Monday, November 5, 2018

D100 Morbid Miscasts

Converted from my reddit post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/d100/comments/97vnhm/d100_morbid_miscasts/

What makes a good miscast? Someones else have probably written up theories. You will find none here.



D100 After You Fuck Up The Spell/Ritual/Enchantment...
1 Every living thing within 100 meters turns and stares at you for a moment.
2 Something rattles around inside your finger bones. The rattling grows rapidly louder until the backs of your fingers split open from knuckle to nail. Luminescent moths flutter out of them. You blink. There are no moths. Your fingers are fine, except for faint scars in a line down them.
3 An eye sprouts somewhere on your body. It sees only the worst in people. Within a month it will have dried up into a raisin dangling on a desiccated nerve.
4 1d10 colourful boils erupt across your flesh. The fluid inside each carries the effect of a random potion or poison, and tastes disgusting.
5 The boundary between yourself and your clothing blurs. Removing it will require a knife, time, and high pain tolerance.
6 Your breathing becomes strained, wheezy. With each exhale a pale green vapour escapes. When the vapour escapes accumulates enough volume it will congeal into a monster and try to steal your skin.
7 Your sense of taste inverts. Filth is now like candy to you, and what you once found delicious is as ashes in your mouth.
8 Fat red ants with too many or too few legs crawl beneath your skin. They’ll spill out of open wounds to attack the one who wounded you, but sitting still or sleeping become too uncomfortable for you to manage unless you’re somehow sedated.
9 Your mind is assaulted with visions of the underworld. You’re blinded and deafened for 1d6 rounds as the howling hordes of the dead crowd and beg you in a thousand languages to fulfill their unfinished business among the living.
10 You vomit a scab-and-snot-crust homunculus which resembles a smaller version of yourself as a child. The homunulus will serve you to the best of its ability while you’re awake, and subtly sabotage you while you’re asleep. It will fall apart into a reeking pile in 1d4 weeks.
11 Somewhere out in the world a child is born infected with your magic. It will gain the ability to cast every spell you can. Your fates will be tied together, for good or ill (though probably ill).
12 Teeth grow in a ridge around some part of your body. They itch and twitch and fall out in 1d4 days, cracking on the ground to reveal the many-tailed slithering things inside.
13 A fairy-ring of toadstools forms around you. The ring has formed a partial, temporary contact between where you are and the home of an extradimensional being. The being will be some combination of pissed off by and curious about the intrusion and seek recompense.
14 Your spittle starts to harden like glue. You must spit it out regularly and find out how to get it out while you’re asleep so your throat and teeth don’t get stuck together. 1% chance of being permanent, otherwise lasts 1d4 days.
15 Squishy white stalks sprout from your body. When you die or are near death, the stalks will burst to release a cloud of spores that impregnate nearby living things with your clone-fetuses. 10% chance per host that a clone will grow to maturity if they’re not actively removed.
16 Magic flees from the area. No spells can be cast within 100 meters of your location for 1d100 years.
17 The spell is cast normally, but tiny black flies spawn out of thing the spell affects/creates which rapidly regress back to maggots and then to nothing. This happens every time you cast that spell from now on, and to everyone who learns that spell from you.
18 The malformed magic awakens lost memories within your genes. You gain knowledge of some things known to a random ancestor, but upon waking each day for a week you must save or be possessed by the mind of that ancestor until they next sleep.
19 Your flesh desiccates and shrivels while its water content is concentrated in a hump of unnatural, unmelting ice on your back. This condition can be reversed by soaking in a hot spring.
20 The spell fails, but leaves a magical echo. A phantasmal copy of yourself will cast the spell again on a random target for 1d6 rounds. Different target each round.
21 Your skull grows thick and knobby, and your neck extends. Your may headbutt as though wielding a mace.
22 A pool burbles up from where you stand. Anything that drinks from it will take on one aspect of your appearance or personality with each sip. The pool runs dry after 1d20 sips.
23 The magic’s effect is inverted. A fireball will burn cold, a banishment will summon, a charm will turn to hate, and so on.
24 The magic curdles and sets in your bones. You will rise as one of the wretched undead three days after you die with a hunger for the marrow of magic-users.
25 You weep barbed crystals which tear at your face as they fall. If one is powdered and eaten by a magic-user, that magic-user will miscast the next spell they attempt.
26 Volatile magic courses through your hands. For 1d6 turns they become glowing chunks of salt, and anything flammable they touch ignites.
27 Your magic begins to give off a scent attractive to a particular sort of monster. Each time you use it in an area home to that monster, you risk attracting some.
28 Your magic gains you the attention of some translucent aetherial beast. If any part of your uncovered body is exposed to the open sky, a tentacle will drop from the heavens to grope towards you and snatch you up. Going 1d6 days without being spotted by the beast will cause it to move on to easier prey.
29 An impossibly deep hollow carves itself into your back. Anyone brave and capable enough to enter and survive your inner guardians can steal a magic item representative of a spell you know. While the item is outside you, you cannot cast the spell it represents, but you also gain an intuitive sense of where it is. If you’re killed any magic items taken from within you lose their power.
