✨ Magic

I was thinking about magic the other day and how I think it works—or at least my default, for settings I run.

Being between books this week, I was re-reading random parts of Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicles and one of the sections I read was Kvothe’s introduction to sygaldry. In that universe, sygaldry is the name given to a form of magic based on engraving runes. While the runes have names and meanings, and there are structures that you must follow that are vaguely like a grammar, the runes themselves aren’t a language.

I tend to run settings with decent amount of magic in them, and I think most of it looks a lot like this kind of lower-case-a artificery. Such runes are teachable, and learnable, they don’t require a pact or a sorcerer-like natural gift. Maybe there aren’t a ton of people eager to teach just anyone, but if you can remember then, and learn to carve them effectively, it’s the runes that do the work of magic.

One of the tavern owners in Rothfuss’ books has a wood box that’s always cold, thanks to some runes carved on the side. Why wouldn’t most successful barkeeps end up with something like this, in a world of D&D magic? A common magic item, a frost box.

I think this is how you get magic weapons, too. You need the weapon to be of the right materials and quality construction to not tear apart from the forces the runes apply. And—to stay within the RAW—maybe the act of creating it requires the expenditure of personal magic power (spell slots) to stabilize the blade during the inscribing process. But once it’s done and stable, it’s now the runes channeling and bending the weave of magic around it. It can’t be “dispelled”, but maybe you could find a way to scratch out the enchantment.

This would extend into spell scrolls and even into wizards’ spellbooks. The way you inscribe them, the structure, the connecting runes and the other information you’d include would be different than on a permanent magic item. You’d need ways to encode the verbal and somatic elements—spells, after all, are not just the words.

So what?

This is, I think, mostly flavor, but with some minor mechanical implications.

I think most spellcasters would be at least vaguely familiar with the major runes. Wizards would likely know them all, and probably bards. Divine casters probably need to know the fewest? I could be convinced that any particular character is more or less fluent—especially based on their Arcana modifier.

Any spellcaster reading a spell scroll could probably get the gist. “It looks like it makes fire—see that big one in the middle? I think it’s in one spot… maybe at one target?” It might be more difficult to tell firestorm apart from wall of fire: “fire again, in an area, I think maybe you can shape it?”

Technically, this isn’t RAW. The DMG rules on spell scrolls say that if it isn’t on your class’ spell list, “the scroll is unintelligible”. I disagree with that. I’d houserule that it’s an Arcana check to figure out what it does, maybe say the DC is equal to 10 + the spell’s level.

I don’t think that necessarily changes the RAW limitation on who can use a particular scroll. (Though plenty of people house-rule this for the sake of fun.) If you’re an arcane caster looking at a scroll of cure wounds, I feel like it would seem incomplete to you. You’d know what it was trying to do, but something wouldn’t fit, like an unbalanced chemical equation. Trying to fix it, the way you understand how magic works, just might not work out.

Between Scrolls and Potions

Mechanically, it does feel like there’s a gap, and I think that’s why people house-rule scrolls. Ignoring—for the moment—that, practically, most of these things are found, not crafted, by the part:

Spell scrolls are like an extra spell slot you prepare ahead of time and use later. They require the same material components in their creation. They are full castings of the spell, taking concentration as normal, with no reduced effects. Spell scrolls are limited to classes who could cast the spell anyway.

Potions that replicate a spell are almost always worse versions of that spell. Compare the spell water breathing (24 hours, 10 creatures, no concentration) to the potion (one creature, one hour, no concentration); or cure wounds (1d8 + modifier, probably more than +2) to a potion of healing (2d4 + 2). Potions can be used by anyone and they generally don’t require concentration.

In neither case can things to too wrong, under normal circumstances (though I like both the variant scroll mishaps and potion mixing rules).

The only real problem with making scrolls usable by anyone is flavor. Given how I think magic works, and given that scrolls have an element of spellcasting baked in (how would a non-caster make an ability check to use one?), it seems like maybe we need something else that fills a similar mechanical niche, but is flavored differently.

Bouncing this around with Noam and Saterade we came up with single-use spell gems. (Or wands, or sticks, or rods, whatever item makes sense to you.)

Gems in particular have a few nice properties, though most of these you could translate.

First, there’s already some precedence in published rules: there’s the spell gem, the reusable item; there’s the helm of brilliance, covered in single-use gems; there’s Drawmij’s instant summons, which imbues a gem with a single magical charge.

Second, gems are small, portable, already in random loot tables—in fact, this makes them potentially more interesting.

Third, because they’re small and portable, gems could all be stuffed into a bag. And doesn’t a bunch of spells clinking around in a bag sound fun?

Fourth, without identify, you really don’t have much to go off to figure out what it does. How much of a hint is up to the DM.

As a first pass at rules, I think these work sort of like a one-time-use ring of spell-storing. Anyone can use them. They require the original casting time, and have the original duration, including concentration. They use the spellcasting ability modifier, spell save DC, or spell attack bonus of the original caster. They crumble to dust after being used.

But to make things interesting, this is potentially a lot of magical power stored in a small space. Maybe a sack full of 1st level spells isn’t a huge risk, but storing a bunch of higher-level spell gems together could have exciting results. I don’t know what the exact ruling or mechanic is here, yet. But it’ll be fun to find out!