Me blethering about Chaos magic + a story · 7:02pm Jul 19th, 2017
I'm a gigantic table top gamer. I have been since I got my first copy of Dungeons and Dragons 3.0. Now I regularly play pathfinder, but I always reach back to play my absolute favorite class; Chaos Mage, courtesy of Mongoose Publishing's splat book: The Quintessential Chaos Mage. The Quintessential series of splat books often had some interesting ideas, but for me the chaos mage was what I really wanted in DnD. A magic user that trades damage for absolute freedom in spell casting, you can actually make your own spells on the fly, and change them on a whim to suit your situation... along with the problem of causing severe, crippling mutations to yourself. DPS they're better than wizards and sorcs, and they have no spells per day. a level 20 chaos mage does 20d8 damage with a typical fireball, and can cast that every turn... at the cost of about 5 damage to himself each time.
That said, I suppose I adore this class because there are so few chaotic-aligned powers for PC classes. There are several for the paladin and the monk, but only clerics can use the more powerful chaos spells.
Here is an excerpt from the book (transcribed by me), a story that I feels captures the whole spirit of the class, and what I think of whenever I see chaos magic used in other media:
The old man opened his hands, light spilling from between his fingers. A glittering, pulsing sphere hung suspended between his cupped palms, of all colours and of no colour, perfect smoothness broken by delicate spirals, spikes and spires of light that rose up, blossomed and faded away again; sometimes dripping down into nothingness, sometimes bursting into fragments that glittered, sparked and flitted away like ash butterflies. 'Do you believe in chance?' he asked, his eyes resting on the glowing orb.
'Yes, master, I do.' the young man's eyes were wide, fixed on the sphere.
'You should not. Chance is the province of the ignorant, the coin of the fool, the mad, and the desperate.' The old man breathed, a single gentle puff, and the sphere began to spin, at first slowly, then faster and faster. 'Look closely, boy, and tell me what you see.'
The young man leaned closer, so close his nose almost brushed the orb as it spun. 'I see... facets, master, facets like a jewel. And they change; sometimes there are more than I can count, sometimes only a handful.'
The old man nodded and smiled, 'Yes,' he said, with perhaps a hint of pride, 'And no. Those are not facets, at least, not like a jewel's facets. What are you seeing is possibility, the possibility of you, my boy, represented in a form your mind is capable of understanding. The facets represent every possible choice you might make at every moment, every word you might say, every motion of your body, every pause or twitch which could change the nature of this moment; of each moment to come. That is what you see and that is what chaos is; choice.'
The old man parted his hands and the sphere shattered. He looked at the boy, holding his gaze for a moment. 'When you learn, when you truly know, that you hold choice in the palm of you hand, that is when you will have the right to call yourself a chaos mage.'
'But it all seems so uncontrolled, master.'
'And it scares you, yes? That fear of the unknown. The knowledge that you are creating the laws of your art at the speed of your thoughts.'
The youngster paused, looking at his teacher with grave sincerity, 'Yes, master, this knowledge I fear. What is the price I must pay?'
'Price?' asked the old man.
'Master, I am young but being brought up in a village without running water does not make me a fool. Were so much on offer without a price, then I would not be your only pupil.'
The old man chuckled, patting the youth on the back and then tousling his hair affectionately. 'You have not been my only pupil,' and he paused wistfully, a streak of sadness passing across his visage. 'There have been others.'
'Where are they now, master, that I might meet them and share of their experiences?'
'Sadly, my boy, that is not possible. All my former students have gone far, far away.'
'Why so, master, when the warmth and hospitality of your home is so well known? Does not one ever visit?'
The old man glanced sadly out the window, taking in the small orchard which bore the apples for which he had become justly famous. 'You ask too many questions, my boy. There will be a time for such answers, but not now. Ask again another day, when my melancholia has receded.'
The youngster nodded, unhappy with the rejection but too thoughtful and mannered to show it. Instead he nodded and withdrew, his eyes drawn to the shattered sphere.
After the door had closed, the old mage stood slowly and limped across to the window. He stared out at the trees, looking at one particular. It seemed at odds with the fine apple trees around it, and indeed, was unlike any other tree he had ever seen.
He remembered his finest pupil and made a mental note to prune him the next fine day that came.
Huh. That story did not go the way I thought it would.
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and according to the book, he's not dead or inanimate. He's at the last safe stage of mutation of the Path of Berserk Growth, where he becomes like an Ent from LotR. One more goofed up spell and he explodes and becomes a grove of ugly, alien flora. His soul boiled away by the powers of chaos and can't be rez'd by any means. Its one of the few True Deaths in DnD.
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huh. I need to look into chaos mages more, because throwing the power of random together with nasty dangers sounds like an interesting roleplay.
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You can find the PDF version of the book on 4shared, but its also possible to find the real book on amazon and ebay.
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Couldn't find it.
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https://www.4shared.com/office/EhLW7dhZce/Quintessential_Chaos_Mage.html
x3
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Thank you!