I went from not being excited at all about psychic damage spells to being really interested in the possibilities of what to say to add flavor, when casting them and how to roleplay casting psychic damage spell and then what comes after (is the target aware, to what extent, will casting a psychic damage spell lead to combat, or perhaps make ensuing social interaction more interesting?).
I mean, think of it like this. Would you be okay with it if you were talking to an NPC and the DM ruled that the ordinary things the NPC was saying counted as verbal components for a spell, and you couldn't tell what was happening while you just took a bunch of damage?
I sure as hell wouldn't. There is a way to secretly cast harmful spells at someone though -- the Subtle Spell metamagic that Sorcerers can use. Probably wouldn't make sense for a spell that wants you to say something like an insult. But I'm sure you can find spells with which you can kill people without revealing what you're doing.
I play a Circle of Stars Druid of a quasi-Polynesian islander culture. her father was a shipwright and navigator who taught her to navigate by ocean currents and stars. she was shipwrecked as a child and washed up on a mainland beach. a druidic hermit rescued her and raised her to be a druid, but she flavors it with her background, and so gravitated to Circle of Stars and elemental water spells.
- she casts Shillelagh on a canoe paddle she always has slung to her back, the last physical connect to her family. it is carved with pictographs representing her family's story, and these carvings glow and come to life when Shilelagh'd
- when she Shapes Water, she is calling to spirits of the sea itself and asking them favors
- Guidance is of course asking the stars to guide someone's way and their zodiac constellation briefly appears when she casts it
- her Thorn Whip is a long strand of kelp riddled with spiky sea urchins
- her Augury material component is a small bowl of water with a teeny wooden boat floating in it. the boat's course through the "sea" represents the result
- her Goodberries are seafood - mussels or uni
- her Healing Spirit is a large glowing jellyfish spirit that drifts across the battlefield, healing not stinging :)
- Guiding Bolt doesn't need much flavouring, it's shooting stars of course
I'm impressed! That's a whole theme of flavor! Now I wonder about the realtive importance of backstory and a flavor theme that goes across all or many spells and how that affects the enjoyment of the character at the table (both for the player of that character and for everyone else). (I guess the two aren't mutally exclusively). Did the backstory come first and the flavor follow from that? Now I'm thinking maybe I should rethink my relative priorities re: effort put into backstory vs flavor/theme, espeicially if the theme and flavor adds a lot of fun, at the table, because it seeems like the backstory is mainly just for me, at least in some ways. Have other players responded favorably to the theme and incorporated it into the roleplay interations with your character? It seems like the level of flavor and attention to detail would add to the fun to the game.
I mean, think of it like this. Would you be okay with it if you were talking to an NPC and the DM ruled that the ordinary things the NPC was saying counted as verbal components for a spell, and you couldn't tell what was happening while you just took a bunch of damage?
I sure as hell wouldn't. There is a way to secretly cast harmful spells at someone though -- the Subtle Spell metamagic that Sorcerers can use. Probably wouldn't make sense for a spell that wants you to say something like an insult. But I'm sure you can find spells with which you can kill people without revealing what you're doing.
I mean, think of it like this. Would you be okay with it if you were talking to an NPC and the DM ruled that the ordinary things the NPC was saying counted as verbal components for a spell, and you couldn't tell what was happening while you just took a bunch of damage?
I sure as hell wouldn't. There is a way to secretly cast harmful spells at someone though -- the Subtle Spell metamagic that Sorcerers can use. Probably wouldn't make sense for a spell that wants you to say something like an insult. But I'm sure you can find spells with which you can kill people without revealing what you're doing.
That's a good point. It might be more fun from the prospective or dealing damage, if the DM were to rule that the target isn't necessarly aware that they took psychic damage, in the moment (but, to your point, not so much fun, if you were on the receiving end of damage that you were not aware of the source of/reason for) .
I still feel like there is something different about psychic damage than all the other types of damage in the game, which I believe are physical in nature. Dealing psychic damage seems kind of a unique oppurtunity for flavoring and roleplay and maybe social interaction.
