Wizard Week: Practicing Magic
image credit: Ruiheng Liu
Just because the Players Handbook says you need a spellbook doesnât mean you canât get creative! Here are some unique ideas for you to use as your wizardâs spellbook. Bulkier collections might require you to either buy a vehicle to carry them or summon them from an extradimensional space. Campaigns with a hub area like a town or stronghold could have a permanent location for a particularly large spellbook.
These are just of few ideas. For more ideas, think of anything that you could collect or craft as a hobby and imagine that each object holds a spell of some sort.
Artwork: This sounds a bit more like a bard but imagine a wizard that fills the halls of their Mordenkainenâs Magnificent Mansion with detailed paintings depicting each spell either directly or abstractly. To prepare their spells, they walk through and peruse their mansion, reading the magic of each painting. For a more mobile spellbook, you could instead have a sketchbook or a carriage full of canvases with an easel attachment.
Brewing/Mixology: You prepare spells as mixed drinks (or potions, if youâre boring) and drink them when you wish to cast the spell. The only downsides are that you must carry your liquor cabinet with you and you get wasted if you donât pace your spellcasting carefully.
Bones: For the edgy necromancer, you carve or paint bones with your spells. Bonus points for animating it as a skeleton so you have a walking spellbook. Just be careful you donât lose it.
Candles: You create candles that have your spell colored or carved into the wax. Perhaps the candlesâ colors have a special significance like a red candle is a fire spell and a green one is poison. You might need to use the Fabricate spell to make candles from a block of wax or else carry a mound of wax and candlemaking supplies with you (some way to melt the wax, a rack to dry the candles on, carving tools, dyes, etc.). You prepare spells by burning them and inhaling their scented magical vapors. You could carry them on your carriage lighting the way or in a permanent location on candelabras or a votive rack.
Cooking: Magical meal-prepping. You spend your spell preparation time cooking and baking up foods each with a unique spell enchanting it. Of course, this requires having an entire kitchenâs worth of ingredients with you. One could make an argument that the Prestidigitation spell can replace most kitchen tools and a fire can be built at any old campsite.
Crystals: You grow or collect crystals that resonate with each of your spells. To prepare spells, you spend time meditating with your chosen crystals and allow their magic to infuse your body.
Illuminated Manuscript: For flair, you add illuminations to your spellbook that illustrate the margins and perhaps hint at what the spell does. The figures and objects in the illustrations move, making repeated actions.
Jewelry: You create jewelry enchanted with your spells and wear the ones that you prepare for that day. This can be very creative ranging from rings of power like the Mandarin to points of a crown to a Pandora bracelet of the wizarding world. Not to mention jewelry is easy to carry on your person or in a jewelry box or chest.
Medals: You emboss your spells on small gold/silver plates, perhaps with gem embellishments, and wear the spells you have prepared as jewelry on your body.
Outfits: You sew each spell into a specific garment; the larger or more elaborate the garment, the more powerful the spell. You prepare your spells as easy as getting dressed in the morning. The only problem is your outfits can sometimes get a little⊠eccentric, sometimes wearing socks on your hands or multiple hats and belts so you can get certain spell prepared. You will also need to carry your wardrobe with you somehow.
Plants: You enchant potted plants or plants in a garden with your magic. The leaves and flowers become patterned with runes and symbols. You prepare your spells by tending to the plantsâ needs of water, food, pruning, and the like.
Rune Stones: You carve your spells as complex runes on small stones or talismans. You could keep the stones in a satchel or pouch. In a more permanent location, you could have them be stones in your fish tank or arrange them in your garden or some other safe location.
Scrolls: Instead of a book you have a whole bunch of scrolls with you, one for each spell. This can take the form of a backpack-scrollrack, a carriage, a bunch of scroll cases hanging from cord off your belt and back, or an extradimensional scroll rack only you can access.
Sheet Music: Perhaps as a wizard you study the power of music that bards use and create more specific spells in a similar manner. Instead of using your ear or âfeelingâ the music, you have to write it down in the form of sheet music which you read and play to prepare your spells.
