Summary

The rules for creating chaos magic whilst intuitive can be daunting upon first read. Presented here is a guide for players as to how chaos magic works and principles you'll need while using them.

Chaos magic spells are incredibly flexible and are built through a number of steps which a player may add a wide variety of variables to fine tune their casting. The combination of various of elements will provide a DC used for a final casting check to unleash the spell. The steps involved in casting chaos magic are listed below;

1. Choose Effect Element: All spells have a final effect, be it as simple as causing damage, or as elaborate as finely crafting an object from the raw forces of chaos
2. Choose Area Element: Chaos magic spells also have an area of effect allowing a practitioner to concentrate the effect upon a single target or across a wide area.
3. Choose a Range Element: It is relatively easy to hurl a spell at a target just a few feet away, but chaos mages have the potential to cast spells with extreme ranges measuring several miles
4. Choose Duration Element: Most chaos magic spells are instantaneous in nature, though a powerful chaos mage may be able to extend its duration for a great length of time. No chaos magic spell may be permanent, however.
5. Choose Saving Throw Element: There are many magical defenses to thwart spellcasters, but chaos mages have the ability to overwhelm a target with huge amounts of chaos energy smashing apart any such shields in an effort to destroy their enemies.
6. Casting the Spell: The combination of all the different elements listed above will produce a DC a chaos mage must match with his casting check. If he succeeds then the spell works as planned. However, failure can produce catastrophic results as the chaos mage loses control of the very chaos energies he was attempting to harness. There are many different options available to the chaos mage within each of these steps, for chaos magic is truly the most flexible art within arcane spellcasting. A chaos mage will start by choosing an effect element where you find the base DC for the casting check for the spell and then go through the remaining elements choosing options as desired which will modify the DC of the Casting check. By the time you reach the end of step 6 you will have a final DC of the casting check.

A Casting check is equal to 1d20+Caster Level

Chaos Magic Elements

Casting the Spell

Once all elements have been chosen and the modified casting DC determined the spell may be cast. A chaos mage makes a casting check to equal or exceed the casting DC of the spell. A casting check is 1d20+ Chaos Mage level. Success will result in working as the chaos mage planned. However failure has dire consequences. The chaos mage suffers lethal damage instead of subdual for the casting and is stunned for the rest of the round. In addition if they roll a 1 on this casting check they suffer a backlash of chaotic energy and progress one step on the Paths of Chaos.

Using Chaos Magic

All chaos magic spells have a casting time of a standard action. They are also assumed to provoke an attack of opportunity and have both verbal and somatic components. It is possible to further reduce the Casting DC of a spell by increasing the time required to cast the spell, thus ensuring a greater chance of success. By increasing the casting time to a full round action the Casting DC may be reduced by 1. Every additional round of casting time beyond this further decreases the Casting DC by 1 up to a maximum reduction of 10 for a 10 round casting time.

If a chaos mage is distracted while casting all Concentration checks are modified by the spell's casting DC. If they fail this check, the chaos mage is assumed to have failed to cast the spell with the penalties for failure being immediately applied.