Let's get a sneak peak into Tasha's

[MaxWilson]

Lol. I am odd that I care more about logistics and validity of the lore over the math.

Not that odd. :) There's another thread ongoing right now where I just made the point that an internally-consistent world (i.e. validity of the lore) is one the three top priorities for the experience I offer to my players. If I were one of your players I would really appreciate all the thought you obviously put into consistent lore, but I don't care if you have perfectly DMG-balanced encounters.

[stoutstien]

Not that odd. :) There's another thread ongoing right now where I just made the point that an internally-consistent world (i.e. validity of the lore) is one the three top priorities for the experience I offer to my players. If I were one of your players I would really appreciate all the thought you obviously put into consistent lore, but I don't care if you have perfectly DMG-balanced encounters.

And an insane need to try to give both Is why I'm a prepatual DM.

Back on topic. The whole new custom spell idea is something I'm optimistic about.

[MaxWilson]

And an insane need to try to give both Is why I'm a prepatual DM.

Back on topic. The whole new custom spell idea is something I'm optimistic about.

That's one that puzzles me--am I the only one that's allowed spell research all along? It's readily apparent that the balance between spells is pretty inconsistent, so even if you accidentally let a player create an OP spell it's probably not going to be as OP as Simulacrum or True Polymorph. Therefore the only difficult part of allowing custom spells is coming up with a spell research system that fits your personal aesthetic (e.g. do you it to be a downtime activity, or something that happens automatically when PCs level up?), and there's absolutely no reason to think that WotC is going to be better at matching your personal aesthetic than you are.

Are there really that many DMs out there who will respond to your declaration-of-intent that "I am going to research a new spell that [does XYZ]" with a flat, "You can't because 5E has no written rules for spell research"?

[cutlery]

Are there really that many DMs out there who will respond to your declaration-of-intent that "I am going to research a new spell that [does XYZ]" with a flat, "You can't because 5E has no written rules for spell research"?

Why do you think people get so excited when there are new spells released in official content?

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's one that puzzles me--am I the only one that's allowed spell research all along? It's readily apparent that the balance between spells is pretty inconsistent, so even if you accidentally let a player create an OP spell it's probably not going to be as OP as Simulacrum or True Polymorph. Therefore the only difficult part of allowing custom spells is coming up with a spell research system that fits your personal aesthetic (e.g. do you it to be a downtime activity, or something that happens automatically when PCs level up?), and there's absolutely no reason to think that WotC is going to be better at matching your personal aesthetic than you are.

Are there really that many DMs out there who will respond to your declaration-of-intent that "I am going to research a new spell that [does XYZ]" with a flat, "You can't because 5E has no written rules for spell research"?

Even from the start I've been open to player-suggested homebrew spells. One of my first 5e campaigns had a warlock who had his own variants. Not so much power upgrades as making them more suited to his backstory.

I'd be hard-pressed to accept something that felt like a straight upgrade, and it would have to gel with the fictional layer (I denied a request to change thorn whip to fire for a pyromancer sorcerer due to concerns over how the whole pulling thing works with fire), but generally I'd be willing to work with people on most requests.

What I don't like is the presumption that this is a player entitlement. That if a DM says "no custom spells", they're being unfair or going against some kind of "rules". As with the race stuff, I'd have much preferred it presented as guidance for DMs, with the encouragement that <these changes> are unlikely to cause issues with the rest of the game.

[Segev]

Why do you think people get so excited when there are new spells released in official content?

I always figured it was for the same reason that they get excited about new content released with setting information, or new settings. It's new ideas they hadn't thought of, themselves. It's also less work, since they don't need to balance it, themselves.

I suspect that having rules/guidelines for creating custom spells will help expand the creativity of spell creation, because it will offload some of the mental juggling and guesswork needed to decide where to balance a spell, as well.

Consider how much more magic item theorycrafting is done in 3.5/PF than in 5e.

[MaxWilson]

What I don't like is the presumption that this is a player entitlement. That if a DM says "no custom spells", they're being unfair or going against some kind of "rules". As with the race stuff, I'd have much preferred it presented as guidance for DMs, with the encouragement that <these changes> are unlikely to cause issues with the rest of the game.

I think that when a player says "I am doing X", they are entitled to a response from the DM a la either "Y happens" or "I need some clarification about how you intend to do X" or "you're not sure how to do that, but maybe Z could help."

It's certainly possible that the DM says, "You can't do that, because spell research is an art that has been lost for thousands of years, since the days of the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal who personally invented over a hundred new spells." But is it really true that 90% of DMs run campaigns where spell research is a lost art, and if so, how are those DMs supposed to react when new spells turn up in Xanathar's Guide to Everything or Tasha's?

I think players are entitled to logically consistent rulings from the DM. This doesn't necessarily imply spell research, let alone that a given spell they want to research will be possible, but I think it does imply a better answer from the DM than a flat, "You can't because 5E has no written rules for spell research." Inventing/improvising new rules is kind of the DM's job.

Why do you think people get so excited when there are new spells released in official content?

I understand the excitement about new spells (Frog God's Book of Lost Spells is excellent, full of adaptations of spells from D&D and AD&D and I assume also 3E, and I gave copies to all my players to inspire their own spell research efforts) but I assumed a lot of the excitement about new spells like in Xanathar's was for the sake of the Internet. If I research a spell necromancy Darkball in my DM's game that's 4th level and does 6d6 necrotic damage with a weakness rider a la Ray of Sickness, I can't talk on the Internet about how great Acidball is for Necromancers. It's still a great spell in game, but Internet people like "official" stuff so they can talk about it in public.

Also, I think for a lot of people, it simply never occurs to them to attempt spell research.

