I recently ran a campaign containing a Wild Magic sorcerer. SKЯIT was a 15 year-old half-elf who had no idea how to control her magical powers. Wild Magic felt perfect for this character — random surges of unconstrained magical energy and power perfectly fit the character. But although I liked the concept of Wild Magic, I found the implementation in the PHB to be lacking. The rules surrounding Wild Magic surges, especially its interactions with the Tides of Chaos feature, are ambiguous at best and confusing at worst, with results ranging from utterly useless to completely overpowered depending on a particular DM’s interpretation. So I decided to make a custom take on it for my campaign, with the goal of forcing the sorcerer to make more impactful choices about when to use Tides of Chaos, and give the DM and sorcerer more control over how often wild magic triggers. The campaign wasn’t long enough to really evaluate how well it’s worked in practice, but I like the concepts it reinforces. So, before I get into the explanation, here’s the rule itself:

New Wild Magic Rule

If Tides of Chaos has not been used, roll a d20 every time the sorcerer casts a spell of level 1 or higher. On a result of 1, a Wild Magic Surge is triggered. When Tides of Chaos is used, the DM begins keeping track of a “wild magic threshold,” which begins at 1. From then on, every time the sorcerer casts a level 1 or higher spell, the DM rolls a d8 (or another die, depending on how common you want wild magic to be). On a result less than or equal to the wild magic threshold, wild magic is triggered. At this point, the sorcerer regains use of Tides of Chaos and the threshold goes away. If the result is greater than the threshold, the threshold increases by 1. On a long rest, the threshold goes away and Tides of Chaos is restored.

Justification

When looking at the Wild Magic rules in the PHB, I distilled my issues with them into two major problems:

  1. Wild magic roles occur at the DM’s discretion.  I don’t particularly like this bit of DM fiat. It results in two levels of indirection for a Wild Magic Surge to be triggered. Not only does the DM need to decide that a particular spellcast is worthy of having a wild magic role, the roll also must be a natural 1. So the only human factor over how often wild magic surges occur is how often the DM roles for them. If the DM wants Wild Magic to be determined entirely mechanically, they can have decide to roll every time a spell is used, but that locks the rate of Wild Magic to about once every 20 spells. However, the DM can’t simply choose to role every time, because…
  2. Tides of Chaos is returned to the sorcerer when the DM calls for a Wild Magic Surge Role. Tides of chaos is a good feature. Equivalent to inspiration, being able to choose any roll to have advantage (or negate disadvantage) is powerful. My problem with it is when it’s recharged. Tides of Chaos should be available 2-3 times per adventuring day, similar to most features that are recharged at a short rest (Wild Form, Action Surge, etc.). But the player doesn’t get choose when this feature is recharged — the DM does. And if the DM wants a wild magic surge about once every twenty spells, then the sorcerer gets the feature back every time she uses a spell. This pretty much breaks the feature, as every spell can be cast with advantage. So if the DM doesn’t want Tides of Chaos taking over all spell casting, then a Wild Magic roll can’t be made every time a spell is used. So really, the DM doesn’t have much of a choice after all: If you want to keep the feature at a fairly consistent rate, Wild Magic will occur once every 40-60 spells. And that’s all the default rules let you do.

There a couple of different ways to deal with the problem, of varying complexity and result. I chose a rather complicated solution to this problem, so I figured I should provide explanations of why none of the simpler solutions worked for me.

Increase the chance of a Wild Magic Surge on each roll.

This is perhaps the most straightforward way to deal with the problem. Simply have a surge occur on a role of 1 or 2 (or better yet, just roll a d10 or some other die to get the same effect more simply) and the DM can precisely control how often surges occur. This solves problem 2, but does nothing to resolve problem 1 — the DM still needs to choose when a wild magic roll occurs, about once every short rest to keep Tides of Chaos consistent. Wild magic is supposed to be random - it’s something that can and should be handled mechanically, with the DM just following instructions, rather than having to make decisions.

Only have Tides of Chaos refresh when a Wild Magic Surge actually occurs.

This allows the DM to roll every time a spell is cast, possibly combining with the first suggestion to get a frequency of Wild Magic that is acceptable to the group. However, this simultaneously makes Tides of Chaos significantly underpowered. In it’s most basic form, the feature would refresh once every 20 spells — nowhere close to the rate of about once every short rest that I’m going for. In addition to this, both of these suggestions (and the default rules) have a clear optimal path for the sorcerer to follow: Use Tides of Chaos as soon as possible, since this maximizes your chance of getting to use it twice or more in a day. Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with encouraging this strategy (and it has a bit more depth than abilities that just refresh at certain rests), I felt like I could have a better solution.

Final Solution: “Ticking Time Bomb” of Wild Magic

For my solution, I began by using the second potential solution and combining that with rolling on every spell. So without getting Tides of Chaos involved, a Wild Magic surge occurs about once every 20 spells. Still, for my campaign I found this rate to be a little low. It was a low-level campaign, and the sorcerer probably cast all of 40 spells throughout the entire campaign. So I decided to make using Tides of Chaos a more impactful decision. When the sorcerer “bent luck” to make things go her way, it would only be a matter of time before some wild magic escaped her. The threshold concept ensured that Tides of Chaos was restored relatively quickly, but only on an actual surge. By changing the die that’s rolled with the threshold in play, DMs and players can customize what sort of balance they want on the refresh/wild magic scale. The more quickly the ability refreshes, the more quickly a wild magic surge is guaranteed to occur. It also gives the sorcerer a small modicum of control about when Wild Magic Surges occur, since using Tides of Chaos means one is coming sooner or later.

I haven’t play tested this rule very much (short campaign) and I’m concerned it might require to much mental overhead for the DM. If that turns out to be the case, the player could keep track of it. At that point, though, I’m not sure I would consider the effects of this rule worth the extra effort put in. I still enjoy it from a balance perspective, however, and do plan to incorporate it into future games.