In the Wild Magic Training Ground, even cantrips come with the chance of a wild magic surge. Spam enough of them and you’re bound to see some chaotic interactions. You might turn invisible while holding your breath. You might freeze solid while sleeping. Maybe you get tormented by shrill and discordant music. Or get hit with a race change. Or lose all your hair. Pretty much any obscure thing you can imagine, and it probably already exists on this d10,000 table. And in a weird way, it’s the d10,000 table I really want to talk about.
The existence of that table tells us something important. For some players, random shenanigans are really, really fun. Just imagine how much you’d have to love something to make up a list of 1,000 items, let alone that monstrosity! But for others, seeing the grim reality of the ground-zero-fireball or save-versus-death-meteor, it seems like folly to include such shenanigans in a game.
Here’s my take. There is a fine line to walk between “harmless fun” and “randumb.” This is the element that separates the good random effects results from the bad ones. Take the wand of wonder for example. Growing leaves, turning blue, or accidentally enlarging your target are all amusing effects. They might provide a distraction if your GM is feeling generous, but they are interesting enough to elicit comment and consternation among the party. And more importantly, they can do so without disrupting the game. The 3% chance to petrify yourself is the opposite kind of effect. And let’s not even get started on The Void in the deck of many things. It’s cool if you manage to TKO an enemy, but doing the same to yourself amounts to, “Lol you don’t get to play anymore tonight.”
Sure the threat of instant death or massive damage-to-self is exciting. But I question whether that excitement is worth it, even when we’re dealing with a low % chance.
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we share our favorite random effects? Do you like the deadly ones? Or do you prefer an assortment of bizarre “10d10 stray dogs appear” and “target disgorges a dragon’s egg” type results? Would you pay a visit to the Wild Magic Training Ground? Whatever your take on chaos magic, wild surges, and random effects, let’s hear it down in the comments!
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Wild magic was a lot of fun in the recent D&D movie… not quite game-accurate, but it did a wonderful job of portraying the kind of chaos that ensues when you’ve got a wild mage around.
I’ve only ever played one briefly in a convention game, but what struck me was that if your luck is on form, they’re awesome. In that particular edition (4e, I think), they had a cantrip that just kept bouncing from one target to another if you kept rolling hits and you kept rolling odds (or evens, whichever)… and I remember getting a chain of roles that pretty much cleared the room of minions.
But yeah, if your luck isn’t in, it can be catastrophic. That’s why on the whole, I prefer more moderate results. Not the just-plain-weird-but-harmless ones, like your skin turning blue… though those are amusing. But having effects which are good or bad but not excessively so… casting Fireball on your own position is a bit too much, but I’m fine with doing the same thing for Grease or Fog Cloud… random elements which might be disruptive, but probably won’t cause a TPK…
In my homebrew I have 4 different DoMTs. 3 are based off the regular 52 card deck and one is based off a Tarot Deck. I have a D100 chart just for miscellaneous things kender and ferrets might bring back to the party. I have a expanded, cursed “wand of wonder” called the Horrible Magic Ring that I snitched from a previous DM. All of them have good effects and bad, but the very good and very bad all have 1% chance on a D100. These go along with the Critical Hit and Critical Miss charts to help inject a bit of random interest into the game.
As for the players…have you ever tried to pry a Deck of Many Things out of a characters hands? Even if the person right before them went up in a column of flame, they are still going to get their pull, come hell or high water. Catastrophic events always tend to immediately turn the session in to rescue/resurrect missions and I let anyone whose character is currently incommunicado run the monsters and minor NPCs. That way everyone is still involved.
The only times I’ve really embraced the randomness of wild magic, wands of wonder, or the dreaded deck of many things has been in either wacky high-magic low-consequence Rules?-What-Rules? campaigns where the PCs can expect that losing your best friend’s soul to Avernus leads to a fun-filled session for everyone, or (as a player) in miserable game groups where (privately) I honestly didn’t care anymore and was grateful that in a few months I wouldn’t ever game with that bunch ever again.
