Genies

I'm going to throw an Efreeti in an iron flask at my party tomorrow (level 7), and was trying to play through some ways to twist their potential wishes around.
>what are some potential ironic wishes?
>have you ever had a genie in a campaign?

>dick is twice as big
>doesnt work

Level 7 is awfully soon to be letting players swing around the equivalent of 9th-level spells. Anyway, Wish as it's currently worded always leaves the DM an escape hatch when it's used for anything other than duplicating a spell: it may simply fail and do nothing.

There are a few traditional ways to pervert wishes. Bringing someone back from the dead can result in a Monkey's Paw situation: basically casting Animate Dead when you meant to cast Raise Dead. The wish perversions cited in D&D the most are simply teleporting someone into the presence of a unique item's current owner when they wish for that item, or transporting someone into the future if they wish for an enemy's death. Wishing for higher ability scores used to grant you only +0.1 to that score, useless unless you could get 9 other wishes. Any kind of clause tacked onto a wish to try to avoid unpleasant surprises can be circumvented by the efreet explaining exactly how he will pervert the wish before he grants it - that way it's no longer a surprise.

Don't use the Wish spell, run your djinn like Arabian Nights.
The djinn is a servant, and actually *does* the things you ask it.
When it fulfills It's debt, it's free.

But it doesn't just snap it's fingers to bring 10 million gp, or whatever.
It'll give you whatever it already has, then go out to earn (or steal) more for you.
And it can't conjure a castle on request, but could build one fairly quickly, etc.

They are not always servants there, they grant wishes as a form of gratitude for freeing them.

>write elaborate list of wishes with incredible specificity
>"i wish everything on this paper became true"
>paper becomes permanent zone of truth

Hope you realize the first thing an Efreeti would do after being released from being imprisoned is observe that the party are mere mortals, torch their asses, and then fuck right off back to the city of brass.

>making every single wish be useless or harmful

Why not just cut out the middleman and have rocks fall,everyone dies.

I've always considered Efreet to be "word of the law" guys. They'll be literal and if you express your wish in a well-thought literal way they'll do exactly what you asked. It's not because they care about you, of course, but they'll lose face among their peers if they don't grant wishes.

This. Very much this. I'd also accept burning a wish on a, "spirit instead of letter," or, "I wish I knew how to word my wish to get exactly what I want," wish that lasts for exactly the next wish.

Give them one wish each. But they have to wish to be either a dog, an ass, or an ape.

No need to screw with them, just limit what he can do. If he's completely de-powered then he needs to steal what they want, social engineer the situation to come about or make the character do the hardwork that they need to get their wish granted. If they wish for strength then he'll be their coach and give them weights and make them lift, if they want charisma he'll teach them etiquette. If they want a kingdom then he's advising them on who to marry and ally with while assassinating key nobles.

Hey, that's pretty useful: use it as a lie detector by having them write the claim on the paper.

>Didn't specify what the dick would be twice as big as, or in what state
>Genie can now make the dick twice as big any arbitrary size.

Your dick is now twice as big as an ant.
Your dick is now twice as big as a watermelon while erect. If you ever get erect you will suffer blood loss to your brain and lose consciousness, or possibly die.

>hurr lemme lawyer the wish for you
Fuck off
Wishes are way better when you get exactly what you asked for in letter and spirit, and THAT fucks you over because you were wrong about what you want, like people often are

>That twilight zone episode where the lonely salaryman buys a potion to make his crush love him unconditionally.
>Only options of escape are poison her or poison himself

I had one of my player kill himself like that once.
>Wanted to not be living anymore (unded)
>So he stopped living

>Why not just cut out the middleman and have rocks fall,everyone dies.
Because it's a game and is more about the experience than the outcome. I'm not giving them a genie to kill them or for free wishes. I'm giving them a malevelont force that will tempt them with power while they figure out if they should command him like a slave, or release him with or without ever asking for a wish. hell, he could even take them to the city of brass to be his slaves if fuck up.

"I wish that you would grant the wish that I would use to wish for (object) if I knew how to safely and correctly word a wish that would give me what I have in mind when I say I wish for a (object)."

But at some point the game shifts from D&D to L&L (Lawyers and Loopholes) which isn't quite the same.

>I want to live forever
turned into a stone statue
>I want to be rich
the most valuable wealth is a lesson: don't trust genies
>I want to be king of a kingdom
chess piece
>I want to be the strongest fighter
tarrasque
>I want my _____ to come back to life
they're alive but they resent you for bringing them back

>safely grant what I have in mind
hands you a brain

Here's a twist: have him not be a dick. He only went in the flask to get away from his problems for a while; it's actually pretty chill in there and a completely acceptable way to fuck off for djinn.