I play a Circle of Stars Druid of a quasi-Polynesian islander culture. her father was a shipwright and navigator who taught her to navigate by ocean currents and stars. she was shipwrecked as a child and washed up on a mainland beach. a druidic hermit rescued her and raised her to be a druid, but she flavors it with her background, and so gravitated to Circle of Stars and elemental water spells.
- she casts Shillelagh on a canoe paddle she always has slung to her back, the last physical connect to her family. it is carved with pictographs representing her family's story, and these carvings glow and come to life when Shilelagh'd
- when she Shapes Water, she is calling to spirits of the sea itself and asking them favors
- Guidance is of course asking the stars to guide someone's way and their zodiac constellation briefly appears when she casts it
- her Thorn Whip is a long strand of kelp riddled with spiky sea urchins
- her Augury material component is a small bowl of water with a teeny wooden boat floating in it. the boat's course through the "sea" represents the result
- her Goodberries are seafood - mussels or uni
- her Healing Spirit is a large glowing jellyfish spirit that drifts across the battlefield, healing not stinging :)
- Guiding Bolt doesn't need much flavouring, it's shooting stars of course
I'm impressed! That's a whole theme of flavor! Now I wonder about the realtive importance of backstory and a flavor theme that goes across all or many spells and how that affects the enjoyment of the character at the table (both for the player of that character and for everyone else). (I guess the two aren't mutally exclusively). Did the backstory come first and the flavor follow from that? Now I'm thinking maybe I should rethink my relative priorities re: effort put into backstory vs flavor/theme, espeicially if the theme and flavor adds a lot of fun, at the table, because it seeems like the backstory is mainly just for me, at least in some ways. Have other players responded favorably to the theme and incorporated it into the roleplay interations with your character? It seems like the level of flavor and attention to detail would add to the fun to the game.
The back story definitely came first. It's a pretty theme-driven campaign - we did a Session 0 where the DM gave us a general sketch of the campaign setting, then we all spent a week writing backstories that we shared out. (The players know each other's backstories, the characters slowly learn them over time.) The DM then uses our backstories to drive the plot of the campaign, so they are always relevant. I mean, he's got his main plot too, but our individual stories contribute to it. So the backstories and flavour remain relevant throughout and get incorporated into role-play interactions regularly.
I mean, think of it like this. Would you be okay with it if you were talking to an NPC and the DM ruled that the ordinary things the NPC was saying counted as verbal components for a spell, and you couldn't tell what was happening while you just took a bunch of damage?
I sure as hell wouldn't. There is a way to secretly cast harmful spells at someone though -- the Subtle Spell metamagic that Sorcerers can use. Probably wouldn't make sense for a spell that wants you to say something like an insult. But I'm sure you can find spells with which you can kill people without revealing what you're doing.
That's a good point. It might be more fun from the prospective or dealing damage, if the DM were to rule that the target isn't necessarly aware that they took psychic damage, in the moment (but, to your point, not so much fun, if you were on the receiving end of damage that you were not aware of the source of/reason for) .
I still feel like there is something different about psychic damage than all the other types of damage in the game, which I believe are physical in nature. Dealing psychic damage seems kind of a unique oppurtunity for flavoring and roleplay and maybe social interaction.
It still can be. Think of a spell like vicious mockery, you sling insults at someone that are so painful it literally hurts them. But the words have to still ring through with some magic to them so it’s kinda obviously spellcasting. My bards regularly incorporate spells like prestidigitation and thaumaturgy into their performances. They weave the material and somatic components directly into their songs or orations without saying anything specific by means of verbal components, but it’s still obvious to the audiences that my characters are casting spells. It has to be or else the game starts to break down.
I played a necromancer wizard for a short spell (lulz). Because the subclass does not have much that feels very necromancer-like, I flavored nearly every spell to be macabre in some way. Magic Missile had ghostly skulls that would silently scream as they approached their victims. Toll the Dead was flavored so that the bell sound would summon an avatar of Death, which would strike at the soul of the victim. Feather Fall caused ghostly skeletal wings to sprout from my back to gently lower me to the ground. Shield would ripple when struck, causing the souls of the damned to become visible within the shield and writhe in pain from having taken the blow instead.
