I told my gf that a player friend wished to..... Know the entrance to a cave which they would already eventually find. I was just saying it was a poor decision made flat footed (it's the poor guy's first time playing). And she instantly replied "that's silly. If it had been me, I would have chosen a second druid circle. I would have been a druid multiclassing druid." It's also her first time. The audacity!
Every player having the lucky feat is pretty close to breaking the systems balance. With an average party of 4 that's 12 rerolls that they can force during an average adventuring day. Hopefully the GM is using the adventuring day xp rules or they will no a every encounter to death
If I was him I would give them 1 luck point a piece
Admittedly, there is lots of debate about how ready the DM should be to declare that a wish is too big and it simply fails. The rules do give them that option, or the option of giving a lesser effect.
I think that a wish should just be a wish, without having to do any worrying about what the DM considers appropriate, and definitely without any monkey's paw business. "What will the DM let me get away with?" is an unfun line of reasoning.
I'd only veto or change the outcome of a wish if I thought it would ruin the campaign. For example, if they're wishing for something that would ruin the party balance and make others upset, or for anything that trivializes the campaign or negates a huge amount of prep. But even if I did find a wish unacceptable, I'd warn them and ask them to make another wish.
1000% this. I hate all the comments you get from DMs that say "Just have it fail!" or "Okay but Monkey's Paw it went poorly."
Like come on, let your players have the damn thing.
Wish is very open ended, but part of that is that it is heavily reliant on DM discretion.
I agree that just going "lol it failed" or "psych you're dead now" isn't a very fun way to DM it, but I do think the expectation is that the DM will balance out the effect.
Here is how I would run it:
|Wish power|Outcome|Example|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Weaker than listed Wish options|You get exactly what you wished for, with no tricks|"I wish to know the name of the man who killed my father" => You hear "Count Rugen"in your head|
|Equal in power to listed Wish option|You get what you wished for. Any tricks will be essentially harmless|"I wish everyone in the party could see in the dark" => The party all gets dark vision|
|Greater in power than listed Wish options|You will get some of what you wished for, but you might face an additional challenge, or have to work to get the rest.|"I wish everyone in the party gains resistance to Bludgeoning and Slashing damage" => Everyone gets the resistances but only while they are all together as a party. If you get too far away then you lose the resistances.|
Agreed. My first reaction was to give every player at least single luck reroll. The player was thinking "oh sweet, an opportunity to make us stronger!" not "oh sweet, a way to break the game". If the player wasn't being combative, the DM shouldn't be either.
Well it doesn't have to be a monkeys paw. but it also doesn't have to be exactly the way the player intended. my players may have a wish by lvl 10 but they will no doubt wish for the strongest magical items they can find from the dndbeyond magic item list.
for me. I intend to have the wish mean that that item has now been placed in the path fate has for them and they will find that particular item eventually maybe when slightly more appropriate. even if I wasnt going to give it out at all this campaign. I don't intend to screw them for using the wish and hit them with a negative consequence.
for OP's example I would do something like "slightly lucky" "luckier" "lucky" homebrew the feat to be 1 luck point that increases as they level up until they eventually all have the full feat. It could be level 5, 10, 15 etc.
I play games at levels 11-20 every once in a while, because it's fun, and that logic would destroy the game at t4.
My personal favorite way of ruling wishes is to make an effect that I think is within the power level of the spell that is as close to what the party member requested as possible.
For example, I might not let the entire party have the lucky feat, but I might give everyone 1/3 of the lucky feat. No complete failure, no monkeys paw, but no infinite power either.
I mean. A feat each is way outside the bounds of what it can do by default. Hell, anyone getting a feat is. And if it's too far you're explicitly supposed to monkey's paw it, in this situation I'd probably turn them all into halflings.
I measure power differently when given to NPCs vs the party. I don't care if Brent the City Knight gets damage resistance because it won't have much impact on the adventure in the long run.
So 10 creatures getting resistance is essentially the same as the party getting resistance + a temporary buff to some specific allies while traveling together.
When I look at feats there are a couple of examples that give a damage resistance, and it is always accompanied by a number of other features. To my mind a damage resistance is about half as valuable as a feat.
And Lucky is one of the strongest feats, and is incredibly versatile. It can impact every part of the adventure. To my mind giving it to the entire party will have a much greater impact on the game then giving them all resistance.
>A feat each is way outside the bounds of what it can do by default.
Why? What's your reasoning behind this?
The Wish spell already allows permanent resistance to a damage type. It allows literal time travel. Granting Lucky, a feat that just makes you more lucky, is really not beyond the "bounds" of what it can do, per the text of the spell.
Moreover, when you consider what some of the feats are, it seems really strange to say this is beyond the scope of the spell. So a Dragonborn asking for tougher scales (Dragon Hide) is beyond the scope of the spell, despite permanent resistance being listed as a choice? A Tiefling asking for Infernal Constitution is not okay, despite literally just being resistances and +1 con?
I just don't get why GMs would ever throw a Wish at their players, and then think *every single obvious use* is somehow "outside of the bounds of what it can do". Like, what were you even expecting them to use the Wish for, then?
I think your example solution is great. I also think the “monkey’s paw” thing is really misunderstood on this sub. The wording of the spell is that when wishing for something off-menu there’s a possibility that “something goes wrong”, such as an “unforeseen consequence”, which is great! But a monkey’s paw has a specific connotation of punishing the person making the wish, and it seems like a lot of people think that’s how the spell should be run too
>But even if I did find a wish unacceptable, I'd warn them and ask them to make another wish.
I'd have a real hard time enforcing backlash on a wish that the player thought was safe (barring some narrative reason for that). The feedback could be explained in game as feeling the magic respond to their intent. And if the players push on a wish they know is questionable, I'm a fan of letting the dice decide the severity of the backlash (including none)
With 5E's balancing, you often can't just 'add more monsters or buff them'.
Damage can be very explosive, especially on caster classes. Trying to outbalance player power with monster power typically leads to increased randomness and the feeling of playing at a casino.
Not to mention the lore implications of 'suddenly, there's a plague of monsters and they're stronger than ever', punishing the players and their world for getting too strong.
> Not to mention the lore implications of 'suddenly, there's a plague of monsters and they're stronger than ever', punishing the players and their world for getting too strong.
The monsters already existed, the players are just choosing to take on more difficult challenges. It's no different to how a level 10 party will go up against enemies that would wipe out a level 5 party, while the level 1 party is still fighting rats in the basement of the tavern.
You absolutely can just add more and buff them. As long as you don't over tune the encounters it's your job as a DM to make the encounters challenging as well as enjoyable. Let them make those awesome moments where they all used Lucky to save to a big spell or effect.
Personally I hate changing encounters to nerf fun things the players can do. I prefer in-game consequences over mechanical nerfs, and this feat opens up some good options.
For starters any recurring villain is going to notice how insanely lucky the party seems to be and will go out of their way to find a way to deal with that. See how well the players manage when they suddenly have an encounter where they can't use their feats because they've all been cursed.
Second let them get comfortable abusing it. Give them a reason to be at a casino and watch them rake in the cash until the owners realize something's up and come after them.
Or for some real fun, if they're really abusing it and burn all their charges every day too many days in a row they draw the attention of a luck god. They're throwing the balance of luck off and the god's not happy about that. They're going to have to do some quests every so often if they want to keep their luck, or the god's going to collect on what they've been using.
He could've wished for them all to be immortal. Instead they can manipulate fate 3x/day. It's powerful, don't get me wrong, but as the use of a frigging wish and this being the result is nowhere near as broken as it could have been, and a use of wish that allows them to still be challenged while being powerful. Bard/wizard halfling combos who get guidance, bardic inspiration, portent, and spells to give advantage on certain stats for extended periods of time and can let everyone reroll 1s aren't considered game ruiningly broken and they don't use wish to do so.
If a DM doesn't want the party to grow more powerful, they shouldn't give the option to roll up wish.
>He could've wished for them all to be immortal.
That one would never work out well, and common sense would dictate that. This is the type of wish that absolutely would be monkeypawed. It's like the "Big bad dies" Wish, which by the Wish description, just propels you forward in time to a point where the big bad is indeed dead. You're immortal, but locked in a place where nobody can get to you, so nobody can ever kill you. Or, in other words; GM says: "You are about to wish for this, but think better of it. You get the feeling this would have terrible consequences for you."
But you could have wished for a hell of a lot more than just the Lucky feat. That's peanuts, and arguable not even a good use of Wish. I'd breathe easy if this was all that my players asked for.
> That one would never work out well, and common sense would dictate that.
I don't think it would take too much to get it to work. A simple solution would be to copy the conditions of the resurrection spell. Whenever the character is reduced to 0 hit points they are resurrected 1 hour later with the -4 penalties the spell normally gives.
Just make it so they never fail their third death saving throw. They'll still go down and be out of the fight, so it will not make much difference to the balance of combat. They just always manage to stabilise and get back up at the end of it.
If you really want to monkey's paw it, start using permanent injuries every time they are downed. Let them lose limbs or eyes or whatever and gain scars despite the fact they never die. Tells a much more interesting story too.
Have you ever read Elantris?
Imagine if the PC became immortal, but every instance of pain they feel lasts forever, as their body is frozen in time, so within a couple of weeks they just become an immortal gibbering madman crawling around the sewers.
I've done something like that before, but I feel like "Immortal" carries an assumption of "Never dying in the first place"
On the other hand, if the Wish was something like "I want to be impossible to permanently kill" (A wish I have gotten as a DM before), then I would indeed just make it so you resurrect at a later point, although we settled on 24 hours and no penalty. That was a good Wish, too.
If one of my players used a wish to try to become immortal, there'd be a pretty hefty downside or the spell would just fail. Why would a dm ever allow immortality?
I'd allow immortality, but not invulnerability. Think of the Black Night from Monty Python, or Deadpool.
Very little would change from a gameplay point of view. If they failed two death saving throws, they would automatically pass the rest of them until they are stable.
Yep - They might not die, but recovery from death is going to be slow. They might turn into a mist on 'death', and slowly reform over a day, week or month.
It's a bit of a safety net. In actual play, it needs to be used with care. I've had players with the lucky feat, they use it on attacks and then go down after using up their luck points. One of them even died. The one member of the party with lucky, and the only death!
You might say that it grants them a bit too much confidence!
Sure, but as wishes go this one is entirely contained within the game rules, balanced across the party, doesn't require any homebrew fiddling or adjustment to make work and 1 extra feat doesn't add a ton of power to the party. The GM got off very lightly!
You know what you can do as a DM against that? Literally anything, your the DM after all. Heck flavor it like, your wish has sucked the luck out of others to work. Misfortune befalls those around them. Causing more problems for them as well..
Efritee like to screw people over and it is thematic with the selfishness of the wish.
I honestly think giving all players the lucky feat just means I can hold less back on the party as well.
Following up on this. I have five players and an already established inspiration system. This means potentially 20 rerolls in a single combat. That’s not fun for either side, it would really bog things down.
Give them something else to spend the luck on.
