So the BBEG of my homebrew campaign, before he Doc Manhanttaned himself and reformed into a school of Transmutation Lich, cast a level 10 spell to try and cure all disease and such on the planet. It backfired and made lychanthropy worse and permanent on some (reason for furry characters to exist), created undead and aberrations, and other such atrocities such as residual magic radiation from the casting. What I need advice on is that my players found the tome and are gonna start trying to understand it. I don't understand the lore behind magic but want it to be believable. I also need help on the mechanics of the spell as its more or less level 10 mass greater regeneration or something. Thanks for any advise. Also this is my first time posting in the forums. Sorry for any mistakes.
Ok so first and foremost you should probably be a little more descriptive for a number of these events and or the aftereffects.
I am going to make some guesses here. But really you are saying an incredibly potent wizard (of Transmutation) attempt to get rid of all the diseases from the world, up to and including things like lycanthropy. Something went wrong with this massive undertaking and instead of removing these diseases it made them more widespread (maybe diffused the lycanthropic curse to many people) and changed his own body into something that cannot die (maybe not a lich in the strictest sense but similar). This also had the side effect of causing all manner of 'unnatural' events to occur across the world and creatures created by these events. The players have this wizards Spellbook? notes? personal journal? Why is he a bad guy after the spell went off? Is he still trying to fix whatever went wrong?
As for the spell itself, it sounds like he was trying to cast multiple wish spells simultaneously or in sequence. No real need to create some new spell. Can you imagine a cabal of lvl 20 wizards all working together to cast multiple Wishes? Maybe it was the fact that not everyone had quite the same thing in mind for how the spell should work causing some friction between all these potent castings going off. Perhaps there was one bad apple in the group who wanted to use this gathering for something more sinister up to and including BBEG. I think the idea should be that the Wishes that were made didn't quite line up and it caused something of the fabric of the Weave of Magic to become torn and twisted in some spots. Weak in some ares (magic dead zones) and incredibly potent in others physically warping the creatures like a magical radiation you mentioned. Maybe the gods stepped in and said NO THIS LINE YOU SHALL NOT CROSS and the result of the spells being interrupted caused a massive backlash of energy.
I hope this helps you a little.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Thank you for replying it definitely helps. And to add on, the players have the BBEG's spellbook and yes the gods stepped in to stop the casting and that caused a giant magical explosion releasing a bunch of magical radiation and other adverse effects like spreading the diseases instead of curing them, creating undead and having all creatures not blessed or killed via radiant damage come back as zombies, and creating abberations. Would a Wish spell really be enough then to cover what I want done? The reason the big bad is a Tranmute wizard is because the Transmuters Stone feat and Master Transmuter which I wanted to incorporate into the spell casting and spellbook. And he isn't really that evil he just thinks if he recasts the spell it'll work this time. No alterations to the spell or changing anything. He will just straight cast it again and the same thing would happen but to a already damaged world. Does this make things clearer? Does a group or wizards make more sence than just 1? If there is any other advise you can give Im game as I am a very new DM. Thanks.
So thus is the lore reason behind the spell level limit (for forgotten realms anyway): a long time ago magic wasn't limited and everyone (even commoners) could do magic with a little practice. There wasn't a spell level limit either, and wizards who were very practiced could cast 10th and 11th level spells. Then one wizard created tge first 12th level spell which would let him temporarily replace a god and take all their powers. He tried to take the mantle of god of magic, and this ****ed up magic pretty bad. Like hundreds of years of no magic and gods losing their divinity kind of bad. After that the new God of magic set a limit to magic so that could never happen again. Magic would be less common, and no one person could cast a spell above level 9.
Higher level magic can be cast with a group of high level arcane casters, but the strain will likely kill many of them. Multiple wizards casting wish for the same wish could be one way to accomplish higher level magic.
So thus is the lore reason behind the spell level limit (for forgotten realms anyway): a long time ago magic wasn't limited and everyone (even commoners) could do magic with a little practice. There wasn't a spell level limit either, and wizards who were very practiced could cast 10th and 11th level spells. Then one wizard created tge first 12th level spell which would let him temporarily replace a god and take all their powers. He tried to take the mantle of god of magic, and this ****ed up magic pretty bad. Like hundreds of years of no magic and gods losing their divinity kind of bad. After that the new God of magic set a limit to magic so that could never happen again. Magic would be less common, and no one person could cast a spell above level 9.
