here is a Wild Magic system that I’ve been working on for my upcoming campaign setting. This directly ties into the insanity rules that I’ve posted a while ago (if you missed that, you can check it out here: Sanity/Insanity Rules).
Feel free to comment and to critique. Any feedback is welcomed. Also shoutout to anyone who has contributed to the effects tables from the Discord server!
Nice idea! After reading through, some things were unclear (or I felt that they were defined imprecisely), let me elaborate on these points:
Does this happen to all magic users in Duermar or only to Gnomes? And if Gnomes leave this area, they can use magic as usual?
I assume that in case of a natural 20 you would need to roll two additional dice, one for explosion and the other for the random effect, is that correct? Maybe you could clarify that a little in the document.
If you make a bane attack and roll the Baneful effect, do you get to choose an additional bane? What if you have an exceptional success with Baneful effect: Can you inflict two banes in this case?
Which PL will the demoralized bane of shaken have (I assume 3)?
The damage caused by drain and paranoia is inflicted “after” the attack/boon resolves? So, an attack does not stop if I reach 0hp because of it, like it is the case with the reckless trance feat?
Now for some border cases:
If you made a demoralized bane attack and roll Shaken, do you get any compensation?
What happens with Duplicate if the boon didn’t target a creature (genesis, summon, light, darkness etc. come to mind)? Probably the GM will need to find a way to meaningfully double the effect.
If you do multi-targeting (not area), will there be a 15’ cube around each target for the effect? If it is a boon, will enemies profit from it? Otherwise, will you or your allies be harmed? (I would love a yes on these )
For some effects I am having a hard time to find an opposite. For instance spying, mind dredge, domination, reading, seeing… What do you do in such a case?
Now for my opinion on some of the effects:
I think that the overcharge and overload effects would not be very beneficial in case of boon or bane invocations, because your roll is already quite high, and there is no benefit beyond exceeding the target number. For damage attacks they make much sense, though.
What was the reason for you to make use of randomness in Disconnect, Boost, Fluster and Lingering, but not in Overcharge, Outburst, Drain, Paranoia and Blowback, which also could be randomized easily? Is there a logic behind it?
Thank you for the great feedback! There is lots to unpack here, but I wanted to clear up that unless otherwise mentioned the Core Rules of Open Legend still apply normally, which should answer a couple of these. Also if a couple of things aren’t explicitly explained in detail, that’s because this is the first draft, so the end result will probably be a tad more detailled. So, let’s go over them one by one:
It only applies to Gnomes, who are the only magic users in Duermar, besides fey creatures, who are more proficient at it because they are more specialised in their abilities. No they can’t, as the connection to the region activates and cultivates these powers and that’s the reason why they flock to Duermar. Some of these details aren’t clear here, because they are explained in other parts of the setting, but this part focuses more on mechanics.
This is one of the cases where the rules apply as they would normally do, but I’ll make that more clear then!
Yes, that is correct.
So yeah, this was meant as a PL3 Demoralize, but you raise a good point about the potential of redundancy. I’ll reprhase this one:
Any affected target has disadvanatge on all action rolls during their next turn.
It’s less elegant I guess, but now it can actually stack with Demoralize.
The damage takes place afterwards, because else you run into the paradox that if you take the damage before and go unconcious, than how would you invoke or cast a spell?
Good point, but I guess the most logical way is just to duplicate the effect in a random spot instead of on a random target.
Yes, yes and yes.
Keep in mind that Wild Magic only occurs during battle, which takes quite a few of your examples off the table, as those aren’t exactly “combat” banes or boons, but I’ll have to go over the list to make some recommendations or give examples in some cases. For example, I could see for Dominate and Mind Dredge the targets being reversed, so that the enemy sees into your mind instead and gains important knowledge or that they gain advantage against you, because they know what you were planning, or they can give you a command instead.
I agree with this to some degree: These two make very little sense for boons, especially during the first 2 levels, when a 20+ result guarantees any boon, so I’ll have to change them in that table. But for banes I still think those two are still valid, as I tend to reward high results, which especially Overload will certainely produce, even if it’s on a bane.
Yes there is to some degree: One part was balancing, as a couple of these effects, like Blowback and Outburst, felt either too potent or not potent enough depending on the roll of the die, so I chose a fixed value for them. In the case of Paranoia and Drain I wanted them to feel impactful in all cases and having that depend on the roll of a die would contradict that. Another reason was that I didn’t want to inflate the amount of rolls too much, especially since the result of the roll should be known by the time the effect is added, so it’s easier to just add X or double the result, instead of adding another variable.
For the ones that have random durations, those are mostly modelled after boons and as such didn’t feel too overwhelming if they lasted for a bit, and as no one is sustaining them there needed to be some kind of duration attached. And in the case of Disconnect: Because I felt like it.
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