Whatever happened to that character, from the magical Stat-altering banquets in Castle Amber to drop-kicking Acererak’s skull (“to see what would happen”), would be non-canonical.
In more serious campaigns, though, where PC abilities are more rule-bound and the players are invested in their characters’ arcs, as a DM I try not to traumatize folks by introducing a chance that their imaginary persona gets turned into Asmodeus’ spittoon.
That said, how about that 1e AD&D Jester Class variant (Dragon Magazine) that had an increasing chance per level to control the effects of a wand of wonder? That much power in one lunatic’s hand could turn your entire campaign into The Mask. (if it wasn’t there already)
I’m firmly in the camp of “if there is a chance I randomly die using this feature, I will absolutely never use it”.
Plus… it just doesn’t make sense from a backstory point of view IMO. Take the 5e Wild Magic sorcerer, for example. Assuming wild magic rolls are done somewhat regularly when casting (since it’s entirely DM fiat normally). How many times has your sorcerer cast a spell in their backstory? Unless they just acquired their powers, it’s probably a good amount. In that case, HOW ARE THEY STILL ALIVE with that self-fireball in the list? Sure, it’s a rare result (0.1% per surge if I didn’t horribly botch this elementary bit of math, or actually even higher because of the “roll every turn” result but I ain’t calculating that), but eventually it’s gonna happen. And a 1st level isn’t surviving that. And that’s just the noticeable effect of the fireball, there’s also the “got executed because you triggered the life drain effect and killed a bunch of innocent people” and a few other ways to die from that list.
I much prefer something like the Wild Magic *Barbarian* from Tasha, where you get something at random, but it’s never going to be harmful. At worst it won’t be useful in your current situation.
But I also prefer no randomization in my abilities over that, though. The dice decide “does it work?”, that’s how the game works and I’m fine with that (and enjoy it) but I want “what do I do?” to be my choice only.
“How many times has your sorcerer cast a spell in their backstory?”
Built a level 1 wild magic sorcerer for a campaign once and decided they had triggered the ability 3 times prior to the campaign. I rolled the 3 random events and sure enough one of them was the self-fireball. I decided to commit and “play it out”. I succeeded my DEX save to half the damage and rolled low enough on the total damage to not insta-kill. Three successful saving throws (and 1d4 hours) later my sorcerer woke up with 1 HP heavily singed.
I’ve never actually come across a Deck of Many Things. Closest I’ve come is the card room of Castle Amber (module X2), way back from the early ’80s.
In 2E, Wild Mages can control a DoMT 50% of the time, which means they’ve got a 75% chance of getting a good result. Give a 1st level Wild Mage a Deck of Many Things and 200 draws later they’re 30th level with a ton of magic items, six keeps, a handful of followers, a triple handfull of wishes, all their stats are 20, and they’ve got a dozen ‘Get of out Jail Free’ bad situation reversers. Time to retire and roll up a new character.
Or they drew something fatal in their first couple of draws and it’s time to roll up a new character.
The best PC use of the deck I’ve seen is hanging on to it and offering to let NPCs draw from the deck for a ‘small’ fee.
Ah yes, the homebrew ‘wand of wonder’, hours of fun and mirth…
…as in: “I wonder how much this is going to hurt ?”
99- a small dragon appears…in your pocket.
00- a Great Wyrm appears…looking for her child…that’s in your pocket.
I have a tale about the opposite, but it’s at least related.
In GURPS Magic, if you roll a critical failure while casting a spell, there is a good chance that something bad will happen – all the way up to, a demon (or similar malign entity) appears and attacks the caster. As critical failures can not be reduced to less than a 1/216 chance (roll 18 on 3d6), this means that even the best spellcasters in prepared conditions will fail horribly 0.5% of the time.
In practice this discourages reliance on magic for common tasks. Cars don’t crash on 0.5% of all trips, but instead far less. Cooking a meal does not erupt in fireballs 0.5% of the time, but instead far less. And so on.
