The Magic of Ordain

This will be one of two blog posts today. The second will be the promised statblock for a construct creature that my players dreamt up at my Monday night game. This post is going to be somewhat of a brainstorm for me, but also -- hopefully -- a resource for other Dungeon Masters wishing to use a restricted or "low" magic alternative to the spellcasters presented in the core rules of fifth edition.

In my current game, spellcasters must seek out 4th, 5th, and 6th-level spells from the world in order to learn them. No one learns spells of those levels automatically. If a cleric needs to learn Greater Restoration, they can go find a priest with a thigh bone relic from an ancient warrior-priestess and attune to it for several days (or weeks, or months, or whatever's appropriate to your game) and make some headway into the item. Essentially, I'm making all spells of those levels "researchable," using a modified downtime system. A player might need to take that aforementioned thigh bone to a pool of water on a holy mountain and bless it in the still waters under a moonless night. Whatever is tonally and mechanically appropriate and feasible for your game.

Spells of a higher level than 6th don't exist at all in the world where they can be sought out. They exist in dungeons. Your god won't grant you the power to cast Divine Word; you have to delve the sunken fortress of Malga'tir and find the site of the planetar angel Sierissala's final confrontation with the archpriest of Orcus. It's there that you find the word blasted into the stone where she smote him, and it's there that you must face down the shade of the angel, corrupted by necromantic power. So rather than being able to research for these more powerful spells, you have to earn them.

Consequently, some spells are unique in the world, and might only be known by one person. That means a druid seeking the means to earn Plane Shift might have to find and stop the plane-hopping elemental terrorist that destroyed her family's village when she was young, then rip the spell from the villain by way of some vitality transference, ritual sacrifice, talisman, or other suitably potent magic.

So the way I have spells set up is basically this:

• 1st-3rd: You learn these normally. This is what common people think of when they think of magic; flying, healing, shooting fire and lightning, etc. Villagers might have familiarity with some of these spells. A town healer knows how to alleviate a hangover or purify rotted food.
• 4th-6th: You have to research these spells and complete quests to earn them from people who keep them. This magic is known of and thought of as the pinnacle of high wizardry and arch-clerical ritual. Common folk won't have seen this magic, they'll have heard of it. A master arcanist with the Order of the Black can Geas princes and dukes into signing treaties for the good of the realm.
• 7th-9th: You must quest for these, and nobody can teach you these spells in the common way. They exist only in places of power and in the minds, relics, or artifacts of the most powerful spellcasters or otherworldly denizens. Commoners have never heard of these spells, or if they have, it's in fables and myths. Controlling the weather is the stuff of demigods, and the last time the druid Ourathore came out of her sea cave a hundred years ago, a storm sank the coastal city of Clifftop.

So that's my system for making magic meaningful. Normally, players choose spells when they level up. In this system, that freedom of choice is replaced with system and setting interaction. This is not a replacement for normal games; this is an idiosyncratic way that I've chosen to respond to my players and their desire for more challenging, meaningful spellcasting and magic in the world.