Are you really saying that people have been attempting spell research all along, and their DMs are flatly refusing?

I always figured it was for the same reason that they get excited about new content released with setting information, or new settings. It's new ideas they hadn't thought of, themselves. It's also less work, since they don't need to balance it, themselves.

(A) I suspect that having rules/guidelines for creating custom spells will help expand the creativity of spell creation, because it will offload some of the mental juggling and guesswork needed to decide where to balance a spell, as well.

Consider how much more magic item theorycrafting is done in 3.5/PF than in 5e.

(A) Er, maybe. WotC's track record is not great. I was initially excited to hear that the DMG would have rules for future technology like laser pistols, for example, but the rules turned out to be awful. The DMG rules for custom spells are even worse. The PHB crafting rules are bad (reductionist and economically nonsensical); the DMG(?) magic item creation rules are terrible (imbalanced and unworkable); the Xanathar's magic item creation rules are better than the DMG rules but still simplistic and vague, based entirely on item rarity even though Xanathar's itself acknowledges a very important distinction between major/minor items of a given rarity.

What I've heard so far about custom race construction rules in Tasha's does not inspire confidence, so... maybe the spell research rules will be excellent and inspiring, and I'll owe WotC an apology, or maybe I won't.

[Chaosmancer]

I build on this in a very different way.

Dwarves and giants (via goliaths) are all related to one species--the ancient titan race. They screwed up in a major way (a group got greedy and pulled the runic power from their "lesser" brethren, creating the dwarves) and ended up breaking down into modern goliaths. Giants are a pokemon-style forced evolution of goliaths via rune magic. Basically "worthy" individuals get completely rewritten by embedding runes into them. The stronger the individual, the higher on the chain they reach. Failures become trolls, ogres, and other giant-kin. Sadly, true giants aren't fertile but the "failures" are.

So you get the explanation for the dwarven rune obsession, why goliaths are generally so competitive, and how giants fit in. Since giants are sustained by their runes, the ecology works better. And you open up the possibility for non-evil giants (an important thing in my alignment-off setting)--hill giants make great workers, but are too dumb (their brains being warped by partial transformation) to realize that they don't need to eat much anymore.

Spoiler: Runic reprogramming

Show

This is roughly the source code for the reprogramming ritual. The way it works is that to advance someone up the chain (from goliath to giant or to promote a giant) requires at least two people of equal rank to give up their potential for advancement, investing their own power into the candidate. Hence the competitiveness--only the best are considered for promotion.

**START PHYSICAL BLOCK**
GROW IN STRENGTH, SIZE # failure here results in an ogre or ettin. Big, strong, dumb.
LIVE FOR LONG DURATION # failure here tends to be fatal
HUNGER BE SATISFIED # failure here results in a troll. Big, strong, long-lived, always hungry.
BECOME # stopping here results in an ettin
**END PHYSICAL BLOCK**

**START IMPERATIVES BLOCK**
VALUE WORK
BECOME # hill giants
CREATE BEAUTY
BECOME # Stone giants end here
DEFEND KIN
BECOME # Frost giants end here
**END IMPERATIVES BLOCK**

**START RULING BLOCK**
COMMAND UNLIVING ELEMENTS
BECOME # Fire giants
COMMAND KIN
BECOME # Cloud Giants
COMMAND EVERYTHING
BECOME # no one has succeeded in this stage since the Titans. Storm giants came close and are seriously powerful, but seriously rare
**END RULING BLOCK**

Ooooh, this is fascinating. Not sure if I'll steal it 100%, but I have been needing some way to work giants and Goliaths into something newer.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think that when a player says "I am doing X", they are entitled to a response from the DM a la either "Y happens" or "I need some clarification about how you intend to do X" or "you're not sure how to do that, but maybe Z could help."

It's certainly possible that the DM says, "You can't do that, because spell research is an art that has been lost for thousands of years, since the days of the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal who personally invented over a hundred new spells." But is it really true that 90% of DMs run campaigns where spell research is a lost art, and if so, how are those DMs supposed to react when new spells turn up in Xanathar's Guide to Everything or Tasha's?

I think players are entitled to logically consistent rulings from the DM. This doesn't necessarily imply spell research, let alone that a given spell they want to research will be possible, but I think it does imply a better answer from the DM than a flat, "You can't because 5E has no written rules for spell research." Inventing/improvising new rules is kind of the DM's job.

"I don't do homebrew" is a perfectly valid, consistent answer. At the end of the day, it's up to the DM to decide whether content belongs or not, and a perfectly valid answer is "I've already decided on the set of allowed content, not going to accept anything else". And setting an expectation that everything published exists is, IMO, a horrible decision. One of the things I've liked most about 5e is the attitude that content is on a whitelist basis. All those Xanathar's spells? They're optional content, included if and only if the DM says they're available. Heck, not even all the PHB spells are necessarily in any given campaign.

Presenting it as "ok DMs, we know that players often want to make new spells. Here are some suggestions on how to do that in a balanced fashion if you choose to allow this" is, in my opinion, much better than "ok players, here's how you can make new spells if you want." One puts the focus where it belongs, on the DM's right and more importantly responsibility to vet/create new content.

The 3e model of splat-diving (where splats were assumed-included unless forbidden, and the general attitude was that you better have really good reasons to forbid a book) are, IMO, completely backward and one (partial) cause of 3e's issues. It also directly feeds into power creep--spell-casters get a huge power bump as soon as a book is published, while everyone else has to wait for an ASI at best and sometimes completely rebuild their characters.

