I Wish For a Dragon!
Wishcraft is powerful magic, and being dependent on the whim of your GM, exceptionally dangerous. I haven’t had too many opportunities to play with the stuff…until recently. Story time, kids!
So there they were on level 7 of Monte Cook’s Dragon’s Delve. I was running them through this ridiculously large level ‘o demons, and they had finally found the stairs down to level 8. What they did not realize was that the mysterious Will save I’d asked for meant that the party alchemist was now possessed by an incubus. Things took their usual course from there: mind control, betrayal, yadda yadda, and the four-man party was down to three.
Under cover of stink bomb the not-alchemist darted towards a chamber containing a glabrezu, a powerful demon specializing in temptation (read: malicious wishcraft). The party followed after, coming face to face with this monstrous thing that said, “Kill your companions and I will grant you your heart’s desire.” There weren’t any takers, and so the battle commenced. The cavalier went down for the count, the demon’s true seeing defeated the magus’s usual invisibility shenanigans, and after a single round the party was already getting desperate. That’s when the alchemist pleaded within the confines of his own mind, saying that he’d make a wish after all. The incubus released his control, and this poor bastard shouts, “I wish for my friends to be alive and unharmed!”
“Granted!” said the delighted galbrezu. And everyone but the alchemist was turned to stone. The incubus released the lone survivor then, leaving him to suffer the consequences of his actions. That’s not the worst of it though.
With a bit of ant haul and bull’s strength, this poor alchemist managed to drag the comparatively light gnomish cavalier out of the Delve and back to town. There he found everyone he considered a friend had also turned to stone. A few mean spirited NPCs and the followers of particularly dickish local church were unaffected, but over 95% of the village had turned into sculpture garden.
They wound up getting out of that mess with the aid of an holy sword, a few masterwork kazoos, and something called Bard-Stock, but that’s a tale for another time.
How about you guys? Any good stories of wishes gone bad?
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While it is an entertaining story, I don’t see how “being turned to stone” could be rules-lawyered into “technically alive and unharmed”. Could you elaborate on the thought process behind this corruption of the wish?
They’re not dead. They’re not wounded. That must mean they’re alive and unharmed!
Glabrezu wishes are like hand grenades. It takes a human to pull the pin and unleash the destructive power, but after that the demon only has to get anywhere close.
Yeah, if this happened to me I wouldn’t feel that the glabrezu had outwitted the alchemist or that the alchemist made a poor wish, I’d just feel that the GM was an utter jerk who enjoys screwing over PCs who have no way to fight back. Unless “demons are capable of twisting their wishes far beyond any reasonable interpretation” is an established fact in this setting, in which case Alchemist is a moron for making a wish, no matter how desperate the situation.
See, he should have wished something like: I wish for you (the Glabrezu) to never be able to grant another wish again! Or: I wish for you to be confined to the Demi-plane of Extremely Painful Torture for the next 100 years (as time is measured on the Prime Material Plane). Granted, neither of those would have gotten the party out of their jam (OK, the last one might have, but it also might have gotten the party imprisoned in the same place), but they’d still be fun!
Good ideas, but I’ve got sympathy for my player. In the heat of the moment, it is rough going figuring out the best possible wish.
That’s how the Glabrezu manages to polymorph himself into a Balrog
I still appreciate the example from 1,001 Things Mr. Welch is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG – not allowed to wish “I wish everything on this piece of paper were true.”
I remain of the opinion that that’s not how wishcraft works. The genie has to interpret intent to make the magic happen. She doesn’t have mind reading abilities.
Oh, look, the piece of paper now says that the party is enslaved to the Glabrezu.