So I made it a plot point in the campaign I’m running these days. Someone came up with a magic amulet design – cheap, mass producible – that would sacrifice itself to soak up one critical failure. In-universe, no one knew about “critical failures” but they did know that things go wrong a bit under 0.5% of the time even in the best circumstances, and that these amulets are ablative armor to stop that, so mages quickly began carrying a few around, some even refusing to cast spells without this protection.
The economics of this quickly drove the invention of mass production, with the PCs’ home society in the midst of the resulting industrial revolution. (The PCs’ actions are making said revolution ever more extreme, just as planned.)
I play a lot of WFRP, so am generally down for the “you begin bleeding from all your orifices – you have six rounds to live, and a daemon is eating your friends” type of wild magic. The lighter and more frivolous effects often just feel silly; I’m fine with including them, but they should actually feel weird and magical rather than like random funny things. All the milk within a mile spoiling, also from WFRP, is a good example.
The closest I’ve come to Wild Magic was a Rod of Wonder. It turned my tiefling blue and created field of grass. I think there might have been a couple other incidents, but those were the two most memorable.
This remind of a 2e game in Myth Drannor at 18th level. One of the players was a chaos goblin. Every day over breakfast they gave a new name they would answer to until they slept. Rest of party decides to refer to them as “Hey You”. Never gave the same back story twice. Had a weird thief god they followed that liked strange jokes. Totally committed to the bit.
So there in Myth Drannor some spell goes wonky and they get turned into a living shadow. Reverse Curse would fix it but they said “this is awesome, let’s play this out for a bit!” They have fun exploring, ignoring physical traps, etc. They run into a monster and another Mythal surge.
Planar rift. Shadow & monster fail the save. Shadow rolls to see where they go….
Positive Material Plane. Poof, no shadow.
Okay, 18th level pcs, they can fix this….right? Well, they have no body parts. Can’t even even wish to recover the body parts. They don’t have a real name so even reincarnate is out. They could petition the god directly to get their team mate back….except that weird thief god is very specifically weird about resurrection, particularly of valued souls…..like our “totally comitted to the bit” japester.
Net result, they were utterly, irrevocably dead. I, as the GM, spent a week looking for a loophole that didn’t violate the character’s back story. Nope, nada, nothing.
The player said “It was worth it. I am now a legend.”
> “Sure the threat of instant death or massive damage-to-self is exciting. But I question whether that excitement is worth it, even when we’re dealing with a low % chance.”
Put another way, “don’t have the players roll for something unless you are willing to accept a nat 1 or a nat 20”.
For the base Wild Magic table of the PHB, I don’t change it when players want to use the subclass. I do add a non-lethal restriction to the damaging effects so the party can’t instantly die roll 1; But otherwise I feel it would harm what little potential the subclass actually has to make a table so large it can’t be parsed like the 10k table listed above, or a different table hidden from the player. It’s given TO the player for a reason, as knowing what’s possible is part of mastering it. This is valid because if you dig deep there ARE actual builds for Wild Magic Sorcerer. They’re just specifically tailored to either optimizing the 20% chance of bonus action economy or (more likely) minimizing the detrimental effects of the table.
But for players really looking to gamble, I can still use that 10k table and others made online as bonus events in the character’s arc, things known ahead of time for players that want to seek out that extra chaos. So there’s room for a middleground.
As for the 10k table, I just rolled 7667: Target’s weapon is +4 against anyone with an intelligent weapon. That’s actually really neat. Stronger than the normal +3 cap but only in the highly specific circumstance. Well made, but a permanent enchantment might be busted. Word of caution using the 10k table, make all effects temporary unless they’re obviously meant to be permanent. Some of these are campaign shifting. But I guess I should have seen that coming.
I generally prefer wild magic be silly/beneficial randomness and not self-harm/does something so different than the intention you effectively wasted resources.
I also prefer when they’re not presented as default beginner player options. smh
I did have a short lived “post magical apocalypse” campaign where Wild Magic was the only acrcane magic and it was only available to LG, NN and CE characters, with the added twist of the surges never adversely affected them. LG were trying to control it, CE basked in it, and NN felt they were a cosmic pressure relief valve with surges “normalizing” the area.
That’s certainly an interesting twist on the idea.
What we really need is a table that scales with the level of the attempted spell. That way beginner spells only lead to beginner side effects.
Either seperate tables, or additional possibilities added at higher levels, or shifting results up or down in a single table that’s organized by severity. I think the middle option might work best, it seems the most versatile; like of you wanted you could also append possible effects based on the type of spell being atyempted, as well as the level
Remind me how, in my old D&D 2nd edition game, I used the homebrew rule that, instead of just fizzling, any spell whose casting was interrupted caused a wild magic surge.
This resulted in one caster, trying to cast some low-level spell on goblins (not sure which one, probably magic missile) and getting hit mid-casting, ending up accidentally summoning a Slaad! That was way, way above the current game’s level, but thankfully the player realized it after maybe one unsuccessful attack on the Slaad. After that, his character just legged out of Dodge real fast.
I really love the Hitchhiker’s Guide reference on the wild magic table in 5e, but frankly, some of them are quite bad and unfun. Sure, they only happen on a d20 roll of one (or if you push your luck with Tides), but frankly, deaging to a toddler or even just to a teenager is the opposite of fun I think, as it takes your character’s agency out of your hand.
The wild magic Barbarian effects, however, are quite well balanced, and the only one that can have detrimental effects on the party can be mitigated by simply going into rage a bit farther away from everyone else.
Random, once tamed can be super powerful.
I had a so called ‘random powered’ character in pathfinder which was forced to early retirement. (well he was at level 15~ so it was end game anyway)
had the fortunate trait (once per day a random effect from spell or item can be rolled twice and picked the better one). the harrower prestige class at level 10 (when drawing any kind of random cards deck can draw an extra card and dismiss one card).
and crafted the Silent Aviary
-work like the harrowing deck of many things only it is craftable (the normal deck is an artifact and can’t be crafted) and have a command word to diss what you picked and get and instead get the option to fail a save to be trapped in a space that can be exit with planeshift. (the command is actually to redraw, but in this case it’s better safe then sorry. you might draw 5 bad cards in a raw somehow, and why risk it?)
end result? once per day he draw 4 cards, picked the best. and if all sucked could use the command word to get trapped on purpose and planeshift + teleport back to where he was. after a few downtime days he was so far off with wishes, riches and ‘avoid anything you don’t like once’ etc that GM had me retire him.
Just a couple sessions ago I invoked a wild magic item that lead to some… interesting results. I randomly forgot one of my 4 languages known, and it happened to be Common. That got me a bit worried, but I share at least 2 other languages with basically everyone in the party so I thought it wouldn’t be too disruptive. I then had to roll up the new language that was taking it’s place… and the dice landed on Common (1 in 20 odds). There was a collective laugh at that and, in an effort to ensure something came of all that rolling, the DM decided that I now spoke Common in a wildly different accent. My pale, Arctic Elf now speaks Common with an awful Indian accent (I’m not great with accents) and the group loves reminding me about it. As far as the character is concerned she is speaking just the same though.
The was also the time we were fighting Krampus and I got a cascading wild magic surge, which fireballed me twice, summoned some sugarplum flumphs, and then vampiric drained everyone around me killing those flumphs while healing me back up almost completely. The very last roll gave me theme music as we eventually drove Krampus off and saved Christmas.
I love a bit of wild, wacky fun, with a touch of danger. As long as things aren’t in the range of one bad roll meaning death, that is.
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One issue with a lot of tables is that a lot of times the effect is inapplicable or not immediately apparent. The latter is realtively ok but then shouldn’t the wild mage already under the effect of a bunch of unknown effects from surges in backstory time?
