Wild Magic, not Wild Rules
Many years ago, I wrote an article about Wild Magic where I proposed an alternative to the PHB rules for Wild Magic and Tides of Chaos. The entire article was based on a misreading of the Tides of Chaos rule (oops), and after all this time, I wanted to revisit my thoughts on the subject.
The Problems with Wild Magic
There are two separate ways to roll on the wild magic table: Wild Magic Surge and Tides of Chaos. They work as follows:
Wild Magic Surge
Starting when you choose this origin at 1st level, your spellcasting can unleash surges of untamed magic. Once per turn, the DM can have you roll a d20 immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table to create a magical effect. If that effect is a spell, it is too wild to be affected by your Metamagic, and if it normally requires concentration, it doesn’t require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration.
Tides of Chaos
Starting at 1st level, you can manipulate the forces of chance and chaos to gain advantage on one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw. Once you do so, you must finish a long rest before you can use this feature again.
Any time before you regain the use of this feature, the DM can have you roll on the Wild Magic Surge table immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. You then regain the use of this feature.
These two features, although not unusable in their current state, I feel don't meet the bar for simplicity and clarity present in later subclasses. My concerns with these rules can be distilled as follows:
- Both Wild Magic Surge and Tides of Chaos require the DM saying "yes" in order to do anything. A DM, following these rules to the letter, could result in a wild magic sorcerer that never rolls on the Wild Magic Surge table, which seems... unusual at best.
- Tides of Chaos has a wildly fluctuating power level. The number of times you get advantage on a roll ranges from 1, all the way up to the total number of spell slots you have! This also depends on how often your DM wants you to roll on the Wild Magic Surge table.
- Finally, the subclass puts additional work on the DM to make the decisions mentioned previously. DMs may differ, but I feel that subclasses shouldn't put more work on the DM, who's already doing quite a bit to keep the game flowing.
Now, this isn't to say you can't use the rules as written. As with so many things at the table, a good dialogue between DM and player can resolve the vast majority of these issues: Wild magic surges rolled as often as both people find appropriate, and Tides of Chaos resets happening either regularly or in cool story moments. However, I'm aiming to tinker with these rules to make a system that consistently works out of the box, without having to have a conversation about "how the hell are we going to interpret these rules" every campaign.
Fixing Wild Magic Surge
Before we can fix Wild Magic Surge, we need to understand the extremes of how often the sorcerer is going to roll on the Wild Magic Surge table. On the lower extreme, the DM never calls for d20 roll, and you never roll on the table. On the high extreme, the DM calls for a d20 roll every turn you cast a spell of 1st level or higher (and you cast only one such spell per turn), resulting in the following table:
| Level | Total Spell Slots1 | Average Wild Magic Surges Per Day |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | .10 |
| 2 | 3 | .15 |
| 3 | 6 | .30 |
| 4 | 7 | .35 |
| 5 | 9 | .45 |
| 6 | 10 | .50 |
| 7 | 11 | .55 |
| 8 | 12 | .60 |
| 9 | 14 | .70 |
| 10 | 15 | .75 |
| 11 | 16 | .80 |
| 12 | 16 | .80 |
| 13 | 17 | .85 |
| 14 | 17 | .85 |
| 15 | 18 | .90 |
| 16 | 18 | .90 |
| 17 | 19 | .95 |
| 18 | 20 | 1.0 |
| 19 | 21 | 1.05 |
| 20 | 22 | 1.10 |
This table, by and large, tells us what every wild magic sorcerer already knows to be true: Wild Magic Surges are rare. If the DM is being as generous as possible with rolls, it isn't until level 18 that a sorcerer gets an average of 1 Wild Magic Surge per day. If a DM calls for a wild magic roll about half the time you cast a spell, and you spend 2 full days of combat at level 1, 2 fulls days of combat at level 2, and 2 full days of comabt at level 3, there's still about a 57% chance2 you will have yet to see a wild magic surge from rolling a d20, as you potentially head into level 4.
So what do we conclude from this? Well, it depends on how often you want to see a wild magic surges. Given how rarely wild magic surges happen even with the maximum about of rolling, I recommend rolling a d20 every turn you cast a 1st level spell or higher. This both removes DM fiat in how often Wild Magic Surges occur, making it a static chance, and removes the need for the DM to make a decision about rolling a die every time the sorcerer casts a spell.
Fixing Tides of Chaos
If you were thinking "wild magic surges never happen" after the last section, Tides of Chaos is the solution you are looking for. This feature can cause 6 wild magic surges per day just at level 3! And it only goes up from there. Of course, while I encourged the DM to be as generous as possible for the Wild Magic Surge ability, being overly generous in granting Tides of Chaos refreshes can lead to quite a few problems.
