All My Homebrew D&D Spells

Alright kids, buckle up ‘cause it’s time to talk about my wildly unbalanced custom-made D&D spells! Most of these aren’t going to be particularly useful; I’m mainly writing them down because each one has a story behind it and that’s what we’re here for. Isn’t that right? Thought so. Okay, let’s dig in.

Blind Guardian

3rd-level evocation
Casting time: 1 bonus action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S M (a small, red mirror)
Duration: until the song ends

You summon powerful music from the skies to boost the morale of your friends. Roll a d6. The result determines which song is played. While the song is playing, all allied creatures within range may add a d4 to their attack rolls and saving throws.

Okay, it’s a bit on the nose. I thought the name of the German power metal band Blind Guardian sounded like some kind of D&D spell and decided to make one. The result was a spell that plays a Blind Guardian song (in real life, at the game table) and for as long as it lasts all the player characters get a bonus in combat. Turns out it was a pretty great idea because it made all the players rush their turns in combat, giving it that proper intensity that combat should have. That’s usually a problem in D&D; fights are fast and action-packed in other forms of media but tend to slog in role-playing games². I blame the wargaming roots of D&D.

Blind Guardian to the rescue! Whenever this spell was used the group would go into full panic mode in order to make the most of it. Unfortunately it didn’t see much use; the cost of a third-level spell slot was simply too high. I’ll probably make it second-level if I use it again. The spell appeared in Enter the Hollow but I also introduced it in another campaign, this time taking the form of a vinyl record-shaped magic item that could be used once per day. It was less effective with that group as they didn’t seem to care that it was active.

Oh, and the material component is a reference to their album Beyond the Red Mirror.

A Lizard is Me

3rd level transmutation
Casting time: 1 action
Range: self
Components: V, S
Duration: 1 minute

You transform into a beastly humanoid lizard. For the duration your strength score becomes 17, your constitution becomes 15, your armor class becomes 15 and your size becomes large. You also become immune to the frightened condition while this spell is active. In addition, the following actions become available to you in your lizard form:

Multiattack.
You make two attacks: one with your bite and one with your claws.
Bite.
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) piercing damage.
Claws.
Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 3) slashing damage.

Another one from Enter The Hollow. If you’ve read The Ballad of Sir Garner you know that Sir Steven Garner had been turned into a lizard by a wizard. Said wizard did lots of experiments with lizard polymorphism for some reason, and when it became time to fight him he of course turned himself into a giant deadly lizard. Once defeated, the party wizard found the spell used for the transformation in a spellbook along with the spell used for cursing Steve with lizardism, described below.

A Lizard is You

5th level transmutation
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You attempt to turn a medium or smaller humanoid creature within range into a lizard. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take on the appearance of a large lizard. A Greater Restoration spell ends this effect.

Sometimes it’s okay for NPCs to do things the players can’t. But where’s the fun in that? If an evil wizard can turn people into lizards, the good wizards should be able to do so too! Unfortunately we never reached a high enough level to use it.

Psychic Ventriloquism

1st level enchantment
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V
Duration: Instantaneous

You project your words to a creature or object you can see within range. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or utter a sentence of your choosing. The target speaks with their own voice, or yours if they cannot speak. The spell fails if the target cannot be heard, such as if under the effect of a silence spell. If you choose to target an object, it appears to speak the sentence with your voice.

I thought this was a genius spell. Stolen straight from one of my favorite video games, this bad boy seems like it has so much use. Mess up the king’s speech, make the low charisma-guy sound cool, or just prank people. But no, it was never used. That group wasn’t very big on the whole “interacting with the game”-thing. Another guy in the group decided to put it in his campaign, in which it took the form of a magical sock puppet that could be used to cast the spell once per rest. My character took it and used it that very session. It was every bit as amazing as I thought it would be. If you’re going to steal any spell from this list, take this one. It’s probably great. Probably.

Summon Twenty-Seven Blackbirds

4th level conjuration
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You summon twenty-seven blackbirds that appear in unoccupied spaces that you can see within range.