I want to come up with a new Deck Of Many Things that’s vased on Cards Against Humanity
[b]The Deck of Many Things Against Humanity[/b]
A magical deck of cards similar to the Deck of Many Things but with different cards:
*Being Able To Talk To Elephants – The character gains the continuous spell-like ability ability to talk to elephants as per the Speak With Animals spell
*Being A Woman – The character becomes female if not already. If already female they become an exaggerated stereotype of a female of their species
*The Patriarchy – The character becomes male if not already. If already male they become an exaggerated stereotype of a male of their species
*Shiny objects – It rains gold dust and small low grade gemstones
*Tentacles – The character is affected by an Evard’s Black Tentacles spell
*Poverty – All non-magical posessions of the character are lost as per the Ruin card of the Deck of Many Things
*The Rapture – Character is planeshifted to the outer plane matching their alignment
*A Shit Ton of Almonds – Cyanide emanates from the card, poisoning those in the vicinity
*Being A ************* Sorcerer – Character immediately gains one level of Sorcerer
*A Horde of Vikings – Character immediately gains one level of Barbarian
*Agriculture – The surrounding three miles are affected by a triple strength Plant Growth spell
*Unfathomable Stupidity – Character permanently loses 1d4 points of intelligence
*Science – Character permanently gains 1d4 points of intelligence
*An old guy who’s almost dead – Character advances one age category
*Privilege – Henceforth the attitudes of all guards and government officials encountered by the character default to being friendly unless they would otherwise be higher
*Being A Minority – Henceforth the attitudes of all guards and government officials encountered by the character default to being unfriendly unless they would otherwise be lower
*Free Samples – 3d3 random minor magic items tumble out of the card
*A Much Younger Woman – Character regresses one age category
*Doing Crimes – Character immediately gains a level of rogue
*Your Weird Brother – The character gains a new close relative who everyone else remembers as having always been there
*My Ugly Face And Bad Personality – Character permanently loses 1d6 charisma
*Being On Fire – Character is set on fire and takes a permanent -1 penalty to saves to avoid catching on fire, but also gains 1 point of permanent fire resistance
*The Hamburglar – The surrounding area is plagued with rats, ants, locusts, and other food devouring pests
*Huge Biceps – Character permanently gains 1d4 strength
*Solving Problems With Violence – Some intractible abstract problem in the character’s life is manifested in a physical form as a group of thematically appropriate monsters and possibly a dungeon. If the monsters are defeated then the initial problem is defeated as well
*Sweet, Sweet Vengeance – The next negative effect is applied to the character’s worst enemy
*50000 Volts – The character is struck by lightning
*An octopus smoking a cigarette – Character gains an additional pair of limbs
*The Arrival of the Pizza – A messenger arrives bearing an important item or message
*A Fart So Powerful That It Wakes The Giants From Their Thousand-Year Slumber – Sound Burst and Stinking Cloud centered on character and everyone in a mile radius is woken up, even from supernatural slumber
*The Inevitable Heat Death Of The Universe – Doomguard come out of the walls Hellraiser-style and probably attack the character
*The Force – Character immediately gains one level in psion
*Hot People – Character permanently gains 1d6 charisma
*Seeing Grandma Naked – Character is permanently blinded
*Chainsaws for hands – One of the character’s appendages is replaced with a major magic weapon
Overwhelming Transmutation and Universal; CL 23; Price: Artifact
We played 40K Black Crusade back in the day and the BBEG pysker ended up killing himself session two. He was just supposed to cast a spell (psyker power? Forget the correct nomenclature). When using these powers there is a chance of something random to happen similar to Wild Surge. However, if you 75+ you get to roll on the BAD table. The BBEG had a talent that allowed him to roll twice and he rolled the highest result both times (don’t remember if it was 99-100 or just 100). Which meant the dude permanently, irrevocably got his body and soul annihilated. The DM was a good sport about it despite everything.