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Hi all! I'm working on some magical items for a campaign

Chaos gems

The idea is that these gems provide their users with very helpful magical powers, but gradually corrupt them and make them succumb to the effects of chaos.

This is what I have so far.

A chaos gem is an artefact level magical item. It can provide its user with the following powers:

Chaos growth: Its owner increases their current and initial SKILL by 1 and STAMINA by 2. However, they must reduce their current and initial LUCK by 1 whilst they own the gem.
Void blast: Deals 1d6 damage to a target over a range of 100m (as the Fire Bolt spell, but not with fire)
Amorphous healing: Restores 1d6 STAMINA to the owner.
Ray of insanity: Acts as the DIM sorcery spell.
Bolt of Entropy: Acts as the special power of a priest of Decay, but with a range of 10m.

The owner of the Chaos gem has a Chaos score. Their Chaos score starts at 0. Every time they use a power, their Chaos score increases by 1 and then they roll 3d6. If they roll higher than the Chaos score, nothing happens. If they roll equal to or less than the Chaos score, something bad happens. So far, I have the following:

Chaos mutation (roll on the table on Beyond the Pit).
Aura of insanity (all reaction rolls are at -1)

The results are cumulative.

I also want some kind of aura of entropy - living things around the stone user and things that they touch don't grow or heal and eventually, they start to decay too, but I'm not sure how to incorporate that into the game. Any ideas?

The idea with this is that Chaos tempts people with great power, gets them hooked for a bit and then the bad things start to happen when they can't let it go.

maybe prevent natural healing and MP refresh to those nearby? And make a chaos power restore MP

It might be worth looking at the old Warhammer rpg doomstones campaign for ideas 4 very powerfull artifacts that give powerful abilities which come at a very heavy price.

Ruffnut wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:59 pm

maybe prevent natural healing and MP refresh to those nearby? And make a chaos power restore MP

Good idea. Here's my changed version.

Chaos gem

The owner of the gem gets a +1 bonus to SKILL, a +2 bonus to STAMINA and a -1 penalty to LUCK while they own it.

The owner of the gem can use the following powers at will.

Void blast: Unleashes a blast of energy that deals 1d6 damage with a range of 10m.
Ray of insanity: Acts as the DIM sorcery spell with a range of 10m.
Bolt of entropy: Acts as the special power of a priest of Decay, but with a range of 10m.

The owner of the Chaos gem has a Chaos score. Their Chaos score starts at 0. Every time they use a power, their Chaos score increases by 1 and then they roll 3d6. If they roll higher than the Chaos score, nothing happens. If they roll equal to or less than the Chaos score, something bad happens.

Failure 1: Aura of insanity. The owner of the gem now has a -1 modifier to all social tests and all tests that interact with animals.
Failure 2: Aura of entropy. Whenever anyone within 100m of the gem's owner gains STAMINA through nonmagical means, the amount of STAMINA they gain is reduced by 1.
Failure 3: Chaos mutation. Roll on the chaos mutation table in Beyond the Pit.
Failure 4: From now on, whenever the character uses a power everyone within a 10m radius of them must test their luck or increase their Chaos score by 1, then roll 3d6 to see if they get an effect from the corrupting effect of chaos.

If they fail a 5th time, they can go back to failure 1 and increase the penalty by a further -1.

Getting rid of the gem does not reduce the Chaos score in any way.

If an PC gets the gem and gets all of the chaos curses, most NPCs will start to act very hostile towards them when they know what is up. This will lead to the PC being treated as evil even if they are not.

If an NPC gets the gem, then they can get completely taken over by Chaos and become a chaos champion with the powers of the gem. They can then become a powerful villain who travels the land spreading chaos and creating minions.

Robb 1 wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 07, 2019 10:07 pm

It might be worth looking at the old Warhammer rpg doomstones campaign for ideas 4 very powerfull artifacts that give powerful abilities which come at a very heavy price.

That's a good idea. Warhammer sounds perfect for this.