Hey all,
In the last session of the homebrew game I run, the party wizard interacted with and successfully shut down a powerful magical observatory that, among other things, was used to control weather, dominate entire towns, and communicate with various eldritch horrors from beyond the stars. (If this sounds familiar to some, it should: I am running an adaptation of the From Shore to Sea module).
What is not in the module, however, are side effects of interacting with such an immensely powerful device, which was malfunctioning and leaking power compared to its original operations. Both the player and I are on board to have the power affect the wizard in some way. I want to incorporate a couple beneficial side effects, and a couple minor drawbacks.
Some parameters: I do not want to duplicate anything too powerful, and the flavor must stick with the theme of the purpose of the device. Here are possible options I was thinking of, let me know what you think.
By the way, the wizard is 7th level, about to hit 8th, to give you a rough power gauge.
1) Some sort of vision enhancement, Darkvision probably.
2) Something to do with shifting in and out of the Ethereal plane. I do not want this to be as powerful as the Blink Spell, but I do like the idea of cherry picking some of the benefits. Something like the following;
Voidstrider (Su): Once per day as a swift action, you may engulf yourself in the power of star motes. When under the effect of this ability, any physical attacks against you suffer from a 20% miss chance as the bonds which tie your body to the Material plane are weakened. Likewise, your own physical attacks are subject to a 20% miss chance. Spells and other effects which do not require an attack roll affect you normally. This ability lasts for a number of rounds equal to your caster level.
In addition to the above, you may attempt to move through solid objects. For every 5 feet of solid material you move through, there is a 50% chance you materialize and are shunted to the nearest open space and take 1d6 points of damage for every 5 feet of space through which you are shunted.
3) Character gains Aklo as a bonus language.
....
What else can you think of? I am also open to "fluff" physical alterations as well, maybe his eyes glow with the light of a faint star, or maybe his hair becomes translucent.
You could go lovecraftian and have it look like he's made contact with the colour of space with pale skin and hair. Have him hear the sounds of the idiot pipers in his dreams and witness Yogg-Sothoth communicate to him in an alien language he understands but knows not what it is or what he says that echos in his head through his waking days.
You could also be more original and have patches of his forearms become pitch black with specs of white, becoming a map of the stars in space that's visible even in the day. Bonus points if it moves as he does and slowly spreads upwards into his neck and chest as his flesh slowly chips away into this horrific vein of starmap.
I'm a big fan of eyes become pitchblack and reflective myself. Little white dot in the center for his actual eyes.
Just throwing this out there as a simpler option - a penalty to saves vs magic and a boost to save DC's... perhaps something that remains in flux, you could roll d4 each day for bonus/penalty?
Or maybe a d8:
1 = +3 to spell DC, -3 saves vs spells & SLAs
2 = +2 to spell DC, -2 saves vs spells & SLAs
3 = +1 to spell DC, -1 saves vs spells & SLAs
4 = no effect
5 = no effect
6 = -1 to spell DC, +1 saves vs spells & SLAs
7 = -2 to spell DC, +2 saves vs spells & SLAs
8 = -3 to spell DC, +3 saves vs spells & SLAs