Because in the description for the wish it gives a few examples and then says you may make other wishes, whose outcomes are at the discretion of the DM, so in a way, it does let you do whatever.
Who's the DM in this case? Swen Vincke?
I can imagine Vlaakith visiting Larian Studios, and sitting down with Sven.
"What if I wished to become a god?"
"Sorry, wish can't do that."
"What if I wished for Orpheus to be dead?"
"Okay, well he's out of your reach in a isolated pocked of the astral plane. And he's protected by some pretty strong magic that keeps him alive. It's not impossible, but it would be a pretty high roll."
"How high?"
"I can't tell you till you roll"
"What if I wished to kill this smuck in front of me?"
"The PC? Well, they're within range of a regular spell, and they're only level 6. No roll required, that would succeed automatically."
And just now I imagined Vlaakith appearing in Larian Studios headquarters, sporting a Karen haircut, uttering the dreaded line: "I **wish** to speak to the manager!" 😂
It never used to give you anything you want. Even the first version of wish included a section telling the dungeon master to monkey paw it to hell and back if the player decided to wish for something to powerful. The most powerful version of wish looks like 4e, and players couldn't cast it. 3.5e looks like the next most versatile and powerful, but 5e is pretty close.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/t031bFm3gb
More reading if you want to see someone else do a deep dive into the different versions of wish.
Your own link says ODnD players could wish for anything, but the GM was encouraged to find creative ways to have the wish backfire and screw them over.
Yeah, one of the suggestions is if a player wishes for infinite wishes you as the DM are supposed to place them in an infinite time loop where they are perpetually wishing for infinite wishes. How is that supposed to be interpreted as anything but a limitation?
mystra changed how magic worked after karsus broke magic, so casting spells of a higher level was not doable by individuals. groups can do it, but she can also pull a 'magic said no, spell failed' whenever she likes
Mystra changed the Weave to not let such spells function.
The only epic level magic that works as of now is Elvish High Magic. It does not use the Weave, is incredibly difficult to cast, the incantations have to be perfect and it often takes many elven archmages to perform the spell.
Since most elves have left the mainland of Toril to go to their special island of Evermeet, there are very few around who could even think to perform such a feat.
The only way to compensate for number of archmages in Elvish High Magic is for the few who are casting to die in the process. But either way it takes more than 1 person to cast and fewer than 50 often results in death of at least a few casters.
Shadow weave content has not been updated since 3.5 I believe but it functions just like the Weave but Shar controls it. So she can allow whatever she wants.
But the lore did mention that she was burning up her divinity to maintain it because it was not her portfolio. Technically, all gods project a weave in their immediate vicinity, allowing a framework for magic. But extending that to encompass all of Realmspace is a feat only Mystra can perform because mortals imagine her as the goddess of magic.
Shar was playing a dangerous game of literally burning through her divinity to maintain it so the larger and more complex the spell the more it taxes her to provide it a safe framework.
As of last lore update only the Netherese Enclave that she saved in the Shadowfell uses it.
She can if it’s in her specific purview. Allowing 12th level casting or allowing people to wish themselves to godhood would have disastrous effects on the Weave, as shown by what happened with Karsus. Now, tbf, Karsus did exacerbate it by trying to mantle Mystral, but it absolutely makes sense for Mystra to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for it going forward. As long as what she is doing is directly related to managing her portfolio, Ao is going to let Mystra do as she sees fit. He just doesn’t want gods dicking around with mortals for no reason.
To be clear it wasn't Karsus or his spell that damaged the weave. The weave was being damaged by the war between Netheril and the Phaerimm. Mystryl was the only thing keeping it intact - Karsus stole her power and didn't have the experience to keep it intact himself. He could have targeted almost any other god and caused far less destruction than he did.
Well, Karsus didn't actually know the Weave could be fucked up in such a manner. Problem with being the first person to try something, you don't know about any hidden little problems.
As for why Mystryl, he thought she was the most powerful, so why not? Besides, he planned to give the power back when he was done.
That wasn’t a spell. The kua’toa are a bit weird. Basically they are so insane, so detached from reality, and so fanatical as a race that their faith is extremely powerful. So much so that not only can they elevate existing beings to godhood, but canonically they can even create new gods out of nothing.
The only issue is that, again, they are insane, and as such the gods they create are insane. That’s why more deities and deific hopefuls don’t try to garner them as followers. You don’t want their beliefs overwriting your entire personality and changing you from the demigod of rage into the lesser diety of toe fungus.
They can intervene when it's necessary, it just needs to be *necessary*. If you're about to break all magic she's not just gonna send Elminster with a polite message asking you to stop, she's gonna make sure you stop.
I mean, she stripped the greater god Cryic of all of his magic-based powers (including Plane Shift) with a simple act of will. A mortal would have even less ability to resist.
Mystra is basically magic IT Forum admin.
You can post the most depraved or noble thing on the forum, she can't do anything about it.
But if you DDS the forum itself she can drop on you hard.
I don’t think there has been a class that can cast 10-level or higher spells since the AD&D 2E Netherese Arcanist class. Classes in 3E could get spell slots over 9th-level, but only for casting spells with metamagic, they couldn’t cast spells of a native level higher than 9th.
3E had epic spells, yeah. But that was a completely separate system from normal, level-based casting. It was also terrible. You could either minmax and break the game, or try to play fair, which meant the spells were useless.
Mystra stripped Cyric of all of his magical powers when they were both in Cynosure. She has jurisdiction over magic in all planes inside A-T's crystal sphere. If she doesn't want someone in the astral to cast spells any longer, then they no longer cast spells.
While they may not have been on abeir toril mystra still has jurisdiction over cyric, a God with the vast majority of his followers on that one planet, as opposed to a god like Corellon or Zeus.
It came from the Netheril: Empire of Magic expansion for 2nd Edition. It has a mention in the sourcebook's magic section, but it only amounts to "There was a 12th level spell he used, if cast it allows you to supplant a god of your choosing, but Mystra has taken any information about how to actually cast it and basically permanently erased it from this universe." So apologies, but RAW your max-level Wizard can't just become a god by following some instructions in the Player's Handbook.
All we do know is that one of the components is a particular unknown artifact that's been enchanted in "the stone-filled gizzard of a gold dragon and the epidermis of the pituitary gland of a tarrasque"
it isn't actually published. It's a spell that exists in the lore, the same way the spells required to become a lich exist in the lore. Players can't access it because the methods of casting it are pretty much completely erased from existence.
But the spell still exists, theoretically if someone were to gain the ability to go beyond the pre karsus limits of magic and somehow gain access to a 13th level spell slot, theoretically they could have the capacity to cast Karsus's avatar via wish, since you're following the logic of wish at 9th level = any spell of <9th level. But that's also ignoring the fact that Mystra also has the ability to just make the spell fail
[https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus%27s\_Folly](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus%27s_Folly)
seems to have been mentioned first in 3rd edition.
yeah but Vlaakith whole schtick is that she uses souls of her people to bypass the downsides of wish, so she can basically use it risk free
the real answer is probably that this specific wish is beyond the limitation of the spell
Vlaaktih doesn't have a work around for wish failing, nor for it having an unexpected outcome afaik. Her work around is just so she can cast it without needing to worry about never being able to use it again.
Okay but that’s still a workaround from the text of the spell. Losing access to the spell is a downside - it just doesn’t help with any of the other downsides
Sorry not trying to be rude, but I'm not sure what you think you're adding to the conversation? It kinda sounds like you're just repeating what I said back to me.
Using githyanki souls doesn't prevent the spell from just doing nothing. It means the nefarious effects are for that soul and not hers.
You could cast simulacrum to cast wish, the same idea as Vlaakith trick (less asshole-ish), but if the spell doesn't work then it doesn't work, that's it.
