Won't someone help me?!?

Heya ShadowLord XT,

I ran a campaign several years ago that had the PC's dealing with bunches of Corrupted gear and, well, body parts (which were either claimed as trophies or forged into more magical items). =/ Long-term exposure resulted in all sorts of physical and ability-related alterations, a few positive, most neutral or unpleasant. Some examples:

• The subject acquires glowing, subdermal tattoo-like patterns.
• The subject's knee-joints reverse (Speed bonus or penalty).
• The subject radiates faint light in a 15 foot radius (voluntary or involuntary).
• The subject can make fires burn cold instead of hot.
• The subject can shape one sort of nonmagical metal as if it were clay.
• The subject is mildly vulnerable to effects of a given color (violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, or red). If that Scorching Ray is Red (for example), the subject takes an extra 1d6 Damage or is -1 to his/her saving throw.

Cheers,

Dagonet

Heya ShadowLord XT,

Glad to be of help--do you need any more? The mutations I posted are just the highlights from the "Minor" table of afflictions; there're also Lesser, Major, Greater, and Prime Mutations if you want more powerfu modifications and/or a more Lovecraftian feel. =)

Cheers,

Dagonet

Some more highlights then. . .

• Subject's tongue becomes forked.
• Subject's skin constantly drips water.
• Flames or stars swirl beneath subject's skin.
• Subject casts a glowing shadow in darkness. (penalty to Hide checks).
• Subject may take an additional action every eight turns during combat.
• Subject acquires weak projective or receptive empathy.
• Subject's leg's become a mass of rough-scaled tentacles.
• Subject's skin becomes molten metal or liquid gemstone (harmless).
• Subject's head becomes skeletal, insectoid, or Draconic.
• Subject is +30 feet base speed, +3 AC, +3 Attack, or +3d6 Damage.
• Subject is automatically revived whenever it dies (as Raise Dead), its alignment reversing each time.
• Subject's palms secrete a rusting effusion which destroys metallic objects.
• Subject's dominant hand is replaced by a Draconic head.
• Subject's shadow acquires Draconic traits/abilities (i.e. a Dragon's spell abilities, breath weapon, etc.).
• Subject's left and right sides separate, maintaining one-inch of distance between them (harmless).
• Subject transforms into an exact duplicate (except alignment) of any figure of equal or fewer hit dice which comes within 5 feet of it.
• Subject's normal body temperature rises to 250 degrees or falls to -100 degrees.
• Subject continually surrounded by a sphere of negative-Elemental material (Dust, Vacuum, Ash, or Salt).
• Subject generates a repulsion aura against one racial group.
• Subject imposes -1 to all (friendly or enemy) die rolls within 60 feet.
• Subject is +2 or -2 to all dice rolls.

Cheers,

Dagonet

Heya gss_000,

You're absolutely right: some of them *are* a lot more beneficial than others. I run a homebrew rpg system which doesn't use CR and is thus rather more amenable to on-the-fly tinkering with stats and whatnot than D&D 3.5. In general, continued exposure to Corrupted items will (over time) inflict mutations of increasing severity, with the more severe mutations having a greater chance of being negative than positive or neutral. So, for example, when your knee joints reverse you can end up with a Movement penalty, no in-game effect, or a Movement bonus. I suppose all the various (per)mutations could be assigned CR (or would it be EL or ECL?) values, but for the most part they won't be making their bearers any stronger.

Cheers,

Dagonet