Chaos Shield Improvements
Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:56 pm
I wanted to expand on a suggestion Rocketter made for Chaos shield. The fact that it's the same effectiveness regardless of level and, quite frankly, rather anemic in its assistance, is a bit of an issue.
As Wild Mage is balanced to be less game breaking, I think it is worth noting that all that power that is being rebalanced came at the very real cost of getting surges that can quite simply kill the caster. In the middle of a dangerous situation, being silenced, getting 100% Arcane Spell Failure, Hold Person, paralysis, falling asleep, fear, etc., ALL of these results will very likely directly result in a dead wild mage if they happen in the midst of a dangerous fight.
My suggestion is to make it so Chaos Shield and Improved Chaos Shield do three major things to limit these detriments:
1. With either spell up, all of the detrimental surges that allow no save on the part of the caster will, for turns/CL allow those saves to take place. Possibly giving a bonus to the surge saves for Improved Chaos Shield.
2. At CL 28+, either form of Chaos Shield improves the result on the surge table for an amount of surges equal to CL/3. This returns more of the incentive to run Wild Mage as a pure 30 build, just like the old days (something that was a fun cost/benefit analysis to create for people making a Wild Mage!)
3. Maybe change the flat bonus on the surge result from a flat +20 or +40 respectively, to something that scales with caster level. Starting out weaker initially, but getting stronger by the end.
There are still SEVERAL surges that can easily cause a dead wild mage that occur in the surge results between 21 and 49. All I ask is that the rebalancing similarly take into consideration the ways that players pay for being these random chaos casters, and give some reduction to the costs while reducing the benefits.
P.S. I'm really new to writing suggestions, would welcome feedback for if I'm properly following etiquette for this...
As Wild Mage is balanced to be less game breaking, I think it is worth noting that all that power that is being rebalanced came at the very real cost of getting surges that can quite simply kill the caster. In the middle of a dangerous situation, being silenced, getting 100% Arcane Spell Failure, Hold Person, paralysis, falling asleep, fear, etc., ALL of these results will very likely directly result in a dead wild mage if they happen in the midst of a dangerous fight.
My suggestion is to make it so Chaos Shield and Improved Chaos Shield do three major things to limit these detriments:
1. With either spell up, all of the detrimental surges that allow no save on the part of the caster will, for turns/CL allow those saves to take place. Possibly giving a bonus to the surge saves for Improved Chaos Shield.
2. At CL 28+, either form of Chaos Shield improves the result on the surge table for an amount of surges equal to CL/3. This returns more of the incentive to run Wild Mage as a pure 30 build, just like the old days (something that was a fun cost/benefit analysis to create for people making a Wild Mage!)
3. Maybe change the flat bonus on the surge result from a flat +20 or +40 respectively, to something that scales with caster level. Starting out weaker initially, but getting stronger by the end.
There are still SEVERAL surges that can easily cause a dead wild mage that occur in the surge results between 21 and 49. All I ask is that the rebalancing similarly take into consideration the ways that players pay for being these random chaos casters, and give some reduction to the costs while reducing the benefits.
P.S. I'm really new to writing suggestions, would welcome feedback for if I'm properly following etiquette for this...