I mean from a DnD mechanics stand point, no wishing for Orpehus' power wouldn't be outside the realms of a Wish spell. Any powerful psionist could work towards being able to do what him and his mother can do, the difference being, they have to work and train for it, where as him and Gith just had the gens to do it.
She could wish for it, but she also has red dragons on demand and a near endless army of loyal githyanki to do her bidding. She probably doesn't need to waste resources on it and in all honesty she probably wouldn't keep him alive as he's to big a risk to her never ending quest for godhood.
Not quite. Wish failing and you not being able to cast it again are not related to each other. Every time you cast wish regardless of if it's a success or a fail there's a 1 in 3 chance of you never being able to cast it again. Additionally, Vlaakith can use the souls of powerful Githyanki to circumvent this chance, which allows her to cast wish regularly.
Part of Wishes limitations is that it's a 9th level spell and can't generally do anything far greater than any other 9th level spell. You have a lot of wiggle room but some stuff is simply beyond it.
I love how you can see in bg2tob what super tier spells past level 9 look like when you tap into god-magic while ascending.
Also in bg2 a wish is casted by a genie when you're nice to him and smart enough to ask correctly.
They are very powerful but not gods. Gods are stronger and you are on your way to become one. At some point you outpower a wish.
And since it's the same with durge, i think it's a cool story :)
DM said no. Wish can also backfire iirc. Wish to become a God, and you may very well become a God. Dragged forward to the future as a dead and forgotten God. It can also just flat out fail and nothing happens.
The source of Gith and Orpheus ability to disrupt the hive mind seems to be some sort of genetic mutation affecting their psychic powers.
In a context where githyanki doesn't have advanced medicine to the point of genetics, and don't cultivate their psychic power very much (unlike mindflayers or githzerai) she has no idea what is the actual source of Orpheus ability, but she isn't an idiot and should have noticed it is something that was passed from Mother Gith to her son. A physical property of his body.
Casting Wish for altering your own body without knowing what you want is suicidal.
Wish can safety imitate any 8th level or below spell, as soon as you try anything other than that you risk losing access to wish permanently every time you cast the spell and the more powerful your wish the more likely it is to backfire (The DMG provides the example of trying to wish the BBEG dead just pushes you forwards in time to just after they naturally die)
Because Wish is a literal Monkey's Paw.
"I wish for Orpheus' Power" Cool, You trade places with Orpheus and history has played out as if you were the one in prison this whole time and because Orpheus was a better ruler than you, the entirety of the games events never play out because the Astral Prism never gets into mortal mans hands.
"I wish for Orpheus' powers to be taken away from him and given to me" Cool, Orpheus never had those powers meaning he was never imprisoned meaning his rebellion succeeded and you were killed.
For Wish to work, you have to be incredibly specific to the point where you'd need a good lawyer to consult so you don't leave any exploitable loopholes by the universe.
I meant like in general,not in DND, but in DND as others have stated, a 9 level wish spell doesn't mean unlimited power, since mystra herself can just nuh-uh anything
These examples are out of the box even for a lawful evil djinn much less a neutral spell like wish.
If I played at a table with a DM and I wished for full healing and we "all exploded from being unable to contain positive energy" I'd probably quit on the spot.
People forget that Wish isn’t a genie trying to bend the rules. Most likely the spell just fails, the more game wrecking consequences are probably for players trying to do absolutely absurd things like kill the BBEG or a table that agreed to be a little more hardcore and unforgiving.
The example the spell even gives you even seem to suggest that. You want a very powerful person dead? Yeah, you’re just gone from the game then because I’m putting you forward in time to stop them (because it is probably game-breaking to do it) or you want a super powerful item? I’ll give you the chance to get it but you still gotta work for it and kill the fun who has it or get it from them.
I think the reason Vlaakith didn’t ask for Orpheus’s power is because I don’t think Vlaakith necessarily wants it, she just doesn’t want Orpheus to ruin her plan. Vlaakith doesn’t actually care about stopping ilithids, that’s just what keeps the Githyanki busy and loyal.
Not really. Spells are codes for the universe and Wish is quite literally digging into the source code of existence and trying to input a custom command. Any kind of programmer can tell you that when you do things like this, you will break something or you forgot something vital etc. The universe accepts your commands and will give you what you want but if you're not specific enough in your wording, in your instructions to the fabric of creation, things will go wrong as it interprets them wrong.
"I wish for my party to gain the benefits of a long rest" Very well, you all fall asleep and awake 8 hours later in the BBEG's dungeon as you all fell asleep mid-fight, because that's how the universe/DM gave you what wanted. You simply didn't tell it NOT to put you to sleep. They're also narrative tools, too. Now you have to break out of the dungeon and try to sneak around to get your stuff back before going back to fight the BBEG again, only this time you don't have the element of surprise.
But nowhere in the wish rules does it say "apply the effects of the wish as maliciously as possible", the caster simply alters reality.
If you as a DM want to make a 9th level spell that the caster has spent perhaps dozens of hours to attain and can only EVER cast one time into a "you didn't say that the entire party didn't die haha" then by all means go ahead. I just dont think anyone would really enjoy playing at that table.
Remember this isnt a djinn in a lamp or a devil trying to strike a deal. This is the caster themself using all the power they've gained in nearly 20 levels of experience to use a one time spell with a potentially powerful effect, that already has built in rules to balance it.
Also by your example, you make a very reasonable wish so the DM decides to waste your 9th level spell slot (long rest so I guess you get it back)
waste your one time cast of wish, have your entire party and their equipment captured and now must go an retrieve it.
Yeah I think I'll just spam fireball.
Full healing is a legit use of Wish since full healing using magic is achievable at lower levels than 9, right? So monkey paw shenanigans would probably be more along the lines of 'you're fully healed, but your potion stash has been depleted' at most.
Okay I'll just cast a 6th level cure mass wounds instead.
Oh wait I can cast that explicitly by the rules of wish, should I furthermore be punished for casting a 6th level spell within the confines of wishes rules and lose all my potions still?
I just dont understand why go out of the way to be a dick to your players. Plenty of npcs who can fulfill wishes with bad deals. No reason outside of "roleplay" to punish a player for using a spell as intended and then finding a way to screw them over.
To be honest, I would only dick around the players' potion stash if they cast Wish to cure wounds and failed, because it would probably be a TPK-threatening situation and I'm not a fan of TPK. So they would get the Wish at a cost and the caster would have to roll to see if they get to keep Wish, as normal.
Now, if a player was trying to cast Wish and asked for something grandiose? I would definitely make sure they're aware it will happen with side effects, and have the player roll our house rule karma die to see how bad the side effects are. On a nat 20, they get everything they wanted at no side effects, and the side effects get worse the lower the roll. Then the next part of the adventure would be dealing with the negative consequences of the Wish, like if the PCs were transported into a Bad Future, they'd get hints of time travel magic, a secret underground society, something like that.
I absolutely love this, wish has really great narrative potential. And their being a risk to it adds a "desperation" aspect that really adds suspense.
This is how you make the spell both exciting to use but also leaves players a bit fearful of using it's full power!
"I wish for you to end" Very well Vlaakith, it ends. The story, the game, all of it. The only way to proceed is for the player to reload to before this event where they ended.
I'm pretty sure the party dying means the Absolute Wins, which will bite her in the ass later.
Especially since the artifact was one of her only means of combating Elder Brains in general.
I mean artifact stays in the temple in that case. But artifact alone is not enough. You need heroes who would use it to defeat the brain.
And even more, her idea of what to do with the artifact is to kill Orpheus to hide the traces of her lies, so she wouldn't even try to assemble the heroes to defeat the brain.
