Wild Magic Surges with less DM fiat?

[Feddlefew]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what the PHB means by "... The DM can have you roll a d20. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table." (5e PHB, pg 103), then the DM arbitrarily decides when the Surges could happen, which doesn't sit right with me.

I was thinking of a few alternatives, and wanted to know if any of them were viable.

1. Every spell can cause a wild surge
-Do a d20 roll for Surges every time a spell at or above first level is cast.
-Probably not how Wild Surges are meant to work.

2. Flat Probability based on spell level
-Every spell has a [spell level] x 10% chance of causing the d20 surge roll.
- Risk increases with spell level.
- surges become more likely as character level up.
- Very low level characters are unlikely to see a surge.
- Not sure what to do with epic level spells.

3) Build up
- When wild surges happen are now based on a d100 roll, with a target number that starts at 0. Each time the sorcerer casts a spell, the DM adds the spell's level to the current target number and rolls 1d100. If they roll under the new target number, the player rolls a d20 to determine if a wild surge happens as usual.
- A short rest decreases the target number by 1/2 the character's sorcerer levels, rounded up.
- A long rest decreases the target number by the characters sorcerer levels.
- When I wild surge occurs, the target is reset to 0.

I like the idea of Wild Surges becoming more likely as the character grows more powerful or casts many spells in a short period of time, but I feel method 3 might be too complicated. Thoughts?

[Yrnes]

I think the current wording is more of a safety for the DM, where he can tell a player he doesn't need to roll for the 5% chance to trigger the surge if the campaign or a TPK hangs in the balance.

Otherwise, I'd have a player roll on every spell, as intended. I like your idea about a "build up," but that's a lot to keep track of. Maybe a less complicated method?

[ruy343]

Actually, I was looking at the rules regarding wild magic surges, and I realized that surges should happen more often than they do. When a sorcerer uses their ability to grant advantage on any attack roll, they can gain that ability back by rolling on the wild magic surge table. I let my players perform that recharge as a bonus action, and we roll the surge.

Is it risky to re-charge? Yeah. Does it give the sorcerer a much better chance of hitting with spell attacks? Yeah! It actually makes this sorcerer subclass competitive because they really rock the single-target spells (and coupling that with twin spells, that's extra-awesome).

[Bubzors]

Actually, I was looking at the rules regarding wild magic surges, and I realized that surges should happen more often than they do. When a sorcerer uses their ability to grant advantage on any attack roll, they can gain that ability back by rolling on the wild magic surge table. I let my players perform that recharge as a bonus action, and we roll the surge.

Is it risky to re-charge? Yeah. Does it give the sorcerer a much better chance of hitting with spell attacks? Yeah! It actually makes this sorcerer subclass competitive because they really rock the single-target spells (and coupling that with twin spells, that's extra-awesome).

Yea the sorcerer in our party makes this happen all the time. I also don't understand why people freak out so much about the wild magic table. most of the things on it are beneficial or neutral, very few bad things. Honestly I would like it to have a bit more of a harmful bite

[Talderas]

Actually, I was looking at the rules regarding wild magic surges, and I realized that surges should happen more often than they do. When a sorcerer uses their ability to grant advantage on any attack roll, they can gain that ability back by rolling on the wild magic surge table. I let my players perform that recharge as a bonus action, and we roll the surge.

The rules for Tides of Chaos only let you refresh its usage if the DM makes you roll on the table directly while bypassing the d20 roll. You do not refresh Tides of Chaos if you roll on the wild magic surge table due to having rolled a 1 on a d20.

[ChubbyRain]

I much rather have seen a wild mage who's spell effects were randomized rather than having the current wild surge stuff.

You could have even allowed the player to pick the wild surge riders like they do with metamagic.

Smoke: Odd success (attack)/failure (save) your damage decreases by 1 spell level (or half if at lowest level possible) and your target is blinded until the start of your next turn.

Teleport: Odd success (attack)/failure (save) your damage decreases by 1 spell level (or half if at lowest level possible) and your target is teleported backwards 10' in a random direction (roll d6, 1-2 left, 3-4 straight, 5-6 right).

For cantrips you can just add predigitation and druid craft as fun unintended options to each of your cantrips. You can Firebolt and the target smells flowers for one round or whatever. You cast Firebolt later and leaves appear out of nowhere and dance around you before dissapearing.

Low risk of tpk, fun, no DM or player control on activation, and you can balance it.

Maybe only allow them to work on spells of Cantrip - 5th level. Your mastery of spells give you immunity to wild surge for 6th level and higher spells? Their magic is so powerful that it overrides the wild magic flowing through you?

*shrug*

Spells without saves or attacks won't be affected too much. Maybe add a random predigitation/druid craft to those too.

