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Per the Wish spell:

Wish

You don't need to meet any requirements in that spell, including costly components. The spell simply takes effect.

Per the Clone spell:

Clone

This clone forms inside as a sealed vessel and grows to full size and maturity after 120 days.

Does the Wish spell eliminate the need for the Clone to grow for 120 days? Or when it says "the spell takes effect" is that "effect" to get a wizard embryo?

This is somewhat related to this question about wish eliminating the material requirements for the clone spell.

Community
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JWT
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    Might es well wish for a fully grown clone if you so desire. Don't worry about this leading to an evil clone trying to take over the world while you get blamed, it's totally safe. – nwp Sep 05 '17 at 15:06
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    More important, wish to emulate clone gives me a 2,000gp reusable vessel; ditch the clone embyro, sell the vessel, long rest and repeat. – Mindwin Remember Monica Sep 05 '17 at 17:28

3 Answers3

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The effect of the Clone spell is to create, as you put it, a wizard embryo.

Casting Time: 1 hour

Clone takes 1 hour to cast, and Wish will circumvent this, casting a Clone spell instantly. But the 120 days aren't part of the casting of the spell, they're part of the effect. If they were part of casting the spell, it would suck for everyone not using Wish.

Miniman
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  • And many spell effects wouldn't be very useful anymore if wish was reducing all their durations to zero. – Cœur Sep 05 '17 at 17:19
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    @Cœur clone is instantaneous. There is no effect to linger about. it creates the embyro, the embyro is non magical afterwards. This do not stop the wizard from using another wish to speed up the embyro development, with the drawbacks of using wish for those purposes (weakness, chance of never again doing it). – Mindwin Remember Monica Sep 05 '17 at 17:35
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    You may wish to add a comment about using wish to create an instant clone... – Shem Sep 09 '17 at 00:50
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The basic use of [the Wish] spell is to duplicate any other spell of 8th level or lower.

The spell you want to duplicate is Clone which has the effect:

This clone forms inside as a sealed vessel and grows to full size and maturity after 120 days.

If you wish for it to do something else you are not duplicating a "spell of 8th level or lower": you are doing something else. Wish can do this but you are now into the mode of wish which has consequences.

Dale M
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0

You can try, but you are opening a can of worms.

You can wish for anything, this has never changed. What they changed throughout the editions are the consequences of wishing too big.

You would also need two wishes. One to emulate the casting of the clone, another to speed up the growth.

But if you wish for the growth of the clone, you are giving the ball on the DM's hand inside your 3-second area. And historically, the DM always go for the slam dunk.

So, what is so bad about this:

  • 33% chance of never casting wish again.
  • Opening to the DM the interpretation of your wish.

I will try to put several examples of how, depending on your wording of the wish, several undesirable things could happen:

"I wish this clone is fully mature".

  • You could be transported forward in time to the moment the clone matures, 120 days from now.

"I wish this clone becomes mature this very moment".

"I wish this clone becomes mature now, and a perfect copy of me".

  • The clone begins to grow, but absorbs your living flesh in a painful and excruciating way. You may roll for sanity loss. After less than a combat round worth of time, the clone is grown, and it is a perfect copy of yourself. Including the soul that just entered it.

And then, we arrive at one of the problems of open-worded wishes. They can always be used by the DM to make you miserable. Some would say should.

But the rule of cool is your ally this moment. More reddit on wishes.

Anecdote: Back in AD&D 2e (A.D. 199x), we had a houserule about wish: when a mage declared a wish spell, we would start a stopwatch, and let him roleplay his character wishing. From that moment until he finished, anything the player spoke at the table was coming out of the mouth of the character. If he picked up pen and paper, so did the character. Once he spoke "I wish", the spell was already being cast. Whatever he spoke then onwards was the DM's fooder for torture. Also, for every minute he used up we would pause the stopwatch, seize his writing implements, gag him (not physically), and play another combat round.

Mindwin Remember Monica
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