Chaos Magic from Mongoose Publishing

[magnusmalkus]

Anyone ues the Chaos Magic system in Mongoose Publishing's book Encyclopedia Arcane: Chaos Magic?

I noticed that for a class that is ment to be used for it's versatility, able to craft spells of various effects, there are some big holes. The magic system only covers effects of Materialization, Healing, Movement and Damage. What about abilities that involve mind efects (charm person) or divination (clairvoiance) or sight (see invisible)?

I'd like some psychometry abilities, or maybe mimic some other spells like True Seeing, Detect Magic or maybe even Identify...

It's supposed to be a class of flexibility yet some common effects like these seem to be beyond Chaos Magic's ability.

Additionally, in the realm of area effect, there is no option for a line area of effect.

/shrug

Anyone use this magic system and adopt measures to incorporate different and new effects?

 

[RangerWickett]

I've never used Chaos Magic, but you might want to look at Elements of Magic, which is a more flexible spell-design system. It is really open, so it might be a little too flexible at first, but there are a lot of folks on the boards who like it, and you could probably get help if you needed it.

http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?it=1&products_id=2554

 

[Kesh]

The explanation I got from Mongoose folks on their forums was that Chaos magic was just that: chaos. The intention was that it couldn't do fine manipulation (like telekinesis), summoning specific things (the way summon monster does) or divination (getting solid info rather than chaotic uncertainty). I didn't care for that myself, but it fit with their concept.

It's not too hard to add back in, either. Just treat mind-affecting abilities like matter-affecting ones, for determining the numbers. Detection-type spells are a bit trickier.

Also, be sure to upgrade to Quintessential Chaos Mage. That's essentially the "revised" version of the book, which fixes a lot of problems the first book had.

Personally, my biggest problem with the system was the unbalanced Paths of Chaos that are supposed to penalize the character for being too reckless. Most of the penalties are pure roleplaying penalties, which are no real deterrent to many players. Some of those penatlies were just in poor taste, as well. I planned on replacing it with a Taint system:

A character’s taint score applies as a penalty to his Constitution and Wisdom scores. Thus a character with a 16 Constitution and a 14 Wisdom who acquires a taint score of 4 has an effective Constitution of 12 and an effective Wisdom of 10. These penalties reflect the taint’s impact on the character’s physical and mental health.

Instead of moving a step on the Path of Chaos, you gain a point of Chaos Taint. This Chaos Taint can only be removed the way you'd remove a step on the Path, but it stacks with normal Taint (if using Taint in the campaign). Otherwise, it affects the character as normal.

I never got a chance to play with it in a campaign. I'd like to see how well it ports to 4e, though.