Whats a good way of balancing wishes without resorting to "turn your wish into something bad"?

Why on earth would you balance a wish? It's the ultimate magical reward/temptation for a reason. As such they should only ever be accessible via plot device.

Sometimes you can literally just grant the wish and wait for the results to fuck the wisher up through natural progression. For example, let's say you really, really, REALLY hate dragons and are given access to a powerful enough wish to make them all extinct. At first everything seems good: villages aren't being burned down, livestock is more plentiful, and now all of dat sweet sweet dragon loot is yours for the plundering! It's fantastic- until about a few weeks later when mountains of corpses begin to pile up from greedy people murdering each other left and right for the hoards of gemstones and gold that are now about to be devalued because of their abundance. Also now the alchemists and magic users that rely on dragon bits are for potions and spell components and what have you are almost literally seconds away from fighting each other in the streets for what precious little dragon parts remain. But hey, surely it's not that bad right? Wait, what's that? All of the nasty beasts and marauders that the dragons were scaring off with their mere presence have slowly returned to the regions and begun fucking things up even quicker than the dragon would've? Well shit. Well that's what we have adventurers for ri- a lot of the ones that are worth a damn are now demanding exorbitant fees thanks to the inflation? I could go on and on here. Bear in mind that this a long term kimd ofthing though.

When it's a reward, no balance. When it's cast on the daily, anti-cheese.

I hate your idea.

Players tend to wish for things that are too grand. Grant their wish but not to its fullest extent. "I wish to be the strongest." Fine you are stronger but to ask to be stronger than all beings is foolish, you are merely stronger now. "I wish to be the richest in the world." Fine but your riches mean nothing when the world has nothing now. "I wish for a home to live in." A fine wish, it will be a modest home but nothing more.

Don't give them out?

OP here. I want to throw a Djinn at the party to grant them three wishes, but don't want to do the cliche "lol ur wish is now bad XD"

I love your idea

I'm indifferent towards your idea

Roll for effectiveness of the wish. Have it burn through xp so they lose levels the stronger it is. If they wished for too much it kills them.

Don't? I mean if you're giving the player a Wish, just take the implications. Not everything needs to be a reset to the status quo like some shitty cartoon.

If the player wishes for a billion dollars, just give him a billion dollars and see how that effects the story and work with it.

Don't just dick him out of the money because you need him to be the same as he was last session before the next 22 minute timeslot. If you didn't want him to have a billion dollars you shouldn't have given him wishes.

I plan on introducing a weapon artifact that when the player rolls a natural 20 the weapon changes randomly into another martial weapon and we roll on a big long list of random effects ranging from inflicting elemental damage, healing the wielder, polymorphing the target or if the player rolls another natural 20 - summoning a genie to give both the wielder and the target one wish.

Would it be better to have player/DM roll against each other to see who gets to wish first or always let the wielder choose to wish first/defer second?

No matter what both will get one wish, time is stopped and do not take effect until both have made a wish.

Why not make it where a roll of 1 gives the enemy a wish and a roll of 20 gives the player one?

Or make it where they always both get wishes, but a roll of 1 means the enemy chooses, and a roll of 20 means the player does?

>Whats a good way of balancing wishes without resorting to "turn your wish into something bad"?

Making the player believe that the wishes will be interpreted into something bad. They'll generally temper the power of the wish so that it doesn't blow up too badly if they can't avoid any misinterpretations, and the resulting wishes end up generally being things less likely to fuck up the game balance

Easy

That could work, with both of them rolling competitively, higher roll gets to go first. Maybe I'll add a wisdom modifier or something. Crits/fails preventing the other from wishing at all.

Of course if the player hits a goblin then the player might only have to worry about the goblin wishing to never be hungry again or the death of his rival Starpy Rotnubbins as opposed to a genius mind flayer wishing against the player.

>wish granter can't force an effect on something more powerful than it is- shenron clause
>can't make someone more powerful than it is
>wishing to grant your own wishes traps you Jaffar style
>"that is beyond my power to grant" as a goto veto for anything you think might get out of hand
Really though my advice is to simply not do it.

Nah, bad idea. It's impossible to balance that kind of thing because you can't predict what the players will actually wish for with any reliability. They could literally ask for anything, after all. Just have the Djinn grant them a set boon of some sort, like a cool magic item or a nice bonus to an ability.

...

A simple social contract: the GM will grant the wish according to the spirit of it if the player plays within the bounds of the spirit of the wish themselves. It really is not hard. Don't be autistic.

If you have nobody dear to you, you are physically incapable of using Wish.

>turns out that the BBEG was actually attempting to form relationships with all the princesses he captured, but was too socially retarded to pull it off, a la Ice King.

I don't understand this idea

Everytime you wish, you get a horse. You can't sell or give away this horse. If you neglect the horse and it dies, your wish turns into a curse. Otherwise, it's a normal horse.

Just give the wish a limit based on what sort of creature they are. Like a nymph, a less powerful magic creature, could grant something to the tune of 5000 gold, while a genie could grant 10000 or more. The creature's aren't all powerful, they're just captive and magical

let them wish freely but they can only wish for swords

How about this

1) To make a Wish, you have to be in True Love with at least one partner
2) It must be mutual true love and cannot be magically or chemically enhanced
3) To make the wish, you must plunge the wishing knife into the heart of your beloved. Nothing less will provide enough heartbreak to power the spell.

The djinn can't physically harm anyone, mess with free will, or bring people back from the dead.

The wish consumes souls of unborn babies.

They can only directly change a single individual.

Throw the Djinn at the party with the expectation that it may spell the end of the campaign, sending it flying off the rails to god knows where

It may or may not work. It might work badly, or even might work TOO WELL.

And the djinn won't say shit about how well he made your wish happen.

Pic related

1/400 chance of getting a fucking wish every time you swing your beatstick is idiotic and you should feel bad