[Capt. Lavender]

I spent a bit of time thinking about after reading the DM fiat way the rules are written now. I was actually thinking about playing a wild magic sorcerer until I read that the surges would be at my DM's whim and I was worried about him forgetting. (Nothing against the guy, but he's doing a lot, tracking my class feature should be my job IMO) Anyway, I rolled up a different character, but I kept gnawing at this in the back of my mind. The solution I thought of is to have the sorcerer roll a d10 every time they cast a spell of 1st level or above. On a roll of 10, they then roll a d20 to see if they get a surge, (on a roll of 1, as per the standard rules) unless they have used Tides of Chaos. In which case they just get the surge on the roll of 10.

[Chronos]

Quoth Bubzors:

I also don't understand why people freak out so much about the wild magic table. most of the things on it are beneficial or neutral, very few bad things. Honestly I would like it to have a bit more of a harmful bite
Almost nothing on it is beneficial. Even the apparently-beneficial ones are usually just neutral, because you can't control when they come up, and even a very useful spell isn't, when it's not the right time to cast it. The bad things, however, are always bad, and even a single instance of accidentally fireballing your own party is one time too many.

[Noldo]

My impression has always been that the frequency of rolls was made DM’s domain so that each DM could easily adapt wild magic to fit the theme of the campaign.

The buildup is quite interesting idea. An easier way to track it could perhaps be that the DM (or the player) would roll a dice for each spell and if the roll is higher than certain threshold, you roll wild surge as usual. The dice would increase with each try (D4 -> D6 -> D8 -> D10 -> D12 -> D20…). If the threshold would be 4, there is 25 % change of getting a wild surge roll after one spell, 62,5 % after two, 85,9 % after three and 99,8 % change after six spells.

[Giant2005]

My impression has always been that the frequency of rolls was made DM’s domain so that each DM could easily adapt wild magic to fit the theme of the campaign.

The buildup is quite interesting idea. An easier way to track it could perhaps be that the DM (or the player) would roll a dice for each spell and if the roll is higher than certain threshold, you roll wild surge as usual. The dice would increase with each try (D4 -> D6 -> D8 -> D10 -> D12 -> D20…). If the threshold would be 4, there is 25 % change of getting a wild surge roll after one spell, 62,5 % after two, 85,9 % after three and 99,8 % change after six spells.

Or you could do the opposite and keep the Wild Surge trigger being a 1. Roll a D20 -> D12 -> D10 -> D8 -> D6 -> D4 -> D1 (Guaranteed Wildsurge)

[Feddlefew]

Or you could do the opposite and keep the Wild Surge trigger being a 1. Roll a D20 -> D12 -> D10 -> D8 -> D6 -> D4 -> D1 (Guaranteed Wildsurge)

Seems like that might be a little frequent for low-level parties.

After sleeping on it, I think just using a d100 where the target number keeps increasing as spells are cast might be a good option. No d20 roll, just have the wild surge happen if they roll under. That way it's inevitable as the sorcerer casts more spells, but it's not going to screw over the rest of the party until they have a way to deal with it.

[Mr.Moron]

I'm currently having the Wild Sorc at my table just roll every time for non-cantrip spells. This makes it seem to come up every 3 sessions or so, which is fine.

It's also just a neat little feature for adding flavor to magical places in the world. If they're near a nexus of powerful magic I'll often do something like the "Build Up" approach where every spell cast becomes 1 easy to trigger (2+ for the second spell, 3+ for the 3rd) and so on. Under specific circumstances the local magic forces are sufficiently aligned a surge might a have as specific effect or narrow band of effects instead of being totally random.

[Protoneiko]

I had a Player using a Wildmage. He came to me with the Idea of rolling a wildsurge whenever his character was feeling an extreme in life. So If the party was about to me crushed by a boss, BOOM Wildsurge. We even used it when he got to excited about something or to overjoyed with happyness. It just made it more unpredicable and exciting. Everyone at the table enjoyed it and had a blast. (He only burnt down 1 Royal libary with a happy fireball)

[Bubzors]

Almost nothing on it is beneficial. Even the apparently-beneficial ones are usually just neutral, because you can't control when they come up, and even a very useful spell isn't, when it's not the right time to cast it. The bad things, however, are always bad, and even a single instance of accidentally fireballing your own party is one time too many.

See invisibility for a minute, 5th level magic missile, regain 5 HP each turn, creatures getting disadvantage on your spells, advantage on perception, teleport 60ft, quicken spell for free, maximize damage, regain all sorcery points, free reincarnate for a min, free mirror image, additional actions and more. These are all on the wild surge list that are beneficial and come in addition to whatever you just cast. Many others are neutral such as blue skin or a beard of feathers. The only truly bad things I can see are fireball, confusion, astral plane for a turn, potted plant, can't speak, frightened, and damage to all around you. And the severity of the bad list varies greatly.

I understand if you don't like the mechanic, but don't say there are no benefits. The benefits are far more probable than anything going wrong. And if it goes wrong, personally I see that as part of the fun

[charcoalninja]

Buddy of mine was playing a sorcerer like this and since the party was resting anyway he decided to cast sleep on himself as a sleep aid. Rolled on the Wild Surge table and scored a Fireball, thus immolating himself, killing his level 1 sorcerer and destroying all of the phat loot the party had gathered that adventuring day as he was cuddled up next to the gear for shelter from rain.

