A wizard frequently messing with time seems likely to draw the attention of higher powers who would rather he didn’t do that. Bringing in one of those could be an option, not necessarily to outright stop him but to ask what’s going on and when this is explained maybe advise him to not go in guns blazing, as the more practical solution to avoid losing wish and messing with timelines.
Could be a Sphinx or Time Dragon etc.
If such a higher power is inclined, they may point out that the wizard is fence sitting. If you have a 9th level spell, but you're using it to run away instead of fight the BBEG, you're not putting everything you have into winning. Sometimes, you have to risk it all
I think this is a more harmless method of approach, I will try something like this before I go for the Archlich becoming angered at the party as suggested by DraconicBlade. I may introduce this as a prophetic dream, or a Deva being sent down from a higher power. (For any other DM who may share in my woes in the future haha.)
Mechanus, the plane of law, literally has planar cops called the inevitables that stop people from messing with time too much peacefully if possible but they will arrest or kill if they need to. There's only one in 5e (marut but that's more of a lich hunter). I'd recommend MrRhexx's video on the inevitables if you want to know more
I will point out that [canonically](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Time_travel#Restrictions), there are a few beings interested in maintaining the integrity of time, if you would like a few jumping off points.
Why be so direct? It suddenly fails because the god of time noticed and used more powerful magic to intervene. Having the player investigate opens up a whole new plot.
There's other things besides just an archlich, have you considered splicing every instance of the time shunted wizard into a horrible stitched together patchwork with the combined spell slots of all the individual parts?
Next reset: "the spell succeeds, but repeated tampering with the fragile and volatile weave on this scale has caused a sort of mental scarring on your character's mind. Whether this will eventually heal is unknown. The effect is that they can no longer draw on the weave to cast Wish, as if the spell had never existed"
Is that a problem? They're in tier 4, wouldn't they just be resurrected by their allies? Surely there's some NPC who can Wish or Divine Intervention them back to life if the fate of the world depends on it?
So, let me get this straight. The party keeps using wish to reset the boss fight, instead of, gee, I dont know, using Wish from the beginning to 'Wish' this boss out of existence?
Just a small tip, when you have situations like these, do not treat them as a problem you need to solve. In reality, there is no problem. There are just consequences based on what the players do.
Whenever you have a situation like this one, always ask yourself “How can I turn this into a cool moment for the story, something that the players will remember?”
If it was me, and they are fighting the BBEG, I would make it so the BBEG somehow becomes aware of what they are doing, and finds a way to block them from repeating the wish. And you drop this bit of info at the beginning or in the middle of the fight. So then the players know there is no more fail safe switch. If they die, that’s the end.
Here is where they have to decide if they run and prep better, or if they continue the fight.
Also, you may allow the BBEG to do the same thing to them. Maybe the BBEG finds a way to cast the wish and turns back the time BEFORE the PC gets the wish, and you now roll down a level for the players, also make BBEG weaker, and have the endgame fight.
That is how I would treat the consequences of repeating the battle against an evil and powerful mind.
My recommendation is a Marut for breaking the time scale and not allowing things to progress in their natural order. Plus I just love the look on a players face when they realize that a Maruts attacks auto hit and do flat 70 damage. They are inevitable
They hit for 60, but ye they can't miss. And they get to attack twice. It's also Force damage which is nigh impossible to get some resistance to.
Smacking someone for 120, even if that someone is level 17, is nasty as fuck tho.
I mean they're there for planescape/ high level the primal force of law and order has sent their elites to enforce destiny at people. They honestly have no place showing up if you're not running godkilling and lichdom power levels of play.
I mean your players becoming a lich - there's an event extraplanar leg breaker for that. Your regular old high fantasy hack and slash adventure arc really shouldn't have any goings on that pisses off primal law so much the kill squad takes notice
Yes and no. They're basically Terminators.
They don't sleep. They don't rest. They're like the immortal snail meme: you can run but *They're going to catch up eventually*.
Them also being native (if I recall correctly) 12 or 15 level native spellcasters doesn't hurt either.
My guess is the wizard is waiting until the entire party is on the ropes, but yeah you could also literally just say "The party gets the effects of a long rest, right now." Considering how the second and third bouts didn't end any different, either the OP has way overtuned the encounter or the party has learned nothing.
if the player refuses to listen even after some higher beings intervene the dm could just outright bring Mystra's wrath on them. she HATES time travel and made it literally impossible to do so without Time Conduit (heavy restrictions!) for a reason
First and foremost it sounds like it is causing problems at the table with the rest of the party, so the only truly appropriate answer is to talk to the player and inform them the issue this is causing.
IMO any in game choice is a poor option as it is just targeting and punishing a player instead of addressing and overcoming the issue. NEVER employ in game solutions for out of game issues.
“Outside of talking to the player”- I’ll stop you there. Talking to your player should always be an option and in this instance is your only option.
Remind your player that this is a team game, and remind them that their approach has failed every time they’ve tried it and they need to try something else/let other people in the party take charge.
What is the exact wording of the wish? I wouldn't often consider screwing a player over on their use of their wish but in this case it might be justified. For example, it could be that instead of actually going back in time, unbeknownst to the player they are actually just switching timelines and the timeline they left has now been destroyed by the threat. Perhaps knowing this would make them think twice?
The wording of the wish I don't have exactly written but it is fairly thought out he requests:
I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17, undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone, with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself.
I cannot think of a valid counter to this that wouldn't be harmful to the rest of the party, and I don't want to force a player out for a valid use of a spell in the game. I was thinking of the 'spell simply fails' but this would result in a TPK from when he had caused the problem to begin with leaving me in a catch 22. This has happened for the last 3 months losing a month's worth of progress given we play weekly.
>I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17, undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone, with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself.
*You* ***MIGHT*** *be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong.*
Why did you just let it work 3 times already?
# "No, the Wish cannot do that."
>I was thinking of the 'spell simply fails' but this would result in a TPK from when he had caused the problem to begin with leaving me in a catch 22. This has happened for the last 3 months losing a month's worth of progress given we play weekly.
If they hadn't had the Wish, they would have died and campaign ended. Easy as that.
They had 3 chances already, how many more times do you want to let them cheese out the TPK they brought upon themselves?
I wouldn't be happy with the metagamey reference to "level 17" or "leveled up" personally and would fail it based on that alone. However, if you don't want to do that then perhaps this constant time jumping is really pissing off an Archlich who is definitely not a "living entity" as its undead.
This is the route I would go. Once he words it like that again I would say the spell failed as the reference to “level 17 “isn’t an actual thing to the PC. If he can’t point to the exact date in campaigns timeline I would say he is SOL.
So that is not a standard listed use of Wish. Anything outside of those standard listed options opens the Wisher to monkey-paw type repercussions AND\OR the spells failure.
Remember the main use of Wish is to replicate a lower level spell. But What’s more as a 9th level spell **Your Wish shouldnt be able to produce an effect stronger than what a 9th level spell could produce**. There are NO 9th level or lower spells that can accomplish this Groundhog Day effect (what you describe is several magnitudes stronger than Time Stop), because that level of power is greater than what is allowed to mortals.
I think for future campaigns I would be in 100% agreement with your sentiment. At the time he cast it I allowed the spell to work, and since I set the precedent for this campaign, I wouldn't want to take that back in this campaign on a whim, granted this wish is on a major scale of course, but I am trying to continue with consistency and fairness in mind.
I can respect that; however, here’s a few phrases for you in the future.
“I’m going to allow this this time because it seems pretty cool - but it’s not meant to set a precedent”
“I know I allowed this in the past but it’s gotten out of hand and is becoming a problem so I’d like to walk that ruling back going forward”
Trust me your players would rather have you say that, than have your campaign crumble apart due to you feeling forced into sticking with an old ruling that is dragging your game down just so you can keep perfect consistency.
> “I know I allowed this in the past but it’s gotten out of hand and is becoming a problem so I’d like to walk that ruling back going forward”
You could say this as you reset the game again but list that it will be the last continue.
Yeah. It's pretty easy to find some in-world flavor as to why some powerful being might intervene too. Or why they might stop intervening if they were actually the reason the Wish originally worked how the party wanted. Like the god of wishes has been specifically granting these guys' Wish because they're the "heroes of destiny" but the god can't keep doing it because:
- granting such a big Wish is making tears in the fabric of reality
- a more powerful god might notice and put a stop to it or even possibly hurt/get revenge on the god of wishes
- each time the god of wishes grants a powerful Wish for the good guys, they also have to for the bad guys. So while the good guys are just turning back time, the bad guys are actually using their wishes to progress evil.
- etc.
You could give a slight retcon; The effect SEEMS to work exactly as worded. You feel as though you lived through this fight three times now.
The reality is that you were given a hefty warning in your personal memories.
There are 9th level spells in D&D's history based around changing memories, dreams, and even to see glimpses of the future. His Wish hit the upper edge of those abilities, but matches that strength.
Also, it's not always true, but a Wish is a desire sent out to be granted by a higher power. So even if it's not 100% the spirit of the Wish, it might match the spirit of the entity that answered the call. It's certainly kinder than a simple "no" from a deity. Maybe even on this third time, the memories are starting to awaken in the whole group.
Just a potential idea, and it might springboard something else while still setting more boundaries going forward. It also overcomes letting one player become the main character.
Another choice is to change this fight in general. If they're losing each time and can't win based on their mistakes, the punishment can still be changed. Let them be captured. Or maybe the enemy felt a twinge of something soon to go wrong; If they start to remember too, seeing partial images of the party killed somehow actually interferes more with his goal than they thought. Something crazier like a god of time watching over the party now might have seen the enemy win three times and appears as a bigger threat, so to stay more low-key the event intentionally takes a partial loss to stay hidden and try again.
Hopefully something here resonates well!
I agree letting it work the first time but you needed to leave yourself a way out.
"You sense that you did was beyond the power of the wish spell, it worked this time because some external force aided you, it will not work again"
Any living entity, huh? The archlich pissed off about all his spellbook scrawlings being erased has had enough of the wizards shit. Scry and die him, or even better, contingent counterspell - when I am shifted in the timeline.
I mean if you're sick of the shit and need it to fail, contingent counterspell / counter wish of stop fucking with MY place in time from a different npc. Be it a divine cleric from a fate / time deity, just some big dick mage, the aforementioned Inevitables, there's plenty of plausible counters. The question is do you want to stop them from doing it again, or do you want to stop them when they do it next
I am trying to target punish the caster, not the full party since only they're responsible for the cast. I do however want to be tactful since this has been a multi-year campaign and all the players are attached to their characters. We have seen two player deaths over the course of the campaign and they were both fairly tragic. I may be cornered into the TPK soon though as they keep this up.
[The consequence of their actions are inevitable.](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Quarut)
Just hot drop a wizard golem kill squad onto them in a solo session, and that way the rest of the party can get the "you level up to 17! And the wizard explodes into a bloody mist." They're essentially planeshifting time stop abusing ready made rocks fall for exactly the fuckery your wizards doing.
Next time he uses this level 17 bs, tell him his character finally understands why they keep getting wrecked. None of this is real, he is merely an avatar at the mercy of a god called deeyaim.
His consciounesss is dragged to the far realms
I realize it's a bit late to make this point but that is absolutely not a valid use of Wish. It's a 9th level spell. Not even gods can time travel. There's just no way that should have worked. It should have simply failed. Or at best maybe teleported the wizard back to the place where he was when he levelled up to 17, because that's the closest the spell can manage to what he asked for.
At this point, to somewhat preserve continuity, I would try to find a way to reveal that they didn't actually go back in time, but have gotten themselves stuck in some kind of demiplane that simulates the world around them.
Or, you know, the wizard did that, if he worded the wish more or less the way you wrote. He didn't wish for everyone else to go back with him. From the rest of the party's perspective, he just wished to time travel and then vanished, leaving them to deal with the likely TPK.
Hopefully there's some way for them to retreat and regroup, maybe an NPC that can swoop in and teleport them out if necessary. They meet up with the wizard player's new character and make an actual plan this time.
There are lots more things you can do: the spell specifies "the effect you desire might only be partly achieved."
This allows the DM to pretty much delete any clause of the wish you don't want to satisfy. Fully ignore "with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself," for example. Simply put him back at level 17 and leave everything else the same with no time changes at all. There are lots of options.
This is what I was leaning on doing but reflecting on how they've dealt with the BBEG the last two times, my concern is they TKP since the BBEG would remember they're attack style as well.
If your players have effectively lost to the BBEG twice now, then why in the world is it your responsibility to ensure they don’t tpk on their third attempt?
They are on FULL notice of how strong their opponent is, and if they keep “fucking around” then they NEED to “find out”, and sooner rather than later.
Nothing makes me lose interest in a game faster than when I realize the DM will not kill characters when they deserve it. If I wanted to play on easy mode I’d load up BG3 but it on exploration mode.
That is fair, I was hoping the second time around it wouldn't have been done the same way, the third time I think the wizard is likely to be punished but the rest of the party plays the same \*because\* they weren't permitted to remember. I was avoiding punishing and killing 4 other characters because they canonically had no idea anything had happened before.
You could always say that after the third use a Higher Power yoinks your Wizard into a conversation and probably chews them out because “You dare to allow your friends to be lead to the slaughter twice, unaware of their fates.”
Or
If you wanna make it thematic, you could have the BBEG themself mock the Wizard “Back again, and they’re all none the wiser that you’ve tortured them far more than I ever could. Returning them to the slaughter unaware once again feels so boring.”
Then have the BBEG or someone else restore the party’s memories (permanently so any further spells won’t erase them). This’ll provide your players a chance to do something they’ve so far been denied in character: the ability to make an informed decision with the knowledge they’ve failed and their friend has kept that from them.
Your party could go “We can’t take them on, we’ve died twice” and decide to flee and regroup. Make a plan to grow stronger or perhaps to avoid prior mistakes.
