D&D 5E Wild Magic Surge and Tides of Chaos in Your Campaign

[DocWaffle]

Substitute GM

I'm a substitute GM at our local game store, so I only GM when one of the regular GM's can't make it that week.
We aren't adventurer's league, but we're essentially "store league", players may end up adventuring with a different group for a while and then freely go back to their regular group. As such we've had to have some GM discussions regarding consistency. My daughter plays the only wild mage in the store, so I defer to the other two GM's on this one.

This is our current official ruling on wild magic:

• Following the use of any non-cantrip spell, if Tides of Chaos is down, refresh it.
• If Tides of Chaos was up, roll 1d20.
• A wild surge happens on a roll of 1 or 20, or if Tides of Chaos was down.

 

[Bupp]

First, the player wanted to play a wild sorcerer. They want to see wild surges! Surges are fun!

Exactly what I was thinking. I haven't DMed a wild sorcerer in 5e, but I did have a player with one back in 2e from the Tome of Magic. Had a lot of fun with him, and pretty much let him surge almost every time. To add more variety to surges, I pulled from a Dragon Magazine article (I forget the issue) "More Wands of Wonder". It had 4 variant tables for wands of wonder. When the wild sorcerer surged, I'd have him roll a d6 and the d%. The d6 determined which table he rolled on (surge chart, original wand of wonder, variant wand of wonder), and the d% the result on the table.

A quick google search finds a bunch of variant wild surge tables. If I had one I'd probably start off with the standard list. Once a result was rolled, I'd remove it and replace it with another effect. Never the same result twice!

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Anytime the player casts a noncantrip spell, they can roll the d20 to see if a wild surge happens. However, if they use Tides of Choas, their next noncantrip spell automatically triggers a wild magic surge. I also use my own surge table with a slightly more even balance of good, badly, and neutral effects.

 

[Quasadu]

We have a house rule that goes something like this:

The wild mage player gets to decide whether to roll every time he casts a non-cantrip spell. On a roll of 1 a wild surge occurs but the spell fails. On a roll of 20 he casts his spell without using a slot.

If he uses metamagic, he MUST roll for wild surge. In this case on a roll of 1 there is a surge, but the spell does not fail. On a 20 the spell is cast with metamagic and neither the slot nor the sorcery points are used up.

He can choose to recharge Tides when casting a non-cantrip spell, but if he does there is an automatic surge. No d20 roll. The spell does not fail. I am also using an expanded wild surge table with 200 results (and planning to add more).

So far we've had 3 surges occur - the first one caused a geyser to erupt amidst the party, scalding some PC's and some enemies. The second time, the sorcerers hands began shaking uncontrollably which made it hard to cast spells, leading to him using subtle spell metamagic, risking more surges. The third surge was when his chromatic orb became a watermelon.

 

[Elon Tusk]

In my campaign, my players helped a sea dragon/goddess who granted them each a gift. She usually gives one of them a banns-yellow hagfish in an oil-skin bag of sea water that allows them to cast a wild magic surge as a cantrip. For this we use some of the larger wild magic surge tables (with 1000s of possibilities) found on the web.

It has been great fun and created several adventure paths on its own such as animating a nearby object which was a pail that claimed to be the God of Buckets and commanded the hagfish owner to feed the bucket often and promised to make him its cleric (and was a very useful way for me to guide this sometimes game-breaking player).

 

[Coroc]

I had a wild mage back in 2ed with a drow group doing the menzoberanzan boxed set camppaign where everyone played a drow. Natural magic resistance of 50+X % helped a lot on those surges if i remember well.

BTW that has been one of the definig features of the FR Setting to me which seemsquite unimportant nowadays: the existence of wild magic and dead magic areas!

 

[Blue]

I don't have a Wild Sorcerer in my game, but I've had discussions about it so I have my opinion. I don't think the class really functions mechanically nor thematically unless it triggers a lot. So I'd talk to the player and ask how often they want it to go off, up to "every time". Though not deterministically except for "every time" - for example "about half the time" is fine, while "exactly every other" is not. It's not under the character's control.

(Knowing how I think, "about half the time" I'd do even/odd based on the last attack roll (on the die) so it would be random but not require any extra time. Unless they noticed my pattern.)