D&D General wait what is arcane magic anyway?

[Micah Sweet]

Probably not, but I don't think the original idea was for it to be entirely random either.

But the drama of the character knowing the risk is enough for me, I don't need to roll a d10000 every time I cast a spell if nothing happens except in a one.

See to me, if there's no risk, there's no drama.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Every electrician ever has control over whether or not their work is improperly done and thus could cause an electrical fire. Yet there is still a risk of fire from improperly done electrical work. If almost all houses almost always avoid electrical fires, does that mean that for all intents and purposes electrical fire risk is 0? Or is it still entirely there, we're just very good at keeping it contained?

Fukushima shows just how disastrous bad nuclear maintenance can be. Yet the vast majority of nuclear reactors do not have Fukushima-level disasters--not even close. Does that mean there is no risk at all? Or does it mean that the risk is small and we can do stuff about it?

Regardless, as others have noted, any time I make a hard move I could do something pretty nasty--and a hard move on Cast a Spell can happen even to an expert at spellcasting (rolling 2 or 3 on 2d6+3 still gives you 6-.)

But my point was about badly-constructed spells, not casting existing spells badly. Waziri don't just randomly throw formulae together to see what sticks because things that don't stick have a tendency to blow up in your face, literally or figuratively. That's why their magic takes so much time, and why they're so ridiculously jealous over any discoveries they make (well, that and the whole "publish or perish" academia issue)--they have to be absolutely sure that it works as intended, practicing with just teeny-tiny droplets of power. I trust the PCs to avoid accidentally blowing themselves up on any established spell (unless, as noted, they fail the Cast a Spell roll)--but for developing brand-new spells, the Waziri method is dangerous but extremely effective when it works. Other traditions are much more limited in what they can achieve by learning; they have to work within their tradition's limits, or try to fuse together multiple traditions and struggle with the difficulties thereof.


Precisely. It's more rare than the dice can represent in their chunky way. It can still happen. The party as seen the consequences of other people messing such things up. (It isn't pretty.)


In D&D? Probably not. It would be a very significant strain on my relationship with that DM unless they had done very significant prior effort to prove that they can be trusted with such a violation of the rules.

In DW? Absolutely...up to a point. That's one of the possible things a miss can do, so it's perfectly within the rules. All sorts of effects could happen ("Turn their move against them", "Show them a downside of their <class/race/etc.>", "Deal damage", "Split the party", etc.), whatever serves to push the action forward in an exciting way.

But how do you represent that chance? If you can't or don't, then essentially you are just pretending there's a risk.

 

[Bohandas]

Presumably, if I'm understanding the way it's been described, it would only come up during spell research

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Presumably, if I'm understanding the way it's been described, it would only come up during spell research

Precisely. Once a formula is in a publishable state, it's easy enough to follow (again, why people are so secretive about any research they aren't 100% ready to publish). Any of the automatically available spells, which is not a long list in DW, work as advertised, unless you roll a miss, which means I as a DM would make a "hard" move (something bad actually does happen, right then) instead of a "soft" move (the threat or risk of something that will happen unless the players do something).

Anything else you might want to use as a spell? Now that's a much different story. The Ritual move is there for slow-going magic; actual, proper spells are quick things and not dependent on places of power, so developing them is risky but potentially rewarding.