Quote from: S'mon on October 22, 2024, 06:17:00 PMMy son plays a Wild Magic Sorcerer and has to beg the GM to be allowed to roll for Surge. He played a WSM because he wanted weird shit to happen. It should be a check every time.

Simple solution - no wild magic sorcerers in my campaigns so we don't have to have that conversation. And I don't have to spend however long rewriting the table to fit genre or tone; there are other things I'd rather hack on more productively & be able to apply to more players.

Quote from: Mishihari on October 22, 2024, 04:55:47 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on October 22, 2024, 03:20:51 PMThe bigger issue here is that wild magic surge is complete and utter garbage.

I understand some of you had to walk to school uphill both ways in shoes that didn't fit, and that's a cool story. Meanwhile, no other class has to play Russian Roulette just to use their core class feature. So yes, the player gets to completely ignore wild magic surge and never roll the table. That's perfectly reasonable.

Not really.  The point of wild magic is that you randomly get some strong results but have to put up with a lot of randomness, even when you'd rather not have it.  The class is designed for people that want to play like that.  If you want something more controllable, play something else.  This change takes away that playstyle from the people that want it.

The plusses and minuses balance, assuming the system is designed right.  If you eliminate the minuses without altering the plusses you get a much stronger character.  So if this is the only change, they did something wrong.

I see this as part of a long term trend.  Up to 2E magic users were glass cannons.  Starting at 3E they're all cannon and no glass.  A lot of other classes have been losing their signature weaknesses along the way.  This plays into the power fantasy some folks play for, but it makes the game less interesting.  Complementary strengths and weaknesses between characters in a party encourage teamwork and provide opportunities for more interesting tactical situations.

The wand of wonder is a stupid magic item, but at least it's a rare stupid magic item, and I could see how some asshole prankster wizard would create one for an adventurer to find. The idea to make the wand of wonder a place on the map at least had some compelling story hooks. Making the wand of wonder into a character class was a textbook case of turning the stupid up to 11. This change just dials the stupid back down to a 5.

Meanwhile, someone who actually likes the wand of wonder and thinks trolling the rest of the group with it is the pinnacle of fun can still roll for wild magic surge every time they cast a spell. This change did nothing to take away that playstyle from the players that want it. In fact, it lets them do it even if the GM forgets about it.

It also allows players to distinguish between "funny once" and "funny all the time" and just be a regular sorcerer this fight because the rest of the table is tired of their wand of wonder bullshit.

Quote from: Corolinth on October 23, 2024, 02:31:46 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on October 22, 2024, 04:55:47 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on October 22, 2024, 03:20:51 PMThe bigger issue here is that wild magic surge is complete and utter garbage.

I understand some of you had to walk to school uphill both ways in shoes that didn't fit, and that's a cool story. Meanwhile, no other class has to play Russian Roulette just to use their core class feature. So yes, the player gets to completely ignore wild magic surge and never roll the table. That's perfectly reasonable.

Not really.  The point of wild magic is that you randomly get some strong results but have to put up with a lot of randomness, even when you'd rather not have it.  The class is designed for people that want to play like that.  If you want something more controllable, play something else.  This change takes away that playstyle from the people that want it.

The plusses and minuses balance, assuming the system is designed right.  If you eliminate the minuses without altering the plusses you get a much stronger character.  So if this is the only change, they did something wrong.

I see this as part of a long term trend.  Up to 2E magic users were glass cannons.  Starting at 3E they're all cannon and no glass.  A lot of other classes have been losing their signature weaknesses along the way.  This plays into the power fantasy some folks play for, but it makes the game less interesting.  Complementary strengths and weaknesses between characters in a party encourage teamwork and provide opportunities for more interesting tactical situations.

The wand of wonder is a stupid magic item, but at least it's a rare stupid magic item, and I could see how some asshole prankster wizard would create one for an adventurer to find. The idea to make the wand of wonder a place on the map at least had some compelling story hooks. Making the wand of wonder into a character class was a textbook case of turning the stupid up to 11. This change just dials the stupid back down to a 5.

Meanwhile, someone who actually likes the wand of wonder and thinks trolling the rest of the group with it is the pinnacle of fun can still roll for wild magic surge every time they cast a spell. This change did nothing to take away that playstyle from the players that want it. In fact, it lets them do it even if the GM forgets about it.

It also allows players to distinguish between "funny once" and "funny all the time" and just be a regular sorcerer this fight because the rest of the table is tired of their wand of wonder bullshit.

Just to be clear, I also think that wild magic is kind of a dumb idea.  If it's fun for a group, it's all good, but I have no desire to ever try it myself.  That said, the change is a bad one, keeping all the benefits of the class while removing a major downside.  I don't really think it dials it down to a 5 either, if anything it gives a player more ability to cause chaos, if that's what he's after.

Wild Magic Zones in D&D were the lore genesis for this idea, which has now filtered down into a character type. It's there for people who want it. The classes were not constructed like some MMO playtesting against each other for balancing. TTRPGs are just different and are encouraged to allow table curation, especially if it serves the GM fictional setting vision or an agreed upon spot fun for a player experimentation.

