Random Effect Spell

Sometimes, even heroes like to live on the edge.

A Random Effect Spell is just that—a spell or item in a video game that pulls from a pool of random effects, instead of doing the same thing every time. Often (but not always) granted as a late-game spell or ability, or difficult to come by, the Random Effect Spell's effects can run the gauntlet from "really cool" to "really lame". How big the effect pool is can depend on the item or spell, though frequently, at least one or two of them will be a duplicate of an already-existing spell or ability (if not all of them). Frequently, at least one possible effect of the spell will be completely amazing (such as dealing massive damage to all enemies), but another will be completely horrible (such as cutting all your characters' health in half). Also frequent is one option which does absolutely nothing. Whether the risk is worth it generally depends on the ratio of good effects to bad ones in the pool, the cost of the ability, and how many (and how strong) the enemies are you face.

Due to its random nature, it is frequently Awesome but Impractical and a Useless Useful Spell, but not always. If there are enough good effects, they can easily be a Lethal Joke Item or spell. If the randomness results from the spell being miscast, then that's Magic Misfire.

Troper General's Note: Many spells or items in video games (and other games) have an element of randomness to them to keep things unpredictable—such as the additional damage from one spell being randomized, or one spell possibly being able to bestow a number of Standard Status Effects. However, for the purposes of this trope, we are primarily concerned about examples whose primary purpose or effect is the randomness.

See also the Super-Trope Unpredictable Results.

Eastern RPGs

 * Earthbound has Paula's Pray command, which does a random assortment of things. It's free and can heal people and give status effects to enemies, but it can also give status effects to you—so outside of the now-infamous final battle, you're generally better off sticking to Paula's Black Magician Girl skills.
 * Pokémon:
 * "Metronome" can use any other move in the game. At least one spin-off game had "Metronome mode" fights, where you and your opponent had two Pokemon knowing nothing but Metronome, and saw who got luckiest first.
 * "Assist" picks a random move known by any fellow party member, making it slightly less unpredictable than Metronome.
 * Delibird's "Present" move either will either inflict light damage, moderate damage, or moderate healing on the opponent.
 * Sleep Talk picks and uses another one of the Pokemon's skills at random while it sleeps, making it most predictable but still random of all.
 * Chance in the various incarnations of the Dragon Quest franchise.
 * Nara's Silver Tarot Cards in Dragon Quest IV.
 * The Mystery items in the Paper Mario franchise, and, to a lesser extent, the Kooky Cookies. Almost everything Mystery gives you is good, and the Cookies are one of the only ways (outside of the rare Repel Gel) to turn see-through, so they definitely have Lethal Joke Item potential.
 * The rare Random Hearts equipment in Opoona adds random effects to all of your normal attacks, as dictated by a number.
 * The Fool Arcana Chance in Persona 4 becomes any one of the other Arcana cards when it appears, adopting their effects.
 * Final Fantasy:
 * 'Gambler' types (Setzer, Selphie, Cait Sith, Lady Luck) have a variant on this that allow them to use a slot machine or dice to pull out a nearly random effect, but odds are not entirely random, due to a slightly skill or luck based timing on the slots.
 * Final Fantasy XII has the Shades of Black Technick, where it draws power from a random Black Magic spell you have.
 * Final Fantasy IV has a character named Tellah, who is an old sage who has forgotten most of his spells. When you first recruit him, he only has a smattering of low-level spells, but has an ability named Recall, which allows him to cast a random spell from his formerly expansive repertoire with no MP cost. This can be anything from a low first level ability to some of the late game powerful effects, and unlike the normal versions of said spells, Tellah can target multiple enemies with spells cast this way, even if the normal versions of the said spells can only hit 1 target.
 * In FFV, the Hunter can summon a random animal that will give a slight boost and the Geomancer can effect random effects based on the environment, and in FFVI two characters have the ability to enter a state where they can cause a random effect every turn (Mog can dance, which causes random powers based on the chosen environment, and Gau can enter a beast rage, which selects random powers from the selected creature.) Additionally, Relm's sketch ability selects a random effect from the target creature and causes her painting to execute that ability.
 * Final Fantasy VI has the Magicite item that calls an Esper to the battle, but which one appears is purely random, ranging from the useless Siren to the lethal damaging Bahamut. It's useful early in the game when Espers aren't available to you yet or you haven't gotten the stronger ones yet. The item version of summoning Espers doesn't cost MP to use but you can be completely screwed if the wrong one appears.
 * The aptly named "Spell" spell in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has a few different effects, although the most common is turning some enemies into Bots.
 * Lunar Magic on Legend of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 2, it may cure you at full health or decide to turn you into a bunny, any random effect on both your party and your oponents
 * Bahamut Lagoon: The Mini-Devils' Dances are entirely unpredictable; the pool of effects can be changed based on the dragon associated with them, but there's rarely more than about a 60% chance of getting a positive result. Results can range from various element attacks with varying ranges, healing your party, healing the enemies, healing everyone, putting targets to sleep or poisoning them, etc.
 * Acrobats in Dokapon Kingdom can get the "????" skill. It changes to a random skill every time a new battle starts.
 * Falitza's "Press Fortune" ability in The Reconstruction. Whether or not it even causes a good or bad effect to occur is random. Its effects aren't too varied, though—just full-party buffs or debuffs.
 * A number of Viviosaurs in Fossil Fighters Champions have random effect spells. Coelanth has an ability that randomly inflicts any status effect, and Archaeo has one that's just random, period.
 * In the PlayStation 3 remake of Tales of Vesperia, almost all of the arts and spells used by Patty Fleur are random in regards to what they'll do, though the odds of something good or bad happening can be tweaked by equipping certain skills. The most random of all is her Critical Moment spell, which has dozens of possible effects that make good or bad things happen to the party, the enemies, or both.

