New efforts!

[FloatingFatMan]

I made a few wishes which were out of the power of the wish granter.

though, if you got a Yotillion (1000 quadrillion) wishes, and had to cast them all at the same time, then technically you could say "I wish to cast all my wishes right now with the following sentence: I wish I had an ounce of gold."

blam each wish reacts to the same sentence and you have 1 Yotillion ounces of gold.

If I'd been the GM for that game, the yotillion ounces of gold would have appeared in the player's pocket, and crushed him instantly into goo, then spilled over and crushed the entire party under a gigantic mountain of gold,  as well as causing massive earthquakes from the sudden impact of that much weight hitting the ground.

[umber]

If I'd been the GM for that game, the yotillion ounces of gold would have appeared in the player's pocket, and crushed him instantly into goo, then spilled over and crushed the entire party under a gigantic mountain of gold,  as well as causing massive earthquakes from the sudden impact of that much weight hitting the ground.

My first instinct was to suggest just letting it play out and watch an economy collapse from a superabundance of gold.

But... I'd never heard of "yotillion" before, if its 1000 quadrillion ounces then that works out to be about 5 earth masses according to wolfram.  The mountain of gold is actually a planetary impact.  What would happen if that much mass materialized on a planet's surface?  I'm guessing the earth, at least the rocky material, would liquefy and spread out over the denser metallic planet, with maybe the iron core bobbing into the golden mass a little?

[Reaper]

If I'd been the GM for that game, the yotillion ounces of gold would have appeared in the player's pocket, and crushed him instantly into goo, then spilled over and crushed the entire party under a gigantic mountain of gold,  as well as causing massive earthquakes from the sudden impact of that much weight hitting the ground.

That's funny!  I immediately thought of the player being destroyed by the money as well.  Of course, I didn't think to wipe out the party, but that would most likely happen too.  Perhaps even a small section of the area they were standing in when they made said wish!

[FloatingFatMan]

The moral of this story is.. Be careful what you wish for, you might get it! :p

[Inc42]

shame there's no CoX D&D. OR IS THERE?!

Funny you should say this...  ;D

[Wyrm]

really though, you can defeat the whole game with 3 wishes (not really that's whats out of the power of the wish granter), for example you ask for "give me the weapon that /WILL/ defeat [main enemy]"

Here you go.  One Axe-Sword of Massive Might.  You aren't trained in axe-swords, and there's no one to train you in them, and there's no actual skill or feat that allows you to train in it, but you can use it untrained.  Provided you can lift it, since it weighs three tons.  But you know - here it is.  It will - eventually - defeat [main enemy].

"Make me become the hero that is destined to defeat them"

Right on.  Well, it's now 3000 years in the future, you're an infant, and the Axe-Sword of Massive Might has been lost in the mists of time.  In 30 years, if you train hard and go on a quest to locate this missing artifact that you won't be able to use, you will be able to meet your destiny.  I have faith in you.

"give me the power to withstand anything they and/or anyone else can throw at me."

Bad news:  You are a block of unobtanium.  On the bright side, you now weigh about the same as the Axe-Sword of Massive Might.

/gm

[Arcana]

really though, you can defeat the whole game with 3 wishes (not really that's whats out of the power of the wish granter), for example you ask for "give me the weapon that /WILL/ defeat [main enemy]", "Make me become the hero that is destined to defeat them", "give me the power to withstand anything they and/or anyone else can throw at me."

Originally, wishes had unlimited power constrained only by GM fiat, which means any three wishes like that could be accomplished with a single wish and a suitably deft wisher:

"I wish to become the hero destined to defeat my enemies armed with the weapon destined to defeat them while being impervious to any attempt by those enemies or anyone else to harm me."

Later, wishes were constrained in terms of their power, so that two wishes could hypothetically be more powerful than one.  But when they were limited only by what the GM thought the gods would allow, two wishes were only more powerful than one in the sense that you could use that unlimited power in two different circumstances.  Forcing the wishes to be cast simultaneously eliminated the one advantage two wishes had over one.

