Wild Magic
The comic says “wild magic,” but what we’re really talking about here is chaos. Things like the rod of wonder, the deck of many things, and rolling for random treasure all fall within the portfolio of the chaos gods. Interestingly, I think that this brand of chaos is different than randomized stats, randomized hit points, or even the element of chance at play in a typical d20 roll. The reason has to do with authorship.
Supposed we look at TRPG campaigns as collaborative stories told by multiple authors. In this paradigm the roster of authors includes game designer, adventure writer, game master, and players, all of whom have input into the general shape of the story. Different play groups may give different degrees of authority to any level of that structure, or even remove levels entirely (plenty of groups play without published modules, for example). For purposes of my theory though, the important thing to take away is that no one person has complete control of the collaborative fiction.
Now suppose we look at 5e’s “wild magic” as an author. I’ll grant you that the table of random effects isn’t a terribly original author. It’s only got fifty ideas, and some of them are pretty mechanical. You might regain a few hit points or deal some damage to yourself for example. However, you might also summon monsters, turn into a sheep, or even wind up on the Astral Plane. These are major turns in a storyline. They represent new narrative elements that get introduced beyond the normal course of play. And as the comic says, if you decide to include a custom table, the effects can become even more extreme (just check out #0000 over here). By including these elements in a game, you are inviting new creative input beyond your control. I suspect that’s why this kind of chaos can be so polarizing. Depending on whether you like keeping a firm grip on your game or prefer the wacky shenanigans of unexpected plot twists, these game elements rise or fall in value.
So how about it? Do you like to add an element of narrative chaos to your games? Why or why not? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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A bit of chaos is fine but, the Rod of Wonder, with its mostly temporary negative targeted effects is where I draw the line…as both a GM and a player. With the Rod you can at least be fairly certain that if you point it at something, it’s gonna do mostly bad stuff. Not like the Deck where the effect ruins the game, no exceptions. Even as a player, if I ever found the deck, I’d take it to the nearest mage’s guild to be thrown into a portal to Mechanus, where it will hopefully be disassembled.
…if not, some modron can tell the others why being attacked by a dread wraith is a bad thing.
Well there’s a happy coincidence. A buddy of mine just posted this to our campaign page:
http://bit.ly/2iAwaEI
Makes me wonder what a “deck of many things” that actually contributes to the game might look like? What kind of random situations could be universal enough to apply to any campaign and interesting enough to warrant inclusion?
Casts a random 1-3 level spell on the one who the card drawer designates. Randomness is inherently a bad thing, so somethig balanced should be small, or at the very least reversible and/or mitigatable.
Perma death, imprisonment, and level loss are not fun. Neither is loyal insta level gain and super weapons aren’t either if they’re just randomly handed out. Not to mention it sparks envy in the rest of the party.
So the bonuses should be opportunities, penalties should be temporary setbacks, and the entire party must unanimously agree if they’re using the deck.
*loyal servant and instal level gain
Curse this non-editable format…
I’m not certain that’s always true. Spinning the wheel of fortune is inherently exciting, and drawing from the deck is a surefire way to tap into that gambler’s thrill. It’s just that the trade-off between coherent story and random events is difficult to balance correctly.
I mean for the purposes of PCs completing the given quest since they cannot plan that far ahead. If the game is sandbox messing around, then they pretty much have nothing to lose. In that case the GM, if he/she still feels like running the game, accepts that there is no real balance and rolls with it. Even the insane “game breaking” deck of many things can’t break the game if they actually WANT to let Olidammara take the wheel.
Well… not entirely true… if one group wants to make random stuff happen and the other doesn’t want to mess too much with the balance.
TL;DR tho, if the players and GM don’t care about the balance in the game, then any randomness is balanced (probably).
There are quote a few cards in the deck that add a bit to the campaign without throwing story out the window. There’s a card that makes a random (DM choice, really) NPC in the world hate you. There’s another card that makes a demon hate you. There’s one where you get to ask the universe a single question and get a good answer.
Sometimes I think that a custom deck with only plot-relevant cards would be the way to go. Some work on the GM’s part, but it could pay big dividends.
After 1d4 hours everyone returns to normal… except Oracle, who has now gained the Dual-Cursed Oracle archetype.
Poultry Curse
Due to unforeseeable circumstances, that may or may not have involved an arcane spellcaster with a negative Wisdom modifier, you have been transformed into a chicken. This works as per Wild Shape Druid class feature, except that the change is permanent and can not be reversed through effects such as Antimagic Field. You gain Natural Spell as a free feat and can Wild Shape as per Druid class feature once per day.
At 5th level, you gain Alter Self and Oracle’s Burden as bonus spells known.