To fix Tides of Chaos, we need to answer two different questions: First, how often should the sorcerer be able to get advantage on a roll, and second, how often should a wild magic surge occur. The PHB, unfortunately, doesn't offer very much guidance on how often this feature should be used: At least once per day, possibly more. Tasha's added a pattern for abilities like these to grow with progression: Uses per day equal to your proficiency bonus. Although I won't be directly using this pattern, it provides a basis of how often we might expect such a feature to be used. The feature also directly ties its refresh to wild magic surges, so the more often you get it back, the more often you are triggering surges.
There are a bunch of different ways to approach this problem. Ultimately though, I decided that simplicity is the way to go with this feature. Rather than asking the DM to decide to trigger a wild magic surge and return the feature to player, I went with making surges more likely, and returning the feature upon successful activation of a surge.
Making a surge more likely can easily be done by changing the target number on the d20, but in the philosophy of KISS, I think simply changing the die size and keeping the target number at 1 is a more straightforward approach. The chosen die size effects how often you get this feature back, and how often you trigger wild magic surges. Ultimately, I landed on a d8, which yields the following table:
| Level | Total Spell Slots | Average Advantages Per Day | Average Surges Per Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 1.25 | 0.25 |
| 2 | 3 | 1.375 | 0.375 |
| 3 | 6 | 1.75 | 0.75 |
| 4 | 7 | 1.875 | 0.875 |
| 5 | 9 | 2.125 | 1.125 |
| 6 | 10 | 2.25 | 1.25 |
| 7 | 11 | 2.375 | 1.375 |
| 8 | 12 | 2.5 | 1.5 |
| 9 | 14 | 2.75 | 1.75 |
| 10 | 15 | 2.875 | 1.875 |
| 11 | 16 | 3 | 2 |
| 12 | 16 | 3 | 2 |
| 13 | 17 | 3.125 | 2.125 |
| 14 | 17 | 3.125 | 2.125 |
| 15 | 18 | 3.25 | 2.25 |
| 16 | 18 | 3.25 | 2.25 |
| 17 | 19 | 3.375 | 2.375 |
| 18 | 20 | 3.5 | 2.5 |
| 19 | 21 | 3.625 | 2.675 |
| 20 | 22 | 3.75 | 2.75 |
These numbers come in slightly under the proficiency-mod-per-day uses I was going for. But I wanted to keep the number of surges in check, as well as being cognizant of the fact that turning sorcery points into spell slots could lead to certain days with even higher usage.
It should also be noted the this table is based upon Tides of Chaos always being used as soon as it is available. The true number of average surges per day is somewhere in between this table and the previous table.
The Final Solution
Once we put everything together, we get to re-write the two rules from earlier to look as so:
Wild Magic Surge
Starting when you choose this origin at 1st level, your spellcasting can unleash surges of untamed magic. Once per turn, roll a d20 immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table to create a magical effect. If that effect is a spell, it is too wild to be affected by your Metamagic, and if it normally requires concentration, it doesn’t require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration.
Tides of Chaos
Starting at 1st level, you can manipulate the forces of chance and chaos to gain advantage on one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw. Once you do so, you must finish a long rest before you can use this feature again.
When you have no uses of this feature remaining, whenever you would roll a d20 from the Wild Magic Surge feature, instead roll a d8. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table as normal. You then regain the use of this feature.
All together, I'm pretty happy with this rewrite. It takes most of the nebulous concepts around wild magic surges, and turns them into them a consistent rule set that won't differ from DM to DM, that also gives an idea of how powerful the features should be.
Other Alternatives
If the above rules aren't quite your cup of tea, however, there are several other ways to approach Tides of Chaos to normalize its power level without relying on DM fiat:
- Ticking Time Bomb of Magic. Same as above, but have the target number for wild magic surges go up by one after each unsuccessful roll. This increases power slightly and leads to more wild magic, so you may want to make the new die a d10. It's more complicated, but makes wild magic surges more reliably triggered after Tides of Chaos is used.
- Remove the Link Between Tides of Chaos and Wild Magic Surges. Change Tides of Chaos to not interact with Wild Magic Surges at all, and just let it be proficiency-mod-per-day advantage. Depending on how often you want surges to occur, you may also want to increase the d20 range for surges to ofset the lack of Tides of Chaos surges.
Whatever you end up doing, I hope you find a way to make the magic wild, but keep the rules tame.