D&D General Can a Wish spell move a moon to cause an eclipse?

Kobold Avenger said:

Something needs to be done on an eclipse, some the powerful archmage wishes for there to be an eclipse. They were cautious enough to mention it should happen almost immediately, so that the wish wouldn't transport them to a time when there was or will be an eclipse. Could their wish cause a actual eclipse where a moon gets moved to cover the sun?

And after the wish, if a moon gets moved what happens to it?

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If it were my campaign, the answer would be yes; there is a genuine eclipse that serves the archmage's requirements.

Of course, there will be some... side effects.

For example:

• The archmage did not specify which moon was to produce an eclipse, so rather than moving the existing moon, the spell creates a new one. There is now another moon in the sky.
• The movement of the cosmic spheres is broken; the moon is frozen in place. Every day now has an eclipse at the same time the spell was cast. The lunar cycle stops on "dark moon" (by definition, a solar eclipse must coincide with the dark of the moon).
• Alternatively, in order to bring it into position in the required time, the moon's movement is drastically accelerated. A full lunar cycle now takes six hours, or one hour, or even less.
• The moon is physically altered, perhaps even shattered, by the strain.

Possible consequences of such changes:

• Lycanthropes may transform more often, or grow more powerful, or spread their curse more efficiently.
• The Feywild, and fey creatures in general, may change their nature or behavior.
• The god of the moon may be royally narked off... or, maybe the moon-god becomes vastly more powerful and launches a war against the other gods.
• The tides go weird.
• Something that was formerly imprisoned within the moon (shades of Innistrad here) is released.

What Dausuul said, basically. The answer has to be campaign-dependent. If your campaign world has complex celestial mechanics, then the answer is probably "no", a Wish can't do this, or at least, not in the way you want (you get an illusion of an eclipse, you are shunted in time, and so on). If, in your campaign, the night sky is a veil and the stars and other celestial bodies are just pretty lights (like the famous woodcut), then an unprecedented eclipse is no big deal.

I'm reminded of stories like A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court where an eclipse happens because it's narratively convenient for it to happen to save the protagonist's bacon. For most DM's, an eclipse is a plot device, and I don't see a problem with it being treated as such.

OTOH, even in my own campaign, there is a Goddess, Astra, of the Sun, Moon (s), and Stars. And there are two moons, the larger, bright moon, and a smaller, black moon that is almost impossible to see (though for some reason, Sorcerers can always pinpoint it in the sky). Such a Wish would be on par with Divine Intervention, and probably not be granted cleanly.

In computer and video games where night/day, the weather, or moon phases matter (Ultima comes to mind), there's usually magic or some method of manipulating these things available to the player- and I can't think of there ever being a real consequence for using magic to turn day into night or vice versa. Because it's assumed that these are things the player is allowed to do, even though, in our world, if I moved the planet to change day into night, I'm sure that would have serious consequences!

So again, it's up to the DM to decide if stuff like this is a tool they want their players to have or not. And if the answer is "not", then I think a DM should be up front about that, rather than conspire to make the PC's life miserable, lol.

After all, D&D has had spells that let one control weather, tides, create earthquakes on command, and other effects that should create huge problems for the world, yet are seemingly not intended to do so. To draw a line with moving the moon around with Wish is a bit disingenuous- that line should have been drawn earlier. Just my opinion, though.

Umbran said:

The fun of the spell is.. thousands of deaths across the globe? The PCs being responsible for mass suffering of innocents because they don't know the impact of massive tidal changes... is the fun?

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I think players that want to take big decisions need to deal with the consequences of those decisions.

In a game, playing out the aftereffects and seeing how the players react to their decisions ramifications is fun.

I don't see any reason not to allow it but only as a local effect. In the location where the Wish was made, say in a 1 mile radius, it appears that the moon moved and an eclipse occurred, with whatever supernatural results that may occur with that.

Beyond that radius, nobody else directly observes the eclipse, though they will observe it to be darker in that area, and likewise, the moon doesn't appear to have moved to them. They may see a false moon temporarily blocking out sunlight in that area or similar, but the sunlight where they are is not affected outside of that 1 mile radius.

To put it differently, a Wish could shape or change reality locally for a short period of time, but not for everyone, everywhere. Consider it like a Fae Noble making a story where an eclipse occurs. Everyone in the story partakes in the eclipse, but outside the story, causal reality continues on as normal.

Well, can a wish spell shorten the length of a year in your world by a couple of days? Basically the same question.

pawsplay said:

Well, can a wish spell shorten the length of a year in your world by a couple of days? Basically the same question.

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No, only 1d4+1 turns.

By the way. Just because a Wish worked once, doesnt mean it will work the same way a second time. Contexts change.

Yaarel said:

By the way. Just because a Wish worked once, doesnt mean it will work the same way a second time. Contexts change.

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That's a fair point, but it's already hard enough to figure out how to use a Wish properly and avoid the DM playing the role of jackass genie. Adding additional uncertainty just makes people not to want to mess with it.

Something I've often found almost paradoxical is that DM's live for someone to dare to cast Wish, but diabolical behavior just makes people less inclined to use the spell!

Many of these replies seem to regard celestial bodies in their proper, astrophysical sense rather than in their mythic sense (which might be completely different). The question might be better posed as "Do the characters inhabit a world where celestial phenomena follow the same rules as ours, or do they inhabit a world with mythic rules about such things?"

Alternatively, is the Sun a giant ball of burning gas, or is it a goddess in a chariot being pursued by a wolf? Is it both - and if so, at which point does one reality yield to the other?

For a literary precedent, consider when Joshua commands the Sun and Moon to stand still (Joshua 10):

"O Sun, stand still over Gibeon, O Moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."

Admittedly, appealing for divine intervention is not the same thing as a wish - perhaps a miracle would suit better - but this is more about the general principles involved.

Sepulchrave II said:

Many of these replies seem to regard celestial bodies in their proper, astrophysical sense rather than in their mythic sense (which might be completely different). The question might be better posed as "Do the characters inhabit a world where celestial phenomena follow the same rules as ours, or do they inhabit a world with mythic rules about such things?"

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That just changes the question from, "Can Wish move an impossibly large celestial body?" to "Can Wish change the divine order?" or "Given a running start, could a raging Barbarian kick the moon out of orbit?"

In D&D, as I know it, the answer to all three of those things is "definitely not." It's a spell that can accomplish almost anything in the sight and grasp of a mortal being, not something that can do things mythologically attributed to figures like Zeus.

Anyway, I've thought about this and here's my answer as a GM: it does cause a real eclipse, but it's only visible to people within about ten miles. It accomplishes this by temporarily distorting the local area with respect to the Astral Plane. It causes all the real effects of being exposed to such an eclipse, but beyond the affected radius, none of them that would require a real calendar eclipse. My source is Bruce Almighty.