I try to flavor just about any spell with any caster. I feel like it adds a uniqueness, or signature to the character. They become distinct within the narrative, even though they are mechanically very similar.
I played a necromancer wizard for a short spell (lulz). Because the subclass does not have much that feels very necromancer-like, I flavored nearly every spell to be macabre in some way. Magic Missile had ghostly skulls that would silently scream as they approached their victims. Toll the Dead was flavored so that the bell sound would summon an avatar of Death, which would strike at the soul of the victim. Feather Fall caused ghostly skeletal wings to sprout from my back to gently lower me to the ground. Shield would ripple when struck, causing the souls of the damned to become visible within the shield and writhe in pain from having taken the blow instead.
I try to flavor just about any spell with any caster. I feel like it adds a uniqueness, or signature to the character. They become distinct within the narrative, even though they are mechanically very similar.
I've been prepping for a curse of strahd game with my friends, once we finish our current campaign, and I remember the module encourages forcefully reflavoring everyone's spells in more or less the same way. I'm kinda curious to hear more ideas so I can uhhhhh "borrow" them ;)
I played a necromancer wizard for a short spell (lulz). Because the subclass does not have much that feels very necromancer-like, I flavored nearly every spell to be macabre in some way. Magic Missile had ghostly skulls that would silently scream as they approached their victims. Toll the Dead was flavored so that the bell sound would summon an avatar of Death, which would strike at the soul of the victim. Feather Fall caused ghostly skeletal wings to sprout from my back to gently lower me to the ground. Shield would ripple when struck, causing the souls of the damned to become visible within the shield and writhe in pain from having taken the blow instead.
I try to flavor just about any spell with any caster. I feel like it adds a uniqueness, or signature to the character. They become distinct within the narrative, even though they are mechanically very similar.
I've been prepping for a curse of strahd game with my friends, once we finish our current campaign, and I remember the module encourages forcefully reflavoring everyone's spells in more or less the same way. I'm kinda curious to hear more ideas so I can uhhhhh "borrow" them ;)
I do have a few more. This was to be a long campaign, but the DM could not continue and quit the game before we hit level 3. Great guy and one of my best friends, but DMing caused so much stress that he would have gastrointestinal issues when we played. Not everyone can sit in the big chair.
Chromatic Orb Would spin rapidly toward the target, sending off sparks, shards, or spray based on the type selected. Mage Hand was perhaps not so creatively, just a skeleton hand lol. False Life caused a green swirl of energy to be pulled up from the earth and into the wizard, the roll determined how many souls can be seen within the green energy. They scream and claw at the air as they are pulled into the caster, giving them temporary life. Misty Step instead of mist, shadows reach out and surround the wizard, then dozens of dark skeletal arms clasp the caster and pull them into the shadow. Find Familiar would drain the life essence from the vegetation within a 10ft radius and use that energy to construct a body for the familiar, starting with the bones, then adding the nervous system, muscles, and other organ systems, one layer at a time during the ritual.
The ones I did not flavor were Minor Illusion, Detect Thoughts, and Cause Fear.
I think my first attempt at psychic damage was casting Mind Sliver in a crowded area, and when we've not had any interaction with the target, (they were just up to something, so I hit them with a cantrip, just because), it was ambiguous to me, if the DM intended that the target knew what had happened or knew who did it.. . i have to admit that I kind of liked the idea that maybe the target didn't know either that they had sustained psychic damage at all, or who had cast the spell, or perhaps both., to me that interpretation would have been pretty cool.
