Magic Pollution game mechanics

[liquidformat]

So I am trying to think of what you would expect to get from magical pollution, I am interested in both game based mechanics and just cool ideas people might have.

So far from game mechanics I have the following:
Wild Magic region
Spellwarped template
living Spell template
Dead Magic Region

[Saintheart]

Some adaptation of Node Magic?

[Tzardok]

You could take the rules from BoVD about regions touched by Evil and reflavour them?

[Khedrac]

The Athasian desert?

[Buufreak]

Ever hear of Athas, the world of the Dark Sun campaign setting?

[Glimbur]

You could also see more Magical Beasts and Aberrations and Oozes and stuff in general. Maybe it would also lure dragons, though maybe they want their magic less polluted. But feral hordes of Disenchanters roaming the Blight lands instead of antelope would certainly set a scene.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I like the previously mentioned ideas of having extra magical beasts and oozes replacing regular animals. Plus, who can forget Athas where mages sucked the life from the planet?

I also like the idea of there being a larger concentration of psionic creatures (and NPCs), but that might be on too long a time scale to be practical for your narrative (or maybe not). If nothing else, having psionic children be a byproduct of pollution could be interesting story beat rather than the regular issues of cancer and other deformities that tend to follow regular pollution.

[liquidformat]

Ever hear of Athas, the world of the Dark Sun campaign setting?

I had forgotten about Dark Suns! I do like Dark Suns but that is a bit more extreme than I am looking for but good for inspiration.

I like the idea behind Defiler arcane magic that you are stealing magic from the world around you as it were. Though not sure how to implement mechanics to go along with the 'defiler' magic idea.


I like the previously mentioned ideas of having extra magical beasts and oozes replacing regular animals. Plus, who can forget Athas where mages sucked the life from the planet?

I also like the idea of there being a larger concentration of psionic creatures (and NPCs), but that might be on too long a time scale to be practical for your narrative (or maybe not). If nothing else, having psionic children be a byproduct of pollution could be interesting story beat rather than the regular issues of cancer and other deformities that tend to follow regular pollution.
So psionics is 'magic cancer' that is a kind of fun idea and I feel like I have seen some fantasy precedence for it too. Could give wild talent and hidden talent as bonus feats but not have any of the base psionic classes maybe just limit it to the psionic PRCs to make it 'more new' and less understood.

[Telonius]

The Mournlands from Eberron probably fit the description. The fluff text says that bodies there don't decompose. It's surrounded by the "Dead-Grey Mist" (Eberron Campaign Setting p.188), which is more of a natural hazard than a magical thing. Natural healing doesn't work, and the Healing subschool doesn't either. The text mentions lots of mutated monsters, but doesn't give specific examples. (I'd consider adding the Pseudonatural template).

[Malphegor]

Libris Mortis’ & Oriental Adventures Taint might be what you’re after. Basically evil energies are mutagenic in nature resulting in physical and mental illness and malignancy. Evil characters can learn to harness Taint to fuel themselves but often end up polluting more in doing so.

[MesiDoomstalker]

So a few ideas;

Magic as Comic-Book-Depicted Radiation: Things with weird powers, ominous colored glows, extraneous limbs, appendages and growths. Nothing really dies but quality of life takes a huge down turn unless you are one of the lucky ones.

Magic as a Stand-In for Capitalism: Over embellish real-life pollution. Sentient black sludge, roaming trash monsters, natural creatures entangled in magical by-products.

Magic as the Unknowable: Break out the HP Lovecraft. Everything touched by magic becomes tainted in time. Slimy residues, strange ichors and vivid nightmares follow a mage.

[Khatoblepas]

I'd use Heroes of Horrors' Taint mechanic for magic if I wanted it to be a polluting force. Refluff the depravity and corruption to more magical looking stuff, third eyes, runes, glow underneath the skin, wild prehensile beards etc.

Wizards and sorcerers automatically cast off of Taint instead of key ability scores, meaning that high level wizards are mad and corrupted by their own magic, and eventually succumb to their own lust for power, and might become liches to stave off dissolving into magic goo (storing their taint in a receptacle as you would nuclear waste, making destroying them a dangerous task).

[Tzardok]

Heroes of Horror, not Libris Mortis. But if we are talking taint...

There once was an attempt to make an adaption of Warcraft for D&D 3.x
In Warcraft, arcane magic is addicting and possibly corruptive. The sourcebook Magic & Mayham tried to model this effect by introducing a mechanic that looks suspiciously like taint, but with different flavours depending on what school of magic you use the most.
Could be helpful to look that up.

[Silly Name]

One idea that sprang up in mind is having the magic "overflow": springs and wells are infused with magic, and if you drink their water you get a random potion effect, including harmful ones. The few non-tainted wells are extremely precious.

Elementals run rampant, appear suddenly and die in an explosion of their respective element, constantly reshaping the land.