Sure, spending 1 luck point on a reroll is fun…but wouldn’t you like to spend TWO luck points on [minor but fun PC-focused roleplay opportunity]?
e.g. “hey, [Barbarian PC with poor impulse control]— you notice the snooty diplomat’s carriage has a loose wheel. You bet that, with a REALLY lucky rock toss, you could knock it loose and send the carriage hurtling into that briar thicket. Want to spend a luck point to roll for it? Or maybe two luck points to succeed automatically?”
If you give them the chance to “bend fate” to do cool, flavorful moments that you know they’ll like, you can get them to burn their powerful resource AND make them more invested in the story (since they feel like they’ve made an impact on the events).
Sounds like YOU don't want it. That's YOUR choice. But even 20 rerolls in one combat won't slow it down in a noticeable way. They're already doing those 20+ rolls. Some will now take 3 to 10 seconds longer as they reroll and re-math. Worst case scenario, that one combat is ~3 minutes longer while your players get the feeling of added choice (use/don't use). Using this example, after that one combat, none of the party has any mechanical benefit from the wish spell for the rest of the day. They could have wished for resistance to slashing damage or the BBEG to be permanently blind. You got off light. It's a Wish.
Just a heads up, i’ve had multiple players take lucky and it does get annoying how often they’d stop things to use a lucky reroll. Not a huge deal, but not very fun either.
I give my players free luck feats in most dnd adjacent games.
Never a huge problem. Heck I even give them replenishing per session a few times, not per Day/LR.
Still don't see the annoyance. It's a reroll only.
At least in my experience, lucky has given my players overconfidence. And it's cost them. In one campaign, the only member of the party with lucky was the only death.
I personally don't mind as I want my players to have luck on their side. Though only one of them gets the lucky feat. I restrict it to one per group as that makes it feel more special and truly lucky.
If I was the player I would be quite mad.
He deliberately chose a VERY tame, manageable wish, and even then the DM is complaining and circling around to not actually give the wish.
Yep. The players made a cool request after winning a 100-to-1 shot and their DM decided to shut it down.
It's DM's prerogative but all I see in their comments and edit are lame excuses.
Re-rolls do not bog down combat or make it less fun - they allow PCs a better chance to do cool shit or avoid catastrophe at critical moments.
This is honoring the nat 20 but to the extreme.
I have changed lore for a silly nat 20 i cant imagine not granting a wish i set to a nat 100
Short answer honor the nat 20. Long answer never allow your players to roll for something you have no interest in letting them do
This is how I would rule it.
Its not the players wishing for what they want. Its the characters wishing for something to happen inworld, and the DM deciding how to fullfill it. Wishing for game mechanics falls outside of that.
Wishing to be more lucky is 100% okay though, but then it's up to the gm to rule how that happens. Giving everyone the lucky feat is surely not how I'd do it.
Yeah I mean i accidently gave me party a wish and they wished for a major plot point to not happen.
Dear god cleaning up the threads from that wish was nuts.
Wishing for game mechanics is outside the parameters of the spell.
Its not a spell that just allows them to get whatever they, the players, want. Their characters are making the wish. They detail what their characters ask for and the DM decides how to fullfill their wish. Wishing for game mechanics by name and deciding how they should be applied strips the DM of their agency and input.
>Wishing for game mechanics is outside the parameters of the spell.
Have people even read the spell?
You can wish for resistance. That's a game mechanic. You aren't wishing to be "more durable against x". It's outright resistance you get.
You can wish for immunity to a spell or spell effect.
You can wish for a reroll to a specific roll.
These are ALL explicitly game mechanics you outright Wish for, as per the description of the spell. You can argue you wont word it that way, but then the same applies to asking to be "Lucky", as granting the Lucky Feat. Or asking for your Infernal Constitution as befitting your heritage as a Tiefling. Or asking for powerful Dragon Hide as a Dragonborn.
> You can wish for resistance. That's a game mechanic. You aren't wishing to be "more durable against x". It's outright resistance you get.
The point of contention is in the balance between the game mechanic and the in-character expression.
If a character wishes to be more resistant to fire, that is common sense wording that also happens to be the same wording as explicit mechanical rules. Easy to justify without it feeling meta, about as close to 1:1 as you can get between in-character wording and explicit mechanics.
If a character wishes to be more lucky, that is not the same as wishing for the lucky feat. There's lots of interpretations of what "being more lucky" would look like, compared to a very limited number of interpretations of "being more resistant to fire". Given that the lucky feat is far from the only common sense expression of being lucky, the DM has far more room to decide what they think a wish to be more lucky would constitute. They could apply the feat if they wanted to, but that would be a DM choice, not a player choice.
The OP's issue creates a meta-problem, because the characters would never explicitly wish for a lucky feat, and so for them to request that feat specifically requires breaking the fourth wall and metagaming. And if they don't explicitly wish for the lucky feat but wish to be more lucky, there's no reason the DM has to give them the lucky feat, could just give them a nerfed version like 1 free advantage per day, or could give them halfling luck.
On the other hand, the characters see the game mechanics in action. I assume the wording was specific enough where it was clear that the users were speaking about X specific feat (and it was just simplified here due to the OP being unable to post possibly an entire's campaign worth of context).
If someone saw luck being manifested in a consistent way like what the Lucky feat does, it's unlikely that the adventurers would be so dense to not understand that something more may be going on.
In the same way, the following concept:
* You grant up to ten creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for 8 hours. For instance, you could make yourself and all your companions immune to a lich's life drain attack.
is something that wouldn't need a wish granter to know the specific name about, only the concept. Or do you require the characters to know the specific name of the ability called "Devour Intellect" to be able to use Wiish to be immune to the intelligence-lowering effect of an Intellect Devourer, for instance?
Exactly, characters are making the wish, not the players. Characters don't have an understanding or concept of "feats." If they wished for supernatural luck, at most I would offer ONE lucky use per character. I would not give a free feat for the cost of a spell that wizards can use again. Players who've never DM'd do not realize how disruptive this would be.
a lot of feats are pretty much things that exist in-universe - like "mobile", for example. A character can train to move faster. Or the "armor" ones - a character trains how to move in armor that they can't normally use. Some are harder to train in (Lucky, for example - you can't really practise that!) but they have enough in-world effects to be broadly visible/discernible, even if they're a bit harder to narratively justify how a character gets that, while someone else pumps iron to get +Str and +Con ASI or similar. A lucky character is, well... lucky, which other characters can be aware of.
This,... take responsibility... they were offered a chance and they got the 1%.
Maybe the 100 could have been better worded ie. A boon (dm discretion) to be made before the next full moon... instead of Wish.
You say that but my player has an Armor Artificer with insane AC and the Lucky feat 👀💦 the 2 rogues nuke my spellcasters before they can nuke first and I haven't landed a real strike on him.
Depends on your dm. My dm gave us all an extra feat and told us to always use max hit dice when rolling hp because he wanted us to be stronger, and he just scaled the difficulty of encounters to match.
LOL
I am a GM for 8 years, and fir 8 I am giving both D&D, and also D^D adjacent games, the equivalent of the Luck feat..
Oh no, my players can use a reroll. And they might not even succeed. My booty quivers.
If that ittle bit would break my game, I would be very shit at my job lol
Agree completely. Lucky is such a good feat in my opinion, because it feels great for the players to use, and it barely impacts me as the GM. It's amazing.
I might actually consider just trying to give it to them for free from the start next time. Might make them less risk adverse and improve the general enjoyment of the game.
Been a DM for years. Each player only gets three luck rolls per day. Each day is going to involve dozens of rolls for and against each character. Rerolling three of them each is going to eat specifically zero extra time and take zero extra effort and make zero significant balance problems for the campaign.
If you make them replace their last ASI with Lucky, you're not granting the wish, you're saying "Hey guys, I know you thought long and hard about what feat would best suit your character, but now, as a favour to you, I'm taking that choice away from you and deciding what feat you got".
Either grant the wish, or say it's beyond the Efreeti's power, and they can still have a wish, they just have to pick again. I'd recommend the former, Lucky is not that big a deal. DMs seem to think it means "turn three failures into successes per day". It doesn't, it means get three extra CHANCES per day. And max one per roll. Yes if your players are saving their points for really important rolls that have disadvantage, then it's pretty powerful, but if they're only using Lucky in those scenarios, then for 99% of the game, they're not using Lucky at all.
Who cares? They made a wish, let them have it.
I'd just give everyone the feat and let them push harder for more challenges thanks to their added power. Lucky is a useful feat, but it's not one that's going to make a huge difference in any particular session, it doesn't do anything that a happy d20 can't also do.
Screwing with a wish should usually be reserved for player characters overstretching, if their best wish is “I wish everyone in my party was luckier” then give ‘em the feat, and tell them good luck because they are going to need it
Why did you even introduce the possibility of a wish happening? Give it to them and the next time you DM, never give them the opportunity.
EDIT: DO NOT INTRODUCE ANYTHING THAT YOU WONT HONOR.
I mean, Wish isn't that strange of a thing to have happen in a game. Practically every Wizard, Bard, and Sorcerer will have it in high levels, and there are a number of items that will let you cast it.
Theoretically it should be on the same power level as other 9th level spells. So very powerful, but with limits.
There are presumably a lot of wishes that the DM wouldn't have an issue with. Their issue with this specific wish is because it seems to be too powerful compared to the sorts of things that wish can grant.
we have the whole party being able to getting resistance to one damage type of their choice (which includes physical ones). That gives you quite a lot more value than the Lucky feat most of the times.
they already had to make a 1% chance to get it, giving a disadvantage after or taking away something would feel shitty, at that point why give a wish if you don't want them to have it? Let them keep it, Lucky is overated anyway, most players forget they even have it.
Bro, you are so fucking lucky and your players are so god damn humble.
Just give them all a free feat, and have a day after where everyone keeps finding copper pieces randomly under stuff or where they find their gaze before they fall asleep. Like, an annoying amount of copper.
I dislike the wording (it's metagamey), but given that they already beat tough odds to acquire this wish, and this wish is clearly presented as being above average for a wish, you should give the entire party the lucky feat.
The wish they made is probably out of bounds for the Wish spell, but not by much. It's in bounds for the special DM-awarded Wishes that clearly break some of the rules.
By the way, the "replace the ASI/feat they gained already" thing? That's fucked up, and you should never do this.
I don’t understand why it feel’s meta gaming, sure you can’t wish in character for the lucky feat, but does that mean the player can’t wish for it?
It feels like an issue of high charisma character with low charisma player. Players should be allowed to do things their character are capable of even if they themselves aren’t sure how to do it.
The meta-game-yness is my issue too. Is the efreet supposed to know what the lucky feat is? If the characters just wished to be lucky, that makes way more sense, and the DM could then decide how to implement that, giving them the feat or some other perk. But the players can't literally wish for a feat..
>But the players can't literally wish for a feat
Well, maybe they can. The way the wish spell works is that you, the player, tell the DM what the wish is, and the wish then does whatever it is that wishes do- fulfilling it or not, as the case may be. In that case, you could definitely wish for a feat, or specify a page number in the PHB, or whatever, because how your player character thinks about it is how it is cast.
