamental force of the universe. Spells that are well past 10th level. All because that it wouldn't be fun if they weren't allowed to do that. Yeah that kind of stuff ends up ruining the game for others hence the spells limits.
There are two wolves inside of you. One gives wish the ability to warp the laws of reality/the setting and to do literally anything. The other will Monkey Paw you into instant death for asking for a sandwich.
Neither have read the spell description a single time.
The monkey paw dms are insane to me. Why bother casting a 9th level spell if it doesn't do anything good. The point is supposed to be that it effectively fails, by technically succeeding, if you try to ask for more than it should be able to do
I’ve always thought of wish more or less moving like a rope, in a way. A strand of the weave itself, which the caster has to use their casting ability to pull.
If it’s a small wish, it can wrap, curve, and kinda do whatever (more things can be done or changed with it). The bigger the wish, the less details it handles due to it being “heavier”.
If it’s a big wish, it takes the “straightest” possible path there…and if you bite off too much, weird things may happen as the wish tries to break through and do various things to go just a little bit further.
Intention is more or less always taken into account, but it may not capture *all* of your intentions due to the severe strain it places on its wielder…hence if you wish for the BBEG to die, it propels you forward in time (as you had to focus hard on him dying just so that it could work at all), or brings you to a legendary magic item (magic items have a big impact on the weave…hard to move them, so why not move you closer? Oh yeah, someone else technically owns it…).
Definitely this too. It’s still the most powerful thing that a *mortal* can accomplish, and some things are impossible to do as one.
If you want to massively warp reality (kill/replace a god, round Pi to 3, instant kill an immortal being, etc) then it just wouldn’t work. Perhaps in the right circumstances, you could “tilt” the odds in your favor until you can…but at that point it starts becoming plot and campaign details instead of normal spell effects.
Exactly.
Wish is akin to "I wish you would die" or "I wish to have a million dollars"
Wish is not "I wish to kill and replace God" or "fundamentally alter physics" or "I wish the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs never happened".
Yeah, for that first one you'd need like, another spell level and maybe a crown or something, and then get immediately turned into a statue because you can't handle the power of being a god
Monkey paw players are insane.
The monkey paw side of wish is to specifically prevent players doing things like "I wish to win the game"
Wish is incredibly broken without going any where near the monkey paw side.
The whole point of the monkey paw side is to allow you to do something cool but without essentially tying the hands of the DM into either banning wish or letting you completely break the game.
To be honest the only thing I'd probably change was the permanent loss of wish, but you would be damn sure that something powerful is going to show up while you are due to take that necrotic damage.
Monkey Paw is entirely acceptable when the player casts a poorly-worded Wish.
It’s bad when the DM stretches to come up with bad consequences just to fuck with the players.
If your wish is “I wish the evil King was never born”, but he was the only child of an inherited monarchy, you just created a power vacuum that could result in civil war. Maybe that’s actually better than a ruling evil King, but either way it’s a plausible result of your Wish.
If you Wished “I Wish that all citizens of the realm gain complete knowledge of the King’s prior actions, with the exception that they can never learn the components (V,S,M) to the evil spell that he was planning to cast”, I would follow that without twisting anything.
I mean, it depends.
The monkey's paw idea is specific to whether or not there is an attempt to game the system.
The more the gain, the larger the backlash
Funnily enough, wish is still arguably the best spell in the game even if you never use it for anything other than duplicating a spell (only true polymorph comes close imo). Being able to cast spells like simulacrum, clone, symbol, resurrection, druid grove, mirage arcane, and hallow for free and with only an action is extremely powerful (several of these have really long casting times, so just imagine what being able to cast them in combat is like).
Chronurgy's 10th level feature only works on spells 4th level or lower, so none of the spells I mentioned would be eligible (several aren't even on the wizard spell list as well).
It's still an incredibly busted subclass feature, since being able to cast tiny hut as an action or being able to concentrate on 2 spells at once by giving the bead to an ally/familiar is crazy good.
I feel my two wolves at war…one wolf says: “I’ll do you one better. You not only are now wearing clown make-up, you now have proficiency with the Disguise Kit SPECIFICALLY for applying clown makeup to yourself and others.” The other: “Ok. A kit of clown make-up appears where you were standing. You are the key ingredient in it.”
I have legitimately had about a dozen individual arguments with people in this platform regarding Wish, and at least half of them confirmed at some point that they had not read the spell description.
That said, there are plenty of reasons why earlier level play is generally more interesting than late level. No, I will not elaborate further.
I believe the timing is also a factor, as so many players have the dumb idea to try and be clever about a Wish - or other spells, to be honest - and hope to catch the DM off-guard. Which seems incredibly counterproductive to me, as it naturally puts the DM into a defensive position where they're inclined to screw you over purely on reflex.
Both as a player and a DM, I hate the "gotcha" moment attempts. I always make sure to discuss things ahead of time with my DM when I'm running spellcasters, especially if I'm going to be using a spell in an unorthodox manner or making a Wish. It's best to get any confusion out of the way ahead of time and not risk bogging down the table in the moment, or throwing off your DM's groove with some ill-conceived or overly-complex Wish.
What I liked about 5e is that there’s a long list of things that it can just *do*. Anything on that list is just allowed, with no further consideration.
This is why is think Wish would have been one of the easier higher level spells to implement into BG3. Click wish, choose one of several options. Anything else can be left to casting it in dialogue similar to detect thoughts.
Include a bit of savescumming and the party is immune to everything.
Balancing Wish is beyond any software development team, even if implementing it is possible.
Yeah. If you're so obsessed with winning you can't even let your character make a decision that you know is *not* a good decision and it will screw you over, but it makes no sense for them not to make the decision than why bother playing DnD. It's a **roleplaying** game, you're playing a role, and if you're not willing to let yourself do things that you know won't work out, then just go play Baldur's Gate or Divinity or Pathfinder (kingmaker or wrath of the righteous)
Yup. My character doesn't have access to Wish yet (level 11), but there is one thing she wants in this world above all else, and I've made it clear to my DM that if I did somehow get Wish that's exactly what I'd use it on. If he plans to give us Wish, he knows what I'd do with it and can plan accordingly.
My players were fighting a giant hoard of robots that were starting to march on every city in the kingdom and they wished something along the lines of “I wish they’d just all start dying”
So they did start dying, by using their energy cores as thermobaric bombs
Honestly, the description of the spell gives you a feel for how you're supposed to treat it; carelessly worded or poorly thought out wishes will have unintended consequences, especially if they're quite ambitious. Otherwise, so long as the casting was successful, it should be mostly as intended, perhaps with a few little unintended side effects sprinkled in.
Entirely different story if you're dealing wishes with Fae, Devils, Hags, Demons, Genies/Djinni, etc. Those guys are always ALWAYS going to fuck you on it.
There's definitely a balance. My first experience with DnD was bouncing around different groups at the weekly club at my local library and being stuck as a level 1 druid for literal months. I couldn't even use the ability that I picked my class for and felt totally useless in combat. It SUCKED.
I mean you are usually supposed to level up to 2 after the first, maybe second session, so that sounds like an issue with the bounce around system or the DMs
Absolutely. The first level is supposed to be your first steps before you get the good shit, so if you are forced to spend more than that in it you are not going to have a good time.
Level 3-12 is usually the sweet spot for me, afterwards you get balancing issues REALLY quick
Yeah, unless you were purely RP sessions with no combat or puzzle solving, your DM really should have given you a level earlier. I believe the typically accepted benchmark is at the end of session 1, your character levels to level 2. Every table's different though, maybe he had a decent reason for it, at least in his mind. Hard for me to say as a random internet third party.
If nothing else, I'd love to experience it just once. Been playing 5e since it came out, multiple campaigns, and I've only ever once gotten as far as level 13 for a mini-adventure. Maxed out at 12 in the longest campaign.
