Wildspace Magic - Lost Spells

In my wanderings through the various Spelljammer related content in the old Dungeon and Dragon magazines, I came across an adventure that wasn't exactly a Spelljammer one, but included a friendly NPC that was an Arcane. The Arcane are blue skinned giants known for being sellers of magical artifacts of all types, including a near monopoly of spelljamming helms.

The adventure itself was an interesting read (maybe I'll work it into my Spelljammer game), but something unusual about it was that it had a couple spells at the end: Arcane Runes and Read Arcane Runes.

I decided to add them to my playtest Spelljammer spells as wizard spells, and give them a little extra flavor. So, I present to you: my 5th edition adaptation of the spells from Dungeon magazine #53' "Clarshh's Sepulchre".

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Arcane Runes

4th level Alteration (ritual)
Casting time: Special
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (A pinch of dried and powdered lemon, which the spell consumes, and a stylus)
Duration: Permanent or until dispelled

Silently mouthing the words as you write, you inscribe a message or longer text, hidden invisibly within a scroll, book, paper, or parchment. It can be hidden within another text, such as a secret message hidden in a letter or an entire book hidden inside another book. For longer texts, a single Arcane Runes spell can be used, the casting time ending when you close the book or scroll you are working on.

The effect of the spell is not detectable with a detect magic spell, but can be seen by you and anyone designated during the casting of the spell and creatures with truesight.
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At first, this seems like a really nice, though complicated way to send secret messages, but there is a twist.


Arcane can see any text hidden by the spell, without even trying. (Don't tell your players this, or if you are a player, your character doesn't know this!)


This, of course, would be a carefully guarded secret. They would gladly sell scrolls (probably at a discount, but not so much for one to be suspicious), hoping to let it spread and increase the chance that they could see something secret that could be profitable for them.

The knowledge of this spell would lead others to seek a way to see secrets hidden away by Arcane Runes, and some such wizard managed to create a way.


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Read Arcane Runes

4th level Divination (Ritual)
Casting time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (A lit candle held behind the paper or parchment to be read and a magnifying lens)
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

Upon casting this spell, you are able to see all text hidden with the Arcane Runes spell as though you were designated by the caster to be able to do so. You are still required to understand the language that the hidden text is written in.
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And woe to the unfortunate fool that is found with this spell by an Arcane. Not only do they want their clients to feel secure in the knowledge that their messages are being kept hidden from prying eyes, but they want to be the only ones doing the prying. Depending on the Arcane, they might act curious about where you found the spell, and perhaps slip you some gold to remove it from your spellbook, but some might just skip to destroying you and everything you love for encroaching on their terf. Possibly without you ever knowing why or who.


You probably don't want to get on any giant's bad side, but definitely not one that buys and sells magic items for a living. You never know what they have on hand.

Of gods, spheres, and magical chairs: A short examination of Spelljammer and 5th edition D&D Part 2

Note: Check out the apparently ill timed Part 1 of this short series of articles (WotC has a helm in the just released Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage).

Divine Spellcasters Outside of Their Home Sphere. 

 

In my Spelljammer 101 post, I have a quick note that clerics are unable to communicate with their deity outside of a crystal sphere. Traditionally, this is mechanically reflected by not allowing clerics (priests, back then) to prepare their spells above 2nd level. So if they used a decently powered spell, they would be unable to recover it until they returned to a sphere where their deity had influence or managed to talk a similar, friendly deity to help them out.

I never got the chance to play in a 2nd edition AD&D Spelljammer game, but I can only assume this would be quite annoying.

There are some work-arounds:

• Spells that let you communicate with your deity
• The above mentioned getting help from a deity that is a friend of your deity's
• Worshiping an entire pantheon and hope at least one of them in that sphere
• Worshiping a deity that lives in the astral plane (and is therefore accessible in any sphere)
• Just be part of a non-deity religion, or worship ALL THE DEITIES!

There are two main problems with this mechanic in 5th edition:

1. It’s no fun to not get all your spells back, which could discourage people from playing clerics in Spelljammer games, especially if there will be a lot of travel between spheres.
2. Spell slots are based on your combined spellcaster level where multiclassing is concerned.