I'll maintain my same "if you want a custom spell (or anything else), come talk to me and we'll figure out something that works for you, me, the campaign, and the world. But no promises" policy. I may, once I've ok'd the basic structure of the proposed spell, point the player to Tasha's to figure out the mechanics, but that's it. The existence of these rules doesn't change my policies, but it poses the potential to make things more difficult.

Of course, I'm a heretic who doesn't consider the existence or not of written rules to be probative of anything. I take free-form as a baseline and add in rules from whatever source I need to play the games I want to play. Something being "RAW", "1st Party" or not has no influence. Up until now, it's been a testament to the basic structure of 5e that I've been able to run basically straight by the book despite this. I have lots of custom content, but very few custom rules (basically only selecting which variants I'm using). With Tasha's, I'm going to have to take a heavier hand and put large chunks of it on my "not allowed" notice list. Not so much the classes and spells (from what I can tell), but the subsystems/variants. Because unlike previous ones, they're presented as player entitlements, not DM opt-in variants.

Ooooh, this is fascinating. Not sure if I'll steal it 100%, but I have been needing some way to work giants and Goliaths into something newer.

Consider this plagiarized.

Feel free. Everything I do is CC licensed. You're welcome to delve through the setting wiki linked in my sig for anything else interesting.

The realization of how everything fits together with the dwarves, goliaths, and giants made a huge difference to me. It lets me deal with all the ecological questions and have social giants without them overrunning everything. My goal for my setting (beyond just being a fun place to play) is to try to fit as much of D&D in, but coherently while still being recognizable as itself.

I do something similar with dragons as to their source of food, so that they're not gigantic flying locusts stripping the countryside bare to barely sustain themselves.

[Segev]

(A) Er, maybe. WotC's track record is not great. I was initially excited to hear that the DMG would have rules for future technology like laser pistols, for example, but the rules turned out to be awful. The DMG rules for custom spells are even worse. The PHB crafting rules are bad (reductionist and economically nonsensical); the DMG(?) magic item creation rules are terrible (imbalanced and unworkable); the Xanathar's magic item creation rules are better than the DMG rules but still simplistic and vague, based entirely on item rarity even though Xanathar's itself acknowledges a very important distinction between major/minor items of a given rarity.

What I've heard so far about custom race construction rules in Tasha's does not inspire confidence, so... maybe the spell research rules will be excellent and inspiring, and I'll owe WotC an apology, or maybe I won't.

Points granted. I am probably being far too hopeful when I presume it will be something more concrete like the 3.5/PF magic item creation rules.

[Amechra]

My core issue is if the entire structure is based on might and each type of giant has a different standard of said might. Why would a frost giant acknowledge a fire giants abilities in crafting as a comparison to martial skill?

I'm pretty sure that, when the Monster Manual describes a particular giant's position within the Ordning, it's describing how they're positioned inside their caste. A Fire Giant isn't above a Frost Giant in the Ordning because they're a better craftsgiant or because they're a great warrior - it's because they're a Fire Giant.

Think about it this way - in your average Vaguely Medieval Fantasy Setting, nobles (Fire Giants) vie for status all the time by trying to show that they're the wealthiest, or that they're the mightiest warriors. To peasants (Frost Giants), none of that matters - every single noble outranks them, full stop, end of discussion. And if they do think that the discussion isn't over, well... a small army of Fire Giants is going to absolutely wreck a small army of Frost Giants in combat.

It's a divinely mandated caste system, where giants in higher castes are inherently stronger than those in lower castes because their gods said so. It's the divine right of kings, except actually real. Honestly, the weirdest thing in the Monster Manual is that it kinda just assumes that giants in general are OK with this, which feels like throwing away a perfectly good adventure hook.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm pretty sure that, when the Monster Manual describes a particular giant's position within the Ordning, it's describing how they're positioned inside their caste. A Fire Giant isn't above a Frost Giant in the Ordning because they're a better craftsgiant or because they're a great warrior - it's because they're a Fire Giant.

Think about it this way - in your average Vaguely Medieval Fantasy Setting, nobles (Fire Giants) vie for status all the time by trying to show that they're the wealthiest, or that they're the mightiest warriors. To peasants (Frost Giants), none of that matters - every single noble outranks them, full stop, end of discussion. And if they do think that the discussion isn't over, well... a small army of Fire Giants is going to absolutely wreck a small army of Frost Giants in combat.

It's a divinely mandated caste system, where giants in higher castes are inherently stronger than those in lower castes because their gods said so. It's the divine right of kings, except actually real. Honestly, the weirdest thing in the Monster Manual is that it kinda just assumes that giants in general are OK with this, which feels like throwing away a perfectly good adventure hook.

That was one concern that led me to the system I described up thread. For my interpretation, your position is a direct reflection of your strength-of-soul. And you can be promoted--if you show that you're worthy of moving up so that others of your caste are willing to sacrifice their own chance at promotion for you, you can move up the ladder (from goliath -> hill giant -> etc). So storm giants are the natural rulers, because they're the only ones who have survived the insanely difficult road to get there (either step by step or on the first shot, something that's even more rare than surviving a successful promotion from cloud giant). Most of the higher castes have experienced life as part of the lower castes.

[MaxWilson]

"I don't do homebrew" is a perfectly valid, consistent answer. At the end of the day, it's up to the DM to decide whether content belongs or not, and a perfectly valid answer is "I've already decided on the set of allowed content, not going to accept anything else". (A) And setting an expectation that everything published exists is, IMO, a horrible decision. One of the things I've liked most about 5e is the attitude that content is on a whitelist basis. All those Xanathar's spells? They're optional content, included if and only if the DM says they're available. Heck, not even all the PHB spells are necessarily in any given campaign.

