Arcane Mysteries: Wild Spellcraft

In traditional legends, magic has always been a force that granted great power, but which carried risk in its use. This style of magic can be found in countless stories, movies, and books, from European folktales and Japanese anime, to the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia and a particularly famous School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For those who appreciate this uncertainty and desire to let magic be something mystical and untamable, something more than just an entry on the 'spells per day' table, Natural 20 Press presents Wild Spellcraft.

Wild Spellcraft provides game masters with a toolkit for including the unpredictable forces of magic in their game with whatever depth and complexity they want. Ranging from rules for spells gone awry to prestige classes for those who try to master magic in its rawest, most chaotic form, Wild Spellcraft is designed to be modular, to fit into your game in individualpieces or in its entirety.

Wild Spellcraft introduces the wild spellcaster template, a set of rules which can be laid over any spellcasting character, creature, or magic item to add to it the powers of wild sorcery. For some characters, this template will just be for flavor, not power. However, two new prestige classes - the Sculptor of Chaos and the Pandaemonicist - turn what is normally considered a drawback of wild spellcasting into an advantage. Rather than letting the unpredictability of magic endanger them, these masters of wild spellcraft control magic in a pure, raw state.

Wild Spellcraft presents two different complexities of magical mishaps. The basic list of mishaps covers all the traditional effects of magic gone awry, whereas the Exotic & Bizarre mishap tables have hundreds of possibilities dependent on the level of the spell that caused the mishap, and let players have as little or as much complexity with their wild spellcraft as desired.

Also in keeping with the desire to provide a gamer's toolkit for shaping your character, adventure, or game world, Wild Spellcraft includes dozens of concepts around which to base your own individual form of magic. Does nervousness ruin your spells when you're under pressure? Were you cursed for misusing your sorcery? Or does all magic simply run the risk of failure? You'll also find rules on unpredictable magical items - created intentionally, the result of a curse, or perhaps simply failing from great age - and on chaos fields, a hazard which can be added to any adventure location. Game Masters will even find guidelines on how to use the rules in the book to create the type of setting and tone they want, from traditional high fantasy, to comic adventure, to dark and grim drama.

Finally, Wild Spellcraft details twenty new spells that involve chaos, probability, randomness, and unpredictability. Charlatans can really stack the deck with Meece's cartomantic flourish, while more combat-oriented mages can learn the destructive entropic wave or the powerful storm of wild sorcery, Rodinn's roaring paradoxical pandaemonic chaotic conflagration!

Wild Spellcraft isn't just spells being disruptive. It's a new way to see magic in gaming as the powerful, unreliable force that it should be.