Mongoose Publishing

[FallenDruid]

Upon reading the revised rules in the Quintessential Chaos Mage, and then perusing the standard spell lists available to standard arcane casters...

Once you get out of straight damage/enchantment/conjuration effects, Chaos magic loses a hell of a lot of power.

By the letter of the rules, there's no way to devise any kind of permanent affect with transformation magic, no matter how much power you pump into it...

Accordingly, if you say, transform someones armor into, say, water, when the spells duration ends, not only does the water change back into metal, it also reforms around them...which, to my mind, is rather non-intuitive. It should take more power to maintain a temporary chaos transformation, and then turn it back, than to perform a permanent alteration with a instant chaos effect, rather than it simply benig impossible.

As written, if I alter something, and as a side effect of its alteration, its form changes, then when the effect ends, it returns to its natural shape. How are the effects of gravity or wind different from the effects of a warrior with a big sledgehammer? I don't think anyone would argue that if I turn a skeleton into an ice statue, and then the warrior smashes it with his hammer, the skeleton is toast, even after the effect ends. But what if the skeleton melts? I'm not adverse to allowing a Fortitude or Will save to 'pull yourself together' as it were, but it seems like the rules have been gone through and very purposefully designed so that the target audience (clever people who can (ab)use a flexible rule system to its limits) is limited to less(in some cases, much less) than what an equivalent level arcane caster would have access to.

I'm not saying, by the way, that transformations that enhance attributes or skills should be permanent, but only that the rules on physically altering somethings structure should be looked at.

(As a thirteenth level wiz, for example: Flesh to stone followed by transmute rock to mud...or even shape stone, and then stone to flesh...)

[FallenDruid]

Uhm...bump. Anyone care to respond? Anyone at all?

[thedarkelf007]

Well I do have a few ideas on this, more on a DM than just the rules.

Chaos is supposed to be ever changing, not following rules, that sort of thing, so something changing back at the end of the duration appears to be strange as a chaos effect.

Now this is what i am going to do in my game, though not to sure about all the specifics.

A chaos transformation does not have a duration, unless it is to draw out the time it takes to change from one state to another, by drawing it out, you decrease the DC of the change. All changes are considered to be instantaneous.

Anything in the middle of transformation takes damage as part of the process and can make a saving throw to reverse the effect (if it has not completed).

Once changed, the changed creatures take damage each round to simulate the forces of chaos still at work restructuring the creature. Items are fairly stable.

A dispel magic can unravel the change, by using the force of will of lawful magic to right the devistation of the chaos magic.

A Chaos mage can also return something to its correct state, though at the DC of the origional spell...

Damage would be determined based on the level of change...

A chaos mage is not immune to the damage of the change.

This like a few other ideas I have for the chaos mage, are not intended to limit or make the mage unplayable, but more to add flavour and introduce different ideas.

I have yet to implement some of this, though a friend may let me take one into his game to try out my varient rules. At least I will find out what is unbalanced fairly quickly
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Martin

Longterm GM and loves the 2nd Ed B5 rules