So I've been working̦—like every single other person on earth, as far as I can tell—on a retooling of the Sorcerer and the Wild Magic subclass. And I've come up with something that I like a lot, including the potential for much more frequent wild magic surges, but that still feels off somehow. And I was thinking about it this morning and I realized the issue:
To be really true to the idea that, as I understand it, the Sorcerer class is going for, Wild Magic Surge shouldn't be an origin feature; it should be an optional class feature. [NOTE: If you feel differently, I'm not going to disagree with you! I'm not saying something intended to be taken by everyone as true for everyone, just talking about my own conception of the class, which may be different from yours.]
What are the identities of the other subclasses? "I'm good at storms." "I'm good at shadows." "I'm good at dragons." What's the identity of the Wild Magic subclass? "I'm bad at control." But "bad at control" is a terrible idea to base a subclass around.
But "bad at control" is a possibility dripping from every piece of flavor text in the class description. "A sorcerer’s magic wants to be wielded, and it has a tendency to spill out in unpredictable ways if it isn’t called on." The only subclass in which that's mechanically even close to true is Wild Magic—but it's so central to how we think about sorcerers as a society that they put it in the class description.
I haven't thought out the specifics of it completely yet, but the Wild Magic Surge mechanism I came up with / cobbled together from various places on the Internet has a LOT of room for making Surges more or less likely. So I'm thinking an optional class feature whereby the player and the DM together decide on what version of that mechanism to use (in other words, how frequent/likely they want surges to be in a given campaign), and then the sorcerer takes any of the other origins. So at one table you might have a Shadow Sorcerer who's got excellent control of his magic (i.e. doesn't use the feature at all), at another you might have a Storm Sorcerer who's good but not great at control (i.e., uses a version of the mechanism with a lower probability of causing a surge), and at another a Dragonborn who's TERRIBLE at control (i.e., uses a version of the mechanism with a higher probability of causing a surge.)
The other Wild Magic subclass features (Tides of Chaos, Bend Luck, Controlled Chaos, etc.) could either be given to the class as a whole or dropped or nerfed for balance purposes—and basically, everything in the subclass that doesn't relate directly to the surge feels kind of tacked on to me, anyway, so maybe all the other features just go away except for Controlled Chaos, which becomes a class feature.
Anyway, this might not be the right way to deal with sorcerers and wild magic. If you yourself don't like it, then it is CERTAINLY not the right way for YOU to deal with sorcerers and wild magic, and your way is better!
But in case other people think like I do, I wanted to share this idea.
So I've been working̦—like every single other person on earth, as far as I can tell—on a retooling of the Sorcerer and the Wild Magic subclass. And I've come up with something that I like a lot, including the potential for much more frequent wild magic surges, but that still feels off somehow. And I was thinking about it this morning and I realized the issue:
To be really true to the idea that, as I understand it, the Sorcerer class is going for, Wild Magic Surge shouldn't be an origin feature; it should be an optional class feature. [NOTE: If you feel differently, I'm not going to disagree with you! I'm not saying something intended to be taken by everyone as true for everyone, just talking about my own conception of the class, which may be different from yours.]
What are the identities of the other subclasses? "I'm good at storms." "I'm good at shadows." "I'm good at dragons." What's the identity of the Wild Magic subclass? "I'm bad at control." But "bad at control" is a terrible idea to base a subclass around.
But "bad at control" is a possibility dripping from every piece of flavor text in the class description. "A sorcerer’s magic wants to be wielded, and it has a tendency to spill out in unpredictable ways if it isn’t called on." The only subclass in which that's mechanically even close to true is Wild Magic—but it's so central to how we think about sorcerers as a society that they put it in the class description.
I haven't thought out the specifics of it completely yet, but the Wild Magic Surge mechanism I came up with / cobbled together from various places on the Internet has a LOT of room for making Surges more or less likely. So I'm thinking an optional class feature whereby the player and the DM together decide on what version of that mechanism to use (in other words, how frequent/likely they want surges to be in a given campaign), and then the sorcerer takes any of the other origins. So at one table you might have a Shadow Sorcerer who's got excellent control of his magic (i.e. doesn't use the feature at all), at another you might have a Storm Sorcerer who's good but not great at control (i.e., uses a version of the mechanism with a lower probability of causing a surge), and at another a Dragonborn who's TERRIBLE at control (i.e., uses a version of the mechanism with a higher probability of causing a surge.)
The other Wild Magic subclass features (Tides of Chaos, Bend Luck, Controlled Chaos, etc.) could either be given to the class as a whole or dropped or nerfed for balance purposes—and basically, everything in the subclass that doesn't relate directly to the surge feels kind of tacked on to me, anyway, so maybe all the other features just go away except for Controlled Chaos, which becomes a class feature.
Anyway, this might not be the right way to deal with sorcerers and wild magic. If you yourself don't like it, then it is CERTAINLY not the right way for YOU to deal with sorcerers and wild magic, and your way is better!
But in case other people think like I do, I wanted to share this idea.