D&D 5E Many Homebrew Spells for D&D 5e

[dynath]

Ok, well my players decided they wanted me to get some of these into my game. So they said I should critique them. LOL.

I like concussive cord. I'd probably rewrite the component line to say V or S.

Hand of Blight. So fails a save on your turn and is poisoned til the end of its next turn? but it gets to remake its save at the beginning of its turn? this seems like a lot of extra rolls. I'd let it just succeed or fail its save and suffer the consequences til its next turn.

Ice Jet. Ice jet is a bit to similar to ray of frost for my taste, given that its an average 1pt damage difference and ray of frost slows a target it's a better choice. Maybe just give it to druids/clerics which don't get ray of frost?

know direction. I mentioned this before but it's covered by a survival skill check. it's not really useful. Maybe raise it to level 1 and make it "know direction to query" so long as you know what the creature is you can know the direction to it? good for finding lost party members and targeting an invisible foe once you know what it is.

Lance of Faith. Lance of faith would be good as a 1st level spell with each higher slot adding an additional lance. If it stays a cantrip i'd lower its dice to d8s.

Lightning Lash. this is a good spell option. Make it a bonus action and it would be super good. I might do that in my games simply because most of our casters wouldn't want the enemy 10ft closer LOL.

Rainbow Bolt. I don't think this is to much dice rolling. I'd roll damage on one die and then a second d6 for the damage type. With added bolts just roll the extra d6 for type and a signal dice for damage. at most 5 dice simultaneously applied to 4 targets.

Read Magic. useless as it's just an arcana check. anyone who can cast spells can read magic. Maybe increase its spell level and make it a touch spell to allow non-casters to read magical text. Also the 30 second casting time is non-standard, bonus action, action, 1 minute, 10 minutes are normal. I get you're making it take time so its a non-combat cantrip but why? its not gonna have any effect on combat as a whole so I wouldn't worry about it.

Static Shock. Acid splash is the only other cantrip I can think of that splashes like this and it does d6s so this is probably to much damage at a d8/d6. I'd do... "Choose one target that you can see within range. The target takes 1d4 lightning damage and all within 5ft must make a dexterity save or take the same amount of lightning damage." It gives a good effect since it's autotarget damage and splashes to others, its very low damage but cost effective.

Stonefist. You like d10s LOL. Range should be self. 1d8+strength modifier in damage.

 

[AlmirEldignor]

Alright, made some changes / explanations of my logic in some of these things:

Concussive Chord already says V or S, not sure when you read and I don't remember when I changed it, so I may have fixed it before you posted, so is all good.

Hand of Blight: Yeah should probably only be the one save, just didn't want to make Ray of Sickness any more pointless, but it was kinda lame to start with.

Ice Jet: I've got it on Wizard/Sorcerer to give them basically a firebolt equivalent but does Cold damage instead. Probably doesnt need an entire separate entry just for that, other than to give it to druids.

Know Direction was made partly as my work converting older cantrips into 5e terms, I can only assume it is intended for situations where you are indoors or were just recently unconscious or something. Even as I read it I figured it wouldn't be all that useful, but some people enjoy flavour cantrips and stuff.

Lance of Faith, as it stands, is almost identical to Eldritch blast (although slightly worse, if only because more things resist radiant than resist force), which most people agree is the most powerful cantrip because Warlocks can add their CHA to each bolt. When I wrote it originally, I hadn't considered that Clerics can do exactly that also, so shortly after we started playtesting some of these I changed it on the original post to be just one lance, similar to firebolt. I've updated the entry on this forum accordingly.

Rainbow Bolt I had mentioned being roll-intensive, but in practice it was even worse for the players at my table. We had to roll a d6, then get the type, then roll a d10, and track what damage type each d10 was, and even at 11th level when you're only rolling three sets, its a bit crazy. Therefore, I changed it to all one damage roll, just one random type. I also reduced the damage slightly, as suggested, as a trade-off for potentially avoiding most damage resistances. I should also clear up some confusion that some posters seem to be having, both here and on other sites. It was never intended to be a multi-target spell, all the different "colours" were for a single target. My players were also confused by this, but most of it should be made clearer by the single damage roll now.

Read Magic was another translation from 3e to 5e, althought I didn't know you could read other classes's scrolls with an Arcana check. I'll keep it here, for people who want to be able to do that, but don't have good INT/ proficiency in Arcana.

