Chaos Magic - the review.

[bramadan]

I have finaly posted it and it is the longest and most detailed review I have yet done of a d20 product.
Contrary to my previous history with mongoose products it is somewhat negative.
I would be very glad if Sam or Matthew (or anyone else) would like to adress some of the issues I've raised there. (Primarily If I have misunderstood some rule or miscalculated some probablity).
No bad intentions guys, take it as "construcive criticism" from a loyal fan.

 

[Kichwas]

link?

 

[bramadan]

On top of EN world review page

 

[RangerWickett]

Wow. That has got to be one of the most in-depth and calculated reviews I've ever seen. Even though it disappoints me a little that the product wasn't as good as I'd hoped, I'm thoroughly impressed with your analytical skills. By the way, the link is: http://www.enworld.org/d20reviews.asp?sub=yes&where=active&reviewer=Bojan+(bramadan)&product=ENCM

Now it just means I'll have to try my hand at a similar flexible magic system. Perhaps it's just not doable in the standard D&D gaming style. If you had all spellcasters, I think it could work, since everyone would be balanced to each other, but balancing magic-users to warriors and rogues will be difficult.

Again, though, my compliments to you for your clarity and precision in explaining all of your feelings for the product. I must hope, however, that a lot of the folks who'd use the Chaos Magic system will be very roleplaying intensive, and will focus on original spells instead of powerful ones. Maybe Mongoose will come up with some alternative paths of chaos?

 

[bramadan]

I will be quite looking forward to your take on alternative magic. I have been tinkering with the alternative magic system for dnd ever since I started DMing some 10 years ago. It is very hard.
At any rate thanks for the kind words.

 

[Psion]

Write this down in the record books: Psion defends a Mongoose product against a Bramadan attack!

I should preface this by saying that I, too, have serious balance concerns with Chaos Magic. However:

"Together with the significant drop in quality and quantity of "grey box" fiction"

I am astonished that you see that as a bad thing. You read fiction once and you are done with it. Mongoose went way overboard on fiction in earlier products, and I am glad to see they are cutting back. There is a place for some flavor text, but if I wanted fiction, I would buy a fantasy novel. This is a gaming product.

"With atmosphere diminished from Demonology and Necromancy the weight of the book falls on the game mechanics of chaos magic."

Atmosphere? When you are playing the game it is on the DM to create the atmosphere. Again these are gaming prouducts. Mechanics should always be a consideration. And I see Demonology as being on at least as shaky ground mechanically than this one.


" It also means that chaos mages have pre-assigned highest stats: Cha and Con (for hit points) - annulling another great achievement of d20, that of making various stat assignments valid options within a single class."

Huh? Do you regularly play wizards without intelligence as one of their highest scores? OR monks without their highest three scores in wis, dex, and str? I see nothing special here.


"beyond the obvious emphasis it puts on already extremely useful stat: Con, it opens the entire issue of healing. The Player's Handbook states that any amount of magical healing will whip out equivalent amount of the subdual damage the character has suffered making healing chaos mages significantly easier."

If the chaos mage takes subdual and real damage in the same encounter. One of the other, you are hosed. That said, that's hardly a worthy detraction because your default case is that you don't need healing at all.


"Furthermore, even with decent clerical support chaos mage is a veritable damage dealing machine"

After you previous paragraph, I find it odd you consider clerical support a non-issue. I agree with you inasmuch as I don't like this kind of advantage/disadvantage tradeoff. However, keep in mind that this "clerical support" is not so easily given; you are draining the party of its healing resources. Further, you also seem to forget that the HP drain on the chaos mage puts the chaos mage at a disadvantage during combat. Accumulation of damage before the cleric gets there puts the chaos mage that much closer to the brink, and the closer you get to that one magic missile or arrow that will lose the party their artillery.


" This on the other hand reduces the versatility of the Chaos Mage in comparison with the mage seriously damaging the very reson d’etre of the class."

Frivolous != Flexible. There needs to be a balancing factor somewhere for the flexibility. This is it. It doesn't annul the flexibility.


" It is possible to house rule many of this rules to get the somewhat better system. Backlash chance can somehow be related to the level of a spell being cast in order to avoid “always cast the most powerful ones” problem."