Higher level magic can be cast with a group of high level arcane casters, but the strain will likely kill many of them. Multiple wizards casting wish for the same wish could be one way to accomplish higher level magic.
I don't have access to the source material, but a lot of what's said in this video is outdated. For starters, 3.5e had the Epic Level Handbook, which detailed epic level spells. There was no need to be a deity to cast them, you'd just need to be absurdly good at the spellcraft skill. Although 3e epic spells didn't have proper levels, the epic level metamagic feat "intensify spell" could push a 9th-level spell up to "16th-level" with no additional cost. The only requirement is that you'd need to have a 16th-level spell slot, which requires another feat and sufficient levels, etc.
But this is all beside the point. The point of giving spells a level is to ensure a balanced progression of spellcasters v. non-casters. If there's a spell that's so powerful as to change the nature of your campaign setting, there's not much of a point in giving it a level. Just make it a plot device. In other words, don't worry about the mechanics so much as what fits thematically. If you think that this ritual should require sacrifices, artifacts, or a legion of wizards, then make that the case. My recommendation is that you should make the components take multiple adventures to assemble. If I were the DM, I'd hope that the costs would make the player wise up and start to consider whether they'd fare any better than the lich.
For kicks, here's what I might consider. A spell that would attempt to heal the world and stop disease should involve a philosopher's stone, the blood or tears of a god of healing (such as Pelor), and the death of a powerful entity of death and disease. The costs should also mount. By sacrificing a philosopher's stone, the world loses access to its power. Taking blood from Pelor could wound the deity. I would play up the consequences of a wounded god of sun and goodness. The process of assembling the ritual should make the players the enemy of both the gods of evil and the forces of good who recognize the danger.
Thanks so much for the advice. I will most likely go this route where the spell requires very rare and borderline divine components as well as the philosopher stone from the BBEG and favor from the gods. And as for the mechanics of the spell I see how that does not matter much but I feel like when my players examine the spellbook they would want to know about it and see what thr incantations are and such since Ive been making a big deal on how casters need to cast their spells. Should I just bring up the components needed, describe the ritual and power needed and that's it?
Glad to help. I would definitely allow the players a picture of what's entailed if they're able to decipher the text. I'd think of it like Sean Connery's diary from Indiana Jones-The Last Crusade. It took Dr. Jones a lifetime of studying religion and deciphering codes to piece together the way to the holy grail.
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So the BBEG of my homebrew campaign, before he Doc Manhanttaned himself and reformed into a school of Transmutation Lich, cast a level 10 spell to try and cure all disease and such on the planet. It backfired and made lychanthropy worse and permanent on some (reason for furry characters to exist), created undead and aberrations, and other such atrocities such as residual magic radiation from the casting. What I need advice on is that my players found the tome and are gonna start trying to understand it. I don't understand the lore behind magic but want it to be believable. I also need help on the mechanics of the spell as its more or less level 10 mass greater regeneration or something. Thanks for any advise. Also this is my first time posting in the forums. Sorry for any mistakes.
Ok so first and foremost you should probably be a little more descriptive for a number of these events and or the aftereffects.
I am going to make some guesses here. But really you are saying an incredibly potent wizard (of Transmutation) attempt to get rid of all the diseases from the world, up to and including things like lycanthropy. Something went wrong with this massive undertaking and instead of removing these diseases it made them more widespread (maybe diffused the lycanthropic curse to many people) and changed his own body into something that cannot die (maybe not a lich in the strictest sense but similar). This also had the side effect of causing all manner of 'unnatural' events to occur across the world and creatures created by these events. The players have this wizards Spellbook? notes? personal journal? Why is he a bad guy after the spell went off? Is he still trying to fix whatever went wrong?
As for the spell itself, it sounds like he was trying to cast multiple wish spells simultaneously or in sequence. No real need to create some new spell. Can you imagine a cabal of lvl 20 wizards all working together to cast multiple Wishes? Maybe it was the fact that not everyone had quite the same thing in mind for how the spell should work causing some friction between all these potent castings going off. Perhaps there was one bad apple in the group who wanted to use this gathering for something more sinister up to and including BBEG. I think the idea should be that the Wishes that were made didn't quite line up and it caused something of the fabric of the Weave of Magic to become torn and twisted in some spots. Weak in some ares (magic dead zones) and incredibly potent in others physically warping the creatures like a magical radiation you mentioned. Maybe the gods stepped in and said NO THIS LINE YOU SHALL NOT CROSS and the result of the spells being interrupted caused a massive backlash of energy.