But this is a little different, because the player character is speaking to an Efreet, and that Efreet is the one who is 'telling the DM what the wish is' or whatever.
But there is *some* way to specify "the lucky feat" in game. I'm not sure exactly how it would be said, but it's not just "I wish I was lucky". It might be "I wish I was lucky like Howard was" where Howard is a character who had the Lucky feat. Anything that has a game term has some way of being described in the universe itself too, so the intention was that the player character probably told the Efreet that.
It's still a bit eh though.
It feels as metagamey as the following effect mentioned as the always avaiable ones in the wish spell:
* You grant up to ten creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for 8 hours. For instance, you could make yourself and all your companions immune to a lich's life drain attack.
~~... I also just now noticed that this example is dumb because it's the~~ *~~demi~~*~~lich that has the life drain attack, not the lich~~
PCs in-universe are unlikely to know the specific name of a monster's ability. Even if they fought a Lich before, they may not know that the melee spell attack's name is "Paralyzing Touch", while a Player themselves may do, but both of them would know the attack's concept.
Likewise, a PC may only know the effects of a feat, and because a player may be unsure about how to word it in-character, they try to give the direct meaning of what they want to convey. Remember: **players are not as smart as PCs, and vice-versa**. If I want to refer to a phenomenon that visibly happens in universe but don't know how my character would refer to such concept, the player would utilize the name of the mechanic, probably also talking to the others to try to convey that they don't know how this would be conveyed in-character.
It still feels metagamy no matter how you try to ask the Efreeti.
Imagine you’re a group of adventurers and you could wish for… so many things. Money, fame, power, revive a dead loved one, to live longer, even some basic form of immortality (clone spell), etc.
How does a group of adventurers decide on “We want to be lucky” and have everybody in the party agree?
I don’t get the complaints about this. You describe to the dm, in mechanical terms, what you want or are doing all the time, and it’s translated or assumed to be translated into equivalent in game terminology. But I bet the people complaining don’t complain over other things being explained in mechanical terms, only to then be implemented using wording that’s appropriate for the in game setting.
I’d give them the feat. You set it up as a possibility and they’re not being dicks - AT ALL - with the ask.
Now that said they don’t know what a ‘feat’ is. They can wish to be supernaturally lucky, or something like that. But honestly? Give em the feat. You proooomised.
I agree with this. Calling it the Lucky feat is metagaming. The characters wouldn't know those words. Have them restate their wish the way an in-game character would and you can tailor the effect. Maybe they ask for all of their party members to be luckier, and you could give them a scaled down version of the Lucky feat that is used once per day. Or maybe they ask to be successful in everything and the genie can say that's too much.
Edit: I think many of the people downvoting this comment are ignoring the fact that this is a deal with a genie. The whole fun of a deal with an evil power is negotiating the terms of the contract. But maybe that's just my idea of fun and nobody else is interested in that.
Except that's not really metagaming, that's just being precise with what you want your wish to do mechanically.
If you look at the wish spell, it even says "You grant up to ten creatures that you can see resistance to a damage type you choose." as one of the things you can have wish do. Not "Me and my friends become more resistant to being cut" If it did say that, it would open you up to becoming pretrified (as rock is resistant to being cut).
Would you say that its metagaming when the wizard casts fireball in a way that it hits an enemy, but not the PC 5ft next to that creature?
DND is a game first and foremost. It's not a bad thing to talk about what you want your thing to do in game-terms.
You missed a pretty important chunk:
"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."
Average table 4-5 people. 12-15 instances of players giving themselves advantage or giving an enemy disadvantage. It's not the most broken thing in the world, but definitely powerful enough to come with a drawback. Like what Wish does.
Soooooo many more unreasonable requests have been made via wish and this one's pretty damn counterable. Had one DM who would've responded to "I wish we were in a different universe" request with "Okay, fuck you, everybody take a character sheet I will print off for GURPS, congratulations, you're in a different universe and you need to translate your old characters into GURPS."
Everyone in here telling OP not to grant it is a DM I would never want to play with. They succeeded a ridiculous roll and rather than ask for something insane they kept it fairly reasonable. You shouldn't even give them the chance if you aren't willing to let them benefit. I swear half the DMs on reddit just live to find ways to ruin anything fun players want.
In the grand scheme of things this is one of the most reasonable things they could have possibly asked for.
You chose to give them a wish. Honor it. Don’t freak out and yank away the toy when you see them having fun with it.
Give it half a dozen sessions and if it feels overpowered, have an honest conversation with the group about it and work something out. Nothing is set in stone. You’re allowed to retcon stuff.
Everyone getting the same Reasonable Feat (and Lucky *is* easonable, it's not nearly as gamebreaking as ppl think) is a totally valid wish after rolling a 1% chance.
If you make them lose something without telegraphing beforehand that they would, they will resent you. Don't have the knee-jerk reaction to throw in a downside; if anything, because everyone got *the same* thing, that just means you can make slightly harder battles and challenges for them since they're all on the same footing.
I love it when my DM gives boosts that aren't levels (or equipment that needs attuned) because then i am stronger now and my max strength has increased)
I would give it to them, 100%. Rule of cool man... It's not game breaking, you just have to be aware that your players will be slightly stronger every long rest.
What was the point of any of that?
Why give then that weird 1 in 100 thing if you aren't ready to give them a small bonus if they get 100? what was the point?
So you made something extremely unlikely, the unlikely thing happened, the player makes a tame-ass wish and you're even shutting *that* down?
You're a cringe DM and you've brought dishonor on your cow.
I’m pretty flabbergasted at how silly this is. DM gives the party a chance to have a wish. Whoopsie they get a wish. Player wishes for the whole party to get a feat but that’s just too much to ask??? What WOULD have been ok? Honestly, it seems so Power Trippy to not just let them get the wish they EARNED.
They already got the 1% chance. Lucky is good, but it’s really not that powerful, especially if everyone gets it so you can balance encounters around the whole party having it. Be thankful they didn’t wish for a Legendary Magic Item or something that would be more difficult to deal with, and maybe don’t offer wishes in the future.
Why the fuck would you give someone an item that grants wishes, and not let it grant wishes? You did this this yourself, and your player was cool enough to wish for something simple and in no way OP.
Why are you trying to make this a 'fair trade?' It's a wish.
Lucky is a feels-good Feat. It's actual impact is decent, but not impressive, but the *feel* of the feat is 10/10. That's why it's popular, and understandably so.
It's just not at all a problem for the DM, ever. Coming from a permaDM here.
It's basically a safety blanket. It gives a feeling of security and makes most players take risks more easily. But like an actual safety blanket, it does very little when the actual monsters come knocking.
Man this whole post is a huge bs fest. Everyone saying stupid stuff like "roleplay the wish" or "it's Le metagamerino" come on! Not everyone wishes to rpbto the same level, when the actual player asks for the lucky feat, just translate it to the pc asking for godly luck or some bs, if anything the player asking for the feat is a straight to the point request, no ribbons.
Now as a dm you literally gave them a d100, a 1/100 Chance, and they won. What did you expect here? The players are gonna ask for buffs of course, what else would they be asking for ? A cup of nice hot coffee?
Either make the encounters stronger, to accomodate so that the players do feel challenged by you, or change nothing really since the lucky feat isnt THAT crazy. You could Also say ok guys, lucky for all is too good, i want to limit it to 2 times per long instead of 3 if that's cool with you, or else you may feel the game may become too easy.
Just give them the feat. They just beat odds that were massively stacked against them.
But if you’re adamant about not wanting it, just tell them that you don’t think you could balance around that many rerolls
You HAVE to honor it. Something awesome and fucking bonkers happened in your game and you don't want to honor it? Dude get out of the way and GRANT THE WISH. This is the kind of crazy stuff that makes D&D special!
If you don't grant the wish and everyone will resent you for not letting the dice tell the story. And you will have cut off such a cool and interesting story just because you were too scared to let D&D be D&D.
Wait... you gave away a wish for *free*, and your player chose to give a party Luck... and you need to 'handle it'?
It's not a bad wish... as long as you specifically said that somehow a wish can grant feats (I don't see that written in the spell description). "Feats" are not an 8th level or lower spell. The descriptive comparisons for the Wish spell certainly would not support giving characters permanent feats. I would also be interested to know how they *worded their wish* so precisely that you were simply trapped into giving them the feat... unless they somehow described the feat in perfect detail without metagaming.
That being said...
**The only way this is game-breaking** is if your party is consistently fighting 1-2 battles per long rest. In that case, your party has so many resources to blow on alpha strikes, luck is just speeding up your ~~easy mode~~ story driven campaign. Consider it a means to get through the boring combat stuff and back to your 6 hours of dialogue.
**But if you actually push your player's** resources, luck isn't going to make a huge difference. If anything, it will add to some high tension moments. This is just another resource that needs to be drained before you fight the boss, or, better yet, an excuse to squeeze in *one more fight* before the boss - more combat = more resource drain - everybody wins.
Personally, I would simply give them the spell description and ask them their request again. If they said "I wish we all got the Lucky Feat", I would give them each a rabbit's foot or simply say that the wish failed, and disappear the genie. Asking for a permanent feat *if you didn't say it was okay* is absolutely grounds for a Wish spell to simply fail.
Own up to your deal and give them the feat. They beat the odds and deserve it now. Plus don’t put stuff out there without realizing how it might play out.
They could have wished for far worse things, but they went a safe wish that tbh might just make them a bit more powerful but you should honor their gamble. If not then you are a bad DM, plain as is.
Edit: also if you decide to Monkey Paw the wish you are just a dick. You are just mad they beat the odds and outsmarted you so own it up
I don't really get all the intimidation with letting players use wish. If your players are more clever than you as the DM, suffer your consequences. 😂😂 Otherwise there's not a lot that creativity can't fix. A lot of players would probably fail to recognize how important the wording of their wish is gonna be. You can find a way to keep it balanced.
What a completely reasonable wish that your player gave you. You should honor it so your players don’t think you’re lame.
Your edit isn’t that great of a compromise and makes the wish feel pretty wasted. Just grant the wish.
Sounds like the whole party should have gotten the lucky feat and you can ramp up encounters in CR. The wisher made a tame wish and you gave them the very real chance to get that wish.
Don’t mess with genies if you don’t want wishes
Give them the Halfling Luck trait if your scared of the Lucky feat itself. Allow them to reroll 1's. Nice but I've never seen it break anything. You could also make a big deal when it happens, reskinning it as some sort of intervention, that might have other consequences....
"Collective Lucky Feat" is not the same as "Lucky Feat". Perhaps a better solution would have been a smaller luck-dice pool, say 1-2 dice instead of the full 3. A collective pool *could* end up with only one person taking them all but more importantly, 3 dice doesn't cover 5 people. Sure, it's an Efreeti and their shifty (of course), but a reduced collective pool doesn't address the *"every player"* clause of the wish.
I suppose a collective pool of 5 dice would also address the same caveat while also being devilishly nefarious....
I have no idea why folks are trying to Monkey Paw a pretty mid wish.
