Magical Mutations - Table Technician #6 

I guess that's one way for a dragonborn to finally get a tail.

This reminds me of when I was a kid playing Fallout 3 for the first time and I thought more radiation would turn me into a mutant so I bathed in the shit hoping for something cool to happen

I like your homebrew a lot more then most other DMs, it makes sense, is connected/easy to connect to your other homebrew, and my favorite thing is that both PCs and DMs can interact with it. Keep it up man!

This seems like a cool way to introduce the Simic Hybrid race into other settings by passing them off as mutations

"I like to treat magical mutations like any other disease." *Loads flamethrower with religious intent.*

Technically speaking, dragons do this by existing. It was thrown out in 5th edition, but originally a dragons mere presence in an area would shift and mutate it

I've always loved the idea of magical radiation and magical mutation even going as far to start making concepts for entire School of magic completely devoted to magical mutation even having a mutation wizards that specialize in providing mutations for better or for worse.

Aww, I read the title as "Magical Munitions" so I was looking forward to magic railguns that shoot super eldrich blasts or something

*Kanekuo introduces Rad Meter idea* My brain imediently: DUNGEON AND DEATHCLAWS. DO IT NOW.

DND 76 Mutations Rock skin: higher dc slow movement Dark eyes: greater dark vision, horrible vision during the day Bull/Demon horns: can disarm foes with your head, DOORS Feel free to add anything else Edit(30 likes, huh) Edit:dullahan: after having your head chopped off from a planeswalker mid teleport, you seem to be alive. That is because you gain the mutation dullahan, your body can fight on its own while you can do whatever you want. Negative: disadvantage on all attacks and perception if the body doesn’t have its head nearby, you are only a head and due to being chopped of your body or players must carry your head

I already had a magical ore in my world that's mined and incredibly unstable. This would be a great add. Thank you

Hmmm, that last bit on a rad score seems perfect for a short zombie apocalypse campaign

I had an idea involving something like that. I basically just took the idea that WOW had of a large magic bomb, and the setting itself would be a sort of post-apocalypse. The idea for how things got this way is one of two things: 1.) these magic bombs were effectively like the nukes of today and were nothing more then a really powerful weapon that nations had that they ended up using against each other. 2.) a bad guy or group of bad guys succeeded in their goal of blowing up the word, the armies of the world and adventurers having failed to stop them. Anywhere these bombs went off has a magical radiation effect like you came up with but also the laws of physics break down inside them, and wild magic runs rampant.

I love this. My world was created by magical energies seeping in from other worlds. I feel this could work really well in tandem with that concept.

*Just finished watching the Witcher season one * Sees Video pop up Me: Ironic.

This is exelent! Could also be very useful to mark the remnants of battlefields of Anchent wars.

Oooooooh! I want to see the full drawing of the Rocky Four-armed Orc! That looked awesome, but cutoff!♥️♥️

This homebrew is awesome and works for my high magic setting really well. Do you have a link or a PDF to those mutation tables you talked about?

Oh Sweet I have the same idea. Even build a location into the world where there's a large shield set up to keep a magical radiation zone sealed.