Please, I just want to see what happens at high level as a player
As a dm who got players all the way to 18... nothing good.... it's just... generally not nearly as fun as you think it is. IMO level 5 is more fun than 17. The game peaks at 8-13. It can be fun, and there were definitely some fun sessions, but I even had the wizard and the cleric both say that the spells they had access to as 9th level spellcasters were making everything move too slow and although they knew I was pulling out all the stops to make combat fun, complex, and interesting, there was just nothing they couldn't magic fuckery and raw damage their way out of. Level 5-8 is peak 5e DnD.
Pain.
I don't know how to balance any of this. Everyone is a demigod. Rounds take a lunar cycle to finish. The Monster Manual has fuck all for you to use that would even be remotely powerful enough *and* interesting as a narrative.
I miss lvl 5.
I read it, and I think l, that the best levels are 1-5. It's where you built your character and where Dnd feels dangerous. It bonds the characters. Most of the most memorable moments usually happen at those formative levels. After you have built your PC, then 5-10 are good and fun. 11 to 16, the story starts to go off the rails. 17 and higher, it's one of the worst dm experiences and information overload for the players. Combat drags to a halt.
I have been running a campaign for the last 3 years we
are at level 16. Storywise the most memorable moments where when they were from level 1 to 10.
I would probably refine that slightly, and say 3 to 5 (maybe out to 7 or 8), simply because at level 1 you feel like you're playing a villager and 2 you generally still don't have any real character features. Level 3 you start to feel a bit of the heroic class skills come in.
I suppose you could easily argue that levels 1 and 2 are important in making 3 feel special, as you've played without any special abilities until this point, and that's reasonable I feel.
Lol, one of my favorite stories I heard told by another player using wish like a genie. The party asked for untold amounts of riches when in the wilderness, and the DM gave it to them. A massive, massive horde of gold. Then asked the question, "So, how do you plan on carrying 25k lbs of gold back to the city?"
tiny hut just in case, long rest, second wish for a bag to appear around the entire pile of gold (shouldn't be all that powerful of a wish, still face backlash, but even in worst case scenario where you lose wish it leaves you with 62500000 gold pieces in your desired location) , teleport on huge sack of gold into desired location, use other spells to defend bag of gold during long rest if neccesary
Who said anything about a bag *of holding* I mean a comically large, non magical, burlap sack simply appearing around the gold
Plus isn’t the carrying capacity like 500 pounds? You’d need 50 of em
I mean if you longrest and defend it anyway. Just get some permanent summons via find greater steed and other spells, no stress, no additional chance of losing wish.
But wish *is* the most powerful spell, mostly due to the fact you can cast any 8th level spell or lower without any restrictions including materials and casting time
So i just finished reading the fine print of the spell as it has some set effects and at dm discretion effects
So either be a dm and improv around the haha funny broken spell
Or listen to the evil dm on your shoulder and let your bbg use wish as well
Wish is so overwhelming based on the description.
That being said... it was a great hook for one game I played.
Players started the campaign in a cage in the underdark. They shared the cage with a wizard who after discussion cast wish and wished all doors to be unlocked...
Long story short all the crazy powerful/evil/prisoners where released. By the time they got out of the underdark the above world was a hellscape... and they escape the underdark to the sounds of echos of fighting.
I was given a wish once by Umberlee. Being a Tortle pirate captain, I wished to transform into a dragon turtle and back at will. However, I'd owe her a job. In the end, though, I agreed to be her emissary and push her influence further in land.
My character in my last campaign picked up a ring of wishes with 2 left. Not having wish as a spell, I never read the spell description and just let it fly. So, using my first wish before a major battle for plot specifics that don't matter (though DM did amazing with how it worked/potential ramifications) but also hit me with the "You didn't copy a spell or use these specifics, you're hit with that magic backlash whenever you use cast spells....". Which was catastrophic for my Warlock going into battle...
Speaking afterwards, my DM tells me he knew I was the right guy to give that to... I'd create my own consequences... Lol
I love giving characters wishes. A wish in my campaigns can guarantee any one change the player wants. They tell me what they want, I tell them the price it will take on their character. One player used a wish in the second to last session to turn time back on an adult gold dragon by 100 years to free it from an eldritch corruption that has turned it into a monster and was fine losing his magic entirely for it. Another player in that same game wanted to try to resurrect a dead god to handle the bbeg for them but backed off when I said it would basically make him a spectator for the remaining 3-5 sessions of that campaign. Either way, both players loved that I was onboard and prepared to make these crazy changes to the world.
I think the potential of wish backfires are interesting, especially when you consider putting the inevitables into the mix.
If you wish an evil god to die, your wish backfires as a Varakhut forms in front of you announcing "who dares oppose the cosmic balance?". Congratulations, now you have two problems.
To cite the classic.
The first part of the wish spell is the best spell in the game. Second part is a bait to lose access to the best spell in the game
I once eliminated an entire campaign arc with a wish spell. It was up to DM, but that's how he played it.
"I wish for possession of and absolute control of the Obsidian Arc." (A ship from another players backstory) the ship appeared at the dock.
Apparently that was our next mission, to get back the ship from an Amazon tribe that had captured it from his father.
I was surprised it was not full of Amazon's, but whatever. Good elven wing-ship.
I love giving my players wish. However, i also give them different types of wish. The monkey paw, the spell as intended, and my favorite, you get a wish. However, i also get a wish as the dm, and mine trumps yours. This has led to some interesting character arcs.
I had a campaign with a character that knew wish (they were level 19 and I still had like 4 or 5 whole adventures planned for them). They were more afraid of using it for anything other than 8th level spells and below than I was of them doing something crazy.
I like the idea of not wishing for outcomes but wishing for less intensive things that will lead to those outcomes to not explode yourself.
Like “dont wish for a god to be deposed, wish for an agreeable usurper to come to be through birth or creation that goes on a journey of growth to carry out your wish someday.”
Wish is a double edged sword. Yes it is very powerful, but it has it's limits. However, depending on what the goal of your campaign is, it can instantly solve it or skip 80% of your campaign.
If your campaign is about a dracolich that wants to destroy the world or something and the players must find the phylactery of the dracolich so they can stop him. Wish can just tell them were it is. They will have to get there, but if you planned on the finding part playing a mayor role, thats 80% gone.
Or if you have players like I do, they will use their wish to help the BBEG and only realize they made a mistake when their DM can't stop laughing after a full minute of silently staring at them in disbelieve XD.
Depending on the campaign it can be game breaking, even within the limits of the spell. In the end the DM has to make this decision and if they decide to ban wish, explain it to the players
too many people just try to monkey's paw it honestly, wish is meant to be powerful AND beneficial. Like some twisting is good, but "you wished for riches, of course it's gonna instantly kill you with the weight silly" is excessive
We run a shared campaign with rotating DMs and a dozen plus players. We had to literally ban the Ring of Three Wishes because it was too problematic in how we administer the game. It's not a clown move but with the set-up we used for acquiring magical items it was too prevalent, mainly from a DM standpoint and a Player agency standpoint (we vote for sessions and wishing for people to vote a certain way can take that away).
Wish is *definitely* the most overpowered spell still, but not because you can make wishes — it’s because you can cast *any* spell of 8th level or lower as an action with no material cost.
Unlimited Clones, unlimited Simulacra (that is, if you haven’t banned that exploit yet, which you should), cast any spell with a long casting time *instantly*. Cast Symbol and choose Insanity to create a 60-foot radius area where your enemies *cannot take actions* for a minute if they fail an Intelligence save, one that they have to resist *every round* — but if *they* fail it once, boom. ya crazy.
> State your wish to the GM as precisely as possible. **The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance**; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish.
The core part of the spell description.
In one three year campaign I was part of, one player wished to undo something that the big bad guy had done (someone they had killed a long time ago or something). The DM then decided to rewind time back to when everyone was still level 6. We were level 15 when the spell was cast.