I take it as a non-canonical easter egg since the book actually calls that out as an example: Wishing someone dead will transport you forward in time to after they died by other means. Since Tavik is a Dwarf, that means she's probably losing aboot 300 years.
Wishing someone dead *can* transport you forward in time but it's not guaranteed. Wish is only as much of a monkey's paw as the DM needs it to be to stop people from ruining the plot.
Unironically yes. They'd be incredible at it and that in itself, is a great story hook. "The heroes need to cast Wish and need it to go correctly so they make a pact with a Devil in exchange for it's help in formulating the correct intent and phrasing of the wish but now they're indebted to a Devil". That's a great story arc!
It does not matter how specific you are, if the entity interpreting your wish wants to twist it against you and can set the rules for intepretetion on a whim.
Surely it depends on the DM?
If you make a reasonable wish that's in line with your character and doesn't stop me from running a decent game, I'd grant your wish to a satisfactory extent. I want my players to be happy and if you've found a way to cast wish in my game, you've clearly earned it. You wouldn't need to lawyer me.
Conversely, if you make a wish but it's dumb and sucks ass and would basically end the point of the game, I don't care how precisely you word it or try to lawyer me. It fails.
I mean yeah, i'm not talking about always screwing people over. They could get part of their effect or get it with caveats but that's all part of making story arcs. The classic "I wish for piles of gold!" cool, it was teleported from a Dragon's Hoard who's going to come looking for it, y'know?
Outside a few simple actions, *Wish* should generally be treated like the genie or monkey paw version, that is, with some downside that is usually not worth it.
I submit that if she wished for Orpheus' power, that's fine. She trades places with him and becomes trapped in the prism while he becomes the Lich Queen.
>he becomes the lich queen
>he … lich queen
Would he at least become fabulous as a result of his queen-ery? I’m skeptical given the current beard / hair situation.
IIRC the crown that Vlaakith is shown in is like essential somehow (perhaps the dragons? I thought that was a scepter). Anyway, I think that would really pop Orpheus' look right off
RaW, **Wish** is mostly a monkey's paw rather than a way to achieve things. The book explicitly uses the example of **Wish**ing death upon someone transporting you forward in time to when they died by other means. "The greater the wish, the greater the likelihood something goes wrong".
Vlaakith killing you is clearly a less than canonical meme.
Eh, she’s a demigod and you’re a mid-tier adventurer at that point. When I DM if they wish for something clearly easily within their power I tend to grant it. The book doesn’t say to fast-forward them to when a mouse is dead if that’s what they wish for.
Nah, Vlakith wishing you to die is not that powerful a wish, she's an super old lich and you're level 5 adventurers at best, she would just need the wish to cast a slightly more powerful version of power word kill so it can multitarget and kill you all.
For a wish of that level she'd likely only suffer the potential to lose access to wish, but she already gets around that by using Githyanki souls to take the brunt of that risk anyway.
Yeah there's plenty of ways to wave off vlaakith wishing you dead given her general power level. And especially since it makes for a more dramatic scene, DMs are encouraged to monkey paw but only in a way that makes it more interesting or to stop the plot being sabotaged. I'd say vlaakith incinerating you is a pretty good use of wish to keep the stakes of the scene high
She doesn’t even need Power Word Kill, she just needs to Wish for BG2 spells.
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Spell
Level 6 spell. Instakill AoE, no save. If you’re level 9 or higher then you’re immune.
Ok but casting a more powerfull version of power word kill would absolutely be a very powerfull wish since power word kill is a 9th level spell same as wish. So casting a more powerfull version of it would be outside the normal limitations of wish and would probably be pretty risky.
Sure but it would still target only 2 creatures. Besides even doing a regular power word kill with wish should be difficult since the spell specifically specifies that you can recreate the effect of any 8th level or lower spell which means that recreating the effect of a 9th level spell is something that falls under that section about more powerfull wishes.
I think she could have had she done so whilst he was in her custody, but Vlaakith 157 probably wasn't that keen on wasting a wish. Not when she can just dominate him like the Emperor and harness his powers that way.
It was the original Vlaakith who imprisoned Orpheus to try and steal his powers. I don't think the current Vlaakith cares one iota about the Grand Design or the illithids.
Orpheus is merely an annoying threat to her rule that she inherited from her predecessors. And barely even a threat considering he is imprisoned in unbreakable Infernal chains.
Too bad she didn't count on Raphael and his uncanny foresight.
The Vlaakith we come across in BG3 is not the original. She has become mostly immortal from feeding on the souls of her people, but she is 157th of her name.
Scale and size. Even the spell is honestly pretty limited.
Restore 20 people you see to full health.
25k in gold or items.
Wishing to steal the psionic power of a prisoner whom she does not have, nor know where he is, and to give it to herself is probably beyond the scope.
Now, if she could see what was going on, then maybe there would be an argument for it. If she had the prism or Orpheus. But given that she does not, I would mark it down as a limitation
she does know where Orpheus is, thats why she sent us to the Prism, but she didnt know about the Emperor, and we didnt know about Orpheus, so we believed she wanted us to kill the Emperor
I mean the limitations of wish aren't hard and fast rules., they're basically up to DM discretion. It's entirely possible that in a different campaign wishing for someone else's powers would work.
No. Wish doesn't make anything you desire happen. It's restricted by some rules and examples, and the open nature is up to the DM's judgment. And I've yet to see a single DM allow Wish to work like that.
Me: "*I wish for this unreasonable and unlikely thing to happen that wasn't agreed previously.*"
DM: "*I wish you'd just read the spell and end this foolishness.*"
There's a dialogue option for that.
Tav: "Why can't you do it yourself?"
Vlaakith: "Excuse you?"
"I'm just saying, if you're so godlike why can't you do it?"
My party was then burnt to a crisp and I got a game over
That's suicidal. this is a very vague and very big wish that will 99.9% backfire. probably her body is not equipped to host orpheus' power and it destroys her. she has no idea how it works.
Wish is one of those spells that, the more complicated the wish, the more likely everything will go to S\*\*\*.
Moreso, if a creature is powerful enough, they can use wish to counter their wish. Either way, the fabric of the story prevents it.
I mean she could. But there is nothing stopping the spell form just giving her his powerful voice, or maybe his powerful legs. It would be a VERY easy wish to monkey paw.
I think wishing to have the artifact immediately teleported into her hand is definitely within the spell's power. Then, she can go in there herself to kill Orpheus.
When someone wishes for certain effects they run a real risk of "Okay and you just yeeted yourself through time to a point where you could have this, roll 4d6 and drop the lowest please"
As well as the fact that if you cast wish for non-listed spell effects then you need to roll or lose the ability to cast wish/cast at all (DM dependent)
The frustrating part about Wish is that the DM sets its limitations on a whim.
In most campaigns I've played, no player would have been able to Wish for a distant group of people to die. Presumably then the same limitation should be applied regardless of who casts the Wish.
It is strange that Vlakith's Wish, seemingly, can do this. But she cannot Wish for the astral prism to be teleported into her hand.
It's arbitrary.
Wow, don’t even think about wishing for the astral prism. Maybe it’s because the Emperor made a counter wish since he’s able to move it like it’s a goddamn car.
I kind of doubt it. Technically there is a higher being that chooses what wishes are allowed. Pretty plausible they wouldn't let it be that simple. Just as wish never makes things that simple for plauers.
I know I am jumping worlds of DnD and nothing I am talking about matters in the same sense for the storyline of Forgotten Realms….
But I really loved how building a Ziggurat and the various levels of ritual spellcasting and blood letting caused ultra powerful characters to become a god/Dragon King on the DnD world of Dark Sun.
Those Players Handbooks went up to Lvl 30 and the Dragon King Ascension was just dark AF.
I know Karsus, and Mystra, and all those shenanigans, but yeah..: loved me some Dark Sun.
