okay so my players have been hounded by a shining child of thassilon after drawing the fiend card from a deck of many things... anyway they are about to end up fighting it on its home turf. As this is going to take place in chaotic plane I really wanted to do something different, and I eventually decided on a system based off of the colored grid system from Disgaea. Basically there will be colored squares on the map(we play on an erasable map using markers), at the beginning of each player's turn they will get an effect depending on the color square they are standing on, this will vary from something positive like fast healing, a bonus to deflection, something neutral like swapping places with somebody on the board or levitating, or something nasty like damage or getting stunned.
the chaotic part is that the effect shifts at the beginning of each round.
now there will be a crystal which is keyed to each square's color, now a player can destroy the crystal, ending the effect but causing damage to everyone standing on the squares, they can throw the crystal into another color which will switch the color of the squares. With a successful spellcraft roll the player's can identify the crystal's abilities and with a high enough roll they can find out what the effect will be switching in upcoming rounds. with a use magic device roll a player can switch the effect to something of their choosing(however without a spellcraft check first they won't know what each effect does until they activate it) and with a high enough check they can even lock the device into one effect. disable device can be used to destroy a crystal without causing a chain reaction(failure by more than 10 creates an explosion)
I do apologize if I this isn't well organized enough or if I failed to explain something, anyway I was hoping to get some ideas about what I could use for effects. I am planning on every color having a theme: Red squares affecting players physically: fast healing, armor bonuses and diseases and ability damage, blue affecting them magically: with positive and negative spells being cast. And green affecting the terrain: teleporting the players around, swapping places, levitation, and my personal favorite, elevating high up to become walls, which will give the players in green squares a chance to attack the flying fiend in melee but on the other hand blocks off other players.
so any advice about this i can get is greatly appreciated