How does Wish remove the Time Warp of the Feywild?

Question

The Dungeon Master's Guide provides optional rules for Feywild magic. One of these is Time Warp, where 1 day in the Feywild ranges from 1 minute to 1 year "everywhere else in the multiverse" (p. 50). It also states, "A wish spell can be used to remove the effect on up to ten creatures." (Ibid.)

If using the optional rules, when the Time Warp effect is removed do the creatures' ages change or do they move through time or something else entirely?

For example, in Faerûn, the party enters the Feywild and adventures for 1440 days (almost 4 years) and then returns.

• If 1 day in the Feywild = 1 minute everywhere else: The party returns 1 day after they left. Does wish reverse age them 1439 days or does it jump them forward in time 1439 days? If the former, are there experience point implications?
• If 1 day in the Feywild = 1 year everywhere else: The party returns almost 1444 years after they left. Does wish age the creatures 1440 years (effectively killing them) or do they jump back in time about 1436 years?

Answer 1

Wish removes it by making it not happen when you leave

The effect referred to is discovering that time has passed at a different rate while you were gone. Wish can be used to remove the effect of time passing at a different rate while in the Feywild — it doesn't remove the effect when it isn't affecting the creatures, after they've left the Feywild. Once they've left the Feywild, the effect is gone and can no longer be removed, and its consequences are permanent.

Age, dead loved ones, etc. are not the effect referred to, and aren't even effects in game terms. "Being in a later year than expected" is also not an 'effect' that could be removed (it's a lasting consequence of an effect already suffered and now gone), so wish won't time-travel someone in order to remove this non-effect.

Summary of what does happen

Wish can be cast to remove this effect from a group of creatures, so that they (and only they) are immune to the Time Warp of the Feywild when they leave. This immunity only applies if the spell has been cast before leaving. If wish is used this way, when they leave the Feywild, the time elapsed is the same as the time spent in the Feywild.

Any creature excluded from this casting of wish is not protected, and suffers any effects of Time Warp normally when they return. This means that casting the wish to include some people, but not others, will means that they return to their own plane at different times, regardless of whether they leave the Feywild together or separately. (Whether pulling such a stunt on a disliked fellow party member is considered good roleplaying or an unforgivable betrayal of the real-life player will depend on your group's social contract.)

Beware optional rules

Be careful relying on the RAW at all, though. Because Time Warp is an optional rule, the DM has no obligation to use it as written, and may choose to ignore it, modify it, or come up with something else entirely.

Answer 2

All of the above, and then some.

I believe the intent of the "Wish" addendum is actually that it be cast before or during the excursion to the Feywild causing the time to pass at the same rate for those individuals. The metaphysics of that only happening for a handful of people screws with my head a bit but it seems to be the least complicated mechanical solution.

As far as fixing it after the fact goes, what does the player actually want to have happen as a result of the Wish spell? I can't see anyone intentionally aging themselves by 1440 years but the other 3 results are entirely reasonable depending on what the players want to have happen. Of course in those cases it would be more of a custom use of wish than a response to the Feywild mechanic, so whether it works and how is largely up to the GM.

And no, to my knowledge there is no mechanical side effect to reversing aging. I would strongly recommend against implementing one, since the players have still experienced what they experienced. Such an action would come across, at least to me, as punitive without cause.

Answer 3

The way I read it, the wish spell makes time pass at the same rate. So 4 years in the Feywild equals 4 years in their regular realm. So the question is, does the party know at which rate time is going compared to theirs in the Feywild? After all, I wouldn't change it if I gained a huge amount of exp and got to go back to my regular life after only a little to no time has passed and I've only aged a little bit in comparison, but I would change it if I knew that if I were to go back and all my loved ones were to be dead. Regardless of if the wish spell is used or not, the party always ages the same amount. The only thing that changes is how much time has passed in their regular realm.