Personally, I'm not so keen on having Magic work according to the logic of Real Life. So I don't think I'll be using anything as "Scientific" as radiation. It's fantasy, so it doesn't need to operate on anything resembling our modern understanding of how the world works. Rather, my favored way to handle Magic is through Symbolism and Emotion. What matters most is how the Magic is meant to FEEL. In this case, how the Intent behind enchantment and the like has a habit of lingering beyond the effect that generated it. Actions - whether magical or mundane - leave a resonance behind, a lingering impression of the activity and the intent that motivated it. For instance, a knife that was used to perpetrate 99 murders might become cursed. This wouldn't apply to any average Rogue's daggers, unless they're an Assassin who regularly plies their trade, killing in cold blood. A weapon used for defense or war has a far different resonance than one that is used with the sole intent of ending life for its own sake. Whether cold malice or fiery anger, the emotions that motivate the killings cause the knife to become spiritually warped, taking on that bloodlust unto itself. The exact effects can vary, from causing the blade to always drip blood to possessing a wielder with a killing urge. I imagine that spellcasters typically become colored by their Magic. No matter how well heeled, Magic is a wild force at heart, and is fueled by the desires of the ones who wield it. Not unlike a fire is fueled by the materials it consumes, though ideally less _final_ in standard practice. As the spellcaster becomes stronger, their form and/or behavior changes to reflect the Magic they conjure; their intent guides it and is guided BY it. The Paladin's form becomes more majestic, the Necromancer's skin becomes pale and their eyes sunken. The Druid's sweat becomes tinged by the scent of tree sap, and the Alchemist's eyes or hair become tinged by the silver or gold they seek to transmute their spirit into. The changes are always subtle, at first, growing more pronounced as mastery deepens. The difference between a Paladin and the Celestial - or a Necromancer and an Undead - should be one of degrees, not type, when they've reached 20th level. Then, of course, there's lingering magical effects born of Dying Will. Particularly potent spellcasters might, in their dying breath, create an effect far beyond what is possible normally. It is driven by a singular NEED, and thus carries the weight of that need even beyond death. A good example in literature is Mercedes Lackey's character, Vanyel the Herald-Mage. In _Magic's Price,_ his final act of magic was to animate a forest to hold off an army set on invading his homeland. Even centuries after the fact, the forest still defends the lands.

This actually sums up my current Pathfinder character pretty perfectly. The party basically found her frozen in cryo in this thousands-year-old lab underground with absolutely no memory, and they have a unique thing where every time they take any physical trauma their skin immediately hardens into a texture almost like thick tree bark. They have a hell of a lot of HP as well as damage resistance, and they can do a ton of damage unarmed just from the ability to hit someone as hard as they can and not feel it. But it does have a strain on them, and after exerting themselves for too long they start taking a lot of damage from it. And it's a cellular mutation that's throughout their entire body, and so if they start getting too stressed it starts to trigger in their head and basically causes them to drop to their knees clutching their head for multiple rounds. And both of these effects can (and often do) happen at the same time as each other. And playing this character has been one of the most roleplaying experiences I've ever had, although that's also largely because of the characters around them and the character development they've gone through.

This absolutely transformed a character idea I had, and I wanted to share it with you. So, before this video inspired me Lia the half-elf barbarian was your average werewolf. Bitten, a priest weakened her curse, adventures for a cure. But with this, I got the idea for her to be mutated. So now her character is much more developed as she lives in fear of the time she saw the Thing Beyond The Hills, and prefers not to rage as she transforms into a wolf... except wolves only have one row of teeth and no eyes scattered around their body.

I have a kiiinda variation of this. in my D&D the creation of Dragonborn ties into the environmental effects of Dragon lairs. spontaneous birthings of kobolds, Wyverns start to migrate in. And the arrival of regional dragonborn, which depending on if the dragon is chromatic or metallic will (if it's the former) be painfully transformed from a human, or (if it's the latter) just be born as a standard human baby with metallic skin that when they hit puberty take on the usual archetypical dragon features. still sorta hammering out how other things work in my setting.

I love homebrew that's connected intrinsically with the worldbuilding like this. The way its structured, magical radiation kinda has to have some mystical or even mysterious source that could itself act as a catalyst for, maybe, an ancient advanced civilization of magically adept wizards who found ways of harnessing magic in ways that could only be dreamed of by the players.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has a creative list

I’m watching this literally right before i leave to dm for my group! Such weird timing

I'm using this immediately. It could lead to "Mage Burn" sorcerers with a damaging radiation aura and other crazy crap.

HAPPY NEW YEAR YOU BEAUTIFUL CROW! I love your ideas and I missed ya! This will be great no doubt! Edit: Well! I quite enjoyed it! A nice toe dip without giving away too much! Thank you!

