How risky are wild mages?
CyricSpawn
Member Posts: 74
I'm keen to try out Neela but I'm seriously not going to be happy if I lose 80% of my part gold on dodgy wild surge...
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Wild Mages have 3 spells
Nahal's Reckless Dweomer (Level 1 spell)(Used to cast Wild Magic, basically lets you choose any spell you know to attempt to cast)
Chaos Shield (2nd Level spell) Increases chance to cast the spell chosen with Nahal's Reckless Dweomer
Improved Chaos Shield (7th lvl spell) basically a better Chaos Shield.
All other spells function as normal mage. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer can be extremely powerful if set up right, as you can easily get 10+ 1st lvl spell slots, which could mean 10+ Time Stops or 10+ Horrid Wiltings, etc
Generally, a higher roll has more positive results for the caster
That said Wild Mages seem to be purely a cheese class, you abuse their mechanic and do really really broken stuff.
Okay so say you unlock a new level of spells for your mage.
Generalist Mage - 1 Spell
Specialist Mage/Wild Mage - 2 Spells
Edwin - 3 Spells
And that's the facts.
Let's see, there's Turn Self to Stone, Gate Demon, Fireball on Self, Spell Cast (whatever you were trying) on Self, Summon Meteor Swarm, Target on Party, and so many other wonderful means of suicide.
Then there are all the chances to simply fail to do anything significant in combat - Spell Fizzles, Summon Colorful Sparkles, Summon Squirrel Swarm, Change Gender, Change Colors (how'd you like for Neera to have purple skin for the rest of the game?), Change Spell Effect Color, Animate Spell With No Effect.
Can you tell I am not a fan of this class? We've actually discussed this before in other threads. The one benefit is that the Nahal's Reckless Dweomer can give you access to spells of any level, as soon as you can get them into your spell book, IF you cast it successfully. The base chance is 5 percent. That means, you have to roll a 20 on a d20 to cast that spell, and if you fail, which you will 19 out of 20 times without having a chaos shield activiated, you get a wild surge random effect.
This class only appeals to gamblers and parody-lovers, who don't care about reloading over and over, in my opinion.
When I'm not doing a hardcore run, I save before and after every fight anyway. It ends up not being a huge issue.
I also always bring two mages at all times. One of them does the utility stuff, the other does the blasty hurty stuff. Wild Mages are better as the blasty hurty type of mage because if your surge fails, it's not as devastating as if, say, a haste spell doesn't go off or a haste spell turns into a fireball against your own guys.
Another tip to utilizing wild mages: Wands are your friends. Wands don't trigger wild surges. If you ABSOLUTELY need that fireball to go off, use the wand.
Is Neera the stop gap answer to my issue or is wild magic just too risky, or is there another option I'm not seeing?
Here's the exact description word-for-word:
This spell (Nahal's Reckless Dweomer) is the wild mage's ultimate last-resort spell. When cast, the mage releases a sudden flood of wild magical energy in the hope of seizing and shaping that energy into a desired spell effect. The attempt usually fails, but something almost always occurs in the process.
Before casting the spell, the mage announces the spell effect he is trying to create. The mage must be able to cast the spell (i.e., have it in his spellbook), but need not have it memorized. After announcing the spell (along with the target and any other conditions required by the spell), the wild mage casts Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. A burst of magical energy is released, which the wild mage tries to manipulate into the desired form. The actual effect of the spell is determined randomly.
Because the release of energy is planned by the mage, his level is added to the dice roll made when determining what sort of wild surge occurs. This means there is a better chance of a good result. If the result indicates success, the mage has shaped the magical energy into the desired effect. More often than not, the effect is completely unexpected. The result may be beneficial to the mage or it may be completely disatrous; this is the risk the mage takes in casting Nahal's Reckless Dweomer.
And here's Chaos Shield:
Chaos Shield increases a wild mage's chance to gain favorable result when a wild surge occurs. Every time a roll is made on the wild surge chart, an extra 15 is added to the dice roll. When Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is cast, the bonus from Chaos Shield stacks with the wild mage's level bonus.
