Magic Missile d4

Here's another design for a 4-sided die, this time marked from 2 – 5 for use with the D&D Magic Missile spell.

The file is on Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3115258

Lesser Lesser Restoration

 This spell is designed as a stop-gap, temporary remedy for ability loss.

Lesser Lesser Restoration

2nd level abjuration 

Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch
Components: V,S,M (powdered stimulant herbs mixed with brandy) 

You draw a magical circle of runes and sigils around a creature and, while chanting the verbal component of the spell, have them drink an infusion of stimulant herbs in brandy. The spell will temporarily reverse 1d4 points of one characteristic loss. If more than one characteristic is below its normal maximum, the characteristic to be targeted by the spell must be specified when the spell is cast.

The spell can be cast multiple times on the same recipient, affecting the same or different characteristics each time. 

The spell will not raise a characteristic above its normal maximum, nor does the spell address any underlying condition causing the characteristic loss — it will not, for instance, neutralize poison, nor cure a wasting disease. 

Characteristic points restored by the use of this spell disappear at the rate of one per casting per six hours. 

For example, if the spell is cast twice to restore, respectively, 3 points of STR and 4 points of DEX, after six hours one point each of the restored STR and DEX would be lost. If it were cast twice with both castings affecting STR, after six hours, two points of STR would be lost — one for each casting of the spell.

Casting the spell using a 3rd level or higher spell slot increases the amount of ability points restored by 1d4 per level above 2nd.

Attack Of The Mega-Spells of DOOOOOOM!

As we make our way into my new(ish) D&D5e campaign, I'm finding quite a few things that have changed from Ye Olde Dayes that have a tendency to make PCs into unstoppable superheroes. The new hit-point recovery rules are one, though I don't really have too many issues with that; it improves survivability at low levels and keeps things moving along a bit more than they did when a party had to hole up to recover for a week after half an hour of dungeon-bashing.

The idea of having to take a character down below negative their hit-point total to kill them starts to get problematic once they get past the first couple of levels; a mid- to high-level character pretty much needs have no fear of death from a one-shot unless it's an attack that's doing hundreds of points of damage. Add to that the use of Hero Points to guarantee successful Death Saves, and a PC with more than 30hp or so is pretty much unkillable.... unless.....

Intelligent creatures will be aware of the issue, and if they spend a bit of effort after the PC has gone down whacking away at them to make sure of automatic Death Save failures, then the unconscious PC is in real trouble. This is where being swarmed by vicious little bastards like goblins or kobolds gets very dangerous.

Note: I believe, during play-testing, death was set at negative CON+Level; I'm not sure why they decided on the current system. I suppose to give players as much opportunity as possible to save their characters.

I've previously made my disdain for the new Find Familiar spell known. What a stinker.

Another spell that is giving me pause is Lesser Restoration. This is a real uber-spell. It requires no material component, and it pretty much gives the PC four spells for the price of one 2nd level spell slot: it replaces the old Cure Disease, Neutralize Poison, Cure Deafness/Blindness, and Remove Paralysis. That seems amazingly powerful for a humble second-level spell to me.

I think that what I will do with it is, first, make it a lengthy ritual spell, and second, give it a reasonably rare and expensive material component that varies depending on what it is that the caster wants to heal. That still leaves it a very powerful spell to have in one's repertoire without letting it become overly dominant.

So:

Lesser Restoration

2nd level abjuration
Casting Time: 3+1d4 hours (ritual)
Range: Touch
Components: V,S,M (50gp worth of powdered gemstone, which is consumed by casting the spell — diamond to cure a disease, amethyst to neutralize a poison, aquamarine to cure deafness or blindness, or emerald to remove paralysis.) 

You draw a magical circle of runes and sigils around a creature and, after a period of 4 -7 hours of chanting and magical jibber-jabber, can end either one disease or one condition afflicting it. The condition can be blinded, deafened, paralysed, or poisoned.

I think that should do the trick. At least it will make it a bit less egregious.

Find Familiar - rewrite

Because I really hate what they've done with familiars in D&D5e, I've rewritten the spell description. It's heavily based in the way it was presented in AD&D2e.

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Find Familiar

1st level Conjuration (Ritual)

• Casting Time: 2-12 hours
• Range: 1 mile
• Components: V,S,M (10gp/hour of charcoal, incense and herbs that must be consumed by fire over the course of the ritual in a brass brazier)
• Duration: Instantaneous

This spell enables the caster to attempt to summon a familiar spirit to inhabit the body of a small creature, and to act as his or her aide and companion. Familiars are typically animals such as cats, frogs, ferrets, crows, hawks, snakes, owls, ravens, toads, weasels, or even mice, though more exotic creatures are sometimes (rarely) found in the role, such as imps, quasits, or pseudodragons.

