Ever wanted to experience all those cool Surge effects? Like gender change or squirrel invasion?

I have an answer.

Enable console, and then use Ctrl-H. Surge number 0 is the normal state, but from there on, the surges are in the same order as in the ToB booklet.

I fought against Ardulace, and got the Squirrels... They were SLIGHTLY distracting...

Try it! It's fun!

Ara
(LMAO for even thinking all that...)

I did that accidentally once, didn't realise I'd activated that particular cheat. I was in the asylum at the time, so I thought it was pretty normal ;)

I had to fight my way out of the room of squirrels - took about 10 minutes!

Best ones are the doubling effectiveness, or the ones that change the colours of the other creatures :D

I was bored of playing the same old fighter types in game after game so I decided to be a Wild Mage just for a change. I only planned to play for a few minutes and have a laugh but I really enjoyed it.
Now he is making his way through Athkatla alternately turning himself bright yellow, turning into a woman, and creating lots of sparkly effects.

How HE got a license I'll never work out...

[This message has been edited by Masher (edited January 25, 2002).]

Has anyone gotten very far playing a wild mage?

I'm wrapping up chapter 2 in SOA with a wild mage right now, and he's ridiculously powerful, even at a mere level twelve. The reason? By casting a first level spell (NRD) he can cast any spell in his book, even ones he is not high enough level to cast. He was casting Limited Wish, Simulacrum and Mordenkainen's Sword at 10th level. Of course, there is that 5% chance (which increases quite a bit if you use NRD) that something funky is going to happen, but chaos shield can make good funky more likely than bad funky, and one chaos shield will last a long time.

The level fluctuation is a little distracting sometimes, but overall it balances itself out, I think. The most notable consequence is area-damage spells. Sometimes your spell is cast at 4 levels higher and you wipe out everybody, sometimes its a few levels lower and your enemies are barely scratched.

Of course, there was the time he was fighting the Shadow Dragon and summoned a demon when he cast lower resistance. Or the time he hit Mencar Pebblecrusher with a magic missile and turned into a woman. Then there's the infamous summoned cow, which smacked my poor mage's head in the middle of a intense battle with trolls in the druid grove.

At low levels especially, these little surprises are a small sacrifice indeed, considering you can cast any spell in your book (regardless of level) with a first level spell, which gives the wild mage the spontaneity of a sorcerer combined with the diversity of a mage. Plus, you are considered to be a specialist, so you get the extra spell per level, too!

The downside is that you can never count on any of your usual magic strategies to work as normal, but then again its a lot of fun to improvise!

Ok sounds pretty cool. So you are going solo?