At 10th level you gain Elemental Body II as a bonus spell known.
At 15th level, you gain Form of the Dragon II as a bonus spell known.
Errata:
Add the following sentence at the end of the Poultry Curse description:
She uses half her Oracle level as her Druid level for the purpose of determining the exact properties of Wild Shape.
If in future comics Oracle has a chicken-shaped shadow, you’ll know why.
I have a reoccurring NPC in my games, a demonic horse god named Shadowfax, who exists for this sole purpose. He primarily offers chaos through his patented “horse liquid”, which requires the drinker to roll both a will and a fortitude save. Depending on the saves, the drinker could just have their hair turn pink, or it could change their alignment, memories, sex, and class levels. It is a very large table filled with some pretty amazing effects, countered by the chance of simply ruining your character forever.
“Horse Liquid”…
Ya know what?
Not gonna ask.
I remember that goop. Last time I drank it I got sex-swapped, turned into a Kobold, had my sorcerer bloodline changed to orcish, and acquired pink hair.
So you know what? I drink the horse liquid, hoping to reverse my fortunes. What happens?
Hey don’t knock an orc-blooded kobold sorcerer.
That just sounds cool.
Especially when you hit level 15 and grow to large size.
Truly, I shall be the fiercest pink-haired kobold in all the land.
You suddenly feel a massive surge of strength combined with a large diminishing of the perceived wonder of the world. You have gained +4 Strength and lost -4 Charisma.
So as a kobold sorcerer, my current stat array is +2 dex, -2 con, -4 cha. I am experiencing a large diminishing of the perceived usefulness of my character. :/
As a player it would depend on the character.
I have one who takes things in moderation, only using sparse rolls. I have another who wouldn’t touch wild magics with a fifty foot poll. Though the other members in the party are enjoying the random shenanigans that happen.
He bodily threatens them when they ask if he wants to try it.
Have not played one of the ones who would go all in with chaos, enough to encounter such things yet.
As a DM, it would likely depend on the campaign setting, and if wild magic could be implimented without breaking the story.
For instance an open world campaign with no real plot line.
Yah. Like I said back in the Deck of Too Many Things comic…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/deck-of-too-many-things
…this kind of magic is virtually guaranteed to send the campaign spiraling off in an unexpected direction. That can be a lot of fun, but it can also kill campaigns dead.
I’m on the hard “no” side for the crazy wild magic. For me, I like a game world where things flow naturally as a consequence to other things. You need to rescue the peasant boy. Why? He was captured in a goblin raid. Why are the goblins raiding? They were pushed out of the underdark by increased drow aggression. Why are the drow more aggressive? They are in a hurry to gather the components for an upcoming ritual coinciding with the solar eclipse. From there you can have all sorts of logical consequences that make sense with the story.
The reason this is important to me is that the more the setting makes sense and follows its own rules, the more room the PCs have for clever rp, and the easier to show the consequences of their actions, both good and ill, as directly resulting from what they did. Chaos magic takes away from that. The reason for the devil appearing and terrorizing the party isn’t because they have interfered with the Cult of Asmodeus’ plans one too many times, it’s because you drew a queen of clubs from a deck of many things. The evil vampire lord wasn’t defeated through careful planning, information gathering, strategizing, and just a bit of luck, he was turned into a sheep because you rolled a 17 on the wand of wonder. Or maybe you were, resulting in a tpk. Or maybe he was just covered in a pile of wet spaghetti, because lol so random. Yeah it’s really annoying for me as a DM to have my plot derailed like that, but I can fix that by never including them in the game (unless they wish for one, in which case may the gods help them, because I sure won’t.) As a player, I hate it even more because I have no control of it appearing, and all the stuff I hate about it is at the whims of the other players.
Sound reasoning all around, but you’ve hit upon something that interesting to me. When you say, “All the stuff I hate about it is at the whims of the other players,” I think that’s true regardless of wild magic. Because there are other authors in the game, those lol random moments can come into play with our without the help of tables full of literal random effects. That’s the trouble with other players adding their own ideas to a game. I agree that “covered in spaghetti” shenanigans get old in a hurry, but if another player has a more sensible version of “different creative vision,” you’ve still got to leave room at the table for it. That’s hard to do when you’re trying to tell a strictly sensible story. For me, the question becomes, “How much narrative control am I willing to give to other authors?” Speaking for myself, I tend to trust my pals more than random tables.