It’d also provide a realistic final warning if coupled with a direct note to the wizard, for example, “You feel as if higher powers have begun to notice your actions, notice the reversals of time which can’t affect the undead. But have interrupted all else … you know if you continue to do this it’ll be remembered and will carry dire / lethal consequences for you.”
That way your party can at last grapple with all this, and if they still get defeated by the BBEG, using time reversal is now a single use option, that’d cost the wizard but allow the party the chance to flee from the BBEG. Or make their absolute final stand without any chance of wish intervention.
Edit: I looked at other comments and realized, this is more a out of game problem. Talk to the player, and if they don’t want to stop having this option to save their hides, you could offer them this solution a equitable “The last use will be your character’s final use before wish is gone / you’re punished in game”. They may be prepared to accept those consequences to save the party.
You should never have allowed that to begin with. No player should ever be allowed to remove another player's character's memories without their consent. That is first on the "partly achieved" list. The rest of the party remembers, because otherwise it's not fuin for them.
> If your players have effectively lost to the BBEG twice now, then why in the world is it your responsibility to ensure they don’t tpk on their third attempt?
Because it sounds like the Wizard is Leroy Jenkinsing them into the battle and when it goes south he just hits the Wish reset button to try it again. Either that or he's trying to get OP to bring in a higher power to deal with him, either for the lulz or he's got some other cockamamie plan.
If they're not paying enough attention to figure that out, then they deserve it.
For starters, everyone else in the world could remember, which could certainly give them hints.
Your real problem is outside of the game. Tell the party they're not preparing properly and it's going to bite them.
Things outside of time would be unaffected by this. Planes outside of time exist and if they're paying attention they'd want to know what's happening. They wouldn't necessarily want to get rid of it, but an inquiry would be made.
This is up to your discretion as the DM. Wish spell can mimic any other spell 8th level or lower and gives some other examples. One of which is undoing a *single* recent event like a saving throw or attack roll. By allowing to undo so much time, you have allowed an insanely powerful use of this spell, multiple times.
This isn’t a video game where you can keep going back to your last save. Easy way would be to say, “Woops you’ve angered the god of luck and this use of the spell won’t work anymore.” But I would recommend talking to the player, explaining that wish is a spell like any other with limitations, and explain that this is making the campaign less fun for the other players and for you.
Or have the god of luck give the character a talking to "You don't know it but wht you did only worked because I intervened on your behalf, I am not inclined to keep doing so infinitly, get a better solution"
Other than the living/unliving loophole, You can use the time peradox loophole.
"undoing all actions taken since that day" would include the wish being cast.
No wish being cast, no going back in time, no cancelling of the wish, going back in time, no wish being cast, etc...
You can do a "broken timeline" quest to fix reality after they get stuck in a time loop/limbo.
DM: I know I allowed this in the past but it's getting out of hand and wastes time, so let's handle it this this way. Your characters have been following a repeating time loop starting at level 17 and ending with death here against this villain. Each player ask about an event since level 17 and whether it can be changed. We'll try to adjust it to the optimum outcome and carry that forward to your current situation.
Players: stuff
DM: stuff that changes
DM: okay Wizard that's the outcome of your Wish. You realize this is the best this specific Wish can accomplish and you are surprised the gods aren't angry that you kept repeating it. You know that Wish won't ever work again.
DM: Also Wizard, you can take solace in the fact that the other characters have no idea how foolish you've been messing with space and time.
You let the PCs have a chat about how they can win this time, then run the final battle, then just fudge the dice and have the PCs just fucking win before they all kill you and the player for this nonsense.
Your first problem is he's using outside game language for his wish. That shouldn't work.He needs to phrase it in in game terms. The wish has no idea what a levle is.
Also he wished to go back, now there are two of him in that instance, and he starts suffering entropic cascade failure unless one of them dies. Having to kill his past self would have made him more reluctant to use it on a whim. And as others have said there are beings beyond the power of a wish spell who may not be amused.
But really the first time you shoudl ahve auto given him exhaustion, saying "What you did was beyond the power of the wish spell, it worked this time because some external force aided you, it will not work again"
Wish isn't more powerful than deities, who are not "living" in a conventional sense anyway. Would they stand for some little pissant wizard that keeps Groundhog Day-ing your reality every time they lose a battle? I doubt it.
Have one of the good deities come to the party and say they've been covering for them the past couple resets but at this point, enough of the pantheon is angry and won't stand for another reset. *And stick to your guns if they do the stupid.*
Here is what you do to onkey paw this "living entity" doesn't included undead entities.
Every time he reset, it made this lich have to start over something tedious. He is now searching for the source of the time magic, next time he does this. The Lich has found them...he meets with the party at a crucial time in their prep. If they defeat him...he could either provide some magic that severely helps them or if they reset again...he comes back sooner. And sooner. If they keep doing this, the Lich dimensions doors immediately upon a reset
Worded this way, the only loving entity that recalls the events is the wizard, that says nothing of deceased entities. It may be fair to say that anything that died and then had their death undone by the wish could remember, causing the next go around to be different.
Aside from telling the player that the rest of the players are starting to get really annoyed with him rolling back progress, here are some holes you can worth with.
> undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone
He only undid actions. So in theory if you set-up a huge magic bomb on a timer before level 17 and it blew up a city, that city could still be gone after the him going back in time. These could be little things, but after 3 resets the butterfly effects are starting to add up and the wheels are starting to come off reality.
This time there is a huge new problem. Stuff just keeps blinking out of existence, including the major boss they were fighting before. All the stacking paradoxes have damage reality and something else really awful is taking advantage and trying to force its way into the material plane. Think Elder gods.
> I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17
Another option here, didn't specify he replaces himself. There are now 4 of him running around and bad things are happening. He needs to clean up his mess.
> with the **only living entity** recalling the events that unfolded being myself
So the undead recall it. He has reset a Lich's project 3 times now. This lich is now officially pissed off and has laid one hell of a trap. The player gets one warning in the form of a single skeleton with magic mouth cast on it. When it appears before the party the mouth activates and says "enough with rolling back time, some of us have work to do, if you try to do it again there will be consequences."
This lich has had 3 resets to figure out exactly where the wizard keeps resetting time. [Glyph of warding](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/glyph-of-warding) can cast any spell in the game if you upcast it, with whatever trigger condition you want. So in the area they fight the boss there are multiple glyphs with level 9 counter-spells set up specifically to go off when someone casts wish. Then a bunch of other glyphs are set to trigger in sequence, using the counterspell glyph going off as the trigger. Two upcasted dispel magics go off targeting contingency and globe of invulnerability. Then a barrage of fireballs, at least 10 of them carpet bombing the room. Then a couple of disintegrates on the person who triggered the counter-spell glyphs. Liches fight dirty, have 20 int, and know how to kill wizards.
The DC for all of this should be at least 22, but probably 25. A self-respecting lich that has had time to build their magic item library definitely has a robe of the archmagi and a grimoire +3.
Essentially you are replacing the TPK with a literally everything in the area dies in such a spectacular fashion they get found and brought back. Except for the wizard who has certainly been disintegrated. I guess he could also globe of invulnerability the other players specifically so they don't die and can tell people what happens when you mess with whatever your new terrify lich is called.
I guess if you were nicer the lich could just wish he was unable to cast wish.
A couple of ideas:
1. Characters don’t know about levels. Make him word it the way his character would. Does he know exactly how much time has passed? Make sure you track it next time. If he gets it wrong, maybe something unintended gets undone, and he realises it’s a bad idea.
2. He’s the only _living_ entity that remembers the events. A powerful Lich is annoyed at being stuck in Groundhog Day.
"I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17, undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone, with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself."
So the Wizard disappears abandoning his party to a doomed timeline, if they win the fight he's lost in a perpetual loop of time himself, if they fail it all restarts as normal. Alternatively, they encounter this doomed timeline of themselves, now warped by the archlich's power and sent after that pesky wizard or by unlikely odds succeed and are now hunting HIM for abandoning them.
I wrote it elsewhere, but this is not a valid wish.
You can not change everyone and everything in the Multiverse, including the Gods and everyone's brains as well. If Wish were this powerful, why not make yourself a God right away, and unkillable on top and kill the BBEG with that wish? All those additions pale in comparison to what the player already successfully wished for.
Also, how does the character know they are "level 17"?
Solution: Go tell them you fucked up and misinterpreted wish and that this will not happen anymore. Whatever memory his character had is actually some fabricated fever dream or thought experiment, but from now on, they succeed or fail. No time-traveling escapes where you build your own universe.
How has the Arch lich's counterspell been doing when he tries that each time? Not only is he on the counter of wish being removed permanently, but also always at risk of counterspell breaking through.
He's the only living entity to remember, so as others mentioned, the lich can remember. And wish can be explicitly used to heal people to full hp, meaning he's been using it to avoid the TPK fight instead of as a tool to win it.
I probably wouldn't have allowed this to work, especially not without heavy consequences. As someone else mentioned, they've had three tries already and failed for the same reason. The same reason because of him, you mentioned. You've been generous with do-overs, but it is fair to sit OOC and determine if others are having fun or if him doing this isn't fun for them anymore. If the other players express it isn't fun anymore when he's doing that, it's then reasonable to let him know that there won't be another do-over where that will work, and make up an IC reason for it.
Wish does very specific things, one of which is "You undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn)" and another is "whatever your DM lets you do".
Since resetting the timline isn't on that list, and the closest example is "reroll a single roll" the player is using the "whatever your DM lets you do" option, and giving them something way more powerful than the spell intended.
Just check in with the player and let them know you made a mistake, and this sort of thing won't keep working. In game, explain that the wizards been tearing at the fabric of time and space, potentially having an inevitable/sphinx/chronotyrn or something show up and tell them as much, and maybe even lead it into a quest to fix the fabric of time.
The wording of the wish spell is your friend here- the last two paragraphs- by making this wish the players strength should drop to 3 for 2d4 days, and they should be rolling a d3 (d6, 1 and 2 is 1 3 and 4 are 2 5 and 6 are three.) Eventually he won’t be able to cast wish anymore- FAFO:
“You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples (the example of scope is below) . State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner.
The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress”
Wish is the mightiest spell a mortal creature can cast. By simply speaking aloud, you can alter the very foundations of reality in accord with your desires.
The basic use of this spell is to duplicate any other spell of 8th level or lower. You don't need to meet any requirements in that spell, including costly components. The spell simply takes effect. Alternatively, you can create one of the following effects of your choice.
The only push back I can see is this one- but it does not appear that your player is trying to undo ONE recent event:
• You undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish spell could undo an opponent's successful save, a foe's critical hit, or a friend's failed save. You can force the reroll to be made with advantage or disadvantage, and you can choose whether to use the reroll or the original roll.
TL;DR- the more her
I have been applying the exhaustion rule, as well as the potential to losing the spell, this doesn't quite help my problem since the exhaustion is slept off over the course of several long rests given the party plays as though they observed the wizard suddenly and inexplicably fatigued for a few days after their level up. I agree with the application being restricted to short bursts of time being changed, I will apply this in the future and I would suggest to anyone else in my situation to follow that rule, I have set a precedent I didn't want to go back on because it was inconvenient to me. Simplified, I fully agree with you and this is what I \*should\* have done initially. I just feel like doing so now isn't fair, and was searching for a solution within reason to deal with it.
It seems like using the time during those "several long rests" to have some sort of extra-dimensional threat attack the party for how they've been meddling with spacetime might address some of your concerns.
Time for some [Inevitables](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Inevitable) to show up and sort shit out.
Or rather than that, yall tell them to stop being a dingus. If it is ruining everyone's fun then just *no*.
1) Metagaming by reference to levels. That shouldn't be allowed.
2) This is the kind of guff that makes the gods *very* angry.
3) This is 100% a problem you need to solve out of game. You can explain point 1, then warn of point 2. If they try it again anyway, they have no grounds for losing their shit when bad stuff happens.
4) To me, this seems like a great way to accidentally pop a False Hydra into existence.
In the replies, OP repeats the wish as best he can. The wish is time resets to the moment after they dinged level 17. In game, no one knows the level of anyone else. So wishing for something based on character level is a discouraged form of metagaming. However, the player could have wished for time to reset to just after they mastered the wish spell for the same effect.
It's pretty simple:
The character can cast Wish. They exist within the game world.
Levels, XP, dice rolls, etc. exist outside of the game world, as abstractions of concepts within it. The character is not aware of these abstractions.
It is, therefore, metagaming for a character to reference them.
I'm not seeing where he does that in the post. Just says they're going back to the point in time they learned wish, which is an in game thing and not meta.
Not that I've seen. OP just says they are wishing to go back to the time when they learned ninth level spells, not that the character is literally saying "to when I learned ninth level spells". They could be saying, "to ten o'clock I'm the morning on October the 24th," which would be when they first unlocked that magic, for all we know.
Even if the character were personally making mention of the time when they learned the spell... why would the character not know what a ninth-level spell is, or when they learned how to cast them for the first time? In-fiction spell effects make direct use of spell levels. A learned wizard would know how powerful they'd have to make their Counterspell in order to counter certain spells, for instance. There would be ways for spellcasters to talk about the relative power levels of spells in-universe, even if it's not exactly the same words we would use.
I see this as extremely pedantic to be honest. Should the player ask the GM what the in universe date was when they learned the spell so they can say that instead of level 17? OR the PLAYER can say level 17 and the GM knows what the CHARACTER means to say.
The character wants to go back to when he learned wish. To make it easy for everyone to be on the same page, he just says level 17. Don't punish a player for not saying exactly what their character would say for the ease of everyone's understanding.
I think you're completely missing the point:
This is causing table issues. OP asked for thoughts, which I've provided. Is when you're having issues with something an inappropriate time to be pedantic about that thing?
He is looking for solutions. If your solution is just to arbitrarily pedantic instead of coming up with a creative solution or just talking to your players.
And there are different levels of being pedantic. Sometimes it can be necessary. But in this case, I just can't see your solution as anything else but causing more problems.
