Technically, yes, but it is completely subject to whatever your DM wants to happen--including any-and-all side effects/consequences that may accompany it.
Wish doesn't have that as one of the suggested uses, so it falls under the purview of this text:
Wish
<snipped>
You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the GM as precisely as possible. The GM 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.
A DM would be within their rights to say there are world-shattering consequences for using the spell that way. For instance, a DM could say that your home town is magically destroyed by the spell as a catalyst to fuel your transformation into a being that transcends mortal limitations. It's an inherent, necessary risk as the spell is so open-ended in what it can accomplish. Wish has a reputation as a campaign-killer for a reason.
Cast the spell. Ask your DM for what you want. DM decides if they'll allow it. DM decides consequences. You both live with what happens.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Increasing stats is something that can be accomplished by major "very rare" magical items like the Tome of Leadership and Influence. Such items are very expensive; Xanathar's suggests that buying something like that would be a 20,000 gp - 50,000 gp proposition.
Wish allows you to create objects up to 25,000 gp, but limits this to nonmagical objects: you could not use Wish to simply create a Tome of Leadership and Influence. The fact that you could not create one is probably a good reason to rule that you cannot simply replicate one either.
But as Sigred says, Wish does also allow you to exceed the scope of its stated limitations, with unintended consquences. Your DM could allow you to give yourself a +2 Strength... by permanently polymorphing you into a creature with that strength, and possibly saying you can no longer control them as a character. Or by ehancing your body in a horribly disfiguring way that impacts your other stats. Or by wreaking havoc on your surroundings to power the spell, etc etc.
All of that falls under the limitless power of the DM to implement whatever table rule they want; within the bounds of what the spell can definitely do (safely), the answer is "no."
I would allow it one time only, I wouldn’t allow it to work a second time on anyone for this. I wouldn’t nerf it too badly, but I would nerf it. Probably by taking the two points from a different ability score rolled randomly. I’d use a d10 as a d5 since those don’t exist.
I don't like the idea of a gotcha DM, and honestly, I don't care for this effect of wish (I think wish is the best spell with just its any level 8 spell effect). I also don't think the stress from casting wish this way is worth anything short of saving the campaign.
Yeah, I don't know why people so often suggest that DMs screw over the player so badly when using that feature of Wish.
RAW, Wish could let you do basically anything the DM allows. Just talk to your DM and ask them whether they'd like that and whether they'd allow it, or not.
Probably because half the fun of wish is the thrill of danger, and the spell itself invites the DM to screw over the player. Pre-clearing actions with the DM ito make sure they'll succeed is a level of metagaming that some tables don't allow.
Wish is a spell that can potentially only ever be cast a single time by a caster, and the very real danger that casting it results in instant death is one of the things that stops players from blowing that shot frivolously.
I don't like the idea of a gotcha DM, and honestly, I don't care for this effect of wish (I think wish is the best spell with just its any level 8 spell effect). I also don't think the stress from casting wish this way is worth anything short of saving the campaign.
Agreed. I always caution people against using Wish (for non-level-8 spells) in a non-emergency situation. It's so open-ended that it's easy to unintentionally change the entire campaign trajectory. Especially when a player uses it in a way that pushes their character beyond the general statistical limits... you don't usually see the unintended consequences of that right away.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Increasing stats is something that can be accomplished by major "very rare" magical items like the Tome of Leadership and Influence. Such items are very expensive; Xanathar's suggests that buying something like that would be a 20,000 gp - 50,000 gp proposition.
Wish allows you to create objects up to 25,000 gp, but limits this to nonmagical objects: you could not use Wish to simply create a Tome of Leadership and Influence. The fact that you could not create one is probably a good reason to rule that you cannot simply replicate one either.
But as Sigred says, Wish does also allow you to exceed the scope of its stated limitations, with unintended consquences. Your DM could allow you to give yourself a +2 Strength... by permanently polymorphing you into a creature with that strength, and possibly saying you can no longer control them as a character. Or by ehancing your body in a horribly disfiguring way that impacts your other stats. Or by wreaking havoc on your surroundings to power the spell, etc etc.
