FallenDruid
Mongoose
Upon reading the revised rules in the Quintessential Chaos Mage, and then perusing the standard spell lists available to standard arcane casters...
Once you get out of straight damage/enchantment/conjuration effects, Chaos magic loses a hell of a lot of power.
By the letter of the rules, there's no way to devise any kind of permanent affect with transformation magic, no matter how much power you pump into it...
Accordingly, if you say, transform someones armor into, say, water, when the spells duration ends, not only does the water change back into metal, it also reforms around them...which, to my mind, is rather non-intuitive. It should take more power to maintain a temporary chaos transformation, and then turn it back, than to perform a permanent alteration with a instant chaos effect, rather than it simply benig impossible.
As written, if I alter something, and as a side effect of its alteration, its form changes, then when the effect ends, it returns to its natural shape. How are the effects of gravity or wind different from the effects of a warrior with a big sledgehammer? I don't think anyone would argue that if I turn a skeleton into an ice statue, and then the warrior smashes it with his hammer, the skeleton is toast, even after the effect ends. But what if the skeleton melts? I'm not adverse to allowing a Fortitude or Will save to 'pull yourself together' as it were, but it seems like the rules have been gone through and very purposefully designed so that the target audience (clever people who can (ab)use a flexible rule system to its limits) is limited to less(in some cases, much less) than what an equivalent level arcane caster would have access to.
I'm not saying, by the way, that transformations that enhance attributes or skills should be permanent, but only that the rules on physically altering somethings structure should be looked at.
(As a thirteenth level wiz, for example: Flesh to stone followed by transmute rock to mud...or even shape stone, and then stone to flesh...)
Once you get out of straight damage/enchantment/conjuration effects, Chaos magic loses a hell of a lot of power.
By the letter of the rules, there's no way to devise any kind of permanent affect with transformation magic, no matter how much power you pump into it...
Accordingly, if you say, transform someones armor into, say, water, when the spells duration ends, not only does the water change back into metal, it also reforms around them...which, to my mind, is rather non-intuitive. It should take more power to maintain a temporary chaos transformation, and then turn it back, than to perform a permanent alteration with a instant chaos effect, rather than it simply benig impossible.
As written, if I alter something, and as a side effect of its alteration, its form changes, then when the effect ends, it returns to its natural shape. How are the effects of gravity or wind different from the effects of a warrior with a big sledgehammer? I don't think anyone would argue that if I turn a skeleton into an ice statue, and then the warrior smashes it with his hammer, the skeleton is toast, even after the effect ends. But what if the skeleton melts? I'm not adverse to allowing a Fortitude or Will save to 'pull yourself together' as it were, but it seems like the rules have been gone through and very purposefully designed so that the target audience (clever people who can (ab)use a flexible rule system to its limits) is limited to less(in some cases, much less) than what an equivalent level arcane caster would have access to.
I'm not saying, by the way, that transformations that enhance attributes or skills should be permanent, but only that the rules on physically altering somethings structure should be looked at.
(As a thirteenth level wiz, for example: Flesh to stone followed by transmute rock to mud...or even shape stone, and then stone to flesh...)