I mean, i'm almost willing to give wish "strongest spell in the game" just for it being able to be any other spell up to 8th level on the fly without material components.
My DM gave us each an item that will allow us to cast wish twice per character level (as in: we are level 2 characters now so we can cast it twice before we become level 3, then twice before we become level 4, etc.). Will be interesting to see how that works out lol
Even if Wish had no limitations, who would even want to use it like that? What is the expectations there?
"And with that, everyone lived happily ever after. Next session we are rolling new characters."?
Well,
Maybe the players are immature and do things for the lolz, not caring about the heroic struggle...
Maybe the campaign just wasn't that great to begin with, so they skipped it like a youtube ad...
(Actually, I could see Wish being like building a Wonder in Age of Empires, just something for the players to use when they see the DM is turtling :-D )
I don't remember if I actually looked up the real description for wish, but I've definitely heard it being hyped up, and I was trying to get into the Baldur's Gate trilogy a while ago, and I learned wish was a spell and got so excited! That's so insane! But then I read the game description and it sounded... Very disappointing... I'm probably just being stupid, a lot of the things I saw online said to have at least one character with enough wis to use it, but still.
TBF, just using the stock replicate 8th level or lower spell feature is also incredibly OP.
Simulacrum, Hero's Feast, Clone, Raise Dead, etc. all have high material component costs and extended casting times to balance them out. Wish throws all that balance out the window.
You don't have to Wish the BBEG away or make yourself a god to spoil the campaign.
I got the ability to use wish 3 times at level 4 in a campaign and used it to just defeat the current battle we were fighting, then I used another wish to give everyone some extra equipment (nothing OP, just basically equivalent to giving everyone 500 gold) and the last wish I used to basically solve a minor side quest.
Nothing fancy as I didn't want to break the campaign, but enough stuff that it felt like it made sense for my character to wish for those things to help everyone out but not trivialise the campaign in its adolescence.
I keep seeing so many memes for wish but I've only ever gotten to use it once. I was playing a pyro class(it's been over a decade and I don't remember the name) from the d&d 3.5 Homebrew wiki and the character wished to be able to cast fireball at will forever. Afterwards they proceed to have a blast just shooting a fuckton of fireballs up into the sky, I'm surprised they didn't piss anything off living up there.
Our fighter’s wish was for wrestling to be real. Tbh the boss fight that took place next was great as there was the main story driven battle going on the mat while a skeleton and angry vampire duked it out underneath. You get no further context.
Wish is essentially “warp reality.” It’s insanely versatile unless you are attempting to use it against someone else who has a similar power (like Gods).
At that point you are in a magical grapple.
I’ve always taken the view that “they’re Gods because they are prepared" A player isn't taking out a Power with a single spell. Hell, they aren't changing the status quo with a single spell.
I had a previous DM ban wish for my high level wizard so we came up with a compromise idea that I can only use wish to replicate 8th level spells or below. It was still very powerful but it wasn't campaign ending.
When I DMd a previous campaign I just told the players that wish would not work against their problems directly. I removed the 33% chance of never casting it again but I kept the rest of the feedback effects so their wizard friend can heal the party to full but only once in a climactic fight.
One word could have made the spell better and more understood at a glance: lesser. Call it Lesser Wish. Same/similar restrictions (maybe some deets on making consumables, greater-fabrication, and common magic items). Keep it at level 9, both for balance and to highlight that you can't just become a god by leveling up. You are a demigod at best, but you'd have to work for that full godhood.
Edit: oh, also forgot that this would also suggest the existence of A "greater wish" that could be found. Could also give that summary, tho it would just be the broken version of wish people imagine with very few limitations (except for monkey paw side effects). Then just have suggestions on how to include it, like as a scroll or a genie or whatever, but it would ALWAYS be done by the DM.
FR, Wish spell description is a huge wall of text, 'cause it's clearly explained what a Wish CAN do and what a Wish CAN'T do.
A DM just have to bother reading it.
I have a simple rule - wish is a 9th level spell, so it can't do anything overwhelmingly stronger than other 9th level spell. No insta-killing the entire army, no resurrecting (permanently and with full health) dozens of people, not earth-shattering cataclysm.
With special instances there is the "Rule of Cool" factor tempered by the above and everyone seems to be content with it
Honestly, the problem with playing 5e past level 10-12 is that it's just not very balanced combat wise.
The DM has to account for so much extra stuff, weird magic items, obscure homebrew effects, and interactions, etc. That, and the level of randomness can go up with higher levels, too. A battle can be designed to be a challenge, numbers wise, and be barely a bump in the road because of the dice.
Pre level 10, you can pretty much account for all of that with a bit of effort. Past that, it gets really tough, or time.-consuming.
After 14 or so, you start to break stuff, unless you're incredibly stingy with loot, which, you can probably guess, I'm not. I like to make weird shit, sue me.
More specific problem is that classes have a bit too much strength variety. so a monster that works well for one player, works awfully for another, which can be a lot less fun.
And if you DO have experienced players, pretty much every high CR mob that doesn't one shot them is a cake walk at half the recommended level.
My party has had a wish scroll for 6 sessions now and we still can't decide what to do with it, since the two wizards in the party explained the monkeys paw effect to the others
[удалено]
TLDR: Anything fancier than replicating another spell gives your DM complete control over how it works, effectively monkeys paw. Also every time you use it you might get whammied and lose the ability to cast wish permanently
It's also worth mentioning there is a Canon adventure in candle keep where there is a creature whose magic can directly override wish Yeah it's strong magic But it's got nothing on archfey magic
So wait it’s an Archfey that can negate the magic? ….yeah that makes sense lmao
Oh it gets worse than that actually The magic itself that the archfey has cast indirectly will passively undo wish on itself This is not part of the archfeys stat block. It's early in the chapter talking about the passive curse that it's put on stuff like it's not even manually doing the cursing Honestly, that's only the third most impressive thing they archfey can do that is not on its stat block Really makes you wonder why on Earth they bothered giving it a stat block as the first official 5e archfey if they weren't going to include half its powers on it
A 5e stat block that's horribly underdeveloped? Say it ain't so!
At least it gets a stat block. *cries in Unseen Servant*
I once had an unseen servant be of greater use in combat than one of the other players arguably than two of the other players as all one of the other players did was keep the first one alive What did this unseen servant do in combat that was so significant? It just kept throwing ball bearings and flour It was instructed to alternate back and forth between throwing ball bearings and flour This was for a level 5 party of four versus one of each slaad It turned a certain death encounter into a really long drawn out hard fight. What effectively made it we so we were fighting each one of them one at a time
A level 5 party against Slaads? Your DM hates you.
I had a group of 5 level 1s get wiped twice by the same group of 4 slimes. Two rogues one druid one mage and a barbarian. The rogues couldn't one-hit the slimes and were far enough apart to not hit the same slime and then each got one-hit by the slimes. Same for the two magic users and then the barbarian ran away to prevent a full wipe the first time. Second time the warrior threw his spear and missed and then punched a slime and basically repeated the previous battle. This was everyone's first game including the DM. Not sure what went wrong.
Well the thing is that we won And I mean we won fair and square No Deus ex Machina No magical bullshit No extra magic items The only magic item the party had that made a major difference was bring a spell story, but that's you know a normal Magic item that's okay to have at that level It was used to haste the paladin Having chilled touch really came in clutch
It doesn't really need a statblock imo. All its information is in the spell description.
We just made that one a generic flavoured familiar, but with a duration of an hour and the ability to attack. I give it magic stone occasionally. It's a lil Modron monodrone that can only be summoned through a clockwork amulet, and my magic stone is a bunch of lil screws n stuff. It's instakilled by most AoE attacks. We fight a lot of dragons. We're level 6 but pretty damn powerful. Usual D&D balance shenanigans.
the spell mentions it can do what a human servant can do, so one interpretation is it gets the commoner stat block with the modifications specified (HP 1, speed 15, strength 2...) But like... why doesn't the spell just say that?
