Questions about Chaos Magic [Mongoose]

[Soldarin]

Can I do the following:

*In a single spell have multiple transformation effects?

*In a single spell have multiple moderate transformation effects?

*In a single spell have multiple raw damage effects?
For example a 15th chaos mage casting a spell doing 15d8 fire damage, 15d8 cold damage, 15d8 electricity damage and 15d8 acid damage (with a base casting DC of 25).

Multiple effects share the same saving throws (plural??), so is that one save per spell, the type of which is determined by the main effect (fort for damage, will for most everything else), or does a multiple effect spell have several separate saving throws as well?

Final question: the 20 pounds per level limit on transformation effects means I can rarely effect more than 2 targets at 15th level, right?

Thanks.

 

[Soldarin]

No answers? Well, I'll try to answer these questions and others myself, then, to the best of my ability.

You can have multiple effects of the same type of effect, as long as they aren't exactly the same. There is one exception, and that is that you can't have multiple effects of the same category of damage (so you can have a persistent damage effect, combined with a raw damage effect and/or with a degrading damage effect, but you can't have multiple raw damage effects or multiple persistent damage effects or multiple degrading damaging effects). This exception is to keep the damage potential on the same scale as that of a wizard (including empower, twin and maximize feats). 60d8 raw damage at a base casting DC of 25 at 15th level is ridiculous.

A single spell has only one saving throw, the type of which is determined by the main effect (the one you pay full base DC for), this saving throw can have multiple effects though (negating part of the spell, as well as halving damage).

The weight limit on transformations indeed limits the number of targets you can affect with a single casting (at low levels often excluding the caster himself!). You can, however, state in your spell description that targets with a weight that wouldn't put the combined weight of all affected targets over this limit are effected, starting with those closed to the centre of the area of effect (closest to the caster in the case of cones), and skipping targets with a weight that by itself exceeds the limit of the spell. This allows you to combine transformation effects with large area damage or movement effects.

As for familiar base saves, assume it is a magical creature (good fort and ref saves) with HD equal to half the creator's chaos mage level.

Final note: it is a VERY good idea to use the (errataed) rule that rolling a 1 on a save is always a failure, to keep creating chaos items a risk even at high level (with a +17 to Will saves, making a DC 16 (max) will save for staving off chaotic decay is impossible to fail otherwise).

 

[Soldarin]

Allowing multiple damage effects (even only one of each type) turned out to be a bad idea. At 15th level 53d8 of damage (even if spread over 6 rounds) is just too much for a single spell.

So I suggest you use just only a single damage effect in a spell.

 

[Soldarin]

A friend of mine pointed out that the degrading and persistent damage effects require concentration to maintain, which makes it less likely to reach the full damage potential. So assuming you use the tripple damage effect as a single blast you only gain 8d8 of extra damage (about 50%), which is comparable to the empower metamagic feat. This seems quite acceptable.

As you can see this thread is a slowly evolving thing, feel free to contribute.

--------
Another concern of mine (related to the damage potential) is the ridiculous size of burst effects at higher levels (75 ft. radius!), without it costing more than if I chose to be content with a 30 ft. radius blast. Of course, the +5 DC for enemies only is a wise choice with the larger blasts, but some inherent cost might not be a bad idea, what do you guys think?

 

[Voadam]

Are you talking about Mongoose's chaos magic, wild spellcraft or the chaos magic in Spells and Spellcraft? I'm guessing mongooses. I don't have any of them at this point so I can't help you out but you might get more responses if you identify what set of rules you are using more clearly.

 

[Soldarin]

Thanks, I'll edit the thread's subject (if I can). Chaos Magic is the name of the book, so I thought it was obvious enough... Guess not.