StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Ok my character in pathfinder can now cast limited was wondering if you guys had an creative usage for it.

bit more context needed - what world, what sort of tech, others in the party to force multiply from

paizo wrote:School universal; Level sorcerer/wizard 7

Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S, M (diamond worth 1,500 gp)

Range see text

Target, Effect, Area see text

Duration see text

Saving Throw none, see text; Spell Resistance yes

A limited wish lets you create nearly any type of effect. For example, a limited wish can do any of the following things.

Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 6th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools.
Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 5th level or lower, provided the spell does not belong to one of your opposition schools.
Duplicate any sorcerer/wizard spell of 5th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools.
Duplicate any non-sorcerer/wizard spell of 4th level or lower, even if it belongs to one of your opposition schools.
Undo the harmful effects of many spells, such as geas/quest or insanity.
Produce any other effect whose power level is in line with the above effects, such as a single creature automatically hitting on its next attack or taking a –7 penalty on its next saving throw.

A duplicated spell allows saving throws and spell resistance as normal, but the save DC is for a 7th-level spell. When a limited wish spell duplicates a spell with a material component that costs more than 1,000 gp, you must provide that component (in addition to the 1,500 gp diamond component for this spell).

The Pathfinder version is more limited than the D&D 3.5 verison but the thing aside from material cost (The diamond) is the fact you can cast non-Wizard spells with it. Spells like Raise Dead and Reincarnate and now in your spellbook via Limited Wish. Also you get a single takeback if shit goes south.

The biggest use I've seen for Limited wish is that last, making a limited wish to ensure the Barbarian will automatically make all the acrobatic checks to charge across a tightrope and get his first hit in on the BBEG does wonders.

Best example is Bard and Cleric spells you get at level 8 that they get at level 5 or 6. Or alternative versions (Bard Escape for example is Dimension Door except you can bring 1 person per /2 levels rather than 1 person per /3 levels.

Limited wish at it's most basic means you have access to pretty much all magic. It's expensive but it's a great oh shit spell. Remeber if it's 5th or below it's in your spellbook so take a good long look at Cleric and Druid books to find useful spells you don't have are now only a 1,500 gem away.

Limited Wish is really "the thing that would be perfect for this situation but I don't have-wait a minute yes I do" spell. It's a goddamn swiss army knife of spells and should be used that way. Its for situations where the parties normal bag of tricks might not be up to the task. As such it's hard to suggest ways of using it because there are so many things it can do it's highly situational.

Use it to cast Planar Binding (level 6 wiz/sor spell), summoning an efreeti who can grant you three full power wishes.

Kingmaker wrote:Use it to cast Planar Binding (level 6 wiz/sor spell), summoning an efreeti who can grant you three full power wishes.

Ahh, the bullshit that is summoning spells in 3X edition.

Can you use it to cast a sort of time or condition-specific effect on yourself? Like, for instance, a spell that, upon your death, resurrects you at full HP and at the peak of health and age, for your given race.

biostem wrote:Can you use it to cast a sort of time or condition-specific effect on yourself? Like, for instance, a spell that, upon your death, resurrects you at full HP and at the peak of health and age, for your given race.

Not for Limited Wish. Too powerful.

biostem wrote:Can you use it to cast a sort of time or condition-specific effect on yourself? Like, for instance, a spell that, upon your death, resurrects you at full HP and at the peak of health and age, for your given race.

Sort of, if you combine it with contingency. I think you'd be stuck with one of the low-end resurrection spells like Raise Dead, which doesn't exactly bring you back in peak condition.

Ahh, the bullshit that is summoning spells in 3X edition.

Look, if it was 3.5E instead of pathfinder, you'd then use your wishes to wish for three staffs of fifty wishes.

And then the GM kills you.

Kingmaker wrote:
Look, if it was 3.5E instead of pathfinder, you'd then use your wishes to wish for three staffs of fifty wishes.

And then the GM kills you.

Nope, couldn't do tha limited wish in 3.5 Could still do the summoning bullshit, which is why 4th and 5th editions went after summoning with a nerf bat. The DM screwing you with the wish is typically how the DM handles summoning an Efreeti and trying to use their wishes. The spend "one summoning spell to summon a Celestial with Cleric levels and have it blow its arsenal healing the entire party" was harder for the GM to shaft the party with and a really efficient way of dealing with catastrophic damage.

Kingmaker wrote:Use it to cast Planar Binding (level 6 wiz/sor spell), summoning an efreeti who can grant you three full power wishes.

