This entry is part 1 in the series Spell Storage Solutions
Cauldron by Alessandro Paiva

Photo Credit:
FreeImages.com / Alessandro Paiva
Additional effects added by Mike

Sometimes it’s hard to think of topics for Campaign Mastery, mostly because I need to accommodate real-world deadlines and time windows as much as possible), and whatever article is scheduled to come up next looks like taking more time than I have up my sleeve. The tighter the window, the harder it can be. At other times, though, an idea comes to you at once, or close to it, and today’s article represents one of those times.

This is going to be a very intermittent series that will examine alternatives and possible implications to the standard spell storage solutions built into D&D, Pathfinder, and, in fact, most fantasy games.

The totality of the subject is going to be broken into smaller differentials based on the “permanence” and “re-usability” of the spell storage solution in question. There are a number of assumptions that will be made based on metagame interpretations of the official rules as the manifest from the game-world perspective, and those assumptions may or may not be relevant to any given campaign; that’s fine, simply use the article as a guideline to the sort of questions that you should ask (and be able to answer).

Here’s the proposed series outline for future reference:

Part 1: One-time solutions (potions, scrolls, etc)
Part 2: Rechargeable one-charge solutions
Part 3: Charged Power Packs (wands, etc)
Part 4: The Energizer Bunny (permanent items)
Part 5: The Holy Grail (artifacts)

So that’s the plan – to dedicate one or more individual article to each of these topics of discussion, kicking off with those most transitory of magical items, Potions and Scrolls and their analogues.

Key Characteristics

There are three common characteristics that identify the magical devices falling into this category. The magic is contained in something that is fragile and must be destroyed, consumed, or otherwise ‘used up’ in order to activate the power within. That makes these inherently one-use items (though some GMs play a little fast-and-loose on this trait). And finally, they can contain only limited power or complexity, though the exact limits are also prone to tinkering now and then.

Fragility/Destruction

This is probably the most defining trait of this class of magical item. Some of the proposed variants will toy with this property in various respects, but only within limits, and those essentially are that once the magic has been ‘activated’ it can never be activated again using that item; the variations are all related to effect duration.

One-use

This means that they are essentially one-shot items that deliver their effect on a single occasion and no longer exist to do so a second time. From time to time, DMs permit larger bottles containing multiple ‘doses’; this doesn’t actually violate this trait in practice, because each ‘dose’ is still a one-shot deal, but may violate it in spirit; that’s a question each GM must answer for themselves.

Limited Power/Complexity

While the exact nature of the magical effects will vary depending on the GMs answer to the question “What is magic?”, there is nevertheless some constraint on the power levels that can be contained in this form of magic. It’s rare to actually have the limits defined with any certainty by game system; quite often, there will be a little fuzziness about the matter, because it’s often seen by designers as behind-the-scenes and of little practical value to players and GMs. Nevertheless, there is an underpinning schema that structures the use of magic in any game in which it is ‘real’, however poorly defined, and that schema is used to limit the effectiveness of potions.

In the most popular games, D&D & Pathfinder, that schema is based on the classification of magical effects into two values: spell level and caster level. Spell Level defines the window within which the effectiveness of a spell varies, while caster level can be viewed as the magical skill and ‘muscle’, the “oomph” that the spell can deliver. In most respects, the spell level will dictate maxima to the magic-handling variables within the system into various ‘quantum states’, with excess caster levels beyond the minimum being bled off into just one or two of those variables. This constrains low-level mages to casting low-level spells and permits a graduated increase in effectiveness as the mage grows in power and ability.

I have seen several attempts to codify the progression for the purposes of spell design and construction by PCs and they all flounder at one point in particular, and that is the relative difficulty and power of one spell level relative to another. There have been attempts to use simple geometric progression – so that the base effectiveness of a third level spell is defined as 9 or 27 times that of a first level spell. I have seen attempts that use exponential progression. None of them work consistently, across the board, and the reason for that is simple: the spells weren’t designed using any such system, and are usually tweaked as a result of playtesting without regard to any underlying principles, which means that it is impossible to work backwards from spells to creating such a system retrospectively. But it can be fun to try, now and then :)

In any event, there is Some method of differentiating spell base effectiveness and applied effectiveness when cast by a given individual, and that is then used to restrict the power level of the magical effects that can be encapsulated in this type of arcane device.

