I wrote 300 wizard spells for a homebrew I'm making for me and my friends. But when they see 58 pages of spells to pick from at level 1 their eyes kinda glaze over.
The spells are all available at level 1. Some are more situational than others, sure, but I don't really want to get rid of any... and they're already sorted by school (Abjuration, Necromancy, so on).
How can I make my big spell list more palatable to my easily-overwhelmed homies?
Adam Brooks
Bait? Because 53 Homebrewer spells sounds stupid. Cut the fluff man.
Nolan Bennett
>palatable maybe write a little less about each spell?
Luke Morris
Curate that shit. Get the players to propose character ideas to you, and you mention a few spells they should check out based on what they want to play. Same as what you'd do for any other group of players new to a system.
Jack Ross
Not bait, it's a real system I've been working on.
And there's really minimal fluff per spell, just rules.
That's what I've been doing so far and it seems to go okay. Maybe I should make a table with brief five-word summaries of what the spells do?
I understand the issue... like in theory I want my players to have a LOT of spells to choose from as a wizard. But in practice, my players sit down to make a character and suddenly they gotta read through a big honking technical manual...
Ayden Lewis
If they don't want to choose, they'll randomly roll for them and they'll like it.
Carter Gomez
Don't make them available at level 1?
Let them discover spells later on. Like in an old wizard's spell book in a treasure hoard.
You shouldn't have all of the possible spells known and available right away. There should be some mystery in the world.
Josiah Hall
Put a comprehensive list ordered alphabetically at the beginning. Include basic information like the name of the spell, casting time, duration, range, damage (if applicable), school, type of saving throw (if applicable), components required to cast (verbal, somatic, material). Include anything else that you consider important as well. This may help the players sort through spells since they can just skim over a list and just look up the ones with names that catch their eye.
Also, as a fan of homebrew spells myself, would you mind posting a pdf of your spells?
Jayden Wilson
Proper categorization, after theme and/or function, whatever suits your homebrew best.
Lincoln Taylor
disregard the last part, I just now see the pdf
Isaiah Thomas
I second both of these ideas.
Adam Richardson
The idea is that these are "safe" spells that you could learn in school. Designed so that if something goes wrong while casting, the spell just fizzles. There are all sorts of weird-ass, potentially dangerous spells and fragments of spells to be found throughout the world, I promise.
Casting time is almost always the same, and components are always material (but I do them like... you jam the component into your spellbook and then you can keep reusing it.)
I could definitely do a table but I can't think of anything more to include but Name/School/Effect. And probably no better way to categorize but by school. Do you think that'd be good enough?
Jose Reed
First, cut ones that probably on't see much use or are not worth it. Like from the get-go, acquiring the spell component for Dictate is already more effort than what the spell is worth.
Then, consolidate spells. Find redundancies, figure out what spells can be hybridized or mixed together.
Then, categorize them. Put them in broad categories to help make referencing and understanding them easier.
Then, slash the spells wildly so that there are only a handful per level. Choose your favourites, or the ones that you expect to be popular.
Then, release all the extra ones as a splatbook.
Bonus Option: Dont use Vancian casting to begin with
Jace Lewis
>figure out what spells can be hybridized or mixed together Honestly, this. Most games seem to have those token spells like "does 5d6 damage to target" in their core books, but then after all the splat stuff comes out all the players flock to the more flexible ones like"does 4d6 to target OR can be used to [roleplay gimmick]". If you look at wizards in fiction, many of them are able to stretch the limits of what their casting is capable of; very few memorable characters are limited to "this spell does this and ONLY this in this particular situation".
Try combining some of the more simplistic spells into more complex forms. Even if it makes the description a little longer to memorize, they'll probably be more attractive for your players to take.
Jack Baker
I could cut or consolidate a few with no regrets.
Components are stored in your spellbook kinda like a bag of holding -- once you have a cup of coffee in your book you can cast Dictate forever.
And you start the game with all the components for your starting spells.
As for categories... I've really wrung my hands over this but I can't think of better categories than the schools of magic. Spells that do damage: Evocation. Spells that fuck with people's senses: Enchantment.
I definitely need more playtesting. And yeah, there are some spells that I don't expect to be popular... like Lucky Guess. It's a shit spell but I can still see someone wanting that spell for a certain character idea, or getting a character idea based on that spell, so I'm not sure I want to gut it, yknow?
I don't think I can do splatbooks because at this point it'd just be Day 1 DLC. And I'm just making it for my friends anyway.
And only wizards use Vancian casting. Sorcerers, Druids, Clerics, Warlocks, they all got their own types of magic to deal with.
Sebastian Sanchez
I'm the guy you're replying to
I'd also suggest maybe an entirely different philosophy on magic.