Exactly. What I meant was that those random table moments occur if another player wants and I hate it for the reasons outlined above. I absolutely love those times when another player changes the course of the story through their characters’ actions. When the cleric of St Cuthburt decides the church is misguided and corrupt and decides to take over the leadership, when the dwarf fighter decides to adopt the kobold orphan, even when the wizard decides to kick off the Tippyverse with practical teleportation circle use, those are awesome momenta that might be unexpected, but they flow naturally from the characters and, importantly, what those characters can accomplish, usually with help from the rest of the party. Even the more random moments, like that CN bard deciding he wants to disguise self as the king and prance naked through the streets, still stems from what that character can do, and the rest of the world is expected to react accordingly. The random tables however simultaneously give massive control of the world and very little, and the changes to the world just don’t feel earned by anyone.
So it’s not the unpredictable nature of the events themselves, but their arbitrariness. That seems like a significant distinction.
Have you ever seen the JourneyQuest films? The wizard Perf seems to have trouble with wild magic, but it’s later revealed that he’s something called a “retromancer,” meaning he gets the opposite of his spells’ normal effect whenever he casts. I bring it up because that seems like one possible compromise. You have a seemingly random effect (activating that “gambler’s thrill” I mentioned elsewhere in the comments) but there’s an eventual payoff of and explanation for the randomness. The chaos itself become a sensible extension of the story.
As a player and a occasional DM I can’t stand Wild Magic Sorcerers. I love the Sorcerer class, I just loath the subclass.
What it comes down to is cause & effect, this spell is cast and does this thing but something completely random also can happen. As a player I get nervous enough planning my spells and understanding the flow of the battle going on. ‘Okay, Hypnotic Pattern can get all these guys while Careful Spell metamagic will keep my friends safe. But what if I Wild Magic happens and a Fireball happens on me? I’m already low on health and any damage to those assassin’s will cancel my Hypnotic Pattern. Or what if I turn into a houseplant? Or what if…’ and etc.. It’s too much of a hassle and far too chaotic for my liking.
And as a DM my friends pull enough crazy shit as it is, there’s no need and want for actual game mechanics to lend a hand.
I few years back I got into Warhammer Fantasy. The orcs and goblins looked fun, so I decided to give ’em a go. As it turned out, having 1/6 of your units decide not to follow orders each turn was not my favorite playstyle. I kept a dozen of my favorite models and gave away about $200 worth of minis the summer I moved home from college.
Oh gods do I hate the stuff! If you’re not playing a completely zany game… well you’ll end up with one. Or if your group isn’t adaptable you’ll just all be miserable for a while.
For the life of me I cannot grasp how Wild Magic wound up in the 5e PHB. A single die roll killing the entire party shouldn’t be a *standard* option.
Like sure I guess if the effects were less absolutely game destroying or were somehow made to scale appropriately. But nope. That’s not what we got at all.
To make it worse it means one less real option as a thing you can play if you have a GM who limits things based on what material you can use. Because clearly the Wild Mage is somehow a more balanced choice than the Storm Sorcerer. *rolls eyes*
It’s the fireball that kills you a low level, right? But I mean… Won’t the death saving throws keep you from being insta-dead? I’ve never seen a wild magic sorcerer in play, but from a quick read-through it doesn’t seem all that bad.
Am I missing something? Is there a story of terror and poor rolling on your end?
The fireball itself doesn’t kill you*. It’s the fireball and that fact that the entire party and *not* the enemies are likely to be unconscious. Which is the same thing as the fireball just killing you except more humiliating.
*Unless you’re level 1 or 2, in which case it can just insta-kill you by dropping you to -your max HP. Which is very very possible when many members of your party might not even or barely be in double digits of hitpoints and a fireball does 24 damage on average.
But really it’s just that there’s nothing I find fun about “unbalanced to your level damage yourself AND your allies”. It’s just a penalty for daring to want to have class features that actually provide a benefit. And a penalty for being low level.
Presenting it as a side thing would be ok because that would show it’s not how you should expect classes to work and it’s just some weird thing because some people have weird tastes. But presenting it in the PHB gives this implication that class features being *bad* for you is somehow a reasonable design goal.
Interestingly, the wild sorcerer guide I found suggests that you should stand closer to your enemies than your allies in order to maximize “net gain” type results on the surge chart. I guess that, in more ways than one, the archetype is designed for gamblers.
I think everyone draws the line slightly differently at where the breakdown between good randomness (which can enhance a game) and bad randomness (which can ruin it) falls. For me, the easiest way to define bad randomness is stuff that you have minimal control over that can permanently screw over your character (or game, I guess).
For example- something I think is bad is rolling dice to determine your character’s stats. If you had a character concepts you wanted to play it might no longer be viable, or you could have to change it to fill in a gap where someone else didn’t get what they were expecting, or you can have people with objectively better or worse stats which engenders resentment between party members. And while you can increase your stats with magic or items, there’s no way to re-roll unless you make a whole new character.