I hope this helps you a little.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Thank you for replying it definitely helps. And to add on, the players have the BBEG's spellbook and yes the gods stepped in to stop the casting and that caused a giant magical explosion releasing a bunch of magical radiation and other adverse effects like spreading the diseases instead of curing them, creating undead and having all creatures not blessed or killed via radiant damage come back as zombies, and creating abberations. Would a Wish spell really be enough then to cover what I want done? The reason the big bad is a Tranmute wizard is because the Transmuters Stone feat and Master Transmuter which I wanted to incorporate into the spell casting and spellbook. And he isn't really that evil he just thinks if he recasts the spell it'll work this time. No alterations to the spell or changing anything. He will just straight cast it again and the same thing would happen but to a already damaged world. Does this make things clearer? Does a group or wizards make more sence than just 1? If there is any other advise you can give Im game as I am a very new DM. Thanks.
So thus is the lore reason behind the spell level limit (for forgotten realms anyway): a long time ago magic wasn't limited and everyone (even commoners) could do magic with a little practice. There wasn't a spell level limit either, and wizards who were very practiced could cast 10th and 11th level spells. Then one wizard created tge first 12th level spell which would let him temporarily replace a god and take all their powers. He tried to take the mantle of god of magic, and this ****ed up magic pretty bad. Like hundreds of years of no magic and gods losing their divinity kind of bad. After that the new God of magic set a limit to magic so that could never happen again. Magic would be less common, and no one person could cast a spell above level 9.
I learned all this from this video: https://youtu.be/kiGBXhpQAUg
Higher level magic can be cast with a group of high level arcane casters, but the strain will likely kill many of them. Multiple wizards casting wish for the same wish could be one way to accomplish higher level magic.
I don't have access to the source material, but a lot of what's said in this video is outdated. For starters, 3.5e had the Epic Level Handbook, which detailed epic level spells. There was no need to be a deity to cast them, you'd just need to be absurdly good at the spellcraft skill. Although 3e epic spells didn't have proper levels, the epic level metamagic feat "intensify spell" could push a 9th-level spell up to "16th-level" with no additional cost. The only requirement is that you'd need to have a 16th-level spell slot, which requires another feat and sufficient levels, etc.
But this is all beside the point. The point of giving spells a level is to ensure a balanced progression of spellcasters v. non-casters. If there's a spell that's so powerful as to change the nature of your campaign setting, there's not much of a point in giving it a level. Just make it a plot device. In other words, don't worry about the mechanics so much as what fits thematically. If you think that this ritual should require sacrifices, artifacts, or a legion of wizards, then make that the case. My recommendation is that you should make the components take multiple adventures to assemble. If I were the DM, I'd hope that the costs would make the player wise up and start to consider whether they'd fare any better than the lich.
For kicks, here's what I might consider. A spell that would attempt to heal the world and stop disease should involve a philosopher's stone, the blood or tears of a god of healing (such as Pelor), and the death of a powerful entity of death and disease. The costs should also mount. By sacrificing a philosopher's stone, the world loses access to its power. Taking blood from Pelor could wound the deity. I would play up the consequences of a wounded god of sun and goodness. The process of assembling the ritual should make the players the enemy of both the gods of evil and the forces of good who recognize the danger.
Thanks so much for the advice. I will most likely go this route where the spell requires very rare and borderline divine components as well as the philosopher stone from the BBEG and favor from the gods. And as for the mechanics of the spell I see how that does not matter much but I feel like when my players examine the spellbook they would want to know about it and see what thr incantations are and such since Ive been making a big deal on how casters need to cast their spells. Should I just bring up the components needed, describe the ritual and power needed and that's it?
Glad to help. I would definitely allow the players a picture of what's entailed if they're able to decipher the text. I'd think of it like Sean Connery's diary from Indiana Jones-The Last Crusade. It took Dr. Jones a lifetime of studying religion and deciphering codes to piece together the way to the holy grail.