D&D 5E The Joy of Wild Sorcery - Post your amazing surge stories here!

[OB1]

This weekend, I had the most amazing bit of luck with my Gnome Wild Sorcerer, and wanted to start a thread for anyone to post their own truly joyous moments with Wild Sorcery. That moment when the perfect surge comes along at the perfect time, for good or for ill.

My tale...

Three rounds into combat with the session's BBEG and his minions, things were not looking good for our 5th level party. A TPK seemed inevitable. Drixel Habblepox, (Wild Sorcerer 4/ Fey Warlock 1) had been knocked unconscious early in the round. The other three members of the party were all bloodied (Barbarian, Monk and Bard), and we had yet to bloody any of our enemies (yes I know 4e terms but we use them). The Bard, bless him, hit me with a cure wounds before my turn.

As we were having trouble hitting Mrs. BBEG, and I knew it was likely I would be back unconscious by my next turn, I went for the sure thing with a 2nd level Magic Missile from prone. And then I got my Wild Magic surge, and hit what may be the best surge on the table. I was set to start each of my next 10 turns by regaining 5 hit points. It was the turning point in the battle, and 5 rounds and 4 magic missile spells later (and me being knocked out and subsequently revived 3 more times) the battle had been won.

 

[Lancelot]

Too many to count. I'm the DM in my group, and I've got a player who loves wild sorcery beyond anything else in the game. He uses Tides of Chaos on his first roll of the game, nearly every time, and re-uses it any time I choose to refresh the marker... simply to maximize the chances of getting a roll on the table.

Most recently, the party was fighting an adult black dragon... losing... when he accidentally summoned a unicorn into the fight. It was a combat-swinger, as the intelligent good-aligned creature galloped around healing people with a touch of its horn.

He's also dropped a double broken arrow by accident. In a particularly tough fight, he needed to clear the room by dropping a fireball on some of the PCs, simply to clear out a larger group of enemy attackers. He rolled the result where a fireball is triggered on the sorcerer himself. Most of the 7th level party took two fireballs. They were extremely lucky to not see anyone killed; several players came very close to "negative maximum hp".

However, the big story from our group was the time they were battling a trio of gargoyles on a bridge. The wild sorcerer rolled the result which basically says: roll again at the start of every round for the next 10 rounds. By the end of the combat, the wild sorcerer had coated the bridge in grease, was able to fly, had been polymorphed into a wild pig, and was setting everything he touched alight. Yep. Flaming greasy flying pig sorcerer. It just kept escalating every round. Good times.

 

[pukunui]

I had a wild mage in the Legacy of the Crystal Shard campaign I ran earlier in the year. The most memorable surge occurred when she was trying to light a docked pirate ship on fire. She'd run down the long pier to attack it that way, but she'd accidentally put a big hole in the dock while attacking the ship's guards who'd rushed up to fight her, so she had to take a dinghy and row out so she could get close enough to the ship. She shot some scorching rays at the sails, lighting them on fire, and then triggered a wild fireball. Even if she'd survived the initial blast, the fireball obliterated the dinghy, dumping her into the icy waters of the Lac Dinneshere. Needless to say, she was dead either way. We all had a good laugh about that.

It wasn't the end of the road for her, though. The locals fished her scorched/frozen body out of the lake and her companions took her back to Bryn Shander, where they got the local cleric of Lathander to raise her from the dead.

 

[Valmarius]

I'm the DM for my group. Our sorc's first big surge was against a queen ankheg (Young black dragon) when the party was 3rd level. First round of combat she hits it with a scorching ray and rolls the wild magic surge that adds a 5th level Magic Missile to her attack. The rest of the party was rather surprised when the bug burst, covering them all in goop.

Another surge occurred in the middle of a pitched battle in a room full of skeletons. Everything in range turned invisible... So everything in the room is left fumbling around after each other.

The other recurring gag is that she constantly rolls the effect that makes her one size bigger for a minute. It's happened so often that we've all agreed that next time it'll be permanent.

 

[pukunui]

The other recurring gag is that she constantly rolls the effect that makes her one size bigger for a minute. It's happened so often that we've all agreed that next time it'll be permanent.

The wild mage in my campaign rolled the permanent height growth effect a few times. That was funny because she was a halfling and was getting to be a good foot taller than her brother, who was another of the PCs, and almost as tall as the dwarf.

 

[Voort]

Best surge of my own: level one party, getting creamed by skeletons. My halfling wild mage surges, polymorphs himself into a sheep, and proceeds to destroy skeletons left and right with ramming attacks.

Funniest I have seen: The tiefling wild mage had a bounty on his head, was ambushed by thieves guild heavies looking to collect. He's half dead, desperately trying to hide, and uses his last spell slot to make himself Invisible...only to surge & get the result that makes him glow with a bright light.

 

[iserith]

In AD&D 2e, I created an awesome wild mage character named Lawless Slapdash - "Slappy" to his friends - with a lengthy and fun backstory.

In the first combat of the campaign, Slappy cast a spell, got a wild surge, and turned himself to stone.

Thus ends the tale of Slappy the Wild Mage.

 

[OB1]

These are great! And now that I see how many of these are on the, shall we say, ill side of the equation, I realized how close I came to TPKing the party instead of saving it!

 

[Galendril]

Our wild mage has made himself younger by 6 years. He started at 18 and now needs a chaperone whenever he enters civilized lands. The same character has dropped a fireball on the party, but thankfully, it was not at a critical point. The last session he got a 66 which allowed him to dole out some extra lightning damage which dropped a flying huecuva priest which the party had an incredibly hard time hitting.

 

[Galendril]

Btw, where is 'summon a friendly unicorn' on the wild surge table?