Level Up (A5E) Rare variants of spells that don't have them

[věkitateljь]

there's a fan-made compendium of "fixed" 5E spells:

A comprehensive rework of 5E's most problematic spells. Tune-ups for the weak ones, tone-downs for the strong ones, and an eye for balance and flavor throughout. A joint project with Omega Ankh.

https://www.somanyrobots.com/s/Spells-That-Dont-Suck-compressed.pdf

It is licensed CC-BY; made by Omega Ankh and somanyrobots. Judging by "design notes" section, a lot of thought went into it.

I looked into all level 1 replacements and selected the ones that have original version that is available in a5e.tools (or, equivalently, are in SRD). Some of them are nerfs/rebalances instead of buffs: it means that a player has no incentive to research this modification as "rare version" but GM still might give this spell as a reward.

There are 9 such new spells.

Animal Friendship & Animal Messenger: they were merged into a single spell Befriend Beast (allows you to Charm a beast and then give it a message to pass along). This is a good idea but "rare versions" is not a good tool to implement it.

Speak with Animals & Speak with Plants: merged into a single spell Speak with Nature.

Color Spray is converted into Dazzle: a straight Constitution save instead of rolling hitpoints and "caster's location is automatically obscured (effectively a free disengage)".

Burning Hands: upcasting increases the damage by 1d6 and cone size by 5 feet

Detect Evil and Good: renamed into Detect Otherworldly Influence, added the ability to cast as ritual, added Perception and Insight bonus against outsiders.

Divine Favor: "Buffed duration from 1m to 10m. Buffed to 1d6 damage."

Goodberry: instead of removing the nourishing property completely, it is heavily nerfed: "If a creature eats 10 infused fruits, the magic combines to provide enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day". It means that this is a buff, compared to A5E's version!

Illusory Script: changed heavily. To quote from design notes:

• Gave it duration scaling based on component cost (so you can still ritual cast and get duration scaling)
• Fixed a weird debatable loophole where you cast it backwards, designating every creature except your target, which means the entire world sees the fake message, which breaks the truesight interaction.
• Changed its mechanic to a password, which opens up more fun gameplay scenarios

Shield: AC is capped at 21. Upcasting increases AC bonus and AC cap by +1 per each two levels.

And I want to quote my favorite change in the document, a much needed buff to a second level spell:

Ray of Enfeeblement
Replaced With: Curse of Weakness
(design notes: This one went through a bunch of drafts. The original's very situational and quite weird; buffing it at all almost immediately made it too good in its niche, though. We opted for reworking it into an AoE and basically making it silence but-versus-martials.)

Ghastly energy flickers within a 10-foot radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range. When a creature starts its turn in the area or moves into the area during its turn, it must make a Constitution saving throw.
On a failure, a creature is cursed with weakness until the end of its turn. While cursed, it has disadvantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, it deals half damage with weapon attacks that use Strength, and its speed is reduced by 10 feet.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the radius of the sphere increases by 5 feet for each slot level above 2nd.

 

[Tessarael]

The A5E version of Goodberry is quite bad. As a result, I have never memorized it with the A5E Druid that I have played from level 1 to level 7. The A5E versions provides 2d4 berries, an average of 5, half of the 10 berries provided by the D&D 2014 and D&D 2024 versions. D&D 2024 also changed it from an action to a bonus action to eat a berry, which is helpful. I would just go with the D&D 2024 version of Goodberry, but remove the nourishment to be consistent with most spells not providing supply in A5E.

Edit: The rare variant of Goodberry fine as is, with the increased number of berries (10) per D&D 2024: "Beshela’s Bunched Goodberry. Eating or administering any number of berries is a bonus action, and a creature regains 1 hit point per berry consumed."