30 You lose the ability to abide the touch of iron. Contact with it will burn you like acid.
31 Things like jellyfish stings sprout in patches on your arms and legs. Their venom brings mild euphoria. In 1d6 days they’ll drop off and crawl for the nearest body of water to fuse and grow into their adult form.
32 Your hair falls out. Brittle nails will grow back in its place.
33 The skin connecting a random limb at the shoulder or hip forms a raw red band. Any serious hit to that limb will knock it clean off unless it’s better secured for 1d6 10-minute turns or until magical healing is received.
34 For 1d6 weeks you become ravenously hungry for the fresh flesh of magical beasts and people.
35 Your head pounds with the ringing of the bells of the Deep Churches. For 1d6 weeks, whenever you come near a cave or the ocean, save or be compelled to get to the bottom of them.
36 Space forgets you, and scrambles to remember. You appear in a random location 1d6x100 meters away.
37 Your eye sockets bristle with shards of the end of days. Until you yank them out, everything will appear ruined to you.
38 Your reflection in mirrors gains the head of a bull with screaming horns. Don’t be alone in a room with a mirror. If you are your reflection will emerge and drag you into its labyrinth.
39 Your nostrils prolapse as pink and veiny serpents. One serpent will speak only white lies. The other will speak only harsh truths. They can be kept silent with morsels of food. Unborn mice are their favourite, and can be used to convince them to retract for 1d6 days.
40 Your head swells and splits in a rush of sulphurous fluids. You’ve harmlessly given brain-birth to an eldritch creature. You’re compelled to guard and nurture it for 1d6 weeks until it reaches maturity and goes its own way.
41 The spell is successful, but becomes your obsession. You scratch it absentmindedly into every available surface, prepare and cast it at every opportunity, research its origins, murder those who try to change its formula, and so on. Lasts for 1d6 weeks, or 1d6 days with therapy.
42 For the rest of the day, dust gathers thickly on surfaces on and around you, and piles into the forms of words from a forgotten language.
43 The dead will moan when you draw near, or just clack their teeth rhythmically if they’ve got no throat left to moan with.
44 Your aura is marked with the Sign of Folly. Other magic-users and magical creatures will be able to perceive the Sign, and through it know of your error.
45 Your spine writhes and presses against the confinement of your flesh. It is a living thing separate from yourself, hissing against your brainstem. It bites the base of your skull deeply, and your mind goes blank with transcendent agony. Nothing has changed. Your body is fine. You must have imagined the rebellion of your backbone.
46 Fingers sprout on each of your ribs. If they stroke an animal smaller than your fist, the animal will die without a mark on it, and it will sate you like a full meal. One joint from each finger will drop off after a week. After three you’ll just have some circular scars dotting your ribcage.
47 A square section of skin peels away from your body. The veins and hairs and creases of it will form strange symbols. The section will act as a scroll inscribed with the spell you miscast.
48 Your nose and mouth drool a heavy flow of steaming mucus. The mucus will dampen the magic of any enchanted object immersed in it. You will drool the mucus for 1d6 hours. It is quite valuable to certain parties.
49 The nails on your fingers and toes tear off, pushed from beneath by twisting twigs growing from the nailbed. If grown out long enough, these twigs make for excellent wands and staves.
50 You cough up a seed which burrows into the ground. In 1d6 weeks the seed will have sprouted into a castle. The castle will attract monsters from all around, and twist itself to destroy non-monstrous intruders.
51 One of your feet swells to many times it’s normal size and takes on a crystalline texture. This will slow you down and/or count against your encumbrance for the 1d6 hours it lasts. If cut off while it’s still swollen, the foot can be used as a material component that boosts the power of a spell.
52 Your tongue extends and splits three ways down the middle.
53 A tiny and affable sprite takes up residence in your ear. It will trade occult knowledge for candles made of tallow rendered from the fat of rare beasts.
54 Your face cracks. In the coming days it will fall off in shards, revealing the new face underneath.
55 The spell works normally. Sometime soon you will see someone in the distance, someone who looks exactly like you. They’ll be shy at first and keep their distance. They’ll try to isolate you and kill your companions. They want to be all you need.
56 The miscast rebounds off causality and rewrites history. One of your allies becomes and has always been your enemy, and a foe becomes a friend.
57 The malformed magic becomes a beacon to a creature of the outer darkness. It will crash to earth many miles from you, then carve a path of devastation towards you.
58 You see the indistinct shapes of beings lurking in the corners of your eye for 1d6 hours. Ignore them. The more attention you pay to them the more real they’ll become.
59 You instantly age 1d10 years, and gain vague, dream-like memories of time spent conscripted into a paratemporal mage war.
60 Your mind is illuminated with a powerful secret. Some out there would torture and murder you to learn or protect that secret.
61 You gout blood from every orifice, more than your body could possibly hold.
62 The spell appears to work normally, but in truth it’s been subtly twisted to sabotage you as much as possible.
