Gdtyjr

So I know that Wish is meant to be a really powerful spell, but some of my players from my group (I am the DM) seem to have spent some time into getting around the limitations of Wish. Now, I know that in order for no adverse (other than a mishap) you must replicate a spell of 8th level or lower, with anything else becoming a probability for you to never cast a wish spell again. You could wish for a magical weapon but that would be likely to transport you someplace where the weapon currently resides. I know that the Wish, if making something, must remain within three hundred cubic feet, or you could completely heal 20 creatures, or any number of weird stuff.

Some of my players spent a large amount of time trying to create some wishes so that I cannot twist nor corrupt their wish. Now, I also know that they cannot just wish for something like 45 points of Dexterity, but they are legitimate wishes. One of them ran along the lines of "I wish for the immediate and complete obliteration of all (insert monster here, in this case it was the Tarrasque) in this plane of existence with absolutely no adverse side effects whatsoever.

How would a DM handle such a wish? Furthermore, if players are putting that much time into such a wish, would that even be considered abusing that power?

I realize that they might never cast that spell again due to the 33% chance of never being able to cast it again, but I honestly believe telling them that their spell fails is an absolute last resort. I would prefer if the answers came from experience and not conjuncture.

You could use worldbuilding to inflict an unforseen consequence on the players that is nothing to do with the wish itself.

For example: It turns out that there is a greater-power level lawful neutral organization in the multiverse of your setting that are dedicated to preventing and punishing the genocidal use of magic against any creature. They target your PCs for death and eternal afterlife imprisonment in a lawful neutral prison plane as retribution for crimes against reality itself. Set the CR of attacks from that organization above what a Tarrasque would have been. Continue to escalate and just wreck everything the players have achieved.

Or have it be the case that some greater evil power was trapped in a mountain prison on that plane of existence, and the prison was guarded by Tarrasques. Because the guards were eliminated, the servants of the great evil were able to unleash their master from the prison. Chaos and mayhem ensue. Continue to escalate and just wreck everything the players have achieved.

Or do both. Or do something else completely, the Tarrasques all get sent to the abyss, get converted into demons. This allows the demons to overpower the forces of hell and break out into the Prime Material, and now all of reality is under threat by the armies of abyssal Tarrasques under the command of Demogorgon. Whatever. Get creative.

Give the players an out in that the only way they can fix things is to acquire a macguffin and take it to the place of power to rewrite the timeline, undo the wish, and bring back the monsters they destroyed through the misuse of god-level magic.

It checks out because this isn't an adverse side effect of the wish itself. The wish isn't misfiring and causing an adverse effect, so the wish works as described. The world itself just turns out to have an unexpected consequence built in that the players didn't know about.

You're letting the spell through, but using the consequences of that in the world to incentivize the players to undo the effects of the spell.

Only thing I'd consider in terms of overriding the "with absolutely no adverse side effects whatsoever" part would be to take the 33% chance of losing access to the wish spell and just setting that to 100% for a usage of that magnitude, but give it back after they reset the timeline, which seems fair.

I'd also set the wish in such a way that it can't be undone by another wish spell if another party member tries to dig everyone out of trouble that way.

The wish spell says that, if you wish for too much:

the spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence...

If someone says they want their wish "with absolutely no adverse side effects whatsoever", three obvious solutions are:

• to rule that the spell simply fails


• to rule that the wish is only partially granted (for example to rule that the Tarrasque was injured but not killed)


• to rule that the wish is only partially granted and the part that is not granted is the "with absolutely no adverse side effects whatsoever" part, and then make up some appropriate adverse side effects

You still want to give the character something in exchange for their wish, so my approach is generally to decide how much of of a benefit their wish is worth, and then give them that much benefit, regardless of how much they asked or didn't ask for.