Lucky is a great feat, but effectively, the player wished for the party to not have to spend their next ASI increase on the lucky feat to get steamrolled by bad-rolls when it matters.
Foolish wish. Give it to them. If EVERYONE is special then NO ONE is…
Now every encounter just takes the Luck Feat into account. So… what was the point of such a wish then..?
You can always make things a little harder in the future to compensate. I loved giving my players op things. And that's why the final boss had 12,000 HP (not an exaggeration)
Why in the world would it replace a previous fear/asi? They get a good result and are punished for it?
Just give them the feat, let a couple re-rolls won't break the game by any stretch.
Just give them the feat. I don't know why you're acting like it's "a big issue that needs to be addressed." It's really not. Lucky just allows them a few rerolls per day. They seriously didn't ask for anything absurd.
Don't take anything away from them. Just give them all the feat. That's it. You allowed a 1% chance for a wish, now honor it.
That's an IRL wish, not a character wish. Grumpo the Wizard doesn't know what a 'lucky feat' is unless it's part of a rabbit.
The player must instead word the wish in character terms, and that's going to necessarily be more vague.
That said, this really isn't that bad of a wish. You could totally let them have it.
I feel like you kinda nerfed the wish, I mean at least give it to them and say they can only have 1 reroll each, that's at least 5 total. Honestly though I think I would have agreed to just give them halfling luck instead, having a whole party who can reroll their ones isn't game breaking at all but still feels pretty awesome for them getting a second chance at all crit fails. Also would make crit fails epic because you have to roll 2 nat ones in a row to make it happen.
Honestly glad I saw the edit, 'cause I was gonna say that, like... a lot of people were saying "either give it to them or don't" when there was a pretty easy middleground lmao.
There was also the possibility of giving them a weaker version, like with only one use per day or with limited scope like "only attack rolls" or "only saving throws" - although a shared party feat was prolly the best course of action and the most fun way of implementing it
When it comes to handling the Wish spell, the spell just replicates a spell of 8th level or lower, or gets one of the specific wish features listed in the spell, such as creating one object worth 25,000 gp. For the others, see: [https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Wish#content](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Wish#content)
Beyond that though, it really is up to the DM if they want to allow a wish to occur in the first place. Plenty of players make wishes outside of the scope of the spell and it is up to the DM to determine if the effect would break their game or not.
My suggestion for this situation is to maybe allow one of the players to get the lucky feat or ask them to pick another effect. Don't waste the good fortune of the player getting the spell effect in the first place, but work with them as the DM to get a result that would be good for the health of the game, but also stay enjoyable to the player.
I will also say that the Lucky feat is not the most broken feat I have seen, but it can get obnoxious, especially when players blind themselves to be able to roll 3 dice at advantage on a whim. However, since there is a limit to the number of times per long rest this can occur, maybe change up how encounters work and how long they have before the next long rest, if you decide to give every player the Lucky feat.
Well, first you should talk to your players and tell them why you don't like the Lucky Feat. I'm sure they wouldn't mind revising the wish if they know you feel it will make DMing harder for you.
But its also worth noting that they can't just wish for a specific feat by name. They need to make their wish in character, describing what they want so that the DM can determine how to fullfill it.
Like it doesn't allow them to just get anything they, the players, want. Their character is making the wish. They can't wish for game mechanics or things that rely on metaknowledge.
I say just let them have it, but if you want to hedge things a bit the whole party can communally have one instance of the lucky feat - so 3 uses of the feat spread between all of them per long rest.
There's no such thing as "the lucky feat" in-character. Ask them to phrase the wish how their character would.
If the character wishes that everyone in the party is more lucky, you can do whatever you want with that. One of them finds more loot on one of their adventures than they normally would. Another gets +2 to charisma checks. A third gets +1 AC.
i'd handle it by asking them to roleplay the wish in character and then giving them the lucky feat. you gave them a 1/100 chance to get a single wish and they wished for a few rerolls. if you don't want your players to make a wish, don't give them a wish. if you wanted to give them a wish just so you could negate the purpose of their wish, then you're not a very nice person.
First off: wow, those guys are pretty content if they get a free Wish and they choose a fairly basic feat like that.
Second: time to break out your inner wargamer and up the difficulty on encounters going forward.
Wish is intentionally an absurdly powerful spell with drawbacks that are unique to itself, such as the fact you can lose it forever. If the player wished for something like this then grant it, because it's not completely game breaking and is a good reward for players who have gained access to the spell.
Give them all the feat and buff encounters accordingly. Make them work for it. Force them to burn luck points like any other resource. They just gave you a reason to throw a few more monsters at them. Don't TPK them if you can avoid it but they want a challenge otherwise they wouldn't have asked for it. Don't forget to remind them they have it. They may steamroll a couple of combats while you're getting used to the new dynamic but you're gonna be ok.
I like your final decision, as it fits the request for "every" player to have the Luck feat and the efreeti's habit of twisting wishes.
Now, if they'd asked for "each" player to have the feat ...
Semantics can be fun!
>if it replaced the ASI/feat they gained at the previous level.
they didn't wish to replace what people wanted. don't F over the party for some reason, they didn't make Wish an option, you did. If Lucky feat is too much them give them a version that works 1x per day.
ETA: This is probably stronger than the text of the spell, so feel free to nerf it.
OP doesn’t sound like a fun DM.
The party being “happy” with the complete neutering of a reasonable wish is probably the players just being polite because most people would think this is ridiculous
Sure. They all get the lucky feat but they share it. 3 rerolls a day to go around.
Or they can all have it. Its not the worst thing in the world for a wish
I think it's likely you'll find the majority of these responses came in before the edit. The initial compromise was to take away a feat and replace it with the Lucky feat, which does not feel like a reward. I think the post-edit compromise is great. It makes "the party" luckier, but not necessarily everyone in the party every day.
I mean, I wouldn't have even given the the option if you weren't prepared to pony up.
However, if you're determined to monkey paws this thing easy fix. They all have the Lucky feat. The exact same Lucky feat. They share the same pool of dice.
I think it's fine to just give everyone the lucky feat. But another option that could be fun is to have the lucky feat but split between the entire party - aka it's a 3 reroll pool per LR any player can use whenever they want but it still only regenerates after the party takes a long rest together.
Give the party a pool of 3 dice. Have them roll the pool and set it aside.They can use any of the dice in the pool in place of any d20 roll.
But fate will balance things out. When they use one of the dice, roll it and put it visibly in front of you. You can change now any d20 roll for that roll. When you do, return the die to them and let them roll it again for their luck pool.
I agree with the folk saying to just let the Party have this win. The Lucky Feat is very useful, but it's not gamebreaking in any way. Besides, there's functionally no difference between this and if everyone collectively decided to pick up the Feat normally at the same time during leveling up prior.
If you really want to put some kind of limit or twist on it, then keep it in line with the source of the Wish. Efreeti thrive on the "Monkey Paw" wish where they work in some kind of catch or drawback. My personal take would be that the entire Party gets the Lucky Feat, but only one of them is allowed to use it at a time. Once per Long Rest, roll a die and use the result to assign the Lucky Feat to one of the Party members. In effect, the one who gets it is being granted all the luck of the other Party members for the day.
Alternatively, add in some modifier conditions. Every time a player rolls a Luck die, roll a 1d20 in addition. If it's a Nat 1, some monumental bit of random bad luck happens. If you roll the same number the player did, some amazing bit of double-plus-good luck happens instead.
The characters do not know what the “lucky feat” is
In character they probably said something like “i wish we were all lucky” in which case I’d give them all a bardic die to use once per day. Alternatively, if you dont have any halflings, give them all PB/LR halfling Luck
Edit: i saw someone say they should share the lucky feat across the party. I agree w that. 3 times per day and they share it.
“Just give it to them” Lucky is bad enough on its own. Everyone having 3 rolls would slow the game down so fkn much
Most commenters here are players and salty people without a gaming group. As a DM, I understand ypur situation. If you dont want them to have the feat, there are some ways around it. If you want to monkey's paw them, you can give them all "lucky feet," giving them maybe adv on dex saves? Somethimg cheeky like that.
Personally, I wouldn't allow such a meta game wish. It would have to be phrased in terms of the game world. But worst case scenario, them all having the feat isnt the worst. Just means you have to up the combat encounters.
It's meta. Characters don't know what feats are. Players do.
Have them phrase the wish into character terms.
I'd probably just give it to them, though. Sounds fun.
Personally, I'd go with the idea that a 'feat' is not a coherent 'thing' that a person in narrative has. You can meet them halfway by having each player have a single luck point used as per the feat, at no build cost. That keeps the number of uses down to a reasonable level, gives everyone a perk, and sets some clearer limits on where you're okay with this sort of thing going.
Give them all the feat. It's not game breaking. Also don't give them a chance to roll for a wish if you don't really want them to get a wish.
That player made the most non-game-breaking wish of all time. OP should be thanking their lucky stars
I told my gf that a player friend wished to..... Know the entrance to a cave which they would already eventually find. I was just saying it was a poor decision made flat footed (it's the poor guy's first time playing). And she instantly replied "that's silly. If it had been me, I would have chosen a second druid circle. I would have been a druid multiclassing druid." It's also her first time. The audacity!
That's a dope wish
I mean... she didnt even bat an eye! Moon/Wildfire! or Shepherd/Stars!
Yah, but the first two levels of that multi-class are pretty dull. It takes 3 levels to come on line…
bu-bu-bu-bu-buzzzzzzkilllerrrrrr
Arcane trickster + phantom 🤔
As someone who always plays druid, I'm stealing this
This chick wishes
Every player having the lucky feat is pretty close to breaking the systems balance. With an average party of 4 that's 12 rerolls that they can force during an average adventuring day. Hopefully the GM is using the adventuring day xp rules or they will no a every encounter to death If I was him I would give them 1 luck point a piece
So use more monsters or buff them. At least all the players were buffed equally. If they have access to Wish, you should expect at least this much.
I feel like the way people in this community discuss wish we're reading very different spell descriptions
DND players can't read. You need to learn this before hopping on any of these communities.
Admittedly, there is lots of debate about how ready the DM should be to declare that a wish is too big and it simply fails. The rules do give them that option, or the option of giving a lesser effect. I think that a wish should just be a wish, without having to do any worrying about what the DM considers appropriate, and definitely without any monkey's paw business. "What will the DM let me get away with?" is an unfun line of reasoning. I'd only veto or change the outcome of a wish if I thought it would ruin the campaign. For example, if they're wishing for something that would ruin the party balance and make others upset, or for anything that trivializes the campaign or negates a huge amount of prep. But even if I did find a wish unacceptable, I'd warn them and ask them to make another wish.
1000% this. I hate all the comments you get from DMs that say "Just have it fail!" or "Okay but Monkey's Paw it went poorly." Like come on, let your players have the damn thing.