Re: Mind Sliver: I can't quite wrap my head around what it would be like to "drive a disorienting spike of psychic energy into the mind of one creature" . . . might have to re-flavor just in order to be able to conceptualize (and not sure how best to do that - would be curious to have ideas)
After reading the whole spell description of Dissonant Whispers I don't think it would work for idea of the target not knowing that they had sustained damage, because of the "terrible pain" that they are wracked with and I'm not 100% sure if they could necessarily infer who was casting the spell, from the caster's words or not, because there is a "V" requirement to the spell (so probably they would know who was causing it), but then also it seems like the spell takes the form of the caster whispering telepathically into their mind, because only the target can hear what is said. Hmmm. So maybe you have to say something out loud to fulfil the voice requirement and then the spell take the form of you whisper something unsettling directly into their mind (, I think it would be more fun if they didn't necessarily have to know who was doing it, but that's probably not the way it is supposed to work). But even though, I still think that Dissonant Whispers has really great roleplaying potential. Probably lots of fun things to say/whisper into the mind of the target! (gaslight-y and cognitive dissonance, abandon all hope sort of stuff!)
Re: Mind Sliver: I can't quite wrap my head around what it would be like to "drive a disorienting spike of psychic energy into the mind of one creature" . . . might have to re-flavor just in order to be able to conceptualize (and not sure how best to do that - would be curious to have ideas)
Have you ever suddenly forgotten what you were doing, in the middle of doing it? I imagine it's like that, plus a sudden headache.
I flavour my halfling Feylock's spells to suit, much like others here do. Not just in spell choice, but in visual theme. His verbal components are all whistling (Harking back to the old Halfling Whistler subclass), for example. His Mage Hand looks like a slightly translucent Grig, rather than a floating copy of his own hand. Eldritch Blast looks like tangled roots and leaves and shards of rainbow. And so on. Still recognizably the same spells, to other folks trained in the Arcane. So the at-the-table flavouring doesn't affect the straight mechanics. If I want(ed) to have his whistling be subtle and easily overlooked so that folks would not notice his casting, I could just take the Metamagic feat at some point, allowing him access to sorcerers' "subtle spell" in limited amounts.
My Druid has Misty Step from the Fey Touched feat and when he casts it it looks like vines and large leaves sprout out of the ground, completely enveloping him, then suddenly pulling him into the ground. They then spring forth from the ground where he’s teleporting to, open up and he steps out. Then they disappear back into the ground.
My swarm keeper ranger in the icewindale campaign has a snow theme to him.
His swarm is a small snow storm and the spells are winter themed. When his swarm uses the gathered swarm it turns into little icicle shards, it becomes a strong blast of snow and wind when pushing targets.
Mage hand is a hand shaped show flurry, similar looking to like the stuff in a snow globe but hand shaped.
Faerie Fire creates an aurora borealis effect on the objects and creatures it affects.
Web is a series of icicles in a criss cross pattern that partially freezes targets on contact (instead of the usual sticky web)
Zephyr strike creates a storming wind surrounding my ranger
Not so much flavouring the spell as the method and consequences of casting:
I have an NPC in my world called Gizmo Grayling, an artificer who is obsessed with storing magic and curses in gems. For a spelljammer campaign, I have created a wild magic autognome sorceror called Junior (or "Gizmo Grayling Junior" in full), who was built by Gizmo to help test his inventions. Junior, naturally, decided he was fed up of being an experiment and stole a sack full of Gizmo's gems and set off to tour the world, and later the universe. He casts magic by selecting a gem on his arm-holster, putting it into a wrist-mounted contraption which resembles a revolver, and then the mechanism in his wrist activates the spell.
Because Gizmo was also storing curses and experiments in his gems, whenever the Wild Magic goes off, it's because Junior picked the wrong gem, or combined two or more in an experiment which went wrong. As such, all the wild magic events are caused by curses stored in the gems, whilst the magic itself comes from the same gems - meaning technically, junior isn't actually magical! Thus far, he's become a sheep, and also wild-magicked twice in one round - first caused him to immediately cast another spell, and then that spell caused wild magic, causing him to heal 10hp! So it won't be long now until the negative side of it comes around XD
Not so much flavouring the spell as the method and consequences of casting:
I have an NPC in my world called Gizmo Grayling, an artificer who is obsessed with storing magic and curses in gems. For a spelljammer campaign, I have created a wild magic autognome sorceror called Junior (or "Gizmo Grayling Junior" in full), who was built by Gizmo to help test his inventions. Junior, naturally, decided he was fed up of being an experiment and stole a sack full of Gizmo's gems and set off to tour the world, and later the universe. He casts magic by selecting a gem on his arm-holster, putting it into a wrist-mounted contraption which resembles a revolver, and then the mechanism in his wrist activates the spell.