[Arcana]

If I'd been the GM for that game, the yotillion ounces of gold would have appeared in the player's pocket, and crushed him instantly into goo, then spilled over and crushed the entire party under a gigantic mountain of gold,  as well as causing massive earthquakes from the sudden impact of that much weight hitting the ground.

There is no such thing as a yotillion.  1000 quadrillion is a quintillion.  However, I would have interpreted that request as implying a yotta-ounce, or 10^24 troy ounces of gold.  That is about thirty billion trillion kilograms of gold.  I would have all of it materialize in the caster's pocket forming an instant lump of neutronium which would instantly crush the caster gravitationally.  To reduce the impact of the wish collaterally, I would teleport the caster and his party into space, whereupon they would be vaporized in the detonation of the neutronium, forming a bright new star in the sky as a warning to others trying to tempt the patience of the gods.

[Arcana]

Here you go.  One Axe-Sword of Massive Might.  You aren't trained in axe-swords, and there's no one to train you in them, and there's no actual skill or feat that allows you to train in it, but you can use it untrained.  Provided you can lift it, since it weighs three tons.  But you know - here it is.  It will - eventually - defeat [main enemy].Right on.  Well, it's now 3000 years in the future, you're an infant, and the Axe-Sword of Massive Might has been lost in the mists of time.  In 30 years, if you train hard and go on a quest to locate this missing artifact that you won't be able to use, you will be able to meet your destiny.  I have faith in you.
Bad news:  You are a block of unobtanium.  On the bright side, you now weigh about the same as the Axe-Sword of Massive Might.

/gm

Incidentally, although this sort of thing is seen as just being cruel, and it often is, it is also justified by a commonly held principle of wishes I called the conservation of magic.  It stated that all things being equal, magic will try to satisfy a wish by the minimum amount of magic possible.  When you wish for something small and simple, usually the simplest way for magic to satisfy that wish by expending the minimum amount of magical power is to just give it to you.   However, the more extreme or ludicrous the request, the more likely it is that there exists a way to satisfy the wish with less magic by granting something unconventional.  If you ask for a cookie, the path of least resistance is for a cookie to magically appear.  If you ask for the ability to be impossible to be harmed by all possible weaponry, the amount of magic necessary to satisfy the request by constantly neutering all attacks directed towards you is extremely high.  Turning you into a statue of indestructible material takes less energy.  Teleporting you to a dimension with no attackers might take even less energy.

There was one other escape hatch for wishes like this.  Wishing to be another being by description - "I want to be the hero that eventually defeats so-and-so" - has a meta-catch: that entity might not be a player-controllable entity.  If you wish to be God, or A god, gods aren't player characters.  I would recommend telling the player that they begin to have the hunch that if they were to make that wish, they would cease to be themselves anymore and would in effect be wishing for their own self-destruction.  If they persist, that's what would happen: they would become the entity they wished to be, and be permanently not controlled by the player anymore.  In effect, since the character didn't exist anymore and what the character became isn't controlled by the player, they've effectively committed suicide-by-wish.

[Joshex]

There is no such thing as a yotillion.  1000 quadrillion is a quintillion.  However, I would have interpreted that request as implying a yotta-ounce, or 10^24 troy ounces of gold.  That is about thirty billion trillion kilograms of gold.  I would have all of it materialize in the caster's pocket forming an instant lump of neutronium which would instantly crush the caster gravitationally.  To reduce the impact of the wish collaterally, I would teleport the caster and his party into space, whereupon they would be vaporized in the detonation of the neutronium, forming a bright new star in the sky as a warning to others trying to tempt the patience of the gods.

odd I got the 'yota' from scientific decimal notation stating it as the decimal place after quadrillions. either way Bigger is even better.