Beyond amusing.

[Talderas]

See invisibility for a minute, 5th level magic missile, regain 5 HP each turn, creatures getting disadvantage on your spells, advantage on perception, teleport 60ft, quicken spell for free, maximize damage, regain all sorcery points, free reincarnate for a min, free mirror image, additional actions and more. These are all on the wild surge list that are beneficial and come in addition to whatever you just cast. Many others are neutral such as blue skin or a beard of feathers. The only truly bad things I can see are fireball, confusion, astral plane for a turn, potted plant, can't speak, frightened, and damage to all around you. And the severity of the bad list varies greatly.

I understand if you don't like the mechanic, but don't say there are no benefits. The benefits are far more probable than anything going wrong. And if it goes wrong, personally I see that as part of the fun

The split is about 1:1:1 for beneficial:neutral:harmful effects, however he's pointing out that beneficial effects end up no better than neutral because their benefit isn't applicable when it occurs.

[Mr.Moron]

..and? Not everything has to be beneficial to be engaging or fun. Our wild-magic Sorcerer turned into a potted plant during the first boss fight of the game, that certainly wasn't beneficial. It made for a very memorable moment though and the player had fun. Another time it cast obscuring mist on the party at time when it would have really been much better for everyone to be able to see. That however gave the fighter a chance to boldly jump off the side of the boat blind, into shark infested waters and still save the day.

It's certainly a chaotic mechanic and yeah one that's more likely to introduce complications than mechanical gains. Complications are interesting to deal with though, and some people just plain love chaos.

[ruy343]

Actually, I made an error in my previous post: it's been a while since the group played.

The "tides of chaos" ability allows for advantage on any one attack roll, and it recharges if the DM allows you to roll on the surge table when you cast another first-level or higher spell. That means that every time the sorcerer casts another spell, the bonus d20 comes back if the DM allows it, making this kind of sorcerer a great spell sniper, allowing them to use spells like chromatic orb and not worry too much about missing and wasting the spell slot.

Personally, I feel that this is just the right level of DM fiat. When the sorc casts a spell and asks "can I roll a surge to get my bonus d20 back?" I can roll, look at the effect, and if it's going to TPK the party, then I can ask, "Are you sure...?" in true DM fashion.

Maybe I'm just a nice DM...

[Chronos]

Quoth Bubzor:

See invisibility for a minute, 5th level magic missile, regain 5 HP each turn, creatures getting disadvantage on your spells, advantage on perception, teleport 60ft, quicken spell for free, maximize damage, regain all sorcery points, free reincarnate for a min, free mirror image, additional actions and more.
See Invisibility is great when you have reason to think there's someone invisible near you. If there's not, though, and you didn't suspect it, all it does is tell you what you were already assuming. Cast it randomly, and it usually does nothing.
5th level magic missile is always useful, if you're in combat. If the encounter is trying to get a locked door open, though, the only targets around are going to be your party.
Regaining 5 HP per turn is nice, if you're wounded. Sometimes you will be, sometimes you won't.
Creatures getting disadvantage on saves vs. your spells and free maximize will never hurt you, at least, but like Magic Missile, they're useless out of combat.
Teleporting 60 feet is nice if there's someplace you want to get to, but it does nothing if you're already where you'd like to be.
Quickening spells for free is a bad result, not a good one, since it applies to all of your one-action spells, and you only have one bonus action per turn. Effectively, the result is that you can't quicken spells.
Free reincarnate is only good if you die in the next minute, which is extremely rare. If you don't, it's wasted.

In short, there's very seldom a benefit, and often a drawback. The only reason to chose Wild Magic is to "keep things interesting". And if you're deliberately choosing to set things up so your party sometimes randomly gets screwed over, just to "keep things interesting" or whatever, then you're no better than the 3.5 Frenzied Berserker who deliberately has a low Will save.

[AvatarVecna]

In one of my groups, we had someone play a Chaos Sorcerer. The group as a whole was that Sorcerer, a Fighter, and a Life Cleric, with the Fighter being a decent source of DPR. Unfortunately, they went up again a large group of bugbears and the Cleric and Fighter got into the low HP, while most of the bugbears still had decent health and the Sorcerer wasn't doing too well. Then, the sorcerer got the most fun result of all: the first one (roll on this chart every round for the next minute). About two rounds in (The cleric and fighter had dropped, I'd jumped into the game with my stereotypical rogue and had dropped a couple bugbears, but the rest were still up), he got the fireball result, and everybody, including all of the hobgoblins, went down. The Fighter managed to roll a 20 on his death save, got up, and began administering first aid to the cleric. We all managed to live, but we wouldn't have if we hadn't gotten that fireball. Adding to the hilarity was that his next result turned him into a sheep, bringing him back into consciousness (temporarily).

Bottom line: even the terrible results can be useful in the right situation.

BTW, his first result was the "immunity to intoxication" one, and he spent the rest of the session challenging the dwarf fighter to drinking contests.