Your innate magic comes from the wild forces of chaos that underlie the order of creation. You might have endured exposure to some form of raw magic, perhaps through a planar portal leading to Limbo, the Elemental Planes, or the mysterious Far Realm. Perhaps you were blessed by a powerful fey creature or marked by a demon. Or your magic could be a fluke of your birth, with no apparent cause or reason. However it came to be, this chaotic magic churns within you, waiting for any outlet.
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.
Wild Magic Sorcerer Table
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.
Starting at 6th level, you have the ability to twist fate using your wild magic. When another creature you can see makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use your reaction and spend 2 sorcery points to roll 1d4 and apply the number rolled as a bonus or penalty (your choice) to the creature's roll. You can do so after the creature rolls but before any effects of the roll occur.
The one exception was at a convention session where one of the characters I provided was a wild-magic sorcerer. I ran the scenario twice, and in the second session, the player who picked that character wanted the randomness and we ended up having a lot of fun with it.
Different sorcerers claim different origins for their innate magic. Although many variations exist, most of these origins fall into two categories: a draconic bloodline and wild magic. Choose the draconic bloodline below or one from another source.
They turn into a black hole & the campaign ends then and there. BBEG defeated, go to another galaxy entirely.Or maybe the gods* stop it and turn time back. Perhaps some other magical event is caused by that and chaos ensues.Or maybe the sorcerer just blinks out of existence.GM's decision.*If applicable
I have a question of the wild magic surge. when a surge goes off, the spell is (cancled / fails spell slot expended) and the surge goes off correct? or is it the surge is in addition to the the spell that was cast?
A sorcerer whose innate arcane ability comes from the wild forces of chaos can unleash surges of untamed magic. When a sorcerer casts a sorcerer spell, the DM can have the player roll a d20. If a 1 is rolled, the DM may have the player roll on the Wild Magic Surge table to create a randommagical effect.
Magic is one of the fascinating things that makes a game of D&D alive. It is amazingly unpredictable and epic. It makes the world feel alive and vibrant. That is why D&D classes that can cast spells are so fun to play as. One subclass, in particular, stands out to be the very definition of magic being unpredictable and wild: the Wild Magic sorcerer.
See, a sorcerer has a sorcerous origin, which is the origin of their powers. Sorcerers who have Wild Magic as their sorcerous origin might have gotten their powers from exposure to some form of raw magic. Another possibility would be that you were blessed by a powerful creature.
Note that many of these effects last for a minute. If you are in combat, a whole minute would mean 10 rounds. That means the effect will be active for 10 rounds. Furthermore, if the effect is a spell, it will not get affected by Metamagic, a third-level sorcerer feature. If it normally needs concentration, the spell will not require it and will last for its entire duration. Lastly, effects casting a spell will not expend a spell slot.
I'm just starting to get into D&D 5e. Magic classes in particular fascinate me, and the one that caught my eye the most is the wild sorcerer. Or, rather, the concept did. The mechanics of the design itself seem particularly lackluster when compared to every other magic class I've looked at.
After quite a bit of searching, it seems I'm not alone in this observation. All over the place, people insist that wild sorcerers are unbalanced/underwhelming/generally unwanted. But I haven't really seen any explanations of what exactly makes them this way, compared to other classes.
I'm now looking at attempting to DM a game with a bunch of other newbies, and trying to figure the game out as a group. One of my players will likely want to play a wild sorcerer. I'm interested in seeing how that plays out in RAW, but more importantly, I want the players to have fun.
Right now I'm considering using the existing mechanics, but supplementing them with a secondary system of character progression that slowly takes the sorcerer from fearing their magic that's unpredictable, to having some, but not total, control over it. Basically there's a chaos level that increases and decreases based on player ability/spell usage. High chaos means more wild surges, low means less. To get the most out of the design, you have to balance the chaos level (in theory).