Shrunken Heads: For the eccentric necromancer, you have a collection of shrunken heads that hold your spells. You unsew their mouths to allow them to whisper their spellâs secrets into your ear as you prepare spells.
Stone/Clay Tablets: You carve your spell into stone or clay tablets. This presents a similar problem like the scrolls in that they are not only unwieldy but also heavy. You will likely need a horse-drawn vehicle or extradimensional space or else a more permanent place to store your spell tablets.
Stories/Poems: Again more like a bard but each spell in your spellbook could take a more narrative format like a story or poem which you read or recite to cast or prepare the spell.
Tattoos: You tattoo your body with your spells. When you prepare certain spells, you trace the patterns on your body and cause the prepared ones to glow slightly.
Tarot Cards: You have a set of illustrated cards that you use to hold your spells. For added flavor, the spells you âchooseâ are the ones you randomly pulled from the deck in-game. Or, for added fun, you can actually prepare your spells at random by assigning them to certain cards. Hopefully you donât ever know more than 78 spells or however many there are in your deck. Perhaps you can count their facing (rightside-up or upside-down)
Vials of Memories: Once you learn a spell, you save space inside your head by extracting the memories in liquid form, drinking them when you wish to prepare the spell (much like the Pensieve from Harry Potter)
Ways to Practice your Magic
For unique manifestations of your magic, you can refer to one of my most popular articles about narration of spell combat by following this link. Here, I provide some further, more creative alternatives for wizards of certain specialty schools
You could use runes or symbols to create your spells.
You could enchant objects with your prepared abjuration spells and activate them when the time comes (usually a brooch, bracer, shield, helm, or cloak).
You could use historically magical minerals as components in your protective magic like salt, iron, gold, or silver.
You could create glowing objects to represent your shields or temporary hit points, like summoning glowing bones that spin around you or sigils of Boccob or your own personal seal.
When you dispel or counter magic, a magic animal avatar could emerge from you to rip apart the target spellâs aura.
You could summon conjured objects by extracting the materials for it from the surrounding environment like in Fullmetal Alchemist. Summoned creatures might even work this way, being unable to physically manifest in this dimension but instead creating an avatar.
Objects you create might be made from specific materials that you are good at manipulating. For instance, a wizard considering themselves an ice mage might create a table made from ice (textured to add friction), instead of wood.
You could involve a lot of symbols in your conjuring spells like in a magic circle. The object rises from the symbols drawn on the floor or on prepared pages.
You materialize objects from coalesced smoke that you cast from your fingertips.
Objects you create are summoned ectoplasm from the Ethereal Plane that take on real form once in the Material Plane.
Objects you summon rise from shadows and always have a darker tint than similar objects. The objects are created with matter from the Shadowfell.
There are so many ways to practice divination. Follow this link to Wikipedia for ideas. I have listed my favorites below.
Aruspicina: Observation of sacrificial rites.
Auramancy: Observation of auras.
Capnomancy: Observation of smoke.
Cartomancy: Observation of cards like tarot cards.
Ceromancy: Observation of wax dripped into water.
Cleromancy: Observation of cast objects (casting bones, dice, beans, runestones, etc.)
Cryptomancy: Observation of omens.
Dririmancy: Observation of dripping blood.
Entomomancy: Observation of insects movements and behaviors.
Lithomancy: Observation of stones or gems.
Necromancy: Speaking with the dead. (I think this one might be taken, however)
Oneiromancy: Observation of dreams.
Scrying: Gazing in a crystal, pool, mirror, or other reflective surface.
Tyromancy: Observation of cheese (you canât make this stuff up)
You could manipulate auras of the charmed creatures.
You could cloud a creatureâs mind with false visions or senses to guide their behaviors.
You could have a potion or poison be inhaled by the target to make them susceptible to suggestion.
You could have a dangling amulet hypnotize your target.
You could give the target an object cursed with the enchantment magic.