Meh, if you hate DM you can do better:

1. Wildshape into kobold;
2. Summon Sarruhk;
3. Pun Pun

Kingmaker wrote:Use it to cast Planar Binding (level 6 wiz/sor spell), summoning an efreeti who can grant you three full power wishes.

GM Counter: Explain to me exactly which part of your backstory is the reason you are familiar with these creatures even existing. Also, make me a Knowledge:Plains roll for the relevant plain for that creature to confirm.

Isn't wish limited to creating an item of up to 25,000gp? A staff of 50 wishes is not gonna fall under that...

That's nonmagic items.

Under 3.5e, you can wish for a magic item. Any magic item. It just costs (XP cost of item x2) + 5000 XP to cast. Except that if a Wish that comes from a spell like ability or magic item (like an efreeti or a staff of 50 wishes), the XP cost is obviated. The first Wish is prohibitively expensive if you can't cheat (>500k XP, I think), but cheating is super easy if you're a wizard.

Yes, it is stupid. Yes, no sane GM would let it fly. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible with the text of Wish, which does not specify any limitations on the magic items you can create.

GM Counter: Explain to me exactly which part of your backstory is the reason you are familiar with these creatures even existing.

I'm a goddamn 11+ level wizard who knows planar binding and efreeti are not particularly obscure outsiders? There are far better ways for GM to deal with the problem (the simplest of which is a 'lolno')

Kingmaker wrote:I'm a goddamn 11+ level wizard who knows planar binding and efreeti are not particularly obscure outsiders? There are far better ways for GM to deal with the problem (the simplest of which is a 'lolno')

Than you should have no problem rolling me that knowledge roll. That is except if you newer bothered to read about them in magic school and thus have no relevant knowledge skill.

A flat no is newer a good solution for a GM to pull. You don't want to be the dictator laying down the law for your players. What you want is to find creative ways of limiting them that make sense and force them to economize on their characters whilst at the same time giving them something to play toward. Like for example:
1. Limit access to spell components to make sure they save up on them and don't use them all the time to over shine other players.
2. Make them explain why their character learned certain spells during their pre-game phase. Back story should account for spells just as it does for skills, feats and other things. If your character is pyrophobic it will be bloody difficult for you to justify having learned fireball. This is something I find most GM's don't care about. They'll make you explain why your fighter fights a certain way but the wizard can just have a complete mess of spells and nobody cares.
3. I won't allow my players to learn just any spell from the books when leveling up. Only the spells that they could have conceivably gotten from libraries or such in the area or seen done in the game.
4. Summoning any creature requires your character to prove his knowledge of said creature.

I find that these rules and those like them tend to be a good fix for overpowered players.

Kingmaker wrote:That's nonmagic items.

Under 3.5e, you can wish for a magic item. Any magic item. It just costs (XP cost of item x2) + 5000 XP to cast. Except that if a Wish that comes from a spell like ability or magic item (like an efreeti or a staff of 50 wishes), the XP cost is obviated. The first Wish is prohibitively expensive if you can't cheat (>500k XP, I think), but cheating is super easy if you're a wizard.

Yes, it is stupid. Yes, no sane GM would let it fly. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible with the text of Wish, which does not specify any limitations on the magic items you can create.

Wow it's been ages, can't believe I forgot that part. Pulled up my old notes, if it wasn't costing xp (so item based or controlled caster) I was ready to make the players only able to get 25k gp per wish used towards items. Want better item, stack the wishes. Campaign never got that high though sadly.

Purple wrote:

Kingmaker wrote:I'm a goddamn 11+ level wizard who knows planar binding and efreeti are not particularly obscure outsiders? There are far better ways for GM to deal with the problem (the simplest of which is a 'lolno')

Than you should have no problem rolling me that knowledge roll. That is except if you newer bothered to read about them in magic school and thus have no relevant knowledge skill.

A flat no is newer a good solution for a GM to pull.

Further GM actions: Efreeti are well-known pathological liars who are also sociopaths. They'll grant the wish by bending what you said to the extreme, it'll be in a way you don't expect that will likely cause you to die.

