Wild Surges have a greater chance to be positive as you advance in levels, so yes, they do become almost always good. The true advantage is being able to use Nahal's Reckless Dweomer for versatility--so, instead of using a Level 7 Spell Slot for Mordekainen's Sword, you can memorize a Project Image instead and use NRD to cast MS. Need a Greater Malison? NRD will do it for you. Don't have Breach memorized (for some reason) and you're fighting a spellcaster? NRD can take care of that too. The only things I wouldn't recommend casting with NRD are self-buffs, because if it goes south on an enemy, they still get damaged in some way; if it goes south on YOU, you can get a game over through an explosion or petrification or something.
Another bonus is that the spells you cast can be cast at up to five levels higher of power. IE, at level 4 you use NRD to cast a Fireball. Fireball's damage is 1d10 per your level. While casting the spell, NRD "surges" and it casts with an extra three levels of power. So, instead of dealing 4d10 of damage, you deal 7d10 of damage.
In addition, a spell cast through a Dweomer doesn't count towards your "one spell per round" limit, so if you pause the game you can unload pretty much your entire spellbook through it.
Cheese alert: You can also use NRD to cast Limited Wish, ask the genie to restore your low-level spells, and get all the Dweomer's back....which can be used to cast Limited Wish again. This effectively means you will never run out of spells.
Have fun Of course, at low levels you're going to be struggling a lot, since NRD is more likely to go wrong at lower levels, but it's worth soldiering through. And some of the surges can be amusing. For instance: summoning a bunch of sparkles as you cast Cloud Kill. Your enemies may be dying horribly of asphyxiation, but at least they're glittery!
I really don't see the endgame appeal with a Wild Mage seeing as how at spell cap reckless dweomer loses much of it's usefulness. Unless I am missing something...Do Wild Surges actually become really useful and almost always good at a certain point, making reckless dweomer useful for something other than desperation and/or attempting to cast higher level spells?
Well, with the level cap in BG1 NRD isn't very useful no, especially considering its use to cast spells beyond your understanding is limited to Improved Chaos Shield by the end. At the most, casting with NRD gives you a 24% chance of casting success if you use it with Chaos Shield and at caster level 9 (if you get lucky and manage to successfully cast an Improved Chaos Shield then this number rises to 34%).
In BG2, however, once you become able to cast level 7 spells the wild mage becomes incredibly good at using NRD to his advantage. At caster level 15 with an Improved Chaos Shield on you get a 40% chance of success when using NRD, which is really good considering you can use it to cast any spell in your book and you can spam them as if you had Improved Alacrity. In my wild mage run all my level 1 spells are replaced with NRD upon arrival to BG2.
Have you considered a wild mage? They are very 'high risk, high reward' but they get incredibly powerful in BG2.
I completed the BG trilogy (ttu) with the wild mage. And it was very intriguing when my mage completed his spells (while holding my breath). This is a fun class to play out through the entire series as it always surprises you.
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Another bonus is that the spells you cast can be cast at up to five levels higher of power. IE, at level 4 you use NRD to cast a Fireball. Fireball's damage is 1d10 per your level. While casting the spell, NRD "surges" and it casts with an extra three levels of power. So, instead of dealing 4d10 of damage, you deal 7d10 of damage.
In addition, a spell cast through a Dweomer doesn't count towards your "one spell per round" limit, so if you pause the game you can unload pretty much your entire spellbook through it.
Cheese alert: You can also use NRD to cast Limited Wish, ask the genie to restore your low-level spells, and get all the Dweomer's back....which can be used to cast Limited Wish again. This effectively means you will never run out of spells.
In BG2, however, once you become able to cast level 7 spells the wild mage becomes incredibly good at using NRD to his advantage. At caster level 15 with an Improved Chaos Shield on you get a 40% chance of success when using NRD, which is really good considering you can use it to cast any spell in your book and you can spam them as if you had Improved Alacrity. In my wild mage run all my level 1 spells are replaced with NRD upon arrival to BG2.