What is the best wish option, in the situation pictured here:

jmerry

What is the best wish option, in this situation:


Text of the options (duplicates picture content):

1. Incur bad luck on everyone in the area, including party members.
2. Cast a double-length time stop and improved alacrity on the caster.
3. Temporarily remove half the caster's HP.
4. Party loses 10000 GP.
5. Bring a "meteor swarm" down upon the caster.

Relevant facts about the situation:
- There are no current enemies, but Vithal is about to return from his final trip into the elemental planes.
- This wish has been cast by a projected image of the (dragon disciple) protagonist, and the djinn is speaking to that image.
- This image has already summoned a planetar and prepared a 3x Incendiary Cloud chain contingency.
- The entire party is currently immune to fire (100% or more resistance), and the protagonist is wearing the cloak of mirroring.
- The protagonist is wearing the robe of Vecna and amulet of power, for the best possible casting speed.
- This was played in BG2EE 2.5, with mods including SCS. While some of these wish spells have been altered slightly, that's all for AI scripting purposes; no substantive changes have been made to their effects.

I'll post my answers to this one tomorrow, when I put up the part of the run that the picture comes from.

Balrog99

Depends on who else is in your party I suppose, but a temporary level penalty doesn't seem to be a game changer in the situation you describe. You'll still be able to cast some pretty awesome level 5 and 6 spells.

jmerry

Not levels, just HP. And only for the caster (the image). That is indeed a pretty harmless one.

The level drain penalty is a different wish; two levels lost for the whole party, permanent until restored. It didn't come up this time, and I've never taken it.

lroumen

Which option were you aiming for that is not in the list? Wish rest? I mostly use wish in combat or near creatures.

If you want to kill him then swarm, the rest is void unless you want to prep a few delayed blast fireballs, then take the alacrity and timestop combo.

jmerry

With this party? They wished out of combat all the time. Usually aiming for a rest, but wishes can also offer some pretty serious buffs like party-wide Hardiness or Improved Haste. Or free stuff. Or applying buffs like Improved Haste and Magic Resistance to everyone on the map, which is quite good for you when your next encounter isn't on the map right now. Even something like 25 stats can be helpful despite the short duration, because of lore boosts and spell scribing. In this case - well, I had the image out to stretch my "daily" spell capability, and I had nothing to do but wait and cast spells with it. It was going to wish at some point anyway, so why not right then?

All right, here's my analysis of the options, from worst to best:

1 (Bad luck): Very bad. The debuff only lasts ten rounds, but it makes every neutral NPC on the map hostile. Including two merchants I'd like to do business with in the future.
5 (Meteor swarm): Bad. Oh, it won't hurt the party - but it will deal zero damage to the planetar and make it mad. I'd rather not fight a planetar when I don't have to. This one is a side effect of the SCS AI changes; despite being under your control as summons, planetars get a standard block that makes them hostile if they're attacked when not busy.
3 (Caster loses HP): Mostly harmless. This is the one I chose at the time. The image went on to take no damage during the fight, so no harm was done.
2 (Time Stop and Improved Alacrity): Mostly harmless. Sure, six rounds of stopped time sounds good. But there isn't anything to do with them, with no enemy in sight. I'd spend most of the time just waiting for the effect to run out.
4 (Lose 10000 gold): Actually good. This one's just flat out weird, and I'd have to call it a bug. If a real party member chooses this wish option, it does exactly what it says and you lose the gold. If a clone chooses this option, your party doesn't lose any gold, and the image drops 10000 gold if you kill it. When cast with an image, this joins the random wand and random potion options as a way to get free stuff.

As for Vithal ... I fought him. He put up plenty of defenses, but none of them granted fire resistance. The incendiary clouds killed him before I could even open the way for a Breach.

I didn't discover that bug with the gold loss option until the very end of the run, after the point of no return. That's just ... wow.

lroumen

Ah, i did not know the image would then create money and I also did not know the planetar would go hostile in scs.