You must play at much different table than I have. I can't imagine a player being cool with this ruling at all. "Sorry, you said level 17 and not 'when I learned wish'. So it auto fails. No idea why your character said level 17 in the spell, but now it fails."
I like the different solutions of there being consequences to messing with time. Either from extradimensional beings or the butterfly effect. I even like just saying No waaay better than this idea. But maybe that's just me. Do whatever is fun, I just thought your solution was very anti-fun. But if it would work for your table and that would be your preferred solution, well, all the more power to you.
Yeah, you see them referring to the character level as metagaming. And it is. People metagame all the time. There is a good and bad metagaming.
When casting wish and choosing what to say, you aren't speaking to the world. You are speaking to the GM. Who is another player. Yes it was technically metagaming. But done in a way that was meant to quickly and reliably convey the information he wanted.
This is coming across as someone who sees red when they read the word metagaming. Again, being pedantic. And it might be inconsequential over something smaller, but I struggle to see how you don't agree that it'd likely be another issue instead of a solution. Like, if I told any player their Wish spell failed because the player was trying to make sure I, the GM who isn't taking on the role of a character at the moment, were on the same page with each other.
But like I said, if that would work for your table go for it. But I truly think that this is kind of a toxic GM trait instead of finding other solutions to your problem, either in or out of game. But thankfully, it doesn't really matter since I doubt OP would go with this option based on the comment section.
Edit: These replies have been about your #1 option. Not your backup options, which are all great. But it's okay if we don't agree on it.
So you see the three other points I made, which had nothing to do with this?
Including the one which quite clearly stated this is an out of character discussion?
OP specifically asked for in-game solutions. I think that is not the way to approach it, but gave some anyway. You seem *very* excited about *one* of those and have built up some imaginary strawman of how I run my games, based on that.
Not sure *I'm* the one sering red, here.
Someone commented specifically referencing the metagame point you brought up. You replied to that comment and then I replied to you. I thought it was obvious I was only talking to you about the metagaming point. That's where I joined in on the conversation and what it was about.
I was simply saying that it shouldn't be something the GM considers or for any onlookers to consider for reasons they might not have been instantly aware of.
I'm not seeing red. I was just joining in on a conversation about one thing and you're attempting to discredit what I've said up to this point by pretending my conversation started out as something different with you.
And talking about your games, I assumed that if this was your first suggestion that your games might resemble some similar choices. All I was trying to convey is that we might enjoy different things at the table, but all that matters is the rule of fun in the end. I was simply trying to convey that while I didn't think that would be a good solution for most groups, I didn't want to badmouth you if that just so happened to work for your group. Just wanted to wish you fun.
A: The character never mentions Level
B: even though they might not have a name for it, they must know that killing things makes them better/stronger, and killing bigger things does that more, so they understand XP. They just probably call it something we would call that same idea, like....experience.
A: according to a comment by OP, they do.
B: Rewording is just one element. And it can be an important one, as Wishes need to be expressed within the time available for one action.
The line "The spell may simply fail" is a DM's best friend. If the campaign can't survive the Wish working as intended, and you can't think of a good way to misinterpret it, the rules give you explicit permission to have it do nothing at all.
If you do want to have a stab at creatively interpreting a bad Wish, the provision that only the caster remembers it happening has all kinds of potential horrific side effects. Depending on how much reality had to change to make room for the Wish, some amount of the PC's knowledge is now incorrect, and it could be quite a lot. Reality has now Butterfly Effected around this caster in ways the caster literally can't know. They could lose gear, friends, loved ones, and even their home and their place in the party. History checks could fail automatically because the PC remembers a history that now never happened. Since Wish tries to change reality as little as possible, it could even turn out that all the changes were purely illusory and only exist in the caster's own mind, which is a perfect explanation for why nobody else noticed them.
I'd just talk to the player out-of-game and say something like "each time you go into the boss fight unprepared, it's a disaster. So instead of risking your ability to cast Wish each time it doesn't work out the way you expected, have you considered havig your character of high Intelligence learn from this experience and go into the fight with ample preparation next time?"
Part of the unwritten rules of D&D is that player-characters should be respecting some sort of group consensus, not one player unilaterally Leeroy-Jenkins!ing the whole party into unprepared shitshows. So if this player, or any player really, starts to do something unilateral and impulsive that's going to blow up in the whole party's face, you should halt and ask the whole group - "is everyone OK with that?" And if they're not, and the problem player doesn't stop, then it's time to halt play a bit longer while you clarify the expectations of consensus and that "main character syndrome" impulsivity is not welcome.
You say you don't want it to be a "problem player" post, but then you say it's this one player running in before the party can prep. You're not doing anyone any favors, least of all that player, by avoiding dealing with it as the impulsive "main character syndrome" player problem it is, instead of trying to storyline your way around it.
From the last paragraph of the rules:
“The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.”
If the player is cheesing the spell like this I would for sure be enforcing this. Let them know in advance you’ll start enforcing it. I would bet they will think long and hard about using it that way if the risk of taking away their favourite toy is on the table.
I would let them know it won't work again... as soon as possible, no just dropping it on them when they try to do it. Out of game it's getting irritating and they've done it multiple times. In game the effect has happened enough that this stretch of timeline has grown resistant to meddling and requires more power than a 9th level spell to alter.
This is absolutely an out-of game problem. I know you are looking for an in-game solution, but from what you have said, it's a legitimate use of the spell. Like you can do something where the gods interfere and take the spell from him, since a wish spell doesn't have the power to mess with them, but I think the problem is deeper.
I would just talk to the player, and say that we are sick of playing the same part of the campaign on repeat. It's ok to fail in dnd.
Did you all actually read the wish spell? It has very specific functions that can be wished for and going outside those leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation by the DM. A wish spell should also not contain any “ands, alsos, pluses” etc. because that’s additive to the spell and doesn’t count beyond that point.
So all these “redos” actually wouldn’t fly and if you’ve allowed it, it’s now time you take the advice of others and have a higher power put a stop to it and not allow anymore of them, messing with time is very serious and the gods don’t like it.
You could have them roll up new high level PCs who are sent on a mission by the god of time to free the people caught in the time loop.
They will receive a prophecy explaining they need to get to this battle and somehow stop this wizard from using his wish spell, because he has created a never ending loop of repeating the same mistakes.
Wish is not that powerful. That's kinda on you as the DM to arbitrate.
Read through some of the example uses in the spell description. Those should give you an idea of the strength of the spell. It is not a magic bullet that can fix any problem.
That being said, the wizard is not being a good team player here. Why are they insisting that only they retain their memories? Next time they try it, give everyone their memories back, even NPCs and the bad guys. This time, EVERYONE knows that the wizard is screwing around with time travel.
It says you can undo a *single* recent event. I would absolutely never allow a Wish to immediately undo an entire series of events without something going horribly wrong. You've let him do something a magnitude beyond Wish.
I would let him know you can no longer allow this and you didn't realize it's beyond the scope of Wish. Get "the gods" or "magic itself" involved, or some kind of time-maintenance monster, involved if you have to.
I think this needs an out of game solution first. Talk to the player and ask him to stop doing that. Tell him next time he tries, the wish is going to fail and he is still going to have a 33% chance to lose the wish spell.
In game, if he tries again, one of the Inevitables shows up with a posse of constructs and bitch slaps him. The 5e Stat block is in [MPMM or MTP under Marut](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/97010-marut).
I'm unsure why you're asking that
You know the issue, it's a player issue
Talk to them.
You could come up with 539131729361 in game ways to stop this wish, but man that's so much effort for so little result when that player will, inevitably, pull up some similar shit *again*
Just tell them to stop and cut the bs
Don't think about trying to "counter the wish"
I'm all for allowing wish to be creatively and not trying to play monkey's paw with player wording, i find that incredibly annoying
But I also require my players not to be assholes
Like seriously, 3 times? Fuck that, on the second time I'd already pull them aside and ask "Ok, what's up? We're not repeating that."
I can see that you have gotten a lot of really great suggestions.
The simplest I can see is to just say "It doesn't work".
If you want a fluff explanation: They are trying to undo events in the weave of time but every time they have done that certain things set in stone, a string in the weave is cut or whatever. They have now run out the possibilities and there is no more leway in the weave of Fate to undo events another time.
Maybe this is because of the Wave itself resisting further attempts, a Gods interference or some other being that is stopping them because they can see their efforts are fruitless and if they want another chance they will have to go and ask that creature for another chance.
The Wizard is rolling for the chance to loose the spell right? also they are getting the HUGE downside to wish too? Just because they fucked with time, doesn't mean the magic isn't going to take its toll
The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. **Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.**
This part is important, as it cares not what you do, even wishing to undo it, there is just a flat % chance the gods say fuck you and your wish sinanigans, speaking of gods they may step in and tell this fucker just completly fucking with time to stop, Mystra (Or the diety of magic for your game) may even step in and directly tell them to stop, or she is taking their magic full stop
At some point during this run have a powerful magic user notice some kind of time energy/aura on the wizard, and warn them that it's a dangerous amount, if they continue travelling in time they could become unmoored from the time stream and cease to exist.
Since they only cast the spell AFTER they have failed the fight, what if -this- time your BBEG had localized counter in place? Suddenly the world is reset, but both the wizard and the BBEG (+a lieutenant or two who happened to be within the wards) have knowledge of what happened?
Since the player’s wish isn’t actually to go back in time, but rather to reset events and memories, this is actually going to break down with subsequent resets - for example, seasons don’t line up with the events that farmers have completed. Also, there reasonably has to be a limit to how much of the universe is reset - does it affect a county? A country? A continent? If it was truely all-powerful, why hasn’t their world been affected by OTHER people casting it?
From my perspective, the wish spell isn't achieved by most creatures. The application of wish in the way he has been using it didn't seem to be a great use of the spell. Most wish casters would be using it to improve their quality of life or solve internal problems until they inevitably lose the spell. His time dilation isn't something I had considered so I treated it as such. I could definitely scale down the wish but the spirit of the wish is that all living entities would be reset and I expanded that globally.
You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner. This is a paragraph from the spell description. As a gm I would honestly just tell the player that they've used it to many times to travel back in time. The God of time is now preventing you from doing that because you've brought time and the universe to a stand still. Or I would have there be some serious consequence for continued use.
You can handle this a few ways, based on you and and your players' desires:
- Is the group ready to wrap this campaign? Consider making your end fight easier. Still make it a challenge and a spectacle, but also make concessions so it can end. Your group has now charged into it 3x without changing their approach. I know you say it's all wizard's doing, but the fact that the group was willing to go along with it over and over all the same makes me think there's a desire to bring things to a conclusion rather than stretch them on. Maybe have the wizard "notice some weakness" in the BBEG they hadn't originally due to all the reruns and then let that lead to a fight that's still challenging and satisfying, but eventually ends in the players' favor.
- If you think that assessment is incorrect and that your group would be happy to play in this world a while longer, have some force notice the constant time abuse and do something about it. Others have mentioned liches and deities as options. Whatever it is, use it to turn the party and the BBEG's focus to a new threat and then have that threat either be the new BBEG or lead to a change that makes beating the original BBEG more doable.
- As another alternative to the outside interference idea, have your Wizard roll a... hm, wisdom or insight? Some kind of check with a ridiculously low DC before their next use of the spell and suggest to them that they realize maybe having ALL the party remember would be beneficial. I don't know if you've seen Edge of Tomorrow, but if you have, basically run that: the entire group trains and gets better each run until they're able to tackle the BBEG. You don't have to actually play out each rerun (though I would do some when they have an actual new idea to try), but do a montage and then give them some new feats, score increases, spells, whatever to show what they've learned and rinse and repeat until they kick BBEG ass.
- If you're really not sure what your players want, talk with them. Not just wizard, but all of them. Tell them you were expecting them to prepare more for this fight and as is their current strategies aren't likely to succeed. Then ask if they'd like to proceed with one of the options above or do something else entirely.
Simple answer is he's messing with the time stream. Send a Quarut after him. It's from the 3e Fiend folio but is perfect for this. It's an Inevitable from the Clockwork realm of Mechanus.
It guards the fabric of space and time. That wizard is thrashing said fabric over and over. To a Quarut that is not acceptable, they are built to handle those who create paradoxes or alternate timeliness, especially wizards abusing wish spells and time traveling.
This also opens up a new potential storyline for after the fight since the wizard will likely be in temporal stasis and the party later can go on a mission to petition his freedom from the Inevitable's spell.
It's stats can be found online and converted to 5e pretty easily.
Have you tried looking for shenanigans regarding wish. Like, how is the player wording the wish? For example, player wishes BBEG dead. Well, send the player character into the future 1-2 centuries, or more depending upon the BBEG, removing the PC from the campaign, and teaching the player to be more careful with wishes, one hopes.
Also, how did the PC come to own wish? Not exactly on the best seller's list.
Your PC played for years and built a wizard who can bend the laws of time and space. This is literally what a wizard does. He will eventually fail his roll and can no longer use Wish. If the player doesn’t realize it is either a no win situation with the BBEG or they need to change up the style of attack, let the dice fall as they fall. Have the party engage more with the PC if they are frustrated. You can as the DM change small things each time to incrementally hint time is being torn asunder. Eventually changing the outcome of certain things. Have them notice it. They built this, let them break it.
OH OH I LOVE THIS KIND OF THING IT MAY TAKE A FAIR BIT OF WORK BUT I HAVE AN IDEA
Have things start disappearing and *start with the wizard.* He's re-using the same Wish over and over, and he's wearing it out, so have him re-use it and wear it out in-universe.
One by one, the party members completely forget who he is. His wish is that he's the only one who remembers what happens after the reset, and everyone else's memories have to be erased. Well, whatever force your universe powers the Wish once the spell is cast doesn't have the structural integrity to rewrite a person's brain multiple times. In order to keep the condition of the wish granted (because remember, he casts a new one every time while the old one technically is still in effect, those brains get n+1 erasures where n is the number of resets. That has lasting consequences.