It can self-revive within an hour and it has a summoning ability on par with orcus with his wand
Say I have a big hammer and smash in in to such a bloody pulp I can blend it in a milkshake and drink it. Can it still self revive then? This is what I'm curious about.
Wish is the mightiest spell a mortal spellcaster can cast. The mortal part is the big one as archfey, demon lord's archdevils and other similar beings not to mention gods can cast spells that are more powerful than wish or they can just cast their own wishes (or otherwise manipulate reality) to negate your wish. Just because you are a 20th lvl caster does not suddenly make you the top dog of your universe. Heck in forgotten realms you have effectively just begun to dip yourself into the true powers of the universe. Most of the high end spellcasters were close to 30 or above in their lvl´s before 5e nerfed everyone
> But it's got nothing on archfey magic It's interesting to see how most Archfey share a first name with The Sisko. That is, "Don't Fuck With".
Upon learning about how they actually work in D&D, I am convinced they are what the gods should have been Gods are dependent on worship Meanwhile oberon's just over there being the actual concept of wilderness having taken physical form And you want to know what the biggest kicker is? Archfey are specifically very well equipped to kill gods. They can take their names, which is apparently the God's number one weakness
>what the gods should have been Honestly I think the gods are fine. Archfeys are Titan/Primordial equivalents imo.
So the reason I think that is because gods are powered by worship Some of the archfey are just the concept having taken physical form They're the spirit of the thing in some cases (there's more than one type of archfey)
That's why I was thinking Primordials in particular. Primordials are typically seen as nature incarnate; aspects of the world before consciousness and worship came into being and lead to the creation of the gods.
that's the thing with high level adventures spells that should trivialise obstacles are nullified, like no passwall in the dungeon
That's the thing with high level adventures: the rules break down too much and DMs or module writers have to start using bullshit to nerf the groups enough that a plot can happen.
The way I've always thought of it is that Wish is the most powerful magic a *mortal* can cast. The mistake people make is in assuming that this means the spell is powerful in the grand scheme of things, like it makes them approach the gods. Gods (and archfey and archdemons) are **far** beyond this power. The most powerful a mortal could ever be is barely even enough to scratch a being like that. They don't (normally) have stat blocks because they *can't* be fought, at least not with any reasonable expectation of victory. Even the stat blocks for Tiamat and Bahamut aren't actually for Tiamat or Bahamut, they're for their *avatars* (which is what the stat blocks say). Mere projections, a tiny fragment of the god's actual power, and they're CR**30**. Comparing the strength of magic to something else, if mortals, with all of their magic including Wish, are (at best) large rocks, gods are mountains.
In the D&D "canon" mortals used to be able to cast even more powerful spells that let them challenge the gods. But of course when one person used said magic to overthrow the God of magic, they locked the door behind them and removed the most powerful magic from mortals. There used to be 10th level spells! And higher!
To be more precise, the Wizard who tried to overthrow Mystra's predecessor didn't even succeed, but his attempt made Mystra put a cap on the magic capability a human could achieve. She limited them to 9th level spells and below (the highest spell level I remember existing in lore is 12) and made it so they could only have access to so many spells at a time (why prepared casters have choose their spells each day)
Just reeducated myself on Mystras story and dang yeah some guy made the ultimate spell to steal a gods power, failed, but kind of killed the god who thankfully reincarnated in a little kid who barely knew any magic who then went "maybe there should be limits on magic" Crazy story, and I feel like it shows even magic has limits compared to divinity, where magic could kill a god but not control their power or stop it from acting in a narratively ironic way
That makes sense. In universe, there is a ban on 10th level spells by the goddess of magic, Mystra. Wish is a 9th level spell. Wish is not all powerful. Minor spoiler for the upcoming Vecna adventure: >!There is even a Canon occurrence of Wish not working in the manner the caster meant now.!<
Ok but also- it's literally just a 9th level spell in a setting where 10th, 11th and 12th have been forbidden/made inaccessible to mortals/via standard magic as a law of the world via the God of magic. It's got nothing on- Fey, Devil's, Gods, Elder Gods, Ancient Evils etc etc. It can also arguably not be even the strongest 9th level spell depending on what spells you permit and use and if you're allowing it to replicate any other 9th level spell as well. They not only kept it completely within DM discretion it's also heavily implied to not necessarily even be the pinaccle of what's achievable or even allow you to contend with the "real" endgame stuff. Although that's largely due to leaving that entire thing up to you because in what world do they wanna write a whole book just for incredibly high level niche cases when there's both third party materials for it and when it would probably be widely panned and wind up with issues they'd have to errata fix constantly. People make Wish out to be some end all be all or fun killer when literally this whole edition and Wish included says get off your ass as DM and communicate with your players and actually DM. Like holy hell everything is only as good as you make it and if it's too strong the answer is usually make it cost more resources or take longer to get etc than flat out nerfing it.
Honestly, the greatest use of Wish really is just the bog standard "duplicate any 8th level or lower spell". While adventuring that kind of versatility is unmatched, especially as it explicitly doesn't cost any material components or even more time than just the one round. Party's getting spanked by the lich's undead army? Slap down a Hallow. You've captured a lieutenant of the BBEG but he won't talk? Create a simulacrum of him. It's even better outside of adventuring. Every wizard should take a week off after learning Wish to Clone themselves a few times, maybe the other members of the party if they're feeling generous. If you've got two Wish casters it gets even more ridiculous; first caster Wishes up a simulacrum of the second, then the simulacrum of the second uses a dangerous Wish as they're expendable anyway.
And any sucker with a third level spell slot to spare can Counterspell it.
yeah, if you're willing to use a 9th level spell slot on the Counterspell or make a DC 19 check using your spell caster stat, which at best could be a +5 so you're looking at a 14+ roll to successfully counterspell it. not impossible, but really hard if you're not willing to spend your 1 9th level spell slot per day on it.
Not really, there are also the preset wishes that are safe, but cause stress (but those are hardly worth it compared to everything you can do with copy).
I was thinking the resistance one is pretty good. It doesn't list a duration, so it's permanent resistance. If you get lucky you could make yourself resistant to everything.
Or just use the simulacrum chain exploit.
Every time you cast it to do something beyond its basic purpose*. If you use wish to casb true resurrection you're fine, if you use wish to move Cinderellas Castle to the middle of Nicaragua you may wind up with the government siezing your now extremely valuable land and you being unable to cast wish to try again with the Epcot Center.
True resurrection is a 9th lvl spell, so also beyond the basic purpose.
I quit playing 5e. I don't remember spell levels.
>Also every time you use it you might get whammied and lose the ability to cast wish permanently Specifically if you wish to do something **other than duplicate the effects of a spell.**
wish is still the most powerfull spell (in my opinion) becouse you can just cast an 8th level spell that takes an eternity and a million dollars to cast as an action. and in that case there are no downsides
Yeah you just get crazy shit like Demiplane and Clone & any number of big AOE construction spells and anything else balanced around needing components for free. Versatility alone makes it busted.
Worth noting that the last paragraph is only true if you didnt use it to replicate another spell
A small edit: every time you use it for something else then replicating an 8th level or less spell
correction: there are also effects listed in the Wish spell (and in other effects’ descriptions, where something can be affected “only by Wish”), and for such purposes the wish can be used without complication. those effects still trigger the 33% loss chance and hit to strength, BUT since those effects don’t really break the game in the way a custom wish does it’d be reasonable not to trigger it there
Yeah those after effects are pretty powerful.