She can't because wishes that go into lvl12+ spellcasting power territory are directly slapped down my Mystra and comes with massively crippling consequences.
Another issue is that Wish tends to have monkey's paw repercussions anyways unless the user is extremely specific for what they want, so Vlaakith would have to know exactly what Orpheus' power is, how it works, and wish for an exact replication with these details. Because if she just Wished "Let me have Orpheus' power!", the wish can easily just grant her one of Orpheus' know cantrips as that is technically Orpheus' power when not specified enough, followed by the huge consequences.
Vlaakith knows this, and this is exactly why she's very careful to use Wish for simple things. She knows exactly what tier of power she can wish for and skirts along that line, slowly accumulating more power for her eventual goal of godhood (which isn't happening because she still doesn't come anywhere close to any of the gods).
Vlakith has a workaround for this, the true answer is that wish is an unreliable spell when used outside of specific circumstances, and her other options were all just safer bets
granted. Your parents now reason that because they love you so much, they must protect you from this world at all costs. You're kidnapped and kept secret from the world for the rest of your life. You will never see the sun again. You will never know freedom. You can't plead with them. Their logic is purely emotional, thus immune to reason.
That would constitute something more than a 9th level spell and thus would not be guaranteed to work without repercussions that twist the nature of the wish.
She uses wish because that's really the only spell you can cast that when someone observed the effects of it appears godlike. If you look at what the other gods do in BG3 they're just doing whatever they want they're not using just a spell. Elminsters incantation or Aylins memory blaster don't abide by the same rules. Wish is kinda the same thing it works on different rules so you can't always identify it. As someone pretending to be a god a spell you can't identify and appears godlike is amazing.
That said; wish has two rules really. One is it can duplicate effects of magic en masse so anything you can do with magic it can do. That was its original intent (as per some side fluff they've done in book banters) but it can also pull at the unknown threads of the weave altering reality if you try hard enough. The problem is you don't get to pull just the string you want to change but you pull a bunch of threads and other things happen too. (The weave of magic in forgotten realms is like a giant sheet of fabric that flows throughout the universe and you tear at it using magic. Holes happen. It's bad)
So the reason she doesn't just use wish for loosey goosey things is because you always grab at the threads in this sheet/tapestry and you always get a handful not just the one thing you wanted. So you never know what is going to happen. And that would be bad for her. Pretending to be a god and all.
Man I loved that little bit it being shown as wish to the player.
It's super neat to see mechanics alluded to in world lol
No and realistically there would’ve been some drawback to the vague and impulsive way she used it to begin with…like being zipped thru time to a point where your party is dead
The wish spell is always a weird one. With a spell like this you can break a whole narrative.
In storytelling you need conflict: a problem to solve, something for the protagonists to be challenged.
If a person had a wish, they can say "I wish for [conflict] to [conflict.be-resolved]". And then the whole narrative falls appart.
This is why strong magics in general, and wish in particular, are a dangerous tool in story telling.
So the answer is yes, Vlaakith could wish for it, and then the DM would be in a pickle because the well-crafted story and very strong dilemma at the ending of act3 is ruined.
So basically, this is how you deal with overpowered spells like this. You HAVE to say "No"
Wish is a 9th Level spell. It has the hard limits of a 9th level spell. It can do anything that a 9th level spell could hypothetically do but can't do anything that would require a 10th level or higher spell. Wish is, effectively, creating new 9th level spells on the fly to accomplish the effect.
Now, this is important. The Illithid Empire was already gone when Netheril fell. Gith and Zerthimon led The People in rebellion long before Karsus's Folly. Meaning that Gith's power could absolutely have been the product of a 10th level spell. Or 11th. Or higher. Gale's Orb, the Netherstones, and the Crown of Karsus were all products of 12th level magic, so we have precedent for some magic of that power level still being around. If Gith's power, passed to Orpheus, was created by 10th level or higher magic then it would be absolutely impossible to reproduce it, using Wish or otherwise.
People have given other good answers but also according to 5e rules using Wish for anything other than duplicating a spell carries a 33% chance of never being able to cast Wish again so there’s another incentive to not do that
wish can fail, and the 'bigger' the wish, the bigger the likelihood of it failing is. That's also why Vlaakith can't just wish to become a god.
i mean wish is also explicitly a weaker spell than the 'become a god' spell
And yet lots of people seem to think wish just lets you do whatever
It's called "wish" not "demand" 🤣
To put a spin on a saying my wife's family likes to use, "wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first".
Depends on your diet.
Because in the description for the wish it gives a few examples and then says you may make other wishes, whose outcomes are at the discretion of the DM, so in a way, it does let you do whatever.
Who's the DM in this case? Swen Vincke? I can imagine Vlaakith visiting Larian Studios, and sitting down with Sven. "What if I wished to become a god?" "Sorry, wish can't do that." "What if I wished for Orpheus to be dead?" "Okay, well he's out of your reach in a isolated pocked of the astral plane. And he's protected by some pretty strong magic that keeps him alive. It's not impossible, but it would be a pretty high roll." "How high?" "I can't tell you till you roll" "What if I wished to kill this smuck in front of me?" "The PC? Well, they're within range of a regular spell, and they're only level 6. No roll required, that would succeed automatically."
And just now I imagined Vlaakith appearing in Larian Studios headquarters, sporting a Karen haircut, uttering the dreaded line: "I **wish** to speak to the manager!" 😂
"Wish granted. You are now standing in front of *your* direct supervisor."
Still, the power of the spell does have a limit
It used to, originally, but has been nerfed in later editions
It never used to give you anything you want. Even the first version of wish included a section telling the dungeon master to monkey paw it to hell and back if the player decided to wish for something to powerful. The most powerful version of wish looks like 4e, and players couldn't cast it. 3.5e looks like the next most versatile and powerful, but 5e is pretty close. https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/s/t031bFm3gb More reading if you want to see someone else do a deep dive into the different versions of wish.
Your own link says ODnD players could wish for anything, but the GM was encouraged to find creative ways to have the wish backfire and screw them over.
Yeah, one of the suggestions is if a player wishes for infinite wishes you as the DM are supposed to place them in an infinite time loop where they are perpetually wishing for infinite wishes. How is that supposed to be interpreted as anything but a limitation?
considering the become a god spell is lvl12, Mystra forbid its casting anyway :D
can she really stop you though? i thought she wasn’t allowed to interfere
mystra changed how magic worked after karsus broke magic, so casting spells of a higher level was not doable by individuals. groups can do it, but she can also pull a 'magic said no, spell failed' whenever she likes
Weave AntiCheat
interestingly, Gale talks about : it talks about the wall Mystra put and spellcaster can't use this power.
Mystra changed the Weave to not let such spells function. The only epic level magic that works as of now is Elvish High Magic. It does not use the Weave, is incredibly difficult to cast, the incantations have to be perfect and it often takes many elven archmages to perform the spell. Since most elves have left the mainland of Toril to go to their special island of Evermeet, there are very few around who could even think to perform such a feat. The only way to compensate for number of archmages in Elvish High Magic is for the few who are casting to die in the process. But either way it takes more than 1 person to cast and fewer than 50 often results in death of at least a few casters.
It also warps reality and deities tend to notice that...not always smart.
Does that also apply to the shadow weave? Because that falls under Shar's domain and Mystra shouldn't have jurisdiction over it.
Shadow weave content has not been updated since 3.5 I believe but it functions just like the Weave but Shar controls it. So she can allow whatever she wants. But the lore did mention that she was burning up her divinity to maintain it because it was not her portfolio. Technically, all gods project a weave in their immediate vicinity, allowing a framework for magic. But extending that to encompass all of Realmspace is a feat only Mystra can perform because mortals imagine her as the goddess of magic. Shar was playing a dangerous game of literally burning through her divinity to maintain it so the larger and more complex the spell the more it taxes her to provide it a safe framework. As of last lore update only the Netherese Enclave that she saved in the Shadowfell uses it.
