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## ("Chain") Binding Efreeti and "The Wish Economy" [D&D 3.5]

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:55 pm

> Omegonthesane wrote:

> > tussock wrote:Right, so if you take my post and my other post and my other post and stick them together like as if we were having a real-time conversation, you get ...
> > 1: So don't do that, as a house rule. Monkey claw it.
> > 2: Because the limits on Wish don't make any sense if Wish is secretly of infinite power. So Monkey Claw It.
> > 3: Like the first limit that says you can't Wish for a Wish, or a Gate, but you found a way in the rules to get a bunch of Wishes and Gate spells with your Wish, that doesn't make any fucking sense. SO MONKEY CLAW THE FUCKER.
> > I mean, I get that the rules as written do stupid things that contradict themselves in all sorts of places, but it's like ...

> > > the rules wrote:Doctor, doctor: whenever I slam my dick in the door it really hurts!

> > And I'm saying, so don't do that, and especially not infinity times. You're all just so damn keen on following the rules there, eh. It's clear enough that they thought they'd removed any way to get cheap Wishes and they just missed one or two. So just fix it for them. With the fucking bit where it says

> > > Wish wrote:You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

> > MONKEY CLAW. Using your wish to create greater effects than these. Monkey claw. greater effects than these. These being the whole list. Monkey claw. Undesirable fullfillment is what it says. If you get more wishes, it's supposed to fuck you up, because you got a greater effect than what it said you should get, out of the list of effects that you can get. Which excludes 9th level spells as being a thing you can get without getting fucked.
> > And I know that's MTP houserules bullshit territory, and I'm saying that's how you fix these things. Your infinite power loops, I reject them. Is what I'm saying. A lot.

> Red text mine for emphasis - his main thrust was still retarded, but it was "houserule Wish in the least efficient most retarded way available" not "The rues stop you doing that".

Bold text mine for causing you to actually read it. Because it is fucking obvious as shit to everyone who reads it and isn't a dishonest shill that he genuinely believes the actual rules of Wish cause the wish to not work. Or he wouldn't be quoting the actual rules text, and then specifically saying that the rules themselves prevent you from doing it.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

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deaddmwalking
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Post by deaddmwalking » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:47 pm

> Kaelik wrote:

> > tussock wrote:it's totally just sitting there in the spell waiting for everyone to use it.

> No it isn't. Once again, not it isn't. Asking for a Ring is not a greater effect than asking for a Ring. It is a listed effect, and so does not in fact allow for bullshit greater effects fuckery. As has been explained to you several times.

Asking for a ring (or any other object) that provides the benefits of a 9th level spell, is, by one way of calculating, asking for something that exceeds the stated benefits of Wish.
Effectively, he's taking the stated spell effects as the maximum power level. Anything that is more powerful than a single 8th level spell is too powerful for Wish.
That can certainly be confusing when some available effects are listed as possible and you're adding the caveat 'unless they create an effect greater than an 8th level spell', but since the GM is a thinking person, it can work for a specific game.
So, we know that Wish doesn't let you wish for a 9th level spell. If you wish for a scroll with a 9th level spell on it, that would functionally be the same as duplicating a 9th level spell. So wish can't do that. If you want a scroll, it has to be of an 8th-level or lower spell. Best solution? Probably not. A solution? Most assuredly.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:53 pm

By Tussock's "reading" you'd be able to dick people over on any wish, because the effects of Wish are always the effects of the 9th level spell Wish, and Tussock claims you should only be getting an 8th level spell. Which is to say that Tussock is insane and wrong.
But the really really weird part is the part where he seems to think that DMs dicking players over by willfully misinterpreting wishes is a solution to, well, anything. That shit was bullshit. Knights of the Dinner Table makes fun of that bullshit, because it's hilariously obvious that it was bullshit. The DM being a dick and willfully misinterpreting a wish is a problem, not a solution. And if you think, even for a moment, that doing that might be less bad than something else, you have a huge fucking problem on your hands.
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deaddmwalking
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Post by deaddmwalking » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:57 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:By Tussock's "reading" you'd be able to dick people over on any wish, because the effects of Wish are always the effects of the 9th level spell Wish, and Tussock claims you should only be getting an 8th level spell. Which is to say that Tussock is insane and wrong.