So yeah, he owes them a wish, and if it's your typical rule-the-world bullshit wish he's gonna have to fuck with it just to keep up appearances, but as long as it's not too much trouble he'll be cool.

>the GM bends over backwards in order to make sure that the wish is somehow harmful
>lmao im so clever
No, you're a fucking idiot.

No, that's what I have mind in.

Just use "Wish" as per written rules.

Don't just twist words around for minor things. It's the bigger things, outside of the rules that get twisted.

>genie tries to get clever about wishes
>wish for him to get banished for 50000 years
>leave

It's an efreeti, they're meant to purposefully misinterpret wishes. If you want a wish just for a wishes sake you'd use a djinni.

Games with you must be really boring.
Are your only enemies orcs that you have to stab to death before they stab you?

>if you're not doing this lolrandom-tier monkey paw shit then you're boring
What?

>he gets banished into your ass
>you exist fo 50000 years as an asshole effigy

lol xD

>lolrandom tier
It's a trope older than you are

What, according to you, does not count as lolrandom?

>It's a trope older than you are

Let's remove the word "trope" from that sentence as it has been watered down to nothingness by tvtropes where every-fucking-thing and its opposite is also a trope. Then try making your point again with explanations rather than chronological snobbery. You appear to be arguing something like "The Monkey's Paw is an old story, therefore I should fuck my players over." I find this less than convincing.

Even better, then, to fuck with the metagamers who instantly recognize the distinction.

Okay, let's go at it again. It's an extremely old plot twist that the players will know and most likely expect from getting a wish at low level. They're fucking level 7. And unlike a lot of people in this board most groups don't low-key hate their DM so it can actually be a lot of fun

The entire point of stories with dickhead genies and monkey paws and devil pacts and whatever is that there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't just wish for everything to be good for you forever. You need to put in some honest work and earn it.

Now, whether that's the story you want to tell is a completely different matter. But that's the point such a story is making.

Honestly, I've often thought that the best wish a good and virtuous person could make, would be "I wish that my genie got a wish". If the genie is nice, then you've just done a good deed for someone. If the genie is a dickhead, you've just turned their dickery back onto them, as any wish they make will backfire on them.

>The entire point of stories with dickhead genies and monkey paws and devil pacts and whatever is that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Aside from The Monkey's Paw, the point is just to be a little clever about it. People who think before they wish generally turn out okay.

>Honestly, I've often thought that the best wish a good and virtuous person could make, would be "I wish that my genie got a wish". If the genie is nice, then you've just done a good deed for someone. If the genie is a dickhead, you've just turned their dickery back onto them, as any wish they make will backfire on them.
And that's not being clever about it. If the genie's a dickhead, you've just given him a no-hold-barred wish because it's not the wish that backfires, it's the genie choosing to make it backfire.

Fucking this. Also, the genie is never bound to grant you your wish if he thinks it's bullshit or impossible (even for his vast powers). Even honor and gratitude have their limits. "More wishes" is gonna insult him, and "more genies" will just bring dudes who are mad at you for disturbing them.

>"more genies"
Or exotic slaves that might bring more trouble than their are worth.

>People who think before they wish generally turn out okay.

No they don't. They just forestall their eventual comeuppance, which is usually all the worse because they tried to be clever about it.

>If the genie's a dickhead, you've just given him a no-hold-barred wish because it's not the wish that backfires, it's the genie choosing to make it backfire.

If the genie can grant awesome wishes any time, and is actively choosing to make them backfire, then he could grant his own wishes whenever he wanted. In which case, I never had any wishes to make in the first place, and so my choice is irrelevant. All that matters is that I tried to do a good deed, so I come out the moral victor either way.

>more wishes
>done, you spend the rest of your days wishing for more than you have, never satisfied
>but you said you would grant my wish
>I said grant one wish

>so, things haven't changed at all

I've got the same thing planned as the OP.

The players will reach the end of a dungeon soon, where they will find a young efreeti in a hookah. When they free him, his slaves will be busy preparing the druid's dead cat companion for dinner. If they assume he will grant their wishes and they start making wishes without thinking about it, the efreeti will screw them all over. If they fight and kill the efreeti, they will have wasted a potential ally. I want them to either talk him into cooperating with them or beat the efreeti into submission with nonlethal damage.

In the future, they will find other genies that aren't dick-ass efreeti and will gladly grant their wishes.

It's the easiest wish to grant.

That sounds really cool user

In my campaign they're going to find the efreet alone in an abondoned dungeon and, hopefully if they talk to him, find out that he's been trapped in that battle for 10000ish years after dicking over his old master and being left alone and forgotten