(B) Presenting it as "ok DMs, we know that players often want to make new spells. Here are some suggestions on how to do that in a balanced fashion if you choose to allow this" is, in my opinion, much better than "ok players, here's how you can make new spells if you want." One puts the focus where it belongs, on the DM's right and more importantly responsibility to vet/create new content.

(C) The 3e model of splat-diving (where splats were assumed-included unless forbidden, and the general attitude was that you better have really good reasons to forbid a book) are, IMO, completely backward and one (partial) cause of 3e's issues. It also directly feeds into power creep--spell-casters get a huge power bump as soon as a book is published, while everyone else has to wait for an ASI at best and sometimes completely rebuild their characters.
*snip*

(D) I do something similar with dragons as to their source of food, so that they're not gigantic flying locusts stripping the countryside bare to barely sustain themselves.

You lost me at (A), that doesn't even seem related to spell research, and I've said things that directly contradict it (see my remarks on how I used the Book of Lost Spells).

(B) It's interesting to me that you're viewing creation of new spells as a metagame activity done by players. I'm viewing it as an in-game activity done by PCs, like founding a university or raising a child. Maybe I've been more heavily influenced by Jack Vance's stories than you have. If other DMs ban spell research, maybe that's why? Maybe they're viewing as a metagame activity too?

(C) Again, this is the opposite of what I said I did with the Book of Lost Spells. "I gave copies to all my players to inspire their own spell research efforts." More specifically I told them that some of these spells were overpowered and some were underpowered, and that researching overpowered spells was harder, but that I wanted them to have this book to open their eyes to what kinds of things might be possible. Zero players requested to research spells exactly as presented in the book; multiple players invented their own variations on spells and attempted to research them, often succeeding.

So the point is, you're apparently objecting to something that isn't even part of this conversation. And I'm an AD&D player, not a 3E player. AD&D is totally 100% comfortable with optional rules staying optional, since you can't even use all of the rules at once anyway.

(D) My biggest concern with dragons has always been ecological viability--there are too many different kinds of dragons for them all to have separate, sustainable breeding populations. So, I make them all one species, and which color of dragon you turn out to be is determined by your personality/ethics/morals. A stupid, brutish dragon will grow up to be a white dragon; a friendly, peaceful, and proactive dragon may grow up to be a silver; etc.

[Amechra]

That was one concern that led me to the system I described up thread. For my interpretation, your position is a direct reflection of your strength-of-soul. And you can be promoted--if you show that you're worthy of moving up so that others of your caste are willing to sacrifice their own chance at promotion for you, you can move up the ladder (from goliath -> hill giant -> etc). So storm giants are the natural rulers, because they're the only ones who have survived the insanely difficult road to get there (either step by step or on the first shot, something that's even more rare than surviving a successful promotion from cloud giant). Most of the higher castes have experienced life as part of the lower castes.

I think that's a cool way of handling it, but it really changes the overall thrust of the system - it goes from being an unjust hierarchy propped up by divine will to a hierarchy defined by merit. I like the former a bit better, but that's just me.

[MaxWilson]

Think about it this way - in your average Vaguely Medieval Fantasy Setting, nobles (Fire Giants) vie for status all the time by trying to show that they're the wealthiest, or that they're the mightiest warriors. To peasants (Frost Giants), none of that matters - every single noble outranks them, full stop, end of discussion. And if they do think that the discussion isn't over, well... (A) a small army of Fire Giants is going to absolutely wreck a small army of Frost Giants in combat.

(A) Point of order!

Frost Giants are faster, therefore better at concentrating force. We all know that logistics wins wars. A small squad of Fire Giants would beat a similarly-sized squad of Frost Giants in a melee fight, but in a war the Frost Giants are going to win. The Fire Giants can concentrate all of their forces on a small strongpoint and hold that strongpoint against a concerted attack by all the Fire Giants, but the moment they try to hold territory outside that strongpoint (call it the Green Zone) they invite defeat in detail by the Frost Giants.

24 Frost Giants can annihilate 12 Fire Giants and then annihilate 12 more Fire Giants, just by getting there "the firstest with the mostest."

However, there's no particular reason to assume they'd ever go to war with each other in the first place, whether you're using WotC fluff or TSR fluff.

[Hellpyre]

(D) My biggest concern with dragons has always been ecological viability--there are too many different kinds of dragons for them all to have separate, sustainable breeding populations. So, I make them all one species, and which color of dragon you turn out to be is determined by your personality/ethics/morals. A stupid, brutish dragon will grow up to be a white dragon; a friendly, peaceful, and proactive dragon may grow up to be a silver; etc.

I prefer the Fred Saberhagen premise of dragons as an r-strategist species, and then to fit better into D&D expectations I lean into colors as breeds rather than stages of growth. I still end up at a single species, but I have color derive from the female parent. It misses out on eggs for dragons, but plays fairly nicely with even a small breeding population otherwise.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You lost me at (A), that doesn't even seem related to spell research, and I've said things that directly contradict it (see my remarks on how I used the Book of Lost Spells).

(B) It's interesting to me that you're viewing creation of new spells as a metagame activity done by players. I'm viewing it as an in-game activity done by PCs, like founding a university or raising a child. Maybe I've been more heavily influenced by Jack Vance's stories than you have. If other DMs ban spell research, maybe that's why? Maybe they're viewing as a metagame activity too?

(C) Again, this is the opposite of what I said I did with the Book of Lost Spells. "I gave copies to all my players to inspire their own spell research efforts." More specifically I told them that some of these spells were overpowered and some were underpowered, and that researching overpowered spells was harder, but that I wanted them to have this book to open their eyes to what kinds of things might be possible. Zero players requested to research spells exactly as presented in the book; multiple players invented their own variations on spells and attempted to research them, often succeeding.