In my current (and likely future) campaign(s) when a player uses Counter-spell, Dispel Magic, or Anti-Magic Shell I have a random Wild-Magic like effect occur varying in severity based on the level of the Spell negated. This is to show that magic isn't simply destroyed in the setting but rather can only be counteracted by destabilizing it's structure or scattering it. The fact that magic is only dispersed and reabsorbed, not spent and created is actually important to the plot and I use this mechanic to display that to the players. I just wanted to share, and this video reminded me of it.

I love videos like this, adding things for people to mull over and think about. The perfect sort of ideas to set someone off on building settings or little story ideas with.

this is really cool this hole Magical Mutations thing would be an awesome class feature sorcerers to have

I've wanted some weird magic stuff that makes the arcane seem dangerous and weird.

Another great idea I’ll be using in my campaigns thanks

I like the idea that unused magic items produce this magical radiation, and so dragons have become immune to it since their hoards tend to put off loads of the stuff. This also makes trying to steal their hoards much, much more complicated.

This sort of system is just perfect for demonic/eldritch corruption. I can already imagine things like demonic mutations that grant fire magic, but it is a demonic fire that is very hard to control and can easily get out of hand, causing harm to friend, foe, or even the bearer of the mutation. Another, much more serious mutation could be exposure to aberrant blood that allows gruesome shapeshifting by tapping into eldritch flesh magic... at the cost of random growths that attack anything nearby and perhaps even a gradual transformation into a formless flesh monster the more the power is used. These videos are so Inspiring!

For this idea, you might also want to raid some other systems for ideas. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Dark Heresy have a similar mechanic built in and in the former case several tables of random mutations to roll that range from bird feet to turning into an inside out pseudodaemon.

I have two kobold characters that got crossed with a leopard gecko and a crested gecko that one of them was keeping as pets / experiment subjects. Pan was studying transmutation magic, with leaf helping her by gathering what she needed, and keeping an eye out for anything wrong. Two of Pan’s geckos got out of their cages and fell into a pot she had brewing. Pan and leaf both tried to catch the geckos before they fell in and were close enough when the thing exploded to get swapped with the geckos. Now the geckos looked like mini drakes with a lower stance, and the two kobolds had traits from the geckos. Pan was yellow and tan with spotting and a fat tail and softer scales. Her horns were also smaller. Leaf had a more orangey-red look with a mosaicked pattern across his boy and growths along his head, back, arms, and tail that made him look like a crested gecko.

Alien hand syndrome as a mutation would be hilarious for a troll who thinks his arm is sentient and attacks him so keep's chopping it off only for it to regenerate a couple of days later more blood thirsty.

This is actually a really useful mechanic if you want to give PCs Acute Radiation Sickness.

I think this is some amazing homebrew with boundless potential. Some examples I thought of would be a new Race or Subrace for an existing Race that came about due to living near magical radiation and becoming resistant to it (like Purple Dragonborn in this video), magic items used to weaponize or protect against Magical Radiation, a campaign or quest villain experimenting with magical radiation, players incorporating mutation into the character before or during the campaign, potential creatures who feed off the radiation, are weak to it, or perhaps even spawned from it. Maybe even subclass options that incorporate it or new spells that use it. The Potential New Damage Type is frankly just the tip of the iceberg and this iceberg has some real gold in it.

With a little tweaking, this could make for a neat feature for sorcerers I like the idea for each spellcasting class having a drawback related to the basic idea for the class. "You only get 1 spell and 1 cantrip each level" is... not that, but - spitballing here - a mutation feature (maybe with a different trigger for each subclass, like wild magic surges for sorcerers) where you have to make a charisma save against a DC of 10+your sorcerer level or get a "mutation point", and once you have as many mutation points as sorcery points you get mutated... now that's interesting

🤔 very nice, very nice indeed. On my homebrew setting my player are exploring the ruins of a ancient high magical empire. And this ideia fits like a glove! Thanks!