A creature acting as a familiar can benefit a wizard, conveying its sensory powers to its master, conversing with them, and serving as a guard/scout/spy as well. A wizard can have only one familiar at a time, however, and he or she has no control over what sort of creature answers the summoning, if any at all comes. If an appropriate animal is supplied by the caster for use in the ritual, it can improve the chances that the spirit (if it answers the call at all) will inhabit the desired form.

The familiar will be of normal human intelligence — 3d6 (3-18) INT. It will normally be longer-lived than the normal animal, but familiars are not immortal, and the bodies will eventually wear out.

The wizard receives the heightened senses of his familiar, which grants the wizard a +1 bonus to Passive Perception.

Familiars have the same hit points and armour class as their animal prototype, plus 1 hit point per caster level.

The wizard can drop into a trance-like state in which he or she can see, hear, smell etc. through the familiar's senses. While in this state, the wizard has no use of their own senses, and cannot move about or perform any other actions. Any damage taken by one member of the link is also experienced by the other.

If separated from the caster, the familiar loses 1 hit point each day, and dies if reduced to 0 hit points. When the familiar is in physical contact with its wizard, it gains the wizard's saving throws against magical attacks. If a magical attack would normally cause damage, the familiar suffers no damage if the saving throw is successful and half damage if the saving throw is failed. If the familiar dies, the psychic shock is intense: the wizard must successfully make an immediate DC 10 CON save or drop to 0 hit-points (at which point they are dying — make Death Saves as usual). Even if he or she survives this check, the wizard permanently loses 1 point from their Constitution when the familiar dies.

When the wizard decides to find a familiar, he or she must load a brass brazier with charcoal. When this is burning well, he or she adds 10gp worth of incense and herbs per hour that the ritual lasts. The spell incantation is then begun and must be continued until the familiar comes or the casting time is finished. The DM secretly determines all results. Note that most familiars are not inherently magical, nor does a dispel magic spell send them away.

Deliberate mistreatment, failure to feed and care for the familiar, or continuous unreasonable demands have adverse effects on the familiar's relationship with its master. Purposely arranging the death of one's own familiar will almost certainly result in no spirit ever voluntarily acting as a familiar again.

A familiar spirit can be dismissed by means of a similar ritual as that which invokes one, whereupon the creature becomes a normal animal once again.

Random Familiar Summoning Results
D20 Roll	Familiar*	Sensory Powers
1-5	Cat	Excellent night vision & superior hearing
6-7	Crow	Excellent vision
8-9	Hawk	Very superior distance vision
10-11	Owl	Darkvision, superior hearing
12-13	Toad	Wide-angle vision
14-15	Weasel	Superior hearing & very superior olfactory power
16-20	No familiar available within spell range
* The DM can substitute other small animals suitable to the area.

Spell books

This is a page from an alchemical manuscript in the Getty collection, and it's a pretty good fit for how I imagine the instructions for casting spells to be written out in spell books in my campaign.

There's no explicit "Tak ye ane silvere bowle by Midnyte ynde fille it with ye Teares of Ane Pure Mayde..." sort of instructions here.

The numerical sequences would have relevance only to whoever it was who wrote them down, or to someone who had deciphered his or her unique system of notation.

The images might be literal renderings of how material spell components must be laid out, or perhaps they're just mnemonic aids to achieve a particular mental state. Or maybe both. Again, unless you know the specific system used by the original writer, having access to the page itself would be of limited usefulness.

As you can imagine, copying out a spell description like this would take plenty of time, concentration, patience and skill, and certainly wouldn't be the sort of task one would want to undertake in the primitive conditions of your average monster-infested dungeon.

So until you've managed to decipher the systems of notation and illustration as used by the person whose book you've just stolen acquired found, it's not going to be of a great deal of use to you. It's still valuable though, so don't lose it.

The Getting of Magical Spells

tl;dr
How I handle spell acquisition in my own campaign.

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When a magic-user character is created, they begin at level one with a rather limited magical repertoire consisting of Read Magic and 1-4 other randomly determined first-level spells. These are the spells allowed them by their erstwhile Master before being thrust out into the world to make their own way.

When they train to rise in level, they come away from their training with one new spell of their new level. Note that this assumes that the training is done under the guidance of a Master of higher level; if the wizard self-trains, then no new spell is gained.

Apart from the above circumstances, new spells must invariably be garnered in the course of the wizard's adventuring career.