Weakest spell in the game by far. I gave this one in the form of a scroll to a wizard character long before he had access to 4th-level spells, only telling him the name. He was so excited to find out what it would do. Imagine his surprise when it did little more than what the name implies. Fortunately, it could be upgraded into…

Summon Twenty-Seven Ravenous Flaming Killer Dire Ravens

Prerequisite: You know the spell Summon Twenty-Seven Blackbirds
7th level conjuration
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You summon twenty-seven ravenous flaming killer dire ravens that converge upon a creature within range. The target must make a dexterity saving throw, taking 27d4 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one. On a failed save the target is blinded and its speed is reduced to 0 until the end of its next turn as the birds swarm around it.

Yup, it’s another joke spell, except this time it’s really good. The wizard was very excited and bought a bunch of extra d4s so he could roll the damage all at once, and then he never used it. Why do I even bother?

Graft Head

7th level necromancy
Casting time: 10 minutes
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S, M (the head of a creature that has been dead for no more than one minute and the body of another dead creature)
Duration: Instantaneous

You attach the head of a creature onto the body of another, creating a new creature and bringing it to life. The creature has the physical attributes of the creature the body was taken from and the mental attributes and abilities of the creature the head was taken from. Why would you cast this, I mean, seriously?

Here’s yet another spell that only exists to allow the players to do what the NPCs can. The group was fighting a group of human/pig-hybrids in a vampire-owned factory (it’s a long story) and this spell is how they came to be. The party never even found the spell. They accidentally razed the entire building to the ground before they could loot anything.

Submarine

3rd level transmutation
Casting time: 1 minute
Components: V, S, M (a glass marble or piece of soap)
Range: Touch
Duration: 1 hour

You create a yellow spectral globe around a sailing vessel you can see within range. The globe is filled with fresh air that lasts until the spell ends.

The globe protects the ship and all aboard from the dangers of drowning and pressure, but not from damage from outside obstacles or creatures. Creatures can enter or leave the bubble at will, but those outside the sphere cannot be forced inside against their will, the sphere proving substantial enough that such creatures may choose whether to enter or to slip away along its sides. At the end of the spell’s duration the bubble pops, causing a ship still underwater at that time to sink.

At higher levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the duration increases by 1 hour for each slot level above 3rd.

Yellow because of the Beatles. This one was in preparation for an underwater adventure that never happened. Think I ripped most of the description from a Pathfinder spell.

Summon Murabella

4th level conjuration
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You summon Murabella in an unoccupied space that you can see within range.

Murabella was an evil hag. She made a deal with the party’s wizard in exchange for him casting a spell of her choosing at some point. About half a year after the deal, in real-time, on the campaign’s final session, she finally forced him to cast the above spell, causing her to appear and attempt to fight the party to get the MacGuffin and take over the world. The party was level 15 at the time so she failed miserably. They briefly thought she was the final boss, but then the real one appeared and almost wiped the floor with them. Good times.

Supernova

10th level transmutation
Casting time: 1 hour
Range: 100 000 000 miles
Components: V, S, M (a gravity stone from the planet Rubion worth at least 100,000 gold)
Duration: Instantaneous

You cause a star within range to collapse upon itself, after which it bursts into a flaming supernova. All physical matter, including creatures, within the star’s wildspace system is destroyed, leaving behind nothing but cosmic dust.

This was for a spelljammer adventure. Not a spell they were meant to cast, but handed to the party in a dramatic reveal as to what the ones that came before were trying to accomplish. The adventure was some kind of ripoff of Halo where an ancient civilization tried to blow up the solar system to get rid of the infectious slaadi. The group actually did end up using a large magical machine that would cast the spell for them. Little did they know that one of them had already been infected by a slaad. Unfortunately I forgot about that little fact and nothing came of it. Whoops.

A Very Brief Conclusion

And there you have it! Moral of the story: don’t homebrew spells, no one will use them. They’re probably not balanced either.

THESE SPELLS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM OF CAMPAIGN DERAILMENT OR TOTAL PARTY KILLS, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THESE SPELLS.