What is so "wild" about a wild mage?

Remove all ads!

I've got one in my party but she doesn't seem to be anything special. It's not Neera if that maters?

 

The wild mage has the potential to be the strongest or weakest class in the game depending on how lucky you are.

Wild mages get Nahal's Reckless Dweomer (NRD), a level 1 spell that can duplicate any other spell at the cost of forcing a wild surge. This means that a wild mage potentially has more castings of level 8-9 spells than even a sorcerer.
A wild surge is the wild mage's special ability. Good wild surge effects can heal you, replenish your spells, or significantly improve the power of your spells. Bad wild surge effects can silence the caster, kill your allies, and even kill the caster outright.

 

Wild mages also get a bonus to the random roll as they gain levels IIRC, and they have spells that further improve their chances of getting a better result, allowing them to use surges reliably to their benefit.

 

Explanation from pocketplane :

you can find an entire list with rolls and what that score will have for effect at http://www.pocketplane.net/volothamp/wild.htm

This can be good or bad, for example some bad rolls would be :
6 - Caster hit by a Fireball, 14 - Caster Held, 17 - All the party's gold is destroyed.
but some good ones include 15 - Caster Hasted, 32 Caster becomes Invisible - 83 - Target polymorphed into Squirrel.

and then there's weird effects, like 7 - The caster's gender changes and 88 - Cow falls from sky on target.

It's also possible to land on a roll that makes you roll a few more times ( 4 times if your original roll havs a value of 63) and all the effects of these 4 rolls happen at once.

In other words, wild surges can be a huge boon or a huge pain in the ass.
Allways keep an eye on your message screen to see what's happening - you don't want to discover that all your gold was destroyed 2-3 saves later, with no chance to go back.

 

The moment you accidentally gate a Fiend into the field you'll know just how 'wild ' things can be.

 

LOL! Darion that's just so not funny. Lol. Ok so it is funny. Well until it happens anyway

Thanks a ton for the table xosmi!

Unfortunately the table isn't the same as what is in the game. Well at least not all of them. For example:

62 Detect magic spell centered on target

But it does give me a good idea of what some of them could be

 

Ah, probably the one on spellhold is outdated or they tweaked the table for the enhanced edition then, i don't really use wild mages so i wouldn't know

 

You can just open up the table (WILDMAG.2DA) in NI and pair up the STRREFs with the ones in the TLK file (Ctrl+L) to see what each entry does.

 

What? Lol. I know that NI stands for Near Infinity but what about the rest?

 

1. open the chitin.key file in the game directory, then expand the folder called 2DA on the left side of Near Infinity.
2. find the file called WILDMAG.2DA, click it.
3. you will find a table. th left most row of numbers (gray) is the line, the second column of numbers are actual dice roll values. the nex column being spell names, the final column being the string reference.
4. find the dice roll you want to know of what effect it will have in case of a wild surge, in this case 62.
5. note the string reference in the last column for this line, in this case 917.
6. Open the String referencce lookup window (Search -> Stringref)
7. in the new window, enter the stringref number in the topleft field and press enter.
8. Voilá, the effect this string references is in this case "detect magic" (which matches the table i linked to in an earlier post)

 

Wow. A little confusing but pretty cool. Thanks
I wonder if they just put that spell in for the wild surges and not for player use otherwise?

 

If nothing else, wild mages count as specialist mages (one extra spell slot per spell level), but without having a forbidden school.

The special wild mage spells are the first level Nahal's Reckless Dweomer, which allows you to cast any spell in your spell book (yes, even 9th level spells), though this forces a wild surge roll (as opposed to casting a normal spell as a wild mage which has a chance to roll a wild surge). So the result may be somewhat random.

Higher caster levels give better chances for getting better rolls, apparently. The second level Chaos Shield and the seventh level Improved Chaos Shield also improve your chances of getting a good roll. You may even cast the spell you were hoping to cast! According to the descriptions, the 2nd and 7th level chaos shields will improve you wild surge rolls by adding 15 and 25 to the roll, respectively.

 

Is charisma needed for a wild mage? Assuming (s)he isn't the main character.

 

CHA is not a relevant stat for any class, except if you want to dual to or from a druid.

 

Doesn't charisma give you more options when replying to someone? Like the beholder in the Sahuagin city? I don't always get the same options. Or am I having another brain fart?

 

Charisma does affect a few things in the game (namely, shop prices and reaction modifier), but few conversations are actually stat-dependent.

 

I don't know about the beholder in the Sahuagin city, I do know that if you talk to the pirate king or some such in Brynnlaw with a high enough CHA, you can convince him you're crazy and should be sent to the asylum.

As Keneth says, there are some other things affected by CHA, but there's also an easily attainable ring that sets your CHA to 18.

And since CHA isn't a major stat for any class, it's not important that way either.

 

Yep charisma is usually low priority because of the charisma ring and the Friends spell.

Charisma's effects are more subtle compared to other stats. Besides improving store prices, it affects some dialogue/rewards, NPC morale failure (NPCs panic more frequently if your party leader has low charisma) and it affects how soon certain incompatible NPCs fight each other (Keldron and Viconia, Minsc and Edwin, etc).
Can't conclusively confirm that last one, but that seems to be the case.

 

That seems unlikely; I've never seen any such code in the scripts.

Also, I can't remember the last time I've seen a morale failure within a party. Even with low Charisma, it's extremely rare unless your party members keep dying.

 

I've never seen a morale failure. Ever. Panic due to spells, sure, but morale failure, no.