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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I play a genie warlock whose patron is a candy genie! So all my spells are candy stuff. Eldritch blast is rock candy rockets, witch bolt is licorice lasso, summon fey summons a gingerbread man, etc.
A lot of the feats in Tasha's can be good starting points if you want a unique flavor for your spells.
Does your spellcaster never have enough spells known/prepared? You might remedy that by taking the Fey Touched feat, giving you two new spells. In pure gameplay terms, these are separate from the spells that your class gives you access to (aside from being castable using your spell slots) - but flavorwise they don't have to be. You could start adding fey flavor to all of the spells you cast; for example, maybe you're a light cleric whose light starts taking on all sorts of brilliant colors. Shadow Touched, Telekinetic, and Telepathic also work for something like this. Artificer Initiate is more restrictive in terms of what classes it can work with, but its third feature opens up some interesting creative options as well.
This is great, I'm new to D&D and am playing a bard for the first time. I'd never thought about the personalisation I could add. Also doing my first time as GM in a different campaign with a cult setting so this is very useful. Thank you so much!
you have a good DM that is willing to work with you!, and that's the best situation you can find yourself in!
My players used Zone of Truth as part of an interrogation of an NPC they thought was just a regular, though top rung, noble. The NPC failed his save but he knew it and the cleric in the party who cast the spell knew it. So I played the NPC as recognizing the spell and acting nonchalant about the whole thing. And the players as expected became frustrated by the attitude. He was slippery but forthcoming, easily answering all questions put to him though also being vague and imperial because noble.
A Nat 20 Intimidation wherein the dragonborn fighter picked up the guy because they weren't getting the information they thought they should be getting (they've been under the impression that this guy is the BBEG behind all the problems of the city). The NPC's response was to cast Command and say Drop. Because the NPC was a cleric himself. Failed save from the fighter.
That Nat 20 worked and now the NPC is going to be actively working against the players. I can't wait.
I had built a fey warlock themed to serve an art patron (putting most of his spells in illusion like painting) but his eldritch blast was themed to be this whirlwind of magical colored light
Well, isn't that just a delicious development. Players making their own antagonists is always... the most fun.
Personal grievances and slights breed the best conflict haha
Regards: with the use of FEATs such as fay touched, barbarians can cast spells. As a matter of fact the totem barbarian can cast speak with animals.
I was wondering what some cool ideas for fiendish traps and encounters I could have in my Demonic Campaign, and this seemed like the place to ask.
This is a nice article! It seems like I say that for every article I read, though :)
I had a necromancer that liked to cast magic missiles that looked like laughing green skulls.
I had a Warforged, Clockwork Soul Sorc/ Forge Cleric, named Ingot. We didn't play long enough for the characters to discover it externally, but I worked out with our DM that every time he cast a slotted spell it would replace some part of the target with a small clockwork part that served a similar function. The plan was that as we leveled up and he cast higher slot-level spells it would become more outward. Eventually having actual outer parts being replaced by brass pieces. After a while the PC's would get an easy saving throw to resist or allow it to happen. So in summary, he would be progressively be turning all his friends into Warforged or as he'd say "helping/improving" all his friends by bestowing the blessings of Mechanus. Tee hee hee...
As an aside, I played him like Lt. Cmdr Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation in the first episodes mixed with Lenny from To Kill A Mockingbird. He was basically a new being. Lots and lots of knowledge and zero practical experience. Capable of amazing feats of the arcane version of computation but SUPER naive. Ex: someone attacked us. We fought them and prevailed, then he tacked them to a tree with daggers and eviscerated them while still alive to "research" the inside of an elf. He was gleeful and fascinated. He was eventually convinced to move on and then we went to get paid for the bounty and he was still covered in viscera to the shoulder and NO idea how disturbing and smelly he was. Then horses came up in conversation and he walked around talking to different quadrapeds asking if they were a horse.
The plan was that as he experienced things he wouldn't stay that naive. I know it'd get tedious for all the other players. But it was really refreshing to play a character that was completely amazed and filled with childlike innocence but not be an actual child that would die in a fight. That's why eviscerating that elf wasn't an evil act. It was a "hostile" and he literally didn't know any better. If we kept playing he would soon learn that that wasn't okay.
I don’t think so... that sounds more like for the forums, or an article about traps...
I know I'm a year late to this article but I'll still tell you some ideas from my Battle Smith Artificer. His cure wounds is a syringe filled with alchemical reagents that he injected into you, his web spell is a mass of metal wires that stuck into the walls and restrained everyone and his catapult spell was a little spring loaded launcher on the back of his gauntlet that he loaded whatever item he used for spell into it and launched it as he cast.
It took me a while to respond to this for some reason, but yes. You were right. You were very right.
I can relate to this. I love "personalizing" spells. I have a character who is a Divine Soul Sorcerer and doesn't understand his magic. He is stereotypically Neutral Good, trying to bring about positive change by "helping the most while harming the fewest". He started as a Ranger, and when he obtained his second level ability to cast spells, one of his chosen spells was Goodberry, to aid his party. Imagine his surprise when this spell manifested as an angelic hand placing the berries in his outstretched hand, or Mark of the Hunter manifesting as an image of an avenging angel surrounding the target! At third level, his magic manifested, and he switched class to Sorcerer. At fifth level, his confusion (and heritage) reached its climax as he spontaneously transformed from a human to an aasimar.
Curse of Strahd official 5e book or the Lost Citadel a 3rd party book. Although the Lost Citadel does have a slavery theme based play setting, it is like D&D meets Walking Dead.
My character is a drake warden Ranger based on How to train your Dragon, which is a universe that is stated to lack magic, so as a spellcaster it's really fun to phrase spells as not actually magic, like pulling out medicinal herbs to cast Cure Wounds, or using a cloak of Featherhide scales to cast invisibility, or even using Hidden World crystals charged with elemental energy to make elemental bombs
My main character is an elf Druid, she grew up in a temple where no-one really trusted her and loads of really strict rules were enforced. Now she does almost everything by the book… and for any spell more complicated than Shape Water she sits down, crosses her legs and closes her eyes, no matter where she is, because her teacher told her to do that. This leads to her failing at spells because she sits on something sharp, or because the floor’s wet and she doesn’t want to sit down. She uses Charm Person by looking up at them sadly and they feel sorry for her.
Why not? Its a good article
Plus its always nice to encourage player to be more creative and not dull and boring playing the same way over and over agine
I dont see anything wrong with this article. What are you trying to say?