I've played a few sessions where a player was playing a wild magic sorcerer. After reminding the DM about the wild magic ability, the DM said that he was aware of it. Do you want to guess how many times we rolled for wild magic?
Basically, there are so many moving parts to being a DM that it's very easy to forget a specific character's abilities. Choosing Wild Magic just adds another thing for DMs to worry about. Now, every time the sorcerer casts a spell, the DM has to remember and decide, "should I roll for wild magic?". It's very easy for this ability to slip through the cracks while the DM is juggling everything else.
One more suggestion- if you're feeling that the Wild Surge is a bit lackluster, I'd say what you need is a different table. I encourage making your own- in one of my earliest 5e campaigns, a lovely lady sorcerer caused the hair of every creature within 60 feet to crawl off its owner and then engage in a battle royale, with the victorious hair returning to its owner (which turned out to be the ecstatic lady) and the others disappearing in a puff of scorched hairspray, leaving their owners bald. The baddies were so bemused they called off their attack and everyone walked away, rubbing their heads.
I'm playing my first sorcerer (not first caster in 30 years of playing) and going back to an Irda (have played Wizard of High Sorcerery of course) in a Prime Plane where several Krynn races escaped The Chaos War and Dragon Purge (Dwarves, Minotarus, Irda, Gnomes in two separate caravans). 500+ years have passed since then and we have a some Steam Punk technologies and magic-tech hybrids that will eventually lead to a Starfinder campaign 1000+ years in the future.
When affected by magic spells, nearby powerful magic auras, suffering stress (such as damage) having a wild swing in emotion, suffer a penalty to the wild magic roll. This is called the Entropy level. The Wild Magic Entropy modifier roll gets larger as the Entropy level rises.
Starting when you choose this origin at 1st level, your spellcasting can unleash surges of untamed magic. Immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher, the DM can have you roll a d20. If you roll a 1, roll on the Wild Magic Surge table to create a random magical effect. A Wild Magic Surge can happen once per turn.
If a Wild Magic effect is a spell, it's too wild to be affected by Metamagic. If it normally requires concentration, it doesn't require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration.
Any spell that you've learned from Sorcerer.This is also reasonable - but it opens the door to casting spellsthrough magic items, such as the Cape of the Mountebank,triggering wild magic surges.
Any spell on the Sorcerer spell list.Still reasonable. This would mean that learning the spell HoldPerson through the Bard's learned spells (e.g. by multiclassinginto Bard) and casting it could trigger a wild magic surge, as it'sa spell that's both on the Bard's spell list and the Sorcerer's.
There are (at least) two ways to resolve this. There is a clear, direct answer: Any spell you cast that is on the sorcerer spell list counts as a sorcerer spell (ie, your last option). While this has the advantages of both being simple and of being a response directed at the question itself, it has the disadvantage of being largely based on (now unofficial) tweets from Jeremy Crawford. If you wish to go that route, I encourage you to read the answers that use these quotes at "What makes a spell being cast considered to be a class spell?" (Thank you to Medix2 and David Coffron for that link). I choose not to follow that path for reasons other than it being unofficial. First, this is a complex question and I don't think all the nuances and caveats lend themselves to explanation within a tweet character limit. Second, I am uncomfortable with the logical conclusion that follows - an individual spell you cast that is on two different spell lists is simultaneously a spell of both of those classes. And third, applied broadly it contradicts what is an official Sage Advice answer (see below).
Rage clearly says that RAW you can't cast spells. Since no exceptions are specified and the wild magic surge states that you would be casting a spell nothing would happen.
However, if we accept an assumption based on the flavor of rage that you can't cast spells while raging because you are unable to perform and concentrate on the necessary complex tasks required to cast a spell (V, S, M components, concentration) then it would make sense for the effects of the wild magic surge to still trigger. After all, even though your character is the source for these spells they are not willingly invoking them. Note that this is based on the "common sense" reading of the rules and not their literal interpretation. It would be purely up to the DM to allow this. 2ff7e9595c
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