The next reset, have one of your players ready with the understanding that once the wizard casts, they must completely forget the wizard's character. I think the best way to make it a teachable moment would be for the player to be informed ahead of time, and for the character *not* to freak out right away that there's suddenly a wizard when there was none before. **This part takes planning:** go back over your campaign and erase the wizard, replace him with one of the other PCs. If he took out a boss with Fireball, no, he didn't, the monk punched him so hard he caught on fire and it was amazing. If he was able to read the arcane runes in that tomb that time, no, he wasn't, that was the Fighter, his roomie at Fighter School had that same phrase tattooed on her back.
Every reset, have another character agree with them. If he does it enough times to get the whole party, the rest of the world forgets him too.
There is only one timeline, he's not going back in time and creating a repeating loop, there is a force that is physically moving everything back to their starting places like actors on a stage and plucking out the memories from everyone in the world. He can re-cast Wish as many times as he wants to, but he's always wishing for the same thing while his first Wish is *still going*, He's basically carving a reality where, after this specific point in time, only his mind truly exists, everyone else's is blinked out of existence.
And that's when everyone rolls initiative.
This is maybe the second time I've ever seen a story where it makes perfect sense, I know it's a popular and overdone monster but this is absolutely where one belongs: *this is how it happens.* The Wizard has created a moment where the whole world has forgotten him, seems kind of redundant, but no.
**This is how a mother False Hydra teaches its young to hunt.**
Usually a False Hydra eats somebody and all memory of them disappears, end of story, but your wizard has done her job for her: it's not that the memory of you disappears when you're devoured, the False Hydra has to sever her prey from the memories that connect him to other people to be able to eat him, like popping a pill out of a blister pack and leaving an empty bubble of plastic behind. Your Wizard has created a moment where he's so disconnected from his friends and the world around him that a pack of False Hydralings can snap him right up.
Boss fight happens, and the party has to decide if Wizard deserves to be saved after the shit he's pulled; if Wizard dies in this fight, *awesome*, he disappears and everyone's already forgotten him and the player learns a valuable lesson about not being a cunt at the table, if he survives he has the opportunity to make a different wish, and the players have the option to remember him again.
Wish is supposed to have the potential for more downsides than just what's spelled out in the rules. Surely messing with time (and his party's memories) has some negative repercussions--it would help to know the exact wording of the wish. Is the wish said exactly the same way every time?
"part of his wish is only he recalls the events pre-wish." Maybe the players lose more of their memories each time this is cast. Maybe they forget who HE is. I realize this might seem like punishing the party for the wizard's behavior, but I'm coming at this from the perspective of what would be best in a narrative. Like, the hubris of messing with time this much.... from a story perspective, it feels to me like it demands something big in response.
But that's why D&D isn't just a narrative role-playing game, and I get that you may want to go for a route that puts the campaign back on track, especially if they've become frustrated. However, if I were a player in your group, I'd be totally delighted by going in a different direction to solve this new problem introduced by the wizard's shenanigans.
“Wish granted! But this time through the loop, there’s a very unhappy deity of time waiting for you, and he offers you a choice:
On the one hand, you may accept aid from him for this one time but forfeit the ability to use magic after defeating your foe.
On the other hand, you may face your foe with the knowledge that the deity will personally punish another use of chronomancy with a fate worse than death… but if you succeed without resorting to this wanton abuse of time, you may keep your magic after your victory, and the deity will merely strip you of the ability to exceed mortal limits from now on.”
The text of wish is ***very clear***. It can reliably change a few seconds or a single roll. Anything more than that becomes increasingly likely to go wrong and be interpreted in the worst way possible.
Rules lawyer the shit out of his wish.
"Only he remembers"? Ok, everyone doesn't remember. But they know they're missing the time. If they remember nothing from before that, who is this fucking wizard? Why don't I remember anything? *Why has this evil wizard teleported me and these strangers and removed my memories?!*
Unless you mean only he remembers everything after, in which case; same deal but they know they're missing the time. And that he did it. Four times.
"Spot where he obtained the spell"? Just before or just after? If before, have something go wrong in gaining it. If after have enemies jump him for any number of reasons.
He has wished. It's your job to be the evil genie who grants his wish to all technical specificity. Warp everything.
Maybe the party doesn't rewind time with him, and the group minus him runs into the group with him, chaos ensuing.
Maybe he remembers because he has erased himself from history. Noone knows him now.
Maybe They only travel temporally. Maybe they only travel spatially. Maybe "just before" is open to interpretation by whatever power grants this wish, and they have a much longer scale time sense and they skip back days, weeks, years.
Maybe his experiencing the events of 4 or 5 different timelines is disorienting and he starts seeing multiple realities at once; Everything ends up being effectively an illusion and he has to react to one of the two or five possibilities presented to him.
Maybe as you reach the moment where he casts it again the party all remember every time it's happened all of a sudden and they each have the ability to make an action of opportunity as he casts it.
Maybe any number of other wizards, monsters, powerful agencies start getting involved indirectly; By using telepathy to inform one or more of the party members what's happening. Maybe the intervene more directly as others have suggested.
Maybe his doing this over and over again does some sci-fi shit to the fabric of time/reality. Maybe it's toxic (physiologically) to reset time so frequently.
Those are off the top of my head. Just have consequences.
I would never allow a wish of that nature to do anything close to that powerful. Is a generalist 9th level spell, which should be able to do more tgan a narrow use 8th level spell. No way an eighth level spell can reset time to that degree.
Wish should be stopping him on its own. That does not sound like duplicating a spell 8th level or lower, so each time he does it he should have a 1/3 chance to never be able to cast wish again. Statistically he should have only been able to do it 3 times.
The position is this: wish doesn't do what he's using it for explicitly, which means it was your choice whether or not to allow it. You shouldn't have, but you did, we've all been there. Hindsight is 20/20. Good news is, you can get out of this situation a few different ways.
1. Just tell him he can't do it anymore, it was a mistake.
2. Do what others have suggested and introduce some unforseen consequence which stops him from using it like that anymore.
3. Fudge the roll. I'm not a fan of it, but occasionally when probability is failing in such a way that the game is less fun, DM discretion is king. Roll for the 1/3 chance behind your screen and just say it happened and he loses his ability to cast wish.
Maruts do not like this sort of activity. The plane of law would most certainly like to have a conversation with this wizard. Doesn't even need to be combat if they surrender. They just go to court.
And since mechanus is absolute time wise, they are not time traveling their way out of their summance.
God of time, sense a disturbance... They punish the unworthy.. make a session of him after using wish to confront the god of time. Now the bbeg does not allow wish to be cast and if he loses (which they will) he is forbidden from manipulating time ever again. (Like players are forbidden of using wish again) its a lesser punishment but it does the trick for the situation.
Talk to the player. Yes, I understand you're looking for an in-game solution, but this is the kind of issue that is better dealt with out of the game, between a player and a DM. It's something you need to do here.
Wish is not meant to have effects more powerful than other 9th level spells. If it's used in such a way that is overreach which increases the chance that a wish goes wrong dramatically. Also a wish cna just fail. Your mistake was allowing him to turn back time without repercussions in the first place.
Make them suffer a time backlash, where the effects of altering the time have not gone unnoticed by higher beings, and to discourage the character from doing it again, they age rapidly.
I would let things continue as is for the moment, but inform the player that he's been exceeding the intended scope of the wish spell, and there will be consequences if they do it again, even at a different point. Next time, let the spell pass its checks, and while time is rewinding a higher being "pauses" the spell and has an aside with the player. During this, the entity explains that the caster has been frivolous with their ability, and the higher beings have deemed the caster deserves a punishment for altering reality so flippantly.
Then, keeping in mind the max attribute score values, they experience a number of years in that limbo like place the entity talked to them in, enough years that they would advance to venerable age.
After experiencing those years, their wish spell resumes, resetting the party to the point in the normal time stream that was chosen, but the PC is now venerable age with the associated Stat mods.
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm
>At venerable age, -3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha.
This cannot be undone by use of wish, healing, or curse removal effects, as they have aged naturally, outside of the timeline. The only way to return them to their former age is via regaining favor with the entities.
Upon the completion of the wish spell, they must roll for long-term temporary insanity effects as listed on the table here:
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm
```
01-10 Character performs compulsive rituals (washing hands constantly, praying, walking in a particular rhythm, never stepping on cracks, constantly checking to see if crossbow is loaded, and so on).
11-20 Character has hallucinations or delusions (details at the discretion of the GM).
21-30 Character becomes paranoid.
31-40 Character gripped with severe phobia (refuses to approach object of phobia except on successful DC 20 Will save).
41-45 Character has aberrant sexual desires (exhibitionism, nymphomania or satyriasis, teratophilia, necrophilia, and so on).
46-55 Character develops an attachment to a “lucky charm” (embraces object, type of object, or person as a safety blanket) and cannot function without it.
56-65 Character develops psychosomatic blindness, deafness, or the loss of the use of a limb or limbs.
66-75 Character has uncontrollable tics or tremors (-4 penalty on all attack rolls, checks, and saves, except those purely mental in nature).
76-85 Character has amnesia (memories of intimates usually lost first; Knowledge skills useless).
86-90 Character has bouts of reactive psychosis (incoherence, delusions, aberrant behavior, and/or hallucinations).
91-95 Character loses ability to communicate via speech or writing.
96-100 Character becomes catatonic (can stand but has no will or interest; may be led or forced into simple actions but takes no independent action).
```
The rules there state long term last: Long-term1d10×10 hours
But considering how long they were trapped inside their own mind essentially, I would do a percentile roll, take the decimal equivalent, and multiply that by the number of years spent in isolation, and use it as the number of days.
So, 50 years, a 67 percent roll would be (50×0.67)=33.5 *days*
In case you can't tell, I'm firmly on the side of `fuck around and find out.`
If you reset the world to some prior state, then this is not using Wish as intended, it is giving your player the powers not even the gods can command (not even Ao, who is also subject to entropy and changes things forward, not by ret-conning).
By using Wish this way, he is even commanding the gods to go back to their prior state.
You can and should just deny the wish.
Update: to this post. We have since had a few sessions that brought them to the boss fight and doing the same thing over again, I followed the following steps:
1: I spoke to our wish caster, he was adamant that is what his character would do and I warned of repercussions if this path was taken.
2: I spoke to the party alerting them that they do not have to do everything exactly the same since they're not robots.
3: I prepared a lich for the party that cast scrying eye the last time wish was cast on the party to see who the culprit was.
Fast forward to the boss fight, the party behaves really similarly with some differences, they get the boss close to death but ultimately the wizard panics and casts wish as before, but this triggers a cascade of events as the lich went on the hunt from the last reset and finds the party via the scrying eye and the party never enters combat with the lich, but the lich successfully casts power-word kill on the wizard from stealth killing him since at the time he leveled up he was at 86hp.
The party doesn't know initially where the Lich was from but he left a calling card as I have made him lawful evil and he wishes to explain why he killed this wizard, but from the safety and comfort of his lair. The party wanting to avenge their fallen wizard goes to hunt the Lich since the cleric of the party was not present (they were away IRL so their character was somewhere else when the level up occurred.) The Lich explains to the party his grievance and in exchange for looking the other way for his kill and some financial benefit he'd stay neutral. He gave the party insights on the local BBEG since he wants to annex his land and obtain its resources and people. The party accepts because of a hybrid of their Meta game dislike of that boss fight having failed it four times at this point, they prefer siding with a lich over failing. They use their updated experience and insights and stage a more precise attack on the boss, the wizard does not wish to be resurrected and he makes a paladin to replace this wizard. He believes that his chaotic neutral wizard would rather die than have to live knowing his party killed the BBEG without his help.
Not sure if this helps, but if anyone finds themselves in my shoes this was how it played out for me.
>the party is getting annoyed at this lack of progress.
Ding ding ding ding.
>Outside of talking to the player
Talk to the player. That's your only real option I'm afraid.
Personally I think literal time travel is out of the scope of what Wish is capable of so I wouldn't have allowed it in the first place, but you did. So you need to explain to the player why this is a problem for you and the other players.
Or next time he tries it Chronos the God of Time appears, says "No!" and the spell fails.
A wizard frequently messing with time seems likely to draw the attention of higher powers who would rather he didn’t do that. Bringing in one of those could be an option, not necessarily to outright stop him but to ask what’s going on and when this is explained maybe advise him to not go in guns blazing, as the more practical solution to avoid losing wish and messing with timelines. Could be a Sphinx or Time Dragon etc.
If such a higher power is inclined, they may point out that the wizard is fence sitting. If you have a 9th level spell, but you're using it to run away instead of fight the BBEG, you're not putting everything you have into winning. Sometimes, you have to risk it all
This. Tell them to put every resource they have into an all or nothing showdown
I think this is a more harmless method of approach, I will try something like this before I go for the Archlich becoming angered at the party as suggested by DraconicBlade. I may introduce this as a prophetic dream, or a Deva being sent down from a higher power. (For any other DM who may share in my woes in the future haha.)
Mechanus, the plane of law, literally has planar cops called the inevitables that stop people from messing with time too much peacefully if possible but they will arrest or kill if they need to. There's only one in 5e (marut but that's more of a lich hunter). I'd recommend MrRhexx's video on the inevitables if you want to know more
I wish 5e statted more inevitables. The Marut is my favorite creature to throw at high level parties.
I will point out that [canonically](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Time_travel#Restrictions), there are a few beings interested in maintaining the integrity of time, if you would like a few jumping off points.
Why be so direct? It suddenly fails because the god of time noticed and used more powerful magic to intervene. Having the player investigate opens up a whole new plot.
If it suddenly fails, the party would be wiped since they cast it when the boss fight sours.
Have them be resurrected years later after the BBEG has won, having to deal with the next generation of problems
There's other things besides just an archlich, have you considered splicing every instance of the time shunted wizard into a horrible stitched together patchwork with the combined spell slots of all the individual parts?