You heard it here second, folks!
(i.e., I said this in my review.)


"And 3) A distinctly new flavour filling an important niche in fantasy gaming.

While I believe that 3) was true for Necromancy and Demonology I simply do not see it as a case for Chaos Magic."

??? What?!

Demonology and Necromancy are not new in flavor. They have lavished more detail on it perhaps, but I do not see them as necessarily distinctly new. Au contraire, it appears they have tried to reconstruct some rather classical tropes. Chaos magic is the less travelled road here, and easily deserves the title distinct.


"They are wading ever deeper into the babe-art territory but they are still on the right side of (my subjective) line of good taste."

They crossed mine with the boob-groping-skeleton in Necromancy and a boob-groping-chaos-monstrosity isn't any better.


Anyways, all in all I think Necromancy is the better balanced book, and agree that Choas Magic is on mechanical shaky ground. (But then, so it Demonology). But I think you dismiss the effect of damage on the chaos mage a little too easily.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

There is a place for some flavor text, but if I wanted fiction, I would buy a fantasy novel. This is a gaming product.

"With atmosphere diminished from Demonology and Necromancy the weight of the book falls on the game mechanics of chaos magic."

Atmosphere? When you are playing the game it is on the DM to create the atmosphere. Again these are gaming prouducts. Mechanics should always be a consideration. And I see Demonology as being on at least as shaky ground mechanically than this one.

I think reviewer commented that point here:

However it was much reduced in quantity in this book which will undoubtedly please many “crunchy bits lovers” as much as it saddens me.



Well, good review and good 'defense'. I liked reading both of them. However, I don't think flavor text reducing is a good idea. There wasn't THAT much of it in prior books, and especially new mechanics I feel, need a story, so idea of those rules comes to me in other form too than in form of partially flawed rules. Book however, seems good for some idea-harvesting.

 

[Mongoose_Matt]

Yeah, what Psion said

The important thing to remeber about Chaos Mages is that they never cast their spells in a vacuum. They do it within the context of an ordinary game. A yawning pit that takes down the whole party will hurt a wizard, sure - but it will not reduce his spellcasting capabilities. For the Chaos Mage it will. That sneaky goblin rogue that loops behind the party to attack the spellcasters may be dealt with a well-aimed magic missile (or whatever) after his sneak attack, but a Chaos Mage may well not have the hit points to fend it off for himself.

On top of that, I can see fighters getting royally annoyed that their Chaos Mage constantly begs for healing when they are taking all the damage. And if you are a cleric, who do you heal? Your magical support, or your front line fighter?

As you may all guess, I normally like Bramadan's reviews However, I cannot help thinking that, here, he has made onbe fundamental error of reviewing;

He has not tried the rules in a game

Chaos Magic, up to that point, was our most heavily playtested product. It may not be for every gaming group (what would be?) but it does not have wide gaps - give it a bash, it may surprise you. But do so in a game, not just by flicking through - you never know, our playtesters mnay have just spotted something through playing the rules that you may have missed by just reading them. . .

As for flavour text, this is something I solidly believe we will never get right for everyone - there is just too wide a spread of opinion on the subject. I am well aware that there are players who would rather it disappeared altogether, just as there are those who are looking for nothing more than a 'good read.' The same also applies, incidentally, to so-called 'cheesecake' art. It may be a surprise to no-one that The Slayer's Guide to Amazons, before The Quintessential Fighter, was our best selling book to date. Possible reasons for this;

1. The Slayer's Guide series is developing in the market place and so it is natural that the latest books will sell more - somehow I don't think so, the SG's are amongst the best selling d20 books around (which surprises some, I know ).

2. Our writing targeted female gamers wanting strong characters and they responded to this book - yeah, right!

3. It was the front cover and centrefold that did it.

Umm, I think I know where I would stake my money. . .

I have to admit (and I am going out on a limb here, so be careful with the saw), I am a little nonplussed with the views some have expressed about our artwork and that of other companies. Such pictures may not be 'politically correct' but they have been a staple of fantasy art for years, do not turn all women off (there is a section of female gamers that actually _like_ such artwork, and they are not as small a section as you might think) and, it seems, do work in the market place.