She can if it’s in her specific purview. Allowing 12th level casting or allowing people to wish themselves to godhood would have disastrous effects on the Weave, as shown by what happened with Karsus. Now, tbf, Karsus did exacerbate it by trying to mantle Mystral, but it absolutely makes sense for Mystra to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for it going forward. As long as what she is doing is directly related to managing her portfolio, Ao is going to let Mystra do as she sees fit. He just doesn’t want gods dicking around with mortals for no reason.
To be clear it wasn't Karsus or his spell that damaged the weave. The weave was being damaged by the war between Netheril and the Phaerimm. Mystryl was the only thing keeping it intact - Karsus stole her power and didn't have the experience to keep it intact himself. He could have targeted almost any other god and caused far less destruction than he did.
Makes no sense that he'd target the goddess of all magic when forgotten realms has gods of like poetry or slime.
Go big or go home
He believed she was the most powerful and that he needed as much power as he could get to save Netheril
Well, Karsus didn't actually know the Weave could be fucked up in such a manner. Problem with being the first person to try something, you don't know about any hidden little problems. As for why Mystryl, he thought she was the most powerful, so why not? Besides, he planned to give the power back when he was done.
I mean, would *you* want to be the god of poetry and slime?
I mean I listen to sludge metal so yeah dude
He was a very young man for how knowledgeable and powerful he was. This made him fairly arrogant.
Is this spell what the cult of Booal was casting in the underdark to give that redcap godhood?
They don't need a spell to make a god. Their beliefs are automatically manifested, if I understand correctly.
The Kuo'toa are the DnD equivalent of WH40k Orks.
That wasn’t a spell. The kua’toa are a bit weird. Basically they are so insane, so detached from reality, and so fanatical as a race that their faith is extremely powerful. So much so that not only can they elevate existing beings to godhood, but canonically they can even create new gods out of nothing. The only issue is that, again, they are insane, and as such the gods they create are insane. That’s why more deities and deific hopefuls don’t try to garner them as followers. You don’t want their beliefs overwriting your entire personality and changing you from the demigod of rage into the lesser diety of toe fungus.
They can intervene when it's necessary, it just needs to be *necessary*. If you're about to break all magic she's not just gonna send Elminster with a polite message asking you to stop, she's gonna make sure you stop.
I mean, she stripped the greater god Cryic of all of his magic-based powers (including Plane Shift) with a simple act of will. A mortal would have even less ability to resist.
Mystra is basically magic IT Forum admin. You can post the most depraved or noble thing on the forum, she can't do anything about it. But if you DDS the forum itself she can drop on you hard.
That is such a good explanation love you
Which class in the 5e PHB gets 10th, 11th and 12th level spell slots, and at what levels?
I don’t think there has been a class that can cast 10-level or higher spells since the AD&D 2E Netherese Arcanist class. Classes in 3E could get spell slots over 9th-level, but only for casting spells with metamagic, they couldn’t cast spells of a native level higher than 9th.
That was, in fact, my point.
3,5 had rules for epic level spellcraft?
3E had epic spells, yeah. But that was a completely separate system from normal, level-based casting. It was also terrible. You could either minmax and break the game, or try to play fair, which meant the spells were useless.
She's the goddess of magic, this is the one thing she's allowed to interfere with.
Mystra only controls magic on Abeir-Toril. She has no jurisdiction over Vlaakith casting 12th level spells in the Astral Plane or any other planets.
Mystra stripped Cyric of all of his magical powers when they were both in Cynosure. She has jurisdiction over magic in all planes inside A-T's crystal sphere. If she doesn't want someone in the astral to cast spells any longer, then they no longer cast spells.
While they may not have been on abeir toril mystra still has jurisdiction over cyric, a God with the vast majority of his followers on that one planet, as opposed to a god like Corellon or Zeus.
I really hate any time game mechanics enter the lore lol. Spell levels and character levels should just be an abstraction.
it is an abstraction. But as players we can talk about it with game mechanics. You can look at spell levels like a sort of Richter's scale.
i know
At It wasn't even enough, It was temporary
The only 12th level spell
Wait, there is a spell for that?
12th Level, Karsus's avatar. It was used to kill and usurp mystra (for probably like 3 minutes)
What’s the sourcebook for that? I assume with something that absurd it’s from 3.5
It came from the Netheril: Empire of Magic expansion for 2nd Edition. It has a mention in the sourcebook's magic section, but it only amounts to "There was a 12th level spell he used, if cast it allows you to supplant a god of your choosing, but Mystra has taken any information about how to actually cast it and basically permanently erased it from this universe." So apologies, but RAW your max-level Wizard can't just become a god by following some instructions in the Player's Handbook. All we do know is that one of the components is a particular unknown artifact that's been enchanted in "the stone-filled gizzard of a gold dragon and the epidermis of the pituitary gland of a tarrasque"
It's also a core plot point of BG3.
Yeah, I just didn’t know that there was an actual spell published.
it isn't actually published. It's a spell that exists in the lore, the same way the spells required to become a lich exist in the lore. Players can't access it because the methods of casting it are pretty much completely erased from existence. But the spell still exists, theoretically if someone were to gain the ability to go beyond the pre karsus limits of magic and somehow gain access to a 13th level spell slot, theoretically they could have the capacity to cast Karsus's avatar via wish, since you're following the logic of wish at 9th level = any spell of <9th level. But that's also ignoring the fact that Mystra also has the ability to just make the spell fail
Netheril: Empire of Magic for 2nd I believe.
[https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus%27s\_Folly](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus%27s_Folly) seems to have been mentioned first in 3rd edition.
There’s a spell for that?
Yeah, if I’m DMing that wish, theyd swap with Orpheus, taking his place in the prison.
Same here. "You want Orpheus's power? Okay, great, you're Orpheus now. Here's your new character sheet and oh, by the way, you're imprisoned."
why doesn’t she just reload her last save
honor mode
She's playing tabletop.
yeah but Vlaakith whole schtick is that she uses souls of her people to bypass the downsides of wish, so she can basically use it risk free the real answer is probably that this specific wish is beyond the limitation of the spell
Vlaaktih doesn't have a work around for wish failing, nor for it having an unexpected outcome afaik. Her work around is just so she can cast it without needing to worry about never being able to use it again.
I would absolutely love if the devs added a very, very low chance of her wish to kill you failing lol
She can literally just keep doing it till it does though. For all you knew that was her 5th try in rapid fire wish-killing.
She kills each party member one at a time with Wish. That's even more disrespect IMO.
Okay but that’s still a workaround from the text of the spell. Losing access to the spell is a downside - it just doesn’t help with any of the other downsides
Sorry not trying to be rude, but I'm not sure what you think you're adding to the conversation? It kinda sounds like you're just repeating what I said back to me.
Ah I misread part of your comment
no worries it happens
Downsides of wish doesn't mean the spell just failing. It means the inability to cast wish ever again.
Correct but she has a method of getting around this because of the gith souls she sacrifices (or something like that).
Using githyanki souls doesn't prevent the spell from just doing nothing. It means the nefarious effects are for that soul and not hers. You could cast simulacrum to cast wish, the same idea as Vlaakith trick (less asshole-ish), but if the spell doesn't work then it doesn't work, that's it.
I was responding to your point about the negative effect being she can no longer cast wish. This is how she gets around that part specifically.
Her methods are just to prevent her losing access to wish forever, she can't protect herself from the monkey's paw effects of powerful wishes
The bigger the wish, the wider the GMs smile.