The idea of a free exchange of knowledge is far from common amongst the wizarding community, and as a rule, magicians tend to become more and more secretive about their knowledge and skills as they gain in power. The only other wizard who can be relied on to share knowledge is the Master under whom one's apprenticeship was taken, and even then only if the Master and apprentice parted on good terms, and only to a very limited degree. The price for this cooperation is generally an undertaking to perform any tasks required by the Master, and naturally those tasks will likely be those the Master would rather not have to take care of themselves, due to their unpleasant or tedious or dangerous nature (or, likely enough, all three). Note that this is pretty much the only reason that any wizard would burden him or herself with an apprentice at all; few magicians are of a naturally charitable nature.

Transcribing Spells From Scrolls

The most common source of new spells is from scrolls: bought, found or stolen — and only the most common and puny of spells will generally be available for sale. Scrolls, unlike spells indited within a spellbook, are essentially charged one-use magic items and must be reverse-engineered to be transferred into a reusable set of instructions. This will require the use of one Read Magic spell per two spell-levels, to read the text without activating its magic, and to allow a literal transcription to a non-volatile form. Once that is done, the wizard can attempt to transcode the scroll text into their own notational system as if translating spells from another wizard's spellbook (see below).

Transcribing Spells From The Spellbook Of Another

Every wizard, in the course of their career, develops their own unique and idiosyncratic system of notation, based originally on that taught to them by their original Master, but diverging further and further as they undergo their own unique experiences and develop their own mnemonic codes and so on. For this reason, the spellbook of another wizard will almost never be immediately comprehensible, and will inevitably require careful study to allow a workable translation.

Assuming that magical means of translation aren't available, the chance of being able to decipher enough of a specific wizard's code to be able to then start transliterating the spells within his or her book(s) has a base of 50%, assuming the writer of the book is of the same level as the magician attempting to decode it.

This is modified by plus or minus 5% per level of difference between the reader, and writer at the time of writing. For example, a 5th level reader trying to decode the book of a 10th level wizard (5 levels below) would have a 25% chance of success. The same 5th level reader deciphering the book of a 1st level magician (4 levels above) would have a 70% chance to succeed.

This initial period of study takes 5-30 days, after which the d100 is rolled for success. A further period of study can be employed following a failure If that fails, the spellbooks will remain incomprehensible until the reader has risen at least one level, at which time they can try again.

If the reader succeeds, they can then begin translating the instructions within the book into their own system of notation. As a rule, this will take 2d4 hours of uninterrupted concentration per page, and will, of course, require access to inks, pens, and drawing instruments. This process requires absolute precision, and is not the sort of thing it would be wise to undertake in the Wild or the tunnels of the Underdark.

The chance of successfully transcribing a spell is the same as that of deciphering the notational system, but there is no limit to the number of times a failed attempt can be repeated. Note that in general the only way to find out if you have correctly transliterated the instructions is to attempt to cast the new spell.

Decoding a spell already known is considerably easier than attempting to decode instructions to one that is completely new. Add 5% to the chance of a successful transliteration for every character level above that of the level of the known spell. For example, a 5th level decoder attempting to transliterate a known 3rd level spell would add 10% to the chance of success (2 levels difference = +10%).

Each time a spell from a particular source is successfully transliterated, add 5% to the overall chance of success, to a maximum of +25%, as the decoder becomes more and more familiar with the original system. Success is never absolutely guaranteed however, and can never rise above 99%. (This includes multiple spells taken from scrolls, assuming that all were created by the same wizard).

Spell Book record sheet

I have created an A5 PDF for tracking the contents of a character's (or NPC's) spellbooks.

In my campaign, a standard spellbook is 100 pages, and each spell requires one page per spell-level* to inscribe. Therefore, the number of spells that can be written into a spellbook depends on the levels of the spells involved.

This file includes an array of check-boxes on the front page to indicate how many pages have been filled, and rows for the spell names, spell levels (and thus pages filled by them), casting/preparation time, and material components.

Using this form, it's a simple matter to keep track of which spell is in which book, how many books the character (or NPC) needs, and... and...

And probably some other stuff.

It should be handy for the DM too, for generating spellbooks-as-loot. The sheet can just be handed to the player when they manage to get past all the traps guarding the book. Or, if they don't... then not.

The PDF can be downloaded here. It's about 289KB.

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* Note: I've converted all the spells into 20 spell levels, so for normal campaigns that would be more like two pages per spell level.

Spell trading — collect the whole set! (No, don't)

For one reason or another (mainly from reading lots of Jack Vance and Terry Pratchett) I've always thought of wizards in my campaigns as being generally mutually suspicious, competitive, and often positively hostile to each other. That's fine as far as campaign background goes, but it's not really usually very workable as an intra-party vibe if players want their characters to survive for long. Cooperation is almost always a better survival strategy than competition.