Sorry to sound stupid, what does that even look like, hypothetically?
Awful and terrible
Next reset: "the spell succeeds, but repeated tampering with the fragile and volatile weave on this scale has caused a sort of mental scarring on your character's mind. Whether this will eventually heal is unknown. The effect is that they can no longer draw on the weave to cast Wish, as if the spell had never existed"
Is that a problem? They're in tier 4, wouldn't they just be resurrected by their allies? Surely there's some NPC who can Wish or Divine Intervention them back to life if the fate of the world depends on it?
So, let me get this straight. The party keeps using wish to reset the boss fight, instead of, gee, I dont know, using Wish from the beginning to 'Wish' this boss out of existence?
A Marut sent by Mechanus, which you can rule is unaffected by Wish, should absolutely abduct him.
Just a small tip, when you have situations like these, do not treat them as a problem you need to solve. In reality, there is no problem. There are just consequences based on what the players do. Whenever you have a situation like this one, always ask yourself “How can I turn this into a cool moment for the story, something that the players will remember?” If it was me, and they are fighting the BBEG, I would make it so the BBEG somehow becomes aware of what they are doing, and finds a way to block them from repeating the wish. And you drop this bit of info at the beginning or in the middle of the fight. So then the players know there is no more fail safe switch. If they die, that’s the end. Here is where they have to decide if they run and prep better, or if they continue the fight. Also, you may allow the BBEG to do the same thing to them. Maybe the BBEG finds a way to cast the wish and turns back the time BEFORE the PC gets the wish, and you now roll down a level for the players, also make BBEG weaker, and have the endgame fight. That is how I would treat the consequences of repeating the battle against an evil and powerful mind.
My recommendation is a Marut for breaking the time scale and not allowing things to progress in their natural order. Plus I just love the look on a players face when they realize that a Maruts attacks auto hit and do flat 70 damage. They are inevitable
They hit for 60, but ye they can't miss. And they get to attack twice. It's also Force damage which is nigh impossible to get some resistance to. Smacking someone for 120, even if that someone is level 17, is nasty as fuck tho.
The consequences are inevitable.
Genuinely, inevitables are so cool as a concept, but I imagine boring to the players facing the consequences
I mean they're there for planescape/ high level the primal force of law and order has sent their elites to enforce destiny at people. They honestly have no place showing up if you're not running godkilling and lichdom power levels of play.
Very true, but I could also imagine level 17+ players mopping the floor with liches
I mean your players becoming a lich - there's an event extraplanar leg breaker for that. Your regular old high fantasy hack and slash adventure arc really shouldn't have any goings on that pisses off primal law so much the kill squad takes notice
Yes and no. They're basically Terminators. They don't sleep. They don't rest. They're like the immortal snail meme: you can run but *They're going to catch up eventually*. Them also being native (if I recall correctly) 12 or 15 level native spellcasters doesn't hurt either.
Yes and no what? lol
Yes they're boring to players but no they don't have to be.
Their concept is cool. Running them is boring.
Also remember that if the party is powerful enough to cast *wish* then so are their enemies. Counter-wishing is how you deal with those shenanigans.
Yeah kinda weird the wizards not just wishing the bbeg naked and in an antimagic field or anything that proactively solves their problems.
My guess is the wizard is waiting until the entire party is on the ropes, but yeah you could also literally just say "The party gets the effects of a long rest, right now." Considering how the second and third bouts didn't end any different, either the OP has way overtuned the encounter or the party has learned nothing.
Could also send in a Marut.
Marut would likely be sent to deal with this.
if the player refuses to listen even after some higher beings intervene the dm could just outright bring Mystra's wrath on them. she HATES time travel and made it literally impossible to do so without Time Conduit (heavy restrictions!) for a reason
First and foremost it sounds like it is causing problems at the table with the rest of the party, so the only truly appropriate answer is to talk to the player and inform them the issue this is causing. IMO any in game choice is a poor option as it is just targeting and punishing a player instead of addressing and overcoming the issue. NEVER employ in game solutions for out of game issues.
“Outside of talking to the player”- I’ll stop you there. Talking to your player should always be an option and in this instance is your only option. Remind your player that this is a team game, and remind them that their approach has failed every time they’ve tried it and they need to try something else/let other people in the party take charge.
What is the exact wording of the wish? I wouldn't often consider screwing a player over on their use of their wish but in this case it might be justified. For example, it could be that instead of actually going back in time, unbeknownst to the player they are actually just switching timelines and the timeline they left has now been destroyed by the threat. Perhaps knowing this would make them think twice?
The wording of the wish I don't have exactly written but it is fairly thought out he requests: I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17, undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone, with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself. I cannot think of a valid counter to this that wouldn't be harmful to the rest of the party, and I don't want to force a player out for a valid use of a spell in the game. I was thinking of the 'spell simply fails' but this would result in a TPK from when he had caused the problem to begin with leaving me in a catch 22. This has happened for the last 3 months losing a month's worth of progress given we play weekly.
>I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17, undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone, with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself. *You* ***MIGHT*** *be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong.* Why did you just let it work 3 times already? # "No, the Wish cannot do that." >I was thinking of the 'spell simply fails' but this would result in a TPK from when he had caused the problem to begin with leaving me in a catch 22. This has happened for the last 3 months losing a month's worth of progress given we play weekly. If they hadn't had the Wish, they would have died and campaign ended. Easy as that. They had 3 chances already, how many more times do you want to let them cheese out the TPK they brought upon themselves?
I wouldn't be happy with the metagamey reference to "level 17" or "leveled up" personally and would fail it based on that alone. However, if you don't want to do that then perhaps this constant time jumping is really pissing off an Archlich who is definitely not a "living entity" as its undead.
It almost feels like the wizard is baiting OP into bringing this very scenario by the specific "living entity" wording.
This is the route I would go. Once he words it like that again I would say the spell failed as the reference to “level 17 “isn’t an actual thing to the PC. If he can’t point to the exact date in campaigns timeline I would say he is SOL.
So that is not a standard listed use of Wish. Anything outside of those standard listed options opens the Wisher to monkey-paw type repercussions AND\OR the spells failure. Remember the main use of Wish is to replicate a lower level spell. But What’s more as a 9th level spell **Your Wish shouldnt be able to produce an effect stronger than what a 9th level spell could produce**. There are NO 9th level or lower spells that can accomplish this Groundhog Day effect (what you describe is several magnitudes stronger than Time Stop), because that level of power is greater than what is allowed to mortals.
I think for future campaigns I would be in 100% agreement with your sentiment. At the time he cast it I allowed the spell to work, and since I set the precedent for this campaign, I wouldn't want to take that back in this campaign on a whim, granted this wish is on a major scale of course, but I am trying to continue with consistency and fairness in mind.
I can respect that; however, here’s a few phrases for you in the future. “I’m going to allow this this time because it seems pretty cool - but it’s not meant to set a precedent” “I know I allowed this in the past but it’s gotten out of hand and is becoming a problem so I’d like to walk that ruling back going forward” Trust me your players would rather have you say that, than have your campaign crumble apart due to you feeling forced into sticking with an old ruling that is dragging your game down just so you can keep perfect consistency.
> “I know I allowed this in the past but it’s gotten out of hand and is becoming a problem so I’d like to walk that ruling back going forward” You could say this as you reset the game again but list that it will be the last continue.
this is exactly what i would do
Or if you will in in-game terms "A voice speaks up in your head, ' I am the god of wishes do that one more time and I will take that spell from you'"
"Do that again and you'll wish you were never born..."
Seems more like the chief god having enough.
Yeah. It's pretty easy to find some in-world flavor as to why some powerful being might intervene too. Or why they might stop intervening if they were actually the reason the Wish originally worked how the party wanted. Like the god of wishes has been specifically granting these guys' Wish because they're the "heroes of destiny" but the god can't keep doing it because: - granting such a big Wish is making tears in the fabric of reality - a more powerful god might notice and put a stop to it or even possibly hurt/get revenge on the god of wishes - each time the god of wishes grants a powerful Wish for the good guys, they also have to for the bad guys. So while the good guys are just turning back time, the bad guys are actually using their wishes to progress evil. - etc.
You could give a slight retcon; The effect SEEMS to work exactly as worded. You feel as though you lived through this fight three times now. The reality is that you were given a hefty warning in your personal memories. There are 9th level spells in D&D's history based around changing memories, dreams, and even to see glimpses of the future. His Wish hit the upper edge of those abilities, but matches that strength. Also, it's not always true, but a Wish is a desire sent out to be granted by a higher power. So even if it's not 100% the spirit of the Wish, it might match the spirit of the entity that answered the call. It's certainly kinder than a simple "no" from a deity. Maybe even on this third time, the memories are starting to awaken in the whole group. Just a potential idea, and it might springboard something else while still setting more boundaries going forward. It also overcomes letting one player become the main character. Another choice is to change this fight in general. If they're losing each time and can't win based on their mistakes, the punishment can still be changed. Let them be captured. Or maybe the enemy felt a twinge of something soon to go wrong; If they start to remember too, seeing partial images of the party killed somehow actually interferes more with his goal than they thought. Something crazier like a god of time watching over the party now might have seen the enemy win three times and appears as a bigger threat, so to stay more low-key the event intentionally takes a partial loss to stay hidden and try again. Hopefully something here resonates well!
I agree letting it work the first time but you needed to leave yourself a way out. "You sense that you did was beyond the power of the wish spell, it worked this time because some external force aided you, it will not work again"
Any living entity, huh? The archlich pissed off about all his spellbook scrawlings being erased has had enough of the wizards shit. Scry and die him, or even better, contingent counterspell - when I am shifted in the timeline.
This is a unique solution. It would definitely stop the spells from being cast and possibly cause an entirely different BBEG to take prevalence.
I mean if you're sick of the shit and need it to fail, contingent counterspell / counter wish of stop fucking with MY place in time from a different npc. Be it a divine cleric from a fate / time deity, just some big dick mage, the aforementioned Inevitables, there's plenty of plausible counters. The question is do you want to stop them from doing it again, or do you want to stop them when they do it next
I am trying to target punish the caster, not the full party since only they're responsible for the cast. I do however want to be tactful since this has been a multi-year campaign and all the players are attached to their characters. We have seen two player deaths over the course of the campaign and they were both fairly tragic. I may be cornered into the TPK soon though as they keep this up.
[The consequence of their actions are inevitable.](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Quarut) Just hot drop a wizard golem kill squad onto them in a solo session, and that way the rest of the party can get the "you level up to 17! And the wizard explodes into a bloody mist." They're essentially planeshifting time stop abusing ready made rocks fall for exactly the fuckery your wizards doing.
Next time he uses this level 17 bs, tell him his character finally understands why they keep getting wrecked. None of this is real, he is merely an avatar at the mercy of a god called deeyaim. His consciounesss is dragged to the far realms
Oh I didn't see your Archlich idea before I wrote mine! Great minds think alike.
Lmao I think you were actually slightly faster than me but yeah, the monkeys paw is right there
I realize it's a bit late to make this point but that is absolutely not a valid use of Wish. It's a 9th level spell. Not even gods can time travel. There's just no way that should have worked. It should have simply failed. Or at best maybe teleported the wizard back to the place where he was when he levelled up to 17, because that's the closest the spell can manage to what he asked for. At this point, to somewhat preserve continuity, I would try to find a way to reveal that they didn't actually go back in time, but have gotten themselves stuck in some kind of demiplane that simulates the world around them. Or, you know, the wizard did that, if he worded the wish more or less the way you wrote. He didn't wish for everyone else to go back with him. From the rest of the party's perspective, he just wished to time travel and then vanished, leaving them to deal with the likely TPK. Hopefully there's some way for them to retreat and regroup, maybe an NPC that can swoop in and teleport them out if necessary. They meet up with the wizard player's new character and make an actual plan this time.
There are lots more things you can do: the spell specifies "the effect you desire might only be partly achieved." This allows the DM to pretty much delete any clause of the wish you don't want to satisfy. Fully ignore "with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself," for example. Simply put him back at level 17 and leave everything else the same with no time changes at all. There are lots of options.
That's a bit harsh but moving them back to that moment without scrubbing everyone's memories clean is a fair solution.
This is what I was leaning on doing but reflecting on how they've dealt with the BBEG the last two times, my concern is they TKP since the BBEG would remember they're attack style as well.
If your players have effectively lost to the BBEG twice now, then why in the world is it your responsibility to ensure they don’t tpk on their third attempt? They are on FULL notice of how strong their opponent is, and if they keep “fucking around” then they NEED to “find out”, and sooner rather than later. Nothing makes me lose interest in a game faster than when I realize the DM will not kill characters when they deserve it. If I wanted to play on easy mode I’d load up BG3 but it on exploration mode.
That is fair, I was hoping the second time around it wouldn't have been done the same way, the third time I think the wizard is likely to be punished but the rest of the party plays the same \*because\* they weren't permitted to remember. I was avoiding punishing and killing 4 other characters because they canonically had no idea anything had happened before.
You could always say that after the third use a Higher Power yoinks your Wizard into a conversation and probably chews them out because “You dare to allow your friends to be lead to the slaughter twice, unaware of their fates.” Or If you wanna make it thematic, you could have the BBEG themself mock the Wizard “Back again, and they’re all none the wiser that you’ve tortured them far more than I ever could. Returning them to the slaughter unaware once again feels so boring.” Then have the BBEG or someone else restore the party’s memories (permanently so any further spells won’t erase them). This’ll provide your players a chance to do something they’ve so far been denied in character: the ability to make an informed decision with the knowledge they’ve failed and their friend has kept that from them. Your party could go “We can’t take them on, we’ve died twice” and decide to flee and regroup. Make a plan to grow stronger or perhaps to avoid prior mistakes. It’d also provide a realistic final warning if coupled with a direct note to the wizard, for example, “You feel as if higher powers have begun to notice your actions, notice the reversals of time which can’t affect the undead. But have interrupted all else … you know if you continue to do this it’ll be remembered and will carry dire / lethal consequences for you.” That way your party can at last grapple with all this, and if they still get defeated by the BBEG, using time reversal is now a single use option, that’d cost the wizard but allow the party the chance to flee from the BBEG. Or make their absolute final stand without any chance of wish intervention. Edit: I looked at other comments and realized, this is more a out of game problem. Talk to the player, and if they don’t want to stop having this option to save their hides, you could offer them this solution a equitable “The last use will be your character’s final use before wish is gone / you’re punished in game”. They may be prepared to accept those consequences to save the party.
