Can I wish to never auto-miss on a natural 1?

Question

Any attack roll that comes up a natural 1 is an automatic miss regardless of bonuses. I'm playing a wizard and I like my touch-attack spells, and now I have access to wish.

Can a wish be used to eliminate this auto-miss rule?

Answer 1

Yes, you can wish for it, but you probably won't get it.

A wish can automatically do any of the following:

• duplicate other spells (with max spell level depending on whether it's a wizard/sorceror spell and whether the spell's school is prohibited to you)
• undo otherwise permanent spells such as geas or insanity
• create a nonmagical item worth no more than 25kgp
• create a magic item, or improve an existing magic item
• give a +1 inherent bonus to one ability score
• remove any one kind of affliction from a group of creatures
• revive the dead as with resurrection
• teleport a creature to a location of your choice on any plane
• force a re-roll of any 1 roll made in the last round

You are allowed to wish for things not on this list, but the DM is not only allowed but encouraged to twist your wish into something you didn't really want.

Honestly, if I was a DM and someone wished for this, they would auto-miss on 20s instead of on 1s, and be unable to crit unless they had an expanded crit range.

Answer 2

Old School Approach

Wishes should be worded, or at least able to be worded, in character voice. Since your character is ignorant of the mechanics of his universe, he's unable to voice that wish to affect the mechanics.

As a GM, if a character wished for that, Sure, the character never misses by rolling a natural 1 - in whatever dice games the character plays.

The player still misses on a natural 1.

Answer 3

Deities can have a trait that lets them automatically roll a 20 whenever they want. You can wish to be a god.

Otherwise, you're not supposed to ask things that are part of the mechanics, just things your character, with his knowledge, could ask.

Answer 4

In the original, pre-edited question, the OP tried to couch the out-of-character mechanics (rolling a 1 5% of the time) with in-character observations ("I summon a bunch of skeletons and cast at them, noticing that despite my superior skill, I still miss ~5% of the time).

The problem with that is that while the miss-on-a-1 rule is a relatively clear-cut and arbitrary "cosmic rule" for the player, it isn't so for the character. It's meant to represent (though not necessarily simulate) the vagaries of the encounter. So even if the wizard keeps a list of 1,000,000 attacks and analyzes precisely why he missed 50,000 times, he will see that those misses were because the skeleton had surprisingly held back for a second, or that he himself had slipped and missed the second between casting or touching, or any number of understandable, realistic and unsurprising in-universe explanations. I don't think you can wish for "none of my enemies will ever move in an unexpected fashion and also that I never miscalculate the distance between us while being fired upon".

But here's a twist: to take the normal course of events in real-life, ignore the regular and observable cause-and-effect and instead infer some sort of cosmic game takes a special mindset. The main problem with that is that if that's the case, then the wish spell is just as part of that cosmic game. It's possible that the gods themselves are, too. A powerful wizard who had gone down that particular rabbit-hole would have no choice, I believe, but to embark on an existential quest to discover what really makes the world tick.

Answer 5

One of my characters made this wish, only she phrased it "I wish that my weapon will always strike true." I dig her flavor text. Copied it down, with the location and how much gold (put in a wishing well for fun sake).

Since I'm DM - I'm thinking she'll get what she asked for. Her weapon won't miss. But the specifics - that's the fun stuff. It could hit her or her allies some of the time, too. Maybe even most of the time, if it's the only one she ever uses. Check out some of the example "cursed weapons," for things such as this. The wish spell encourages the DM to be spiteful because they want to emphasize the "be careful what you wish for." It's just like a character making a deal with an arch-devil - it goes in their favor until the fiend wishes otherwise.

Striving for mechanics, I would make that run badly 100% of the time because it unravels the fantasy feel of the game. If they worded it to 'never accidentally hit their friends,' or 'never drop my weapon' as often happens with a botch, sure they could probably have it. But to tear at the edges of imagination by rule grinding, definite no.

Answer 6

Mechanics-wise, I don't think that wish is unreasonable. I personally try to houserule away the "1 always misses on attacks" rules whenever I get the chance, as I feel that having a 5% chance to automatically miss, no matter your skill, feels kind of crappy. If the player phrases the wish in a way that makes some sense in-game (for example, "I wish that my spells would never fizzle."), then I'd probably give it to them. I mean, the ability to hit 5% more (which is the most that this wish can get you, barring alternate critical miss rules) is absolutely on par with getting 15000gp worth of stuff, or getting +1 to a stat permanently.

While this is most definitely outside of the standard list of wishes, I don't think that a player getting this wish would be that bad.

Answer 7

When it comes to things like this I prefer to deny the character his wish and then explain outside of the game why: if I gave it to him that it would make him the perfect swordsman, and perfect does not exist, for if you have nothing to strive for then why take up the sword at all?

However I do not deny the wish entirely and meet the character halfway. For instance, I would suggest to the player they wish for the ability to cast True Strike, and give them the ability to cast it a number of times equal to their INT modifier or some such adaption. Cruel but fair.

Answer 8

"I wish for my spells to never miss/fizzle/whatever"; You permanently lose the ability to cast any spells. No brainer. Anyone who wouldn't punish this kind of play is a bad DM.