My homebrew world is in what is called the Fifth Age. Thousands of years ago, the Second Age ended with a magical apocalypse that wiped out the main civilisations of the time. I could have certain isolated places where this magical radiation/magical mutation feature comes into play as a result

Using something *similarish* in one of my old campaigns, I had a player slowly transform into a fiendish creature. It started with a simple color change when they cast burning hands, where the fire turned icy blue. Her skin became pale and ashy over time before also freezing over with a blueish frost, and slender horns began poking out of her scalp over time. Eventually she was killed by another player, but was resurrected as a true fiend. By the end of the transformation, a dubious god found favor with her and gave her name "Ashcloak", giving her a magical mantle crafted from her own ash.

I like this concept of magic a lot. It’s like a milder form of Warpstone from warhammer fantasy. For those who don’t know what warp stone is, it’s a solid form of magic in Warhammer fantasy. Warpstone essentially does everything that magic substance does that was said in the video, except the negatives are a lot worse.

Happy for this, if only because my DM promised us early in our current campaign that if we were exposed to "radioactive goblin guts" we'd get super powers. Hell yeah.

This video has inspired a goddess of untamed magic in my campaign setting based on Marie Curie. Called Madame Curvosie. Her priests purposely expose themselves to the radiation and she blesses them with beneficial mutations, and curses those who defile her shrines with horrific variations

DMPC: *casts level 10 spell but it backfires* Player party nearby: "it's not 3 roentgen its 15000"

What should magic radiation units be called? “3.6 ______, not great, not terrible.” I’m planning a proto-steampunk fantasy campaign set in 1850s Prussia and this is perfect. Totally gonna have a magic Geiger counter. Also, I love the name Mageburn. I was trying to come up with a name for Magic Radiation that sounded better but couldn’t come up with anything.

Man this video, I love your homebrew ideas and how they work so well with stuff that I already came up with. I like to do homebrew stuff a lot and at one point came up with my own homebrew race called Canids. A canine themed race that split off into three sub races Bura, Mara, and Corga. The reason I bring this up is because your thing on magical mutations works well with the sub race Canid Corga. The Canid Corga are a humanoid Fennec fox / Aard Wolf race. Small like dwarfs, but more brain than brawn. The sub race preferred magic for hunting than any other tool. Because of their obsession with magic they accidentally domed themselves to a horrible fate. A Corga has a life span of 250 years, but that life span is very unnatural. They self experimented with magic to improve themselves in the arcane and achieved the higher intelligence, resistance to magic, and longer life span they wanted. These benefits are great until a Corga gets past 120 years of age. After that 120 years the magic the Corga’s have in them begin to overwhelm them due to the unnatural nature of the magic. Many Corga with enough willpower can hold off the effects of their magic, but Over time their magic will cause madness, lose of muscle mass, and magical surges that they can’t control. These symptoms ultimately lead to lichdom, if the Corga hadn’t already incinerate themselves via magical surges. Those who maintain control over their magic will inevitably turn into a Lich. Because of this, many Corga will voluntarily go on suicidal hunts so that they at least die with honor and not turn into a lich. Sorry for the rambling, I just love the homebrewing of D&D content and just thought of sharing a little of mine.

My current villain is a combination of mr Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein, and Tesla who made a magic serum called mutiphage which mutates its host depending on what magic they are best at, your bloodline, curses, etc. for example a character who was born with magic sight might grow a giant crystal eye in the center of your face, with many other crystal eyes all over, similar to the monster called the Nothic. Any host who is possessed or infested with other monsters will fuse with the monsters living in the host as well. This is the basics of some things in our dark fantasy d&d campaign.

I love the SCP-106 inspired goblin at 1:20

You know what? This is my favourite video of yours. I really want to add this to my game.

Yay finally more cute goblin guys! oH NOOoOOoO

Thank you for this idea. I am making my own homebrewed world and it has an ore that has magical properties. Now i will make so they emit magical radiation too.