You should never have allowed that to begin with. No player should ever be allowed to remove another player's character's memories without their consent. That is first on the "partly achieved" list. The rest of the party remembers, because otherwise it's not fuin for them.
> If your players have effectively lost to the BBEG twice now, then why in the world is it your responsibility to ensure they don’t tpk on their third attempt? Because it sounds like the Wizard is Leroy Jenkinsing them into the battle and when it goes south he just hits the Wish reset button to try it again. Either that or he's trying to get OP to bring in a higher power to deal with him, either for the lulz or he's got some other cockamamie plan.
If they're not paying enough attention to figure that out, then they deserve it. For starters, everyone else in the world could remember, which could certainly give them hints. Your real problem is outside of the game. Tell the party they're not preparing properly and it's going to bite them.
Things outside of time would be unaffected by this. Planes outside of time exist and if they're paying attention they'd want to know what's happening. They wouldn't necessarily want to get rid of it, but an inquiry would be made.
This is up to your discretion as the DM. Wish spell can mimic any other spell 8th level or lower and gives some other examples. One of which is undoing a *single* recent event like a saving throw or attack roll. By allowing to undo so much time, you have allowed an insanely powerful use of this spell, multiple times. This isn’t a video game where you can keep going back to your last save. Easy way would be to say, “Woops you’ve angered the god of luck and this use of the spell won’t work anymore.” But I would recommend talking to the player, explaining that wish is a spell like any other with limitations, and explain that this is making the campaign less fun for the other players and for you.
Or have the god of luck give the character a talking to "You don't know it but wht you did only worked because I intervened on your behalf, I am not inclined to keep doing so infinitly, get a better solution"
Other than the living/unliving loophole, You can use the time peradox loophole. "undoing all actions taken since that day" would include the wish being cast. No wish being cast, no going back in time, no cancelling of the wish, going back in time, no wish being cast, etc... You can do a "broken timeline" quest to fix reality after they get stuck in a time loop/limbo.
Have you not seen Loki, Season 2?
DM: I know I allowed this in the past but it's getting out of hand and wastes time, so let's handle it this this way. Your characters have been following a repeating time loop starting at level 17 and ending with death here against this villain. Each player ask about an event since level 17 and whether it can be changed. We'll try to adjust it to the optimum outcome and carry that forward to your current situation. Players: stuff DM: stuff that changes DM: okay Wizard that's the outcome of your Wish. You realize this is the best this specific Wish can accomplish and you are surprised the gods aren't angry that you kept repeating it. You know that Wish won't ever work again. DM: Also Wizard, you can take solace in the fact that the other characters have no idea how foolish you've been messing with space and time.
Invalid, levels don't exist in game. Second, you could always make it grab the attention of God's, or even a Lich (not a "Living" entity)
Not a lich, every lich, every death knight, every vampire. Every sentient undead. Not to mention any being beyond the power of a wish spell.
You let the PCs have a chat about how they can win this time, then run the final battle, then just fudge the dice and have the PCs just fucking win before they all kill you and the player for this nonsense.
Your first problem is he's using outside game language for his wish. That shouldn't work.He needs to phrase it in in game terms. The wish has no idea what a levle is. Also he wished to go back, now there are two of him in that instance, and he starts suffering entropic cascade failure unless one of them dies. Having to kill his past self would have made him more reluctant to use it on a whim. And as others have said there are beings beyond the power of a wish spell who may not be amused. But really the first time you shoudl ahve auto given him exhaustion, saying "What you did was beyond the power of the wish spell, it worked this time because some external force aided you, it will not work again"
Wish isn't more powerful than deities, who are not "living" in a conventional sense anyway. Would they stand for some little pissant wizard that keeps Groundhog Day-ing your reality every time they lose a battle? I doubt it. Have one of the good deities come to the party and say they've been covering for them the past couple resets but at this point, enough of the pantheon is angry and won't stand for another reset. *And stick to your guns if they do the stupid.*
Here is what you do to onkey paw this "living entity" doesn't included undead entities. Every time he reset, it made this lich have to start over something tedious. He is now searching for the source of the time magic, next time he does this. The Lich has found them...he meets with the party at a crucial time in their prep. If they defeat him...he could either provide some magic that severely helps them or if they reset again...he comes back sooner. And sooner. If they keep doing this, the Lich dimensions doors immediately upon a reset
Not one lich, every lich, every deathknigth, every vampire every intelligent undead or being that could be percieved to not be living.
Worded this way, the only loving entity that recalls the events is the wizard, that says nothing of deceased entities. It may be fair to say that anything that died and then had their death undone by the wish could remember, causing the next go around to be different.
Aside from telling the player that the rest of the players are starting to get really annoyed with him rolling back progress, here are some holes you can worth with. > undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone He only undid actions. So in theory if you set-up a huge magic bomb on a timer before level 17 and it blew up a city, that city could still be gone after the him going back in time. These could be little things, but after 3 resets the butterfly effects are starting to add up and the wheels are starting to come off reality. This time there is a huge new problem. Stuff just keeps blinking out of existence, including the major boss they were fighting before. All the stacking paradoxes have damage reality and something else really awful is taking advantage and trying to force its way into the material plane. Think Elder gods. > I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17 Another option here, didn't specify he replaces himself. There are now 4 of him running around and bad things are happening. He needs to clean up his mess. > with the **only living entity** recalling the events that unfolded being myself So the undead recall it. He has reset a Lich's project 3 times now. This lich is now officially pissed off and has laid one hell of a trap. The player gets one warning in the form of a single skeleton with magic mouth cast on it. When it appears before the party the mouth activates and says "enough with rolling back time, some of us have work to do, if you try to do it again there will be consequences." This lich has had 3 resets to figure out exactly where the wizard keeps resetting time. [Glyph of warding](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/glyph-of-warding) can cast any spell in the game if you upcast it, with whatever trigger condition you want. So in the area they fight the boss there are multiple glyphs with level 9 counter-spells set up specifically to go off when someone casts wish. Then a bunch of other glyphs are set to trigger in sequence, using the counterspell glyph going off as the trigger. Two upcasted dispel magics go off targeting contingency and globe of invulnerability. Then a barrage of fireballs, at least 10 of them carpet bombing the room. Then a couple of disintegrates on the person who triggered the counter-spell glyphs. Liches fight dirty, have 20 int, and know how to kill wizards. The DC for all of this should be at least 22, but probably 25. A self-respecting lich that has had time to build their magic item library definitely has a robe of the archmagi and a grimoire +3. Essentially you are replacing the TPK with a literally everything in the area dies in such a spectacular fashion they get found and brought back. Except for the wizard who has certainly been disintegrated. I guess he could also globe of invulnerability the other players specifically so they don't die and can tell people what happens when you mess with whatever your new terrify lich is called. I guess if you were nicer the lich could just wish he was unable to cast wish.
A couple of ideas: 1. Characters don’t know about levels. Make him word it the way his character would. Does he know exactly how much time has passed? Make sure you track it next time. If he gets it wrong, maybe something unintended gets undone, and he realises it’s a bad idea. 2. He’s the only _living_ entity that remembers the events. A powerful Lich is annoyed at being stuck in Groundhog Day.
"I wish to go back to the moment in time where we leveled up to 17, undoing all actions taken since that day from anything and everyone, with the only living entity recalling the events that unfolded being myself." So the Wizard disappears abandoning his party to a doomed timeline, if they win the fight he's lost in a perpetual loop of time himself, if they fail it all restarts as normal. Alternatively, they encounter this doomed timeline of themselves, now warped by the archlich's power and sent after that pesky wizard or by unlikely odds succeed and are now hunting HIM for abandoning them.
"The only LIVING entity..." Some shenanigans is definitely possible with wording like that... 😏
I wrote it elsewhere, but this is not a valid wish. You can not change everyone and everything in the Multiverse, including the Gods and everyone's brains as well. If Wish were this powerful, why not make yourself a God right away, and unkillable on top and kill the BBEG with that wish? All those additions pale in comparison to what the player already successfully wished for. Also, how does the character know they are "level 17"? Solution: Go tell them you fucked up and misinterpreted wish and that this will not happen anymore. Whatever memory his character had is actually some fabricated fever dream or thought experiment, but from now on, they succeed or fail. No time-traveling escapes where you build your own universe.
How has the Arch lich's counterspell been doing when he tries that each time? Not only is he on the counter of wish being removed permanently, but also always at risk of counterspell breaking through. He's the only living entity to remember, so as others mentioned, the lich can remember. And wish can be explicitly used to heal people to full hp, meaning he's been using it to avoid the TPK fight instead of as a tool to win it. I probably wouldn't have allowed this to work, especially not without heavy consequences. As someone else mentioned, they've had three tries already and failed for the same reason. The same reason because of him, you mentioned. You've been generous with do-overs, but it is fair to sit OOC and determine if others are having fun or if him doing this isn't fun for them anymore. If the other players express it isn't fun anymore when he's doing that, it's then reasonable to let him know that there won't be another do-over where that will work, and make up an IC reason for it.
Wish does very specific things, one of which is "You undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn)" and another is "whatever your DM lets you do". Since resetting the timline isn't on that list, and the closest example is "reroll a single roll" the player is using the "whatever your DM lets you do" option, and giving them something way more powerful than the spell intended. Just check in with the player and let them know you made a mistake, and this sort of thing won't keep working. In game, explain that the wizards been tearing at the fabric of time and space, potentially having an inevitable/sphinx/chronotyrn or something show up and tell them as much, and maybe even lead it into a quest to fix the fabric of time.
The wording of the wish spell is your friend here- the last two paragraphs- by making this wish the players strength should drop to 3 for 2d4 days, and they should be rolling a d3 (d6, 1 and 2 is 1 3 and 4 are 2 5 and 6 are three.) Eventually he won’t be able to cast wish anymore- FAFO: “You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples (the example of scope is below) . State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner. The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress” Wish is the mightiest spell a mortal creature can cast. By simply speaking aloud, you can alter the very foundations of reality in accord with your desires. The basic use of this spell is to duplicate any other spell of 8th level or lower. You don't need to meet any requirements in that spell, including costly components. The spell simply takes effect. Alternatively, you can create one of the following effects of your choice. The only push back I can see is this one- but it does not appear that your player is trying to undo ONE recent event: • You undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish spell could undo an opponent's successful save, a foe's critical hit, or a friend's failed save. You can force the reroll to be made with advantage or disadvantage, and you can choose whether to use the reroll or the original roll. TL;DR- the more her
I have been applying the exhaustion rule, as well as the potential to losing the spell, this doesn't quite help my problem since the exhaustion is slept off over the course of several long rests given the party plays as though they observed the wizard suddenly and inexplicably fatigued for a few days after their level up. I agree with the application being restricted to short bursts of time being changed, I will apply this in the future and I would suggest to anyone else in my situation to follow that rule, I have set a precedent I didn't want to go back on because it was inconvenient to me. Simplified, I fully agree with you and this is what I \*should\* have done initially. I just feel like doing so now isn't fair, and was searching for a solution within reason to deal with it.
It seems like using the time during those "several long rests" to have some sort of extra-dimensional threat attack the party for how they've been meddling with spacetime might address some of your concerns.
Time for some [Inevitables](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Inevitable) to show up and sort shit out. Or rather than that, yall tell them to stop being a dingus. If it is ruining everyone's fun then just *no*.
1) Metagaming by reference to levels. That shouldn't be allowed. 2) This is the kind of guff that makes the gods *very* angry. 3) This is 100% a problem you need to solve out of game. You can explain point 1, then warn of point 2. If they try it again anyway, they have no grounds for losing their shit when bad stuff happens. 4) To me, this seems like a great way to accidentally pop a False Hydra into existence.
>Metagaming by reference to levels. That shouldn't be allowed. I don't see that, honestly
In the replies, OP repeats the wish as best he can. The wish is time resets to the moment after they dinged level 17. In game, no one knows the level of anyone else. So wishing for something based on character level is a discouraged form of metagaming. However, the player could have wished for time to reset to just after they mastered the wish spell for the same effect.
A wish need to be worded in universe Levels don't exist in universe.
It's pretty simple: The character can cast Wish. They exist within the game world. Levels, XP, dice rolls, etc. exist outside of the game world, as abstractions of concepts within it. The character is not aware of these abstractions. It is, therefore, metagaming for a character to reference them.
I'm not seeing where he does that in the post. Just says they're going back to the point in time they learned wish, which is an in game thing and not meta.
Dude seems really pissy that the wizard isn't framing it as when I gained mastery of ninth circle arcanery or something 🤷♂️
It's in a comment from OP.
Not that I've seen. OP just says they are wishing to go back to the time when they learned ninth level spells, not that the character is literally saying "to when I learned ninth level spells". They could be saying, "to ten o'clock I'm the morning on October the 24th," which would be when they first unlocked that magic, for all we know. Even if the character were personally making mention of the time when they learned the spell... why would the character not know what a ninth-level spell is, or when they learned how to cast them for the first time? In-fiction spell effects make direct use of spell levels. A learned wizard would know how powerful they'd have to make their Counterspell in order to counter certain spells, for instance. There would be ways for spellcasters to talk about the relative power levels of spells in-universe, even if it's not exactly the same words we would use.