The Illuminating Scroll Variations

Scrolls represent an interesting variation on this principle, because they serve two separate functions simultaneously. They preserve or encapsulate a magical effect which is suspended immediately prior to activation. That means that a scroll can be used to cast the magical effect, consuming the scroll in line with the principles described above, or the spell can be ‘unpacked’ by an appropriately-skilled character to enable the spell to be permanently inscribed in an appropriate resource like a ‘spell book’. This function as a means of publication/transmission of spell designs means that spells of any power level can be ‘encoded’ into a scroll, violating the ‘limited power’ characteristic in at least one respect.

Some GMs balance this by imposing a different restriction: casting a spell from a scroll uses the caster level of the character reading the scroll, not that of the character who created the scroll. This is consistent with the scroll’s contents already being (effectively) part of the caster’s spell-book or equivalent resource. Scrolls that are designed to be cast by anyone, in effect having embedded caster levels, are many times more difficult and expensive to create.

Some (more philosophical) GMs even suggest, or state outright, that it is the presence of the embedded caster levels of the creator in potions and selected scroll examples that prevents the translation of such effects into castable spells to be placed in a spell book. This theoretical ‘explanation’ for the observed rules fact implies that the violation of the limited power principle comes at a cost, maintaining a ‘balance’ of sorts within the entirety of the spell system.

When such a GM encounters a player who is just as interested in the ‘natural philosophy of magic’, i.e. arcane theory as applied to the constructs within an RPG that the rules are simulating, is the point at which things begin to get more sticky, because the first thing they do is point out that this logic undermines the very principle that restricts the power of potions; by stating that scrolls can contain any power level of spell because they don’t have embedded caster levels, they proceed to define a new class of potion which is also free of embedded caster levels, offering a means of encapsulating spells into potions of greater level than is normally permitted. If the GM hasn’t carried his logic through to this point and also enabled NPC spellcasters to do so – worsening an already-existing game balance issue – or devising some other explanation for the power level restrictions of potions – their entire campaign can fall apart as mid-to-high level mages run roughshod over everything in the game.

That additional explanation usually rests on the properties of the material in question, fudging a solution on the premise that the components of a potion are inherently only capable of encapsulating a limited amount of power for some reason that does not affect scrolls. The most entertaining solution that I have seen was based on the toxicity of potions increasing with spell level, in effect stating “If you want to put a seventh-level spell into a potion by not embedding caster levels, go right ahead – but only characters who are completely immune to poisoning can ever take the resulting potion and survive long enough to complete the spell”.

Personally, I simplify the entire question back to the original premise: there are limits to the power that can be embedded in magical devices, and those limits are either in the form of restrictions to effect power level or limitations to function. Under this model, spells aren’t meant to be castable from scrolls, which exist purely as a means of disseminating spells from one mage to another; but some enterprising mage a long time ago figured out a way of jerry-rigging the system to get around that restriction by means of supplying the missing spell-launching ‘element’ from within themselves, and this was too useful not to then become a standard practice. This explains the existing set of restrictions without scope for violations – without the loose ends.

For the purposes of this article, I am not going to pick and choose between these or any other theories of magic; I simply state as a principle the implied trait, that in one fashion or another the magic that can be contained within these items is restricted, and leave it at that.

Key Interpretations

Not all “underlying theory” can be so lightly dismissed however. We need some understanding of what it is that potions and scrolls actually are, at a conceptual level, before we can set about creating variations and analogues and playing around with those concepts.

Complex Structures

Spells, no matter the game system, are inevitably described as things of complexity. The exact nature of the “thing” that is complex can vary, but the “mechanism” that translates raw “oomph” into “unnatural effect” is a complex structure or pattern, a machine or ‘computer program’ or biochemical process analogue that can be configured this way or that to produce a fireball or a meal of exquisite perfection.