Because Gizmo was also storing curses and experiments in his gems, whenever the Wild Magic goes off, it's because Junior picked the wrong gem, or combined two or more in an experiment which went wrong. As such, all the wild magic events are caused by curses stored in the gems, whilst the magic itself comes from the same gems - meaning technically, junior isn't actually magical! Thus far, he's become a sheep, and also wild-magicked twice in one round - first caused him to immediately cast another spell, and then that spell caused wild magic, causing him to heal 10hp! So it won't be long now until the negative side of it comes around XD
I love that.
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Sometimes I absolutely love to fire Eldritch blast out of my eyes for laser vision. One time I killed a shadow dragon homelander style this way alongside subtle spell
Artificers practically cry out for this sort of thing. I wouldn't change the game mechanical effect without careful thought and DM permission, but flavor...your imagination is the limit. My alchemist casts tasha's caustic brew by popping a few ingredients into a bottle, shaking vigorously and spraying, champagne-style. She has the only crossbow in existence with underslung rocket launcher, firing everything from gas canisters to hypodermics full of small doses of healing potion. I joke that the spray that causes the faerie fire effect also causes +10 to long-term cancer risk. She's somewhere between Mary Poppins and Willie Wonka.
i like this idea about storing slotted spells in gems! A lot! I could see maybe extending that metaphor as a way to physically track spells at the table, like have small pretty rocks or crystals. etc that represent spells, maybe each level represented by a different color, keeping them visible or out on the table when they are unused and then put them back in the box or the bag when they have been expended. I also like the backstory on why the spells are stored in gems and just the idea of having a backstory for why all of a character's spells might be physically stored gems (that the player can use to track).
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I went from not being excited at all about psychic damage spells to being really interested in the possibilities of what to say to add flavor, when casting them and how to roleplay casting psychic damage spell and then what comes after (is the target aware, to what extent, will casting a psychic damage spell lead to combat, or perhaps make ensuing social interaction more interesting?).
I mean, think of it like this. Would you be okay with it if you were talking to an NPC and the DM ruled that the ordinary things the NPC was saying counted as verbal components for a spell, and you couldn't tell what was happening while you just took a bunch of damage?
I sure as hell wouldn't. There is a way to secretly cast harmful spells at someone though -- the Subtle Spell metamagic that Sorcerers can use. Probably wouldn't make sense for a spell that wants you to say something like an insult. But I'm sure you can find spells with which you can kill people without revealing what you're doing.
I'm impressed! That's a whole theme of flavor! Now I wonder about the realtive importance of backstory and a flavor theme that goes across all or many spells and how that affects the enjoyment of the character at the table (both for the player of that character and for everyone else). (I guess the two aren't mutally exclusively). Did the backstory come first and the flavor follow from that? Now I'm thinking maybe I should rethink my relative priorities re: effort put into backstory vs flavor/theme, espeicially if the theme and flavor adds a lot of fun, at the table, because it seeems like the backstory is mainly just for me, at least in some ways. Have other players responded favorably to the theme and incorporated it into the roleplay interations with your character? It seems like the level of flavor and attention to detail would add to the fun to the game.
That's a good point. It might be more fun from the prospective or dealing damage, if the DM were to rule that the target isn't necessarly aware that they took psychic damage, in the moment (but, to your point, not so much fun, if you were on the receiving end of damage that you were not aware of the source of/reason for) .
I still feel like there is something different about psychic damage than all the other types of damage in the game, which I believe are physical in nature. Dealing psychic damage seems kind of a unique oppurtunity for flavoring and roleplay and maybe social interaction.
The back story definitely came first. It's a pretty theme-driven campaign - we did a Session 0 where the DM gave us a general sketch of the campaign setting, then we all spent a week writing backstories that we shared out. (The players know each other's backstories, the characters slowly learn them over time.) The DM then uses our backstories to drive the plot of the campaign, so they are always relevant. I mean, he's got his main plot too, but our individual stories contribute to it. So the backstories and flavour remain relevant throughout and get incorporated into role-play interactions regularly.