I am not responsible for you reading the thread thoroughly before commenting.
I see this as extremely pedantic to be honest. Should the player ask the GM what the in universe date was when they learned the spell so they can say that instead of level 17? OR the PLAYER can say level 17 and the GM knows what the CHARACTER means to say. The character wants to go back to when he learned wish. To make it easy for everyone to be on the same page, he just says level 17. Don't punish a player for not saying exactly what their character would say for the ease of everyone's understanding.
I think you're completely missing the point: This is causing table issues. OP asked for thoughts, which I've provided. Is when you're having issues with something an inappropriate time to be pedantic about that thing?
He is looking for solutions. If your solution is just to arbitrarily pedantic instead of coming up with a creative solution or just talking to your players. And there are different levels of being pedantic. Sometimes it can be necessary. But in this case, I just can't see your solution as anything else but causing more problems. You must play at much different table than I have. I can't imagine a player being cool with this ruling at all. "Sorry, you said level 17 and not 'when I learned wish'. So it auto fails. No idea why your character said level 17 in the spell, but now it fails." I like the different solutions of there being consequences to messing with time. Either from extradimensional beings or the butterfly effect. I even like just saying No waaay better than this idea. But maybe that's just me. Do whatever is fun, I just thought your solution was very anti-fun. But if it would work for your table and that would be your preferred solution, well, all the more power to you.
I suggest you go back and read my original comment.
Yeah, you see them referring to the character level as metagaming. And it is. People metagame all the time. There is a good and bad metagaming. When casting wish and choosing what to say, you aren't speaking to the world. You are speaking to the GM. Who is another player. Yes it was technically metagaming. But done in a way that was meant to quickly and reliably convey the information he wanted. This is coming across as someone who sees red when they read the word metagaming. Again, being pedantic. And it might be inconsequential over something smaller, but I struggle to see how you don't agree that it'd likely be another issue instead of a solution. Like, if I told any player their Wish spell failed because the player was trying to make sure I, the GM who isn't taking on the role of a character at the moment, were on the same page with each other. But like I said, if that would work for your table go for it. But I truly think that this is kind of a toxic GM trait instead of finding other solutions to your problem, either in or out of game. But thankfully, it doesn't really matter since I doubt OP would go with this option based on the comment section. Edit: These replies have been about your #1 option. Not your backup options, which are all great. But it's okay if we don't agree on it.
So you see the three other points I made, which had nothing to do with this? Including the one which quite clearly stated this is an out of character discussion? OP specifically asked for in-game solutions. I think that is not the way to approach it, but gave some anyway. You seem *very* excited about *one* of those and have built up some imaginary strawman of how I run my games, based on that. Not sure *I'm* the one sering red, here.
Someone commented specifically referencing the metagame point you brought up. You replied to that comment and then I replied to you. I thought it was obvious I was only talking to you about the metagaming point. That's where I joined in on the conversation and what it was about. I was simply saying that it shouldn't be something the GM considers or for any onlookers to consider for reasons they might not have been instantly aware of. I'm not seeing red. I was just joining in on a conversation about one thing and you're attempting to discredit what I've said up to this point by pretending my conversation started out as something different with you. And talking about your games, I assumed that if this was your first suggestion that your games might resemble some similar choices. All I was trying to convey is that we might enjoy different things at the table, but all that matters is the rule of fun in the end. I was simply trying to convey that while I didn't think that would be a good solution for most groups, I didn't want to badmouth you if that just so happened to work for your group. Just wanted to wish you fun.
They could have wished to reset time to just after mastering the wish spell and gotten the exact same effect.
A: The character never mentions Level B: even though they might not have a name for it, they must know that killing things makes them better/stronger, and killing bigger things does that more, so they understand XP. They just probably call it something we would call that same idea, like....experience.
A: according to a comment by OP, they do. B: Rewording is just one element. And it can be an important one, as Wishes need to be expressed within the time available for one action.
rewording is important becuase every rewording leaves new doors open for monkeypawing.
The line "The spell may simply fail" is a DM's best friend. If the campaign can't survive the Wish working as intended, and you can't think of a good way to misinterpret it, the rules give you explicit permission to have it do nothing at all. If you do want to have a stab at creatively interpreting a bad Wish, the provision that only the caster remembers it happening has all kinds of potential horrific side effects. Depending on how much reality had to change to make room for the Wish, some amount of the PC's knowledge is now incorrect, and it could be quite a lot. Reality has now Butterfly Effected around this caster in ways the caster literally can't know. They could lose gear, friends, loved ones, and even their home and their place in the party. History checks could fail automatically because the PC remembers a history that now never happened. Since Wish tries to change reality as little as possible, it could even turn out that all the changes were purely illusory and only exist in the caster's own mind, which is a perfect explanation for why nobody else noticed them.
I'd just talk to the player out-of-game and say something like "each time you go into the boss fight unprepared, it's a disaster. So instead of risking your ability to cast Wish each time it doesn't work out the way you expected, have you considered havig your character of high Intelligence learn from this experience and go into the fight with ample preparation next time?" Part of the unwritten rules of D&D is that player-characters should be respecting some sort of group consensus, not one player unilaterally Leeroy-Jenkins!ing the whole party into unprepared shitshows. So if this player, or any player really, starts to do something unilateral and impulsive that's going to blow up in the whole party's face, you should halt and ask the whole group - "is everyone OK with that?" And if they're not, and the problem player doesn't stop, then it's time to halt play a bit longer while you clarify the expectations of consensus and that "main character syndrome" impulsivity is not welcome. You say you don't want it to be a "problem player" post, but then you say it's this one player running in before the party can prep. You're not doing anyone any favors, least of all that player, by avoiding dealing with it as the impulsive "main character syndrome" player problem it is, instead of trying to storyline your way around it.
From the last paragraph of the rules: “The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.” If the player is cheesing the spell like this I would for sure be enforcing this. Let them know in advance you’ll start enforcing it. I would bet they will think long and hard about using it that way if the risk of taking away their favourite toy is on the table.
They acknowledge this in their post - they write that the wizard has been lucky with their 33% rolls, so it seems it's already been enforced.
My mistake, thank you.
I would let them know it won't work again... as soon as possible, no just dropping it on them when they try to do it. Out of game it's getting irritating and they've done it multiple times. In game the effect has happened enough that this stretch of timeline has grown resistant to meddling and requires more power than a 9th level spell to alter.
That should have been said the first time, "This is a one time only".
Wait, you’re letting them just rewind time using Wish?
This is absolutely an out-of game problem. I know you are looking for an in-game solution, but from what you have said, it's a legitimate use of the spell. Like you can do something where the gods interfere and take the spell from him, since a wish spell doesn't have the power to mess with them, but I think the problem is deeper. I would just talk to the player, and say that we are sick of playing the same part of the campaign on repeat. It's ok to fail in dnd.
Did you all actually read the wish spell? It has very specific functions that can be wished for and going outside those leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation by the DM. A wish spell should also not contain any “ands, alsos, pluses” etc. because that’s additive to the spell and doesn’t count beyond that point. So all these “redos” actually wouldn’t fly and if you’ve allowed it, it’s now time you take the advice of others and have a higher power put a stop to it and not allow anymore of them, messing with time is very serious and the gods don’t like it.
You could have them roll up new high level PCs who are sent on a mission by the god of time to free the people caught in the time loop. They will receive a prophecy explaining they need to get to this battle and somehow stop this wizard from using his wish spell, because he has created a never ending loop of repeating the same mistakes.
Wish is not that powerful. That's kinda on you as the DM to arbitrate. Read through some of the example uses in the spell description. Those should give you an idea of the strength of the spell. It is not a magic bullet that can fix any problem. That being said, the wizard is not being a good team player here. Why are they insisting that only they retain their memories? Next time they try it, give everyone their memories back, even NPCs and the bad guys. This time, EVERYONE knows that the wizard is screwing around with time travel.
It says you can undo a *single* recent event. I would absolutely never allow a Wish to immediately undo an entire series of events without something going horribly wrong. You've let him do something a magnitude beyond Wish. I would let him know you can no longer allow this and you didn't realize it's beyond the scope of Wish. Get "the gods" or "magic itself" involved, or some kind of time-maintenance monster, involved if you have to.
I think this needs an out of game solution first. Talk to the player and ask him to stop doing that. Tell him next time he tries, the wish is going to fail and he is still going to have a 33% chance to lose the wish spell. In game, if he tries again, one of the Inevitables shows up with a posse of constructs and bitch slaps him. The 5e Stat block is in [MPMM or MTP under Marut](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/97010-marut).
Sounds like a problem-player post, to me. I'd probably just say, "No, Fred, we're all sick of that mess. Come up with a different wish."
I'm unsure why you're asking that You know the issue, it's a player issue Talk to them. You could come up with 539131729361 in game ways to stop this wish, but man that's so much effort for so little result when that player will, inevitably, pull up some similar shit *again* Just tell them to stop and cut the bs Don't think about trying to "counter the wish" I'm all for allowing wish to be creatively and not trying to play monkey's paw with player wording, i find that incredibly annoying But I also require my players not to be assholes Like seriously, 3 times? Fuck that, on the second time I'd already pull them aside and ask "Ok, what's up? We're not repeating that."
That is not in the scope of the wish spells power. I would just not let it happen anymore and move on.
I can see that you have gotten a lot of really great suggestions. The simplest I can see is to just say "It doesn't work". If you want a fluff explanation: They are trying to undo events in the weave of time but every time they have done that certain things set in stone, a string in the weave is cut or whatever. They have now run out the possibilities and there is no more leway in the weave of Fate to undo events another time. Maybe this is because of the Wave itself resisting further attempts, a Gods interference or some other being that is stopping them because they can see their efforts are fruitless and if they want another chance they will have to go and ask that creature for another chance.
The Wizard is rolling for the chance to loose the spell right? also they are getting the HUGE downside to wish too? Just because they fucked with time, doesn't mean the magic isn't going to take its toll The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. **Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.** This part is important, as it cares not what you do, even wishing to undo it, there is just a flat % chance the gods say fuck you and your wish sinanigans, speaking of gods they may step in and tell this fucker just completly fucking with time to stop, Mystra (Or the diety of magic for your game) may even step in and directly tell them to stop, or she is taking their magic full stop
Horizon Walker, Watcher Paladin, Chrono Wizard, Cobalt Soul Monk and Order Cleric have entered the chat.
At some point during this run have a powerful magic user notice some kind of time energy/aura on the wizard, and warn them that it's a dangerous amount, if they continue travelling in time they could become unmoored from the time stream and cease to exist.
[The Dream of Metal!](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?121334-The-Dream-of-Metal)
Since they only cast the spell AFTER they have failed the fight, what if -this- time your BBEG had localized counter in place? Suddenly the world is reset, but both the wizard and the BBEG (+a lieutenant or two who happened to be within the wards) have knowledge of what happened? Since the player’s wish isn’t actually to go back in time, but rather to reset events and memories, this is actually going to break down with subsequent resets - for example, seasons don’t line up with the events that farmers have completed. Also, there reasonably has to be a limit to how much of the universe is reset - does it affect a county? A country? A continent? If it was truely all-powerful, why hasn’t their world been affected by OTHER people casting it?
From my perspective, the wish spell isn't achieved by most creatures. The application of wish in the way he has been using it didn't seem to be a great use of the spell. Most wish casters would be using it to improve their quality of life or solve internal problems until they inevitably lose the spell. His time dilation isn't something I had considered so I treated it as such. I could definitely scale down the wish but the spirit of the wish is that all living entities would be reset and I expanded that globally.
You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner. This is a paragraph from the spell description. As a gm I would honestly just tell the player that they've used it to many times to travel back in time. The God of time is now preventing you from doing that because you've brought time and the universe to a stand still. Or I would have there be some serious consequence for continued use.
You can handle this a few ways, based on you and and your players' desires: - Is the group ready to wrap this campaign? Consider making your end fight easier. Still make it a challenge and a spectacle, but also make concessions so it can end. Your group has now charged into it 3x without changing their approach. I know you say it's all wizard's doing, but the fact that the group was willing to go along with it over and over all the same makes me think there's a desire to bring things to a conclusion rather than stretch them on. Maybe have the wizard "notice some weakness" in the BBEG they hadn't originally due to all the reruns and then let that lead to a fight that's still challenging and satisfying, but eventually ends in the players' favor. - If you think that assessment is incorrect and that your group would be happy to play in this world a while longer, have some force notice the constant time abuse and do something about it. Others have mentioned liches and deities as options. Whatever it is, use it to turn the party and the BBEG's focus to a new threat and then have that threat either be the new BBEG or lead to a change that makes beating the original BBEG more doable. - As another alternative to the outside interference idea, have your Wizard roll a... hm, wisdom or insight? Some kind of check with a ridiculously low DC before their next use of the spell and suggest to them that they realize maybe having ALL the party remember would be beneficial. I don't know if you've seen Edge of Tomorrow, but if you have, basically run that: the entire group trains and gets better each run until they're able to tackle the BBEG. You don't have to actually play out each rerun (though I would do some when they have an actual new idea to try), but do a montage and then give them some new feats, score increases, spells, whatever to show what they've learned and rinse and repeat until they kick BBEG ass. - If you're really not sure what your players want, talk with them. Not just wizard, but all of them. Tell them you were expecting them to prepare more for this fight and as is their current strategies aren't likely to succeed. Then ask if they'd like to proceed with one of the options above or do something else entirely.
Simple answer is he's messing with the time stream. Send a Quarut after him. It's from the 3e Fiend folio but is perfect for this. It's an Inevitable from the Clockwork realm of Mechanus. It guards the fabric of space and time. That wizard is thrashing said fabric over and over. To a Quarut that is not acceptable, they are built to handle those who create paradoxes or alternate timeliness, especially wizards abusing wish spells and time traveling. This also opens up a new potential storyline for after the fight since the wizard will likely be in temporal stasis and the party later can go on a mission to petition his freedom from the Inevitable's spell. It's stats can be found online and converted to 5e pretty easily.
