What are some cool ways to cast spells?

[tennyson]

Hi Everyone,

For example, last session a mage cast Sleep and pronounced "Profundus Somnus" as he was casting it. What other terms have you used to cast spells? I would like add a little more detail to the mage I'm currently playing, and I find that saying the actual spell is much more fun than saying "I cast...fill in the blank."

Thanks in advance.

 

[Piratecat]

From a former player of mine (who posts here as Bandeeto); read them out loud for the proper effect:

Shatter:
"Operatic, cacophonic, stratospheric shriek,
Focussed locus hocus pocus hypersonic seek,
Broken, cracked and burst and wracked, shattered now
must you be,
Slivers, shards are in the cards,
And by the way: Shadoobie!"

Color Spray:
"Technicolor paparazzi,
magnesium flash,
watch the birdie,
film 6:30,
geeze your costumes clash!"

Grease:
"Slip and fall and slide and sprawl, stagger, skid, and
stumble,
Topple, flop, and pitch and drop, totter, tilt and
tumble,
Perniciously lubricious, oily unguent vicious,
Lipoleic, oleo-, petroleum slick of suet,
Polyunsat, ceramide, sebaceous lipid do it.
Balsam and brilliantine, butter, lard of beast,
Dip and tallow adipose, glycerine and grease."

Irritation:
"Private itches, ants in britches, poison oak and ives,
Eczematous icthyosis, boils, wheals and hives,
Busy tongued insectile young,
Your nails flay fleshly strips,
The burning rash and stinging lash,
Of magic nettled whips!"

Mirror Image:
"Prism prisons laggard light,
Fly eye comports compound sight,
Psilocybin, icy high been,
Crystal silver dreams imbibin'.
Loosely shifting diamond view,
Crazed cracks cross the iris blue,

As future finis by veiled pupils pass,
So let me be seen,
Through the same darkling glass!"

Gust of Wind:
"Blowing bluster, Nor'east guster, tornado, hurricane!
Atmospheric, hypobaric, send cyclonic strain!
North wind's breath, salt sailor's death,
Knock foemen to their knees,
Come cruel cutting courser, with artic gale force, er...
Well... at least with a brave bracing breeze!"

Pyrotechnics:
"Multimillions, megahit! Stallone and Schwarzenegger!
Laser lights and phoenix flights, a nitro kilokegger!
Spielberg, Lucas! Getting warm. Show takes town by firestorm.
The smoke, the flames, we're naming names, pure pyrotech
impaction,
Blockbusting blast, a stellar cast,
Take one, roll film, and ... Action!"

Stinking Cloud:
"Breathe deep breaths of this putrid perfume,
Gangrene green choking vaprous spume,
Sulfur eructations, musky skunk deflations,
Nauseous nostrils flare at the flatulence of nations,
Effluvius Vesuvius, your bile brings reports,
On essence of incontinent otyugh shorts,
And lastly the bouquet beheaded camels couldn't miss,
The full-bodied stench of crusty dwarven spirit piss."


Note: After gaining an evil mage's spell book, the wizard gained the spell Darkening Bolt. It is in all ways the equivalent of Lightning Bolt, but uses negative energy and manifests as a black stroke.

Darkening Bolt:
"Tesla, Volta, Van de Graaf,
Laughing blue-black barbed gaffe,
Dark arc sparking spearing spike,
Of streaking, striking, ion shrike,
Streaming ebon dreams of will o' wisp scars,
Where dancing lances crisp from mouths of Leyden jars,
And forking lightless bolts of scintillating breath,
Drown themselves in dark electric death.
Flickering feeble waveforms, your groundless power pales,
In your current static state, resistance fails."

 

[alsih2o]

From a former player of mine; read them out loud for the proper effect:

Shatter:
"Operatic, cacophonic, stratospheric shriek,
Focussed locus hocus pocus hypersonic seek,
Broken, cracked and burst and wracked, shattered now
must you be,
Slivers, shards are in the cards,
And by the way: Shadoobie!"

i have GOT to game with you pc

 

[Holy Bovine]

Those are really cool Piratecat! Do your players think up those or do you use them more as a DM? I may have to swipe some of these the next time my PCs encounter an enemy spellcaster!

 

[wighair]

You might want to check out the Ars Magica rules (see other thread) and take up the link to a free download. Just using the nouns/verbs in latin that that provides gives a little of what you're after...

e.g.
Creo Ignem - create fire
intellego vim - detect magic
Rego Aquam - Control water

The full set are...

verbs (techniques)...
Creo - create
Intellego - detect/get info from
Muto - change
Perdo - destroy
Rego - control

nouns (arts)...
Animal - like it sounds
Aquam - water/liquid
Auram - air/gases
Corpus - body (human)
Herbam - plant/tree
Ignem - fire
Imaginem - image
Mentem - mind
Terram - earth
Vim - magic

 

[sircaren]

I tend to use latin for divine spells and draconic (from dragon magazine) for arcane. I have the spells I have memorized summarized on index cards. When it comes time to cast a spell, I say(or shout if it calls for it heh) the words and describe what my character does with any material components. Then I describe the visual spell affects and give the card to the DM so he can assign game mechanic stuff. The name of the spell is never spoken or referred to at the table.

 

[Gez]

Casting a spell is usually a few short words, as it's casted in about one half of a round (3 seconds).

It tends to be things like "hhawajah" pronounced with a weird voice. I'm partial to shagazam, and one other player seems to like shabadabada.

One exception, fireball is always FAY-YER-BALLLL !, otherwise it's not fun (other spells are refered to in French, but this one is special).

Teleportation and co., which only have a V component, are "cassos" (buzzoff).


Of course, when I want to make it sounds cool, rather than coming up with funny sounds, I describe the casting. "A warm tingle crawl up <character>'s veins, the idealized image of the spell appears in her psyche, a moment of exhilaration as the words of power dance just outside of reach, and finally, reality bends, the draconic words are uttered of their own accord, the fingers move by themselves, non-existent tinkling sounds are heard faintly, the arcane energies are shaped into being -- the spell is cast.

 

[Bandeeto]

Those are really cool Piratecat! Do your players think up those or do you use them more as a DM? I may have to swipe some of these the next time my PCs encounter an enemy spellcaster!

At the time I was looking to jazz up the somewhat boring prospect of: "I cast 'Stinking Cloud'!" The components were a great deal of fun to write, and to say. It helped that PCat gave out experience point bonuses for coming up with things like that. Always a spur to creativity.

Except for some of the shorter ones, I tended to use the full verbal component only the first few times I cast it, as it slowed down the game otherwise. In game the spells were (of course) actually in the "language of magic", but the other characters quickly picked up the cadence of the familiar ones and knew how to react.

Bear in mind that this was 2nd Ed, so you had a bit more time to cast!

 

[Angcuru]

Piratecat, does this guy perchance game in the central Jersey area?

One thing that should be thought about is that while those quotes are godly awesome, the extend past the required spellcasting time of most any spell. But on the other hand, it'll scare the crap out of a villager or two!

 

[Scarab]

From a former player of mine (who posts here as Bandeeto); read them out loud for the proper effect:

Do you have your dwarven curses somewhere? Those were hilarious.