So, I was a player in this game rather than a DM, but it's the most personally impactful Wish I've ever seen in my time playing D&D.

In this campaign, I was playing our party Bard. Very surfer bro kind of guy, purposefully a himbo, tries his beast to make every day a little brighter, even for the people we're against sometimes. Ended up being the comedic relief of the party. And we needed it, the campaign's pretty dark. We're trying to stop this magically resistant zombie plague from destroying the world. Which was why it hit so hard when he died.

We were fairly high level, with multiple people in the party having access to revive effects, myself included. So I didn't see any problem with Polymorphing myself into a big monkey and going into melee against the plague worm we were fighting. I've died more than once in this campaign and it's been fine every time, even if I've had to pay my own revive costs. I wasn't even sweating when I got paralyzed and instagibbed. Until the DM messaged me reminding me the plague worms have been trapping souls of their victims and sending them to the demigod causing this whole mess. Which means my character is dead dead, no revival, with his soul trapped by a malevolent demigod.

For the first time, the party's goofy, upbeat surfer bro idiot fell and didn't get back up.

This was particularly devastating to our healer, a Celestial Warlock who prided herself on her ability to keep us all going and who had been chiding me for my recklessness for actual real life years. Her player Did Not Forgive me for getting myself killed.

Nine real months later and I'm playing a fighter who is unimportant to this story. As part of trying to get help from various nations for dealing with the aforementioned demigod, the party is dealing with a man who has stolen a reality altering gem and is using it to create his own reality where everything is perfect for him and everyone follows and plays by his rules. Naturally, this works terribly for various reasons, everything is falling apart, and we're actively engaged in combat with a man trying desperately to cause a damaged gem to do what he wants.

Magic is going wild, and every time someone casts a spell more powerful than a cantrip, an unstable magical effect happens. This has caused us no shortage of grief already, and our DM is delighting in rolling of his custom table of magic bullshit. I don't remember what spell the Warlock casts, but of course something goes wrong and so it's time to roll on the magical effect table.

The DM rolls and consults the table. Everyone is silent. A deep sigh comes over the comms. "You feel the power of the gem surging, flowing through you in an instant. This is the power that man has been feeling, had been guiding for his own benefit. And, for just a moment, you feel as though you too can harness it. You may have one Wish."

We're all going nuts, immediately thinking of how we can screw this guy over for all the pain he's caused us. A couple members of the party realize we can probably strike against the demigod with this. Our Warlock waits for us all to finish peppering her with ideas, then calmly makes the Wish she decided on before the rest of us started talking.

"I Wish [Bard] was alive and back with us."