Some of this perception derives from the use of the same game-mechanical terminology to describe what priests do and what mages do. Since priestly spells derive from the purity of spiritual energy and connection to the divine of the priest, reason suggests that the others also have some analogous power source that is equally ‘pure’ in its own way. The variety and sophistication of possible outcomes from spells then suggests a degree of complexity in shaping that power source’s manifestations, and every game mechanics construct that has appeared since D&D first enunciated these founding principles (however vaguely) has only deepened the perception of the instrument of translation of cause into effect as a complexity of some sort.

There are several real-world phenomena that various GMs and sourcebooks have employed as analogies to describe this complexity. DNA manipulates a complex array of simple chemical processes to cause the production of outcomes as diverse as eyeballs and nerve cells, arranged into such complex diversities as amoebas and elephants, turtles and birds, giraffes and humans. DNA itself contains only four simple ingredients, usually identified as the code letters C, G, A, and T; what matters is the complexity of arrangement of these codes.

There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, but implicit within them is the potential for every book that ever has been or will be written.

The fundamentals of elementary subatomic structures are very simple, but the arrangement produces every element within the period table and their properties, which in turn implicitly manifest in every substance and chemical reaction in the universe.

Computer programming languages are (in general) simple instructions that when arranged in the correct way, yield everything from Space Invaders to Excel to iTunes.

One of my favorites actually derives from a science-fiction source, the writings of Robert A. Heinlein – I forget in which story – or perhaps it was E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith (my memory is playing tricks on me at the moment), or even Isaac Asimov. In a nutshell, “A television is just a power supply that is manipulated in various ways by the circuits and coils to manifest an image; the physical components don’t matter in and of themselves, what matters is the forces that they exert on and the effect that they have on the energies. With a pattern of force of the correct properties, the mechanical components are no more necessary to the delivery of a transmitted image than an outboard motor”.

There are many more, but these spell out the basic principle: we are used to complex outcomes being an emergent phenomena of simple principles arranged in complex patterns, and in fact everything in the known universe is described or defined by that principle. It is only to be expected that a similar logic would be applied to spellcasting.

It follows that magic can be broken into two discrete components: the power source and the complex structure of effects that translate that power from cause into effect when the magic is activated. Crafting spells, and potions, and scrolls, and any other form of magical device for that matter, is all about what empowers the spell and the encapsulation or codification of those complexities.

In light of the previous section, this provides a framework for understanding the differences and similarities between potions and scrolls. Scrolls function without an embedded power source, deriving the ‘fuel’ for their ‘fire’ from the caster; potions are self-contained. What they have in common is the embedded complexity that somehow transforms that oomph from potential into effect.

Patterns of energy

Quite often, the complexity is described in terms of the complex arrangement of patterns of energy, often through the principle of the “law of similarity”. A complex pattern or writing that symbolizes and encodes a pattern of energy on the page or in the compounding of the potion is the same thing as that pattern of energy; connect it to an energy source of the right type (embedded or not), and hey presto! instant (and inevitable) effect.

Chemical Encodings

Potions are usually described in terms of encoding the complexity in a chemical or biochemical compound. Because the number of processes involved is relatively few, this requires a greater variety of encodable elements and these must be present in just the right varieties and quantities. Furthermore, many of the ingredients are considered inimical to each other, and most be moderated by the addition of still more components. The creation of potions is thus a complicated and lengthy process that must be carried out with precision and great care. The complexity of pattern is thus represented by a complexity of preparation and process.

The Standard Components

All magic, at least in the D&D / Pathfinder system, is based around three standard components – the verbal, somatic, and material. Most other game systems also use this foundation, with the occasional variation in the detail.

In terms of the creation of magical items, there are three interpretations: (1) These three standard components are presumed to be replaced by representative substitutes within the magic ‘encoding’, or (2) the three standard components don’t matter in and of themselves, what matters is the effect they have on the magical ‘force’; or (3) the standard components are employed during the preparation of the magic item, and hence this effect is what is encoded into the ‘preserved’ spell.

