Limited Wish

I've kicked this bugaboo down the road a couple of times, but I did add it to the wiki and today it did randomly come up.  Therefore, hopefully, I've addressed the subject definitively enough for my game world.  I wouldn't imagine this will please anyone else, but we'll see.  I'm posting it here because it has generated interest in the past, so I know some will be interested in its review.


Spell

Limited Wish is a spell of focused invocation, allowing the caster to alter reality within the constraint's of the dweomer's area of effect. Only that which exists within that range can be affected; this constraint defines the spell's function, preventing broad manipulations of time, history or distant events while still providing the caster with immense control over their present circumstances.

The spell is capable of reshaping the immediate environment, altering conditions or imposing changes upon creatures and objects at the direction of the caster. The injured may be healed, opponents weakened or killed, enchantments dispelled, truths revealed. However, in addition to the magic's area limitation, the caster must be able to specify that the effect is needed for some higher purpose beyond the character's whim. Nor can the spell fundamentally change circumstances that apply to the game's rules, which must be upheld for the purpose of playability.

Needfulness

This describes any condition in which the requested effect is essential to the caster's well-being, progress or ability to fulfill an obligation. If the caster is in physical danger, the wish can be employed in the interest of survival. If there is an objective at hand, and the character would have to employ other means to obtain that object — that is, fight or kill an opponent, cross a gorge, physically open a chest, preserve a life against threatening elements — then the wish can be made entirely effective.

However, the spell cannot function for the purpose of indulgent, frivolous goals. The caster could create a sufficient amount of wealth to save a kingdom from bankruptcy, but could not simply "invent" money out of the air, simply because it's wanted. A caster could turn aside a lava flow, but could not simply cause the ground to open up and start spouting lava, merely because purposeless damage is sought as a desire. The spell is only able to provide magic that is essential to the task at hand, not what is most convenient, most destructive or most profitable.

Game Rules

Within the fabric of the game, limited wish cannot ignore player and opponent hit probabilities or damage, or willfully change all of a character's ability stats, character class or fundamental knowledge relating to proficiencies or sage abilities. For the purpose of explaining this limitation — for it seems obvious that we might wish to be more attractive, stronger, bigger, a different race and so on, once again these things fall under the category of needfulness.

The player, wishing to improve the player's chance at success within the game, may wish to employ limited wish as a means of doing so — though it is only one 7th level spell, and should obviously not be the end-all manner of altering every intentionally placed functional game design inherent in Dungeons and Dragons — but we should suppose that the characters are comfortable and happy with whom they are. They have no knowledge of this "player," nor do they need these imposed changes from their perspective.

Additionally, the theoretical research and invention that led to the spell would have encountered limitations within the game world's reality that opposed such changes, simply because players might want them. The gods, the assumed laws and rationalities of the setting's existence... and of course the dungeon master — who chooses how to ruin and spoil the campaign they've constructed — may simply have no wish for one spell to be created that can ruin everything at a stroke. So, it turns out, after all the research was done, this was the very best that the magi could do. They just weren't able to fabricate a magic spell that would improve a character's ability stat by a single point.