Creatures enchanted by you could have some sort of visual cue to the enchantment magic. This could range from subtle, like a small symbol appearing on their shoulder blade, to extreme, like Crown of Madness making an iron crown appear on the creatureâs head. Alternatively, glowing chains or puppet strings or a glowing orb before their eyes.
You could create a controlled portal to an elemental plane to draw elemental energy from.
You could invoke Archomentals of the spellâs element to cast the spell, almost like a cleric or warlock.
Fire/Lightning: Imix, Zaaman Rul, Chlimbia
Cold/Water: Olhydra, Ben-hadar, Cryonax
Wind/Thunder: Yan-C-Bin, Chan
Earth: Ogremoch, Entemoch, Sunnis
You could call an element by calling on its true name, sort of like magic in the Eragon book series.
You could manipulate chemicals scientifically to create the evoked effect
Fire: Pretty much any flammable liquid or gas like concentrated hydrogen peroxide.
Cold:Â Cryogenic liquid (hypercooled gas) such as liquid nitrogen.
Lightning: Inducing a spontaneous redox reaction to produce a current. For this explanation you might need a conductive material focus for such a spell.
Acid: Perchloric acid is one of the strongest acids around, as is hydroiodic acid, hydrobromic acid, hydrochloric acid, and sulfuric acid.
Poison: Many chemicals can be considered poisonous, including chlorine gas, strychnine, cyanide, batrachotoxin
You could burn off energy from your soul to create the energy for your spells, knowing full well that it will eventually burn out. You could also channel energy from some other finite source.
You could summon short-lived elementals to cast your elemental spells.
Your energy could take the shape of a symbol or animal as it flies toward the target.
Your illusions could be you bending light
Your illusions could be you creating a mental image in the minds of those who can witness it; a collective delusion.
You could summon a swarm of harmless insects that take the form of the illusion.
Your illusions could be carefully shaped elemental energies like fire, water, sand, pebbles, etc.
Your illusions could come from a set of cards with images on them which you produce whenever you create the pictured illusion. Useful if you donât stray too often with your illusions. You could also use tiny charms/jewels, figurines, or pictures in a sketchbook.
You could subconsciously pull the imagery for your illusions from your, your allies, or your enemiesâ dreams or fears.
Your illusions could be composed of ectoplasm and exist on the Ethereal Plane but only visually on the Material Plane.
Your undead creations could come from weird science like Frankensteinâs monster, using science and surgery to channel negative energy or lightning damage through flesh. You might have a variety of devices for your spells.
Your undead you create could require a complex ritual of mummification. It doesnât create an actual mummy but it preserves the corpse and perhaps reduces the smell from embalming chemicals. You use chemicals to cause necrotic damage in opponents.
You could create undead by trapping souls or demons inside the corpses. These souls are used to make necrotic attacks.
You could cover a corpse to be animated with glowing runes, each reanimating a specific part of the creature like a specific knuckle or joint. These symbols are key to your control over organic material and negative energy.
Your necromancy could come from a form of nature magic using fungi and plants to reanimate corpses. Your necrotic damage is dealt by natural poisons, venoms, and toxins.
You could need to scribe symbols on the target of your transmutation target in order to affect them.
Your transmutation magic could be a form of necromancy by bending the flesh of a creature to polymorph them. Shrinking a creature might cause skin and flesh to slough off while growing a creature might require some sort of sacrifice or else cause uneven cancerous growth.
Your transmutation magic could be more abstract. Instead of literally polymorphing a creature, you cause a magical aura of what they would polymorph into to surround them and augment their abilities. This would make stealth with your magic impossible, however.
When you polymorph a creature or object, elements (usually stone or mud) from your surroundings could cover the target to alter it. You could also have vines wrap around them, creating a sort of mech-suit for them to pilot.
You could maybe specialize in a certain material, so your transmutation spells always work but transform the target into that material. Maybe you can only transmute things into cheese so when you polymorph the barbarian into a black dragon, they gain black waxy scales, a cheesy interior, and breath acidic molten cheese.
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