His solution is to tell players in advance that they will wish for something not to exceed the benefits of an 8th level spell or they will 'suffer consequences'.
Effectively, he's advocating a gentleman's agreement for his table as a solution to the problem. For his specific game, that could work. But as a general fix, it's no good - it's straight Oberoni.
Edit - A far as Wish as a '9th level spell', obviously it is itself a 9th level spell... But It's sort of like using a higher level spell slot to prepare EVERY lower-level spell - but just once. Effectively, it's just a super-charged Mnemonic Enhancer - you give up a higher level spell-slot to recast a lower-level spell - but you don't even have to have previously prepared or cast the spell you're substituting.
Last edited by deaddmwalking on Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane » Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:45 pm

> Kaelik wrote:

> > Omegonthesane wrote:

> > > tussock wrote:Right, so if you take my post and my other post and my other post and stick them together like as if we were having a real-time conversation, you get ...
> > > 1: So don't do that, as a house rule. Monkey claw it.
> > > 2: Because the limits on Wish don't make any sense if Wish is secretly of infinite power. So Monkey Claw It.
> > > 3: Like the first limit that says you can't Wish for a Wish, or a Gate, but you found a way in the rules to get a bunch of Wishes and Gate spells with your Wish, that doesn't make any fucking sense. SO MONKEY CLAW THE FUCKER.
> > > I mean, I get that the rules as written do stupid things that contradict themselves in all sorts of places, but it's like ...
> > > And I'm saying, so don't do that, and especially not infinity times. You're all just so damn keen on following the rules there, eh. It's clear enough that they thought they'd removed any way to get cheap Wishes and they just missed one or two. So just fix it for them. With the fucking bit where it says
> > > MONKEY CLAW. Using your wish to create greater effects than these. Monkey claw. greater effects than these. These being the whole list. Monkey claw. Undesirable fullfillment is what it says. If you get more wishes, it's supposed to fuck you up, because you got a greater effect than what it said you should get, out of the list of effects that you can get. Which excludes 9th level spells as being a thing you can get without getting fucked.
> > > And I know that's MTP houserules bullshit territory, and I'm saying that's how you fix these things. Your infinite power loops, I reject them. Is what I'm saying. A lot.

> > Red text mine for emphasis - his main thrust was still retarded, but it was "houserule Wish in the least efficient most retarded way available" not "The rues stop you doing that".

> Bold text mine for causing you to actually read it. Because it is fucking obvious as shit to everyone who reads it and isn't a dishonest shill that he genuinely believes the actual rules of Wish cause the wish to not work. Or he wouldn't be quoting the actual rules text, and then specifically saying that the rules themselves prevent you from doing it.

Whether he does or not is actually not a required condition for showing he is a retard, he's saying that monkey claw is a better solution to infinite loops than Wish Economy. A shill might read the bolded text as saying that since the list is meant to nominally be equally good, if something on it is obviously ricockulously better than something else on it it's secretly not allowed to be - but that's a stupid reading that no sane honest person would take, so I won't take it.

> Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:06 pm

Okay, people, for fuck's sake: tussock's argument is that "you should houserule limits in list entry #1 to apply to list entry #7 P.S. also the rules support my houserules (???) hey what are you guys doing stop yelling at me for gettng the rules wrong I'm only talking about houserules." That's what he's actually doing here, and if you fall for it you are a suuucker.
Everything about that is stupid as all fuck. It's also trivially wrong, because entry #7 already has limits that, when they apply, do fairly successfully prevent you wishing for more wishes and you don't need to apply the limits on entry #1 to get reasonable results out of the spell text and it's very important that you read this part deaddmwalking - wishing for a magic item costs twice the XP cost of crafting it plus 5k XP on top! The wish entry, taken on its own, does not produce unreasonable results or infinite power loops even before tussock's useless houserules. The problem occurs when wish meets SLA and the costs disappear, which causes list entry #7 to explode in a way list entry #1 doesn't.
Tussock does not understand how wish is supposed to work, nor why it breaks down and ends up not working that way. Predictably, his solutions and his defenses of them end up being pretty dumb as a result.
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tussock
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Post by tussock » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:32 am

> tussock wrote:If we're talking house rules, you just can't use Wish in any way that would grant you more Wishes, because monkey-claw.

> tussock wrote:I mean, here in the world of considering designer intent, you'll notice there's a fuck-tonne of limits on what you get from casting a wish, and none of them make any sense at all if one wish can get you another wish in any way, shape, or form.