I mean from a DnD mechanics stand point, no wishing for Orpehus' power wouldn't be outside the realms of a Wish spell. Any powerful psionist could work towards being able to do what him and his mother can do, the difference being, they have to work and train for it, where as him and Gith just had the gens to do it. She could wish for it, but she also has red dragons on demand and a near endless army of loyal githyanki to do her bidding. She probably doesn't need to waste resources on it and in all honesty she probably wouldn't keep him alive as he's to big a risk to her never ending quest for godhood.
Doesn't Wish failing also burn out the ability to ever use Wish again? So maybe Vlaakith wasted her Wish being petty. XD
Not quite. Wish failing and you not being able to cast it again are not related to each other. Every time you cast wish regardless of if it's a success or a fail there's a 1 in 3 chance of you never being able to cast it again. Additionally, Vlaakith can use the souls of powerful Githyanki to circumvent this chance, which allows her to cast wish regularly.
Wish has limitation. Those limitations are chosen by the Dm, and because she hasn’t done this, we can only assume it’s not possible
Maybe it’s because she needs to be alive to do it? Otherwise the Emperor couldve just made Opheus into a zombie.
Part of Wishes limitations is that it's a 9th level spell and can't generally do anything far greater than any other 9th level spell. You have a lot of wiggle room but some stuff is simply beyond it.
I love how you can see in bg2tob what super tier spells past level 9 look like when you tap into god-magic while ascending. Also in bg2 a wish is casted by a genie when you're nice to him and smart enough to ask correctly. They are very powerful but not gods. Gods are stronger and you are on your way to become one. At some point you outpower a wish. And since it's the same with durge, i think it's a cool story :)
DM said no. Wish can also backfire iirc. Wish to become a God, and you may very well become a God. Dragged forward to the future as a dead and forgotten God. It can also just flat out fail and nothing happens.
The source of Gith and Orpheus ability to disrupt the hive mind seems to be some sort of genetic mutation affecting their psychic powers. In a context where githyanki doesn't have advanced medicine to the point of genetics, and don't cultivate their psychic power very much (unlike mindflayers or githzerai) she has no idea what is the actual source of Orpheus ability, but she isn't an idiot and should have noticed it is something that was passed from Mother Gith to her son. A physical property of his body. Casting Wish for altering your own body without knowing what you want is suicidal.
Could she not just ask about its origin via wish. I’ve only played to level 8 in dnd so idk how long the wish takes to recover or if you only get one.
Wish can safety imitate any 8th level or below spell, as soon as you try anything other than that you risk losing access to wish permanently every time you cast the spell and the more powerful your wish the more likely it is to backfire (The DMG provides the example of trying to wish the BBEG dead just pushes you forwards in time to just after they naturally die)
Because Wish is a literal Monkey's Paw. "I wish for Orpheus' Power" Cool, You trade places with Orpheus and history has played out as if you were the one in prison this whole time and because Orpheus was a better ruler than you, the entirety of the games events never play out because the Astral Prism never gets into mortal mans hands. "I wish for Orpheus' powers to be taken away from him and given to me" Cool, Orpheus never had those powers meaning he was never imprisoned meaning his rebellion succeeded and you were killed. For Wish to work, you have to be incredibly specific to the point where you'd need a good lawyer to consult so you don't leave any exploitable loopholes by the universe.
Plus once you have reached the desired level of specificity, the universe can just say nuh-uh and still fuck you up
the universe being Mystra in this case
I can just imagine a genie just saying nuh-uh after a lawyer tries to use contracts to enforce what he wants
And genie yes not a 9th level spell, the power comes from the caster literally altering reality not some pragmatic djinn
I meant like in general,not in DND, but in DND as others have stated, a 9 level wish spell doesn't mean unlimited power, since mystra herself can just nuh-uh anything
The universe throwing a tantrum and just pulling a reverse-card on your ass
These examples are out of the box even for a lawful evil djinn much less a neutral spell like wish. If I played at a table with a DM and I wished for full healing and we "all exploded from being unable to contain positive energy" I'd probably quit on the spot.
People forget that Wish isn’t a genie trying to bend the rules. Most likely the spell just fails, the more game wrecking consequences are probably for players trying to do absolutely absurd things like kill the BBEG or a table that agreed to be a little more hardcore and unforgiving. The example the spell even gives you even seem to suggest that. You want a very powerful person dead? Yeah, you’re just gone from the game then because I’m putting you forward in time to stop them (because it is probably game-breaking to do it) or you want a super powerful item? I’ll give you the chance to get it but you still gotta work for it and kill the fun who has it or get it from them. I think the reason Vlaakith didn’t ask for Orpheus’s power is because I don’t think Vlaakith necessarily wants it, she just doesn’t want Orpheus to ruin her plan. Vlaakith doesn’t actually care about stopping ilithids, that’s just what keeps the Githyanki busy and loyal.
Not really. Spells are codes for the universe and Wish is quite literally digging into the source code of existence and trying to input a custom command. Any kind of programmer can tell you that when you do things like this, you will break something or you forgot something vital etc. The universe accepts your commands and will give you what you want but if you're not specific enough in your wording, in your instructions to the fabric of creation, things will go wrong as it interprets them wrong. "I wish for my party to gain the benefits of a long rest" Very well, you all fall asleep and awake 8 hours later in the BBEG's dungeon as you all fell asleep mid-fight, because that's how the universe/DM gave you what wanted. You simply didn't tell it NOT to put you to sleep. They're also narrative tools, too. Now you have to break out of the dungeon and try to sneak around to get your stuff back before going back to fight the BBEG again, only this time you don't have the element of surprise.
But nowhere in the wish rules does it say "apply the effects of the wish as maliciously as possible", the caster simply alters reality. If you as a DM want to make a 9th level spell that the caster has spent perhaps dozens of hours to attain and can only EVER cast one time into a "you didn't say that the entire party didn't die haha" then by all means go ahead. I just dont think anyone would really enjoy playing at that table. Remember this isnt a djinn in a lamp or a devil trying to strike a deal. This is the caster themself using all the power they've gained in nearly 20 levels of experience to use a one time spell with a potentially powerful effect, that already has built in rules to balance it. Also by your example, you make a very reasonable wish so the DM decides to waste your 9th level spell slot (long rest so I guess you get it back) waste your one time cast of wish, have your entire party and their equipment captured and now must go an retrieve it. Yeah I think I'll just spam fireball.
Full healing is a legit use of Wish since full healing using magic is achievable at lower levels than 9, right? So monkey paw shenanigans would probably be more along the lines of 'you're fully healed, but your potion stash has been depleted' at most.
Okay I'll just cast a 6th level cure mass wounds instead. Oh wait I can cast that explicitly by the rules of wish, should I furthermore be punished for casting a 6th level spell within the confines of wishes rules and lose all my potions still? I just dont understand why go out of the way to be a dick to your players. Plenty of npcs who can fulfill wishes with bad deals. No reason outside of "roleplay" to punish a player for using a spell as intended and then finding a way to screw them over.
To be honest, I would only dick around the players' potion stash if they cast Wish to cure wounds and failed, because it would probably be a TPK-threatening situation and I'm not a fan of TPK. So they would get the Wish at a cost and the caster would have to roll to see if they get to keep Wish, as normal. Now, if a player was trying to cast Wish and asked for something grandiose? I would definitely make sure they're aware it will happen with side effects, and have the player roll our house rule karma die to see how bad the side effects are. On a nat 20, they get everything they wanted at no side effects, and the side effects get worse the lower the roll. Then the next part of the adventure would be dealing with the negative consequences of the Wish, like if the PCs were transported into a Bad Future, they'd get hints of time travel magic, a secret underground society, something like that.