My first instinct was to suggest just letting it play out and watch an economy collapse from a superabundance of gold.

But... I'd never heard of "yotillion" before, if its 1000 quadrillion ounces then that works out to be about 5 earth masses according to wolfram.  The mountain of gold is actually a planetary impact.  What would happen if that much mass materialized on a planet's surface?  I'm guessing the earth, at least the rocky material, would liquefy and spread out over the denser metallic planet, with maybe the iron core bobbing into the golden mass a little?

Planetary impact? So I killed the [main enemy] too? WOW I'm on a roll!

[LadyVamp]

When I was asked long ago by a GM how to deal with wishing for wishes, I suggested that the GM grant the additional wishes but with the caveat that the power of those wishes were linked, and thus all of them had to be used simultaneously.  If you think about it, a million wishes you have to use simultaneously is really no more powerful than a single wish, which is exactly the sort of letter-of-the-law magical loophole a wish might enforce.

Not bad but I prefer to grant them their infinite wishes with as much perversion as I can think of at the moment.  People usually forget to word them perfectly, and I get to beat them up every time they make a wish.  lmao

[LadyVamp]

http://bit.ly/1JOIrsc ;)

Basically a loophole closer (loophole being 'wish for more wishes'). Meaning you can have as many wishes as you want, as long as you wish for them at the same time - which means basically the only wish you'll get is the one most prominent in your thoughts.

You could word the wish for more wishes such that the loophole is closed.  I prefer my way.  Sure, you got them.  Now I reserve the right to pervert them however I want.  You, dear player, have been warned.

[JanessaVR]

There was a reason D&D 3.5 made some changes to be very specific in terms of what the Wish spell (and its divine counterpart, Miracle) could accomplish.  To wit, the official definitions:

Wish Spell
Miracle Spell

[LadyVamp]

really though, you can defeat the whole game with 3 wishes (not really that's whats out of the power of the wish granter), for example you ask for "give me the weapon that /WILL/ defeat [main enemy]", "Make me become the hero that is destined to defeat them", "give me the power to withstand anything they and/or anyone else can throw at me."

Keep in mind that as DM/GM, it's my job to keep things balanced and just as my npc gave you 3 wishes, same npc could give 3 wishes to the main villain.  I'm under no such requirement to give you your wishes after he's burnt his.  His 3 might be, "show me everyone who can destroy me."  "Make everyone who is able to destroy me incapable of doing so in such a way they will not realize they have lost their ability."  "Give me 2 hot babes to entertain me while I wait for these 'heroes' to come and try to slay me."

You'll go off to kill the bad guy only to discover you can't.  As DM/GM, I'm under no obligation to inform you that he used a wish to undo your wishes.  With but a single wish, he undid your 3 wishes.  And those 3 wishes would not be unreasonable requests for a villain though the 3rd one is most unlikely of the 3 to be requested.

[FloatingFatMan]

There is no such thing as a yotillion.  1000 quadrillion is a quintillion.  However, I would have interpreted that request as implying a yotta-ounce, or 10^24 troy ounces of gold.  That is about thirty billion trillion kilograms of gold.  I would have all of it materialize in the caster's pocket forming an instant lump of neutronium which would instantly crush the caster gravitationally.  To reduce the impact of the wish collaterally, I would teleport the caster and his party into space, whereupon they would be vaporized in the detonation of the neutronium, forming a bright new star in the sky as a warning to others trying to tempt the patience of the gods.

Well, my way or your way, they still won't ask for wishes again! :p

[Twisted Toon]

Here you go.  One Axe-Sword of Massive Might.  You aren't trained in axe-swords, and there's no one to train you in them, and there's no actual skill or feat that allows you to train in it, but you can use it untrained.  Provided you can lift it, since it weighs three tons.  But you know - here it is.  It will - eventually - defeat [main enemy].Right on.  Well, it's now 3000 years in the future, you're an infant, and the Axe-Sword of Massive Might has been lost in the mists of time.  In 30 years, if you train hard and go on a quest to locate this missing artifact that you won't be able to use, you will be able to meet your destiny.  I have faith in you.
Bad news:  You are a block of unobtanium.  On the bright side, you now weigh about the same as the Axe-Sword of Massive Might.