I do think there are limits - but I don't believe any d20 publisher has crossed them yet. I also believe I would not be off base to suggest that most gamers like to see such pictures as well. . .

There have been calls for balance in such art, but here we hit a fundamental problem of human society.

Naked men look ridiculous.

And I think a lot of women will agree with that Women _look_ far better than men, so when it comes to choosing artwork, what do you pick? There may not be any beautiful men. Sting tried it in Dune. *Shudder*

I do think 'that' picture in Necromancy has been woefully misrepresented. People saying the skull is smiling or grinning?

Skulls do that all the time, don't they?

Regardless, if you do have a problem with such pictures, you can always assume that, being British, I am completely repressed in this manner (centuries of inbreeding, you know), and this is the only outlet I have. . .

Anyway, I have wildly digressed. If anyone violently disgarees with either my views on artwork or Chaos Magic, I am sure you will be able to find my email address!

 

[Psion]

However, I cannot help thinking that, here, he has made onbe fundamental error of reviewing;

He has not tried the rules in a game

Heh... this debate came up on RPGnet. Some people claim that you cannot make an effective review sans playtesting. Normally I disagree. However in the case of Chaos Magic, I flat out admitted in my review that my concerns about the balance might best be addressed by playtesting. However, I game for myself, and as I already said elsewhere I already have ideas about the nature of primal magic in my game, playtesting of Chaos Magic won't happen by my hand.

But even not playtesting, I can see that Bramadan is ignoring some impacts of the damage mechanic.

To be honest, I do see one other unintended impact of using hp as a resource: it makes multiclassing chaos mages with classes with more HP more viable than multilcassing wizards and sorcerers. That doesn't bother me though, as I consider multiclass wizards a little too unviable in the system as it stands.

As for flavour text, this is something I solidly believe we will never get right for everyone - there is just too wide a spread of opinion on the subject.

That's true... but in cases like this, I beleive moderation is the trend. I don't have Amazons, but I honestly beleive that Sahuagin is the best balanced Slayer's book yet because it is balanced... a good bit of flavor text and background for inspiration, and a good bit of good practical crunchy bits.

The same also applies, incidentally, to so-called 'cheesecake' art. It may be a surprise to no-one that The Slayer's Guide to Amazons, before The Quintessential Fighter, was our best selling book to date. Possible reasons for this;

1. The Slayer's Guide series is developing in the market place and so it is natural that the latest books will sell more - somehow I don't think so, the SG's are amongst the best selling d20 books around (which surprises some, I know ).

2. Our writing targeted female gamers wanting strong characters and they responded to this book - yeah, right!

3. It was the front cover and centrefold that did it.

Umm, I think I know where I would stake my money. . .

By that logic, Avalanche's books should be flying off of the shelf.

I would guess that it is the subject matter that might have drawn more buyers. I mean some people concern themselves with society of hobgoblins and gnolls. But most don't.

But amazons aren't in the MM. There is something new that people can latch onto and add to their game. I think people may perceive it as having more value. And I also think that (beleive it or not) #2 played a role.

I have to admit (and I am going out on a limb here, so be careful with the saw), I am a little nonplussed with the views some have expressed about our artwork and that of other companies. Such pictures may not be 'politically correct' but they have been a staple of fantasy art for years,

There are a lot of people who could really live without the works of Boris and the like. I'll admit I have some Royo books... he's just too good to miss. But some of his more lewd stuff makes me wince, too.

It's your company, but to me when I buy fantasy artwork, I buy it with my tastes in mind. But when I buy gaming products, I buy it with the gaming material in mind... I find being exposed to tacky artwork as a consequence a little annoying. And I am just here to let you know that there are people like me out there that find the "one bare breasted woman per product" a little gratuitous.

 

[drnuncheon]

There have been calls for balance in such art, but here we hit a fundamental problem of human society.

Naked men look ridiculous.

That said, I was flipping through TQF and actually looking at the art, and I noticed a couple of things:

a) The women are definitely kicking ass, whether they're wearing plate mail or swimsuits, and

b) There's some beefcake in there too - big, burly guys wearing little tiny furry loincloths.

There's yer balance!

J