D&D 5E Pages from the PHB

[Lanefan]

I would never play a character who couldn't rely on his own abilities to work.

Which means you'd never play a Thief (find and remove traps doesn't always work, and the consequences of failure can be deadly).

Just imagine going through life that way. If each time you tried to take a step forward you had a 5% chance of falling on your face....you would never attempt walking again. Especially if you could crawl without the chance of face planting.

For one thing, the chance of deadly failure isn't 5%; it's maybe 5% of 5% of 5% of 50-60%.

For another thing, messing with arcane powers is (or should be) *much* more complicated and dangerous than walking. More like operating very finicky and not-always-reliable heavy machinery on a job site that has never heard of the terms "health and safety".

If magic had the possibility of killing you each and every time you cast it, no one would cast spells unless the situations was already so bad that you were going to die anyways.

Oh yes they would, because if they didn't die they'd do (or could do) great things.

Getting into melee combat has (or should have) the possibility of killing you each and every time you do it, but characters still wade in on a regular basis. Why should magic be any different?

I certainly wouldn't allow a mage into my group if I knew his spells could accidentally blow up and kill me and he had no control over it whatsoever. Please, just tell the mage to go home and we'll find us another fighter.

That's the risk of having wizards in the party. Send them home...your band of fighters will do just fine until you hit some magic you can't handle.

The only way it becomes remotely feasible that anyone would take up the profession of mage is if their spells never went haywire. Or if they did go haywire that the consequences were very mild.

In real life people take up all sorts of dangerous professions. Magic by its very nature should be more dangerous than any of them...and yet people will still try to learn it.

Man what?

Wizards were balanced in 2E because Wild Magic?

Is that seriously your argument? Seriously?

In small part, yes.

In 1e and 2e magic wasn't easy to cast. You had to be completely uninterrupted (*any* interruption cost you the spell to no effect), you had to have room to wave your arms around, there were casting times involved, fireballs and lightning bolts sometimes ended up going where you didn't expect, etc. (the one thing they missed was that many area-effect spells, like any ranged thing, should have needed a roll for aiming or placement) 2e introduced wild magic as well.

3e brought in combat casting, concentration checks (often trivially easy to make) if interrupted, no casting time for most spells, metamagic to allow still-silent-quick-max.effect casting, guaranteed placement (no expanding fireballs or rebounding lightning), and so on - no wonder mages got out of hand! All the drawbacks were gone, but the benefits remained.

Further in 1E and 2E, AD&D Magic was not, generally, high-risk, high-reward.

I as a Fighter have been fireballed and bolted so many times by my own side I've lost count! It's not always the caster who's at risk.

Where wild magic comes in as yet another risk (and balancer) is that if a caster gets interrupted in mid-spell there should be a chance of a wild magic surge (WMS) that can do just about anything from the extremely beneficial to the mind-numbingly mundane and-or foolishly humourous to the awfulest of deadly; with the more extreme effects being much less common. And this also applies to Clerics, who got off easier all along.

Lan-"for comparison check out DCCRPG, where any caster inevitably ends up as a twisted deformed husk by campaign's end"-efan

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Which means you'd never play a Thief (find and remove traps doesn't always work, and the consequences of failure can be deadly). For one thing, the chance of deadly failure isn't 5%; it's maybe 5% of 5% of 5% of 50-60%.-

Except that most of the time playing a thief your abilities are 60% higher than not having a thief. And they aren't always deadly. The vast majority of the time you check a door, it doesn't ACTUALLY have any traps on it so it doesn't matter if you succeed or fail.

I admit the same thing is true of the wild mage. The vast majority of the time you aren't going to roll "kill yourself and your friends" on the table. However, even rolling on the table means that you failed to hurt the enemies that round. Which could make the different between life and death already. Your fireball on that troll instead becomes butterflies out of people's ears? What if the next round the troll attacks and kills your ally?

As I said though, it depends on the mechanics.

For another thing, messing with arcane powers is (or should be) *much* more complicated and dangerous than walking. More like operating very finicky and not-always-reliable heavy machinery on a job site that has never heard of the terms "health and safety".

And yet, I doubt almost anyone would work on a job site with finicky and not-always-reliable heavy machinery where there is no concept of "health and safety" without being VERY desperate. There's a reason health and safety exists. People died and everyone else complained about having to work in dangerous situations until they made sure that machines were safe to use.

Oh yes they would, because if they didn't die they'd do (or could do) great things.

Honestly, we worked with the Wizard not because he could do "great things" because most of the time he couldn't. It was nice to throw a fireball at some kobolds and kill them all. However, the kobolds had such a low chance to hit us all and died in one hit that without the fireball we'd defeat them very safely it would have just taken another 15 minutes of real time to make all the rolls. We were happy he ended tedious combats with less rolling.

Practically, however, out of all the enemies we fought, he had the greatest chance of killing us. Let's say he has a .1% chance of killing us each time he casts a spell. At 3 spells per combat, 3 combats per day...let's day 10 spells total per day to make the math easier. That's a guaranteed death once every 100 days. The chance increases to a fairly significant amount at about 10 days, however.