So the point is, you're apparently objecting to something that isn't even part of this conversation. And I'm an AD&D player, not a 3E player. AD&D is totally 100% comfortable with optional rules staying optional, since you can't even use all of the rules at once anyway.

If spell research is something that's trivially doable during a campaign, then why haven't all those spells been researched before? Wizardry (especially) has been around forever and a day, and we're well past the heyday of that art. For my world, either the ancient aelvar (who ran a continent-wide wizarding empire for thousands of years before man was created) or the old empires (who ran magitech empires for nearly two thousand years) would have already discovered that. So at most you're finding something in a book somewhere.

For me, spell research is either
a) spontaneous discovery--something available only to spells-known types and that spell is theirs and theirs alone.
b) the product of generations of trial and error and known within a school of magic (not the 8 schools, but a literal group of like-minded scholars and researchers). These types you can find in books, but you can't really make your own.

Both of these are inherently setting-side (not meta, but setting-side) things. You're declaring that your character is one of those weird people with a unique power or you're declaring that this spell already exists in the world and you're just discovering it from someone else's writings.

This comes from my own experience with research--breaking new ground is not easy. And magic is not science--there's no underlying formalism. Spells are black boxes that either work exactly the same or just don't work at all--that's why a sorcerer's power to manipulate their spells is so special. It represents a (to a wizard) fundamental violation of the nature of things.

Plus, for me, any addition of content to the world is gated through the DM. It's my world, and I need to make sure that it all fits together, because I have to be excited about it to play in it.

Edit: on reflection, I think a lot of it is that I want rules that encourage the players to work with the DM to create new things, not assert that they have the right to do it themselves. Because helping the players make new things is a big part of my fun. And it causes a lot fewer issues and less conflict when both sides are pushed to work together, rather than present things as a done deal/right.

(D) My biggest concern with dragons has always been ecological viability--there are too many different kinds of dragons for them all to have separate, sustainable breeding populations. So, I make them all one species, and which color of dragon you turn out to be is determined by your personality/ethics/morals. A stupid, brutish dragon will grow up to be a white dragon; a friendly, peaceful, and proactive dragon may grow up to be a silver; etc.

Mine are all one species as well, but I take away the ethic/personality associations. Instead, the color is entirely elemental in nature, with chromatic vs metallic as being non-caster vs caster. All metallics are casters, all chromatics only use their innate abilities. I also add a new step in the lifecycle (hatchling) and move the colors/element associations around, but that's extra.

Basically, hatchlings are born prismatic. At about 1 year, they are drawn to a particular (individual) source of elemental energy. If they're lucky, that's a draconic graveyard where they can soak up energy from the bones of the dead dragons. If not, they might dive into a volcano, etc. There they metamorphose into a wyrmling and eventually into a young dragon. As a young dragon they have to seek out their hoard (which isn't necessarily gold and gems--notable dragons have hoarded butterflies (a particular black former-dracolich), architecture (a particular silver), mortal adulation (the butterfly-hoarder's mate, a gold), stories (a particular bronze), or a city (three particular dragons)). This makes young dragons the most troublesome--they're hungry and desperately seeking something beyond simple cows or deer to slake that thirst. Once they've found an appropriate hoard, they settle down and metamorphose into adults (through a long sleep). From that point, they stay that way unless they get the urge to dominate other dragons--to lead a flight of their own. In which case they end up metamorphosing into ancients.

But then I remove all alignment and fixed-personality stuff from everyone. Including outsiders. That's one place I depart strongly from 5e canon--I can't stomach having racial alignments for anyone. Or cosmological alignment.

[MaxWilson]

I prefer the Fred Saberhagen premise of dragons as an r-strategist species, and then to fit better into D&D expectations I lean into colors as breeds rather than stages of growth. I still end up at a single species, but I have color derive from the female parent. It misses out on eggs for dragons, but plays fairly nicely with even a small breeding population otherwise.

Technically my dragons do have stirges as a larval stage (which they don't consider to be dragons yet any more than humans consider spermatazoa to be humans), but it looks like I need to (1) read up on larval species, and (2) look up a Saberhagen story on dragons which I apparently missed. Or, wait--are you thinking of the Books of Swords? It's possible those dragons may have influenced my stirges-as-dragons tendencies, but I don't see how it solves the ecology problem. It would be too easy to accidentally breed Black Dragons out of existence, for example--with a small breeding population you're very vulnerable to random chance. You also don't have a good explanation for where colors came from in the first place, although I suppose maybe you just assume a high mutation rate as inherent to the draconic genome?

Hmmm, interesting.

[Segev]

My take on spells (particularly wizard spells) for years now has been that they're actually contracts, or at least combinations of contractually-defined effects. You do X and Y, and you're owed from the animistic spirits that make up the underpinnings of the world and its physics (and metaphysics) certain favors to be called in by specific triggers (words, gestures, items, etc.). Your "part" of the bargain is you preparing the spell - all of your spells - and the casting is calling it in and specifying any details that need specification at the time of invocation. (Spontaneous casters have a variant explanation that I can go into later, but don't want to diverge onto here.)

Higher-level wizards are better at mixing and matching requirements for various effects, performing more efficient preparation and squeezing more debt out of the supernatural world without accidentally invalidating other contracts obligating other things. This balance is how they get their spell slot limits, and how they get more of them as they get better at it (higher level). It's also why high Int means they get more spell slots (in 3e, anyway).

New spell research takes two forms, sometimes in combination: long and painstaking research of the sort rules lawyers here on the forums would be familiar with, finding contracts whose rules interact just so to make the effect that the spellcaster wants, and formalizing the preparations and the invocations for ease of re-use...and actively negotiating new contracts.