From there people are all "but tussock, the designers clearly intended you to not be able to get a 9th level spell with Wish and also clearly intended you could get a ring of infinite wishes for free by casting a 5th level spell instead of casting wish, at the same time".
I'm just pointing out that doesn't make any sense. To me.
If you want a whole new rule, rather than just reading the spell as a person from outside your circle-jerk here would assume it was intended, the one you seem to require is to say that Spell-Like wishes (and all things derived from them in depth) can't create magic items.
But I think that's a bunch less fun that screwing over people who think there's secret rule combinations that create infinite power when you find them. Even though that's two wrongs not making a right. Don't care. G'night.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:45 am

> tussock wrote:From there people are all "but tussock, the designers clearly intended you to not be able to get a 9th level spell with Wish and also clearly intended you could get a ring of infinite wishes for free by casting a 5th level spell instead of casting wish, at the same time".

Except for that whole part where the rules clearly fucking intend for you to be able to use Wish to get a Ring of Three Wishes. Like, that is very obviously one of the reasonably possible and even prepared for uses of Wish in the game rules.
So you are still wrong.

> tussock wrote:I'm just pointing out that doesn't make any sense. To me.

Right Tussock, no one is disputing that you don't know how lists work. We all agree that you are completely befuddled by lists. But just because you don't understand lists doesn't mean other people don't.

> tussock wrote:If you want a whole new rule, rather than just reading the spell as a person from outside your circle-jerk here would assume it was intended, the one you seem to require is to say that Spell-Like wishes (and all things derived from them in depth) can't create magic items.

1) A whole new explicit rule or explicit change to the current rules that makes the bad thing go away is always 100% of the time superior to not changing the actual rules, but just fucking people by surprise when they try to use the actual rules that really exist instead of your crazy imagination which they have no access to.
2) No, that rule is not as good as the rules actually presented in the Tomes because it does not do away with the XP cost for things that shouldn't have an XP cost including but not limited to Wishing for a Wand of Shield, something that no one cares if you do that with an SLA wish.

> tussock wrote:But I think that's a bunch less fun that screwing over people

If you are trying to undermine your own position and credibility, you are succeeding.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
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Neurosis
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Post by Neurosis » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:02 pm

Generally speaking, I think I actually agree with some of what Tussock was saying above. I can't be sure because of his virulent overuse of the phrase "Monkey claw" making his posts lose all meaning. I'm not sure if he was actually trying to invoke the premise/moral "Monkey's Paw" story or if it was some memetic thing I'm not getting. Anyway the conversation was also hard to follow because Tussock and everyone yelling at him were talking past each other. A lot.
I did learn something from it, which is that by far the most FUCKED part of the wish RAW is the seventh bullet point. (Although with the XP cost it's really Wish as an SLA that should not exist. Either Wish shouldn't be available as an SLA to anything or it should still cost XP as an SLA. That would be the simplest fix (and would help explain why Outsiders are so reluctant to grant wishes as it dumps all their XP in the toiler).

