3.5 Chaos Mage

[Ricky S]

Hi

Does anyone know where I can get rules for the chaos mage? My friend in my party is playing one and I just want to check what the rules for his character are. If anyone has played as a chaos mage I would appreciate hearing about it. Also is chaos mage stupidly overpowered? because from what I have seen my friends character owns! He is able to make up spells and his general attack is 5 D8 damage to anyone within 20ft who is opposed to him. Generally in combat all of the characters are generally useless as they cannot do a worthwhile amount of damage compared to him. The only downside is that if he role a natural 1 on his spell casting eight times (not in a row just generally) his character will die and cannot be brought back to like short of resurrection and miracle/wish being cast.

[BobVosh]

Sounds homebrewish.

http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-296192.html

All I could find on it.

[mabriss lethe]

you probably need to look at the class from... Mongoose I think. It sounds vaguely like their Chaos mage class.

[Thurbane]

Unless you mean Wild Mage from Complete Arcane?

[ghost_warlock]

There's a havok mage in the Miniatures Handbook.

[Ascension]

There's a havok mage in the Miniatures Handbook.

Does he have a brother with eye-beams?[/xmen]

[ghost_warlock]

Does he have a brother with eye-beams?[/xmen]

Yes, but dating a character with power over magnetism is optional.

[Eldaran]

Well, the Chaos Mage is from two Mongoose Publishing books, one is 3.0 and one is 3.5. The first is called Encyclopedia Arcane: Chaos Magic, which I have, and the second is called the Quintessential Chaos Mage.

From what I remember from the book, anytime they cast a spell they have to make a caster level check, and if they roll a 1 on it, the DM then rolls a d20 and if it's less than or equal to their "Path of Chaos" level then they gain another Path of Chaos level. Each level causes progressively bad things to happen, until they gain 10 levels, then they explode permanently and can never be rezzed.

The other downside is, every time they cast spells, they have to make a caster level check, and the DC depends on the power of the spell. And they take damage depending on that DC whether the spell succeeds or not.

[FMArthur]

A friend of mine tried to get me to let him play a Chaos Mage a while back, and I disallowed it. Assuming it's the same Chaos Mage (as there are a few different ones)...

1) It's more work for the DM than other classes, especially after they start descending down one of the paths of chaos.
2) This is not a long-term campaign character, they will just go insane or reach some level on the chaos path that they can no longer function in the party with, unless I'm missing something.
3) Their class feature for counterspelling basically lets them counterspell anything, anytime, all the time.

It's too late now, but in the future you should check up on classes presented to you that you're unsure about. I'm not saying to reject all homebrew and 3rd-party work, as a lot of it is more balanced than Wizards' own, but if you really don't have the time to read about something unfamiliar and potentially dangerous, don't allow it. A restrictive DM is still better than a DM caught totally unprepared by his/her players.

[JMobius]

At least as of the 3.0 edition, not all of the paths of chaos were properly balanced, either. Some of them had some ludicrous penalties, while others offered outright advantages. Most notable in my mind was the Path of Shadow, which I had one player take... because the second step on that path had the PC gain 1d6 CHA. The bastard rolled six too.

An interesting class, but for the most part it seemed pretty weak compared to other casters in terms of casting ability, and the paths of chaos and self damaging magic only added to that. The counterspell ability was awesome, though.