And here's Improved Chaos Shield:
Improved Chaos Shield increases a wild mage's chance to gain a favorable result when a wild surge occurs. Every time a roll is made on the wild surge chart, an extra 25 is added to the dice roll. When Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is cast, the bonus from Chaos Shield stacks with the wild mage's level bonus.
I always play minimal-reload, aiming for a perfect no-reload. It gets to be more than 5 or 6 reloads, I start over. The wild mage class is not for me, and thus, neither is Neera.
Personally I'd just like to see the Wild Surge table reworked to remove things that are guaranteed reload material, like petrifying the caster or destroying a portion of the party's gold. Stuff like that might be fun in a PnP campaign but are significantly less so in a computer game where there's already tons of competition for excellent wizardry.
Here's a link to the wild surge table, which has been posted before:
http://www.playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Wild_Surge_Table
Notice that you must get a 100 in order to cast exactly the spell you intend. That means that even with Improved Chaos Shield, a third level spell, which lasts a matter of rounds, you still only have a 25 + your level percent chance to cast your intended spell with a Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. That's a base one in four chance, AFTER casting a third level spell on yourself. You'd have to be an eighth level wild mage just to get that up to one in three (33%).
A first level wild mage would have a 2% chance to cast the intended spell with a Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. This class just keeps looking worse and worse to me.
As for making Neera a flat mage...let's just say it wouldn't make sense.
But look at this, 1 in 20 surge but then how many in 100 are game over effects, then what's the chance of getting both?
Considering a lot of the wild surges that deal damage to your team are fire-related, I think I'm going to use a lot of 3rd level divine slots on protection from fire.
I believe that the mathematical probability would be .05*W, where W is the percent of game enders on the wild surge table. And, some of them are always game enders, while others are situationally game enders. So there is some wiggle room for opinion.
Somebody in another thread (was that you, @SandmanCCL?) worked out that the chance of a game ender is about one in one hundred or fewer spell casts. But you're going to have a lot more than a hundred casts during a game. And I thought their estimate of the situationally game ending wild surges was very low.
This assumes that you *never* cast Nahal's Reckless Dweomer, which causes a wild surge on purpose.
In my opinion, wild mages are simply not able to do their jobs. Every time they cast it's the same as playing Russian Roulette with your and your party's lives.
It's kind of like this: Suppose someone gave you a revolver with 100 chambers in it, and one bullet in one of the chambers. You must point it at your head and fire. The other chambers fire pieces of paper with numbers on them. One of them has a million dollar prize that you can win, if you fire the gun at your head. The others have prizes of one hundred dollars, five hundred dollars, and one thousand dollars. One has a 100,000 dollar prize, and one has a 50,000 dollar prize. More than half of them contain one dollar.
Would you fire the gun at your head? How many times? Much as I'd like that million dollars, and as much as I know that I have more years behind me than ahead of me, I don't think I'd take the deal, not even one time.
How many people here would? I bet a few people would fire the gun at least once. Those are your wild mage players.
I just had another thought: The WORST thing that happens with wild surges is the petrification thing. Considering how many other NPCs get some sort of unique equipment, they should give Neera an amulet or belt or just something that'll give her protection from petrification. Yea or nay?
But that still leaves me being the Mage which is cool but not my first choice.
What I meant is that the Wild Mage basically can cast any level spell, using level 1 spell slots, so if built right (Admittedly using cheese) you have your 1st lvl slots all be the Wild Mage Specific spell, then all your other slots whatever else for lvls 2-9, kind of makes Wild Mages more powerful but less reliable sorcerers.
Tip (Assuming its not fixed in EE) if you sequencer two or more Chaos Shields when activated they will stack, when normally cast they would not.
Less reliable ... yeah ya think? What's the chances of Nahal's Reckless Dweomer actually working?
If set up right, you can literally chain like 8+ Time Stops back to back, I did it once with a Wild Mage solo run, kind of boring though being able to spam more spells then a sorcerer, making sure the last Nahal's Reckless Dweomer cast is a Limited Wish or Simply having Limited Wish Memorized so I can get all my lvl 1 spells back, and rinse and repeat.
Was near unstoppable.
Something will go seriously wrong eventually, the only question is when.