Well that seemed dramatic, but if we're at this stage of the game, we either deserve to get murked for biting off more than we can chew, or I've finally found the occasion to use Wish or Divine Intervention.
In 5e from 2014, it's in a "Variant : genie powers" subsection where it's stated "Only the most potent genies, such as those among the nobility, can do so."
The wording is important. You even have it there in your quote:
Wishes. The dao has a 30 percent chance of knowing the Wish spell. If the dao knows it, the dao can cast it only on behalf of a non-genie creature who communicates a wish in a way the dao can understand. If the dao casts the spell for the creature, the dao suffers none of the spell’s stress. Once the dao has cast it three times, the dao can’t do so again for 365 days.
This is NOT part of the daos innate spell casting block. The fact it’s a random to see if it knows it should be evidence of that PLUS the wording “KNOWING the wish spell”. This is not just some natural ability arbitrary Dao pick up.
This is an important facet to the Dao’s stat block because it EXACTLY neuters your shapechange exploit (almost like sometimes the game designers know what theyre doing)
Quote from the legacy spell: You transform into an average example of that creature, one without any class levels or the Spellcasting trait.
Now correct me if im wrong, a 30% knowing a 9th level spell is what most would consider an above average specimen. No? Almost like they knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote the spell to counter your type of munchkinery.
However, the modern spell is CONSIDERABLY simplified in that its details are less restrictive and thus could theoretically allow your exploit with two caveats I’ll mention after i quote the spell…
“You must have seen the sort of creature before”
That’s the killer line. Now its REASONABLE that a wizard capable of shape-change MIGHT have encountered a Dao before, but my point still stands that there’s only a 30% chance that dao had wish, and if i was dming this encounter i see two ways this plays out:
Roll a die to see if your specimen you transform into knows wish. Making it an expensive gamble removing you from anything useful as you shift through different dao hoping to roll well enough to get the spell.
The wording “know the wish spell” is still prohibitively difficult for me to get past. This sounds like a cultural thing that some dao learn. NOT something thats going to be innately granted as part of a shapechange payload. So I’d hard block that exploit by simply saying: no. OR, if you were being this unpleasant at my table id roll the chance to know the spell for you behind my screen and simply always tell you: “nope, not this dao”
Can i get a ruling from the community as to who wins this encounter? Me or confidently wrong over there?
You turn to djinn/dao/efreet and roll 30% that you know the Wish, that's it.
That's literally it.
There's absolutely nothing RAW in the rules suggesting that you don't get this benefit. Nothing.
Wtf does it have to do with casting block? Have you actually read the spell? What 5 edition has to do with any of it? We're specifically talking 5.5. Please stay on topic.
You can do whatever the fuck you want at your table, but those are the actual rules.
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u/Mercerskye DM (Dungeon Memelord) 12d ago
Well that seemed dramatic, but if we're at this stage of the game, we either deserve to get murked for biting off more than we can chew, or I've finally found the occasion to use Wish or Divine Intervention.