Circle Casting Details Revealed for Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun

Wizards of the Coast has explained the effects of Circle Casting in Dungeons & Dragons. Next month, Wizards of the Coast will release Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun, a player-facing campaign setting book. One of the major draws of Heroes of Faerun is the addition of Circle Casting, a new way to greatly enhance spells through a group casting. More details were provided about Circle Casting via a D&D Beyond article posted this week. While some spells (such as the newly revealed Doomtide and Spellfire Storm) have specific effects that activate during a Circle Casting, any D&D spell can be enhanced via Circle Casting. The following generic options are available when a spell is cast via Circle Casting.

• Augment: Stretch your spell's range by thousands of feet.
• Distribute: Let your allies share the burden of Concentration, keeping the spell's effects steady.
• Expand: Widen the spell's influence, increasing its area of effect.
• Prolong: Sustain the spell's effect for hours beyond its typical duration.
• Safeguard: Shape the Weave to spare your allies from the storm you unleash.
• Supplant: Replace costly Material components with the collective strength of your circle.

Not every spell can be cast via Circle Casting. Eligible spells must have a casting time of an action or 1 minute or longer and is cast using a spell slot. When a spell is cast via Circle Casting, a primary caster is chosen, and the primary caster chooses the targets, maintains Concentration if needed, provides components, expends the spell slot, and makes any other choices the spell requires. Some Circle Casting options require every member of a Circle to expend spell slots as well.

 

[wizard71]

Is it Opposite Day or something…?

No, it’s Friday!

 

[Ferrousbones]

Looking at that list of effects, some spells become very interesting (mostly not combat related in this list):

• Detect Magic - Expand (very good from an in-world standpoint)
• Floating Disk - Prolong
• Unseen Servant - Prolong
• Enlarge/Reduce - Prolong
• Pass Without Trace - Expand or Prolong
• Rope Trick - Prolong (if long enough, this could become better than Tiny Hut)
• Locate Creature - Augment (1000 feet isn't that far, so depending on how far thousands is, this could be more useful)

There are many other spells that could benefit, such as Fireball (or similar), especially in combination with uncommon functions (such as Haste on a Steel Defender as regards travel).

What spells do you all notice with these effects?

 

[bedir than]

Sending - Expand
Rather than a walkie-talkie you have a radio

 

[mellored]

Can a familiar help?
Can you Disturbe the concentration to a rogue?
What's the material cost reduction on Hero's Feast?
How big is an Expanded Cloud of Daggers?

 

[TheSword]

I really hope familiars don’t count. It should be something wonderful to encourage casters in the game world to co-operate to create impressive effects not just a way of making individuals more powerful.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Can a familiar help?
Can you Disturbe the concentration to a rogue?
What's the material cost reduction on Hero's Feast?
How big is an Expanded Cloud of Daggers?

To support a Circle Magic Spell you need to have spell slots so Familiars don't have those (although perhaps there will be a feat or spell that gives spell slots to Familiars, Paladin Mounts, even Martial characters for the purpose of circle casting), and it depends if your Rogue has spell slots.

We don't have specific numbers on each of the circle magic spell enchancements, but I suspect that they grow stronger with each additional member of your circle. So maybe with a lead caster and 2 support your augment adds 2000 feet to a spell, but add two more support casters and it becomes 4000 additional feet instead, add 10 more support casters and it becomes 14,000 additional feet to the spells normal range. This is hypothetical.

So maybe first material cost reduction its say a 100 to maybe a thousand gold per support caster depending on how generous WotC is.

Also we know class/subclass and other features can still enhance circle spells, so it'll be interesting see how metamagic interacts with this mechanic.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Roll20 mentioned a spell in the book that allows you to summon an army, I suspect that its if you cast with its special circle magic option, otherwise its more like a normal summoning spell.

So like maybe you can summon a great warrior with a summoning spell, but it has an option summon a swarm of warriors if you have an engraved Gold Dragon's scale worth 4,000 gold and 4 casters using circle magic.

 

[Ferrousbones]

Sending - Expand
Rather than a walkie-talkie you have a radio

Assuming that Expand can increase the number of targets. Otherwise, this wouldn't work, since Sending isn't an AOE spell.

 

[Ferrousbones]

Looking at the spells with (optionally) consumed components:

• Ceremony
• Revivify
• Awaken
• Create Spelljamming Helm (from the 2014 Spelljammer book)
• Greater Restoration
• Hallow
• Raise Dead
• Resurrection
• True Resurrection

The spellcaster gold economy might be even more broken now, not counting spells with low cost, like Continual Flame.

 

[GarrettKP]

To support a Circle Magic Spell you need to have spell slots so Familiars don't have those (although perhaps there will be a feat or spell that gives spell slots to Familiars, Paladin Mounts, even Martial characters for the purpose of circle casting), and it depends if your Rogue has spell slots.

I just thought about this, but based on the preview article, the two spells that can be circle cast for greater effect both require the casters to spend spell slots.

Monsters in the new Monster Manual do not have spell slots, meaning this really isn't usable, RAW, by NPCs. Which means enemies would not be able to use this against PCs, but also PCs could not use hirelings to help cover the castings.

Now this is, of course, assuming the article is not omitting a rule that says an NPC's X/day features count as spell slots for this requirement.