> FrankTrollman wrote:
> No Wishing for More Wishes!
> The 3.5 wish spell is very explicit in what it can do, and extremely vague about what it can't do. It has a big list of things it is capable of, and then tells the DM to ad hoc things if anyone wishes for anything that isn't on that list. Unfortunately, wishing for a Staff of 50 wishes is on the list of things you can wish for. The XP cost is considerable (512,180 XP), but if you get your wishes from a magic item (like a Staff of 50 Wishes) or a spell-like ability (like an Efreet), you don't have to pay that XP cost, so the fact that it is stupidly large doesn't even matter. Needless to say, the game completely breaks down as soon as that happens. So in that spirit, we suggest an alternate list of things wish can do, coupled with some things wish actually can't do:
> - Free Wishes – the following wishes have no XP cost:
>   – Wealth: A character can wish for mundane wealth whose total value is 25,000 gp or less.
>   – Magic Item: A character can wish for a magic item that costs 15,000 gp or less.
>   – Power: A character can wish to increase an inherent bonus to any attribute by 1 (to a maximum of +5)
>   – Spell: A character can wish for the effects of any spell that lacks an XP cost that is lower level than the highest level spell in its spell list (a wizard spell of 8th level or less, or a paladin spell of 3rd level or less, for example).
>   – Transport: A character can wish herself and 1 other willing creature per caster level to any location on any plane.
> - Wishes that aren't Free – the following wishes cost XP or gp or both:
>   – Add to the Powers of a Magic Item: A character can increase the powers of a magic item to anything she could enhance it to with her own item creation feats. This requires 1 XP for every 10 gp increase in magic item value.
>   – Raise the Dead: A character can bring the dead back to "life", even if they were an undead, construct, or other creature that cannot normally be brought back to life. This may even be able to bring back a creature who has been devoured by a Barghest (50% chance of success). This costs 3,000 XP, which can be paid in any combination by the caster or the target. The spent XP for this wish can reduce a character's level, but coming back to life in this manner otherwise won't do so.
>   – Undo Misfortune: A character can wish back the sands of time in order to force events of the last round to be replayed. Time can be reset to any point back to the character's previous initiative pass. This use costs 1000 XP. While the action spent to cast wish in this case is restored, the character still loses the spell slot and XP used to power it.
>   – Turn Back Time: A poorly fated adventure can be averted entirely with a wish. The character expends the slot and pays 5,000 xp, and none of it ever happened.
> - Wishes that are Rituals – some wishes have much greater costs, at the whim of the DM. Here is an example:
>   – Become a new Creature: A character can wish themselves into being a new creature. This must be done when a character is eligible to gain a new level, and the character makes the wish and takes a level of the new racial class (or racial paragon class) and is now the new race.
> Any use of wish causes the wisher to become fatigued (and yes, there are ways to get around that).
> Creatures with spell-like abilities that grant wishes may only grant wishes that have no XP cost. So an Efreet can give you as many +2 swords as it wants, but an Efreet can't give in to your request to have a +3 sword. Also, you'll notice that we categorize the inherent bonuses as something that's free and therefore going to be rapidly available to all the player characters somewhere between 11th and 15th levels. That's because we seriously believe that it is more balanced for characters to all gain +5 inherent bonuses than it is for some characters to figure out how to manipulate XP gains and thought bottles to get inherent bonuses while the other players don't. Inherent bonuses need to be available or not available to everyone or they break the game.
> Magic items with wish on them can be used to cast wishes with an XP cost of at most 5,000 XP, and are produced as items using spells with a cost of 5,000 XP. As a result, you can't wish for an item that has wish on it.

Wow, these here house rules seem like a genuine solid solution to the worst parts of the Wish problem.
Although I actually think that 15,000 GP is actually a bit low as an arbitrary breakpoint for the magic item you can wish for. Why that number?
Like, all bullshittery about getting more wishes aside, wishing for a Ring of Wizardry or Invisibility or Freedom of Movement or for a Life Drinker or a suit of Mithral Full Plate of Speed or a Rod of Rulership or a Wand of Stoneskin or a Staff of Life or a Periapt of Proof Against Poison or whatever, really, as long as it doesn't grant more wishes and therefore break the game in half--this doesn't seem out of line for something the (best) 9th Level spell in the game can do, with or without an XP cost. I think requiring Item Creation feats may be a bit much, also.
I mean, I get that a player who wants to be a dick could wish for a one or more really expensive magic items every day (especially with no XP cost) and sell them, therefore generating infinite wealth over time but...
a) PCs with access to wish probably have access to various other means of generating ludicrous amounts of wealth.
b) Arbitrarily capping the free item value at 15k gp doesn't prevent this.
Last edited by Neurosis on Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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> Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.

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> TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:35 pm

> Although I actually think that 15,000 GP is actually a bit low as an arbitrary breakpoint for the magic item you can wish for. Why that number?

It's the cutoff that the 3e PHB had in it before the 3.5 revision broke the spell every which way. Also, it's the average value of a Medium Magic Item.
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Wiseman
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Post by Wiseman » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:36 pm

There are other tome rules that make having infinite gold not a problem by the time it comes online.
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.

> RadiantPhoenix wrote:

> > TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".

> The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".

> hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.

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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sun Feb 09, 2014 8:44 pm

> Schwarzkopf wrote:I mean, I get that a player who wants to be a dick could wish for a one or more really expensive magic items every day (especially with no XP cost) and sell them, therefore generating infinite wealth over time but...

You don't have to sell anything. You can wish for 25k GP directly. Tome characters are eventually supposed to graduate from caring about mundane wealth and start trafficking in higher level forms of currency, and magic items powerful enough for those characters aren't bought or sold in gold. Wealth-by-level doesn't work particularly well, and it doesn't work at all when you can trade an arbitrarily large number of chairs (or something else mundane and ridiculous) for a +10 sword given enough time.
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Post by tussock » Mon Feb 10, 2014 3:39 am

> Monkey's Paw

I got it wrong once and then just stuck with it, hoping to make it a thing. It's how all great religions are formed, give or take.
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Hellborn_Blight
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Post by Hellborn_Blight » Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:29 am

