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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5636181" data-attributes="member: 4937">"So in your opinion what kind of effects the pool could/should have..."This is a wierd question.  Am I DMing your campaign?  The real question here is do you want this to be pure win, a Gygaxian style gamble, a test of player greed/stupidity, or a balanced tradeoff where you get something equivalent to what you lose?A) It's a pure win: This is equivelent to giving everyone a magic item that they can't lose.  Make sure you keep the mutation fairly small and unobtrusive, and make sure you count this against the loot that they have.  This is an interesting way of randomly distributing the loot thereby forcing less specialization than you'd have otherwise.  If you go this way though, make sure the pool loses its magical properties permenently (or at least for the duration of the campaign) after everyone has tried a sample.  Fluid replenishes at a slow rate (one does every 100 years or something).  Whatever.B) It's a Gygaxian roulette wheel: It should have everything from congradulations you win (LA template +4), to roll up a new character (LA template -4, or 'you die').   Big problem here is going to be modern gamers.  If your group is the type that gets cranky if Bob gets a more powerful character than everyone else, and insists that their replacement characters be as powerful as Bob's, then don't go this way.C) It's a balanced tradeoff: As A, but more obvious mutations that have hampering physical or social effects.  Bonuses to something are offset by penalties at least as large in other areas.   Has both the problems of A and B, but doesn't require you to implement as hard of limits.  Maybe there are enough doses to go around 3-4 times.  (This could morph into D below if the characters are too greedy simply by accumulation of drawbacks, ei: "You now look like a total freak.")  Differences in coolness are likely to be much smaller and easier for the party to accept.D) It's a test of player Greed: As C, but the penalties massively overwhelm the rewards, including things like, 'The stuff is addictive, and you have massive and potentially lethal withdraw symptoms if you don't keep taking it." or "You don't stop evolving, you get new crap sprouting out of you every month from here on out." or "Sure, you get an extra attack.  It's just that you can't control that third limb and it wildly attacks anything - including allies - that get within 5' of you".   In this case, you are testing whether the players are dumb enough to try magical experimentation on their own bodies without first trying it out on say a monkey or a dog to see what happens.   However, in this case, the dumb decision ought to be reversible with extensive player effort.Make up your mind which way you are going with this, and I'll be more than happy to help you create random tables.</blockquote>

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