Review of Wild Spellcraft

This is a nice little gem. It is filled with great ideas for use of wild magic. It includes a few different notions of using it so one can use it a little or a lot. It can be a large feature of the campaign world or just a unique spot that it happens in. It can apply to certain casters of any type and magical items.

Introduction: This is one of the better introductions I?ve read in a role-playing book. It tells one exactly what the book has in it chapter by chapter. The best feature is the 10 Ways to Scavenge This Book. A nice little feature and it is very well done.

Chapter One is Wild Spellcraft Template. This is what I consider the meat of the book. It shows one how to apply the wild Spellcraft to any spell caster. There are many options to make the tables of mishaps fit one what needs. There are also ways to make mishaps more common or less common.

Chapter Two is Wild Spellcraft in Your Game. This is the best chapter in the book because of the great ideas presented here. It gives many great suggestions on why wild spellcasters happen and how to have that in one?s world. It gives good advice for using this unpredictable type of magic in different genres as well. There are many ideas presented in this chapter, most of them can inspire campaigns.

Chapter Three is Wild Arcana. In this chapter are the rules for wild magical items and even a few examples of them. Having items that are not reliable is a great idea as the average gamer seems to take for granted his items will always work. Just introduce the concept of wild items and one?s players will be a little more careful and maybe a little paranoid. Next, the chapter goes into the concept of Chaos Fields. These are places that all magic becomes wild. The areas tend to be small, but one can have regions miles long. There are many options presented here allowing one to have Chaos Fields with varying degrees of power so one?s players will never know what to expect from these places.

Chapter Four is Masters of Wild Spellcraft. This is the chapter with a few feats (three), but the heart of this chapter is the two prestige classes. The feats are all interesting and would be fun for either a player or a Dungeon Master. Chaotic Disruption allows spells that one counters, to instead go become mishaps and go astray. Enwild Spell allows one to automatically have a spell he casts become a mishap in hopes of having a good outcome. The third feat is Reckless Spell and at the risk of a mishap one can turn a lower level spell into one that is one level higher. The two prestige classes are also interesting and would be a fun in most games. The first is Pandaemonicist. This is a person that who enjoys the mishaps and has abilities to help make them a little more beneficial, at least he hopes they can. The Sculptor of Chaos is for someone trying to control Chaos. Both classes do get a lot of abilities so I would suggest that both the player and dungeon master are familiar with the Wild Spellcraft rules before using either of them. However, the rewards from such classes are well worth the understanding of these rules. Next the chapter details three NPCs. They are very well detailed giving the back-story, the appearance, and role-playing notes. These NPCs are well done and should be fairly easy to fit in most campaigns.

Chapter Five is Wild Spells. There are over three-dozen new spells in this book. All of them are wild in nature. There are new spells for the Bard, Cleric, Druid and Wizard/Sorcerer.

Chapter Six is the Land Tomb of the Library of Yen-Ching. This is a sample adventure that is given to easily introduce the Wild Spellcraft rules in one?s games. There is advice for making the adventure for first through third level characters, fourth through ninth level characters, and tenth level and higher level characters.

Overall this is a very interesting book full of ideas to expand upon one?s game. Using this book will only add another level of complexity and interest to one?s game. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Some original ideas. Not something our particular group was able to incorporate.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

"OUCH!" If you ever wanted to punish your spellcasters for trying those spells they don't know this is the way to do it. It will deffanatly make the "Madwand" a feared character, by both friends and foes alike.

Very neat ideas, but not much that you can just grab and play with, and frankly, the book doesn't live up to its ad either. Still, a good place to go for some inspiriation if you have cash to blow.

Run and hide, the wild mages broke into 3e. Wild Spellcraft goes beyond the old munchkin mages, detailing a variety of spellcasters and spells that just don't always work as intended for a variety of reasons. Its a very good take on the matter, and no one is likely to yawn at "yet another wild mage, same as the last wild mage" again.

Fine product. Compact presentation of the Wild Mage as recalled from old 2ed AD&D. Maybe a little too similar but with enough twist to appeal more "coventional" groups. Clear layout and mediocre pictures.

The plug-in nature of Wild Spellcraft makes it much more useful than it might have otherwise been. It hasn't gotten as much use I would like, but I blame my players more for that. ;)

This PDF is exactly what it says it is: a complete reworking of the classic "wild magic" concept for use in pretty much any d20 game that uses a magic system like D&D(like d20 Modern or Everquest Tabletop RPG). There may be some minor balance issues as the basic ability to cast Wild spells is a template instead of a feat, but the "cool factor" more than outweighs it. Just get it!

A very useful book about a subject that usually gets shoveled to the bottom of a pile, or given a snippet of information. I'm particularly fond of the Pandaemonicist prestige class, myself.

The only thing I regret about buying it is that I haven't ordered a copy of the hardcover.

When I first started reading Wild Spellcraft, I realized it wasn?t the product I was looking for. After reading it in its entirety, though, I decided that it didn?t matter. Contained herein is a template enabling spell-casters to use wild magic (that?s all the template does), feats for controlling the highly unstable form of magic, new spells, two prestige classes (one who revels in chaos and another seeks to control it) and some other nifty bits of information. If you want an easily managed set of rules for wild magic in your campaign, look no further.