Wild Magic locations

Wild magic can occur in places close to magical rifts, snarls, or areas where the boundaries between the planes are weak. Some creatures such as Fey and Demons are chaotic in nature and may trigger Wild Magic effects through their actions, or cause players nearby to trigger them. In addition, some characters are particularly susceptible to wild magic effects, especially those aligned with the fey, gods of trickery and chaos, and other mischievous entities.

Wild Magic class features

Surges are most often caused by Wild Magic class features such as those found in the Wild Magic Sorcerer, Way of Wild Magic Monk, or Path of Wild Magic Barbarian. In addition, the DM can decide when one of these surges is triggered whenever it feels appropriate.

Wild Magic items

Some magic or cursed items could trigger a Wild Magic Surge when used, such as the Wand of Chaos, the Ring of problem solving, or the Iridescent Spiral, found in this book.

Messing with magic

You can consider allowing your characters to push the limits of their magical abilities and in so doing trigger a Wild Magic Surge. For example, you could allow players to attempt to cast spells at higher levels than they have access to, or try to emulate casting a spell they do not know. If they fail an Arcana check with a DC equal to 15 + the spell’s level, they fail to cast the spell and instead trigger a Wild Magic surge. Pushing the limits and stretching the rules of magic comes with unpredictable results after all…

Roleplaying a Surge

It’s recommended that a DM doesn’t read aloud the result of the surge to their players. Instead consider giving them a sense of what it feels like.

The build-up to a surge can be a migraine, a tingling, a visible manifestation of magical energy around the character, or just a sense of unease or impending dread. As the surge resolves, the effect can be described vaguely to give a sense of mystery.

A lot of surges cause spell effects, but that doesn’t mean we should just state the name of the spell that was caused by the surge, instead describe how it feels, what happens, and let your players roleplay around that description.

Surges that create a spell effect

Any Wild Magic surge that includes a spell cast is subject to the following conditions unless otherwise specified in the effect description:

• The Spell can be cast at any range
• The Spell cannot be affected by Metamagic
• The Spell is not subject to any required components or materials
• The Spell does not require concentration
• The Spell is cast at the lowest possible spell level for that particular spell
• Spells that require a saving throw are made against your spellcasting save DC
• The Spell lasts for the maximum possible duration
• The Spell has no discernible source

Identifying spell effects

When a spell is cast by a Wild Magic surge, any character can make an Intelligence (Arcana) check with their reaction or action to attempt to identify the spell. The DC to do so equals 15 + the spell’s level. If the spell is cast as a class spell and the character is a member of that class, the check is made with advantage.

Canceling spell effects

When a Spell is cast via a Wild magic effect that has a duration longer than one round the player who triggered the surge can spend an action to attempt to roll 11-20 on a d20 to cancel the spell. Nothing can modify this roll. This only applies to Wild magic results that are described explicitly as using a spell or gaining the effect of a spell and can only be attempted by players whose characters have first correctly identified the spell that has been cast.