I’ve employed both interpretations in different campaigns. The major consequence of interpretation (1) is the implication that material components are not specific but are instead abstract representatives of some quality, for which an analogue can be substituted during spellcasting. A spell may call for sulfur, because it burns; anything else could be substituted so long is it also has the quality “burns”. Another spell may call for ‘ice’ but the quality that is actually required is ‘cold’, and anything else that carries that quality is an acceptable substitute.

At a deeper level, the presumption is that the effect of all three standard components induce a state of altered mental reality in the spell caster, which is where the transformation of power source into effect takes place. This premise is implicit in both (1) and (2).

Personally, my thinking about the standard components is forevermore contaminated by Steve Ditko’s mind-bending work on early Dr Strange comics. I can never think about gestures without picturing someone interacting with a virtual-reality representation of reality as depicted in the 90s and early 2000s, effectively drawing symbols in the air while populating and refining the force structures with the material and verbal components. In other words, magic is exactly the way it is depicted in various pieces of fantasy art, with glowing symbols in the air etc!

I feel this is worth mentioning because these visualizations of ‘the way magic works’ enables me to craft spontaneous narrative description of the process that helps ‘sell’ the fantasy and sense of reality to the players. Simply treating magic as game mechanics takes too much away from the game, in my opinion.

It follows that I can never handle the use of potions and scrolls without thinking about the visual description of what it looks like to the characters witnessing the process, and can’t create an analogue for potions and scrolls without considering the visual drama that is to accompany them. That’s something else to bear in mind.

Potions

A potion encapsulates a spell or magical effect in a chemical compound that must be ingested or applied as a cream or some equivalent action. One of the standards of the RPG, they have various appearances – one of the first expansions to the rules that came to my attention through Dragon Magazine was a random potion description table, which irritated me immediately because it seemed so incomplete, not in content, but in application. I immediately started taking some of the randomness out of the table, codifying potions with specific types spell effects with dominant colors. In particular, I wanted to be sure that no two types of potion had the same appearance. It took quite some time before the players realized that healing, regeneration, and polymorphing potions were always green, for example – in fact anything that caused a physical transformation. The details from that foundation would vary, but ‘detect magic’ would show a sparkling ‘glitter’ effect within the potion and a blue-white glow, with the intensity rising with spell level.

When consumed, potions tend to have a visible effect, even if only for a second or two. If the spell description doesn’t provide an appropriate description – something that modern rules system tend to do better and more frequently than older ones – I create one (usually original to that campaign). An invisibility potion might cause a fading effect from the outermost edges of the image (thinking in terms of a photograph or piece of art and not a body with internal organs), or the image might vanish leaving only a momentary outline, or it might vanish as though it were being erased in swathes for a second before returning only to be erased again. I always want some description of the process that is consistent with, but distinct from, the description of the effect.

I also like to create an impact on the perspective of the character experiencing this effect which may be different again – seeing the world as splashes of watercolor, for example. I often draw inspiration for these from the different artistic effects in my image editor – just so that I can convey to the player the sense that the character is in a different state than he was while subject to the effects of the spell.

Scrolls

I’ve always done scrolls in one of three ways: either a visually-abstract symbolism drawn on the page, or handwritten words, or a combination of the two. Handwritten words introduces the question of language – is a scroll prepared by a Drow different in content to one prepared by a Human, for example, or is there some common language that all magic is written in, or does in fact the language not matter because the meaning of the word manifest within the mind of the reader regardless of the language in which it is written?

When the copying or casting process begins, there is a visual effect in that one by one, the words or lines become illuminated, again glowing a bright blue-white or yellow-white color. From time to time, in different campaigns, I will vary this a little in details, but the overall premise remains consistent – sometimes they will all light up at once and then go out one by one, or they will light up and then vanish one at a time, or whatever.

When casting is complete and the spell takes effect, there is a visible effect, usually in the form of a colored energy erupting from the face of the page and swirling through the air towards the target. The coloration is normally consistent with the dominant color applied to potions of the same type. And the spell visual effects themselves are the same as for potions.