/gm

There is no such thing as a yotillion.  1000 quadrillion is a quintillion.  However, I would have interpreted that request as implying a yotta-ounce, or 10^24 troy ounces of gold.  That is about thirty billion trillion kilograms of gold.  I would have all of it materialize in the caster's pocket forming an instant lump of neutronium which would instantly crush the caster gravitationally.  To reduce the impact of the wish collaterally, I would teleport the caster and his party into space, whereupon they would be vaporized in the detonation of the neutronium, forming a bright new star in the sky as a warning to others trying to tempt the patience of the gods.

Remind me to use wishes for smallish things, like a mug of ale or something, if I ever play D&D with you guys (and girls).

[JanessaVR]

Remind me to use wishes for smallish things, like a mug of ale or something, if I ever play D&D with you guys (and girls).

That's if you're using the old-school rules, where Wishes were basically allowed to anything and GM's were all but encouraged to screw over the players for trying to use them even if they weren't trying to do something outrageous.  As of 3rd Edition, no real worries with Wishes.  If anything, they're handy to keep around as a "wildcard spell" backup in case the chips are down and you haven't prepared the spell that will save your party from an imminent TPK.

[darkgob]

odd I got the 'yota' from scientific decimal notation stating it as the decimal place after quadrillions. either way Bigger is even better.

yotta = either septillion (mostly English- or Arabic-speaking countries) or quadrillion (most of Europe), either way combining them makes no sense.  If you're describing something in units (grams, ounces, seconds, etc.), you use yotta- as a prefix.  If you're simply describing an amount of items (i.e., no units attached), you use septillion or quadrillion depending on your regional convention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

[primeknight]

Incidentally, although this sort of thing is seen as just being cruel, and it often is, it is also justified by a commonly held principle of wishes I called the conservation of magic.  It stated that all things being equal, magic will try to satisfy a wish by the minimum amount of magic possible.  When you wish for something small and simple, usually the simplest way for magic to satisfy that wish by expending the minimum amount of magical power is to just give it to you.   However, the more extreme or ludicrous the request, the more likely it is that there exists a way to satisfy the wish with less magic by granting something unconventional.  If you ask for a cookie, the path of least resistance is for a cookie to magically appear.  If you ask for the ability to be impossible to be harmed by all possible weaponry, the amount of magic necessary to satisfy the request by constantly neutering all attacks directed towards you is extremely high.  Turning you into a statue of indestructible material takes less energy.  Teleporting you to a dimension with no attackers might take even less energy.

There was one other escape hatch for wishes like this.  Wishing to be another being by description - "I want to be the hero that eventually defeats so-and-so" - has a meta-catch: that entity might not be a player-controllable entity.  If you wish to be God, or A god, gods aren't player characters.  I would recommend telling the player that they begin to have the hunch that if they were to make that wish, they would cease to be themselves anymore and would in effect be wishing for their own self-destruction.  If they persist, that's what would happen: they would become the entity they wished to be, and be permanently not controlled by the player anymore.  In effect, since the character didn't exist anymore and what the character became isn't controlled by the player, they've effectively committed suicide-by-wish.

I have to ask, did anyone ever just wish for a supernova just to be a butt?  Or maybe for Superman to drop the moon on someone/thing?

[Arcana]

Remind me to use wishes for smallish things, like a mug of ale or something, if I ever play D&D with you guys (and girls).

If you're smart, you will use wishes to accomplish things you know your GM wants you to accomplish, just in the most profitable way possible.  Because the cosmic limit on wishes is "whatever the GM will allow."

How to make a wish