I agree with S'mon having no control but the dice seems best -- no one else to blame but the fates. But if you need to have restraint "GM May" beats out "Player May" in my experience. If you really hate the table scribble up your own; when I first saw it it reminded me more of an example table from old TSR D&D with a WotC bent, shrug... could've been better, but the format is workable.

MOAR! I wanna know if it is better to buy a used 2014 PHB or 2024 PHB! Academic of course, as I'm still mostly satisfied with Basic 5e.

Quote from: Man at Arms on October 22, 2024, 03:40:46 PMThe player chose to play a Wild Magic Sorcerer.  Now they don't want any consequences, for making that choice?

Why not? That's been the path of Magic Users since 3.x, all power, no consequence. This is just the continuation of removing limits on spellcasters.

Quote from: Tristan on October 23, 2024, 07:02:43 PM

Quote from: Man at Arms on October 22, 2024, 03:40:46 PMThe player chose to play a Wild Magic Sorcerer.  Now they don't want any consequences, for making that choice?

Why not? That's been the path of Magic Users since 3.x, all power, no consequence. This is just the continuation of removing limits on spellcasters.

Not sure what you mean there. 3.5 wizards and sorcerers still get d4 hit die, limited weapon and armor proficiencies, spell failure checks if they wear armor, the worst attack bonuses, relatively poor saving throws, and wizards still have to memorize spells and use a spellbook. Aside from sorcerers getting spontaneous casting, it's all the same weaknesses they have in old-school D&D.

In fairness, all the classes in 3.x were at least a little poorly designed except for arguably the Rogue, and the martial classes particularly so, but the "meta" for power-players was Cleric and Druid. There was the whole "quadratic wizard vs. linear fighter" debate, but that's equally true of OSR D&D as it is of 3.x. From what I've seen, the optimizer "meta" is a little more balanced in 5e, but you still see Bard, Druid and Cleric in the top tiers, so I guess you could say WOTC's biggest historical problem is overpowering the hybrid magic/martial classes.

The big change to wild magic sorcerer is that the table has had its real fail states removed, and generally it's much easier to get a good effect that actually helps.  This is why it's represented as rolling a 20 instead of a 1. 

Everyone knows why the DM was written into the original one, right?  It's because the DM knows that one of the fail states was "point blank fireball on the party at level 1", which is a very reliable TPK in a dungeon and happened like 2% of the time you rolled on the 5.0 table.  By putting this in the hands of the DM, the 5.0 designers were able to solve two problems at once:

1- Include a faithfully represented version of the actual 2.0 wild mage.
2- Not have it be a meme party wipe often enough to dominate discussion.

As such, the DM is involved in that loop. 

The 5.5 one has several differences- as mentioned earlier, the negative options are much softer, and the positive options more beneficial.  The class now WANTS a magical surge, even without the "Tides of Chaos" power being there.  But also, the subclass doesn't show up until level 3- previously, all the things that represent "a source of power" come online at level 1, which was thematically superior but often ran into wacky issues, especially with the extremely cheesy multiclassing.

The 5.5 class is entirely different than the 5.0 class for this reason.  I think the 5.0 one is thematically superior in every way (both 5.0 PHB sorcerer subclasses are weaker than the later ones- if you want to fix that, that's easy enough to fix without messing with the identity of either).

But the 5.5 one simply has a different goal, he's a different dude.

Quote from: Man at Arms on October 22, 2024, 03:40:46 PMThe player chose to play a Wild Magic Sorcerer.  Now they don't want any consequences, for making that choice?

Because the new table is mostly buff, but also still risky, the wild magic sorc will simply avoid rolling on that table when things are so dicey that he simply can't risk it.  Is that avoiding consequences?  Kinda, but there's another consequence: while you are avoiding wild magic surges, you effectively don't have a subclass at all. 

Your abilities are:
Wild Magic Surge:  This is the optional chance at a wild magic surge.  If you opt to not use this, you never get any benefits from it, obviously.
Tides of Chaos:  This gives you advantage on a ability check, attack roll, or saving throw, but if you do this, the next spell you cast will always trigger a wild magic surge, no roll required.  So if you don't want a wild magic surge, you'll have to avoid this dice-advantage mechanic, which is the main feature of the subclass.
Bend Luck:  This is your only ability you have if you aren't risking or causing wild magic surges, a 1d4 bonus or malus to a roll at the cost of a sorcery point.  While a good feature, it sure as heck isn't worth a whole subclass pick!
Controlled Chaos:  Roll twice when you roll on the wild surge table and take the one you like better.
Tamed Surge:  Choose the wild surge result manually (once per long rest)

Everything except the level 6 power is totally based on the wild magic surge.  The level 18 power is also safe to use (you pick the result, after all), but that's once per day and at very high level.

Dodging wild magic surges seems to be well within the cost-benefit of the 5.5 thing- you simply don't have anything cool going on without them, but sometimes you really don't want them to happen.

This is part of why I think the 5.0 one is better, and why I think it's better to add power to the other spots and leave the wild magic table as a mostly-disadvantage.