#1 is why it needs to be changed, #2 is why it won’t work without new, overcomplicated rules.


Is this a necessary part of spelljammer? I would say… Mostly. It’s a good way to mechanically explain why the deities of one setting aren’t the same ones in another setting, but the players end up with most of the burden of the current mechanics. What can we do? We change it, of course. The question is, how?


The first thing to look at is the way that spell slot progression has changed in 5e, which makes it so that either we create an elaborate method of calculating how many spell slots you get, subtracting some based on the cleric levels but not the others…


Or we just ignore spell slots.


Yup, ignore ‘em. You get just as many spell slots.


But classes still know/prepare spells based on the individual class levels, maybe we should focus on that instead. If you are outside of a sphere that your deity has influence in, you are unable to change prepared spells above… say, 3rd level. You can swap out spells of a higher level, but you can only swap in 3rd or lower.

If you go to another sphere with a begrudgingly friendly deity, maybe they would let you change out 4th or 5th level spells, and a very friendly deity might let you swap out 6th or 7th level spells. A deity that you complete a quest for would let you prepare 8th level spells, maybe even 9th, if the quest was of enough importance.

If you gain a level, and you would gain an additional prepared spell, your deity prepared for this eventuality and implanted the knowledge of the spell inside you, to awaken when the time was right.



There! I did it!


…but there is something else:



Spells aren’t the only thing that clerics get from their deity, they also have abilities like Channel Divinity and Divine Intervention. How do we make that fit into this?

Channel Divinity is also a paladin ability, paladins don’t even have to worship a deity, and trying to argue whether “justice” exists in a sphere doesn’t sound very fun, so I’ll probably leave that one alone.

But Divine Intervention. Your deity acting on the world on your behalf wouldn’t be possible in a sphere where they have no influence, let alone in the phlogiston! So maybe this should be it?


Let’s examine it:

• Most games only go to 10th level, where a cleric gets Divine Intervention. So this wouldn’t affect most players anyways. (I dislike this logic, so I would never stop at this)
• Deities have no ability to affect things outside of a sphere they have influence in, so this one makes sense for a cleric to not be able to use.
• If there is a similar deity that is friendly with yours, and they are willing, it might be possible to call upon them, especially if you perform a quest or task for them. If you are likely to spend a lot of time in a given sphere, this would probably be a good idea.

I think I will make a table that describes how the friendliness of a deity affects the Divine Intervention roll…



What do you think? Is my logic sound? Does this seem to fit 5th edition D&D? Is it staying true enough to Spelljammer?

Expect a third part of this series, where I will take feedback into consideration and write out more "official" rules that I will use in my Spelljammer game.

Of gods, spheres, and magical chairs: A short examination of Spelljammer and 5th edition D&D Part 1

Note: For a quick lesson on the basics of Spelljammer, check out my Spelljammer 101 post.


Way back in time, back before Wizards of the Coast owned D&D, it was owned by TSR. Due to management decisions, many strange things came about, best of which is Spelljammer.


I love Spelljammer, and though it has it’s problems… quite a few of them… the heart of it is of silly space adventures, swashbuckling action, and weird creatures not seen elsewhere in D&D.

…And it sadly hasn’t gotten any real support since its original line ended back in 2e.


So, of course, the fans have done their best to adapt it to newer editions, including 5th, but there is a problem. Two major ones in fact, in my opinion. Both of them stem from a conflict with 5th editions’ design philosophy: Spelljamming helms leave their user magicless until they can regain their spells, and divine casters can’t gain spells from their gods outside a sphere where their god has influence.


Let’s take a look at these two issues and consider how necessary they are to Spelljammer, and how they might be made to work in 5th edition. Starting with:

Helms taking all spells from their users

You are a powerful mage, the forces of the universe bend to your whim, you are ready to take to the stars and explore wildspace! You gleefully move to the spelljamming helm, curious to see how quickly you can master this new toy. Sitting down, preparing for this artifact’s power to flow through you… and then your magic is gone. All your spells have been drained from you, into the chair. How can you defend your ship if you get attacked? If you need to send a Message or escape quickly?