Like instead of having a tool for every situation, to me personally, it's more fun to have a few tools that I need to be creative with. Know what I mean?
Camden Perry
Maybe try to put a bullet list? It doesn't have to explain the rules, just what it does. Like "Dictate : a magic pen writes what you say on some paper. (p. XX) "
Then the list is only a few pages long, the players can get an idea of which spells interest them and can go look at the more specidix rules related to this spell.
Wyatt Cooper
For that it'd be possible to learn obly a few spells per level even if all are accessible. Say at level 1 you learn five spells. You can choose any from the 300, but once you've chosen them that's all you have until next level, and you have to work with it?
Logan Butler
Acid Arrow, Bowers, Confidence, Magic Missile... there are a few spells that are really basic, pure math spells like that 5d6 thing. But for the most part I had roleplay gimmicks in mind. Take a look, yo, maybe you'll disagree.
I totally agree! I've kept that philosophy in mind while building other classes, too. And for wizards, I wanted to make sure each spell was really situational and that as a wizard you only get a handful of em.
I think that's what I'll have to do. Write up really brief summaries in a table and see if that helps.
Jaxson Reyes
Why do you need 300 additional wizard spells?
Landon Howard
You could just let someone choose certain schools and then roll for starting spells, then they won't need to look through everything. I would also definitely combine some spells together like just having one spell that lets you summon milk, molasses, or grease, instead of a spell for each.
Jason Murphy
>material components
Get rid of this shit. Of course nobody wants to play a game with 300 spells if you have to stuff your inventory with junk for every one
David Parker
Divide them into Offensive, Defensive and Assist. Offensive spells do damage defensive prevent damage done or reduce damage, Assist spells help others.
Isaac Cruz
>Of course I don't want to play a game with 300 spells if you have to stuff your inventory with junk for every one
FTFY
Andrew Bell
I agree with him though
Eli Jones
What is this campaign? Mary Potter?
Samuel Scott
Many of these spells are fucking retarded and/or useless, plus random as fuck material components means that only people looking to play a very specific flavor of game would ever use this. However, it'd just be easier for them to mod an existing system than use this shit in the first place. But mostly retarded as fuck components. Lets list a few selected at random: >a red hot coal that’s burnt your hand >a crown >a stolen fruit > a sex worker’s earring > a clean undergarment weighing less than one ounce >a middle manager (fucking what?) > a signed copy of the Budget Telekinesis contract from Squidshine’s
Come the fuck on bro. >
Isaac Davis
>inventory management is fun
You're the cancer killing traditional games. Fuck off back to >>>r/pgs
Julian Ward
I agree with you
Anthony Evans
If you're going to use material components for spells, every spell shouldn't use a different material. Have a list of twenty or so core components, and combinations of them lead to different effects. So a fireball uses a chunk of coal, and a wall of fire needs coal + a clod of earth or something.
You could even let your players experiment, see what different combinations might lead to.
Chase Barnes
I don't like inventory management either. I like the idea of material components as part of a magic system but I don't want to keep track of a hundred feathers and spend gems and shit all day.
A: Components aren't expended. You only need one cup of coffee to cast Dictate as many times as you want.
B: You start the game with the components you need to cast your spells.
C: Those components are stored in your spellbook, bag of holding style. Don't even need to write shit in your inventory.
Therefore, components only matter when...
A: You're learning a new spell. "I have to find a crown to put in my spellbook so I can cast whatever"
B: Your component gets stolen somehow.
C: You are taking the spellbook of some wizard you just killed, you dump the components out of his spellbook's index and a bunch of random shit falls out. Rifle through the loot, whatever.
D: or if you get really desperate for a cup of coffee I guess.
This isn't inventory management. It's just my way of doing components, it makes sense for my magic system, my players like the mini-quests when it's time to go find a component. And they like the fluff, one of the wizards is an author who makes loads of money rewriting spells to have cheaper components.
It's a regular-ass fantasy setting that my players and I have fleshed out. Except business and financial tools are like 500 years ahead.
Ayden Morgan
Components, components. Man, either I shouldn't have posted the pdf without taking components out... or I should have explained how spellcasting works in my system/setting first.
I feel you on this, it always felt more organic and fluid. And that's pretty similar to how my druids work. But being a wizard and writing spells is pretty rigid and technical. When you write a spell you can theoretically define the component as whatever you want as long as you write the spell to account for it.
But if you're trying to write an explosion spell with a chunk of coal as the component and it's just not working very well, you might keep rewriting the spell to make it fit the chunk of coal, or you might instead do some testing and find that it works really well as written if you use a fingernail as the component. And even better if it's your dad's fingernail. And if that'll stand up to peer review, why bother trying to force it to work with coal? You can publish or sell as is.