[Cruiser1]

There are rules for "Arcane Pollution" in Cityscape p32-33, which produces random spell effects if you enter it (e.g. baleful polymorph).

[liquidformat]

Taint/depravity/corruption seems like a pretty interesting mechanic for dealing with the mechanics of 'defiler' arcane magic though some thought would have to be given to avoid abuse from being undead (like your taint is fixed as undead), I think tainted Sorcerer and Scholar can be used as is but would have to be paid close attention to for pcs.

Maybe 'Preserver' arcanists need some variant of Southern Magician feat, maybe turning it into a meta magic feat that allows you to cast arcane spells as divine spells (off of normal stat) at a +1 spell level?

I think some of the NPC templates in DMG2 might work well too.

One note I have is that I think magic pollution doesn't necessarily have to be just 'evil' like it is in the case of taint/corruption/depravity mechanics. An area where druids have been using a lot of magic for example could end up concentrating a 'nature energy' which turns creatures their into plant like cleatures giving them the greenbound or woodling templates or maybe even blightspawn. A wild magic area on the other hand could create chimeric, multi-headed, pseudonatural (maybe adjusted to be aberrations instead of outsiders), and spellwarped creatures.

Mournland like stated above is another interesting place perhaps undead creatures flourish there...

[Biggus]

In the Discworld books there are several examples of this. Where an extremely powerful spell (epic spell in 3.5 terms) hit various effects can linger for long afterwards, causing the normal laws of reality to be altered or suspended entriely. Effects vary from the spectacular (an upside-down mountain) to the trivial (a flipped coin landing on its edge changing from a rare occurrence to the most common outcome). It also makes the barrier between imagination and reality thinner, so if you imagine a dragon vividly enough one will appear.

A more mundane example is the rubbish dump of the magical university where lots of rubbish which has been used for magical purposes is dumped, which collectively contains a fair bit of residual magic. The result in this case was that the local wildlife (a bunch of rats and a feral cat) became sentient and gained the ability to speak.

[tiercel]

Planar traits (not only dead magic or wild magic, but elemental-dominant, alignment traits, impeded or enhanced magic, etc.) might be incorporated as part of a “magic pollution” / “magic enhancement” sort of effect as well.

[ShurikVch]

Dragon #350 have the "Magical Pollution" and "Creatures of Corruption" articles, which includes some hazards (Herbal Rot, Shadow Nightmares), monsters (Alchemical Undead, Toxic Ooze), magical locations (Artificer's Dump, Grave-Tainted Well), and templates (Arcane-Blood Creature, Corrupted Creature, Poisonous Creature, Stonebone Creature)

[Fouredged Sword]

I think it should be a slow erosion of the world itself, as in the barriers between the prime material plane and other places.

In the small scale, not much happens. The area has a slightly higher rate of elementals, dire animals, undead, and other such creatures. The planes are leaking into the world, but only at trace amounts. The corruption exists, but not sufficient to effect things in any sudden manner. Rather it slowly pools. If enough collects in a spot you get undead or elementals. If enough collects in a creature you get dire or otherwise mutated creatures. A lot would depend on the type of magic and the relative "alignment" of the area in question. Corruption caused by necromancy would lean towards undead, but so would a region that just happens to be "close" to the shadow plane regardless of the magic used.

At moderate corruption you start to see the modified creatures displace the native environment and the climate itself changes. The corruption has built up to a point that it's not just pooling in isolated places and in creatures. It has suffused the environment itself. Places connected to the fire plane, for example, would shift up a temperature band or two compared to the area around them. Maybe there are more storms if the place is connected to the chaos plane. Regardless of the specifics, things get more extreme, but things have not progressed so far that time won't heal the wound in the world.

Major corruption signifies a breach. The fabric between the planes grows so thin and the amount of planer magic on the material side builds up to the point that someplace gives. A natural permanent gate forms. There is now a breach between the prime material and someplace else. The power of that plane pours out like a dam breaking and grossly swings the environment and creatures in the area towards it's nature. What more, creatures native to the plane can find there way through the breach ether intentionally or not. What is worse, the breach is self sustaining. The world can no longer heal on it's own. Powerful magics must be bent towards closing the hole in reality. Left on it's own, the situation deteriorates.

In the worst case, a total collapse happens. The whole region becomes collocated on both the prime material and the plane in question. Any creature within the area counts as being in both planes. All the traits of the plane in question apply. All creatures that attempt to leave the region must make a DC 24 willsave. If they pass that save they may choose what plane they exit onto, ether the material or the other plane in question. On a failed save the creature in question rolls a d100. On a roll of 2-40 they end up in the prime material plane. On a roll of 51-99 they end up on the other plane. On a roll of 1 the creature is sent to a random location on a random plane. On a roll of 100 the creature is sent to a plane of their choosing and a location of their choice, with their destination randomized by 1d100 miles. The save can only be made once per day, with the result being maintained for the entirety of that day.