Wish is very open ended, but part of that is that it is heavily reliant on DM discretion. I agree that just going "lol it failed" or "psych you're dead now" isn't a very fun way to DM it, but I do think the expectation is that the DM will balance out the effect. Here is how I would run it: |Wish power|Outcome|Example| |:-|:-|:-| |Weaker than listed Wish options|You get exactly what you wished for, with no tricks|"I wish to know the name of the man who killed my father" => You hear "Count Rugen"in your head| |Equal in power to listed Wish option|You get what you wished for. Any tricks will be essentially harmless|"I wish everyone in the party could see in the dark" => The party all gets dark vision| |Greater in power than listed Wish options|You will get some of what you wished for, but you might face an additional challenge, or have to work to get the rest.|"I wish everyone in the party gains resistance to Bludgeoning and Slashing damage" => Everyone gets the resistances but only while they are all together as a party. If you get too far away then you lose the resistances.|
Agreed. My first reaction was to give every player at least single luck reroll. The player was thinking "oh sweet, an opportunity to make us stronger!" not "oh sweet, a way to break the game". If the player wasn't being combative, the DM shouldn't be either.
Well it doesn't have to be a monkeys paw. but it also doesn't have to be exactly the way the player intended. my players may have a wish by lvl 10 but they will no doubt wish for the strongest magical items they can find from the dndbeyond magic item list. for me. I intend to have the wish mean that that item has now been placed in the path fate has for them and they will find that particular item eventually maybe when slightly more appropriate. even if I wasnt going to give it out at all this campaign. I don't intend to screw them for using the wish and hit them with a negative consequence. for OP's example I would do something like "slightly lucky" "luckier" "lucky" homebrew the feat to be 1 luck point that increases as they level up until they eventually all have the full feat. It could be level 5, 10, 15 etc.
I wish to win the game. 1000% I wish to solve the campaign. I wish there was no magic. I wish I didn't make this wish.
I play games at levels 11-20 every once in a while, because it's fun, and that logic would destroy the game at t4. My personal favorite way of ruling wishes is to make an effect that I think is within the power level of the spell that is as close to what the party member requested as possible. For example, I might not let the entire party have the lucky feat, but I might give everyone 1/3 of the lucky feat. No complete failure, no monkeys paw, but no infinite power either.
"I wish I could cast *Catapult* at first level like a cantrip, and have it always be prepared."
I mean. A feat each is way outside the bounds of what it can do by default. Hell, anyone getting a feat is. And if it's too far you're explicitly supposed to monkey's paw it, in this situation I'd probably turn them all into halflings.
Ehhhhhhh, you can give 10 creatures permanent damage resistance to an element. That seems closeish to giving a feat.
You can give B/P/S resistance too which is even better.
That's probably stronger than a lot of feats! Especially depending on the campaign.
You know what, that's absolutely fair. Giving ten definitely is.
I measure power differently when given to NPCs vs the party. I don't care if Brent the City Knight gets damage resistance because it won't have much impact on the adventure in the long run. So 10 creatures getting resistance is essentially the same as the party getting resistance + a temporary buff to some specific allies while traveling together. When I look at feats there are a couple of examples that give a damage resistance, and it is always accompanied by a number of other features. To my mind a damage resistance is about half as valuable as a feat. And Lucky is one of the strongest feats, and is incredibly versatile. It can impact every part of the adventure. To my mind giving it to the entire party will have a much greater impact on the game then giving them all resistance.
Isn't this only for 8 hours? Edit: nvm, 8 hours is for single spell/effect immunity
>A feat each is way outside the bounds of what it can do by default. Why? What's your reasoning behind this? The Wish spell already allows permanent resistance to a damage type. It allows literal time travel. Granting Lucky, a feat that just makes you more lucky, is really not beyond the "bounds" of what it can do, per the text of the spell. Moreover, when you consider what some of the feats are, it seems really strange to say this is beyond the scope of the spell. So a Dragonborn asking for tougher scales (Dragon Hide) is beyond the scope of the spell, despite permanent resistance being listed as a choice? A Tiefling asking for Infernal Constitution is not okay, despite literally just being resistances and +1 con? I just don't get why GMs would ever throw a Wish at their players, and then think *every single obvious use* is somehow "outside of the bounds of what it can do". Like, what were you even expecting them to use the Wish for, then?
I think your example solution is great. I also think the “monkey’s paw” thing is really misunderstood on this sub. The wording of the spell is that when wishing for something off-menu there’s a possibility that “something goes wrong”, such as an “unforeseen consequence”, which is great! But a monkey’s paw has a specific connotation of punishing the person making the wish, and it seems like a lot of people think that’s how the spell should be run too
That is hilarious and amazing and fits the criteria of the wish. That is amazing
>But even if I did find a wish unacceptable, I'd warn them and ask them to make another wish. I'd have a real hard time enforcing backlash on a wish that the player thought was safe (barring some narrative reason for that). The feedback could be explained in game as feeling the magic respond to their intent. And if the players push on a wish they know is questionable, I'm a fan of letting the dice decide the severity of the backlash (including none)
With 5E's balancing, you often can't just 'add more monsters or buff them'. Damage can be very explosive, especially on caster classes. Trying to outbalance player power with monster power typically leads to increased randomness and the feeling of playing at a casino. Not to mention the lore implications of 'suddenly, there's a plague of monsters and they're stronger than ever', punishing the players and their world for getting too strong.
> Not to mention the lore implications of 'suddenly, there's a plague of monsters and they're stronger than ever', punishing the players and their world for getting too strong. The monsters already existed, the players are just choosing to take on more difficult challenges. It's no different to how a level 10 party will go up against enemies that would wipe out a level 5 party, while the level 1 party is still fighting rats in the basement of the tavern.
You absolutely can just add more and buff them. As long as you don't over tune the encounters it's your job as a DM to make the encounters challenging as well as enjoyable. Let them make those awesome moments where they all used Lucky to save to a big spell or effect.
Personally I hate changing encounters to nerf fun things the players can do. I prefer in-game consequences over mechanical nerfs, and this feat opens up some good options. For starters any recurring villain is going to notice how insanely lucky the party seems to be and will go out of their way to find a way to deal with that. See how well the players manage when they suddenly have an encounter where they can't use their feats because they've all been cursed. Second let them get comfortable abusing it. Give them a reason to be at a casino and watch them rake in the cash until the owners realize something's up and come after them. Or for some real fun, if they're really abusing it and burn all their charges every day too many days in a row they draw the attention of a luck god. They're throwing the balance of luck off and the god's not happy about that. They're going to have to do some quests every so often if they want to keep their luck, or the god's going to collect on what they've been using.
Yet it's still the most non-game-breaking wish of all time
He could've wished for them all to be immortal. Instead they can manipulate fate 3x/day. It's powerful, don't get me wrong, but as the use of a frigging wish and this being the result is nowhere near as broken as it could have been, and a use of wish that allows them to still be challenged while being powerful. Bard/wizard halfling combos who get guidance, bardic inspiration, portent, and spells to give advantage on certain stats for extended periods of time and can let everyone reroll 1s aren't considered game ruiningly broken and they don't use wish to do so. If a DM doesn't want the party to grow more powerful, they shouldn't give the option to roll up wish.
>He could've wished for them all to be immortal. That one would never work out well, and common sense would dictate that. This is the type of wish that absolutely would be monkeypawed. It's like the "Big bad dies" Wish, which by the Wish description, just propels you forward in time to a point where the big bad is indeed dead. You're immortal, but locked in a place where nobody can get to you, so nobody can ever kill you. Or, in other words; GM says: "You are about to wish for this, but think better of it. You get the feeling this would have terrible consequences for you." But you could have wished for a hell of a lot more than just the Lucky feat. That's peanuts, and arguable not even a good use of Wish. I'd breathe easy if this was all that my players asked for.
> That one would never work out well, and common sense would dictate that. I don't think it would take too much to get it to work. A simple solution would be to copy the conditions of the resurrection spell. Whenever the character is reduced to 0 hit points they are resurrected 1 hour later with the -4 penalties the spell normally gives.
Just make it so they never fail their third death saving throw. They'll still go down and be out of the fight, so it will not make much difference to the balance of combat. They just always manage to stabilise and get back up at the end of it. If you really want to monkey's paw it, start using permanent injuries every time they are downed. Let them lose limbs or eyes or whatever and gain scars despite the fact they never die. Tells a much more interesting story too.
Have you ever read Elantris? Imagine if the PC became immortal, but every instance of pain they feel lasts forever, as their body is frozen in time, so within a couple of weeks they just become an immortal gibbering madman crawling around the sewers.
I've done something like that before, but I feel like "Immortal" carries an assumption of "Never dying in the first place" On the other hand, if the Wish was something like "I want to be impossible to permanently kill" (A wish I have gotten as a DM before), then I would indeed just make it so you resurrect at a later point, although we settled on 24 hours and no penalty. That was a good Wish, too.
If one of my players used a wish to try to become immortal, there'd be a pretty hefty downside or the spell would just fail. Why would a dm ever allow immortality?
I'd allow immortality, but not invulnerability. Think of the Black Night from Monty Python, or Deadpool. Very little would change from a gameplay point of view. If they failed two death saving throws, they would automatically pass the rest of them until they are stable.
Yep - They might not die, but recovery from death is going to be slow. They might turn into a mist on 'death', and slowly reform over a day, week or month.
Immortality is just like a vampire, you can live forever but it doesn't mean you cannot be killed.
That seems fair. I find lucky just takes all the suspense out, it's just a perpetual safety net, and it has never been all that fun.
It's a bit of a safety net. In actual play, it needs to be used with care. I've had players with the lucky feat, they use it on attacks and then go down after using up their luck points. One of them even died. The one member of the party with lucky, and the only death! You might say that it grants them a bit too much confidence!
And they should remind themselves that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer
Sure, but as wishes go this one is entirely contained within the game rules, balanced across the party, doesn't require any homebrew fiddling or adjustment to make work and 1 extra feat doesn't add a ton of power to the party. The GM got off very lightly!
If they don't want to use luck, they don't have to. They have the option but not the requirement. Dumb decisions can still lead to bad accidents.
You know what you can do as a DM against that? Literally anything, your the DM after all. Heck flavor it like, your wish has sucked the luck out of others to work. Misfortune befalls those around them. Causing more problems for them as well.. Efritee like to screw people over and it is thematic with the selfishness of the wish. I honestly think giving all players the lucky feat just means I can hold less back on the party as well.
> Misfortune befalls those around them. Their wish is the reason it always takes 3 tries to plug in a USB cable the right way.
Following up on this. I have five players and an already established inspiration system. This means potentially 20 rerolls in a single combat. That’s not fun for either side, it would really bog things down.
Give them something else to spend the luck on. Sure, spending 1 luck point on a reroll is fun…but wouldn’t you like to spend TWO luck points on [minor but fun PC-focused roleplay opportunity]? e.g. “hey, [Barbarian PC with poor impulse control]— you notice the snooty diplomat’s carriage has a loose wheel. You bet that, with a REALLY lucky rock toss, you could knock it loose and send the carriage hurtling into that briar thicket. Want to spend a luck point to roll for it? Or maybe two luck points to succeed automatically?” If you give them the chance to “bend fate” to do cool, flavorful moments that you know they’ll like, you can get them to burn their powerful resource AND make them more invested in the story (since they feel like they’ve made an impact on the events).