The reason a wizard's spellbook is so hard to decipher is because it rarely has spells neatly organized in it as individual things; books that do are specifically written for others' consumption, and even then, they lack the notes and edits and connections that say how best to prepare them with other spells to maximize spell loadout. This is why wizards have to make Spellcraft checks to use others' spellbooks, or have to scribe the spells into their own books. The scribing process is at least partially just working them into their own notes and filling in how to make them work with their other spells.

Obviously, this works less well in 5e, where prep and casting are a bit more divorced, but it can be adapted. I mainly share it for another fun way - in my opinion - to handle spell research.

[Unoriginal]

(A) Point of order!

Frost Giants are faster, therefore better at concentrating force. We all know that logistics wins wars. A small squad of Fire Giants would beat a similarly-sized squad of Frost Giants in a melee fight, but in a war the Frost Giants are going to win. The Fire Giants can concentrate all of their forces on a small strongpoint and hold that strongpoint against a concerted attack by all the Fire Giants, but the moment they try to hold territory outside that strongpoint (call it the Green Zone) they invite defeat in detail by the Frost Giants.

24 Frost Giants can annihilate 12 Fire Giants and then annihilate 12 more Fire Giants, just by getting there "the firstest with the mostest."

However, there's no particular reason to assume they'd ever go to war with each other in the first place, whether you're using WotC fluff or TSR fluff.

With the Ordning dissolved, their old animosity may result in an all-out war. Or it could be one of the two groups are among the Giants who don't respect the traditional Giant pantheon, and such going at war would be what's expected.

[MaxWilson]

(A) If spell research is something that's trivially doable during a campaign, then why haven't all those spells been researched before? Wizardry (especially) has been around forever and a day, and we're well past the heyday of that art. For my world, either the ancient aelvar (who ran a continent-wide wizarding empire for thousands of years before man was created) or the old empires (who ran magitech empires for nearly two thousand years) would have already discovered that. So at most you're finding something in a book somewhere.

For me, spell research is either
a) spontaneous discovery--something available only to spells-known types and that spell is theirs and theirs alone.
b) the product of generations of trial and error and known within a school of magic (not the 8 schools, but a literal group of like-minded scholars and researchers). These types you can find in books, but you can't really make your own.

Both of these are inherently setting-side (not meta, but setting-side) things. You're declaring that your character is one of those weird people with a unique power or you're declaring that this spell already exists in the world and you're just discovering it from someone else's writings.

This comes from my own experience with research--breaking new ground is not easy. And magic is not science--there's no underlying formalism. Spells are black boxes that either work exactly the same or just don't work at all--that's why a sorcerer's power to manipulate their spells is so special. It represents a (to a wizard) fundamental violation of the nature of things.

Plus, for me, any addition of content to the world is gated through the DM. It's my world, and I need to make sure that it all fits together, because I have to be excited about it to play in it.

Edit: on reflection, I think a lot of it is that (B) I want rules that encourage the players to work with the DM to create new things, not assert that they have the right to do it themselves. Because helping the players make new things is a big part of my fun. And it causes a lot fewer issues and less conflict when both sides are pushed to work together, rather than present things as a done deal/right.

(A) It's not trivial, and spells have been researched before, or there wouldn't be any spells in the PHB.

If you want I can describe my system in more detail, but for now I'll just say you're making false assumptions about how easy spell research is.

(B) The fact that you're presenting this as if you're disagreeing with what I said upthread makes it sound like this is another false assumption. It makes me wonder what kind of a spell research system you're imagining in your head--or even how you run other, non-research-based activities. When a player says, "I want [hire a new teacher for the university/ research a spell/potty-train my child]," and a DM replies, "Okay, this is how hard that is and how much it will cost" (or replies "that's not possible"), would you call that "players working with the DM" or "players asserting the right to do it themselves"?

[PhoenixPhyre]

(A) It's not trivial, and spells have been researched before, or there wouldn't be any spells in the PHB.

If you want I can describe my system in more detail, but for now I'll just say you're making false assumptions about how easy spell research is.

(B) Also a false assumption. It makes me wonder what kind of a spell research system you're imagining in your head.

A) But those spells have been researched over millennia. The introduction of a new spell is a major event, not something you toss off in the downtime between adventures.

B) I'm worried about rules that say "here are the mechanical formalisms to create a new spell" with the expectation that it mostly involves in-character resolution of actions. Creation of a new spell (or any other game content) is, to me, an act that crosses the layer boundaries and has to be mostly done at the player level through negotiations between player and DM. I don't need a spell research system for that--it's just standard homebrew. You only need a system if it's up to the players to invoke and resolve and the DM is supposed to be mostly neutral. Content creation is not a neutral act. It's an inherently author-stance act, and in D&D that belongs in the DM's wheelhouse (even if they choose to delegate pieces of it).

Edit to respond to your edit: Spell research is different here, because it introduces elements at all layers of the game. Hiring people is a well-defined thing that has no implications for the game layer or the player layer--it's entirely at the fiction layer. Spells have huge effects, including world-building effects. The existence (or not) of certain effects has knock-on effects on just about every part of the setting. So it's something that has to be decided at the player layer--any mechanics are both unnecessary and likely to cause issues. The existence of mechanics for something produces the expectation (falsely) that that action can be done with minimal DM involvement. And that's dangerous for content creation.

[Amechra]

(A) Point of order!

Frost Giants are faster, therefore better at concentrating force. We all know that logistics wins wars. A small squad of Fire Giants would beat a similarly-sized squad of Frost Giants in a melee fight, but in a war the Frost Giants are going to win. The Fire Giants can concentrate all of their forces on a small strongpoint and hold that strongpoint against a concerted attack by all the Fire Giants, but the moment they try to hold territory outside that strongpoint (call it the Green Zone) they invite defeat in detail by the Frost Giants.

