I am looking to create a world where magic is far from stable and friendly.
The rules for wild magic in the Dm's book seem tame for what I am looking for. I want a blunder with magic to be something feared.
As a guide, the world had an arcane Apocalypse, and now it's been some time, but the ley lines that carry the magic about are still far from stable, and so is the power they grant.
If someone could post a product to look into, or even better, some home rules on this, it would be most appreciated.
I'd do a mishap table with certain effects from failure.
Then there'd be a "disruption check", a caster level check whenever you for some reason fail to cast a spell (whether it's countered, arcane spell failure, concentration loss or whatever) that represented safely aborting the spell.
Then I'd add 2% spell failure per spell level of all spells.
As compensation, I'd probably up the sor/wiz hd/bab to d8/75%.
Or something like that.
I would suggest looking at the spell casting system fo Dark Heresy, Casting the most simple of spells can lead to a TPK.
Here is the table I use for my own "magic gone wrong" setting. I'm pretty tough on my players, though. A first level arcane caster suffers a 95% spell failure chance for casting. This goes down by 5% every level until it becomes 0. Also, Divine casters suffer from a reduction of spells in this world.
ARCANCE SPELL FAILURE TABLE
0-30% No Effect
31-45% Opposite Effect
46-60% Affects caster instead of target (or vice-versa)
61-75% Affects random target within range
76-90% Random effect on random target within range (as per Rod of Wonder p.489)
91-100% Explosive backlash centered on caster (1d6/spell level for radius of 10ft/spell; Reflex save for half. Save is equal to caster’s save for that level of spell.)
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You could also work some metamagic feats, and the reversals, into the effects. Sure, an enlarged fireball might sound like a benefit, but the possibility of the area of effect expanding (or shrinking) could make strategizing a bit more interesting.
You could also got the D&D2E tome of magic and read up on it. It had some interesting ideas, though I would say the system is far from perfect. Still, it could have some great inspiration.
I'm interested to find out what you come up with, so please keep us posted!
Like Dark Heresy!
I am looking to create a world where magic is far from stable and friendly.
The rules for wild magic in the Dm's book seem tame for what I am looking for. I want a blunder with magic to be something feared.
As a guide, the world had an arcane Apocalypse, and now it's been some time, but the ley lines that carry the magic about are still far from stable, and so is the power they grant.
If someone could post a product to look into, or even better, some home rules on this, it would be most appreciated.One thing you might want to try to get a hold of would be a copy of the rules for Gothic Earth, which was a network campaign based on the old Masque of the Red Death rules.
Try to reign in your enthuisasm. Make magic too deadly to cast and no one in their right mind will play a caster.
Either you are wrong or you are overestimating the relative sanity of the average gamer, as evident of the rather large number of wild mages I dealt with in 2nd edition play.