I've been wanting to play around with something like this a lot, so thank you for the additional ideas! Keep up the awesome work!

So the Mourning from Eberron? Y'know the Magic Nuke

I love it. Thank you so much bird man from the past

I love these videos you make. They give me so many ideas that I might never use but they help me fantasize.

If you're looking for ideas for mutations look up the chaos mutations from warhammer fantasy roleplay with examples of your skull being permanently on fire,bleeding wasps instead of blood,growing a sentient tumor or turning into mass of flesh and limbs and regressing to feral state attacking whatever is nearby.

I love this channel, thank you so much for the inspiration!

Radiation can also be used as a plot point where your party has to clean up another, more murderhobo-ish party's mess, like a dragon's core keeping on the effects of their lair, but with chaotic side effects beacuse, well, corpse. An undisposed corpse.

I'm kinda inspired to add this with an Eberron campaign setting for a very modern twist on nuclear fission and similar stuff... the Nuclear Bomb was actually the result of an arcane disaster and the now ruined crater that was once the former capital is a mutated wasteland.

Makes me think of the one Minecraft mod Thaumcraft and the flux system. You have to make sure you clean it up, or ensure you produce as little as possible or else it'll spread and cause magic corruption. Clever ideas, especially the ways the magic radiation could've started!

I just found these and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEM! I hope its not too much of a bother if I use them as inspiration for the TTRPG I’ve been designing. Its a bit of a mix between 5e and FATE and mostly me trying to fix the systems I don’t like from the original game. Your ideas fit perfectly into some of the goals I’m trying to achieve :)

this is PERFECT, I'm writing a story that has magic that acts exactly like this, mutating anything that has too much exposure to it, thank you so much for your advice, always love watching your vids

Oh man, the things I would give for a 5e Gammaworld adaptation. I think I still own an old starter set around here somewhere. I bet the mutations in there would be great for this.

I definitely want to add some of this in my current game. I already have a bizarre curse floating around that seems to brainwash and mutate people, and this gives me some good ideas for mechanical backing. I’m totally using that rad meter for starters.

im planing a campain in 6 or 7 months from now and im gonna dm my first game, ive been a fan of dnd and ive picked up a few tips here and there but i must say youve been my bigest inspiration. These little things here and there that are open ended allowing my own creativity to show is truely amazeing. thanks for the amazeing content and keep doin what you love

This will be great for my upcoming ebberon campaign! that is if my players decide to venture into the mourn-land.

I run a campaign based in a outrun neo-noir world. Comes with my own heavily homebrewed 5e. You have inspired my next campaign arc to let my players deal with drug trafficking of an arcane substance. I am excited to implement a system like this to the campaign and to let them probably try and get mutated intentionally lol.

Yayyyyy!!!

A superbly helpful and inspiring video! I can't wait to use these ideas in my own game. Thanks for sharing these cool thoughts!

This is perfect for my work campaign in the Grove level of the sunless citadel. Whenever the PCs take a long rest they'll have to make a save to resist the necrotic energy of the gulthias tree. Fail lose a hit die. Fail by 5 or more lose a class ability e.g. One use wild shape/rage or a sorcery point/sneak attack die. The effect can be removed by a restoration spell.

Ok I just thought of how this would be useful for an Ebberron campaign that takes the party into the mournlands. The thing about the site of the former nation of Cyre is many of the inhabitants were turned into monstrous beasts and the only race that can live there without problems are the warforged. I will definitely be using this feature for when I get around to starting my Ebberron campaign.

Oo, nice new vid! Drop everything!