Players will often want to combine their magical resources, so that there's a degree of redundancy in their spell-books. That's a good idea from a practical point of view, but it doesn't fit well with the campaign background.

It's a simple matter, however, to discourage on-the-fly spell trading without arbitrarily forbidding it. All you have to do is make it a long, difficult, expensive and risky process, and it will happen rarely, if at all.

 In my own campaign, I see magic-users' spellbooks as being like a cross between the Lindisfarne gospels and the Voynich manuscript; ornately illuminated and written in a unique personal code.

It's possible to copy a spell from one wizard's book into another, but it will require a whole lot of Read Magic spells, access to expensive inks and what-not, and plenty of time — at least 1d4 days per spell level. Also, there's a small chance (actual % depending on the ratio of caster and spell level) that the process will destroy the original, like reading a spell from a scroll. Even that tiny risk, along with having to surrender control of their spellbook for so long, makes most players unwilling to freely share their spells with others. However, it does make it possible for MU characters to expand their repertoire from found/stolen material as long as they're prepared to devote the time and resources to doing so.

Talking Animals

I was reading through some AD&D spell descriptions yesterday, and noted that the druid and magic-user versions of Reincarnation differ quite dramatically in the range of critters a dead character can come back as. The druid spell will probably bring you back as an animal of some kind, while the magic-user version will always result in some humanoid type or other.

Dark Sword anthropomorphic mouse fighter,
nice miniatures, if you like that sort of thing

In my Swords & Wizardry campaigns, I've conflated the magic-user and cleric spell lists, so there's just the one version of reincarnation, and there's no set list of resulting creature types. It occurs to me that the spell would be an ideal explanation for the existence of talking anthropomorphic animals with opposable thumbs and a bad attitude....

It's an outcome that would have to be employed with some care. Not every player is a secret (or not-so-secret) furry, not every player is going to enjoy waking up as a talking badger. But for those who swing that way, it could be fun, until the novelty wears off.

I've never really seen the point of the druidic reincarnation spell; it always seemed to me that it was mostly a pointless waste of time and an annoying "gotcha!" — your character dies, boo-hoo, but not to worry, you can be reincarnated! And you come back to life, but as a muskrat or something, and scurry off to burrow through the leaf-litter eating bugs (or whatever muskrats do). Not a lot of scope for adventuring there.

Regeneration/Resurrection Spells (S&W/OD&D)

I like to have potent magical healing available in my campaign, so that players need not have to discard a beloved character just because of some unfortunate accident with a giant razor-sharp scything blade-trap of DOOOOOOOOM. However, I don't much like the idea of healing magic being so convenient that reattaching a limb is as easy as applying a band-aid. To that end, here's my idea for Regeneration and Resurrection spells:

Regenerate
Spell Level: Cleric L5
Range: Touch
Duration: variable (permanent)

This spell allows the cleric to reattach or regrow missing limbs and/or organs.

A regenerating creature must be obtained and restrained, and exactly the same damage inflicted on it as on the spell recipient*. Then the cleric creates a mystical link between the two creatures, so that the intended recipient partakes of the other creature's regeneration as it heals.

The length of time it takes to complete the spell depends on the regenerative ability of the creature being leeched off, and the amount of damage that needs to be healed. The cleric must maintain full concentration throughout the process or else all benefit is lost, and the spell must be started again from scratch.

* Note that this is likely to make the creature quite angry.

Resurrection
Spell Level: Cleric L7
Range: Touch
Duration: variable (permanent)

This spell allows the cleric and up to 1d6 others to enter a mystical trance, during which their spirits pass over into the Spirit Realm*. Once there, they can track down the spirit of someone deceased and return with it to its body. The corpse will be regenerated by the spirit's self-image once it is returned to the Material Plane, so that when the spell is complete it will be whole and entire, even if it was originally nothing but bones.

The nature of, and dangers inherent in travelling the Spirit Realm are at the discretion of the individual GM. I suggest that it not be entirely easy or straightforward; casting (or partaking in the casting) of this spell can be the basis for a whole adventure in itself. I'd also suggest that the GM should adjust the difficulty of finding the correct spirit according to how long they have been dead.

All sorts of complications come to mind: traditionally the gods of the dead have been reluctant to give up their subjects, and may require placating (or duping) to get away with the dead 'un. The spirit of the dead person may have no memory of their life on earth, and may be unwilling to go back -- in that case, they would actually have to be kidnapped. The possibilities for fun are endless!

*This could probably be handled in the same way as Astral Travel, but that would be up to the individual GM