Nathaniel Ross
Even if you only need one crown or middle manager or signed copy of the Budget Telekinesis contract from Squidshine’s, that shit is still pretty dumb. Are there epic level spells? Do they require the trapped last breath the last member of a then extinct species? A halfling dream of a very elaborate and specific brunch? The fetus of your aborted self from an alternate timeline? How retarded does this stuff get? Is it SUPER SPECIFIC? Will a bigger cup of coffee make the spell better? Will the type affect it? What if the cup is made of gold?
Owen Nguyen
>"OR can be used to [roleplay gimmick]" I don't expect sourcebooks to note all of said gimmicks, but sometimes... >playing 3.5 >buy gallons of kerosene >cover perimeter of a kobold camp with it >cast Energy Ray (Fire) at kerosene pool >GM says nothing happens, because the system has no rules to govern that mechanical interaction
Christian Hernandez
These 300 spells are just the spells you'd find in a school library. As for other spells? I don't know how I'd justify some spells being "epic-level." Just rarer, more expensive, better-protected by the wizards that wrote them.
For example, I am not sure why a wizard would write a spell such that the component is a halfling dream... unless, of course, that wizard had a halfling dream in a jar and decided to use it as the component so that (basically) nobody who copied the spell could cast it.
Look at Squidshine's spells. Squidshine makes a ton of money writing really useful spells and then making sure every wizard who wants to cast... Fireball or Telekinesis or Heroism can only get the component from his shop.
The listed component cost is what it is. If it needed to be strong black coffee in a big blue cup it'd say so. If the spell could be affected by non-essential qualities of the component somehow, like False Alignment or Verve, it'd say so. But if the spell asks for a cup of coffee, give the spellbook a cup of coffee.
Alexander Butler
As others have said, the material components are whack. You have to make them so they are things that could reasonably be found in a phanny pack/component pouch.
The spells seem interesting though.
Easton Scott
>material components for prestidigitation >a 3 page essay graded A+
????????????????????????????
Anthony Thompson
Why is every magic system 'spells' and not actual interesting or unique fucking magic?
Angel Russell
>I wrote 300 wizard spells for a homebrew I'm making for me and my friends I feel so bad for you.
I never use homebrew spells my DM made (granted he didn't really ask). I think it broke both our hearts. I know how much work he put into it, but they just aren't as good as other spells. It's like turning down a hand-made present, it just makes me feel like the worst person in the world. Maybe next time I'll just use them anyway despite the power downgrade, just to humor the guy, make us feel less bad.
Liam Turner
Everyone just makes their system needlessly complex in other ways (instead of 300 spells, you have 10 schools each with 10 selectors, 10 effects, and 10 targets, and any magic can be modified on the fly with dice rolls).
Or it's so freeform that combat turns into 20 minute GM negotiations whenever you cast a spell.
Ian Flores
using avatars is against the rules btw
Elijah Moore
It's an autistic satisfaction.
Thomas Nguyen
That would be fine. Name, school, and the effect in like 7 words or less. Page number is nice, but not so necessary when they can search the pdf
Jace Green
All right that is pretty fucking neato, man.
Lincoln Wood
Hate component based magic.
What's the point of being magical if I need some random things to cast the smallest spell. For things that are more powerful like wish like spells require consumed components or arcane foci
Xavier Morales
A good middle ground is not to require them to be able to cast a spell, but as an enhancement to them.
Lincoln Ramirez
That's actually not a bad idea.
Three fucking hundred of anything to sort through and pick the best from (or at least the ones that best fit your character) is a terrible idea, however.
I've had players not just have their eyes glaze over but nope straight out of the game when looking at lists of ~36 skills for the first time.
Maybe drop them down to a list of ~30-50 main ones and put the rest into a couple different categories of 'cool but not as generically useful.'
Grayson Sanders
>But when they see 58 pages of spells to pick from at level 1 their eyes kinda glaze over. Where's the problem? As new spells come available, they will pick one or the other. In fact, you can make it an easter egg game to gind the best spells. If they're not interested in that, they'll just pick some sub-par spells and be done with it. This is not necessarily a problem.
Just keep gaming with your players and if they don't like something, they'll probably tell you what, sooner or later.
Isaiah Murphy
The problem, as I understand it, is that OP dumped 58 pages of spells on his players all at once. They get to sort through all that shit all at once to figure out which ones to take.
There is no "as new spells come available," they're all available right now and his players have to deal with that entire list right off the bat.
That said OP, changing it so that only a few are available immediately and they get access to a few random ones every so often would work wonders for making it easier for your players to process the list.