On the other side is something like random damage. I’m sure there are game systems out there where a longsword does 7 damage on every attack, but most players I’ve known thing rolling dice is fun, so they prefer things like 2d6. Critical hits though, can fall somewhere in the middle. It’s the kind of thing that can change a “we’ve got this” situation into a “oh shit we’re in trouble now!” situations very quickly. Some people are all for them, while other tend to be more cautious around crit systems.
One thing I think you can do to make your players more excepting of randomness is make it a core part of gameplay. Something that shows up multiple times a session can be planned for and worked around. Something that shows up once a campaign is just a pain in the ass and has the potential to force some party members to drop out the game while they fill out a new character sheet.
Reasonable points. You’ve also reminded of the reasons why I put randomized stats and attack rolls in a separate category than the deck of many things.
Stats happen ahead of the game, and so don’t affect the course of play in real time. Attack rolls happen all the time, and as you rightly point out can be planned around. Elements like “you’re suddenly a sheep” or “a powerful devil is now your enemy” are true plot twists though. That’s what I mean when I say that random tables can act like coauthors. They have their own difficult-to-predict ideas about a direction for the story.
I wanted to make two separate comments because my other one was already getting pretty long, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually use the “Wild Magic” rules in a game. From the one time I read through it, I recall it seemed like all the effects where equally split between good and bad outcomes, so there’s not really any power-boost to be gained. Add to that players tend to be risk-averse, and it wasn’t very attractive from the get-go.
In addition, it was rarely “necessary” to beat an encounter since most encounters were designed without it in mind, and that it adds one more piece of complexity for the GM to handle made the entire thing DOA for my groups.
Which is a pity because I thought it was a really good concept. In D&D you roll dice for nearly anything- walking across a narrow ledge, talking your way past the guard, smacking an object with your weapon, etc. But not spells. Apparently if you wanted to mess about with reality and the fundamental forces of the universe there was no chance of it going wrong or not working. Say “I cast a spell” and it happens. Any rolls that happen are usually in response, i.e. saves and such.
When I wanted to redo 3.5s magic system, one of the first things I wanted to do was make every single spell have a roll involved to cast it. The best part is that once you have roll involved, you can MODIFY it. You can have class features or items that improve it, or you can have situations or monsters that make it tougher. And I’m not just talking about spellcraft skill-checks, because the skill system in 3.5 was so laughably easy to break that….
Well, the only experience in 3.5 that players had with “rolling to cast spells” was the Truenamer. If I was being polite I’d say that it soured people on the concept, and if I was being honest I’d say it was a steaming load of old wank.
Dude over here did an interesting breakdown:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468899-GUIDE-Playing-Dice-with-the-Universe-A-Slant-Guide-to-Wild-Magic-Sorcerer
According to him, “If you are near (for most effects, within thirty feet of) your enemies but not your allies, you push the number of positive outcomes up to 54%, while increasing the negative to only 18%.” Of course, I’m not convinced that being “D&D’s version of a suicide bomber” is my ideal playstyle, but that’s why you’ve got 31 flavors.
5e at the very least sounds like it’s more varied and more interesting than the stuff you seemed to get in 3.5, but I’m still not entirely convinced it’s a good kind of random. To me, there’s several orders magnitude difference between “rolling a die and hoping you get a high enough number for a specific effect to happen” and “rolling a die and hoping you get one of several good outcomes and not one of several bad outcomes”.
If in doubt, use the Toon random item table.
I’ve always wanted to try Toon… What’s on the random item table besides anvils and mallets?
Other player characters, changes of clothes, sticks of dynamite, kitchen implements, you name it
True wild magic? No thanks there. Magic is supposed to give you some element of control over the circumstances IMO, rolling a chart blindly… doesn’t.
Pseudo controlled wild magic? Has potential. Like how in 2e a wild mage can move about on the wild magic chart a bit (IIRC They can add/remove up to their level and level of the spell the cast to their chart result) and have a 50% chance to have a say in the outcome of using specific magic items (Amulet of the Planes, Bag of Tricks, Bag of Beans, Deck of Illusions, EMEFFING DECK OF MANY THINGS and the Well of Many Worlds) which is kinda cool in a “I don’t know what exactly is going to happen, but I’m gonna do my best to make it end poorly for you” kinda way.
I’m guessing you’ve played one of these, or at least seen one in practice. How did it work out at the table?
Did you hear about the time that a monkey sorcerer singing karaoke accidentally unleashed the tarrasque on an unsuspecting (and newly demagicked) town?