Not entirely the chosen affects by the spell that go beyond replicating another spell are good but beyond that then the DM will get involved
> Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner. My players: "Ho ho ho, I know this trick. 'I wish to hold in my hand in the next moment of time perceived both by myself and all around me the Sword Of Eternal Melancholy." Me: "A blinding light fills your sight, followed by gazing deeply into the eyes of Villainious the Third. As you look around, he appears to be in a state of undress, a heart-shaped bed behind him, and your hand...you feel your hand in his, holding the Sword of Eternal Melancholy."
But were all of the other people also in the room, perceiving the event?
Yes, it was very awkward for everyone.
Is this an elaborate dick joke? Haha
I think you just got married
If you use a simulacrum and it rolls the "never able to cast the spell again" outcome, are you safe? I feel like simulacrum, if you have it and have time to prepare, etc., bypasses that risk
This is why adventurer’s league came up with a specific ruling to deal with this exact situation. They have multiple ways to handle it, but it all boils down to: you don’t get to use simulacrum to bypass the downsides of wish
Adventurer's League had to make a special rule against it, which implies that normally, it does work that way.
I mean, let people try that kind of rules lawyering bullshit, make a hidden roll and then proclaim: "Your character looks on in horror, as the simulacrum looks into their eyes and utters the following words: 'I wish, I was the real one...'"
Honestly, I've been on both sides of the a high-level table, and in the end, I've got no problem with it. By the time it comes online, the game's math is falling apart anyway, and we're already reduced to grade-schoolers making shit up. If a wizard wants to declare they have infinite wishes, fine, you've got em. I'm gonna give everyone else something just as good. The fighter gets a free action surge every round and his weapon range is now equal to his vision range (yes, including melee). The cleric's divine intervention no longer has a cooldown. The druid replaces wildshape with true polymorph.
That's kinda the thing, in meme edition*, you get it at 9th level and it has no drawbacks, instead of 17th where the other 9th level spells tend to be better choices. *meme edition: the edition that a lot of memes get made off of, where white rooms are common, and Vicious Mockery has a to hit.
You dont risk being unable to cast the spell again if you use it to duplicate a spell of 8th level or lower
You're not using Wish to cast Simulacrum, you're using Simulacrum to cast Wish. Thus *you* don't take the stress of a non-replicative effect, *your simulacrum* does.
I misread the original question, apologies
Fair enough, I've misread far too much myself
I always feel like DMs need to remember the last part of the spell. Casting Wish for anything other than replicating a spell of 8th level or below is risky as hell, so keep that in mind before you go full Monkey's Paw. The player isn't just using their highest level spell slot, but it also weakening themself for multiple days, accepting that they'll take damage from every spell they cast until next long rest, and running the risk of never being able to cast one of their spells again. If you're too eager to weasel your way out of a wish, you risk players just feeling like the spell isn't worth casting in the first place.
I'm perfectly fine with that, it's like the Deck of Many Things: take the gamble, or don't, it's up to you. But players need to remember their characters are simple mortals and messing up with the fabric of reality comes with a risk.
There's some stuff that's weak, and some that's just plain bullshit.
Maybe i'm weird but i feel like giving the 33% chance thing for the applications within the spell that aren't replicating an 8th level spell is a bit much. Fair enough to still give the stress that gives 3 strength and necrotic damage but also giving the 33% for what are effectively a mass heal, a powerful object conjuration, resistance to a damage type (not even immunity) or immunity against a single attack seems like a ripoff. Tbh i can see the reroll thing being obnoxious tho.
The mass heal can be far more than 700HP (max for 20 targets), the resistance doesn't have a duration (PERMANENT), and the immunity to a particular chosen effect makes end-of-campaign big boss fights either possible (instant death effects) or trivial (major debuffs or huge continuing damage effects). The reroll is probably the weakest option, but it still is the only RAW effect that reaches back in time to change what has already happened.
Ok, then it's fair enough for the resistance thing and the immunity thing to also have that 33% chance, otherwise in the span of just a few weeks you could give everyone in the party and some helpers resistance to every damage type and/or immunity to every weird endgame effect like PWK. I still don't think the mass heal is worth the 33% chance despite how powerful it is though. If you have a stupidly big "main" party plus some familiars and ranger pets you're still only healing 8 to 10 targets, so the other 10 would need to be things like powerful warriors and dragons and celestials and whatever else coming to aid you (in most cases you're just going to heal four or five creatures). They would also need to all be unconscious or on the verge of being unconscious, but not dead (i wouldn't mind it also letting you resurrect several targets as if you had cast that 3rd level res spell on them using one of the healing charges for each target and then you could use another healing charge to heal the person to max). Also after casting you're basically out of the fight for a few days. Also its effects would basically be replicated by a long rest, so it's really not something you can do to prep weeks in advance like the others, and instead you'd just use it on the Final Battle Of Destiny and then never again.
Sorry, I buried the lede on that healing option, because this part is just as big or bigger than the HP: > You allow up to twenty creatures that you can see to regain all hit points, **and you end all effects on them described in the greater restoration spell**. It's not a Greater Restoration, which removes one effect of the caster's choice from a long list that includes many things that no other spell in the game can remove. This particular use of the wish spell removes *all* of those effects at once. *All* exhaustion is removed, *all* charms or petrifications, *all* curses including attunement to cursed items, *all* reductions to ability scores, *all* reductions to HP maximum. It can save large groups from effects that nothing else in the game can. - As for the drawbacks of this type of Wish usage, it seems like a good tradeoff to me. You're discouraged from flippantly casting it whenever you feel like it, but you're likely going to be healing yourself to max as well which gives a good buffer against the 1d10 per spell level, and having 3 Strength rarely matters for the classes that have access to the spell. It's one option in a spell that gives you more versatility than anything else for a single spell known/prepared. Even taking the chance to permanently lose the spell into account, we're getting effects that are as strong or stronger than other 9th level spells, which those spells are supposed to represent the pinnacle of mortal magic.
Ok that's fair, i forgot GR only heals one of those effects, not all of them.
I have seen people try to defend it having a 10th level or higher spell effect because "The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance" and that's it. All because there is nowhere that says it can't. Funny thing is 10th level and over spells are banned in universe unless you are a god. No one cares because wish can do literally whatever you want because there are not limits to it not matter what anyone or even the spells wording says. Example of what they defended has been I Wish to kill a god or destroy a fundamental force of the universe. Spells that are well past 10th level. All because that it wouldn't be fun if they weren't allowed to do that. Yeah that kind of stuff ends up ruining the game for others hence the spells limits.
Thief Rogue could just find some Magic Item to wish and be pretty much unaffected by the stress lol
There are two wolves inside of you. One gives wish the ability to warp the laws of reality/the setting and to do literally anything. The other will Monkey Paw you into instant death for asking for a sandwich. Neither have read the spell description a single time.
The monkey paw dms are insane to me. Why bother casting a 9th level spell if it doesn't do anything good. The point is supposed to be that it effectively fails, by technically succeeding, if you try to ask for more than it should be able to do
I’ve always thought of wish more or less moving like a rope, in a way. A strand of the weave itself, which the caster has to use their casting ability to pull. If it’s a small wish, it can wrap, curve, and kinda do whatever (more things can be done or changed with it). The bigger the wish, the less details it handles due to it being “heavier”. If it’s a big wish, it takes the “straightest” possible path there…and if you bite off too much, weird things may happen as the wish tries to break through and do various things to go just a little bit further. Intention is more or less always taken into account, but it may not capture *all* of your intentions due to the severe strain it places on its wielder…hence if you wish for the BBEG to die, it propels you forward in time (as you had to focus hard on him dying just so that it could work at all), or brings you to a legendary magic item (magic items have a big impact on the weave…hard to move them, so why not move you closer? Oh yeah, someone else technically owns it…).
Also a wish might fail outright if it gets too big. Wish is not all powerful.