All of that falls under the limitless power of the DM to implement whatever table rule they want; within the bounds of what the spell can definitely do (safely), the answer is "no."
This, I think, is the best explanation... if there's a known mechanic that would achieve the desired effect, but the wording of the spell specifically forbids such a thing, then the spell probably shouldn't be able to accomplish such a thing.
Still, Wish is an interesting spell because it gives so much freedom to the DM in order to accomplish the intended effects. Personally I'm not a fan of just outright punishing a player, but rather trying to use stuff like this to drive further adventures. I think instead of just giving them the stat increase they requested but killing a bunch of people or something... I would just have the spell impart on them the knowledge of where one such Tome is located, and at that point it's up to them to go on a quest to acquire it.
Now all I can think about is the dm laughing as he implants the hard to reach/well protected locations of two skill tomes into your chars brain rather than just giving the stats, triggering an epic quest
It has been years since I DMed, and years since I was in a group where anyone tried to use Wish. Under our interpretation of the 1st edition AD&D Wish rules, we treated Wish as both powerful and treacherous. There was always a danger of, to quote the rules, "suffering some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish."
As a DM, I would allow it... But depending on wording, you would probably lose points of another stat to compensate. I would probably not allow you to specify that this could not be possible in the wish, unless you could find some way not to make it a compound request (with "and" or "but" in it). We did not allow compound Wishes back in the day (e.g., "I wish John was alive and I had a million gold pieces")... So I would not allow "I wish for +2 STR and all my other stats stay the same as they were!"
Also, as a DM, I would have to ask how you would, ICly, specify the stat value. Since a "20 STR" is not an in character thing -- your characters don't know the numbers, just that "I am stronger than Betsy" -- you'd have to be very clever with how you worded it. I might accept something like "Gain 10% strength permanently" as specific enough, but again, I would probably still subtract 10% from somewhere else at random. Unless you were just getting back stats that got lost somehow -- that I would probably allow without consequence.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It has been years since I DMed, and years since I was in a group where anyone tried to use Wish. Under our interpretation of the 1st edition AD&D Wish rules, we treated Wish as both powerful and treacherous. There was always a danger of, to quote the rules, "suffering some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish."
Yeah, throw 1st ed. out the window when 5e Wish is on the table though, 1st was like signing up for a party to get cornered and have the magic-user cast closing wall of fire kill of the horde, then teleport out, and getting all the exp for killing off the monsters.. and rest of the party. Not always like that - but yeah it was incredibly adversarial at a lot of tables, between the DM and the players, and the often between the players, with exp. being awarded for killing blows, gold looted (dang thieves! ).
I'm still not a raving fan of D&D - but 5e has been a step in the right direction, they just need to figure out subclass balance, and class balance. Wish is just plain broken.
You do not need to Wish for better stats - just wish for valuables for 3 days in a row and go overpay for a manual / tome of X, profit at zero risk of Wish burn out in 5e, build a library of expended Manual's / Tome's that are all on that hundred year slow trickle recharge.
I recall in the olden days, that a player wished for a stat bump to strength. The wished for something like having their strength increase to an 18/00 (in AD&D). The DM at the time said that they could increase the stat but only 10% at a time. So 10 wishes would have achieved their goal.
On that same note allowing that the score CAN be raised but not actually be raised immediately is a possibility. Explain that they would need to spend 2 ASIs to achieve their intended result, so using the +2 to raise it 1 point from 20 to 21 and another +2 to go from 21 to 22. This will allow them to achieve what they want if they really want to devote those resources to strength. It allows the rest of the group to level and still not be outclassed and it would take 8 levels to implement.
