One of my wizards specialized in wild magic. I routinely used fireball to produce massive explosions of flower petals, and magical fireworks for celebrations.
I tend to push “wild” magic a bit further, frankly, but love the imagery that “magic explosion of flower petals” conjures, including the looks on all in attendance. 🤣
That said, I like to incorporate not only the degree of intent but the channeled volume of Weave into the unexpected result. In essence, being that rendering a magical change in the local reality causes an equal amount of reweaving, as it were, and “wild” casters are therefore little more than interlopers pulling at threads, unintended results of their fiddling should match the volume of contact.
To shift metaphors: turning on a spigot attached to a pipeline of unknown fluid, one inherently expects something to come out, yet the only control one has is the degree of said turn. The contents are unknown, let alone the pressure or volatility, so it could certainly be a trickle or a torrent of mountain spring water, or steaming dragon piss, or a jabbering cloud of punch drunk pixies straight from a fey hen night. With wild magic, you don’t know shit except how far you turned the faucet on. 😱🤩
Yeah, this was third edition, and she specifically took a couple feats so that she had a lot more control over it. It would still backfire occasionally. I did have one wild surge that almost killed her. Wild surged a chain lightning spell, rolled a nat 20 on the surge check, the spell did double damage, and back flashed half the damage at her. She took 78 points of damage, thankfully I had 82 points, and the cleric took one look at me and slapped me with a Heal. Needless to say the 10 bandits that I fired that off at were unable to absorb 164 points of damage each, and they all quit the fight, having died.
Funnily enough because she also had a pseudodragon familiar, which gave her the [Improved Evasion] feat, she was the only spellcaster that ever was capable of hitting her with lightning or fireball.
One of my wizards specialized in wild magic. I routinely used fireball to produce massive explosions of flower petals, and magical fireworks for celebrations.
I tend to push “wild” magic a bit further, frankly, but love the imagery that “magic explosion of flower petals” conjures, including the looks on all in attendance. 🤣
That said, I like to incorporate not only the degree of intent but the channeled volume of Weave into the unexpected result. In essence, being that rendering a magical change in the local reality causes an equal amount of reweaving, as it were, and “wild” casters are therefore little more than interlopers pulling at threads, unintended results of their fiddling should match the volume of contact.
To shift metaphors: turning on a spigot attached to a pipeline of unknown fluid, one inherently expects something to come out, yet the only control one has is the degree of said turn. The contents are unknown, let alone the pressure or volatility, so it could certainly be a trickle or a torrent of mountain spring water, or steaming dragon piss, or a jabbering cloud of punch drunk pixies straight from a fey hen night. With wild magic, you don’t know shit except how far you turned the faucet on. 😱🤩
Yeah, this was third edition, and she specifically took a couple feats so that she had a lot more control over it. It would still backfire occasionally. I did have one wild surge that almost killed her. Wild surged a chain lightning spell, rolled a nat 20 on the surge check, the spell did double damage, and back flashed half the damage at her. She took 78 points of damage, thankfully I had 82 points, and the cleric took one look at me and slapped me with a Heal. Needless to say the 10 bandits that I fired that off at were unable to absorb 164 points of damage each, and they all quit the fight, having died.
Funnily enough because she also had a pseudodragon familiar, which gave her the [Improved Evasion] feat, she was the only spellcaster that ever was capable of hitting her with lightning or fireball.
A yes, good ol’ wild magic: for when you wanna practice dodging lightning & fireballs but don’t have any casters in the crew. 😅🤌🏼