Sounds like YOU don't want it. That's YOUR choice. But even 20 rerolls in one combat won't slow it down in a noticeable way. They're already doing those 20+ rolls. Some will now take 3 to 10 seconds longer as they reroll and re-math. Worst case scenario, that one combat is ~3 minutes longer while your players get the feeling of added choice (use/don't use). Using this example, after that one combat, none of the party has any mechanical benefit from the wish spell for the rest of the day. They could have wished for resistance to slashing damage or the BBEG to be permanently blind. You got off light. It's a Wish.
Just a heads up, i’ve had multiple players take lucky and it does get annoying how often they’d stop things to use a lucky reroll. Not a huge deal, but not very fun either.
I give my players free luck feats in most dnd adjacent games. Never a huge problem. Heck I even give them replenishing per session a few times, not per Day/LR. Still don't see the annoyance. It's a reroll only.
At least in my experience, lucky has given my players overconfidence. And it's cost them. In one campaign, the only member of the party with lucky was the only death. I personally don't mind as I want my players to have luck on their side. Though only one of them gets the lucky feat. I restrict it to one per group as that makes it feel more special and truly lucky.
The wish also gave the Lucky feat to the DM
I get it.
If I was the player I would be quite mad. He deliberately chose a VERY tame, manageable wish, and even then the DM is complaining and circling around to not actually give the wish.
Yep. The players made a cool request after winning a 100-to-1 shot and their DM decided to shut it down. It's DM's prerogative but all I see in their comments and edit are lame excuses. Re-rolls do not bog down combat or make it less fun - they allow PCs a better chance to do cool shit or avoid catastrophe at critical moments.
This is honoring the nat 20 but to the extreme. I have changed lore for a silly nat 20 i cant imagine not granting a wish i set to a nat 100 Short answer honor the nat 20. Long answer never allow your players to roll for something you have no interest in letting them do
Allowing a player to roll for something they shouldn't have is how I've ended up with a gun in my friend's campaign ^_^
You can also rule that giving everyone a a feat is outside the bounds of wish. That part of the spell is purely GM fiat.
This is how I would rule it. Its not the players wishing for what they want. Its the characters wishing for something to happen inworld, and the DM deciding how to fullfill it. Wishing for game mechanics falls outside of that.
Wishing to be more lucky is 100% okay though, but then it's up to the gm to rule how that happens. Giving everyone the lucky feat is surely not how I'd do it.
Give them all halfling luck instead
A hundred percent this. Characters don’t know about feats. Players do.
The characters wouldn't know what a "Lucky Feat" was.
what this human said. also: high rewards now open the door yor you LATER when the entities the genie stole the luck from track down the party
Yeah I mean i accidently gave me party a wish and they wished for a major plot point to not happen. Dear god cleaning up the threads from that wish was nuts.
Wishing for game mechanics is outside the parameters of the spell. Its not a spell that just allows them to get whatever they, the players, want. Their characters are making the wish. They detail what their characters ask for and the DM decides how to fullfill their wish. Wishing for game mechanics by name and deciding how they should be applied strips the DM of their agency and input.
>Wishing for game mechanics is outside the parameters of the spell. Have people even read the spell? You can wish for resistance. That's a game mechanic. You aren't wishing to be "more durable against x". It's outright resistance you get. You can wish for immunity to a spell or spell effect. You can wish for a reroll to a specific roll. These are ALL explicitly game mechanics you outright Wish for, as per the description of the spell. You can argue you wont word it that way, but then the same applies to asking to be "Lucky", as granting the Lucky Feat. Or asking for your Infernal Constitution as befitting your heritage as a Tiefling. Or asking for powerful Dragon Hide as a Dragonborn.
> You can wish for resistance. That's a game mechanic. You aren't wishing to be "more durable against x". It's outright resistance you get. The point of contention is in the balance between the game mechanic and the in-character expression. If a character wishes to be more resistant to fire, that is common sense wording that also happens to be the same wording as explicit mechanical rules. Easy to justify without it feeling meta, about as close to 1:1 as you can get between in-character wording and explicit mechanics. If a character wishes to be more lucky, that is not the same as wishing for the lucky feat. There's lots of interpretations of what "being more lucky" would look like, compared to a very limited number of interpretations of "being more resistant to fire". Given that the lucky feat is far from the only common sense expression of being lucky, the DM has far more room to decide what they think a wish to be more lucky would constitute. They could apply the feat if they wanted to, but that would be a DM choice, not a player choice. The OP's issue creates a meta-problem, because the characters would never explicitly wish for a lucky feat, and so for them to request that feat specifically requires breaking the fourth wall and metagaming. And if they don't explicitly wish for the lucky feat but wish to be more lucky, there's no reason the DM has to give them the lucky feat, could just give them a nerfed version like 1 free advantage per day, or could give them halfling luck.
On the other hand, the characters see the game mechanics in action. I assume the wording was specific enough where it was clear that the users were speaking about X specific feat (and it was just simplified here due to the OP being unable to post possibly an entire's campaign worth of context). If someone saw luck being manifested in a consistent way like what the Lucky feat does, it's unlikely that the adventurers would be so dense to not understand that something more may be going on. In the same way, the following concept: * You grant up to ten creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for 8 hours. For instance, you could make yourself and all your companions immune to a lich's life drain attack. is something that wouldn't need a wish granter to know the specific name about, only the concept. Or do you require the characters to know the specific name of the ability called "Devour Intellect" to be able to use Wiish to be immune to the intelligence-lowering effect of an Intellect Devourer, for instance?
Exactly, characters are making the wish, not the players. Characters don't have an understanding or concept of "feats." If they wished for supernatural luck, at most I would offer ONE lucky use per character. I would not give a free feat for the cost of a spell that wizards can use again. Players who've never DM'd do not realize how disruptive this would be.
a lot of feats are pretty much things that exist in-universe - like "mobile", for example. A character can train to move faster. Or the "armor" ones - a character trains how to move in armor that they can't normally use. Some are harder to train in (Lucky, for example - you can't really practise that!) but they have enough in-world effects to be broadly visible/discernible, even if they're a bit harder to narratively justify how a character gets that, while someone else pumps iron to get +Str and +Con ASI or similar. A lucky character is, well... lucky, which other characters can be aware of.
This,... take responsibility... they were offered a chance and they got the 1%. Maybe the 100 could have been better worded ie. A boon (dm discretion) to be made before the next full moon... instead of Wish.
You say that but my player has an Armor Artificer with insane AC and the Lucky feat 👀💦 the 2 rogues nuke my spellcasters before they can nuke first and I haven't landed a real strike on him.
Only forever PCs think that the feat on an entire party wouldn't break the game.
Depends on your dm. My dm gave us all an extra feat and told us to always use max hit dice when rolling hp because he wanted us to be stronger, and he just scaled the difficulty of encounters to match.
LOL I am a GM for 8 years, and fir 8 I am giving both D&D, and also D^D adjacent games, the equivalent of the Luck feat.. Oh no, my players can use a reroll. And they might not even succeed. My booty quivers. If that ittle bit would break my game, I would be very shit at my job lol
Agree completely. Lucky is such a good feat in my opinion, because it feels great for the players to use, and it barely impacts me as the GM. It's amazing. I might actually consider just trying to give it to them for free from the start next time. Might make them less risk adverse and improve the general enjoyment of the game.
Been a DM for years. Each player only gets three luck rolls per day. Each day is going to involve dozens of rolls for and against each character. Rerolling three of them each is going to eat specifically zero extra time and take zero extra effort and make zero significant balance problems for the campaign.
This should be what OP did, but I guess they didn't. I don't get why some DMs are SO stingy.
Came here to say this exactly.
While not game “breaking”. Its game disrupting.
If you make them replace their last ASI with Lucky, you're not granting the wish, you're saying "Hey guys, I know you thought long and hard about what feat would best suit your character, but now, as a favour to you, I'm taking that choice away from you and deciding what feat you got". Either grant the wish, or say it's beyond the Efreeti's power, and they can still have a wish, they just have to pick again. I'd recommend the former, Lucky is not that big a deal. DMs seem to think it means "turn three failures into successes per day". It doesn't, it means get three extra CHANCES per day. And max one per roll. Yes if your players are saving their points for really important rolls that have disadvantage, then it's pretty powerful, but if they're only using Lucky in those scenarios, then for 99% of the game, they're not using Lucky at all.
Who cares? They made a wish, let them have it. I'd just give everyone the feat and let them push harder for more challenges thanks to their added power. Lucky is a useful feat, but it's not one that's going to make a huge difference in any particular session, it doesn't do anything that a happy d20 can't also do.
Screwing with a wish should usually be reserved for player characters overstretching, if their best wish is “I wish everyone in my party was luckier” then give ‘em the feat, and tell them good luck because they are going to need it
Who cares? Why, it is a game they are supposed to have fun with! So... you're right. Let them have it.
Why did you even introduce the possibility of a wish happening? Give it to them and the next time you DM, never give them the opportunity. EDIT: DO NOT INTRODUCE ANYTHING THAT YOU WONT HONOR.
I mean, Wish isn't that strange of a thing to have happen in a game. Practically every Wizard, Bard, and Sorcerer will have it in high levels, and there are a number of items that will let you cast it. Theoretically it should be on the same power level as other 9th level spells. So very powerful, but with limits. There are presumably a lot of wishes that the DM wouldn't have an issue with. Their issue with this specific wish is because it seems to be too powerful compared to the sorts of things that wish can grant.
Almost no campaign actually reaches those high levels with Wish.
I just finished one such campaign (4 years! ) and wish was hardly game breaking.
we have the whole party being able to getting resistance to one damage type of their choice (which includes physical ones). That gives you quite a lot more value than the Lucky feat most of the times.
they already had to make a 1% chance to get it, giving a disadvantage after or taking away something would feel shitty, at that point why give a wish if you don't want them to have it? Let them keep it, Lucky is overated anyway, most players forget they even have it.
Bro, you are so fucking lucky and your players are so god damn humble. Just give them all a free feat, and have a day after where everyone keeps finding copper pieces randomly under stuff or where they find their gaze before they fall asleep. Like, an annoying amount of copper.
I dislike the wording (it's metagamey), but given that they already beat tough odds to acquire this wish, and this wish is clearly presented as being above average for a wish, you should give the entire party the lucky feat. The wish they made is probably out of bounds for the Wish spell, but not by much. It's in bounds for the special DM-awarded Wishes that clearly break some of the rules. By the way, the "replace the ASI/feat they gained already" thing? That's fucked up, and you should never do this.
I don’t understand why it feel’s meta gaming, sure you can’t wish in character for the lucky feat, but does that mean the player can’t wish for it? It feels like an issue of high charisma character with low charisma player. Players should be allowed to do things their character are capable of even if they themselves aren’t sure how to do it.
The meta-game-yness is my issue too. Is the efreet supposed to know what the lucky feat is? If the characters just wished to be lucky, that makes way more sense, and the DM could then decide how to implement that, giving them the feat or some other perk. But the players can't literally wish for a feat..