For Static Shock I originally had it as d8/d6 because it was an attack and a save, with the save being conditional on hitting, but in practice if found the hit requirement to be almost negligible in most cases (i.e., Advantage, insane modifiers, etc) I do like you idea of the low-damage splash attack, just maybe without the autodamage. So now its set up as Attack roll (so potential crits, as well as advantage etc) then the splash damage, in d4's, plus the reaction inhibition like shocking grasp.

As for Stonefist, it seems pretty fine where it is, at least in playtesting so far. Its a melee cantrip that does d10's, but in bludgeoning damage that is resisited much more often than something like lightning. I made its range touch because thats the same range as all the other melee cantrips. As for not using STR, the point is to let casters have some decent melee options without stacking points into a physical stat.


In regards to the Free Action thing, for the most part it should just say "no action required", I haven't gotten around to parsing out all the little things like that quite yet. Masterwork items I included because we use them in our game, but its easy enough to ignore that bit if your game doesn't have them.

 

[AlmirEldignor]

Also to anyone interested, there's a another collection of 5e spells available here, some are useful, some are situational, but they're all pretty neat. Be warned: my understanding is that these are almost direct translations from earlier editions, without regard for balancing or edition changes (read: 's op), for example, the Cantrip-based AoE 1 minute non-concentration incapacitate spell.

 

[dynath]

That does identify a lot of your logic which helps understand where you are coming from. It also looks like you've already been addressing many of the concerns I personally had with some of the spells.

Over all my biggest issue is damage output. the cantrips especially seem over powered. From reading through the 5e cantrips average damage seems to be between a d6 or a d8. While I like d10s and think they have their place as a rarity I prefer my cantrips with shortbow or longbow damage not heavy crossbow. It could be a preference but I feel it over shadows ranged combatants at the higher damage point especially when there are rider effects and alternate damage types. Alternatively your 1st and higher level spells seem to be lower average damage than your cantrips. Often times your 1st level spells have 4 or 6 average damage on a failed save while the cantrips average 5 without one inherently making them a better option than the higher level spell. This is why I was advocating lowering the damage on the cantrips as a whole.

 

[AlmirEldignor]

Most cantrips, especially at 1st level, have a much lower damage output per round than regular ranged weapons (the only real exception to this is warlock with the agonising blast thing). Even a d10 cantrip is average of 6 on a hit, whereas a long bow averages 8 (as 1d8+3, assuming they dont have a higher mod for it). Most classes dont ever add their ability score to cantrip damages, except cleric and warlock, afaik. Cleric starts adding the damage at 8th level, by which time most classes have a +5 in their stat and are marking two attacks (or some other method of boosting damage output) If you optimise for it then you can get some pretty high numbers (read: warlock/sorc) but otherwise it's usually just slightly below the average for physical combatants. What it's really about is reliable damage output (meaning, if you hit with two short swords doing 1d6+4 each, you're more likely to get a decent result than 2d10's) Another thing to remember with cantrips is that you cant make reaction attacks with them unless you invest in the feat. Then you also have to consider magic items such as flametongue, which is a huge boost to dpr for characters who get multiple attacks/round.

I do get where you're coming from, with the average d6/d8, but thats simply because most of the cantrips have bonus effects, or use saving throws instead. The d10 ones i added are either re-flavourings of existing d10 cantrips made for other classes so that they have a thing they can do each round if they wanna go all casting stats (ice jet/lance of faith/concussive chord), or dont have any added bonuses (stonefist).


P.S: As for why the 1st level spells seems weaker than the cantrips, its cause you have to remember that by the time the cantrips reach 3d4/6/8/10, you've got 5th level slots to use, iirc. They made cantrips scale with level so that casters still do relevant amounts of damage with an attack that takes their entire action (as opposed to the two or three attacks/action a halfcaster or noncaster would have by then)

 

[AlmirEldignor]

UPDATE: 7/12/2015

Some new spells, some old spells removed, and a couple cantrip tweaks:
Removed-
(0) Know Direction (As mentioned above, basically just a skill check)
(5) Meteor Strike (Replaced and reflavoured with the new 6th-level Cometfall)
(8) Paranoia (Just weird and kind difficult to run with, no one in the playtest ever wanted to use it, probably for good reason)

Changed-
(0) Ice Jet (Now deals in 2d4's, rather than d10's. This is both to differentiate it from other d10 cantrips, as well as slightly reducing the average (5.5 > 5)
(0) Summon Weapon/Shield now reflavoured into Ethereal Weapon/Shield. No real mechanical changes here.