Honestly, even the most rickety machinery you have to work with at a job site will not kill anyone for years worth of working with it.

I can imagine the complex an adventuring wizard might get: "I've been adventuring for 5 years now. I've accidentally killed 50 of my own friends. I've nearly killed myself 10 times now. That's in addition to the deaths caused by the enemies. Which is 5 during that same time period."

Getting into melee combat has (or should have) the possibility of killing you each and every time you do it, but characters still wade in on a regular basis. Why should magic be any different?

The difference is that in one case you are relying on your own skill to save you and the other you are relying on pure chance.

Imagine if you had to use a rotating saw to cut wood. It COULD kill you each time you use it. However, given you use it on a regular basis, you know how to use it "safely". You know where not to put your hands and how to be careful with it. I assume battle is a similar thing. You are skilled enough at fighting that you know you can stop any attacks your enemies throw at you. You know how to properly mitigate the risks and believe yourself to be close to be "safe"(after all, you haven't died yet...)

On the other hand, we're talking about a saw that might randomly fly out of the machine and into your head each time you cut a piece of wood and no amount of skill can stop it.

That's the risk of having wizards in the party. Send them home...your band of fighters will do just fine until you hit some magic you can't handle.

I suppose. But between magic weapons and magic items, there isn't any magic you can't handle. And those don't have wild magic surges.

In real life people take up all sorts of dangerous professions. Magic by its very nature should be more dangerous than any of them...and yet people will still try to learn it.

Some people might, but they'd all be dead within a couple of years, so they wouldn't stick around long. After all, when simply casting a spell to clean your room could result in the death, dismemberment, or permanent polymorph of you and everyone else around you, you end up dead pretty quickly.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Some people might, but they'd all be dead within a couple of years, so they wouldn't stick around long. After all, when simply casting a spell to clean your room could result in the death, dismemberment, or permanent polymorph of you and everyone else around you, you end up dead pretty quickly.

I think the idea is that magic (in a world like this) is not so banal and commonplace that you'd use it to clean your room. It's the Dark Sun thing. Magic is not convenient. It is dangerous.

That said, I don't like unreliable magic systems in games where one character's whole shtick is magic. I mean, if I'm playing a mage, I want to be able to cast spells without accidentally maiming myself every other week.

 

[Remathilis]

Except that most of the time playing a thief your abilities are 60% higher than not having a thief. And they aren't always deadly. The vast majority of the time you check a door, it doesn't ACTUALLY have any traps on it so it doesn't matter if you succeed or fail.

Wha?

Most 1st level thieves start with thief scores well below 60% (An 18 dex halfling might get close to this). And the penalty for many checks ARE deadly; a failed pick-pocket roll (which is based on target's level vs. thieves level) could force a confrontation. A failed find or remove traps roll can spring a trap. A failed Hide or Move Silent roll could well blow your cover. A failed Climb Walls roll could lead to a deadly fall. Perhaps only a failed Open Locks, Read Languages or Detect Noise does not have immediate consequence for failure.

That's not to say this is equal to a wild surge on a wild mage, but a thieves job pre-3e was a precarious one, and not one to be taken lightly.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Wha?

Most 1st level thieves start with thief scores well below 60% (An 18 dex halfling might get close to this). And the penalty for many checks ARE deadly; a failed pick-pocket roll (which is based on target's level vs. thieves level) could force a confrontation. A failed find or remove traps roll can spring a trap. A failed Hide or Move Silent roll could well blow your cover. A failed Climb Walls roll could lead to a deadly fall. Perhaps only a failed Open Locks, Read Languages or Detect Noise does not have immediate consequence for failure.

That's not to say this is equal to a wild surge on a wild mage, but a thieves job pre-3e was a precarious one, and not one to be taken lightly.

True...but my experience was in playing a 14th level Thief for most of my 2e campaign. Either way, there's either a 0% chance of finding a trap or a 20 or 30% chance with a thief around. Most of the time simply failing to find a trap didn't immediately kill you. The fighter was the one who opened the door expressly because we had no idea if the thief succeeded or not. Also, most of the time the trap did a bit of damage and it was easily healed.

We pretty much never used a Hide or Move Silently roll without a backup. We took "Never split the party" very seriously. That meant that no thief was allowed to "scout the area" by themselves...better to burst open the door and fight as a team than risk the thief failing a roll and being too far away from the party to be helped.

I, personally, refused to climb walls at all because there was such a huge chance of failure that it wasn't really considered a skill for me.

I'm not saying there weren't consequences. It's just that the consequences were often not deadly. And they were almost always better than not trying at all. Our group viewed it as a 30% chance of avoiding 5d6 points of damage instead of a 70% chance of taking 5d6 points of damage.

With the wildmage the alternative of having a wildmage is to have a normal mage who succeeds 100% of the time. It wasn't an option most groups wanted to take.

