Baldur's Gate 3 streamer dials the RPG's most unpredictable D&D class feature all the way to 11, triggering a quintessential Sorcerer trick on every single spell cast
Jul. 4, 2024Oops, all Wild Magic
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Wild Magic is one ofBaldur’s Gate 3’s most potentially-devastating features, but one player has leaned into the chaos it offers by modding the RPG to ensure that it triggers every single time a spell is cast.
Wild Magic is a Sorcerer class feature, where, every time you cast a spell, you have a 5% chance to trigger one of dozens of random effects. In D&D, these include things like all your hair falling out, being forced to shout rather than speak, or randomly casting spells. In Baldur’s Gate 3, the table is edited slightly, but that means that the likelihood of something catastrophic happening seems somewhat higher. Previously, we’ve written about Wild Magicwiping Honour Mode playthroughs at the first hurdle, orruining some of the game’s most important moments.
Unperturbed by that fate, streamer Alex Naivety decided to push Wild Magic to its limits. In his modded version of Baldur’s Gate 3, the feature triggers on every single spellcast, including cantrips and other, non-Sorcerer spells. In his playthrough, he even respecs Lae’zel into a magic class to ensure that he causes maximum chaos.
From the bounce, the results are pretty, well, Wild. Before even leaving the Nautiloid, Gale (as a Sorcerer in this playthrough), is polymorphed into a wheel of cheese. The result is a pivotal cutscene in which the Sorcerer of Waterdeep is almost fondued by a dragon.
Things don’t really let up as the playthrough progresses. In one fight later in Act 1, Shadowheart has been hit with the effect of so many different Wild Magic surges that Alex has to scroll to discover exactly what’s happened to her when she’s polymorphed into a dinosaur. Polymorphing is something of a regular occurrence throughout the playthrough, as you might have guessed by now, but so are explosions, and Alex’s bigger fights do tend to spiral out of control a little. I dread to think what they might look like by the time he reaches Act 3, but thankfully he’s not planning to push the game quite that far.
Baldur’s Gate 3 made D&D’s lead designer change one of the RPG’s deadliest NPC-killers because it was “excruciating” to use.
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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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