While not the exact same situation as presented here, something similar is happening in a game I'm playing in right now. We are of higher level than the minimum it takes to make this happen (we are very nearly 19) and we have taken the simulacrum route since it was really easy to make one casting with my factotum (casting level boosted) and then wish from there. Currently we have six efreet copies with us. It was particularly useful seeing as how the game has offered us very little in the way of shopping. It went tomb of horrors, to the city that waits and we are just entering the fortress of conclusion. Doing this has been a fantastic way to buff ourselves for the day. It has also managed to help the saint VoP wildshape ranger/monk giving them inherent bonuses to keep them relevant.
Our Efreets wait in Magnificent Mansions at the beginning of the dungeon (at least for now). We have no plans to bring them with us. EVER. Why? Because of the fact that there are no new ideas under then sun. If a player has some brilliant tactic that can totally swing the combat from party wipe to flawless victory, they get one shot at it being awesome before the DM knows about it and is thus a part of the game world. If you can do it, so can the other guys. It basically comes down to who do you think can power game better, you or the DM? If you have to ask that question, then ya done goofed.
Our group will rarely head into the territory we are in right now seeing as how we would have to deal with this crap when we run our games. So I think it basically becomes a game of self imposed limits creating a sub/meta economy with mutual respect for your gaming group as the currency. Talking to players about what is fun for EVERYONE in the game is still the undisputed way to make sure that these situations don't just follow the rules or even the spirit of the game, but your individual groups decisions about what they want out of their RPing experience.
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Post by Cyberzombie » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:22 am

> FrankTrollman wrote:By Tussock's "reading" you'd be able to dick people over on any wish, because the effects of Wish are always the effects of the 9th level spell Wish, and Tussock claims you should only be getting an 8th level spell. Which is to say that Tussock is insane and wrong.

If the DM makes some absurd rules lawyer argument like that to dick over his players find a new DM. No amount of rules will protect you from a DM who is willing to disregard all common sense to try to fuck over the PCs.

> But the really really weird part is the part where he seems to think that DMs dicking players over by willfully misinterpreting wishes is a solution to, well, anything.

Misinterpreting wishes may not solve the overall problem, especially when you actually get PCs capable of casting it themselves instead of using a magic item/summoned creature, but it is very genre-appropriate. There are few stories about wishing magic going as intended without any complications.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:36 am

> Cyberzombie wrote:

> > FrankTrollman wrote:By Tussock's "reading" you'd be able to dick people over on any wish, because the effects of Wish are always the effects of the 9th level spell Wish, and Tussock claims you should only be getting an 8th level spell. Which is to say that Tussock is insane and wrong.

> If the DM makes some absurd rules lawyer argument like that to dick over his players find a new DM. No amount of rules will protect you from a DM who is willing to disregard all common sense to try to fuck over the PCs.

From A and ~A I can derive that water is wet. From A and ~A I can derive that Killing all the Jews is a good thing.
The solution here is not to say, "If someone derives Killing all the Jews, you should go get your philosophy classes from some other guy who only uses A and ~A to derive water is wet, but doesn't use it to derive killing all the Jews."
The solution is "Don't use Logic that is not good logic."
The solution to the fact that Tussock's Logic allows you to derive obviously stupid actions is to not use Tussock's logic in your games at all.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
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TheFlatline
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Post by TheFlatline » Wed Feb 12, 2014 4:41 am

> FrankTrollman wrote:By Tussock's "reading" you'd be able to dick people over on any wish, because the effects of Wish are always the effects of the 9th level spell Wish, and Tussock claims you should only be getting an 8th level spell. Which is to say that Tussock is insane and wrong.
> But the really really weird part is the part where he seems to think that DMs dicking players over by willfully misinterpreting wishes is a solution to, well, anything. That shit was bullshit. Knights of the Dinner Table makes fun of that bullshit, because it's hilariously obvious that it was bullshit. The DM being a dick and willfully misinterpreting a wish is a problem, not a solution. And if you think, even for a moment, that doing that might be less bad than something else, you have a huge fucking problem on your hands.
> -Username17

It was an old joke that the two ways that you knew a DM had burned out on the game and wanted to be done with it were that you got a wish or you got a deck of many things. Tussock is actually going Gygaxian on us. If we don't stay within what he things is reasonable he'll drop a cow out of orbit onto us.
The "I'm going to dick you over on your wish in some way you haven't thought of" thing was amusing... in high school... 20 years ago.
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fectin
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Post by fectin » Wed Feb 12, 2014 2:38 pm

> Cyberzombie wrote:Misinterpreting wishes may not solve the overall problem, especially when you actually get PCs capable of casting it themselves instead of using a magic item/summoned creature, but it is very genre-appropriate. There are few stories about wishing magic going as intended without any complications.

