We have to talk about just how powerful 1st level Silvery Barbs is compared to 9th level Wish in D&D

I'm a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeon Masters are the hardy souls that take on the role of being the game's lead storyteller and referee. Despite their reputation, they’re not here to rob players of fun—at least in theory. According to the D&D 2024 Player's Handbook, something I was supposed to read and review or whatever, "The DM always strives to delight the whole group." That's something they even mention in the D&D Free Rules (2024).

In alignment with that, my players' fun is my number one goal. That's why I want to build up a campaign where they earn a Wish spell. Even when I was a kid playing D&D in the '80s, my friends and I knew—before we even learned the rest of the game—that Wish was the apex of magical power. We wanted it desperately.

Wish is a 9th-level spell in D&D. It's always been top-tier because it's meant to break the game—to a degree. Wish, at its best, can and should alter reality in ways that are dangerous to the world the DM and players have built together. The DM should be nervous about its far-reaching implications on their meticulously crafted (or beautifully haphazard) world.

And players should be nervous that the DM won't just twist their words and destroy their character forever. See? Fun.

But as Will Smith informed Aladdin back in the 18th century, there are rules to wishes:

• The Genie cannot kill anyone.
• The Genie cannot make people fall in love with other people.
• The Genie cannot bring the dead back to life.

In D&D, what you can’t do with a Wish isn’t so cut and dried. A Wish spell tests the limits of semantics, intention, and good faith between a DM and the wishing player. This is as it should be. Wish is a 9th-level spell, the highest level that can be cast. Only a Wizard or Sorcerer reaching 17th level can cast it, and with the level cap at 20, 17 is way up there. At that point, you're rubbing elbows with the likes of Mordenkainen, Bigby, and Jallarzi—OGs in the land of Greyhawk and beyond.

Because it's hard to know where to draw the line, Wish has one of the longest spell descriptions in D&D. Its most basic use is to duplicate any other spell of 8th level or lower. If you use Wish to duplicate an 8th-or-lower-level spell, your DM won’t even scheme to ruin your fun by twisting the meaning or intent.

But Wish’s spell description offers more interesting options. Here are a few highlights:

• Create a nonmagical item worth up to 25,000 gold pieces—warship, anyone? Hope it's worth its weight in gold.
• Allow yourself and up to 20 creatures to regain all their hit points instantly. Maybe a loophole for that "no raising the dead" clause?
• Ten creatures gain permanent resistance to one damage type.
• Ten creatures gain immunity to a single spell or magical effect for eight hours.
• Swap one feat for another feat for which you're eligible.
• A roll redo: You can force any die roll from the last round to be rerolled with advantage or disadvantage, and you choose the result.

That last one sounds powerful! Messing with the dice? But there are other abilities that allow you to reroll dice. Heroic Inspiration, for instance, lets you reroll any die immediately after rolling, and Lucky gives you advantage or imposes disadvantage. These are limited, sure, but they touch on Wish’s powers, and humans wake up with Heroic Inspiration every day. Lucky is even an Origin Feat, available at 1st level.

Now, let’s talk about Silvery Barbs. It comes from the Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos sourcebook. None of my players have wanted a Strixhaven campaign, but a lot of them were eyeballing that 1st-level Silvery Barbs spell.

Silvery Barbs forces a creature to reroll a d20 and take the lower result. Then, it gives another creature advantage on their next roll. This is more powerful than the Lucky feat because you don’t have to use it before the roll is made. You can wait until the DM rolls a natural 20, then cast Silvery Barbs and force a reroll. And boy, is your DM miffed about it. Sure, the Player’s Handbook says we’re supposed to support each other's fun, but it can feel like you've robbed your DM of theirs.

If Silvery Barbs is a 1st-level spell and can force a reroll, what does that say about Wish being a 9th-level spell that barely does more? It means Silvery Barbs is overpowered, friends. It's game-breaking in a way that D&D makes you wait until 17th level to do with a Wish spell.

Heroic Inspiration doesn’t hurt feelings because it's not invasive—you're only rerolling your own dice. The same goes for Lucky, even though it’s a bit more invasive. But Silvery Barbs? It’s the most invasive of all. It doesn’t just mess with your own dice—it messes with someone else’s, and in D&D, that’s personally offensive in a way other spells and abilities aren't.

The only thing Wish does more powerfully than Silvery Barbs is impose advantage or disadvantage on the reroll. But that doesn’t justify the power discrepancy between a 1st-level spell and a 9th-level one.

It makes me wonder if I’ve been naive my whole D&D-playing life: Maybe Wish isn’t the apex of magical power after all. How could it be when it hardly does more than Silvery Barbs?

No, I’m not taking away Silvery Barbs. I see how happy it makes my players when they save the day with a well-timed reroll of my brutal DM dice. They can keep it. They can flick my natural 20s off the table amid cheers from their fellow players. Can I be both delighted and infuriated by Silvery Barbs? Yes—two things can be true.

But in our next campaign? We’ll be having a talk about Silvery Barbs during Session 0.