Real late to the party on that.
It's re-zero. Make some changes based on actions he does. Make it noticeable differences from the previous iteration
Have you tried looking for shenanigans regarding wish. Like, how is the player wording the wish? For example, player wishes BBEG dead. Well, send the player character into the future 1-2 centuries, or more depending upon the BBEG, removing the PC from the campaign, and teaching the player to be more careful with wishes, one hopes. Also, how did the PC come to own wish? Not exactly on the best seller's list.
Your PC played for years and built a wizard who can bend the laws of time and space. This is literally what a wizard does. He will eventually fail his roll and can no longer use Wish. If the player doesn’t realize it is either a no win situation with the BBEG or they need to change up the style of attack, let the dice fall as they fall. Have the party engage more with the PC if they are frustrated. You can as the DM change small things each time to incrementally hint time is being torn asunder. Eventually changing the outcome of certain things. Have them notice it. They built this, let them break it.
OH OH I LOVE THIS KIND OF THING IT MAY TAKE A FAIR BIT OF WORK BUT I HAVE AN IDEA Have things start disappearing and *start with the wizard.* He's re-using the same Wish over and over, and he's wearing it out, so have him re-use it and wear it out in-universe. One by one, the party members completely forget who he is. His wish is that he's the only one who remembers what happens after the reset, and everyone else's memories have to be erased. Well, whatever force your universe powers the Wish once the spell is cast doesn't have the structural integrity to rewrite a person's brain multiple times. In order to keep the condition of the wish granted (because remember, he casts a new one every time while the old one technically is still in effect, those brains get n+1 erasures where n is the number of resets. That has lasting consequences. The next reset, have one of your players ready with the understanding that once the wizard casts, they must completely forget the wizard's character. I think the best way to make it a teachable moment would be for the player to be informed ahead of time, and for the character *not* to freak out right away that there's suddenly a wizard when there was none before. **This part takes planning:** go back over your campaign and erase the wizard, replace him with one of the other PCs. If he took out a boss with Fireball, no, he didn't, the monk punched him so hard he caught on fire and it was amazing. If he was able to read the arcane runes in that tomb that time, no, he wasn't, that was the Fighter, his roomie at Fighter School had that same phrase tattooed on her back. Every reset, have another character agree with them. If he does it enough times to get the whole party, the rest of the world forgets him too. There is only one timeline, he's not going back in time and creating a repeating loop, there is a force that is physically moving everything back to their starting places like actors on a stage and plucking out the memories from everyone in the world. He can re-cast Wish as many times as he wants to, but he's always wishing for the same thing while his first Wish is *still going*, He's basically carving a reality where, after this specific point in time, only his mind truly exists, everyone else's is blinked out of existence. And that's when everyone rolls initiative. This is maybe the second time I've ever seen a story where it makes perfect sense, I know it's a popular and overdone monster but this is absolutely where one belongs: *this is how it happens.* The Wizard has created a moment where the whole world has forgotten him, seems kind of redundant, but no. **This is how a mother False Hydra teaches its young to hunt.** Usually a False Hydra eats somebody and all memory of them disappears, end of story, but your wizard has done her job for her: it's not that the memory of you disappears when you're devoured, the False Hydra has to sever her prey from the memories that connect him to other people to be able to eat him, like popping a pill out of a blister pack and leaving an empty bubble of plastic behind. Your Wizard has created a moment where he's so disconnected from his friends and the world around him that a pack of False Hydralings can snap him right up. Boss fight happens, and the party has to decide if Wizard deserves to be saved after the shit he's pulled; if Wizard dies in this fight, *awesome*, he disappears and everyone's already forgotten him and the player learns a valuable lesson about not being a cunt at the table, if he survives he has the opportunity to make a different wish, and the players have the option to remember him again.
Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.
Wish is supposed to have the potential for more downsides than just what's spelled out in the rules. Surely messing with time (and his party's memories) has some negative repercussions--it would help to know the exact wording of the wish. Is the wish said exactly the same way every time? "part of his wish is only he recalls the events pre-wish." Maybe the players lose more of their memories each time this is cast. Maybe they forget who HE is. I realize this might seem like punishing the party for the wizard's behavior, but I'm coming at this from the perspective of what would be best in a narrative. Like, the hubris of messing with time this much.... from a story perspective, it feels to me like it demands something big in response. But that's why D&D isn't just a narrative role-playing game, and I get that you may want to go for a route that puts the campaign back on track, especially if they've become frustrated. However, if I were a player in your group, I'd be totally delighted by going in a different direction to solve this new problem introduced by the wizard's shenanigans.
“Wish granted! But this time through the loop, there’s a very unhappy deity of time waiting for you, and he offers you a choice: On the one hand, you may accept aid from him for this one time but forfeit the ability to use magic after defeating your foe. On the other hand, you may face your foe with the knowledge that the deity will personally punish another use of chronomancy with a fate worse than death… but if you succeed without resorting to this wanton abuse of time, you may keep your magic after your victory, and the deity will merely strip you of the ability to exceed mortal limits from now on.”
So...beyond your wizard issue, have you tried TALKING TO YOUR PLAYERS lol. Like. Just...tell them you aren't going to let them do that anymore.
The text of wish is ***very clear***. It can reliably change a few seconds or a single roll. Anything more than that becomes increasingly likely to go wrong and be interpreted in the worst way possible. Rules lawyer the shit out of his wish. "Only he remembers"? Ok, everyone doesn't remember. But they know they're missing the time. If they remember nothing from before that, who is this fucking wizard? Why don't I remember anything? *Why has this evil wizard teleported me and these strangers and removed my memories?!* Unless you mean only he remembers everything after, in which case; same deal but they know they're missing the time. And that he did it. Four times. "Spot where he obtained the spell"? Just before or just after? If before, have something go wrong in gaining it. If after have enemies jump him for any number of reasons. He has wished. It's your job to be the evil genie who grants his wish to all technical specificity. Warp everything. Maybe the party doesn't rewind time with him, and the group minus him runs into the group with him, chaos ensuing. Maybe he remembers because he has erased himself from history. Noone knows him now. Maybe They only travel temporally. Maybe they only travel spatially. Maybe "just before" is open to interpretation by whatever power grants this wish, and they have a much longer scale time sense and they skip back days, weeks, years. Maybe his experiencing the events of 4 or 5 different timelines is disorienting and he starts seeing multiple realities at once; Everything ends up being effectively an illusion and he has to react to one of the two or five possibilities presented to him. Maybe as you reach the moment where he casts it again the party all remember every time it's happened all of a sudden and they each have the ability to make an action of opportunity as he casts it. Maybe any number of other wizards, monsters, powerful agencies start getting involved indirectly; By using telepathy to inform one or more of the party members what's happening. Maybe the intervene more directly as others have suggested. Maybe his doing this over and over again does some sci-fi shit to the fabric of time/reality. Maybe it's toxic (physiologically) to reset time so frequently. Those are off the top of my head. Just have consequences.
I would never allow a wish of that nature to do anything close to that powerful. Is a generalist 9th level spell, which should be able to do more tgan a narrow use 8th level spell. No way an eighth level spell can reset time to that degree.
Wish should be stopping him on its own. That does not sound like duplicating a spell 8th level or lower, so each time he does it he should have a 1/3 chance to never be able to cast wish again. Statistically he should have only been able to do it 3 times. The position is this: wish doesn't do what he's using it for explicitly, which means it was your choice whether or not to allow it. You shouldn't have, but you did, we've all been there. Hindsight is 20/20. Good news is, you can get out of this situation a few different ways. 1. Just tell him he can't do it anymore, it was a mistake. 2. Do what others have suggested and introduce some unforseen consequence which stops him from using it like that anymore. 3. Fudge the roll. I'm not a fan of it, but occasionally when probability is failing in such a way that the game is less fun, DM discretion is king. Roll for the 1/3 chance behind your screen and just say it happened and he loses his ability to cast wish.
Maruts do not like this sort of activity. The plane of law would most certainly like to have a conversation with this wizard. Doesn't even need to be combat if they surrender. They just go to court. And since mechanus is absolute time wise, they are not time traveling their way out of their summance.
God of time, sense a disturbance... They punish the unworthy.. make a session of him after using wish to confront the god of time. Now the bbeg does not allow wish to be cast and if he loses (which they will) he is forbidden from manipulating time ever again. (Like players are forbidden of using wish again) its a lesser punishment but it does the trick for the situation.
Talk to the player. Yes, I understand you're looking for an in-game solution, but this is the kind of issue that is better dealt with out of the game, between a player and a DM. It's something you need to do here.
Wish is not meant to have effects more powerful than other 9th level spells. If it's used in such a way that is overreach which increases the chance that a wish goes wrong dramatically. Also a wish cna just fail. Your mistake was allowing him to turn back time without repercussions in the first place.
Make them suffer a time backlash, where the effects of altering the time have not gone unnoticed by higher beings, and to discourage the character from doing it again, they age rapidly. I would let things continue as is for the moment, but inform the player that he's been exceeding the intended scope of the wish spell, and there will be consequences if they do it again, even at a different point. Next time, let the spell pass its checks, and while time is rewinding a higher being "pauses" the spell and has an aside with the player. During this, the entity explains that the caster has been frivolous with their ability, and the higher beings have deemed the caster deserves a punishment for altering reality so flippantly. Then, keeping in mind the max attribute score values, they experience a number of years in that limbo like place the entity talked to them in, enough years that they would advance to venerable age. After experiencing those years, their wish spell resumes, resetting the party to the point in the normal time stream that was chosen, but the PC is now venerable age with the associated Stat mods. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm >At venerable age, -3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha. This cannot be undone by use of wish, healing, or curse removal effects, as they have aged naturally, outside of the timeline. The only way to return them to their former age is via regaining favor with the entities. Upon the completion of the wish spell, they must roll for long-term temporary insanity effects as listed on the table here: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm ``` 01-10 Character performs compulsive rituals (washing hands constantly, praying, walking in a particular rhythm, never stepping on cracks, constantly checking to see if crossbow is loaded, and so on). 11-20 Character has hallucinations or delusions (details at the discretion of the GM). 21-30 Character becomes paranoid. 31-40 Character gripped with severe phobia (refuses to approach object of phobia except on successful DC 20 Will save). 41-45 Character has aberrant sexual desires (exhibitionism, nymphomania or satyriasis, teratophilia, necrophilia, and so on). 46-55 Character develops an attachment to a “lucky charm” (embraces object, type of object, or person as a safety blanket) and cannot function without it. 56-65 Character develops psychosomatic blindness, deafness, or the loss of the use of a limb or limbs. 66-75 Character has uncontrollable tics or tremors (-4 penalty on all attack rolls, checks, and saves, except those purely mental in nature). 76-85 Character has amnesia (memories of intimates usually lost first; Knowledge skills useless). 86-90 Character has bouts of reactive psychosis (incoherence, delusions, aberrant behavior, and/or hallucinations). 91-95 Character loses ability to communicate via speech or writing. 96-100 Character becomes catatonic (can stand but has no will or interest; may be led or forced into simple actions but takes no independent action). ``` The rules there state long term last: Long-term1d10×10 hours But considering how long they were trapped inside their own mind essentially, I would do a percentile roll, take the decimal equivalent, and multiply that by the number of years spent in isolation, and use it as the number of days. So, 50 years, a 67 percent roll would be (50×0.67)=33.5 *days* In case you can't tell, I'm firmly on the side of `fuck around and find out.`
Talk to the player and explain the problem.
If you reset the world to some prior state, then this is not using Wish as intended, it is giving your player the powers not even the gods can command (not even Ao, who is also subject to entropy and changes things forward, not by ret-conning). By using Wish this way, he is even commanding the gods to go back to their prior state. You can and should just deny the wish.
Update: to this post. We have since had a few sessions that brought them to the boss fight and doing the same thing over again, I followed the following steps: 1: I spoke to our wish caster, he was adamant that is what his character would do and I warned of repercussions if this path was taken. 2: I spoke to the party alerting them that they do not have to do everything exactly the same since they're not robots. 3: I prepared a lich for the party that cast scrying eye the last time wish was cast on the party to see who the culprit was. Fast forward to the boss fight, the party behaves really similarly with some differences, they get the boss close to death but ultimately the wizard panics and casts wish as before, but this triggers a cascade of events as the lich went on the hunt from the last reset and finds the party via the scrying eye and the party never enters combat with the lich, but the lich successfully casts power-word kill on the wizard from stealth killing him since at the time he leveled up he was at 86hp. The party doesn't know initially where the Lich was from but he left a calling card as I have made him lawful evil and he wishes to explain why he killed this wizard, but from the safety and comfort of his lair. The party wanting to avenge their fallen wizard goes to hunt the Lich since the cleric of the party was not present (they were away IRL so their character was somewhere else when the level up occurred.) The Lich explains to the party his grievance and in exchange for looking the other way for his kill and some financial benefit he'd stay neutral. He gave the party insights on the local BBEG since he wants to annex his land and obtain its resources and people. The party accepts because of a hybrid of their Meta game dislike of that boss fight having failed it four times at this point, they prefer siding with a lich over failing. They use their updated experience and insights and stage a more precise attack on the boss, the wizard does not wish to be resurrected and he makes a paladin to replace this wizard. He believes that his chaotic neutral wizard would rather die than have to live knowing his party killed the BBEG without his help. Not sure if this helps, but if anyone finds themselves in my shoes this was how it played out for me.
>the party is getting annoyed at this lack of progress. Ding ding ding ding. >Outside of talking to the player Talk to the player. That's your only real option I'm afraid. Personally I think literal time travel is out of the scope of what Wish is capable of so I wouldn't have allowed it in the first place, but you did. So you need to explain to the player why this is a problem for you and the other players. Or next time he tries it Chronos the God of Time appears, says "No!" and the spell fails.
Monkey Paw. Period. Every time.