Ogre Mage
Hero
Hmm, maybe the PCs are part of a wizard's college. They have been tasked to find spells that are not in the current college library.
Yes, I like that. Perhaps the wizard's college could act as a patron for the party.
Hmm, maybe the PCs are part of a wizard's college. They have been tasked to find spells that are not in the current college library.
I had Skyrim in my mind when I was thinking about it. The town the university sits in has lots of folks so not every PC would need to be a wizard either. Perhaps the hunting guild sends an escort for the wizards to team up and be more likely to survive delving into places to find the new spells.I love the wizard college / fantasy academia concept. Even if the school in question is less Hogwarts and more Unseen University, there's still probably some material in Strixhaven that you could adapt for that purpose. That would be a great premise to support an all-wizard party, especially if new spells were the only way to get XP. Or if players don't love the idea of all being wizards, they could be some other class posing as wizards. Depending on your table's tolerance for silliness, this might mean sorcerers or it might mean barbarians.
Another option would be getting a scroll in an unknown ancient language. You can learn the spell, you can cast the spell, but all you know is the spell level and the target, not what it does.My thought would be to have them hunting for rare elements and material components. Then, you can make it a crafting game; a game within the game. I would also make sure there is an element of randomness to the crafting game. Thus, they can try to cast an unknown spell during battle - who knows what will happen?
If you wanted an endgame, it could be combining spells to overthrow some crazy arch mage group, closing different portals that are creating havoc, or to enter the pantheon of minor deities.
That would be cool. You could revolve the entire campaign around finding the codex to the language. A piece here, a piece there, then the players could slowly decipher the scrolls. And of course, the more difficult the spell, the tougher or stranger the locations of said codex are found.Another option would be getting a scroll in an unknown ancient language. You can learn the spell, you can cast the spell, but all you know is the spell level and the target, not what it does.
Lots of actual experimentation then goes on for spell research.
It would be like in 1e where not all the actual facts were known in the Player's Handbook.
Id simply make all Spellcasting involve learning new spells like a Wizard does, and include the new spells in that dynamic.I have a bunch of third-party supplements adding lots of new spells to 5e and I really want to get more use out of them. How can I add new spells to a campaign in a fun and satisfying way? I want to do something more interesting than just giving my players more sources to choose their PC's spells from. Really, I'd like to make discovering and using new spells the center of the campaign. Here are some ideas I had, what do you think? These concepts all require houserules or change some of the core assumptions of 5e, so I'd need to be clear in session zero on what the campaign was going to be about and make sure all the players were enthusiastic about playing under these conditions. For instance, RAW only wizards can learn new spells outside of gaining a new level, but I'd extend that to everyone.
Would these be fun to play, or would there be some downsides I haven't considered? What would you do instead?
- Some external threat is making it impossible to cast certain spells, forcing the party to seek out new replacement spells while investigating the cause of the spell outage.
- A campaign as a riff on Pokemon, where the party's goal is to "learn 'em all" by filling out a spellbook with every possible spell.
- A curse of some kind keeps PCs from being able to choose the spells they prepare each day. Instead, the PCs get a random set of spells that they may not have previously known. (This might also work as a subclass, and has probably already been written up as one. The trick would be determining what perks to give the subclass in exchange for losing the ability to select the spells they have available.)
That's a great opportunity for the languages PCs know to matter. Languages often get handwaved away or used one or twice then otherwise ignored.Another option would be getting a scroll in an unknown ancient language.