I have developed a new magic type that doesn't fit nicely into one of the established schools, similar to Dunamancy ("Nullimancy") in that it's its own form of magic. I've created a Wizard Arcane Tradition, spells, and even a magic item that take advantage of it. I plan to post it to DriveThruRPG in a few weeks (Free/Pay what you want).

While this magic type has specific flavor from my homebrew campaign world, it could be used anywhere, so I'd like to publish the components here so people who use it can easily incorporate the materials into their DDB characters but also let anyone use any pieces they want.

I read the homebrew publishing rules and know that I can't include links to the source material, but can the description include any kind of reference to it? Can a spell description include a note saying that it's a nullimancy spell, understanding that those spells also need to use one of the standard schools (most of these are evocation or abjuration)? Can the Arcane Tradition include the campaign world flavor text (It draws from a plane that doesn't exist in canon cosmologies but could be adapted using Elminster's Plot Device.) as long as the description also clearly communicates how it's usable more generally? Or can it not reference that campaign at all?

On a related note, I also have an idea for a Biomancer, which works well in the Ravnica setting, which has variations like Dunamancy has both Graviturgists and Chronurgists. I have the same above questions about that, but it's a little different in that I designed it for my campaign world but would fit perfectly into the Simic Combine (the term is even used there, but without details) and if necessary, it could reference Ravnica without mentioning my campaign world.

One final question for both: do tags have to use established tags only? Could I tag new spells with "Nullimancy"? I'm assuming not lest the tag pool get polluted.

Thanks.

Quote from doulos12>>

I read the homebrew publishing rules and know that I can't include links to the source material, but can the description include any kind of reference to it? Can a spell description include a note saying that it's a nullimancy spell, understanding that those spells also need to use one of the standard schools (most of these are evocation or abjuration)? Can the Arcane Tradition include the campaign world flavor text (It draws from a plane that doesn't exist in canon cosmologies but could be adapted using Elminster's Plot Device.) as long as the description also clearly communicates how it's usable more generally? Or can it not reference that campaign at all?

I think you can pretty much include whatever you want background-wise as long as it's not blatantly copyrighted material or such. Personally I would try to keep the main description of a class more about the "spirit" of it and what it does, maybe with a few mentions of things from your setting such as guilds/colleges etc. for flavour. But if you want to put in a chunk of lore, it might be best to do that as an side; I like the blockquote format (quote marks in the top bar of the text editor areas) for this, just enter your text, select it and turn it into a blockquote, and it'll appear in a bordered box that makes it clearly separate from the main body of the text, ideal for extra background, further details, suggestions, DM/designer notes and so on.

Basically try not to get the main text of the class bogged down too much in the lore as people considering it are most likely to want to know what it's about, and what it can do, so making any bigger lore dumps explicit helps people to skim past who weren't going to read it anyway.

One final question for both: do tags have to use established tags only? Could I tag new spells with "Nullimancy"? I'm assuming not lest the tag pool get polluted.

 

I don't believe it's possible to enter custom tags anywhere sadly, they'd be super handy, but like you say, maybe difficult for D&D Beyond to police properly. Sadly there's no ideal way to handle this, you could incorporate a "tag" into your spell names and such, e.g- "My Great Spell [Nullimancy]", or "Nullimancy: My Great Spell", not the greatest option though but it'd make it possible to filter for all Nullimancy spells in Homebrew.

Thanks. This is super helpful. Quote box is a great idea. And yeah, looking at some other creations, brackets in the title seem to be the easiest (though not ideal) way to do it. 

OK, follow-up question: I created the subclass and started to create the spells. Since I linked the spells to the subclass, I’m getting this with the subclass:

• This homebrew Subclass has data mapped to it that is licensed content or private homebrew. This typically occurs when licensed or private homebrew spells are linked to the Subclass.
   

If I publish the spells first, can I then publish the subclass?