 

[Wyckedemus]

Wild Magic is an aspect of D&D. Many players like the random possibilities that *can* occur. They like rolling on random tables. Because you might cast a cantrip and get a fireball, or get a cool buff. Or you might pepper your enemy with butterflies.

It is true that most people in a fantasy world would be scared of a Wild Mage. But the universe has decided that there these individuals exist. Sure, if the wild mage lets average people know he's a wild mage, he may be in for a rough time, and find himself unwelcome in places.

But people don't play hobgoblins and drow and blackguards and fiend-pact warlocks and wild mages because it's easy. They like the challenge of the character. They want to succeed against the odds. And you know what? They usually do. Heroes are usually quite resilient and usually rebound from an unplanned fireball. After all, they often already have to withstand those kind of suprise challenges anyway.

Adventurers take up short swords and staves and face off against witch-kings, dragons, and devils. And they don't run like the rest of the populace. Wild Magic is nothing compared to getting your head bitten off by some gluttony demon. If the heroes value the friendship of their mage friend who happens to be afflicted with wild magic, they will not ostracize him. They will support him and they will overcome their obstacles, gritting their teeth when they need to, and cheering when the villain gets turned into a chicken. The game should be a lot more about character relationships than comparing build mechanics. The characters in the setting don't know that there is a wild magic table that players can read. They don't know what wild magic actually is capable of, beyond rumors and their own witness. Players shoudn't metagame it because they know what the table says is possible.

If you are complaining about wild magic existing in the game, because there is a rare chance that something can go wrong... try to remember that the game uses d20s to determine success in everything! Success and failure is quite fluid. Wild Magic is nothing different.

... in my opinion.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If you are complaining about wild magic existing in the game, because there is a rare chance that something can go wrong... try to remember that the game uses d20s to determine success in everything! Success and failure is quite fluid. Wild Magic is nothing different.

... in my opinion.

This discussion kind of goes back to critical failures. I believe it was in the 2e Combat and Tactics book where there was a preface about "Why not critical fumble rules?" when the author says that they didn't include critical fumble rules because anything that favors randomness favors the enemies and because math makes critical fumbles REALLY bad for the players.

I can't remember the entire page but basically it said this: Enemies are in play for about 2-3 rounds of combat and then they die. So during that 2-3 rounds of combat, it is unlikely that they will roll a crit or a fumble. Most of them will roll somewhere in the middle and then die. So, it appears as if most enemies are fairly competent. Every once in a while, one makes a great move or a really horrible move.

However, when you apply that randomness to a PC who might make hundreds or thousands or rolls over a campaign you start seeing that a 5% chance happens WAY more than most people expect it to. So, if something REALLY bad happens when you roll a natural 1, it'll happen over and over and over again.

The actual discussion in the 2e book said, "As PCs go up in levels, they get more attacks per round. They have a 5% chance of a critical failure each attack they make. So as they go up in levels, they critically fail MORE often. Which feels counter intuitive. We should expect that as you get better, less and less bad things happen to you."

I admit, people like when weird, cool things happen. That's why they like things like the wild mage. However, I played one for many months. I can tell you that about the 10th time I rolled "Butterflies come out of everyone's ears" it was no longer funny or interesting. Everyone just said "Yawn. Again? More butterflies? We were hoping you could actually fireball the enemies this time." And when I did roll that I hurt my party, we then had to roleplay YET AGAIN the fact that my party was angry at me and didn't want me to hurt them anymore.

Most of these things are amusing when they happen once, maybe twice in a campaign. But the numbers were so large that they happened once or twice a SESSION. A d20 is simply not random enough to deal with things that should happen 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10000 times.

 

[Remathilis]

True...but my experience was in playing a 14th level Thief for most of my 2e campaign. Either way, there's either a 0% chance of finding a trap or a 20 or 30% chance with a thief around. Most of the time simply failing to find a trap didn't immediately kill you. The fighter was the one who opened the door expressly because we had no idea if the thief succeeded or not. Also, most of the time the trap did a bit of damage and it was easily healed.

We pretty much never used a Hide or Move Silently roll without a backup. We took "Never split the party" very seriously. That meant that no thief was allowed to "scout the area" by themselves...better to burst open the door and fight as a team than risk the thief failing a roll and being too far away from the party to be helped.

I, personally, refused to climb walls at all because there was such a huge chance of failure that it wasn't really considered a skill for me.

So you're way of avoiding the the consequences of failing rolls were to be a.) high level and b.) don't use your skills.

Well, here is your way to minimize wild-surge problem: don't cast spells.

 

[thalmin]

I must have missed this. When. When does the wild Mage roll on this table. Is it if he fails a check? If he tries to cast too many spells? Every time he casts a spell? (I realize this May have been answered up thread, but with a couple hundred responses, it's easy to miss.

 

[doctorhook]

I must have missed this. When. When does the wild Mage roll on this table. Is it if he fails a check? If he tries to cast too many spells? Every time he casts a spell? (I realize this May have been answered up thread, but with a couple hundred responses, it's easy to miss.

I don't think we actually have an answer to this yet. As far as I know, this is all still "wild" speculation.