It still can be. Think of a spell like vicious mockery, you sling insults at someone that are so painful it literally hurts them. But the words have to still ring through with some magic to them so it’s kinda obviously spellcasting. My bards regularly incorporate spells like prestidigitation and thaumaturgy into their performances. They weave the material and somatic components directly into their songs or orations without saying anything specific by means of verbal components, but it’s still obvious to the audiences that my characters are casting spells. It has to be or else the game starts to break down.
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I played a necromancer wizard for a short spell (lulz). Because the subclass does not have much that feels very necromancer-like, I flavored nearly every spell to be macabre in some way. Magic Missile had ghostly skulls that would silently scream as they approached their victims. Toll the Dead was flavored so that the bell sound would summon an avatar of Death, which would strike at the soul of the victim. Feather Fall caused ghostly skeletal wings to sprout from my back to gently lower me to the ground. Shield would ripple when struck, causing the souls of the damned to become visible within the shield and writhe in pain from having taken the blow instead.
I try to flavor just about any spell with any caster. I feel like it adds a uniqueness, or signature to the character. They become distinct within the narrative, even though they are mechanically very similar.
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I've been prepping for a curse of strahd game with my friends, once we finish our current campaign, and I remember the module encourages forcefully reflavoring everyone's spells in more or less the same way. I'm kinda curious to hear more ideas so I can uhhhhh "borrow" them ;)
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I do have a few more. This was to be a long campaign, but the DM could not continue and quit the game before we hit level 3. Great guy and one of my best friends, but DMing caused so much stress that he would have gastrointestinal issues when we played. Not everyone can sit in the big chair.
Chromatic Orb Would spin rapidly toward the target, sending off sparks, shards, or spray based on the type selected. Mage Hand was perhaps not so creatively, just a skeleton hand lol. False Life caused a green swirl of energy to be pulled up from the earth and into the wizard, the roll determined how many souls can be seen within the green energy. They scream and claw at the air as they are pulled into the caster, giving them temporary life. Misty Step instead of mist, shadows reach out and surround the wizard, then dozens of dark skeletal arms clasp the caster and pull them into the shadow. Find Familiar would drain the life essence from the vegetation within a 10ft radius and use that energy to construct a body for the familiar, starting with the bones, then adding the nervous system, muscles, and other organ systems, one layer at a time during the ritual.
The ones I did not flavor were Minor Illusion, Detect Thoughts, and Cause Fear.
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I think my first attempt at psychic damage was casting Mind Sliver in a crowded area, and when we've not had any interaction with the target, (they were just up to something, so I hit them with a cantrip, just because), it was ambiguous to me, if the DM intended that the target knew what had happened or knew who did it.. . i have to admit that I kind of liked the idea that maybe the target didn't know either that they had sustained psychic damage at all, or who had cast the spell, or perhaps both., to me that interpretation would have been pretty cool.
Re: Mind Sliver: I can't quite wrap my head around what it would be like to "drive a disorienting spike of psychic energy into the mind of one creature" . . . might have to re-flavor just in order to be able to conceptualize (and not sure how best to do that - would be curious to have ideas)
After reading the whole spell description of Dissonant Whispers I don't think it would work for idea of the target not knowing that they had sustained damage, because of the "terrible pain" that they are wracked with and I'm not 100% sure if they could necessarily infer who was casting the spell, from the caster's words or not, because there is a "V" requirement to the spell (so probably they would know who was causing it), but then also it seems like the spell takes the form of the caster whispering telepathically into their mind, because only the target can hear what is said. Hmmm. So maybe you have to say something out loud to fulfil the voice requirement and then the spell take the form of you whisper something unsettling directly into their mind (, I think it would be more fun if they didn't necessarily have to know who was doing it, but that's probably not the way it is supposed to work). But even though, I still think that Dissonant Whispers has really great roleplaying potential. Probably lots of fun things to say/whisper into the mind of the target! (gaslight-y and cognitive dissonance, abandon all hope sort of stuff!)
