(3.5)Quintessential Chaos Mage-tier?

[Ilmryn]

I bought a third party supplement recently, The Quintessential Chaos Mage, and the Chaos Mage is indeed something special. Has anyone played it? I am not good at balance issues, so I ask the Playground: What tier would the chaos mage be in?

[Tyndmyr]

Not familiar with the class...

Is he a full caster?

If so, what spell list does he cast from?

[Ilmryn]

He is a full caster who draws upon the primal forces of chaos. He doesn't cast spells per se, but constructs spells with a system vaguely similar to the epic spell system, but not as broken(at least not to my eyes). he faces considerable risk when casting, each "spell" he casts makes him take a small amount of damage, and he has a small risk of mutating in a bad way.

[tyckspoon]

At least tier 2 if he can reconstruct most of the Wizard spell list with reasonable efficiency. Maybe Tier 1 if the 'drawbacks' of his casting are sufficiently easy to negate or repair, could be much much lower if his spell-construction system itself is actually weak (such as if it actually only lets you put together things on the level of Truenamer Utterances.) So.. basically, we can't really say without seeing the class. Could you provide some sample spells the class might use? What does his Fireball look like, and what kind of risk does he take to cast it?

[The-Mage-King]

You know... I had a look around the G-OGC Wiki, so...

Here's the Chaos Mage.

It's... Interesting.

And that wiki is now bookmarked.

[Ilmryn]

Well, his casting is based on a check, which is 1d20+CL+Wis mod. That being said, his basic blast is DC 10, touch, 1d8/level force. This can be modified, but that naturally increases DC.
The DC is dependent on the power level of the spell, not the power level of the target, so he at least doesn't have the truenamers problem.
As compared to a wizard, he has extreme flexibilty regarding basic effects, but not the raw power or unique effects. His casting is basically at-will, but he takes damage each time he casts.
At low levels, he probably can't do much, but a high levels, especially if you can get CL boost cheese, and/or at will healing(he can't do any healing with his basic casting though), he can probably match a wizard, but at considerable danger to himself.
The damage is 1 per 5 points of DC, which is nonlethal if his casting succeeds. If he rolls a nat. 1, he has a risk of mutating(and that is not pretty). If he mutates ten times, he dies a horrible death, and the risk of mutating is higher the more mutated he is.

[tyckspoon]

mm.. it's got Exponential Wizard going all over it. At low levels, it has the Truenamer's problem (only worse, because you can actually stack a low-level Truespeech check pretty easily.) It's a caster level roll, which is near impossible to boost at low levels, so it's looking at fairly low odds of being able to cast its 'spells' at all, and what it can cast isn't all that impressive (unless you're willing to really play with your dice and take your chances on pulling off one of the DC 15-20+ effects; scoring a Total Transformation effect at level 1 would be pretty impressive, since it can replicate Polymorph Any Object.)

On the other hand, at high levels, it can weave up to 5 effects into a casting at once, and your caster level and stat mod will be high enough to pull it off. Even something simple like a 5x cast basic damage hit will be pretty impressive (DC 11: Single target, Close range, Fort save for half, clxd8 non-elemental damage. 6 extra DC for each subsidiary copy. So something like 110d8 to the face. Sure, it's no Arcane Thesis DeathOrb, but you're doing this off raw class abilities.)

And the inbuilt ability to Craft Contingent spells is just absurd. Hilariously, they make that *easier* to do than to cast a normal spell.

Edit: So, starting at high levels, easily Tier 2 and capable of touching Tier 1. Low levels, I wouldn't play it- seems too easy for the class to blow itself up without sufficient reward.