The Chaos Magician (Arcane Spellcaster Character Concept)

Christobel sat in the center of her cell. A cracked looking glass sat before her as she wove strands of her own hair into a tight cord. Pressing the pad of her thumb onto her canine tooth, she bit down, then smeared her blood along a hollow stone she'd found in the exercise yard before sliding it onto the cord and tying the ends together. She chanted dead words in a dead language, slipping the amulet around her neck before picking up a tiny wooden trivet she'd stolen from the mess hall.

The tools were humble ones, but that didn't matter for her purposes. She didn't follow the gods whose names the spell invoked, but that didn't matter either. All that mattered was they would do for the ritual. As the power swelled and settled, Christobel smiled to herself.

"Nothing is true," she said as she stood to face the barred window, her fingers already weaving the energy into the pattern she needed. "Everything is permitted."

A saying that, in all likelihood, might be one reason I was put here in the first place.

The Chaos Magician

Chaos magic, as an idea, is one that's permeated our fiction. However, as I pointed out in What is Chaos Magic?, the occult philosophy is actually very different than most of its depictions in pop culture. In short, the idea behind chaos magic as a philosophy is that a chaos magician will use whatever tools they need for a particular task, often blending together different symbolism, philosophies, structure, and ritual as needed. While the symbolism and ideas are all directed at a singular purpose, there is no established belief system or structure to the chaos magician; everything is in flux, and they will use whatever they have to hand to accomplish their rites and rituals.

And that is something rarely tried in games that rely so heavily on Vancian spellcasting. Rarely tried isn't the same thing as impossible, though. All you need to do is to ask yourself what method you want to take to embody the chaos in your magician going forward?

If you're playing Pathfinder, for example, then one of the surest ways to accomplish this is with the occultist. Taking Alice Liddel's post The Magic in Everyday Items to heart, an occultist can use almost any sort of random collection of stuff in order to focus their powers. Whether it's a ritualized silver dagger, or a dusty skull they found in a dungeon, or a cracked mirror they took out of the garbage, the class's use of the symbolic ideas behind common items can suit this concept ideally. Especially when you consider that occultists don't need to prepare spells, so they can fire off whatever they need at any given time, but they're still Intelligence-based so it tics a lot of the boxes for folks who want to emulate the real-world philosophy.

Chaos magicians do a lot of reading, as a rule.

Some books are more dangerous than others.

With all of that said, however, it's entirely possible to put together a chaos magician as a flavor performance for a character. A wizard who draws from a dozen different sources and books, using different foci, different somatic and verbal components, etc. depending on the day is an easy example (especially if they're using those alterations to represent metamagic feats changing the parameters of the spells they're casting). A sorcerer whose bloodline is unpredictable might channel chaos in a real sense (like the wild magic sorcerer in DND 5th Edition), but they might also switch languages, gestures, even magical traditions in order to attempt to shape and control that chaos from moment to moment. Even a bard might use tonal dissonance, remixed tunes and songs, or bizarre combinations of traditions in order to produce unexpected effects.

This concept works best as an arcane caster. Chaos magic, by definition, focuses on the abilities and skills of the caster themselves, and how they channel the symbolic power of their rights and rituals. So while a divine caster could work, the idea behind divine magic is that it's spells granted by a particular deity or divine force. So while you might be able to work out some kind of pantheist, or individual dedicated to a particular concept, that's going to require a lot of cooperation on behalf of the GM, and it can get pretty messy and frustrating to find something that captures the flavor you want while remaining balanced.

Also, for further reading, make sure you check out the following from my ongoing 5 Tips series:

- 5 Tips For Playing Better Wizards

- 5 Tips For Playing Better Sorcerers

- 5 Tips For Playing Better Bards

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That's all for this installment of Unusual Character Concepts. Hopefully this one gave you something to chew over, whether you're a player, or a game master.

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