Have you ever suddenly forgotten what you were doing, in the middle of doing it? I imagine it's like that, plus a sudden headache.
Or maybe like psychological violation or emotional enmeshment, plus an icepick to the head (guessing)
I flavour my halfling Feylock's spells to suit, much like others here do. Not just in spell choice, but in visual theme. His verbal components are all whistling (Harking back to the old Halfling Whistler subclass), for example. His Mage Hand looks like a slightly translucent Grig, rather than a floating copy of his own hand. Eldritch Blast looks like tangled roots and leaves and shards of rainbow. And so on. Still recognizably the same spells, to other folks trained in the Arcane. So the at-the-table flavouring doesn't affect the straight mechanics. If I want(ed) to have his whistling be subtle and easily overlooked so that folks would not notice his casting, I could just take the Metamagic feat at some point, allowing him access to sorcerers' "subtle spell" in limited amounts.
Liking the Circle of Stars Druid theme as well.
My Druid has Misty Step from the Fey Touched feat and when he casts it it looks like vines and large leaves sprout out of the ground, completely enveloping him, then suddenly pulling him into the ground. They then spring forth from the ground where he’s teleporting to, open up and he steps out. Then they disappear back into the ground.
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My swarm keeper ranger in the icewindale campaign has a snow theme to him.
His swarm is a small snow storm and the spells are winter themed. When his swarm uses the gathered swarm it turns into little icicle shards, it becomes a strong blast of snow and wind when pushing targets.
Mage hand is a hand shaped show flurry, similar looking to like the stuff in a snow globe but hand shaped.
Faerie Fire creates an aurora borealis effect on the objects and creatures it affects.
Web is a series of icicles in a criss cross pattern that partially freezes targets on contact (instead of the usual sticky web)
Zephyr strike creates a storming wind surrounding my ranger
Not so much flavouring the spell as the method and consequences of casting:
I have an NPC in my world called Gizmo Grayling, an artificer who is obsessed with storing magic and curses in gems. For a spelljammer campaign, I have created a wild magic autognome sorceror called Junior (or "Gizmo Grayling Junior" in full), who was built by Gizmo to help test his inventions. Junior, naturally, decided he was fed up of being an experiment and stole a sack full of Gizmo's gems and set off to tour the world, and later the universe. He casts magic by selecting a gem on his arm-holster, putting it into a wrist-mounted contraption which resembles a revolver, and then the mechanism in his wrist activates the spell.
Because Gizmo was also storing curses and experiments in his gems, whenever the Wild Magic goes off, it's because Junior picked the wrong gem, or combined two or more in an experiment which went wrong. As such, all the wild magic events are caused by curses stored in the gems, whilst the magic itself comes from the same gems - meaning technically, junior isn't actually magical! Thus far, he's become a sheep, and also wild-magicked twice in one round - first caused him to immediately cast another spell, and then that spell caused wild magic, causing him to heal 10hp! So it won't be long now until the negative side of it comes around XD
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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I love that.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Sometimes I absolutely love to fire Eldritch blast out of my eyes for laser vision. One time I killed a shadow dragon homelander style this way alongside subtle spell
Artificers practically cry out for this sort of thing. I wouldn't change the game mechanical effect without careful thought and DM permission, but flavor...your imagination is the limit. My alchemist casts tasha's caustic brew by popping a few ingredients into a bottle, shaking vigorously and spraying, champagne-style. She has the only crossbow in existence with underslung rocket launcher, firing everything from gas canisters to hypodermics full of small doses of healing potion. I joke that the spray that causes the faerie fire effect also causes +10 to long-term cancer risk. She's somewhere between Mary Poppins and Willie Wonka.
i like this idea about storing slotted spells in gems! A lot! I could see maybe extending that metaphor as a way to physically track spells at the table, like have small pretty rocks or crystals. etc that represent spells, maybe each level represented by a different color, keeping them visible or out on the table when they are unused and then put them back in the box or the bag when they have been expended. I also like the backstory on why the spells are stored in gems and just the idea of having a backstory for why all of a character's spells might be physically stored gems (that the player can use to track).