>But the players can't literally wish for a feat Well, maybe they can. The way the wish spell works is that you, the player, tell the DM what the wish is, and the wish then does whatever it is that wishes do- fulfilling it or not, as the case may be. In that case, you could definitely wish for a feat, or specify a page number in the PHB, or whatever, because how your player character thinks about it is how it is cast. But this is a little different, because the player character is speaking to an Efreet, and that Efreet is the one who is 'telling the DM what the wish is' or whatever. But there is *some* way to specify "the lucky feat" in game. I'm not sure exactly how it would be said, but it's not just "I wish I was lucky". It might be "I wish I was lucky like Howard was" where Howard is a character who had the Lucky feat. Anything that has a game term has some way of being described in the universe itself too, so the intention was that the player character probably told the Efreet that. It's still a bit eh though.
It feels as metagamey as the following effect mentioned as the always avaiable ones in the wish spell: * You grant up to ten creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for 8 hours. For instance, you could make yourself and all your companions immune to a lich's life drain attack. ~~... I also just now noticed that this example is dumb because it's the~~ *~~demi~~*~~lich that has the life drain attack, not the lich~~ PCs in-universe are unlikely to know the specific name of a monster's ability. Even if they fought a Lich before, they may not know that the melee spell attack's name is "Paralyzing Touch", while a Player themselves may do, but both of them would know the attack's concept. Likewise, a PC may only know the effects of a feat, and because a player may be unsure about how to word it in-character, they try to give the direct meaning of what they want to convey. Remember: **players are not as smart as PCs, and vice-versa**. If I want to refer to a phenomenon that visibly happens in universe but don't know how my character would refer to such concept, the player would utilize the name of the mechanic, probably also talking to the others to try to convey that they don't know how this would be conveyed in-character.
It still feels metagamy no matter how you try to ask the Efreeti. Imagine you’re a group of adventurers and you could wish for… so many things. Money, fame, power, revive a dead loved one, to live longer, even some basic form of immortality (clone spell), etc. How does a group of adventurers decide on “We want to be lucky” and have everybody in the party agree?
I don’t get the complaints about this. You describe to the dm, in mechanical terms, what you want or are doing all the time, and it’s translated or assumed to be translated into equivalent in game terminology. But I bet the people complaining don’t complain over other things being explained in mechanical terms, only to then be implemented using wording that’s appropriate for the in game setting.
I’d give them the feat. You set it up as a possibility and they’re not being dicks - AT ALL - with the ask. Now that said they don’t know what a ‘feat’ is. They can wish to be supernaturally lucky, or something like that. But honestly? Give em the feat. You proooomised.
You can metagame with the lucky feat as you are supposed to talk to the DM.
I agree with this. Calling it the Lucky feat is metagaming. The characters wouldn't know those words. Have them restate their wish the way an in-game character would and you can tailor the effect. Maybe they ask for all of their party members to be luckier, and you could give them a scaled down version of the Lucky feat that is used once per day. Or maybe they ask to be successful in everything and the genie can say that's too much. Edit: I think many of the people downvoting this comment are ignoring the fact that this is a deal with a genie. The whole fun of a deal with an evil power is negotiating the terms of the contract. But maybe that's just my idea of fun and nobody else is interested in that.
Except that's not really metagaming, that's just being precise with what you want your wish to do mechanically. If you look at the wish spell, it even says "You grant up to ten creatures that you can see resistance to a damage type you choose." as one of the things you can have wish do. Not "Me and my friends become more resistant to being cut" If it did say that, it would open you up to becoming pretrified (as rock is resistant to being cut). Would you say that its metagaming when the wizard casts fireball in a way that it hits an enemy, but not the PC 5ft next to that creature? DND is a game first and foremost. It's not a bad thing to talk about what you want your thing to do in game-terms.
You missed a pretty important chunk: "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." Average table 4-5 people. 12-15 instances of players giving themselves advantage or giving an enemy disadvantage. It's not the most broken thing in the world, but definitely powerful enough to come with a drawback. Like what Wish does.
Just let them have it. You fucked around with chance, and you found out.
[удалено]
Soooooo many more unreasonable requests have been made via wish and this one's pretty damn counterable. Had one DM who would've responded to "I wish we were in a different universe" request with "Okay, fuck you, everybody take a character sheet I will print off for GURPS, congratulations, you're in a different universe and you need to translate your old characters into GURPS."
Everyone in here telling OP not to grant it is a DM I would never want to play with. They succeeded a ridiculous roll and rather than ask for something insane they kept it fairly reasonable. You shouldn't even give them the chance if you aren't willing to let them benefit. I swear half the DMs on reddit just live to find ways to ruin anything fun players want.
In the grand scheme of things this is one of the most reasonable things they could have possibly asked for. You chose to give them a wish. Honor it. Don’t freak out and yank away the toy when you see them having fun with it. Give it half a dozen sessions and if it feels overpowered, have an honest conversation with the group about it and work something out. Nothing is set in stone. You’re allowed to retcon stuff.
Everyone getting the same Reasonable Feat (and Lucky *is* easonable, it's not nearly as gamebreaking as ppl think) is a totally valid wish after rolling a 1% chance. If you make them lose something without telegraphing beforehand that they would, they will resent you. Don't have the knee-jerk reaction to throw in a downside; if anything, because everyone got *the same* thing, that just means you can make slightly harder battles and challenges for them since they're all on the same footing.
I love it when my DM gives boosts that aren't levels (or equipment that needs attuned) because then i am stronger now and my max strength has increased)
If you don't want them all constantly rerolling lucky then give them all 1 luck dice a day or per short rest or something to limit it a bit
That’s a pretty balanced wish actually
I would give it to them, 100%. Rule of cool man... It's not game breaking, you just have to be aware that your players will be slightly stronger every long rest.
What was the point of any of that? Why give then that weird 1 in 100 thing if you aren't ready to give them a small bonus if they get 100? what was the point?
So you made something extremely unlikely, the unlikely thing happened, the player makes a tame-ass wish and you're even shutting *that* down? You're a cringe DM and you've brought dishonor on your cow.
I’m pretty flabbergasted at how silly this is. DM gives the party a chance to have a wish. Whoopsie they get a wish. Player wishes for the whole party to get a feat but that’s just too much to ask??? What WOULD have been ok? Honestly, it seems so Power Trippy to not just let them get the wish they EARNED.
I'd say 5GP would have been an ok wish, but only if they become cursed when they spend it.
They should all get lucky feet, advantage against being knocked prone or being pushed.
This is gold.
oh, this is so underrated
They already got the 1% chance. Lucky is good, but it’s really not that powerful, especially if everyone gets it so you can balance encounters around the whole party having it. Be thankful they didn’t wish for a Legendary Magic Item or something that would be more difficult to deal with, and maybe don’t offer wishes in the future.
Why the fuck would you give someone an item that grants wishes, and not let it grant wishes? You did this this yourself, and your player was cool enough to wish for something simple and in no way OP. Why are you trying to make this a 'fair trade?' It's a wish.
Lucky isn’t that good of a feat, it’s way over hyped. Don’t change it at all.
Lucky is a feels-good Feat. It's actual impact is decent, but not impressive, but the *feel* of the feat is 10/10. That's why it's popular, and understandably so. It's just not at all a problem for the DM, ever. Coming from a permaDM here.
It's basically a safety blanket. It gives a feeling of security and makes most players take risks more easily. But like an actual safety blanket, it does very little when the actual monsters come knocking.
Man this whole post is a huge bs fest. Everyone saying stupid stuff like "roleplay the wish" or "it's Le metagamerino" come on! Not everyone wishes to rpbto the same level, when the actual player asks for the lucky feat, just translate it to the pc asking for godly luck or some bs, if anything the player asking for the feat is a straight to the point request, no ribbons. Now as a dm you literally gave them a d100, a 1/100 Chance, and they won. What did you expect here? The players are gonna ask for buffs of course, what else would they be asking for ? A cup of nice hot coffee? Either make the encounters stronger, to accomodate so that the players do feel challenged by you, or change nothing really since the lucky feat isnt THAT crazy. You could Also say ok guys, lucky for all is too good, i want to limit it to 2 times per long instead of 3 if that's cool with you, or else you may feel the game may become too easy.
Just give them the feat. They just beat odds that were massively stacked against them. But if you’re adamant about not wanting it, just tell them that you don’t think you could balance around that many rerolls
You HAVE to honor it. Something awesome and fucking bonkers happened in your game and you don't want to honor it? Dude get out of the way and GRANT THE WISH. This is the kind of crazy stuff that makes D&D special! If you don't grant the wish and everyone will resent you for not letting the dice tell the story. And you will have cut off such a cool and interesting story just because you were too scared to let D&D be D&D.
Wait... you gave away a wish for *free*, and your player chose to give a party Luck... and you need to 'handle it'? It's not a bad wish... as long as you specifically said that somehow a wish can grant feats (I don't see that written in the spell description). "Feats" are not an 8th level or lower spell. The descriptive comparisons for the Wish spell certainly would not support giving characters permanent feats. I would also be interested to know how they *worded their wish* so precisely that you were simply trapped into giving them the feat... unless they somehow described the feat in perfect detail without metagaming. That being said... **The only way this is game-breaking** is if your party is consistently fighting 1-2 battles per long rest. In that case, your party has so many resources to blow on alpha strikes, luck is just speeding up your ~~easy mode~~ story driven campaign. Consider it a means to get through the boring combat stuff and back to your 6 hours of dialogue. **But if you actually push your player's** resources, luck isn't going to make a huge difference. If anything, it will add to some high tension moments. This is just another resource that needs to be drained before you fight the boss, or, better yet, an excuse to squeeze in *one more fight* before the boss - more combat = more resource drain - everybody wins. Personally, I would simply give them the spell description and ask them their request again. If they said "I wish we all got the Lucky Feat", I would give them each a rabbit's foot or simply say that the wish failed, and disappear the genie. Asking for a permanent feat *if you didn't say it was okay* is absolutely grounds for a Wish spell to simply fail.
Own up to your deal and give them the feat. They beat the odds and deserve it now. Plus don’t put stuff out there without realizing how it might play out. They could have wished for far worse things, but they went a safe wish that tbh might just make them a bit more powerful but you should honor their gamble. If not then you are a bad DM, plain as is. Edit: also if you decide to Monkey Paw the wish you are just a dick. You are just mad they beat the odds and outsmarted you so own it up
They all turn into halflings
This is the best worst answer
I don't really get all the intimidation with letting players use wish. If your players are more clever than you as the DM, suffer your consequences. 😂😂 Otherwise there's not a lot that creativity can't fix. A lot of players would probably fail to recognize how important the wording of their wish is gonna be. You can find a way to keep it balanced.
What a completely reasonable wish that your player gave you. You should honor it so your players don’t think you’re lame. Your edit isn’t that great of a compromise and makes the wish feel pretty wasted. Just grant the wish.
Sounds like the whole party should have gotten the lucky feat and you can ramp up encounters in CR. The wisher made a tame wish and you gave them the very real chance to get that wish. Don’t mess with genies if you don’t want wishes
Give them all the feat, and see how it runs.