63 Your immediate surroundings twist to symbolically represent the spell, e.g. an area twisted by a fireball spell will appear ashy, charred, etc. Thereafter anyone can gain the ability to cast the spell exactly once by meditating in the area for an hour.
64 Your fuckup attracts the attention of an otherworldly patron. They will assign you missions in dreams, often accomplishable in tandem with your other goals with some effort. Completion of missions is rewarded with favours. Failure is punished with sleepless nights.
65 The Doors of Guf slam open above your head and release a cluster of unborn souls. They will hover around you and learn from your example. In 1d6 weeks they will pass into the afterlife never having truly known life and be judged. Around the world an equal number of soulless children will be born. Their names will become bywords for atrocity.
66 The blaring of trumpets ruptures the sky. The unknown zeroeth seal of the apocalypse has been broken by your magic. Only seven now remain.
67 Your magic has offended (or perhaps pleased) the god of trash. You will find trash in inconvenient places and wake up laying in it.
68 A momentous event is placed in your future. It will occur in 1d6 weeks. Omens will appear before you hinting at the event’s nature.
68 You gain the ability to smell love. It’s an acquired taste. The smell of true love is intense enough to make you retch.
69 The spell sours to you. You must undergo some task to reconcile with it or every time you cast it will become a miscast.
70 From then on, anyone looking at the night sky where you miscast the spell will see jagged black stars against an amber void. Alien things might slip through if someone looks too long or too often.
71 Your liver morphs uncomfortably. For 1d6 days poison is the only thing that will hydrate you, and water will get you drunk.
72 Fate snags around one of your limbs. You gain the ability to reroll up to 1d6 dice, but attempting to go over that allotment will sever a random limb. You do not know the exact number of rerolls you have.
73 Time misaligns with your biology. You no longer age, and instead grow larger and hungrier year by year. Eventually you will have to eat the world or starve.
74 You’re inflicted with large, fluttering dandruff. If steeped like tea, the resulting dandruff-fluid can be drunk to stave off the progression of an infection.
75 You’re inspired artistically. Begin a work of art within the next week and it will (1d6): 1, begin a new artistic movement; 2, incite the mass suicide of critics; 3, be murderously sought by collectors; 4, be so offensive that it rouses an era of iconoclasm; 5, cause all who look look upon it to weep at its beauty; 6, be pretty mediocre.
76 The spell is wiped from reality entirely. It’s replaced with a random new spell in your mind and no one else’s.
77 Your bones and skin each take on some aspect of the other. Blades no longer harm you, but blunt weapons do twice as much damage.
78 Your soul and nerves fray and entwine together. From now on, any penalties you’re suffering from pain are applied as bonuses to your spellcasting.
79 The spell melts and remolds into something entirely new, resembling the original and yet its own thing. You forget the original spell and learn the new.
80 A hideous, gaseous imp slips into your brain. You must undergo trepanation or be forever plagued with its endless tittering.
81 The colour and flow of your blood is temporarily reversed. For the next 1d6 days, you are harmed and healed inversely, as a nilbog.
82 The spelling of your name ga’ins s’ome rando’m ap’ostr’ophe’s. Everyone else remembers it as always being this way.
83 You lose buoyancy in water, but gain the ability to hold your breath for hours instead of minutes.
84 You lose conventional literacy, but gain the ability to read words in any language by licking them.
85 Your shadow begins pantomiming your true feelings when you’re deceiving others or yourself.
86 When your wounds heal now, a pearl worth 1d6x(however many points of damage the wound dealt) gp/sp/whatever else the currency standard might be forms within.
87 You gain a paralyzing fear of using magic. Save or be unable to move for a round when you try. Fades in 1d6 weeks or immediately after a therapy session.
88 Your soul becomes slippery and contrary. When you die, you’ll go to the opposite afterlife you otherwise would have. If everyone goes on to the same afterlife your soul self-annihilates. If there is no afterlife your soul prolapses and becomes one.
89 All your group’s rations turn into inedible ooze.
90 You begin shaking. Slowly at first, but faster by the nanosecond. In three heartbeats you’re vibrating across the cosmos, in tune with the strumming of the superstrings. In another you’re back, convulsing on the ground.
91 A bacterium in your gut expands to macroscopic size and slides out one of your ends. It won’t attack you, but is hostile to all others.
92 You become a grounding rod for magic. Any spells cast at someone within ten meters of you will instead affect only you, and you only take half damage/effect from magic. Lasts 1d6 hours.
93 Now any field, orchard, or grove you eat the produce of will be struck barren.
94 You catch a glimpse of your character sheet.
95 Now referring to yourself in the third person gives you an addictive rush.
96 Your voice changes. Somewhere out there, something has added your old voice to its collection.
97 You gain the urge to gibber and cavort under the light of the full moon.
98 Your mind’s eye flashes with the location of a magic weapon
99 You contract a dire disease
100 The twisted currents of magic offend the sensibilities of a weird wizard, who will seek you out and challenge you to a more-or-less honourable magic duel.

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