Colton Evans
Instead of this ludicrous bullshit, how about we do:
>Cast Spell >Effect: Describe to the GM what the effect of the spell is and they will set a DC for you. >Damage: If the spell also deals damage, the DC is higher. [insert scalable balanced spell damage formula]
And then wizards can make it up themselves and we get rid of all this bloated shit and can actually roleplay??
Cameron Miller
Because not everyone likes making up numbers on the spot for a spell. Things need to be balanced, and it's hard to do that on the spot.
Lincoln Johnson
If its a spell that will only get used once in the entire campaign, or not at all, you probably don't need it. Take the ones you like, but know aren't critical and keep them for NPCs or encounters that players can learn from later rather than flooding them with choice paralysis.
Formatting is a thing here too. If you make your font size smaller, have two columns of spells per page, and gut to 100 max it'll be easier for your players to deal with.
How many of them are spell users?
Grayson Barnes
reporting back in. I read some more of these spells, and most of them are broken as fuck for level 1.
Daniel Torres
Well no wonder they don't want to read it. Look at all this useless cruft. Salt, Bottle, Barrel, Snug, Stale... And I've barely dug into this.
There are two problems here: 1. More is not better. Even if you manage to make each spell unique, you just end up creating decision paralysis with your players as they struggle to choose from an overwhelming set of options. 2. Most of these spells are far too situational. With only a limited number of spells, players want the ones with the most power/utility. Creating a pile of salt isn't even worth comparing to something like Mage Hand.
You should cut everything down to only core, useful spells. I would slash half of those with only a single review pass, and you'll need to axe or fix more than that.
Adrian Jones
>>Caring about balance >>Playing a wizard pick one
Andrew Morris
Make premade spellbooks that have themes based on school, culture and profession. Then just give them one fitting of their character.
As they adventure they will encounter new spells at a slower, controlled rate.
Nicholas Gonzalez
Make them difficult to get in game. It's like Pokemon, or magic items. If the player has to work to discover them then they appreciate them way more.
Wyatt Gutierrez
>Salt >When you cast this spell you summon edible sodium chloride salt.
>Bottle >You create a clear, chemically nonreactive bottle in your hand. This bottle has a stopper.
>Snug >The clothes of target creature within 15 feet shrink by one size
This reminds of FATAL or something.
It's an interesting concept. It reads just like if you went to some wizardry school and just leafed through the index of random spells. Not a bad read.
But it really seems totally fucking worthless from the perspective of a player, because like 9/10ths or that stuff is stuff you'd never need or want to use, and to get to the spells that you might actually use at some point you have to read through all the pointless ones. Maybe create a seriously edited-down version, like a version that's just stuff that seems immediately useful to a normal adventurer?
Aaron Brooks
This is actually really cool and creative. Thanks for posting OP I will almost certainly steal some of your ideas.
Logan Reyes
>most of them are broken as fuck
>Most of these spells are far too situational
Yeah, I can see how it's a little of both. A lot of these spells are written for worldbuilding purposes - not every wizard needs Magic Missile more than they need Bellows.
And a lot of spells are written so that my players will read it and think "how the fuck could I use that? ... I could cast Snug a few times on a dude wearing a sturdy leather belt.)
My players are Johnnys, they eat that shit up. And their characters tend more toward "Corporate Spy for a Brewing Company" than "Normal Adventurer."
On the other hand, I agree. If you've got a construction project you probably have an idea of the tools you'll need. And I'm forcing you to closely examine every item in Home Depot one at a time.
Stealing from me? I'm flattered. I'd be happy to share some other stuff I made for this system if you want? A lot of it definitely needs revision/clarification, though. And in general it really is designed only for a certain type of player.
Samuel Price
I'm different, but I want your stuff. I'm homebrewing something that's pretty different in tone and feel to what you have going on but I'm always looking for inspiration.
Brandon Mitchell
>I wrote 300 wizard spells for a homebrew I'm making for me and my friends.
Why did you do that? What made you think that would be a good idea?
>But when they see 58 pages of spells to pick from at level 1 their eyes kinda glaze over.
Well, what did you think was gonna happen?
Ryder Jones
Do your spell list like 3.5 did feats. Make a small chart or table that takes up 2 or right pages that lasts all the names. That way your players will see things they are interested in and then look up that one specifically. Much better than having them listed the way you have it now.
Jack Gonzalez
Personally, I'm into it
Grayson Sullivan
I love what you did mate. That's the kind of shit people ought to do more instead of complaining about how X or Y isn't to their liking. I'd like to see the rest of your homebrew if you're ok with that.
Caleb Morris
>I wrote 300 wizard spells for a homebrew You glorious motherfucker
Owen Morgan
I actually Kinda like this, it needs some form of organization though.