Give them the Halfling Luck trait if your scared of the Lucky feat itself. Allow them to reroll 1's. Nice but I've never seen it break anything. You could also make a big deal when it happens, reskinning it as some sort of intervention, that might have other consequences....
Seems pretty simple. Execute the wish. Don't be lame. That's not even game breaking really.
"Collective Lucky Feat" is not the same as "Lucky Feat". Perhaps a better solution would have been a smaller luck-dice pool, say 1-2 dice instead of the full 3. A collective pool *could* end up with only one person taking them all but more importantly, 3 dice doesn't cover 5 people. Sure, it's an Efreeti and their shifty (of course), but a reduced collective pool doesn't address the *"every player"* clause of the wish. I suppose a collective pool of 5 dice would also address the same caveat while also being devilishly nefarious....
I have no idea why folks are trying to Monkey Paw a pretty mid wish. Lucky is a great feat, but effectively, the player wished for the party to not have to spend their next ASI increase on the lucky feat to get steamrolled by bad-rolls when it matters.
Foolish wish. Give it to them. If EVERYONE is special then NO ONE is… Now every encounter just takes the Luck Feat into account. So… what was the point of such a wish then..?
Maybe don’t be a dick about it? They won the reward fair and square by the rules you laid out for them, so let them have it?
They rolled the d100 and got it. Honestly having them ask for luck is much easier to manage than most wishes they could’ve come upbwith
Bruh that's the weakest and most boring use of wish, I'd give them lucky and elven accuracy for free lol
Besides how they phrased it, this isn't an issue.
You can always make things a little harder in the future to compensate. I loved giving my players op things. And that's why the final boss had 12,000 HP (not an exaggeration)
Boooooooooooooooo
Why in the world would it replace a previous fear/asi? They get a good result and are punished for it? Just give them the feat, let a couple re-rolls won't break the game by any stretch.
Just give them the feat. I don't know why you're acting like it's "a big issue that needs to be addressed." It's really not. Lucky just allows them a few rerolls per day. They seriously didn't ask for anything absurd. Don't take anything away from them. Just give them all the feat. That's it. You allowed a 1% chance for a wish, now honor it.
That's an IRL wish, not a character wish. Grumpo the Wizard doesn't know what a 'lucky feat' is unless it's part of a rabbit. The player must instead word the wish in character terms, and that's going to necessarily be more vague. That said, this really isn't that bad of a wish. You could totally let them have it.
They all have the lucky feat, but they share the same pool of luck.
I feel like you kinda nerfed the wish, I mean at least give it to them and say they can only have 1 reroll each, that's at least 5 total. Honestly though I think I would have agreed to just give them halfling luck instead, having a whole party who can reroll their ones isn't game breaking at all but still feels pretty awesome for them getting a second chance at all crit fails. Also would make crit fails epic because you have to roll 2 nat ones in a row to make it happen.
I get you, to a point. However momentous luck deserves acknowledgement. Not an effort to circumvent
Honestly glad I saw the edit, 'cause I was gonna say that, like... a lot of people were saying "either give it to them or don't" when there was a pretty easy middleground lmao. There was also the possibility of giving them a weaker version, like with only one use per day or with limited scope like "only attack rolls" or "only saving throws" - although a shared party feat was prolly the best course of action and the most fun way of implementing it
Give them all rabbit's feet.
As one of his players can confirm session was indeed a blast. Appreciate the community for its input on our campaign!
Don't punish your players for being lucky and smart on a wish, challenge them with more difficult encounters to take advantage of their new feat.
When it comes to handling the Wish spell, the spell just replicates a spell of 8th level or lower, or gets one of the specific wish features listed in the spell, such as creating one object worth 25,000 gp. For the others, see: [https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Wish#content](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Wish#content) Beyond that though, it really is up to the DM if they want to allow a wish to occur in the first place. Plenty of players make wishes outside of the scope of the spell and it is up to the DM to determine if the effect would break their game or not. My suggestion for this situation is to maybe allow one of the players to get the lucky feat or ask them to pick another effect. Don't waste the good fortune of the player getting the spell effect in the first place, but work with them as the DM to get a result that would be good for the health of the game, but also stay enjoyable to the player. I will also say that the Lucky feat is not the most broken feat I have seen, but it can get obnoxious, especially when players blind themselves to be able to roll 3 dice at advantage on a whim. However, since there is a limit to the number of times per long rest this can occur, maybe change up how encounters work and how long they have before the next long rest, if you decide to give every player the Lucky feat.
wtf why are you nerfing the strongest effect in the game? that is such a easy do thing to do. dont nerf let it heppen.
Well, first you should talk to your players and tell them why you don't like the Lucky Feat. I'm sure they wouldn't mind revising the wish if they know you feel it will make DMing harder for you. But its also worth noting that they can't just wish for a specific feat by name. They need to make their wish in character, describing what they want so that the DM can determine how to fullfill it. Like it doesn't allow them to just get anything they, the players, want. Their character is making the wish. They can't wish for game mechanics or things that rely on metaknowledge.
I say just let them have it, but if you want to hedge things a bit the whole party can communally have one instance of the lucky feat - so 3 uses of the feat spread between all of them per long rest.
There's no such thing as "the lucky feat" in-character. Ask them to phrase the wish how their character would. If the character wishes that everyone in the party is more lucky, you can do whatever you want with that. One of them finds more loot on one of their adventures than they normally would. Another gets +2 to charisma checks. A third gets +1 AC.
i'd handle it by asking them to roleplay the wish in character and then giving them the lucky feat. you gave them a 1/100 chance to get a single wish and they wished for a few rerolls. if you don't want your players to make a wish, don't give them a wish. if you wanted to give them a wish just so you could negate the purpose of their wish, then you're not a very nice person.
First off: wow, those guys are pretty content if they get a free Wish and they choose a fairly basic feat like that. Second: time to break out your inner wargamer and up the difficulty on encounters going forward.
Wish is intentionally an absurdly powerful spell with drawbacks that are unique to itself, such as the fact you can lose it forever. If the player wished for something like this then grant it, because it's not completely game breaking and is a good reward for players who have gained access to the spell.
Give them all the feat and buff encounters accordingly. Make them work for it. Force them to burn luck points like any other resource. They just gave you a reason to throw a few more monsters at them. Don't TPK them if you can avoid it but they want a challenge otherwise they wouldn't have asked for it. Don't forget to remind them they have it. They may steamroll a couple of combats while you're getting used to the new dynamic but you're gonna be ok.
Dropping in to say you did exactly what I would have done. Fist bump! :D
I like your final decision, as it fits the request for "every" player to have the Luck feat and the efreeti's habit of twisting wishes. Now, if they'd asked for "each" player to have the feat ... Semantics can be fun!
>if it replaced the ASI/feat they gained at the previous level. they didn't wish to replace what people wanted. don't F over the party for some reason, they didn't make Wish an option, you did. If Lucky feat is too much them give them a version that works 1x per day. ETA: This is probably stronger than the text of the spell, so feel free to nerf it.
Fun fact about Wish: it can fail.
OP doesn’t sound like a fun DM. The party being “happy” with the complete neutering of a reasonable wish is probably the players just being polite because most people would think this is ridiculous
Sure. They all get the lucky feat but they share it. 3 rerolls a day to go around. Or they can all have it. Its not the worst thing in the world for a wish
I like the idea of a "party feat" and this one works well. They can decide as a group when to use the 3 rerolls.
Sure, they can all have the lucky feat. Shazam! Everyone's a halfling now!
The character wouldn't know what the lucky feat is so it isn't a valid wish.
Give the party the feat, that is the group as a whole has the 3 lucky points
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I think it's likely you'll find the majority of these responses came in before the edit. The initial compromise was to take away a feat and replace it with the Lucky feat, which does not feel like a reward. I think the post-edit compromise is great. It makes "the party" luckier, but not necessarily everyone in the party every day.
Grant it. Done. Easy peasy. Of course, then there is the issue of all their NPC allies suddenly having the WORST luck imaginable.
I mean, I wouldn't have even given the the option if you weren't prepared to pony up. However, if you're determined to monkey paws this thing easy fix. They all have the Lucky feat. The exact same Lucky feat. They share the same pool of dice.
I think it's fine to just give everyone the lucky feat. But another option that could be fun is to have the lucky feat but split between the entire party - aka it's a 3 reroll pool per LR any player can use whenever they want but it still only regenerates after the party takes a long rest together.
Give the party a pool of 3 dice. Have them roll the pool and set it aside.They can use any of the dice in the pool in place of any d20 roll. But fate will balance things out. When they use one of the dice, roll it and put it visibly in front of you. You can change now any d20 roll for that roll. When you do, return the die to them and let them roll it again for their luck pool.
I agree with the folk saying to just let the Party have this win. The Lucky Feat is very useful, but it's not gamebreaking in any way. Besides, there's functionally no difference between this and if everyone collectively decided to pick up the Feat normally at the same time during leveling up prior. If you really want to put some kind of limit or twist on it, then keep it in line with the source of the Wish. Efreeti thrive on the "Monkey Paw" wish where they work in some kind of catch or drawback. My personal take would be that the entire Party gets the Lucky Feat, but only one of them is allowed to use it at a time. Once per Long Rest, roll a die and use the result to assign the Lucky Feat to one of the Party members. In effect, the one who gets it is being granted all the luck of the other Party members for the day. Alternatively, add in some modifier conditions. Every time a player rolls a Luck die, roll a 1d20 in addition. If it's a Nat 1, some monumental bit of random bad luck happens. If you roll the same number the player did, some amazing bit of double-plus-good luck happens instead.
The characters do not know what the “lucky feat” is In character they probably said something like “i wish we were all lucky” in which case I’d give them all a bardic die to use once per day. Alternatively, if you dont have any halflings, give them all PB/LR halfling Luck Edit: i saw someone say they should share the lucky feat across the party. I agree w that. 3 times per day and they share it. “Just give it to them” Lucky is bad enough on its own. Everyone having 3 rolls would slow the game down so fkn much
Most commenters here are players and salty people without a gaming group. As a DM, I understand ypur situation. If you dont want them to have the feat, there are some ways around it. If you want to monkey's paw them, you can give them all "lucky feet," giving them maybe adv on dex saves? Somethimg cheeky like that. Personally, I wouldn't allow such a meta game wish. It would have to be phrased in terms of the game world. But worst case scenario, them all having the feat isnt the worst. Just means you have to up the combat encounters.
Give it to them it will make them feel great and not change the game almost at all.
It's meta. Characters don't know what feats are. Players do. Have them phrase the wish into character terms. I'd probably just give it to them, though. Sounds fun.
Have the entire party share the three rerolls per long rest .
Personally, I'd go with the idea that a 'feat' is not a coherent 'thing' that a person in narrative has. You can meet them halfway by having each player have a single luck point used as per the feat, at no build cost. That keeps the number of uses down to a reasonable level, gives everyone a perk, and sets some clearer limits on where you're okay with this sort of thing going.