Words of Power: 5th Edition Variant Spellcasting

New on EN5ider, the 5E Patreon. Take your 5th Edition spellcasting into new realms with this article by Edric Alan Leggett. Words of Power is a variant rule system which uses combinations of words to craft spells. This article contains fifty such words of power, arranged into Anchor Words, Action Words, and Creature Words, Effect Words, and Unfettered Words, which the caster combines into a Spell Phrase of between three and five words. Illustrated by Herman Lau.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Sorry, it was a lapsus.

 

[jimmifett]

The multiverse was created when the creators saw their work was completed on the only singular universe, and uttered the true-name spell "Crtl+V".

 

[osarusan]

I love this idea. It made me re-subscribe to the Patreon. The idea of different languages having different effects is fantastic, and the words themselves are pretty comprehensive and cover most spell situations.

I like this article, but it's pretty fluffy. I'm still holding my breath for Ranger Wickett to write "Elements of Magic" for 5E.

Same here! So badly! I've posted about that a couple of times, but EoM for 5e would be the biggest deal for me and my whole gaming group.

I like the ideas proposed in this system, but it's a little difficult to wrap my head around—not for what you can do, but for what you can't do. They give examples of casting a spell using 3 words vs 5 words, and I can see how that would work, but it's hard to understand what the difference between those spells would be, or how to adjudicate the power level.

How would you go about fitting this system into a resource-management system. Surely not spell slots. My group abandoned spell slots a while back and we currently use the spell points variant in the DMG, which helps a lot. A skill/roll-based magic system would be a fun way to utilize this word-based system too, although because of 5e's bounded accuracy there's only so much you can do with that. +1 in 5e represents much much more than +1 in 3e.

The pdf is a bit too light to start using in a game any time soon, but it offers a really tantalizing look into something that could be grown into an amazing spell system. Or if EoM 5e is in the works (last I heard it wasn't), I would love to see it utilize languages in this way. I'd love to see some charts and tables with effects and complications caused by the various words of power and based on the language used to cast. And I'd love to see some ideas for how to adjudicate power level vs spell cost (# of words required, what resources are expended).

 

[77IM]

This is... actually really good.

What I like about it, is how it adds a layer of flavor on top of the 5E mechanics, without totally rewriting them. So you are still casting the same PHB spells as anybody else, you just have this magic word thing going on along side it. That makes it very easy to integrate into a game without wrecking balance and whatnot. You could even have some players at the table using these words and others just casting regular spells.