Seals

And so to the variations, starting with seals made from wax or clay. These have the complexity embedded in the complexity of the shape, and the material from which the seal is made – there are, after all, a great many varieties of candle-wax, especially once scents and colors are taken into account. With wax seals, the color of the wax is the same as the color of a potion. With clay seals, I describe an embossing pattern around the rim of the seal – it might be floral or snakelike or burred or crescents or whatever – but it has to be associated with an object of the right color. So floral or cloverleaf or anything like that equals green, snakes are brown or black, a fire pattern is red, crescents are yellow, and so on.

To use the spell contained within a seal, you have to break it, that’s fairly obvious – so that’s the ‘destruction/consumption’ element (As an aside, I have also used metal-based seals as permanent minor magic items that you attach to a weapon or armor).

Seals are great because they can be put on so many different things. You can seal a scroll, an envelope, a door, a chest, a sculpture, a jar, a peace-bond…

As always, I pay attention to the effects that accompany this form of magic device. Where the spell affects one or more distant targets, the halves of the seal have to be pointed at the targets; where they affect the caster, they have to be held overhead. There’s often an audible effect instead of a visual one to seals – it’s very attention getting when breaking a wax seal produces the sound of rending sails, or of the crack of a piece of wood being broken, or the shattering of glass.

Chalk

There are two ways to use chalk: the first is to draw arcane patterns and symbols onto a surface, and the second is to carve figures of some sort out of a stick of chalk. The latter function just like Seals, so that’s easily sorted – just refer to the description above. The former is more interesting, because there are two ways that chalk drawings can operate: The first is for the symbols to vanish when the spell duration expires, the second is for the spell to remain in effect until pattern is broken or disturbed.

Glowing light shows, spires of sparkling light, swirling energies, electrical displays grounding themselves around the rim of the pattern – I really go to town when describing chalk-based spells. I quite often have a chain-casting element to such spells, simply in compensation for the fact that chalk-based spells take a lot longer to inscribe. The alternative is to greatly simplify them, far beyond the usual depictions in fantasy illustration, to something that can be drawn in about the same time as it takes to open and quaff a potion.

Still another option that I have often exploited is to permit chalk spells to exceed the power limits that apply to potions as a way of compensating for the extra time required to draw them. Where potions might only be able to contain first, second, and third level spells, chalk patterns could contain fourth, fifth, sixth, or even higher spells.

In order to maintain the destruction/consumption element, the chalk used is bound to the pattern drawn with it; the final step in activating the spell is to break the chalk or crush it underfoot.

Origami

A lot of people are unfamiliar with origami, and this only really works if you are sufficiently well-skilled in the practice to demonstrate how quickly you can turn a square of colored paper into a complex shape. If you aren’t familiar with the art, check out this Wikipedia Page, especially the examples throughout the article, and these youTube videos:

More complex shapes can be created if you take longer – roses, dragons, frogs, elephants, peacocks, and golems. Nor can most people fold at the speed shown in these videos – a factor of 5-10 is more reasonable, if not longer.

Like potions, origami spells are created in advance. To cast the spell, the paper creations must be torn (sometimes difficult to do; try folding a page length-ways four times, rotating the page 90 degrees each time, to create a panel sixteen pages thick and then try to tear it!) or burned.

Origami magic can seem like a gimmick, but it can also enable the GM to get deeply into symbology and animal avatars. I’ve never actually used it in a campaign, but have considered creating a character class who can shape-change into different animals and objects using Origami magic, probably based on colored rice paper or panels of silk, because that would nicely fit the oriental theme.

Formulas

This idea came to me from the comics character Johnny Quick, who acquires a temporary ‘charge’ of super-speed by reciting the formula “3X2(9YZ)4A”. That seems a little quick and simplistic, but it started the conceptual ball rolling. Mathematical formulas are used to describe physical phenomena all the time, and if the magical principle of “the law of similarity” has any meaning, such formulas are indistinguishable from the thing they describe. Remember the ‘television set’ analogy earlier in the article? Put that concept together with this, and you have a situation in which reciting the applicable formulas casts a spell!