Basically, having to lose your magic just to pilot a ship kinda sucks. Sure, it FLIES, but you are just useless until you take a long rest, from the very start of the adventure!


How does this conflict with 5th edition?

Losing all your spells isn’t very fun. Having your powerhouse spellcaster reduced to a slightly tougher commoner isn’t very fun.

Is this a necessary part of Spelljammer? definitely not. Spelljammer does not need its helmspeople to be magicless. That said, it can add an interesting cost to piloting a spelljamming ship though, so should it stay? It certainly doesn’t have to stay in its current form, but let’s look at the options, as a sort of scale:

1. Leave it as it is. (The purist’s stance) Honestly, I’ve never played Spelljammer, not back in the day and I’ve only DM’d a 5e Spelljammer game which I’ve been putting off solidifying rules for. It’s possible that I’m overthinking it and it isn’t as big of a deal, but I don’t feel like that is true. The PCs could hire a spellcaster NPC to pilot for them, but that is also a trade off of losing all their spells or not getting to pilot the ship themselves. Might not be an issue for some people, but I wouldn’t want to impose that on someone that does see that as an issue.
2. Leave them with at-will abilities. A slight step away from the original “lose all spellcasting”, leaving the helmsperson with cantrips and other spells they would be able to cast at will would at least allow them to defend themselves and contribute to the adventure. Definitely preferable to option #1, but only a little.
3. All spell slots of highest level. It’s a bit jump from “all your spells” to “your most powerful spells”, and now that I think about it, it really does work. It’s a bit of a moot point for first or second level casters, but Spelljammer really seems to be more designed for fifth level and higher. And honestly, now that I’m writing this out, this one makes a lot of sense. It has a cost, that cost makes sense with how much the helm is powered, and it leaves the helmsperson enough magic to feel at least somewhat useful.
4. Helmsperson chooses a number of spell slots. Now we are letting the players make the decisions, how much are they willing to sacrifice to improve the ship’s maneuverability? This can also have an added limit to the number of spell slots, both to keep them from dumping all of them in and then feeling useless later and to reduce any decision paralysis. Limited to one spell slot would be simplest, but more might be more interesting.
5. Attunement by spellcasters only. Attunement is a wonderful mechanic, and with a slight tweak can work decently for helms: Multiple people can attune to it. Because nothing would be more annoying than stopping after each helmsperson’s shift to let the next one attune.
6. Attunement by anyone. Similar to the previous, but obviously, not limited to spellcasters. This is kinda where I feel that it begins to lose flavor. I suppose if it isn’t requiring the loss of spell slots, then it isn’t super dependent on spellcasters, and this allows non-spellcasters to use it, it might make it more fun for players who aren’t currently/don’t like playing spellcasters to try to pilot the ship.
7. Sit on helm. No attunement required, just need to put your butt in the chair. Why am I even putting this here? I don’t like it for several reasons, most of all because it feels lazy.

What option will I go with in my game? This has basically been my way of forcing myself to think about this and make a decision and I am definitely leaning towards #3 or #4. Honestly I really would like to test out #4 to see how the players react to it. 1 and 2 seem too harsh to be fun, and 5 to 7 lose a bit of the flavor in my opinion. I will probably write up rules for #4 and maybe #3 and post them at a future date.

Something else that I will need to address when I write those rules: The warlock problem, how to handle short rest spellcasters? I could either impose that it doesn’t last as long or isn’t as powerful… I will have to think about it.



Next time, I will examine the other big issue: Clerics being unable to regain their spells outside of a sphere where their deity has influence.

Spelljammer 101: The basics of Spelljammer

Ad astra per aspera

("To the stars through hardships")

— Latin proverb

Way back in 2nd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the management philosophy was to crank out as many settings as possible to appeal to as large of an audience as possible. Since Sci-fi was popular at the time, the development team was forced to create a space setting.

And oh boy, did they.

Throwing in a mishmash of tropes, turning some on their head, and creating entirely new ones, Spelljammer was born.