Fighting Games

 * Super Smash Bros.:
 * Mr. Game and Watch has his "Judge" ability. A random number appears over his head, tied to corresponding effects. It can do everything to setting people on fire, freezing them, and (if you get lucky) causing an instant KO, and if unlucky, he will hurt himself.
 * There's also the Pokeballs and Assist Trophies, who summon a random character from their pool to do different things. One Pokemon, Togepi, even does random things within the random item!

First Person Shooter

 * The Surprise Device in Water Warfare does several effects, ranging from the beneficial-to-all (everybody gets healed and has their water refilled!) to the bad-for-all (everyone gets rained on and takes damage! Ack!) to the bizarre (Pan On The Head, it gets dark for some reason). And of course, the standard "nothing at all happens" effect.

Puzzle Games

 * In Peggle, Warren's special attack spins a wheel that randomly gives you an Extra Ball, Magic Hat, Triple Score, or a random powerup from another character.

Tabletop Games

 * Elements Flash card based game has several examples of this type, mostly in the Entropy element:
 * Mutation causes the the target creature to die, turn into a mutant, or turn into a different, random creature with a random power. Additionally, the Entropy Wild Elf has an ability that does exactly the same thing.
 * In addition to its normal effect of returning a creature to the top of the deck, Reverse Time can, when used on a Zombie, turn them into a random creature.
 * There's also Chaos Seed (a spell whose effect is randomly picked out of 11 different possibilities), Pandemonium (a spell whose effect is randomly picked out of all the available effects in the game), Skeleton (a card that can turn into a random creature using the spell Reverse Time), and Fate Egg (a card that turns into a random creature).
 * Dungeons and Dragons also got some spells that inherently work like this.
 * Prismatic Spray, for example, hits each target with only one or two of its seven different rays.
 * Some items, like Wand of Wonder and Deck of Many Things.
 * Forgotten Realms Sourcebook The Elves of Evermeet has Faerie Sword spell that can inflict a random effect on hit. These include being imprisoned in a Forcecage, randomly Polymorphed, Turned to Stone, random Teleportation up to 1,000 miles away or instant death.
 * Nahal's Reckless Dweomer requires you to roll on a table with 100 diverse entries for its spell effect. Of course, many longer lists can be found on the internet. The associated class, the Wild Mage, has a 5% chance of causing an effect from this table whenever casting a normal spell.
 * Magic: The Gathering:
 * Magic: The Gathering Online's "Vanguard" has several Vanguard avatars which pull random effects like these. Most prominently, Momir Vig allows you to pay X mana to make a copy of a random creature that also costs X mana, spawning an entire alternative format called Momir Basic, where players build a deck using only mana sources and a Momir Vig avatar and battle with randomized creatures from all over Magic. Jhoira of the Ghitu has a similar effect for instants and sorceries; likewise with Stonehewer Giant and equipment.
 * The Cascade ability from the Alara Reborn expansion allows you to cast a random spell from your deck for free. There are a variety of spells with similar randomizing effects.
 * Strategy, Schmategy has you roll a six-sided die to determine which of five totally unrelated abilities you'll get when you cast it. To up the ante, one of the options is "Roll the die two more times."

Roguelikes

 * In the case of Ancient Domains of Mystery, a sip from a pool could cause one of many effects, ranging from a free wish, through gaining or losing stat points or intrinsics, or even having a small frog pop out and give female characters a small golden ball and a "Frog Quest".

Third Person Shooter

 * Kid Icarus: Uprising has the Random power, which causes any one of the other powers to be used when activated. God help you if it chooses Spite though.