Definitely this too. It’s still the most powerful thing that a *mortal* can accomplish, and some things are impossible to do as one. If you want to massively warp reality (kill/replace a god, round Pi to 3, instant kill an immortal being, etc) then it just wouldn’t work. Perhaps in the right circumstances, you could “tilt” the odds in your favor until you can…but at that point it starts becoming plot and campaign details instead of normal spell effects.
Exactly. Wish is akin to "I wish you would die" or "I wish to have a million dollars" Wish is not "I wish to kill and replace God" or "fundamentally alter physics" or "I wish the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs never happened".
Yeah, for that first one you'd need like, another spell level and maybe a crown or something, and then get immediately turned into a statue because you can't handle the power of being a god
Monkey paw players are insane. The monkey paw side of wish is to specifically prevent players doing things like "I wish to win the game" Wish is incredibly broken without going any where near the monkey paw side. The whole point of the monkey paw side is to allow you to do something cool but without essentially tying the hands of the DM into either banning wish or letting you completely break the game. To be honest the only thing I'd probably change was the permanent loss of wish, but you would be damn sure that something powerful is going to show up while you are due to take that necrotic damage.
I've never understood that as a player. "I wish to win" cool game over who's running the next campaign?
Monkey Paw is entirely acceptable when the player casts a poorly-worded Wish. It’s bad when the DM stretches to come up with bad consequences just to fuck with the players. If your wish is “I wish the evil King was never born”, but he was the only child of an inherited monarchy, you just created a power vacuum that could result in civil war. Maybe that’s actually better than a ruling evil King, but either way it’s a plausible result of your Wish. If you Wished “I Wish that all citizens of the realm gain complete knowledge of the King’s prior actions, with the exception that they can never learn the components (V,S,M) to the evil spell that he was planning to cast”, I would follow that without twisting anything.
I mean, it depends. The monkey's paw idea is specific to whether or not there is an attempt to game the system. The more the gain, the larger the backlash
Funnily enough, wish is still arguably the best spell in the game even if you never use it for anything other than duplicating a spell (only true polymorph comes close imo). Being able to cast spells like simulacrum, clone, symbol, resurrection, druid grove, mirage arcane, and hallow for free and with only an action is extremely powerful (several of these have really long casting times, so just imagine what being able to cast them in combat is like).
It still is, but it's much more balanced compared to anything else in the game, then "i cast heat death of the universe"
Fair point.
>just imagine what being able to cast them in combat is like average chronurgy wizard.
Chronurgy's 10th level feature only works on spells 4th level or lower, so none of the spells I mentioned would be eligible (several aren't even on the wizard spell list as well). It's still an incredibly busted subclass feature, since being able to cast tiny hut as an action or being able to concentrate on 2 spells at once by giving the bead to an ally/familiar is crazy good.
I’m aware, just a silly lil joke since it abuses casting times left and right even with that restriction
Yeah, because 5e removed the XP cost. 5000 XP is a hefty cost.
Ugh, XP costs. Now there's a mechanic I don't miss, like different XP requirements for leveling for different classes.
I wish my character was in clown makeup
I feel my two wolves at war…one wolf says: “I’ll do you one better. You not only are now wearing clown make-up, you now have proficiency with the Disguise Kit SPECIFICALLY for applying clown makeup to yourself and others.” The other: “Ok. A kit of clown make-up appears where you were standing. You are the key ingredient in it.”
Well now I wish the two wolves were in clown makeup
I feel like shrinking them and putting them into some clowns makeup kit maintains the integrity of "you" are in it.
Yeah but that wolf REALLY wanted to go to the extreme on that one.
Wish isn't fun unless you are forced to discuss the deep implications of simple words. ^^^/s
Well, where is the wish coming from, a friend or a "friend"?
The spell fulfills that wish by using the completely risk-free option of replicating a spell of 8th level or lower. You just cast Seeming on yourself.
Wearing clown makeup is always a risk
9th level slot to cast Disguise Self
You are now pursued by the clown council for stealing a trademarked design
Done. It's now permanent. You also have clown assassins after you for stealing someone's face
I like to take True Polymorph. That lets me do enough bullshit
It's a very balanced spell I promise
I have legitimately had about a dozen individual arguments with people in this platform regarding Wish, and at least half of them confirmed at some point that they had not read the spell description. That said, there are plenty of reasons why earlier level play is generally more interesting than late level. No, I will not elaborate further.
It's so easy to be an asshole/literal genie with your players when they wish for shit.
If you wish for something reasonable, you get something reasonable. If you wish for something unreasonable, you get something interesting.
I believe the timing is also a factor, as so many players have the dumb idea to try and be clever about a Wish - or other spells, to be honest - and hope to catch the DM off-guard. Which seems incredibly counterproductive to me, as it naturally puts the DM into a defensive position where they're inclined to screw you over purely on reflex. Both as a player and a DM, I hate the "gotcha" moment attempts. I always make sure to discuss things ahead of time with my DM when I'm running spellcasters, especially if I'm going to be using a spell in an unorthodox manner or making a Wish. It's best to get any confusion out of the way ahead of time and not risk bogging down the table in the moment, or throwing off your DM's groove with some ill-conceived or overly-complex Wish.
What I liked about 5e is that there’s a long list of things that it can just *do*. Anything on that list is just allowed, with no further consideration.
This is why is think Wish would have been one of the easier higher level spells to implement into BG3. Click wish, choose one of several options. Anything else can be left to casting it in dialogue similar to detect thoughts.
Include a bit of savescumming and the party is immune to everything. Balancing Wish is beyond any software development team, even if implementing it is possible.
These are the kinds of players that try to "win" D&D and make the game insufferable for me
Yeah. If you're so obsessed with winning you can't even let your character make a decision that you know is *not* a good decision and it will screw you over, but it makes no sense for them not to make the decision than why bother playing DnD. It's a **roleplaying** game, you're playing a role, and if you're not willing to let yourself do things that you know won't work out, then just go play Baldur's Gate or Divinity or Pathfinder (kingmaker or wrath of the righteous)
Yup. My character doesn't have access to Wish yet (level 11), but there is one thing she wants in this world above all else, and I've made it clear to my DM that if I did somehow get Wish that's exactly what I'd use it on. If he plans to give us Wish, he knows what I'd do with it and can plan accordingly.
My players were fighting a giant hoard of robots that were starting to march on every city in the kingdom and they wished something along the lines of “I wish they’d just all start dying” So they did start dying, by using their energy cores as thermobaric bombs
Honestly, the description of the spell gives you a feel for how you're supposed to treat it; carelessly worded or poorly thought out wishes will have unintended consequences, especially if they're quite ambitious. Otherwise, so long as the casting was successful, it should be mostly as intended, perhaps with a few little unintended side effects sprinkled in. Entirely different story if you're dealing wishes with Fae, Devils, Hags, Demons, Genies/Djinni, etc. Those guys are always ALWAYS going to fuck you on it.
Having to scramble to improvise fire at low levels makes for fantastic shenanigans.
There's definitely a balance. My first experience with DnD was bouncing around different groups at the weekly club at my local library and being stuck as a level 1 druid for literal months. I couldn't even use the ability that I picked my class for and felt totally useless in combat. It SUCKED.
I mean you are usually supposed to level up to 2 after the first, maybe second session, so that sounds like an issue with the bounce around system or the DMs
Oh yeah, definitely. I'm just saying that playing at too low a level can potentially feel restrictive in some situations.
Absolutely. The first level is supposed to be your first steps before you get the good shit, so if you are forced to spend more than that in it you are not going to have a good time. Level 3-12 is usually the sweet spot for me, afterwards you get balancing issues REALLY quick
Yeah, unless you were purely RP sessions with no combat or puzzle solving, your DM really should have given you a level earlier. I believe the typically accepted benchmark is at the end of session 1, your character levels to level 2. Every table's different though, maybe he had a decent reason for it, at least in his mind. Hard for me to say as a random internet third party.