24 Frost Giants can annihilate 12 Fire Giants and then annihilate 12 more Fire Giants, just by getting there "the firstest with the mostest."

While they're faster, they're also less organized, are described as feeding/supplying themselves by raiding, and have to trade for weapons and armor. If either of them has superior logistics, it's the Fire Giants. Plus, that speed advantage completely vanishes once the Fire Giants bring their motorcycle cavalry to bear!

However, there's no particular reason to assume they'd ever go to war with each other in the first place, whether you're using WotC fluff or TSR fluff.

To be fair, I was mostly using as an oblique way to point out that Fire Giants generally have more brute force than Frost Giants, even thought they don't care about it within their own hierarchy.

[Unoriginal]

If spell research is something that's trivially doable during a campaign, then why haven't all those spells been researched before?

Part of why the Critical Role treatment of the question annoys me *so* much.

Just have the Arcane Trickster research a spell in a couple of weeks, on a boat with no wizardry equipment, without proficiency in Arcana, and name it after her...

Wizardry (especially) has been around forever and a day, and we're well past the heyday of that art.

I mean, wizardry is probably among the "youngest" forms of magic. Gods probably gave mortals powers since as soon as mortals were created, and sorcery can happen anytime powerful magic affects someone.

[MaxWilson]

(A) But those spells have been researched over millennia. The introduction of a new spell is a major event, not something you toss off in the downtime between adventures.

(B) I'm worried about rules that say "here are the mechanical formalisms to create a new spell" with the expectation that it mostly involves in-character resolution of actions. Creation of a new spell (or any other game content) is, to me, an act that crosses the layer boundaries and has to be mostly done at the player level through negotiations between player and DM. I don't need a spell research system for that--it's just standard homebrew. You only need a system if it's up to the players to invoke and resolve and the DM is supposed to be mostly neutral. Content creation is not a neutral act. It's an inherently author-stance act, and in D&D that belongs in the DM's wheelhouse (even if they choose to delegate pieces of it).

Edit to respond to your edit: Spell research is different here, because it introduces elements at all layers of the game. Hiring people is a well-defined thing that has no implications for the game layer or the player layer--it's entirely at the fiction layer. Spells have huge effects, including world-building effects. The existence (or not) of certain effects has knock-on effects on just about every part of the setting. So it's something that has to be decided at the player layer--any mechanics are both unnecessary and likely to cause issues. The existence of mechanics for something produces the expectation (falsely) that that action can be done with minimal DM involvement. And that's dangerous for content creation.

(A) It seems likely that I'm more influenced than you are by Jack Vance.

Turjan looked up, although he could see the Magician only indistinctly through the cover of glass.

“Release me, Mazirian, and on my word as a Chosen Hierarch of the Maram-Or, I will deliver you this girl.”

“How would you do this?” asked the suspicious Mazirian.

“Pursue her into the forest with my best Live Boots and a headful of spells.”

“You would fare no better than I,” retorted the Magician. “I give you freedom when I know the synthesis of your vat-things. I myself will pursue the woman.”

Turjan lowered his head that the Magician might not read his eyes.

“And as for me, Mazirian?” he inquired after a moment.

“I will treat with you when I return.”

“And if you do not return?”

Mazirian stroked his chin and smiled, revealing fine white teeth. “The dragon could devour you now, if it were not for your cursed secret.”

The Magician climbed the stairs. Midnight found him in his study, poring through leather-bound tomes and untidy portfolios. At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam — Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East — swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated — though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.

The way I run my game (AD&D or 5E) it would not be impossible for someone to become the next Phandaal, but most wizards are like Mazirian: imitators, not inventors/originators. This is traditionally how spell research has worked in D&D and AD&D. It's nontrivial but not impossible. This is why the PHB has dozens of spells in it invented by contemporary archmages like Mordenkainen, Otiluke, and Rary who are still alive, not thousands of years dead.

(B) Well, without knowing what kinds of system you're imagining in your head, there's no way for me to know whether or not you're right to be worried.

The system I use works like AD&D spell research: you write up your spell, I'll tell you the effective level (or say that spell is impossible), you tell me what level you want to try to research it at (***), then I have you roll a bunch of dice and pay a bunch of gold, and at the end of it all you've either got a spell that works the way you wanted, a spell that does something kind of like what you wanted but has quirks, or nothing at all. In other words, it works just like everything else does in D&D.

(***) for example, you might want an "8d6 ball of fire in 40' diameter sphere" spell which the DM assesses should be level 4.5, but you only want to pay a 3rd level slot, so you have to research some difficult and expensive optimizations. If it works you get famous and now have Fizban's Fireball, which works so well that someone eventually steals a copy, and a thousand generations later everybody just calls it Fireball.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One problem I have with that model, Max, is that it's basically an extra feature for wizards and wizards only. They're the only ones it makes sense for. And that's not a good thing imo. Wizards already have the biggest list, most spells known, and the only way to add spells between levels. Giving them a way to turn money into spells is a no go.

My "system" is that we talk about it. If we agree on the details, you can take that new spell at level up instead of something else. For wizards, it's finding enough bits and pieces to cobble something together/rediscover a lost spell. For others, it comes from whatever source they usually get spells from. In no case are there any mechanics associated with the "research"--it either just happens or it doesn't.

The only exception is when players are granted boons as rewards. But again, that's coming from someone else, not some form of independent research. Because that's just implausible over a campaign timeline unless you have literal decades of downtime.