I.e.: Saying "I wish for a staff of wishing" will get the reply "There is one 1,000 leagues hence, beyond the fire-river, at the peak of Mt. Excruciating Death, in the den of a dragon." He'll explain that you wished 'for' a staff of wishing, not to possess one; so he informed you where one could be found. Then by wishing "for it to be here, in your hand," the dragon will come at once and bring it to you. Wishing it "to be here, but with the dragon far away" will have used up all of your wishes and now the freed Geni will try to kill you for making him provide you with wishes. And he'll have wished you far away, leaving the dragon and the wish staff back where they were; possibly with the rest of your party. As he interpreted your wish to be: "[The wish staff] be here, but with the dragon far away [from me]."

The Efreeti are likely to do this even with much more mundane things, so it's safer not to mess with them. Any wizard worth his hat should know that.

Except that's not how the spell or spell-like ability works. You explicitly wish to create a staff of 50 wishes, and you send the djinni home. It's within the defined ability of the spell and has no chance of going awry*.

If your GM is an asshole, he will throw RAW out the window and attempt to fuck you over through lawyering the the phrasing of the Wish.

If your GM is sane, he will throw RAW out the window, inform you that RAW is broken, and that you can't wish for more wishes. If you persist, he will call you an asshole and tell you to stop trying to break the game.

If a player makes a flagrantly unreasonable request or attempts something impossible, it is not only acceptable but appropriate for the GM to simply veto it. It is not appropriate for the GM to use it as an excuse to fuck the player over, and it is needless at best to impose some random barrier to success when your goal was really to just stop them.

*Even if you're overstepping the limits of the spell, it may fizzle, or it may be an overly literally interpretation of the wish, but the djinni can not just tack random shit on.

I disagree with you there. A properly constructed barrier, even if it is obviously made up on the spot can present an interesting challenge to a player. And if it is properly constructed there is going to be a chance of success in it as well. This in turn means that suddenly a way to break the game easily becomes, for that player an adventure and goal. And that if he does succeed his efforts can actually turn out fun for the party.

Purple wrote:I disagree with you there. A properly constructed barrier, even if it is obviously made up on the spot can present an interesting challenge to a player. And if it is properly constructed there is going to be a chance of success in it as well. This in turn means that suddenly a way to break the game easily becomes, for that player an adventure and goal. And that if he does succeed his efforts can actually turn out fun for the party.

But this means that the GM wants it to be possible although not at this point rather than the GM does not want it to be possible, if you as a GM decides that being able to obtain a staff of wishes is game breaking what is the point of putting an avoidable barrier rather than telling your players no? Either you're going to have to introduce more and more barriers to stop the players getting their staff or you'll have to give them their staff.

Bedlam wrote:But this means that the GM wants it to be possible although not at this point rather than the GM does not want it to be possible, if you as a GM decides that being able to obtain a staff of wishes is game breaking what is the point of putting an avoidable barrier rather than telling your players no? Either you're going to have to introduce more and more barriers to stop the players getting their staff or you'll have to give them their staff.

Or I am going to introduce a barrier they can't really pass now, but could later if they work toward it (like leveling up and visiting a library to max out your knowledge:plains skill). And if the players want to go through with that hassle I'll let them. I'll just put it into my plot. I tend to be a reactive GM with only a general idea of a plot and the motto "He who sees the goal can not lose the path."

Kingmaker wrote:Except that's not how the spell or spell-like ability works. You explicitly wish to create a staff of 50 wishes, and you send the djinni home. It's within the defined ability of the spell and has no chance of going awry*. ...
*Even if you're overstepping the limits of the spell, it may fizzle, or it may be an overly literally interpretation of the wish, but the djinni can not just tack random shit on.

See, there's the key. You've got to be explicit and it is well within the character of the djinni to misinterpret your general wishing. "I wish for you to create for me a staff of 50 wishes and place it right here in my hand" is pretty explicit and difficult to weasel out of (though I suppose you could provide a used staff of 50 wishes that has no wishes left, so asking for a new, unused staff is also important). "I wish for a staff of 50 wishes" is not. Using a djinni-wish or two incorrectly should learn your players and they'll get 1-2 legitimate wishes. I would scrutinize wishes for wishes more carefully than wishes that are benign, but it's still within the character of the djinni to abuse those.

And if your players are doing something weaselly like wish for a djinni so they can get 3 wands of 50 wishes or whatever, I'd say you're within your rights to weasel right back at them if you feel like their weaseling is game-breaking. You don't need to go as extreme as to kill the PC, but giving a slap on the wrist or a few harmless misinterpretations so that they've only got the 1 wish they started with and some questionably useful information is definitely justified.

And as purple says, if they figure out a way around your barrier by wording the wish such that it isn't easy to defeat and it won't break the game, go ahead and give it to them.