Turn-Based Strategy

 * Fall From Heaven:
 * Several spells of the 'Chaos' domain fall under this - unsurprisingly. The 'Mutation' spell applies a random number of random effects to the affected unit, and can do anything from turning them into a greatly-empowered hero, to turning them into a withered, cannibalistic husk.
 * Greater yet is the 'Wonder' spell, which can have a vast array of effects - including nearly the entire archive of general spells, as well as a number of unique effects you can ONLY get from it: Creating penguins, causing giant mushrooms to grow, opening the very Gates of Hell... or turning you into a baboon.
 * Master of Magic has such spells - unsurprisingly, in Chaos spellbooks. "Chaos Channels" gives an unit a random mutation (and in some ways it counts as Fantastic Unit of the Chaos realm, which is not always a good thing, but in others still as a Normal Unit). "Doom Mastery" automatically affects all new normal units of the caster with Chaos Channels, see above. "Call Chaos" subjects each enemy unit in the battlefield to one of 8 random effects: healing, mostly-beneficial Chaos Channels, one of 5 attack spells or nothing. "Magic Vortex" creates a vortex that moves randomly 3/4 times and causes inescapable damage to anything it runs over and blasts with lightning everything nearby - friend or foe alike.

Western RPG

 * Baldurs Gate II: Throne of Bhall had the Wild Mage whose specialty, Wild Magic spells, could result in any one of a hundred random effects. Some were useful, such as giving the party bonuses, extra spells, or the mage actually succeeding at casting the spell they intended to. Or it could do useless things, like opening and closing all nearby doors, or a few absolutely hilarious things.
 * Micropose's Magic: The Gathering video game had a set of Astral cards (one for each colour) that did exactly this.
 * A recurring artifact called Wabbajack in The Elder Scrolls series turns enemies into random monsters, ranging from simple rats to minibosses.
 * Heroes of Might and Magic: jinni/djinn cast random blessings/curses. Sorcerers from III also have this.
 * In Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark, in a tower with Wild Magic field, every spell becomes this.
 * In Akalabeth (the first game in the Ultima series), the magic amulet had a random function that could cost you half of your hit points or turn you into a Lizard Man or a Toad.
 * The Jester Wand and the Archmage spell "Wonder" in Egoboo have a variety of random effects.
 * In Dofus and Wakfu, the Ecaflip (gambler) class is based around this type of spell. In Dofus, they have attack spells that have a chance of healing opponents instead, attacks that wait a random number of turns before actually taking effect, and a spell that buffs everyone on the battlefield - friend and foe alike - with a random effect, just to name a few. Wakfu has similar attack spells, plus a passive skill that gives the character and/or the enemies a random buff or debuff each and every turn of combat.
 * Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has MALOR spell (teleport) has random destination on the same level when used in combat. It does the same in Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.
 * The series pays at least some tribute to D&D, thus 5th game also has VASKYRE (Rainbow Rays). 6th and 7th games call it Prismic Missile, and in 8th there are two - Prismic Ray (cone) and Prismic Chaos (hits all enemies).
 * Summoning spells from 5th game on are random, though casting power generally defines how tough the called creatures will be - 1x is likely to be the weakest on the list and 7x the greatest - but even then, will it be 1 creature of maximum physical and magical (if any) prowess possible for its kind or 2 weaker ones? In the middle it's much less predictable. Wizardry 8 made it ludicrous, in that despite existence of 4 elemental realms, "Summon Elemental" is put into Divine realm and chooses the element randomly.

Others

 * Clonk has the aptly-named "Random Spell" spell, which casts any of the spells loaded as a definition, even ones not normally available in the scenario. Even in a scenario without any unavailable loaded spells, it's still not useless though obviously luck-based, since it has a very low energy cost.

Anime and Manga

 * Joey/Jonouchi from Yu-Gi-Oh! uses a deck with many cards that depend heavily on luck. For example, the Time Wizard can destroy all the monsters on either side of the field depending on its roulette result, dice-themed cards can multiply one of his monster's attack values or divide an enemy monster's attack values, and another card makes an enemy monster randomly attack a monster on either side of the field. Although Joey's luck often works in his favor, it has also backfired on him quite severely on more than one occasion.

Webcomics

 * In Goblins, the Shield of Wonder causes a random magical effect when struck. Among the things it's done: turned someone's sword into an entanglement effect, came to life and ate the wielder, caused bladelike force fields to appear all over, and created Baleful Polymorph landmines.
 * Quentyn's sword Wildcard from Tales of the Questor. Possibly based on the game trope.
 * Web Comic example: Homestuck has the Fluorite Octet, an enchanted set of eight-sided dice wielded by Vriska Serket, which when rolled result in one of 16,777,216 unique effects, ranging from the devastatingly powerful to the completely useless.
 * Khrima of Adventurers! has the Chaos Vortex, which inflicts some random status effects. It was still enough to kill the Spoony Bard.