A rare way of viewing the wish
High-level help comes once in a lifetime
by Lewis Pulsipher

In many campaigns, wish spells are
extremely rare. In the known world in my
campaign, for example, there is only one
good magic-user able to cast a wish spell,
and perhaps one evil M-U as well — no
one is certain. And these are non-player
characters, of course. No PC
will ever reach such exalted heights, but
even if one did, he would be so involved
with other affairs that as DM I would not
be concerned with the details of granting
wishes to him.

A few wishes do exist in the world,
occasionally on scrolls but usually on
swords or rings. A player character would
be very fortunate to have the use of one
wish spell for himself by the time he
reached tenth level. Or, to put it another
way, one might expect all players in the
campaign to acquire a total of one or two
wishes per real year. In these circumstanc-
es of scarcity, I believe that the wish
spell can be more powerful, and less sub-
ject to failure, than in worlds where their
frequency is considerably higher.
First, I treat a wish not as something to
be spoken into the void. Who grants a
wish? Is it just another spell, arcanely
pulling energy from the fabric of the uni-
verse? No— despite the existence of wish
as a ninth-level spell, I believe that it is
more reasonable (or at least more believ-
able) to think of the wish as an extraordi-
nary event caused by some non-mortal
power in conjunction with the mortal
making the wish. But if one follows
AD&D™ rules, even the greater gods are
rarely able to cause wishes, so there must
be some higher, disinterested Power (or
Powers) which grant the wish, and which
certainly will not manipulate the wish to
serve its own ends. After all, if a mere god
— “mere” in AD&D terms at any rate —
grants a wish, won’t he manipulate the

The person contemplating a wish
negotiates, in effect, with the Powers, to
determine what is likely to be possible
and what is not. In practice, this means
that the player may discuss the possible
uses of the wish with the DM, who will
give more or less information in his reply
as he likes. Oblique rather than direct
answers are common. The DM’s objective
is to guide the player so that he won’t
waste the only wish he may ever use. A
foolish player may still foul up his wish
by ignoring the hints of the Powers, but a
more cautious player can usually get a
good idea of what the wish might do. In
many cases it will not be necessary for the
character to give exact wording to the
wish; the Powers will know what he
wants.

Because the wish is so rare, and derives
from the most powerful beings in the
universe, I permit the traditional use
given as an example in the original D&D
rules, but not in the newer versions:
Someone may wish that a party of adven-
turers had never set out, or had taken a
different route, thereby avoiding a trap or
a fight which killed many or all of them.
In such cases, the players are not allowed
ever to return to the scene of the disaster
with a party, because they know what
happened —although, in their charac-
ters’ minds, it never happened. (A clever
player might wish that the event had not
occurred, but that the characters would
know what would have happened; but I
usually rule that this is stretching the
wish too far.) It is sufficient to say that
the wish has the effect of subliminally
warning the party never to go that way
again, because the same disaster might
occur.

Consequently, borrowing from Michael
Moorcock’s Elric/Corum series (from
which, presumably, the struggle between
Law and Chaos was borrowed for the
D&D® and AD&D systems), I prefer to
think that a Cosmic Balance, a personifi-
cation of the balance between alignments,
grants wishes. The Balance being a dis-
tant and terrible entity, not merely a god,
it is unlikely to grant more than a few
wishes a year, but they will be powerful.
Other explanations can be put forth; at
any rate, the Powers who grant wishes are
not akin to the anthropomorphic gods we
know from such sources as the DEITIES
& DEMIGODS™ book.
wish to serve his purposes? Or, approach-
ing from another direction, why would
the god somehow store in an item the
ability to force him (the god) to grant a
wish to whomever possessed the item?
The wish as a form of divine intervention
just doesn’t make sense.

These methods work well in my cam-
paign, where the wish as a mere spell is
virtually nonexistent; on the other hand,
my methods would ruin a campaign in
which wish spells and 18th-level wizards
are plentiful. Each DM must adjust
methods to suit his world.

I (as the Powers) discourage other uses
of wishes, such as gaining experience
points. If a player is unwise enough to set
his wishes against the suggestions of the
Powers, he’ll deserve whatever punish-
ment or failure you mete out to him.
The other use of a wish in my cam-
paign has been to raise the level limits of
a non-human character. For example, an
elven magic-user with 18 intelligence
cannot rise beyond 11th level. With a
wish, he is able to rise to 13th level when
he acquires sufficient experience. No
actual experience is awarded.
Occasionally a player will, perhaps
foolishly, wish to increase one of his abil-
ity numbers. The Dungeon Masters
Guide states that a wish can raise a char-
acteristic above 16 only by increments of
one tenth, so that ten wishes would be
required to raise one from 16 to 17. This
is obviously a means of limiting power in
those worlds in which wish spells are rel-
atively common, and I do not think it
should apply to rare wishes. Look at it
this way: A player’s character ability
numbers are pure luck (and I require one
3d6 roll per ability, not any of the super-
methods described in the Dungeon Mas-
ters Guide). A player presumably earns a
wish, but he doesn’t earn or necessarily
deserve his ability numbers. Conse-
quently, if a player is willing to use up
his life-saving wish, I will allow him to
raise almost any characteristic to 18. Gen-
erally, this characteristic will be his prime
ability (intelligence for a magic-user,
strength for a fighter, etc.) or his constitu-
tion, to increase his hit points and there-
by his chances of survival. The actual
limits of the increase depend on the char-
acter’s other numbers and on how deserv-
ing he is (in my subjective judgment, as
well as the judgment of the Cosmic Bal-
ance). Generally, the higher a character’s
numbers are, the smaller the increase.
Obviously, this is a most powerful tool,
and players tend to hold on to wishes (or
bury them where their friends can get at
them) for dear life, because a wish is as
good as life when used this way. I have
never seen a wish used merely to resurrect
one person, or for the minor purpose of
changing one round of melee, or for
transporting a party from one place to
another —it is too valuable to be wasted
this way. But if someone tried any of
these, I would probably allow it.