Note the unintended consequences does not have to be a gotcha... if you wished for all the gold in the world and there was no gotcha and items were simply stacked at arms length they would quickly bury the character. The whole point is getting what you ask for is rarely as good as it seems. Likewise if you wish for a stat that is only possible amongst the gods then perhaps the wish kicks off a series of events that may eventually result in the character becoming divine. As a DM I always take into consideration who is granting the wish and why. If it was a ring then who empowered the ring and why. If bob the almighty sorcerer created the ring of wishes to save his arse in emergency then did he include safeguards to deter others from using it. if a benevolent god grants you a wish out of gratitude then there should be no gotchas as long as the wish is within their ability and commensurate with what you are being rewarded for. If however the mortal doth presume too much or ask outside the gods ability there may be a lesson taught in how the wish is fulfilled.
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I was wondering if one could use the Wish spell to increase one of their abilities past the limit of 20.
I'm pretty sure you could do that in 3.5, so I was thought to ask about 5e.
Thanks in advance.
Technically, yes, but it is completely subject to whatever your DM wants to happen--including any-and-all side effects/consequences that may accompany it.
Wish doesn't have that as one of the suggested uses, so it falls under the purview of this text:
A DM would be within their rights to say there are world-shattering consequences for using the spell that way. For instance, a DM could say that your home town is magically destroyed by the spell as a catalyst to fuel your transformation into a being that transcends mortal limitations. It's an inherent, necessary risk as the spell is so open-ended in what it can accomplish. Wish has a reputation as a campaign-killer for a reason.
Cast the spell. Ask your DM for what you want. DM decides if they'll allow it. DM decides consequences. You both live with what happens.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Increasing stats is something that can be accomplished by major "very rare" magical items like the Tome of Leadership and Influence. Such items are very expensive; Xanathar's suggests that buying something like that would be a 20,000 gp - 50,000 gp proposition.
Wish allows you to create objects up to 25,000 gp, but limits this to nonmagical objects: you could not use Wish to simply create a Tome of Leadership and Influence. The fact that you could not create one is probably a good reason to rule that you cannot simply replicate one either.
But as Sigred says, Wish does also allow you to exceed the scope of its stated limitations, with unintended consquences. Your DM could allow you to give yourself a +2 Strength... by permanently polymorphing you into a creature with that strength, and possibly saying you can no longer control them as a character. Or by ehancing your body in a horribly disfiguring way that impacts your other stats. Or by wreaking havoc on your surroundings to power the spell, etc etc.
All of that falls under the limitless power of the DM to implement whatever table rule they want; within the bounds of what the spell can definitely do (safely), the answer is "no."
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I would allow it one time only, I wouldn’t allow it to work a second time on anyone for this. I wouldn’t nerf it too badly, but I would nerf it. Probably by taking the two points from a different ability score rolled randomly. I’d use a d10 as a d5 since those don’t exist.
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I don't like the idea of a gotcha DM, and honestly, I don't care for this effect of wish (I think wish is the best spell with just its any level 8 spell effect). I also don't think the stress from casting wish this way is worth anything short of saving the campaign.
Yeah, I don't know why people so often suggest that DMs screw over the player so badly when using that feature of Wish.
RAW, Wish could let you do basically anything the DM allows. Just talk to your DM and ask them whether they'd like that and whether they'd allow it, or not.
Probably because half the fun of wish is the thrill of danger, and the spell itself invites the DM to screw over the player. Pre-clearing actions with the DM ito make sure they'll succeed is a level of metagaming that some tables don't allow.
Wish is a spell that can potentially only ever be cast a single time by a caster, and the very real danger that casting it results in instant death is one of the things that stops players from blowing that shot frivolously.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Agreed. I always caution people against using Wish (for non-level-8 spells) in a non-emergency situation. It's so open-ended that it's easy to unintentionally change the entire campaign trajectory. Especially when a player uses it in a way that pushes their character beyond the general statistical limits... you don't usually see the unintended consequences of that right away.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
This, I think, is the best explanation... if there's a known mechanic that would achieve the desired effect, but the wording of the spell specifically forbids such a thing, then the spell probably shouldn't be able to accomplish such a thing.