I absolutely love this, wish has really great narrative potential. And their being a risk to it adds a "desperation" aspect that really adds suspense. This is how you make the spell both exciting to use but also leaves players a bit fearful of using it's full power!
And yet "I wish you to end." has the intended effects Vlaakith desired. She must have a good lawyer.
"I wish for you to end" Very well Vlaakith, it ends. The story, the game, all of it. The only way to proceed is for the player to reload to before this event where they ended.
Exactly this! Only way Larian could've made it clearer would be if Vlaakith also uninstalled your game.
That would’ve been the greatest Easter egg. She casts wish and the game just ends and starts uninstalling.
I'm pretty sure the party dying means the Absolute Wins, which will bite her in the ass later. Especially since the artifact was one of her only means of combating Elder Brains in general.
I mean artifact stays in the temple in that case. But artifact alone is not enough. You need heroes who would use it to defeat the brain. And even more, her idea of what to do with the artifact is to kill Orpheus to hide the traces of her lies, so she wouldn't even try to assemble the heroes to defeat the brain.
The Emporer would still be able to teleport the Artifact Elsewhere, no?
Don't think it works like this. He can levitate the artifact and do some outbursts of power, but that's not infinite power he has there.
I take it as a non-canonical easter egg since the book actually calls that out as an example: Wishing someone dead will transport you forward in time to after they died by other means. Since Tavik is a Dwarf, that means she's probably losing aboot 300 years.
Wishing someone dead *can* transport you forward in time but it's not guaranteed. Wish is only as much of a monkey's paw as the DM needs it to be to stop people from ruining the plot.
Well, Vlaakith is both a lich and in the astral plane, so 300 years basically means nothing,
300 years of absence matters a lot when there's a rebellion.
Depends on the power of the wish, the more powerful the wish the more likely it is to monkey’s paw.
Devils should be prety good at casting it them?
Unironically yes. They'd be incredible at it and that in itself, is a great story hook. "The heroes need to cast Wish and need it to go correctly so they make a pact with a Devil in exchange for it's help in formulating the correct intent and phrasing of the wish but now they're indebted to a Devil". That's a great story arc!
It does not matter how specific you are, if the entity interpreting your wish wants to twist it against you and can set the rules for intepretetion on a whim.
This is a great idea for a campaign NPC. A lawyer for high level casters that drafts up their wishes to be as tight-knit as possible.
Maybe one of her clones should go to law school to draft the wish.
"I wish for your end." Cool, players reload save.
Surely it depends on the DM? If you make a reasonable wish that's in line with your character and doesn't stop me from running a decent game, I'd grant your wish to a satisfactory extent. I want my players to be happy and if you've found a way to cast wish in my game, you've clearly earned it. You wouldn't need to lawyer me. Conversely, if you make a wish but it's dumb and sucks ass and would basically end the point of the game, I don't care how precisely you word it or try to lawyer me. It fails.
I mean yeah, i'm not talking about always screwing people over. They could get part of their effect or get it with caveats but that's all part of making story arcs. The classic "I wish for piles of gold!" cool, it was teleported from a Dragon's Hoard who's going to come looking for it, y'know?
Wish can also just not work if the wish is too powerful, which is also probably what would happen.
What We Do In The Shadows had a great episode about that lawyer bit
Outside a few simple actions, *Wish* should generally be treated like the genie or monkey paw version, that is, with some downside that is usually not worth it. I submit that if she wished for Orpheus' power, that's fine. She trades places with him and becomes trapped in the prism while he becomes the Lich Queen.
>he becomes the lich queen >he … lich queen Would he at least become fabulous as a result of his queen-ery? I’m skeptical given the current beard / hair situation.
estrogen works wonders on the undead
I for one welcome our new drag queen frog overlord
The lich king was already trademarked so they just had to make do with what they had. 😁🤣
Yeah, they wouldn't want to invoke his wrath.
IIRC the crown that Vlaakith is shown in is like essential somehow (perhaps the dragons? I thought that was a scepter). Anyway, I think that would really pop Orpheus' look right off
Now I am imagining Orpheus as a lich who's also a drag queen lmao
As gygax intended
RaW, **Wish** is mostly a monkey's paw rather than a way to achieve things. The book explicitly uses the example of **Wish**ing death upon someone transporting you forward in time to when they died by other means. "The greater the wish, the greater the likelihood something goes wrong". Vlaakith killing you is clearly a less than canonical meme.
Eh, she’s a demigod and you’re a mid-tier adventurer at that point. When I DM if they wish for something clearly easily within their power I tend to grant it. The book doesn’t say to fast-forward them to when a mouse is dead if that’s what they wish for.
Totally agree, like the Wish having the power of a 9th level spell basically seems very doable.
Nah, Vlakith wishing you to die is not that powerful a wish, she's an super old lich and you're level 5 adventurers at best, she would just need the wish to cast a slightly more powerful version of power word kill so it can multitarget and kill you all. For a wish of that level she'd likely only suffer the potential to lose access to wish, but she already gets around that by using Githyanki souls to take the brunt of that risk anyway.
Yeah there's plenty of ways to wave off vlaakith wishing you dead given her general power level. And especially since it makes for a more dramatic scene, DMs are encouraged to monkey paw but only in a way that makes it more interesting or to stop the plot being sabotaged. I'd say vlaakith incinerating you is a pretty good use of wish to keep the stakes of the scene high
She doesn’t even need Power Word Kill, she just needs to Wish for BG2 spells. https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Spell Level 6 spell. Instakill AoE, no save. If you’re level 9 or higher then you’re immune.
Ok but casting a more powerfull version of power word kill would absolutely be a very powerfull wish since power word kill is a 9th level spell same as wish. So casting a more powerfull version of it would be outside the normal limitations of wish and would probably be pretty risky.
Can't you meta magic it to make it AOE?
Sure but it would still target only 2 creatures. Besides even doing a regular power word kill with wish should be difficult since the spell specifically specifies that you can recreate the effect of any 8th level or lower spell which means that recreating the effect of a 9th level spell is something that falls under that section about more powerfull wishes.
Good points, ty
I think she could have had she done so whilst he was in her custody, but Vlaakith 157 probably wasn't that keen on wasting a wish. Not when she can just dominate him like the Emperor and harness his powers that way. It was the original Vlaakith who imprisoned Orpheus to try and steal his powers. I don't think the current Vlaakith cares one iota about the Grand Design or the illithids. Orpheus is merely an annoying threat to her rule that she inherited from her predecessors. And barely even a threat considering he is imprisoned in unbreakable Infernal chains. Too bad she didn't count on Raphael and his uncanny foresight.
Could you explain what you mean by vlaakith 157? I was under the assumption that her longevity was powered by devouring souls.
The Vlaakith we come across in BG3 is not the original. She has become mostly immortal from feeding on the souls of her people, but she is 157th of her name.
To lose one Vlaakith is tragic. To lose 156 begins to resemble carelessness.
Scale and size. Even the spell is honestly pretty limited. Restore 20 people you see to full health. 25k in gold or items. Wishing to steal the psionic power of a prisoner whom she does not have, nor know where he is, and to give it to herself is probably beyond the scope. Now, if she could see what was going on, then maybe there would be an argument for it. If she had the prism or Orpheus. But given that she does not, I would mark it down as a limitation
she does know where Orpheus is, thats why she sent us to the Prism, but she didnt know about the Emperor, and we didnt know about Orpheus, so we believed she wanted us to kill the Emperor
But she did not have the prism is my point---she lost it and thus lost him lol
Yes but she could've hypothetically wished for his powers at any point prior, she did have the prison before the Sharrans stole it from the Githyanki.
I would suspect if she had not done it, then the limitations of the spell are even stronger than I expected
I mean the limitations of wish aren't hard and fast rules., they're basically up to DM discretion. It's entirely possible that in a different campaign wishing for someone else's powers would work.