I made a DND campaign set a hundred years later from my last one where, essentially a magical nuke went off making the whole land radioactive which allows a hole FRICK ton of magic effects

Ooh that quick mention of Wild Magic inspired me for this: That rad-point thing, but with wild magic. The save would proc any time you take magic damage or fail a save against magic from a Wild Magic -related source. Fey, Wild Magic Sorcerers, something specific to that storyline that may or may not be purged at the end (like anyone who has one or more of those points, it might spread real fast with this), etc. And instead of debuffs and mutations, your number of probably-renamed rad-points would be your % chance to trigger wild magic with every spell you cast. Wild Magic Sorcerers might have a base of 5 of these to represent the d20 roll from their subclass. There'd be tweaking with the exact things that proc the save for that, and maybe the save stat might be something else, depending on how contagious you want it to be. Maybe you want it to start slow and accelerate, so any time you're affected by a spell that triggered wild magic, you do the save. Also keep in mind that half of this was Kanekuo's rad-points stolen and applied elsewhere, the other half I slapped together in the process of writing the comment. So I have no idea on the balance.

Considering i've been slowly building up a "madmax" style D&D setting, this is beyond helpful!

You might have some of the most creative, interesting fantasy concepts that I’ve ever seen.

Imagine Coughing up slime, then a while later being able to launch a gelatinous cube from your mouth

I'mma just borrow this for a game setting I've been working on for a little while, I think it'll fit in just right.

Got lots of ideas with this alone for a handful of adventures and world rewrites thanks for the

Honestly, this is pretty cool! I'll be running an Ebberon style campaign soon and this is something i'm suprised i haven't thought up myslef. Also, this could even work for my Non, D&D world, with that being high magic as well.

As a huge bio nerd this is such a great video for me. The effects it could have npcs and pcs, oh who to say it stops there. What if certain mutations occur to only certain races. The gears are turning.

Awesome ideas man. i am starting an Eberon game soon, and you gave me some fun little things i might want to explore during it.

This concept seems really interesting to me. I am still getting fairly new into DND, but if I ever get the courage to try and become a DM, I'm going to try to incorporate this

Dood I've been using this concept forever but not this well. I love this

Ah yes, the blessings of the Chaos Gods.

If I ever played around with this, any effects I pick would be adaptive in nature; people affected by the lingering trace of a water elemental would become more adapted to aquatic environments, those around a dead dragon would become dragons themselves, and even those who have found themselves having to deal with the fallout of a zombie uprising wouldn't so much become undead (unless they were already dead) so much as more resistant to whatever effects you might expect from eating rotting meat like what you find on zombies... Which yes, means that survivors of a zombie outbreak will likely start turning into were-hyenas. For some reason, I find reason to think in such a setting, sorcerers would be more common than wizards, and the few wizards out there would quickly start looking like sorcerers from their own choices of magic changing them into something more useful... That said, I doubt everyone effected by such things would want to be a spellcaster, as a fishing village might make a habit of getting their kids slightly attuned to water so they start growing gills, but they use them to send them spear fishing rather than causing floods... Which is a good reason why a non-spellcaster option for "bloodline abilities" for a class should be more common in these kinds of games. ... This is something of a thing in Pathfinder (1E), but basically null in D&D 5e. Not that the pathfinder gave as many options as they did with sorcerer though, which is a shame.

My players will be exploring a world that is slowly falling apart, riddled with holes into other dimensions made by a nightmarish creature from another realm. I think that this would be a great mechanic for that.

Always adore these videos with wonderful artwork but I love how you have taken a bit of the warhammer fantasy warp stone magic that the skaven use and I was working out how to use it effectively and thank you I’ll be using this next session

That Goblin miner is adorable.

This actually helped me expand an idea I had for my D&D inspired book series.

Your homebrew content is great, I especially enjoy the crafting videos.

Hey, I want to say thanks. This gives me a lot more to play around with and implement into game I'm planning.

I really like this idea, especially the alternate rad score. I think I'd use it for other planes of existence, to show how these places aren't meant for people.

God I miss these videos

Oh hell ye, a new Kanekuo homebrew vid

You could easily use this to make a perfect fantasy fallout. You could implement a system that poisons you by taking away one or two hit points for however long you stay in an irradiated place.