Spells, they are a cornerstone of Dungeons and Dragons. A good chunk of classes is able to use spells and the third of the Player’s Handbook is focused on listing out the spells and their effects. But when describing the effects of these spells the book also describes what the spells look like. I believe, and I hope to convince you, that these are just suggestions and should be allowed to change. Within this piece I will be talking about two ways to change from these prescribed spells: the flavor and the damage type.
Flavored Spells
Flavored spells are simple, they look different. That’s it, really. The descriptions found along each spell generally explain how the spell is cast and what it looks like when casted. Flavored spells change these parts of the spell, not its effects.
A good example of this is the burning hands spell. This spell is cast by a player holding their hands outstretched with thumbs touching. Then, orange flames erupt forth from the caster’s fingertips. While this is cool and a majority of people may be okay with their burning hands looking like this, there are some that want something else. Some players may want their entire hand to erupt in flame and they make a sweeping motion that releases blue fire onto their foes. Another player may want something different. This could go on forever with an infinite number of interpretations of what a spell looks like being casted and after being casted.
Another thing to take into consideration with flavored spells is something most of you probably already do, verbal components. Unlike the somatic components that spells normally describe (somatic components are the hand gestures used when casting a spell), verbal is not, so people already flavor those words.
Overall, this is a simple step to allow your players and NPCs to cast spells that fit their character, and I believe that it adds so much more life into your game.
Transmuted Spells
Now, unlike flavored spells that most people probably already use transmuted spells are not widely in use, and that’s for good reason. Transmuted spells are spells that have their damage type changed. This could mean a fireball becomes a lightning sphere and therefore deals lightning damage. There are benefits and consequences when thinking about allowing your players or NPCs to use transmuted spells. Before going further, I would like to make clear my definition of transmuted spells. When I say this, I mean allowing a player to permanently change the damage type of a spell to something different. This means that on selection of a spell they determine its damage type of be something. This does not mean that the damage type can be changed mutiple times.
I am going to talk about the problems with transmuted spells first, because I want you to know the problems before you force players to deal with a rule that could ruin the game for them. You may think saying this could ruin a player’s experience is going overboard, but there are many abilities and spells within the game that are based on damage types or changing them and adding transmuted spells within a game weaken these abilities or strengthen them greatly. An example of a weakened ability is a sorcerer’s transmuted spell meta-magic found within Tasha’s. By allowing transmuted spells you have weakened the appeal of this ability. You haven’t eliminated its usefulness, but it has definitely been weakened and therefore the player’s choice to use it has been weakened. An example of strengthening an ability is the tempest cleric subclass’s ability to use their channel divinity to maximize lighting or thunder damage. By allowing a player to make to transmute their spells they could in turn make them all lightning to take advantage of this ability. My allowing transmuted spells you could be stopping players from being able to play the time of character they want.
The benefit of allowing players and NPCs to transmute spells comes down to roleplay. A player may want to be a ice or water wizard, but there are not that many spells that fit these types, and even the ones that do may be ones that player doesn’t like. So, by allowing transmuted spells you can let that player have the theme they want for their character. This may seem a small benefit, but it allows players so much more customization to their characters that, I believe, would make many players happy to have such a choice.
Allowing transmuted spells comes down to what your players are planning on playing and whether or not allowing transmuted spells would help their vision of a character or ruin it. You also need to make sure that people will not take advantage of this system for numerical benefits and not roleplay ones. This is a big decision and requires open communication with your players.
Conclusion
In this piece, I was trying to show that spells can be changed to add to the roleplaying experience of the game. I tried to show the benefits and consequences of allowing such changes and that it is a big decision to allow transmuted spells. Overall, I wanted to express an addition option to our game that allows more customization and basically adds thousands of more spells without much effort. I hope you have fun with those green fireballs and lightning spheres. Bye.