Of course, the very management that demanded it also hated it, so each one of it’s supplements only got a single printing, leaving it to fade into obscurity. But no longer! Here, I intend to explain the basic ideas and rules of the Spelljammer setting, so that people can better understand the strange ways space travel works in D&D. With the exception of how physics work, most of these have a “usually” in them, as Spelljammer is designed to defy expectations.

Part 1: Spelljammer, spelljammers, spelljamming, and the Spelljammer.

First thing first: Spelljammer is not sci-fi. This is more of a pet peeve of mine than anything else. I’ve taken to describing it as “medieval space fantasy” because people have a hard time separating “in space” from science fiction. People are not in rockets or your typical spaceships/starships: They are on sailing ships. With sails, rigging, etc..

Sorry, I had to get that out of the way.

Sailing ships. Well, for the most part. There are several spelljamming ships that aren’t sailing ships, and most of them are certainly not NORMAL sailing ships that would be seen on our world. Spelljamming ships are usually wooden vehicles, sometimes with metal plating, almost always armed with canons, ballistae, catapults, and other weapons that fit in with D&D. This is getting kind of rambling, but point has been made, moving on.

The secret to how spelljamming ships fly is a magical device known as a helm. The helm is a chair or throne that is bolted to the floor on a ship, when a magic user touches the chair, their magic is used to power it, and they can cause the ship to rise into the air. In addition to the ability to fly a ship, the helm also gives it’s user awareness of the area around the ship, to help with maneuvering and allowing them to be safely below deck and not exposed on the deck of the ship.

Of special note, is that while “a spelljammer” can refer to the ship, one of the crew, or the magic user manning the helm, “the Spelljammer” is the name of the legendary living ship with a whole city on it, from which the setting gets its name.

Part 2: Everything you know about space is wrong.

Well, not everything. The space between planets is still an airless void, referred to as “wildspace”, and most things usually orbit around other things. The first things that someone would notice when leaving a planet’s atmosphere are air envelopes and the way gravity works.

Air envelopes

When a object or creature leaves the atmosphere, it takes with it a bubble of air relative to it’s size. A human sized creature takes with it enough air to last them anywhere from 40 minutes to 6 hours (I couldn’t tell you why it varies that much), and a large object, such as a ship, can take enough air for a crew to breath fresh air for months. After a time, the air envelope loses it’s freshness and becomes fouled, and people breathing fouled air take a penalty to checks. After the same amount of time to become fouled passes again, the air becomes poisonous and will eventually kill anyone who tries to breath it.

Coming into contact with the atmosphere of a planet with clean air will completely refresh a ship’s air envelope, or coming into contact with another ship’s envelope will cause an exchange of air, equalizing the freshness of both, according to the envelopes’ sizes.

Gravity in wildspace

After leaving a planet’s gravity, you would think that you would start floating off into space, right? That isn’t the case in Spelljammer, instead it follows a few rules:

1. Gravity’s range is determined by the size of the planet, creature, or object. A larger planet's gravity can extend out for miles, while a human's would only extend out a couple of feet.
2. Gravity is constant. There are always a few exceptions, but gravity is usually equal to our earth’s gravity whether you are on a planet (regardless of size), a moon, or a ship.
3. Down is subjective. On a planet or mostly spherical objects in space, down is towards the center. On a less spherical shaped object, like a ship, the gravity is usually divided by a plane. The top deck of a ship and usually the first deck are gravitationally aligned one direction, but further decks and the bottom of the ship are aligned the opposite direction. Once again, there are exceptions to this rule, a hallow moon could have you walking on the outside of it, then you enter a cave and you find the center of that moon is "up".
4. Gravity is determined by the largest object. Near a planet, that planet’s gravity takes over. Near a larger ship, that ship’s gravity takes over. This even applies to a person, who, if they were to drift away from their ship, could put objects or even smaller creatures into orbit around themselves.

Part 3: The wonders of wildspace

Once you have your bearings in wildspace, you would get a chance to look around at the wonders of your sphere, the immensely enormous sphere of an unknown substance that contains the sun, planets, asteroids, and everything else that exists in wildspace. Most spheres have a “primary”, or the body that is at the center that most things orbit around, which is most often a sun, but exceptions do exist.