Of course, the spell needs something to fuel it or it’s simply too unbalancing, and that something needs to be comparable in value to a potion, and needs to be consumed in the process of casting the spell. It took me a while to think up something appropriate, but eventually the notion of “focusing” the potential spell led me to the idea of glass lenses, assuming that they are blown/molded instead of being ground. In real life, that would create too many imperfections for the resulting lenses to have any optical value, but for our purposes they don’t have to be exact; their symbolic value is far more important.

Songs

Intriguingly, most Bardic spells are not far removed from the conceptual realm that is under discussion. Like potions and scrolls, they encode in the melody, chord, and lyric, the complexities that describe the magical effect. I was deeply involved in developing a unique set of “visual and aural effects” to describe the effects of bardic magic when the player of the last Bard in any of my campaigns passed away unexpectedly, so I never finished the work. Amongst other effects, depending on the spell being cast, the lute or harp being used could continue to play the tune until commanded to stop or the battle ended. Another idea was for the sound to continue even though the instrument was no longer in use. Where those notes have gone now, I don’t know; they are packed away somewhere, though.

Runestones

This is a notion being explored in the Zenith-3 campaign at the current time. Although the mechanics of spells and spellcasting are quite different, the central concept of power source and complex translation mechanism remain the same, so in principle, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of using them in a fantasy campaign under different rules.

There are two approaches, and both are available; the first is that the runestone must be crushed or broken in the same manner as a seal, described earlier. The second is that the runestone glows from inside, with the rune traced in lines of light or fire, until the spell has run its course, and is then destroyed, blackening and crumbling.

Crushable Gems/breakable crystals

While we’re at it, a very similar idea is the use of crushable gems or breakable crystals.

Dance Moves

I’ve never been a fan of shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” – they simply aren’t my cup of tea – but I know enough about modern dance and the like to recognize that symbolism of complex ideas in human bodily motion is central to the art of choreography. Under the principles offered, there is nothing to prohibit the notion of “dance moves” being the foundation of a type of magical effect. I was creating a branch of magical effect for the “bladedancer” character class based on this idea when the campaign in which it was to appear was put on hiatus.

Rhymes

Some fantasy novels explore the concept of casting spells by reciting invented-on-the-spot poetry – The Incompleat Enchanter, for one, which also features translation between different planes of existence by reciting logical formulae that comprise a Polysyllogism.

Again, I think that limits would need be placed on this treatment in the same manner as Formulas in the name of game balance. And, depending on the personalities of your players, certain types of verse might need to be excluded!

Food

Of course, the granddaddy of fantasy games is The Lord Of The Rings, and that is the source that demonstrates that food-based magic is perfectly acceptable, at least in principle. I speak, of course, of Lembas.

One of the most intriguing notions about food-based magic storage is that most foods remain edible for only a limited period of time. Magic with a ‘use-by’ date is a new way of managing game balance, but one that holds a lot of appeal. It would certainly alter the dynamics of a campaign if this was the only type of “consumable” magic – no potions, in other words – characters would leave town magic-rich after resupplying, and become increasingly magic-bereft as they traveled. Food for thought, isn’t it (pun intended)?

Ammunition

Finally (in terms of the standard model of consumable magic storage), we come to the notion of enchanted ammunition that gives up its benefits after being used once, or a finite number of times. While the ammunition itself might not be consumed, it might then become magic-depleted, another whole-new concept for GMs to explore.

Binary Compounds

But I had one more idea (hence the caveat in the paragraph above) to share. While writing up the section describing the complexity embedded within potions and the like, a stray notion occurred to me: what if the spells were actually cast on the target in advance, but required the potion to activate them, with the potential eventually wearing off if not triggered? This would make magical storage something akin to a Binary Compound, two inert components that have to be brought together to initiate reaction.

I have to admit that I’ve never seen potions described in this way. But the idea is intriguing. At this point, it probably needs further development.

Implementation

I’m not for one minute suggesting that all these diverse forms of magical storage exist as common items within a single campaign. Rather, if the resulting flavor was appropriate, I would look at replacing the notion of “potions” with one of the alternatives. Hopefully I’ve given you enough options to expand your horizons beyond the standard potion described in the rulebooks!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email