New-
5th Level
Aether Waves (Small AoE add-on for weapon attacks)
Chaos Armour (Causes random effects against attackers, good if you enjoy lots of rolling and randomness.)
Reap (Aoe life draining, does same damage as vampiric touch but aoe, may need future balancing)
Zealot's Fire (Self-destructive damage reflection spell, may need future balancing)

6th Level
Cometfall (higher-level Ice version of the older Meteor Strike, now with 97% more druid compatibility)
Frost Aura (Passive small-AoE Cold damage)
Magma Burst (AoE fire damage and one-time restraint)

7th Level
Banshee Wail (cone-based damage spell, save negates necrotic portion)
Icicle Blast (line-based cold damage spell. really dunno why they didn't already have one, although i know a lot of people don't care too much for line AoEs)

8th Level
Healing Rain (AoE HoT, will most likely need balancing pending further testing)
Impale (Single-target massive damage, no damage on save. Deals piercing)
Phoenix (AoE Death Ward effect, cleric only, tiny amount of fire damage when activated, mostly for flavour)

9th Level
Chaos Storm (as chaos armour above, but AoE. DEFINITELY do not use if you don't like rolling for random results)
Empower (AoE stat-boost, non-con, will likely need balancing)
Mindstab (Massive single-target damage, similar to impale above, but psychic damage. requires gold-cost component)
Soul Lance (Line-based necromancy damage spell)



Notes
Added some higher-level spells now, instead of the horde of 1st-4th levels as before, now that the playtest is progressing into higher level grounds. I mentioned it above, but I'll say it again here: The "Chaos" spells are random, and although its almost always something for your enemies, you can actually benefit them on occasion. If you dislike things like Wand of Wonder or Deck of Many things, this is basically just a watered-down combat version, so you probably won't enjoy it too much. I probably made some other changes i didn't remember to mention here, so if something is different that's probably why. Depending on how the Ice Jet changes go, some of the other d10 cantrips may also be changed to suit.

 

[Dragonsbane]

Looks great. Explanations about how you figured out dice or power levels makes my inner DM very happy!

 

[Goemoe]

I very much appreciate your work. You give me tons of spells to read through and check. I offer new spells to my campaigns by letting the players find some very old tomes in some dungeons or treasure hoards. Its always a good reward. So thanks for the creative or compiling work

 

[Goemoe]

Armaments of the Forest (Druid, Ranger)
1st Level Transmutation
Casting Time: Bonus Action
Range: Self
Components: S, M (two blades of grass, a small leaf, or a twig, depending on the effect you choose)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 Minute
You turn ordinary forest items into deadly weapons. When you cast this spell choose an effect from the list below. You can only have one version of this spell active at one time.
Blades of Grass You turn a pair of grass blades into grass scimitars. You are proficient with these scimitars, and they function as +1 scimitars. You may use your spellcasting ability modifier instead of Dexterity or Strength for attack and damage rolls with these swords.
Leaf Shield You turn a plain leaf into a solid shield. You are proficient with this shield, and it acts as a +1 shield.
Twig Staff You convert a twig into a deadly wooden quarterstaff. You are proficient with this staff, and it functions as a +1 quarterstaff. You may use your spellcasting ability modifier instead of Strength for attack and damage rolls with this staff. It may also be used as a spellcasting focus.

Nice spell but I would rate it a second level spell. I am just editing you ideas for my campaign, creating tomes for my players to find. If Magic Weapon is a second level spell, Armements of the Forest has to be second level as well, as it does quite the same under different circumstances, even offering a weapon or a shield.

 

[AlmirEldignor]

Nice spell but I would rate it a second level spell. I am just editing you ideas for my campaign, creating tomes for my players to find. If Magic Weapon is a second level spell, Armements of the Forest has to be second level as well, as it does quite the same under different circumstances, even offering a weapon or a shield.

That was my thought at first too, but I decided to make it a 1st-level for two reasons: 1) It doesn't scale with slot level, and 2) it only lasts for 1 minute, as opposed to the 1 hour of magic weapon.
It's mostly intended as a way for druids/rangers to have emergency weapons on hand in case of disarm, etc.