So the dreaded wild mage 1st level fireball happened to my group.
I was running the Tyranny of the Dragons adventure had my group make characters the week before and sat down to play.
the party consisted of a....
Half elf ranger (favored enemy humans and orcs)
Human paladin (sword and board with the shield feat)
Dwarven warlock
Half orc cleric (of war)
and A Gnome sorcerer (wild mage)
The party gets the initial blurb about the town being attack and general mayhem occuring and rush to the town. Sneaking between two buildings the come across the initial encounter with a family trying to escape a band of kobolds. I gave the party advantage on their first attack rolls because the kobolds thinking the pcs are other raiders, ignore them.
First round goes pretty standarded tanky types rush up to the front of the allyway to block it off while the ranged do their thing.
Then it happens the party clustedered in the allyway and begin their second round. The gnome sorcerer launches a firebolt at the only kobold to actually hit someone, only to roll a natural 20. I call for a wild surge roll figuring it was a good time to show off one of the characters abilities. That was a mistake. The sorcerer rolls a 07, the party ranger looks up the effect in the PHB and a fireball as the 3rd level spell goes off centered on the gnome....the gnome rolls and deals 23 points to the entire party and 3 of the kobolds 
" /> The paladin was the only survivor because of shield mastery. Many WTFs were spoken followed by laughter.
For sake of still playing I called for a reroll of the damage to a single d8. The adventure continued on and was very enjoyable.
Soo anyone else die the WMD death?
This makes me happy. Chaos at its finest. Bravo!
Keaerin wrote:
Keaerin wrote:
Seems like a good ajudication, especially considering that Wild Surges aren't normally triggered on critical hits (unless the caster was recharging Tides of Chaos, which wasn't mentioned).
Personally, I like to roll the chaos die. It allows me to slightly fudge things in emergencies. Instead of exploding everyone, I may have turned him into a plant, instead!
I know it takes rolling dice away from a player, but this is also a random thing (s)he has no control over. Though you can bet once they hit level 4 or 5, all bets are off, and if they turn into a plant while flying, they're probably gonna plummet straight down...
There have been no WMD events here so far thankfully! 
I can imagine all of your players being all "WTF!" ha ha... 
And I think your decision was a good one that kept the fun (and session) going. I bet they will all be talking about that incident for quite a while though ha ha!
Timborama wrote:
If they would only bring back Nahal's Reckless Dweomer from 2nd edition we could have many more wonderful WMD stories...
If anyone needs to know Nahal's Reckless Dweomer was a 1st level spell from the original Tome of Magic that purposely created a wild surge in the attempt to create another spell effect. There were also 50 more surge effects and most of them weren't beneficial, but they had effects that worked like meta-magic on the spell effect (i.e. Spell effectiveness [range, duration! damage, etc.] increases 200% or Spell effectiveness [range, duration! damage, etc.] decreases 50% or Spell function but shrieks like a shrieker). The fun was that it was a surge on purpose. Good stuff... or not depending how you rolled.
I think if you rolled twice and the GM chooses from the two results as he sees fit, that'd be good.
But asking for a roll then fudging it away...I don't know what players would see in that.
This happend to me last night BOOOM knock out half the party and a few ghols too :P
Noon wrote:
God they need to add kobolds as a race soon, wild Mage kobold toady to another PC, I'd play the hell out of that.
Keaerin wrote:
Keaerin wrote:
Unless I'm mis-remembering, wild surges aren't possible on cantrips. As a DM you can run it however you'd like, of course, but by the book the spell has to be 1st level or higher to risk a wild surge.
I was just considering what I would do if this happened when I start running that module in a couple weeks. I think the first thing I would do is scale the damage down in the same way it scales up when you cast a spell as a higher level, so I would remove 2d6 from the damage since the 1st lv Sorc is essentially casting fireball as a first level spell.
I would then assume average damage, but for whomever was reduced to 0 by average damage, I would allow a roll for the damage in the event that the rolled damage is lower than the average result.
I would also probably allow the wild mage to yell something out to the party, warning them of the ensuing firestorm. With the advanced warning, everyone would get advantage on their saves.
I haven't decided what I'll do if it does happen while the party is low enough level for it to matter. Concern was expressed during party creation about the possibility of the fireball TPK, but I just felt like remaining non-committal. Usually I'd make a house rule. But for some reason leaving the party with "I don't want to change the wild surge table, but I'm not going to let a wild surge TPK the party at 1st-level" is what I went with.
Maybe the suspense over not knowing what can happen will add to player immersion.
I'm definitely not intending on protecting the wild mage PC, though. If I have to do something to save the party from a fireball, I'll save the wild mage too. But if anything else kills her, I'll let her die. That's the consequences of choosing to play that character. 
As of right now, they're part way through 2nd level and the wild mage has cast exactly 1 spell of 1st-level or higher (and used the ability to gain advantage on the initiative roll to force a wild surge when she cast the spell*). So far, she has mainly just used fire bolt to blast things, which doesn't trigger a surge possibility.
* I allow a player to tell me at character creation a percentage between 0% and 100%. When the wild surge rules say that the DM can have you roll, I use that percentage to determine whether I do or not. This player decided she wanted 100%, so she can force wild surges whenever she wants by taking advantage to a d20 roll first.
re: substitutions. I think I'd replace fireball in this case with thunderwave as a 20' radius sphere. Less likely to outright kill the party, plus the opportunity to toss the party around. I'd use it like hollywood recoil and send the WM flying backwards.
noaharkwv wrote:
Keaerin wrote:
Noon wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Sword_of_Spirit wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Noon wrote: