A magic pool - ideas wanted

If you want some truly insane levels of Chaos, go to this thread and look at my posts starting at post 6. It's a... d500?... random chaos chart, with 25 subtables (for the record, subtable XXV is "Random Leg Replacements").

Just to give you an idea, one (randomly rolled) possibility is "Can no longer use pronouns." Another is "Alcohol doesn't exist for you." A third is "skin turns orange." Two of those results required rolling on a subtable. :)
 

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Though I think it might help if you could better define what you mean by "mutations."

There's plenty of weird stuff that can be done to PCs. But honestly, -1000 XP? That's hard to justify as a mutation. Likewise, can no longer use pronouns. Changing the colors of their hair and skin, giving them tentacles, wings, claws even. That's perfectly "reasonable" for a mutation. But the other stuff?
 


Sorry, bit autistic and all. Don't mean to be confrontational except in the sense that I'd like to provoke thinking about the problem in a different way.

I program for a living. You are asking for a system (code) without actually describing what you want (specs). What I was showing was that different specs would produce radically different products while all meeting the overly loose requirements of, "Create a system for arbitrating the outcome of a magic pool"



I don't usually formally track loot, but one way to look at this is that they are taking magic items out of the pool and hense increasing their wealth level. So, if the benefits are largely positive, you have to count this against their expected wealth by level. If you do that, then the system is as balanced (or unbalanced) as D&D's wealth by level system and CR/EL system itself. Nothing else is needed in theory. I mean, "Can use overland flight 1/day" is more or less giving the character an item that can do that for practically all purposes.

Now, if your system is truly Gygaxian, then it basically balances itself in the sense at least that it balances reward with risk. And yours seems to offer lots of risk with the rewards, so as long as your are fine with some players getting screwed and others getting rewarded, then you are balanced.



You are running all of these as if they are quirks, but they are all special cases of 'looks like a freak'. In my game, I usually run 'freak' disadvantages as either a penalty on diplomacy checks with first acquaintances (once people get to know you, they stop judging you by your looks), or by asserting that everyone reacts to you one step more negatively (ei, normally indifferent characters are unfriendly, and normally unfriendly ones are hostile). I tend to prefer the latter, though in some cases they stack.

I don't know the mechanics of most of the citations you make, but I'd be inclined to consider 'looks like a freak' a default drawback to many of them, and I'd be especially tempted to apply the drawback as an additional drawback whenever 2 or more physical mutations were picked up.



Shouldn't this be tied to character alignment? I'd probably run the above as, "If you are Chaotic, gain smite Law, otherwise suffer 3d8 anarchic damage." or something along those lines.

Also, if you are going the Gygaxian route, I find the idea of 'player's choice' which you use in some cases to be odd. In practice, that's probably a bad idea, in that negatives don't in fact balance with positives in those cases. Boosting your skill in something you do all the time is very difficult to balance against a negative in a skill you never use and rarely if ever would have to use because some skillful person will be nearby to do it for you.



I would consider that overly harsh. I would only apply such costs to being able to choose from the table. So, maybe one entry is, "Lose 1500 XP. Player gets to choose one benefit."

Thank you for the feedback.

The 'player's choice'-issue = Yes, I do agree. But you only get this by rolling a natural 00, I was just thinking about making that special, you know. Not trying justify or anything.

XP loss = Hmmm, why is it overly harsh? Permanency gives you low-level spell effects permanently (some are even mid-level) and they have exclusively an XP-cost. Such as Darkvision costs 1000 XP to be made permanent. Many of the abilities above are more or less about the same strenght as Darkvision or Resistance (500 XP). I could adjust the cost to be 1000 or 500 XP, but otherwise I find my own idea to be brilliant (which always sounds bad :)). IMO the abilities given by the well are more like Permanency spell than magical items. This is of course arguable. We have LA, we have wealth per level and we have Permanency spell with XP-cost. It's a mess!

Smite-issue = I was thinking about the same as you, but think about the funniness: If paladin would have Smite Good, would that be something new? Nothing serious... It wouldn't ruin the character either, just don't smite if you don't want to?
 

Thank you for the feedback.

The 'player's choice'-issue = Yes, I do agree. But you only get this by rolling a natural 00, I was just thinking about making that special, you know. Not trying justify or anything.

I was thinking more of entries like #17 through #20. Why should you control whether you get cold resistance or fire resistance? Isn't that a random effect of the magic, or is there some sorting hat like mechanism that asks you what you want to be put into?

XP loss = Hmmm, why is it overly harsh? Permanency gives you low-level spell effects permanently (some are even mid-level) and they have exclusively an XP-cost.

Because permanency allows a caster to create and customize for himself additional abilities and power above and beyond those he can expect to obtain through the normal acquisition of loot. It is equivalent to the cost paid for crafting your own magic item. Whether it is a permenent spell or an enchanted item, you are still gaining some additional power. They differ only in the ways which the player might lose access to this power; otherwise the differences are mainly fluff.

Applying a XP cost to the magical pool strikes me as like forcing a player to pay an XP cost to keep the sword +1 that they have found. This seems an additional and unnecessary burden on top of the fact that they must randomly 'seek' the item they want from the pool, risking dangerous choices, and ultimately perhaps not ending up with what they want. In that way, the pool strikes me as far more like obtaining magical items through the normal course of play than it seems to be like casting a permenency spell to the exact extra benefit that you want.
 

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