How do you handle Wish?

[KorvinStarmast]

Work with the DM, not against them.

{snip}

But again, I’d suggest not trying to surprise your DM with this and run your thoughts by them before you get there.

Sound advice.

Spoiler: set up

Show

In 5E, I just go by the text for the spell and any scrolls anyone might happen to find (and I generally don't allow anything much greater than the effects listed). Better Wishes than that are in the realm of DM fiat.

Historically, I used to rule that a Wish is always granted by the 'nearest' wish-granting entity. Which was usually a deity of some sort, but might be a Ki-Rin or a Genie or whatever. Once you cast it, they have to grant it, but they interpreted it according to their alignment or goals or motives.

A very lawful creature will interpret the Wish precisely, an evil or chaotic creature might give you the Monkey's Paw Treatment, a Good creature might pervert the Wish if they feel it's selfish or harmful.

So on the rare occasion the players got access to a Wish, it turned into an in-game quest to work out what entity was most amenable to their interests and what they needed to do to curry favour with them, and then how to make sure the right entity is 'close by' when the Wish is cast.

The more egregious the Wish , the more favour they need to curry to ensure it goes the way they want (and, possibly, the more interest other entities might have in interfering).

It was my go-to method for years and years. I always disliked the overly adversarial "precise-wording" paradigm older editions basically mandated. So I changed it from an unresolvable OC conflict to an resolvable IC conflict, which made for good stories.

I am stealing this.

This has always been a false argument.

D&D is a game, decision-making is always down to the player in the end.

Spoiler: the rest

Show

Consider something simpler, like Augury or Contact Other Plane: the character's abilities are already factored into the number of questions you can ask and the fact that the spells can be cast at all. Same here. The character's intelligence is already factored in that the player gets to wish anything at all. The rest is up to the player.

Furthermore, there are no genuine wizards of superhuman intelligence around to truly answer how such a person would act. Any questions of the sort "how would this person behave?" have to be answered by real people. If it's not the wizard's player, then the next closest possibilities are the other players, or the dungeon master. So, in effect, a person going "I don't know what to do but my character would" is effectively saying "I don't know how to play my character, would somebody else please play my character?".

Alternative way to look at it is that the wish is always made to an interpreter that is at most as intelligent as the dungeon master. This is a real life fact, but it can be a fact in the game just as well. So even if we presume a fantastically intelligent wizard, the actual wish has to be dumbed down to parameters legible to the allmighty idiot running the actual function. That would also explain why only some effects can be achieved with certainty: those are the only ones well-defined, for anything else, the wizard is guessing how an interpreter of unknown intelligence would react to their wording, exactly like the player is.

Yep.