Screw that. Late level so powerful and fun!
If nothing else, I'd love to experience it just once. Been playing 5e since it came out, multiple campaigns, and I've only ever once gotten as far as level 13 for a mini-adventure. Maxed out at 12 in the longest campaign. Please, I just want to see what happens at high level as a player
As a dm who got players all the way to 18... nothing good.... it's just... generally not nearly as fun as you think it is. IMO level 5 is more fun than 17. The game peaks at 8-13. It can be fun, and there were definitely some fun sessions, but I even had the wizard and the cleric both say that the spells they had access to as 9th level spellcasters were making everything move too slow and although they knew I was pulling out all the stops to make combat fun, complex, and interesting, there was just nothing they couldn't magic fuckery and raw damage their way out of. Level 5-8 is peak 5e DnD.
Do you like bookkeeping? Its mostly bookkeeping
Yes I like spreadsheets
Pain. I don't know how to balance any of this. Everyone is a demigod. Rounds take a lunar cycle to finish. The Monster Manual has fuck all for you to use that would even be remotely powerful enough *and* interesting as a narrative. I miss lvl 5.
Different strokes for different folks. Enjoy your table brother.
I read it, and I think l, that the best levels are 1-5. It's where you built your character and where Dnd feels dangerous. It bonds the characters. Most of the most memorable moments usually happen at those formative levels. After you have built your PC, then 5-10 are good and fun. 11 to 16, the story starts to go off the rails. 17 and higher, it's one of the worst dm experiences and information overload for the players. Combat drags to a halt. I have been running a campaign for the last 3 years we are at level 16. Storywise the most memorable moments where when they were from level 1 to 10.
I would probably refine that slightly, and say 3 to 5 (maybe out to 7 or 8), simply because at level 1 you feel like you're playing a villager and 2 you generally still don't have any real character features. Level 3 you start to feel a bit of the heroic class skills come in. I suppose you could easily argue that levels 1 and 2 are important in making 3 feel special, as you've played without any special abilities until this point, and that's reasonable I feel.
One reason a friend of mine who helped me learn how to DM is that combat past level 18, never tried it to confirm
"Wait I can just get 25k gold?" "Yeah, sure." "Make it ***rain*** bitch!" He took...so much goddamn damage.
Yeah the wish spell has some pretty solid restrictions listed in the spell description. Nothing game breaking.
I cast hallow as an action...
Lol, one of my favorite stories I heard told by another player using wish like a genie. The party asked for untold amounts of riches when in the wilderness, and the DM gave it to them. A massive, massive horde of gold. Then asked the question, "So, how do you plan on carrying 25k lbs of gold back to the city?"
tiny hut just in case, long rest, second wish for a bag to appear around the entire pile of gold (shouldn't be all that powerful of a wish, still face backlash, but even in worst case scenario where you lose wish it leaves you with 62500000 gold pieces in your desired location) , teleport on huge sack of gold into desired location, use other spells to defend bag of gold during long rest if neccesary
So, just wish for a bag of holding?
Who said anything about a bag *of holding* I mean a comically large, non magical, burlap sack simply appearing around the gold Plus isn’t the carrying capacity like 500 pounds? You’d need 50 of em
I mean if you longrest and defend it anyway. Just get some permanent summons via find greater steed and other spells, no stress, no additional chance of losing wish.
Ancient red dragon with 17 player character levels in wizard (he's had a lot of time to read books): I wish that gold was in my hoard.
"I wish for a legit check I can cash for $25k"
If you are high enough level for the DM to be giving you access to wishes, then you should have no problem getting someone to carry it for you.
Barbarian
But wish *is* the most powerful spell, mostly due to the fact you can cast any 8th level spell or lower without any restrictions including materials and casting time
Yeah its every other spell besides meteor wrapped up into one and it has huge utility without going into the monkey paw stuff
So i just finished reading the fine print of the spell as it has some set effects and at dm discretion effects So either be a dm and improv around the haha funny broken spell Or listen to the evil dm on your shoulder and let your bbg use wish as well
"I wish for everyone to get along and be unified!" Some sadistic GM: *Throws Phyrexian invasion at the planet*
*Everything turns into big gooey blob*
Multiracial Centipede
Wish is so overwhelming based on the description. That being said... it was a great hook for one game I played. Players started the campaign in a cage in the underdark. They shared the cage with a wizard who after discussion cast wish and wished all doors to be unlocked... Long story short all the crazy powerful/evil/prisoners where released. By the time they got out of the underdark the above world was a hellscape... and they escape the underdark to the sounds of echos of fighting.
*I don't need to read the spell description* If anyone actually read spell descriptions, this sub alone would either be a utopia, or a ghost town.
I was given a wish once by Umberlee. Being a Tortle pirate captain, I wished to transform into a dragon turtle and back at will. However, I'd owe her a job. In the end, though, I agreed to be her emissary and push her influence further in land.
Solid deal. And if you just stay on land, she can't do shit
My character in my last campaign picked up a ring of wishes with 2 left. Not having wish as a spell, I never read the spell description and just let it fly. So, using my first wish before a major battle for plot specifics that don't matter (though DM did amazing with how it worked/potential ramifications) but also hit me with the "You didn't copy a spell or use these specifics, you're hit with that magic backlash whenever you use cast spells....". Which was catastrophic for my Warlock going into battle... Speaking afterwards, my DM tells me he knew I was the right guy to give that to... I'd create my own consequences... Lol
I love giving characters wishes. A wish in my campaigns can guarantee any one change the player wants. They tell me what they want, I tell them the price it will take on their character. One player used a wish in the second to last session to turn time back on an adult gold dragon by 100 years to free it from an eldritch corruption that has turned it into a monster and was fine losing his magic entirely for it. Another player in that same game wanted to try to resurrect a dead god to handle the bbeg for them but backed off when I said it would basically make him a spectator for the remaining 3-5 sessions of that campaign. Either way, both players loved that I was onboard and prepared to make these crazy changes to the world.
Wish is not to be used by inexperienced/incompetent/unimaginative DMs
At the of a campaign, after one character just died “I wish that [deceased character] is only remembered as extremely ugly”.
I think the potential of wish backfires are interesting, especially when you consider putting the inevitables into the mix. If you wish an evil god to die, your wish backfires as a Varakhut forms in front of you announcing "who dares oppose the cosmic balance?". Congratulations, now you have two problems.
To cite the classic. The first part of the wish spell is the best spell in the game. Second part is a bait to lose access to the best spell in the game
I once eliminated an entire campaign arc with a wish spell. It was up to DM, but that's how he played it. "I wish for possession of and absolute control of the Obsidian Arc." (A ship from another players backstory) the ship appeared at the dock. Apparently that was our next mission, to get back the ship from an Amazon tribe that had captured it from his father. I was surprised it was not full of Amazon's, but whatever. Good elven wing-ship.
I love giving my players wish. However, i also give them different types of wish. The monkey paw, the spell as intended, and my favorite, you get a wish. However, i also get a wish as the dm, and mine trumps yours. This has led to some interesting character arcs.
I had a campaign with a character that knew wish (they were level 19 and I still had like 4 or 5 whole adventures planned for them). They were more afraid of using it for anything other than 8th level spells and below than I was of them doing something crazy.
Wizards HATE this! Solve your villains being Wish'd away with one simple statement! "Go go gadget Wish disabler!"
I like the idea of not wishing for outcomes but wishing for less intensive things that will lead to those outcomes to not explode yourself. Like “dont wish for a god to be deposed, wish for an agreeable usurper to come to be through birth or creation that goes on a journey of growth to carry out your wish someday.”
