Does the wish spell trigger the 33% automatically?

Question

The answer to "Are there limits or costs to Wishing forever for ability score increases?" seems to indicate "There is a 33% chance you can never cast wish again." Several other answers on here take that for granted. However, the exact text from the PBH says:

The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, your Strength drops to 3, if it isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.

From a grammatical point, this is as ambiguous as "Peter sees the park with the telescope." Is he looking through it, or is it in his hand?

I am looking for the RAW answer regarding the "In addition..." Is that grammatically modifying the 1d10 damage, in which case the remaining text only applies if you cast a spell before finishing a long rest, or does it apply to "After enduring that stress," in which case all of these effects apply automatically after casting the spell?

Answer 1

Neither reading you suggest is correct. The 33% is conditional on whether you use wish for duplication of another spell effect or not.

Any casting of wish used for an ad-hoc effect causes a kind of stress, which includes the 33% chance:

The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress …

What follows is a list of three effects of this weakening. This weakening due to the stress mentioned at the beginning of your quote has as its third effect:

Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.

So:

1. Casting to duplicate another spell effect

   → no chance to lose the ability to cast wish.

2. Casting for a bespoke effect

   → 33% chance of losing the ability to cast wish.

---

If the above reading obtained from the spell as-written is insufficient and Word of Designer would be more convincing, Jeremy Crawford has confirmed (twice) the above reading is how to read wish, in response to this exact question:

1. Nick DeVito‏ @NDevito1
   @JeremyECrawford Casting Wish: do you always have a 33% chance of never casting it again or is it only if you cast another spell b4 a rest?

   Jeremy Crawford
   ^{@JeremyECrawford}
   There's a 33% chance of not casting wish again if it does anything other than duplicate a spell of level 0-8. #DnD
   _{10:54 AM · Oct 12, 2015}

2. Jeremy Crawford
   ^{@JeremyECrawford}
   Wish spell: (1) Duplicated a spell of 8th level or lower? No stress. (2) Did anything else with wish? Stress. #DnD
   _{10:36 AM - 7 Nov 2016}

Answer 2

You suffer the chance of never casting Wish again if you do anything other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level

The RAW Reading:
The RAW reading, as evidenced by this post's history, is very contentious.

1. All of the listed effects happen when you do anything other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level.
2. Only a general stress occurs if you do something other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level. If you then cast another spell before taking a long rest, you experience the other effects, including a 33% chance to never cast wish again.

Intelligent people have believed both options and changed their opinions. Therefore, I conclude there is no useful RAW reading.

Therefore, we consult the RAI, in this case Sage Advice:

Question

Whenever you cast wish, do you always have a 33 percent chance of never casting it again?

Answer

If you cast wish to duplicate a spell of level 0–8, there are no detrimental effects. However, if you do anything other than duplicate a spell of level 0–8, you suffer the stress described in the final paragraph of the spell. If you suffer that stress, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish again.

Since the RAI is equivalent to one of the RAW interpretations, we can conclude that this is the RAW answer.

Answer 3

The paragraph is about the stress of producing any other effect with Wish

Since the OP is concerned about the grammar of the rules and there clarifications, here is a grammatical analysis

The quotation is a classical paragraph, and fits very well with the definition of a paragraph provided by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Topic Sentence

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) defines a topic sentence as follows:

Not only is a topic sentence the first sentence of a paragraph, but, more importantly, it is the most general sentence in a paragraph. What does "most general" mean? It means that there are not many details in the sentence, but that the sentence introduces an overall idea that you want to discuss later in the paragraph.

Our first sentence epitomises a topic sentence: it introduces a topic without providing any specific details.

The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you.

Supporting Sentences

UIUC continues:

The second and third sentences are called supporting sentences. They are called "supporting" because they "support," or explain, the idea expressed in the topic sentence.

That describes how how we should understand our second and third sentences.

Concluding Sentence

UIUC says this about ending a paragraph:

You can understand concluding sentences with this example. Consider a hamburger that you can buy at a fast-food restaurant. A hamburger has a top bun (a kind of bread), meat, cheese, lettuce, and other elements in the middle of the hamburger, and a bottom bun. Note how the top bun and the bottom bun are very similar. The top bun, in a way, is like a topic sentence, and the bottom bun is like the concluding sentence…the concluding sentence is similar to, but not exactly the same as, the topic sentence.

Here is our concluding sentence:

Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.

While this sentence breaks a rule of a classical concluding statement (in that it provides some additional details) it does serve as a conclusion. It lets the reader know a topic is coming to an end (with the word “finally”) and it reminds the reader of that topic: “this stress.”

As we are still on the same topic, “the stress of producing any other effect with Wish,” it’s clear the intervening statements in the paragraph is about that topic, specifically.