Citation needed.

> Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.

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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane » Wed Feb 12, 2014 2:46 pm

> fectin wrote:

> > Cyberzombie wrote:Misinterpreting wishes may not solve the overall problem, especially when you actually get PCs capable of casting it themselves instead of using a magic item/summoned creature, but it is very genre-appropriate. There are few stories about wishing magic going as intended without any complications.

> Citation needed.

There's certainly many examples of it not going to plan.

> Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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RadiantPhoenix
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Post by RadiantPhoenix » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:12 pm

Most stories of people wishing on genies and regretting it are about (relatively) ordinary people making wishes on the spur of the moment, not superhumanly intelligent people who study magic for a living.
They're also generally wishing for much broader and vaguer things than "an awesome magic cloak of awesomeness" or "a ring of three wishes".
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fectin
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Post by fectin » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:13 pm

And how many of those are genre appropriate?
Whether you look at traditional stories like the Arabian Nights, more recent ones like Kipling's stories, or modern ones like Aladdin, genies are shown as faithful servants who give you what you want. Even most stories about selling your soul for [whatever] are about regretting the cost, not about failing to get [whatever] (Devil and Daniel Webster, etc).

> Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.

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deaddmwalking
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Post by deaddmwalking » Wed Feb 12, 2014 5:24 pm

> fectin wrote:

> > Cyberzombie wrote:Misinterpreting wishes may not solve the overall problem, especially when you actually get PCs capable of casting it themselves instead of using a magic item/summoned creature, but it is very genre-appropriate. There are few stories about wishing magic going as intended without any complications.

> Citation needed.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People is a fine Disney movie dealing with leprechaun and wishes. After capturing the King of the Leprechauns, the leprechaun will escape in short order so Darby uses his first wish to make it that King Brian will remain with him for two weeks, giving him time to make judicious use of his wishes.
He is tricked into wishing that someone (played by Sean Connery) could see the leprechaun, so King Brian (who can be invisible when so desired) appears and reveals himself...in the form of a rabbit. King Brian argues that he fulfilled the exact terms of the wish - though not the obvious intent.
While deliberating over his third and final wish, his daughter nearly dies. Darby wishes to 'go in her stead'. While traveling on a coach to the afterlife, Darby appears to him and tricks him into making another wish. According to the King Brian:
Three wishes I'll grant ye, great wishes an' small! But you wish a fourth and you'll lose them all!
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fectin
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Post by fectin » Wed Feb 12, 2014 6:33 pm

Leprechauns are traditionally tricksters, yes. Generalizing that to wishes is a bit rough though. It's like saying that King Brian wears green a d is chaotic, therefor any NPC in green should be chaotic.

> Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.

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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Wed Feb 12, 2014 8:51 pm

How about: Wish is a stupid spell so just get rid of it.
That works wonders for the problem, really.
Other problems remain, but Wish was never a viable spell.
Because, really, you can reword the rules of Wish as "You've won. The game completely breaks down at this point and there's nothing important left to do so just magical teaparty that shit."
Anyway, wishgranting beings in folklore are rarely creatures with a Wish spell. Instead they have a limited suite of awesome powers that they use to preform services. A Leprechaun King might, for example, have a bunch of illusion spells at will, Planeshift, and a huge vault full of gold. But he wouldn't have the Wish spell.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Wed Feb 12, 2014 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ice9
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Post by Ice9 » Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:12 pm

Actually, thinking about it, I think the Tome Wish could be close to fine with one additional stipulation:
* Items must be 15K or less, and within the Wish's spell-replication limits (only up to 8th level, no material/XP components).
That solves the "Wishing for Gate / Simulacrum scrolls" issue. Now the only problem is that you have an infinite loop of bind Efreeti -> Wish for 3x Planar Binding scroll -> bind three Efreeti.
One solution, albeit slightly a kludge, is to just add a material component (doesn't have to be very expensive, just over the limit) to Planar Binding, making it ineligible for Wish. With Gate, Simulacrum and Shapechange already prohibited, I think there are no other creature-production methods that allow an infinite loop.
That said, I still might want to remove/change creature-Wishes. While a manually-grown Efreeti farm isn't actually infinite, it still allows stockpiling things in downtime at a rather alarmingly fast rate. And until the hypothetical revamp to consumable items happens, 15K is still enough to amass considerable vertical power from.
Last edited by Ice9 on Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:16 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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