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Wild Magic $5.99
Publisher: Drop Dead Studios
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by James E. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/17/2018 16:00:46

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book as part of the Patreon campaign that funded it.

So! This is a little different from most of the Spheres of Power expansions, and as the name implies, it's all about magic going bonkers. Sometimes this is unintended, like when the GM has a 'wild magic zone' the characters get into. Other times it may be on purpose, as powers like the Cantrips feat can be used to deliberately trigger a minor magical effect.

Much like the ultimate in wild magic - the Deck of Many Things - the actual effects can swing between amusing, beneficial, or harmful. This isn't just one or two tables, though - this PDF is 94 pages long for a reason.

We start off with an introduction to Wild Magic, including details on chance, how effects stack (short answer, "yes"), and what to do with chances over 100%. There's also the chance of a major magical event if your risk goes too high and you're using that rule, and while it's not quite as bad as the Deck, there are events like getting disintegrated, permanently changing the normal temperature of an area, or negating every summoning for awhile. (Awkward if you focus on Conjuration!) Helpfully, the first section also includes a reprint of the Spell Schools to Spheres table for quick reference, as well as a couple of variant rules.

After the short introduction, we get into archetypes and class features that use wild magic. The Elementalist and Thaumaturge do well here, while Armorists, Mageknights, Prodigies, and Scholars get a few options.

We also get two pages of player options, starting with Wild Magic Feats, a new category of feat impacting your use of - surprising nobody - wild magic. Some of the feats get better if you have more feats from the category, giving incentive to go all-in on wild magic. There are also two new casting traditions, a boon, a general drawback, and two traits. We also get two equipment properties and a magical item.

But after all of that, we're barely into the book - the real reason we're here follows, with the massive wild magic tables. Not satisfied with a single event of options, this book offers a truly ridiculous number of options (many of which can easily be converted to work with the normal spellcasting system, by the way).

We start off with the basic Universal Wild Magic Table, which can kick in whenever nothing else is appropriate. Following that, we have the Cantrips table (mostly minor effects) and the Major Events table (risky as heck). You might think that would be enough, but no, Drop Dead Studios went all-in on this.

After the 'general' tables, we have tables for all of the spheres (although, as of the release I'm reviewing, not all of these were bookmarked for quick access - a minor oversight). These are heavily themed tables (yes, 100 options each), allowing for results that are related to the kind of magic that spawned them.

So... this isn't necessarily a book that should be a permanent part of every game, although it's great if your group enjoys being unpredictable. Put simply, this expansion is wild magic at its finest - sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful, and sometimes weird, but always unpredictable. I love it.



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Wild Magic
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