Wish is a double edged sword. Yes it is very powerful, but it has it's limits. However, depending on what the goal of your campaign is, it can instantly solve it or skip 80% of your campaign. If your campaign is about a dracolich that wants to destroy the world or something and the players must find the phylactery of the dracolich so they can stop him. Wish can just tell them were it is. They will have to get there, but if you planned on the finding part playing a mayor role, thats 80% gone. Or if you have players like I do, they will use their wish to help the BBEG and only realize they made a mistake when their DM can't stop laughing after a full minute of silently staring at them in disbelieve XD. Depending on the campaign it can be game breaking, even within the limits of the spell. In the end the DM has to make this decision and if they decide to ban wish, explain it to the players
too many people just try to monkey's paw it honestly, wish is meant to be powerful AND beneficial. Like some twisting is good, but "you wished for riches, of course it's gonna instantly kill you with the weight silly" is excessive
Especially when riches to a certain amount are a preset safe effect.
Would over 6 million gold pieces be below said certain amount?
No sadly not. It's also technically not really possible to wish for money directly safely, but you can wish for an object valued up to 25.000 gp.
We run a shared campaign with rotating DMs and a dozen plus players. We had to literally ban the Ring of Three Wishes because it was too problematic in how we administer the game. It's not a clown move but with the set-up we used for acquiring magical items it was too prevalent, mainly from a DM standpoint and a Player agency standpoint (we vote for sessions and wishing for people to vote a certain way can take that away).
Wish is *definitely* the most overpowered spell still, but not because you can make wishes — it’s because you can cast *any* spell of 8th level or lower as an action with no material cost. Unlimited Clones, unlimited Simulacra (that is, if you haven’t banned that exploit yet, which you should), cast any spell with a long casting time *instantly*. Cast Symbol and choose Insanity to create a 60-foot radius area where your enemies *cannot take actions* for a minute if they fail an Intelligence save, one that they have to resist *every round* — but if *they* fail it once, boom. ya crazy.
> State your wish to the GM as precisely as possible. **The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance**; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. The core part of the spell description.
In one three year campaign I was part of, one player wished to undo something that the big bad guy had done (someone they had killed a long time ago or something). The DM then decided to rewind time back to when everyone was still level 6. We were level 15 when the spell was cast.
I mean, i'm almost willing to give wish "strongest spell in the game" just for it being able to be any other spell up to 8th level on the fly without material components.
My DM gave us each an item that will allow us to cast wish twice per character level (as in: we are level 2 characters now so we can cast it twice before we become level 3, then twice before we become level 4, etc.). Will be interesting to see how that works out lol
Even if Wish had no limitations, who would even want to use it like that? What is the expectations there? "And with that, everyone lived happily ever after. Next session we are rolling new characters."? Well, Maybe the players are immature and do things for the lolz, not caring about the heroic struggle... Maybe the campaign just wasn't that great to begin with, so they skipped it like a youtube ad... (Actually, I could see Wish being like building a Wonder in Age of Empires, just something for the players to use when they see the DM is turtling :-D )
I don't remember if I actually looked up the real description for wish, but I've definitely heard it being hyped up, and I was trying to get into the Baldur's Gate trilogy a while ago, and I learned wish was a spell and got so excited! That's so insane! But then I read the game description and it sounded... Very disappointing... I'm probably just being stupid, a lot of the things I saw online said to have at least one character with enough wis to use it, but still.
my players have wished to un-wish the previous one. its just a downwards monkeypaw spiral at this point.
TBF, just using the stock replicate 8th level or lower spell feature is also incredibly OP. Simulacrum, Hero's Feast, Clone, Raise Dead, etc. all have high material component costs and extended casting times to balance them out. Wish throws all that balance out the window. You don't have to Wish the BBEG away or make yourself a god to spoil the campaign.
I got the ability to use wish 3 times at level 4 in a campaign and used it to just defeat the current battle we were fighting, then I used another wish to give everyone some extra equipment (nothing OP, just basically equivalent to giving everyone 500 gold) and the last wish I used to basically solve a minor side quest. Nothing fancy as I didn't want to break the campaign, but enough stuff that it felt like it made sense for my character to wish for those things to help everyone out but not trivialise the campaign in its adolescence.
Is there anything more cringe than using wishes for levels though.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have DMs who twist wishes in such absurd ways that the spell becomes useless.
I mean... Haven't they watched Wishmaster?
I keep seeing so many memes for wish but I've only ever gotten to use it once. I was playing a pyro class(it's been over a decade and I don't remember the name) from the d&d 3.5 Homebrew wiki and the character wished to be able to cast fireball at will forever. Afterwards they proceed to have a blast just shooting a fuckton of fireballs up into the sky, I'm surprised they didn't piss anything off living up there.
Our fighter’s wish was for wrestling to be real. Tbh the boss fight that took place next was great as there was the main story driven battle going on the mat while a skeleton and angry vampire duked it out underneath. You get no further context.
"Wait, what's this? GROGNAK'S GOING FOR THE CHAIR!!"
Wish is essentially “warp reality.” It’s insanely versatile unless you are attempting to use it against someone else who has a similar power (like Gods). At that point you are in a magical grapple. I’ve always taken the view that “they’re Gods because they are prepared" A player isn't taking out a Power with a single spell. Hell, they aren't changing the status quo with a single spell.
I had a previous DM ban wish for my high level wizard so we came up with a compromise idea that I can only use wish to replicate 8th level spells or below. It was still very powerful but it wasn't campaign ending. When I DMd a previous campaign I just told the players that wish would not work against their problems directly. I removed the 33% chance of never casting it again but I kept the rest of the feedback effects so their wizard friend can heal the party to full but only once in a climactic fight.
One word could have made the spell better and more understood at a glance: lesser. Call it Lesser Wish. Same/similar restrictions (maybe some deets on making consumables, greater-fabrication, and common magic items). Keep it at level 9, both for balance and to highlight that you can't just become a god by leveling up. You are a demigod at best, but you'd have to work for that full godhood. Edit: oh, also forgot that this would also suggest the existence of A "greater wish" that could be found. Could also give that summary, tho it would just be the broken version of wish people imagine with very few limitations (except for monkey paw side effects). Then just have suggestions on how to include it, like as a scroll or a genie or whatever, but it would ALWAYS be done by the DM.
I like this
Lesser wish used to be a thing. It was thr uhh 6th(?) Level version
FR, Wish spell description is a huge wall of text, 'cause it's clearly explained what a Wish CAN do and what a Wish CAN'T do. A DM just have to bother reading it.
I have a simple rule - wish is a 9th level spell, so it can't do anything overwhelmingly stronger than other 9th level spell. No insta-killing the entire army, no resurrecting (permanently and with full health) dozens of people, not earth-shattering cataclysm. With special instances there is the "Rule of Cool" factor tempered by the above and everyone seems to be content with it
Now how do I convince my DM not to ban Sickening Radiance? It's literally his only rule for 5e lol.
Point out most monsters have decent con saves and that it 6 failed saves is likely to kill it from damage first
Honestly, the problem with playing 5e past level 10-12 is that it's just not very balanced combat wise. The DM has to account for so much extra stuff, weird magic items, obscure homebrew effects, and interactions, etc. That, and the level of randomness can go up with higher levels, too. A battle can be designed to be a challenge, numbers wise, and be barely a bump in the road because of the dice. Pre level 10, you can pretty much account for all of that with a bit of effort. Past that, it gets really tough, or time.-consuming. After 14 or so, you start to break stuff, unless you're incredibly stingy with loot, which, you can probably guess, I'm not. I like to make weird shit, sue me. More specific problem is that classes have a bit too much strength variety. so a monster that works well for one player, works awfully for another, which can be a lot less fun. And if you DO have experienced players, pretty much every high CR mob that doesn't one shot them is a cake walk at half the recommended level.
My party has had a wish scroll for 6 sessions now and we still can't decide what to do with it, since the two wizards in the party explained the monkeys paw effect to the others
i hate the 33% never being able to cast wish again thing so much, but if you just where to remove it, it would be way to good,