Still, Wish is an interesting spell because it gives so much freedom to the DM in order to accomplish the intended effects. Personally I'm not a fan of just outright punishing a player, but rather trying to use stuff like this to drive further adventures. I think instead of just giving them the stat increase they requested but killing a bunch of people or something... I would just have the spell impart on them the knowledge of where one such Tome is located, and at that point it's up to them to go on a quest to acquire it.
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Now all I can think about is the dm laughing as he implants the hard to reach/well protected locations of two skill tomes into your chars brain rather than just giving the stats, triggering an epic quest
It has been years since I DMed, and years since I was in a group where anyone tried to use Wish. Under our interpretation of the 1st edition AD&D Wish rules, we treated Wish as both powerful and treacherous. There was always a danger of, to quote the rules, "suffering some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish."
As a DM, I would allow it... But depending on wording, you would probably lose points of another stat to compensate. I would probably not allow you to specify that this could not be possible in the wish, unless you could find some way not to make it a compound request (with "and" or "but" in it). We did not allow compound Wishes back in the day (e.g., "I wish John was alive and I had a million gold pieces")... So I would not allow "I wish for +2 STR and all my other stats stay the same as they were!"
Also, as a DM, I would have to ask how you would, ICly, specify the stat value. Since a "20 STR" is not an in character thing -- your characters don't know the numbers, just that "I am stronger than Betsy" -- you'd have to be very clever with how you worded it. I might accept something like "Gain 10% strength permanently" as specific enough, but again, I would probably still subtract 10% from somewhere else at random. Unless you were just getting back stats that got lost somehow -- that I would probably allow without consequence.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, throw 1st ed. out the window when 5e Wish is on the table though, 1st was like signing up for a party to get cornered and have the magic-user cast closing wall of fire kill of the horde, then teleport out, and getting all the exp for killing off the monsters.. and rest of the party. Not always like that - but yeah it was incredibly adversarial at a lot of tables, between the DM and the players, and the often between the players, with exp. being awarded for killing blows, gold looted (dang thieves! ).
I'm still not a raving fan of D&D - but 5e has been a step in the right direction, they just need to figure out subclass balance, and class balance. Wish is just plain broken.
You do not need to Wish for better stats - just wish for valuables for 3 days in a row and go overpay for a manual / tome of X, profit at zero risk of Wish burn out in 5e, build a library of expended Manual's / Tome's that are all on that hundred year slow trickle recharge.
I recall in the olden days, that a player wished for a stat bump to strength. The wished for something like having their strength increase to an 18/00 (in AD&D). The DM at the time said that they could increase the stat but only 10% at a time. So 10 wishes would have achieved their goal.
On that same note allowing that the score CAN be raised but not actually be raised immediately is a possibility. Explain that they would need to spend 2 ASIs to achieve their intended result, so using the +2 to raise it 1 point from 20 to 21 and another +2 to go from 21 to 22. This will allow them to achieve what they want if they really want to devote those resources to strength. It allows the rest of the group to level and still not be outclassed and it would take 8 levels to implement.
Wish fulfilled.
Note the unintended consequences does not have to be a gotcha... if you wished for all the gold in the world and there was no gotcha and items were simply stacked at arms length they would quickly bury the character. The whole point is getting what you ask for is rarely as good as it seems. Likewise if you wish for a stat that is only possible amongst the gods then perhaps the wish kicks off a series of events that may eventually result in the character becoming divine. As a DM I always take into consideration who is granting the wish and why. If it was a ring then who empowered the ring and why. If bob the almighty sorcerer created the ring of wishes to save his arse in emergency then did he include safeguards to deter others from using it. if a benevolent god grants you a wish out of gratitude then there should be no gotchas as long as the wish is within their ability and commensurate with what you are being rewarded for. If however the mortal doth presume too much or ask outside the gods ability there may be a lesson taught in how the wish is fulfilled.