Let’s talk about Magic. For many of us, it’s the driving motivator, the spark that ignited the flame of our love of the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. While we may have stuck around for many of the other beloved elements of the game, it all still boils down to the promise of getting to play out fantasies of wielding world-altering powers in often heroic, and sometimes not-so-heroic ways. 

Within the class spell lists and sourcebook details is a wealth of information on how various spells are executed. Open up any spell description and you can learn its effects, school, and the various mechanics for casting it, just to name a few. Based on just this information alone a player can gain valuable insight into what is involved whenever their character unleashes a spell. 

But as useful as spellcasting is as a problem-solving tool within a campaign, it can also be an extremely effective way of weaving your character’s personality into the narrative in an explosive and exciting way. This is why Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything encourages players to consider different ways of personalizing their spells. Visualizing how your spellcaster goes through the act of incantation can help you pull them off the page into a three-dimensional creation. Likewise, the inclusion of the Artificer Class into 5e and the way they use tools to do their magic provides a great opportunity to remind ourselves of the different ways the same spell might be cast by all the different spell classes.

When I go through the process of selecting new spells for my characters, especially early on in the character creation process, I like to ask myself questions about them.

• Where and how did they actually learn the spell?
• What is the actual source of the magic they use on a daily basis?
• What is their relationship to their magic?

Let’s look at a few different examples of personalized spellcasting and how they reflect on the characters using them. 

There’s More Than One Way to Start a Fire 

To show just how versatile personalized spellcasting can be, let’s zoom in on a single spell. We’ll go with one of the most commonly referenced spells in D&D: Fireball. 

One of my current campaigns is heavily focused on the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book, with a bit of Greyhawk-set homebrew and tweaks to the narrative thrown in at the whims of our DM. Last summer a crew of us found ourselves exploring a dungeon chock-full of Sahuagin alongside a guest player, Laura, whose character was a Triton Sorcerer we rescued along the way. Upon entering a room that was filled with our fishy foes, she suggested we all stand back while she unleashed a surprise Fireball on them. 

The spell went off exactly how it’s written to, each Sahuagin within a 20-foot radius making saving throws or facing her full burning wrath. When Laura described the action, however, rather than the typical explosion of flame, she described what our characters witnessed as more akin to the boiling hydrothermal geysers that you might find along the seafloor. I always think of this as an example of a simple but brilliant choice for a character. As a character who has spent most of her life underwater, her access to literal flames would probably be very limited. But that wouldn’t mean she’d have no exposure to concepts of extreme heat and how that could be wielded on an elemental level to do harm in a clutch moment.

This wasn’t just a tossed-out aside for Laura. This was integral to the entire concept of her character. For her, it wasn’t just a cosmetic change to a common spell. It was as much a part of her character’s background as her ideals or flaws. Through deciding what her Fireball would look like, she gained an understanding of this particular sorcerer and how she interacted with, and manipulated, the world around her. Likewise, she taught the rest of us at the table a tiny little fragment of info about her character by tossing that spell out the way she did, same as if she let slip a bit of her backstory in conversation. 

Meanwhile in another game, one of my own Sorcerers, albeit much more of the landlubber half-elf variety, struggled a lot to control her Wild Magic. When I was selecting spells for her, I purposefully picked the ones that felt least like she’d be able to rein them in when things went down. I chose spells like Witch Bolt or Chaos Bolt, and eventually Fireball. When we’d find ourselves in a heap of trouble, I’d describe her spellcasting almost as if she were desperately trying to contain the raw power spilling out of her, struggling against her raw heightened emotions. So while her introduction to the spells may have been more typical, her relationship with them was much more incendiary. A Fireball from her would be a Fireball, but it would erupt out of her as she lost control of herself. 

Like those undersea geysers, my sorcerer’s Fireball was just as much an eruption, but rather than steaming out of geysers, it was passionate chaos erupting directly from her. It was a storytelling way of leaning into the raw chaos of Wild Magic outside of the mechanics of rolling on the chart for Tides of Chaos. It was a way of representing in-character that this was a person whose magic was dangerous. Out of character, of course, I was in as much control of her as any other dice-based spellcaster, but in character, the fury of her spellcasting served as a beacon to the fact that she was a magical hot mess and perhaps other characters might not want to stand so close to her. 

A Few Match Strikes

Those are some pretty character-specific examples of how the same spell is cast. Let’s look at some quicker, broader examples of how a few different character types could approach it. 

Wizard: The classic, right? Are you going old school with the balls sulfur and bat guano? Are they pre-mixed and shapes in small baggies just waiting for the right vocals and somatics to be added in before they’re flung into the fray? Or perhaps you’re a wandy type and you have that flourish that your mentor taught you burned (pun intended) into your muscle memory. Maybe your Fireball is always very uniform to reflect the discipline of your intense arcane studies.

Light Domain Cleric: Not all lords of light are made equal, and how their devout followers harness their divine spells might vary from Cleric to Cleric. Maybe a small spiritual avatar of your deity carries the fireball to its destination. Maybe your Fireball carries a glimmer of starlight or the literal Silver Flame. 

Fiend Warlock: If you’re pulling your magic energies from otherworldly evil masters, it makes sense that the Fireball abilities they grant you would take on a twinge of their flavor as well. Maybe your Fireball reeks of sulfur and resembles hellfire? Maybe it takes the form of a flaming sword flung through the air, or even a flaming Imp or Quasit, summoned in service of your shared Dark Lord, ready to sacrifice itself in a fiery blaze to help you get out of a bar tab. 

Bard: Magical Secrets are amazing, aren’t they? But when a Bard lifts their spells entirely from someone else’s toybox, how is that reflected in their own usage of it? A more musically inclined Bard might unleash the fire directly from their instrument in a burning fiddle, “Devil Down to Georgia” type way. A College of Swords Bard taking the spell at level 10 might incorporate it into their sword flourishes, shooting out Fireballs from the tip of their blade. Meanwhile, the newly announced College of Spirits from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft already features the power to draw on spirits to learn spells from outside their class, so perhaps they might entice those same spirits to heat things up a bit? 

As you can see, even within the realm of a single spell there are almost limitless ways to change and adapt your spellcasting to heighten your character and add new dimensions to the table’s storytelling.

How have you personalized spells to reflect your own characters and campaigns? Let us know in the comments! 

Riley Silverman is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles. 

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