# Print version of Wild Spellcraft: comments?



## RangerWickett (Aug 12, 2002)

Well, I'd like to know if anyone has any comments for the newly released print version of Natural 20 Press's Wild Spellcraft.  I'm especially interested to hear from those who have both the pdf and the print version, to see how the two versions stack up.


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## Glacialis (Aug 22, 2002)

Hey there RW. Well, you know I've been an obses...erm...longtime fan of your Wild Magic classes and such for quite a while now . I pre-ordered the print version, and since it has yet to arrive I'm going to go smack around the distributor I ordered from. Other than that...I promise to spend a great deal of time nitpicking and spewing forth opinions!


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## tensen (Aug 23, 2002)

My copy showed up in the mail from Mystic Eye yesterday.  It looks spiffy (hey am I allowed to use that term? <grin)

I have to sit down and see what got added/changed.  But I'm quite pleased with the results of it.


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## Glacialis (Sep 20, 2002)

*OK...*

Finally got my print copy of Wild Spellcraft. My thoughts?

Great! As near as I can tell, the suppress surge feat is gone, there's a area in one of the later chapters that makes for a wonderful addition to any campaign, and some new magic item properties.

I'm worried about the +5 equiv one. Max to weap + all other damage? I mean for +5 it should be quite powerful, but I cringe at that.


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## RangerWickett (Sep 21, 2002)

I know, I was also a little uncomfortable about the entropic and dystopic weapons.  But think of two examples:


*Fighter with Magic Dystopic Sword:*  Say a 20th level fighter, with a +2 flaming, shocking, frost dystopic greatsword (a +10 weapon).  If he hits, he does 32 damage, or 46 on a critical hit.  
*Fighter with Magic non-Dystopic Sword:*  If instead he had a +5 flaming burst, shocking, icy burst greatsword (also a +10 weapon), he could take a -3 attack roll penalty for power attack, and still have the same attack bonus as above.  If he hits, he does 5d6+8, for an average of 25.5 damage.  On a critical hit, he deals 5d6+4d10+16, for an average of 54.5.  Plus he can hurt the Tarrasque and other monsters, while the other guy has a harder time bypassing its damage reduction.

It's kind of a toss-up there, but overall I'd say the non-dystopic version is better.

Now, here comes the real munchkined version, which I agree might have been a mistake.


*Rogue with a Dystopic Weapon:*  A 20th level rogue with a +5 dystopic shortsword (a +10 weapon).  If he hits normally, he'd deal 11 points of damage.  But if he gets a sneak attack, he'd do 71 points of damage.
*Rogue with a non-Dystopic Weapon:*  This guy has a +5 flaming, frost, shock, holy shortsword (also a +10 weapon).  If he hits normally, he'll deal 4d6+5 points of damage, for an average of 19 (26 if the target is evil).  In a sneak attack, he'd deal 14d6+5 damage, for an average of 54 damage (61 if the target is evil).

A skilled rogue, who uses good tactics, would definitely benefit from an entropic weapon, especially if he can manage to get sneak attacks regularly from flanking his foes, though most foes at 20th level should probably have some sort of anti-sneak attack defenses, like fortified armor or blur.  Or they'll be undead, and be immune to crits.

At the time I wrote it, I wasn't thinking of epic-level characters yet, and since I don't own the ELH, I can't say whether it's too powerful at epic levels, though it probably is.  I can just imagine some 100th level rogue sneak attacking with one of these things, doing 311 points of damage with each hit.  Eek!

If I were to redo it, I'd probably put a cap on it to say that it can only maximize 5 dice of damage for each attack.


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## RangerWickett (Sep 21, 2002)

By the way, I'm glad you like Yen-Ching.  It's named after a local Chinese Restaurant.  

Though in hindsight, I'm much more pleased with the writing I did for Four-Color to Fantasy and TFT than for Wild Spellcraft.  I could've done a lot better, and made it crunchier, instead of relying on just the one rules set.

Ah well, I'll do better next time, and at least for right now I've given people new toys to play with.  Many thanks to Russ and the folks from MEG for helping me out on this.


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