The first thing you might notice about a sun, planet, moon, etc. is its shape. Spherical worlds are common, but far from the only shape that worlds can be. Some are coin shaped, some are geometric shapes, some are just weirdly amorphous. Just about any shape is possible (and likely exists somewhere).

In addition to it’s shape, planets, moons, and other bodies in wildspace are categorized by what element they are largely made of:

• Fire worlds are balls of flame, uninhabitable to most beings, and typically act as suns to illuminate everything in the sphere. Strangely, many are simply named “the Sun”.
• Earth worlds are largely made of earth, or at least have a decent amount of landmass on the surface. Many inhabited worlds are earth worlds, though not all are inhabitable.
• Water worlds are huge bodies of water sometimes with islands dotting the surface, and sometimes not. In colder spheres, water worlds can be entirely frozen.
• Air worlds are giant orbs of air, sometimes with floating islands inside. Unless the air is fouled, they are good places to refresh a ship’s air envelope.
• Living worlds are a type of world that is largely living matter, usually plants, and is very rare. This can range from a “relatively” small one that has grasped onto several moon sized worlds, or an enormous tree that fills it’s sphere and holds entire worlds in it’s branches.

There are also rare elemental mix worlds, but that’s a bit complicated for this guide, so maybe I will go into that if I make a more advanced guide in the future.

Finally, there are the stars. Which… are not stars as we know them. They could be glowing gems, portals to the plane of radiance, or they could simply be portals out of the sphere. Once again, anything you could think of could be the case somewhere.

Except for them being distant suns, billions of light years away. Because that would be weird.

Part 4: Beyond the crystal sphere

What do you do when the worlds of your sphere no longer interest you? When you need further adventure? When you need to REALLY get out of town?

You can head to another crystal sphere, that’s what.

As far as the furthest world is from the primary, and that far again, is the crystal sphere. It is mind mindbogglingly huge, to the point that if you go up and touch it, it will seem absolutely flat, despite being round. Most spheres have naturally occurring portals out of it, some are consistently open, others open and close on some schedule or randomly. Prepared travelers will have magic that allows them to temporarily open a portal themselves.

Once you make it through a portal, you will be bombarded with a brilliant display of a multicolored substance known as the phlogiston. It is what surrounds the spheres and flows between them, allowing travel. You can use these flows between the spheres to travel anywhere you desire. It can take months, and you may need to make stops at spheres along your way to freshen your air envelope and supplies.


Things to note about travel in the phlogiston:

1. The phlogiston mixes with the air envelope of the ship, and while it does not affect the air quality at all, it is extremely flammable and is very dangerous to anyone starting a fire or using fire magic.
2. The phlogiston cannot enter a sphere, no matter how hard you try.
3. While in the phlogiston, it is not possible to use any extraplanar magic- You are unable to summon creatures, use spells like Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, or items like bags of holding or portable holes. Similarly, clerics are unable to communicate with their deity.

Part 5: Other crystal spheres

After traveling through the phlogiston, you will eventually (hopefully) reach another crystal sphere. Once a portal is found or created, your ship can enter to explore the new worlds available to you. Things may be similar or completely different from your home sphere. In addition to unusual worlds, the rules may be different. Gun powder/smoke powder may not work, or certain races may feel an unwelcoming feeling of foreboding that manifests (mechanically) as a penalty to rolls, preventing them from having a major presence in a sphere.

In addition to the main three D&D settings (Realmspace, Greyspace, and Krynnspace), there are literally infinite spheres to explore, and mix that with planar travel and there is no end to the adventures that adventurers can go on. Some spheres aren’t easily traveled to (the spheres of the Eberron and Dark Sun settings), but a DM can always add those in their game if they want.



I hope that you enjoyed my guide, and that you learned a lot about the Spelljammer setting! In the near future, I plan to add more posts about it, including an examination of the setting’s special rules as they would fit into 5e, how I will codify those rules, a write up of the adventure I’ve made for my players (leading to an old module that I’m going to adapt for the next part of their journey), and more posts about the basics of Spelljammer (I’m thinking “Spelljammer 102: Peoples of wildspace”).


See you next time, space cowboy wizard.