[Hellpyre]

Technically my dragons do have stirges as a larval stage (which they don't consider to be dragons yet any more than humans consider spermatazoa to be humans), but it looks like I need to (1) read up on larval species, and (2) look up a Saberhagen story on dragons which I apparently missed. Or, wait--are you thinking of the Books of Swords? It's possible those dragons may have influenced my stirges-as-dragons tendencies, but I don't see how it solves the ecology problem. It would be too easy to accidentally breed Black Dragons out of existence, for example--with a small breeding population you're very vulnerable to random chance. You also don't have a good explanation for where colors came from in the first place, although I suppose maybe you just assume a high mutation rate as inherent to the draconic genome?

Hmmm, interesting.

The Book of Swords is where I would jump to first in explaining it, yeah, although I vaguely remember them being mentioned in one of the other Empire of the East subseries.

Basically, in most of my worldbuilding dragons spawn, leaving large clutches of often a few thousand eggs, hatching over the course of a few days. The spawn aren't generally treated as dragons up until the wyrmling stage is reached, although they do of course have the type. Matrilinear traits in general are fairly difficult to breed entirely out of a long-lived species, and dragons are particularly long-lived and mobile, as well as spending potentially several centuries as apex predators. They can refill emptied areas from halfway across the globe in substantially less than a single draconic lifetime.

The origin of colors is something I play with a bit more from campaign-to-campaign. My favorite version of it came about when I was in a different version entirely of the biology of dragons, where they were molded by dominant emotions in the area surrounding the egg, and in general were a much more distinctly magical set of species. What I currently am using as an explanation is that colors of dragons derive from old magical experiments, developing creatures that bred true for the purpose of harnessing a self-replenishing source of elemental magic. I've actually been meaning to go back and workshop another origin recently, although having a bunch of alternate dragons from previous editions means I've never had to say no to players trying to replicate those expirements.

I also have had dragons extract some (and occasionally all, where eating was purely a matter of sensation to them) nourishment from their hordes in one way or another since I first began DMing, since I feel like they must use an absurd amount of energy to unleash draconic breath or fly, even with innate magic helping. At the moment, I have gold as a sort of magnet for wild magic, cementing it as an inherently valuable resource and giving a decent reason for dragons and mortals alike to gather large hordes of the stuff in one conveniently lootable-by-adventurers place.

[MaxWilson]

The Book of Swords is where I would jump to first in explaining it, yeah, although I vaguely remember them being mentioned in one of the other Empire of the East subseries.

Basically, in most of my worldbuilding dragons spawn, leaving large clutches of often a few thousand eggs, hatching over the course of a few days. The spawn aren't generally treated as dragons up until the wyrmling stage is reached, although they do of course have the type. Matrilinear traits in general are fairly difficult to breed entirely out of a long-lived species, and dragons are particularly long-lived and mobile, as well as spending potentially several centuries as apex predators. They can refill emptied areas from halfway across the globe in substantially less than a single draconic lifetime.

The origin of colors is something I play with a bit more from campaign-to-campaign. My favorite version of it came about when I was in a different version entirely of the biology of dragons, where they were molded by dominant emotions in the area surrounding the egg, and in general were a much more distinctly magical set of species. What I currently am using as an explanation is that colors of dragons derive from old magical experiments, developing creatures that bred true for the purpose of harnessing a self-replenishing source of elemental magic. I've actually been meaning to go back and workshop another origin recently, although having a bunch of alternate dragons from previous editions means I've never had to say no to players trying to replicate those expirements.

I also have had dragons extract some (and occasionally all, where eating was purely a matter of sensation to them) nourishment from their hordes in one way or another since I first began DMing, since I feel like they must use an absurd amount of energy to unleash draconic breath or fly, even with innate magic helping. At the moment, I have gold as a sort of magnet for wild magic, cementing it as an inherently valuable resource and giving a decent reason for dragons and mortals alike to gather large hordes of the stuff in one conveniently lootable-by-adventurers place.

Ah, I see then how you avoid letting lines die out--just keep an adult female of that color alive long enough for one of her female descendants to mature. Makes sense.

Cool ideas, thanks for sharing. And it's nice to meet another Saberhagen fan. That's three of us on GITP in the last week.

One problem I have with that model, Max, is that it's basically an extra feature for wizards and wizards only. They're the only ones it makes sense for. And that's not a good thing imo. Wizards already have the biggest list, most spells known, and the only way to add spells between levels. Giving them a way to turn money into spells is a no go.

Just for the record, clerics, druids, and artificers all have more spells known than wizards do, not that that's bad or anything. Druids probably have the most, probably 2x to 3x as many as wizards do (except wizards who have researched or found a lot of spells during play).

I can't imagine why you think research doesn't make sense for sorcerers, and I imagine you'd probably object to recruiting defeated foes as henchmen and hiring mercenaries as an "extra feature" for fighters/bards/etc. which lets them turn gold into extra attacks, but oh well. You don't like it the way I like it, but go in peace and play how you like it.

[MrStabby]

So anyone know how the expanded spell lists interact with other features? Is it a feature of a character that they can consider a spell to be part of a class list or is it natively added to the list?

So if I were to play a divine soul, would it access new cleric spells? Or is it a feature of the cleric that they can access a couple of spells not on their list. Or say grabbing both command and dissonant whispers with magic initiate from the bard list.

[Segev]

So anyone know how the expanded spell lists interact with other features? Is it a feature of a character that they can consider a spell to be part of a class list or is it natively added to the list?

So if I were to play a divine soul, would it access new cleric spells? Or is it a feature of the cleric that they can access a couple of spells not on their list. Or say grabbing both command and dissonant whispers with magic initiate from the bard list.

I don’t understand the question. Can you provide examples where this would be important?