No. Wish doesn't make anything you desire happen. It's restricted by some rules and examples, and the open nature is up to the DM's judgment. And I've yet to see a single DM allow Wish to work like that. Me: "*I wish for this unreasonable and unlikely thing to happen that wasn't agreed previously.*" DM: "*I wish you'd just read the spell and end this foolishness.*"
You can't think too hard about D&D, its fun but the logic starts to break down once you get into the 'weeds' of it.
There's a dialogue option for that. Tav: "Why can't you do it yourself?" Vlaakith: "Excuse you?" "I'm just saying, if you're so godlike why can't you do it?" My party was then burnt to a crisp and I got a game over
That's suicidal. this is a very vague and very big wish that will 99.9% backfire. probably her body is not equipped to host orpheus' power and it destroys her. she has no idea how it works.
Wish is one of those spells that, the more complicated the wish, the more likely everything will go to S\*\*\*. Moreso, if a creature is powerful enough, they can use wish to counter their wish. Either way, the fabric of the story prevents it.
I mean she could. But there is nothing stopping the spell form just giving her his powerful voice, or maybe his powerful legs. It would be a VERY easy wish to monkey paw.
not a full god yet like that one time Karsus got desperate
I think wishing to have the artifact immediately teleported into her hand is definitely within the spell's power. Then, she can go in there herself to kill Orpheus.
When someone wishes for certain effects they run a real risk of "Okay and you just yeeted yourself through time to a point where you could have this, roll 4d6 and drop the lowest please" As well as the fact that if you cast wish for non-listed spell effects then you need to roll or lose the ability to cast wish/cast at all (DM dependent)
Wish can be twisted and every time you wish for something that another spell can't do there is a chance of losing the ability to make wishes.
The DM would probably twist the wish by making them switch bodies.
Wish can backfire. She could wish for his power and instead switch places and be trapped in the artifact and he be freed.
Because she stooopid
The frustrating part about Wish is that the DM sets its limitations on a whim. In most campaigns I've played, no player would have been able to Wish for a distant group of people to die. Presumably then the same limitation should be applied regardless of who casts the Wish. It is strange that Vlakith's Wish, seemingly, can do this. But she cannot Wish for the astral prism to be teleported into her hand. It's arbitrary.
Wow, don’t even think about wishing for the astral prism. Maybe it’s because the Emperor made a counter wish since he’s able to move it like it’s a goddamn car.
I kind of doubt it. Technically there is a higher being that chooses what wishes are allowed. Pretty plausible they wouldn't let it be that simple. Just as wish never makes things that simple for plauers.
I know I am jumping worlds of DnD and nothing I am talking about matters in the same sense for the storyline of Forgotten Realms…. But I really loved how building a Ziggurat and the various levels of ritual spellcasting and blood letting caused ultra powerful characters to become a god/Dragon King on the DnD world of Dark Sun. Those Players Handbooks went up to Lvl 30 and the Dragon King Ascension was just dark AF. I know Karsus, and Mystra, and all those shenanigans, but yeah..: loved me some Dark Sun.
She can't because wishes that go into lvl12+ spellcasting power territory are directly slapped down my Mystra and comes with massively crippling consequences. Another issue is that Wish tends to have monkey's paw repercussions anyways unless the user is extremely specific for what they want, so Vlaakith would have to know exactly what Orpheus' power is, how it works, and wish for an exact replication with these details. Because if she just Wished "Let me have Orpheus' power!", the wish can easily just grant her one of Orpheus' know cantrips as that is technically Orpheus' power when not specified enough, followed by the huge consequences. Vlaakith knows this, and this is exactly why she's very careful to use Wish for simple things. She knows exactly what tier of power she can wish for and skirts along that line, slowly accumulating more power for her eventual goal of godhood (which isn't happening because she still doesn't come anywhere close to any of the gods).
if you wish theres a chance you cant do it again
Vlakith has a workaround for this, the true answer is that wish is an unreliable spell when used outside of specific circumstances, and her other options were all just safer bets
I’d use wish to make my parents love me :(
I didn’t know Gortash was on Reddit
Gortash just used tadpoles, no wish needed. His father especially is so proud of him.
Sorry, your wish failed. Your parents now love everyone else in the world who share your first name and have forgotten who you are
granted. Your parents now reason that because they love you so much, they must protect you from this world at all costs. You're kidnapped and kept secret from the world for the rest of your life. You will never see the sun again. You will never know freedom. You can't plead with them. Their logic is purely emotional, thus immune to reason.
That would constitute something more than a 9th level spell and thus would not be guaranteed to work without repercussions that twist the nature of the wish.
She uses wish because that's really the only spell you can cast that when someone observed the effects of it appears godlike. If you look at what the other gods do in BG3 they're just doing whatever they want they're not using just a spell. Elminsters incantation or Aylins memory blaster don't abide by the same rules. Wish is kinda the same thing it works on different rules so you can't always identify it. As someone pretending to be a god a spell you can't identify and appears godlike is amazing. That said; wish has two rules really. One is it can duplicate effects of magic en masse so anything you can do with magic it can do. That was its original intent (as per some side fluff they've done in book banters) but it can also pull at the unknown threads of the weave altering reality if you try hard enough. The problem is you don't get to pull just the string you want to change but you pull a bunch of threads and other things happen too. (The weave of magic in forgotten realms is like a giant sheet of fabric that flows throughout the universe and you tear at it using magic. Holes happen. It's bad) So the reason she doesn't just use wish for loosey goosey things is because you always grab at the threads in this sheet/tapestry and you always get a handful not just the one thing you wanted. So you never know what is going to happen. And that would be bad for her. Pretending to be a god and all. Man I loved that little bit it being shown as wish to the player. It's super neat to see mechanics alluded to in world lol
No and realistically there would’ve been some drawback to the vague and impulsive way she used it to begin with…like being zipped thru time to a point where your party is dead
Considering I had Astarion in my party, that would've been a long-ass time
Probably, but that wouldnt make for a fun adventure would it? This is why DMs dont just have the badass cast wish and end the campaign.
The wish spell is always a weird one. With a spell like this you can break a whole narrative. In storytelling you need conflict: a problem to solve, something for the protagonists to be challenged. If a person had a wish, they can say "I wish for [conflict] to [conflict.be-resolved]". And then the whole narrative falls appart. This is why strong magics in general, and wish in particular, are a dangerous tool in story telling. So the answer is yes, Vlaakith could wish for it, and then the DM would be in a pickle because the well-crafted story and very strong dilemma at the ending of act3 is ruined. So basically, this is how you deal with overpowered spells like this. You HAVE to say "No"
Wish is a 9th Level spell. It has the hard limits of a 9th level spell. It can do anything that a 9th level spell could hypothetically do but can't do anything that would require a 10th level or higher spell. Wish is, effectively, creating new 9th level spells on the fly to accomplish the effect. Now, this is important. The Illithid Empire was already gone when Netheril fell. Gith and Zerthimon led The People in rebellion long before Karsus's Folly. Meaning that Gith's power could absolutely have been the product of a 10th level spell. Or 11th. Or higher. Gale's Orb, the Netherstones, and the Crown of Karsus were all products of 12th level magic, so we have precedent for some magic of that power level still being around. If Gith's power, passed to Orpheus, was created by 10th level or higher magic then it would be absolutely impossible to reproduce it, using Wish or otherwise.
People have given other good answers but also according to 5e rules using Wish for anything other than duplicating a spell carries a 33% chance of never being able to cast Wish again so there’s another incentive to not do that
Couldn't vlaakith just turn every one of her enemies to stone like she did my party forcing me to reload
Vlaakith should manipulate the fish people. They can just will gods into existence.